Promise of Blood

chapter 13



She’s here,” Julene said.

Taniel frowned at the Privileged mercenary. She wore a wicked small smile, tugged up farther on one side by the scar on her face, and her eyes were unnaturally wide. It reminded Taniel of a cougar he’d once seen at a circus. They stood at the front gates of Adopest University. The walls surrounding the collegiate town were little more than crumbling relics beyond which flags waved in the brisk breeze on the towers of the university buildings. Taniel could hear the sound of students laughing. This was not a good place to confront a Privileged.

Yet far better than the crowded city.

“You sure?” Taniel asked. He’d not opened his third eye in days. The last time, he’d nearly collapsed. He told himself it wasn’t because he’d been in a powder trance for four weeks running. He wasn’t powder blind. He wasn’t addicted.

He snorted a line of powder off the back of his hand and shivered.

Julene ignored his question. “Well?” Taniel asked Gothen.

The magebreaker nodded. “She’s here,” he confirmed.

Taniel looked around for Ka-poel. She was studying the gargoyles above the gate. A group of male students were studying her. Taniel glared at them, setting a hand on the butt of his pistol.

“Is that a real savage?” one of them asked.

“You have to have a permit to carry a weapon on university grounds,” another informed him.

“Sod off,” Taniel said. “Wait. Where can I find a map of the university?”

The boy—Taniel thought of him as a boy, though he might have been the same age—sniffed. “Sod off yourself.”

Taniel turned toward the group until they could see his powder keg pin.

“That supposed to impress us?” the boy asked.

Taniel grinned. “It will when I beat your teeth in.” He snatched his pistol from his belt and flipped it around until he held it by the barrel. He flipped it again, then spun it around his middle finger until he held it the right way.

“Fancy,” one of the boys said with a laugh. “Administrator’s office. Head through the gate, take a right. You’ll run into it eventually.”

“Thanks,” Taniel said. “And yes, she’s a savage. My savage.” His grin disappeared when he turned to find Ka-poel glaring at him.

He cleared his throat. “Let’s find a map of the university. Julene, how close can you get to her without her sensing you?”

“I don’t care if she knows I’m coming.”

“I do,” Taniel snapped. “Don’t be a damned fool.”

Ka-poel tapped herself on the chest, then walked a pair of fingers through the air.

“You can get close?” Taniel said.

Ka-poel rolled her eyes.

Of course she could. Ka-poel could practically walk up and poke a Privileged without being noticed. Taniel wondered where his mind was at. It was the damned powder, he decided. When this was over, he’d go a month without touching the stuff.

“All right. Pole, find the Privileged. I want to know exactly where she is, down to the building and the room. You two,” he said, pointing at the mercenaries. “Wait for Captain Ajucare.” The captain had been trailing them for a week at Tamas’s orders. Far enough to stay out of the way, and close enough to be there if he was needed.

A quick glance down the road gave Taniel a glimpse of men on horseback in the distance. “Tell him to begin evacuating the university. We’re going to take this Privileged here, now. Gothen, will you be able to cut off her access to the Else?”

“Of course.”

“No problems this time?”

“None,” Gothen said. “I won’t make the same mistake I made last time.”

All that was needed was for Gothen to be able to get close enough to cut off her sorcery. If bullets and blades weren’t enough to kill her, it would give Julene the chance she needed to use her own sorcery.

“An evacuation will tip our hand,” Julene said.

“I’m not going to let a bunch of students get killed in the crossfire if we mess up and the two of you begin to throw around sorcery.”

Julene sneered at him.

“I’ll be back,” Taniel said.

Taniel headed through the gates and toward the administration building. A series of signposts gave him better directions. The place was practically a town in and of itself. The buildings were huge, built of somber gray stone with towering spires and wide arches. They were separated by open spaces where students lounged on the grass. Taniel walked through a large quad and past the library. His rifle was getting looks.

“Can I help you, sir?”

A man of perhaps forty intercepted him as he headed up the stairs of the administration building.

“Powder Mage Taniel,” Taniel said. “Who are you?”

The man drew himself up. “Assistant to the vice-chancellor. Professor Uskan, at your service.”

“Professor,” Taniel said. “Is the vice-chancellor here?”

“He’s in Adopest on business. Pardon me, are you Taniel Two-Shot? The field marshal’s son?”

“Look, I’ve got a company of soldiers about to come pouring through your front gate. There’s a rogue Privileged on your university grounds. We’re hunting her on orders of my fa— on orders of Field Marshal Tamas.”

Uskan’s eyes grew wide. “Wha… No, you can’t fight here. This is a university.”

“We’ll do our best not to. Do you have an evacuation plan?”

“What? No…”

“Well, you should come up with one. Now. The soldiers are from the Wings of Adom. Send word for the students to get out.”

“Get out? We have almost five thousand students here! The campus is nearly a mile across! What do you expect me to do?”

“Think of something.”

“What about the Privileged?”

“We’ll deal with her.”

The man wrung his hands. “Privileged! There could be wholesale destruction! The repairs…”

“I’m sure it won’t come to—” Taniel froze. There she was, coming out of the library not a hundred yards away. Taniel began to breathe quickly. She wasn’t wearing her Privileged gloves. That gave him an advantage.

“Go on,” Taniel said. “You should evacuate the premises.”

“But what do I say?”

“I don’t know,” Taniel growled. He slowly reached for his pistol, trying not to look obvious.

Uskan swallowed hard and looked Taniel up and down. He gave him a beseeching look. “Just be careful of the Applied Sciences building,” he said. “It’s brand-new.” Taking a deep breath, he suddenly threw his arms in the air.

“Free lunch!” he yelled. “Free lunch, outside the north gate!” He began to run across the quad.

“Shit,” Taniel said.

The woman stared at him. He snatched a pistol from his belt, hesitated. People on the quad were slowly following after Uskan. Taniel gritted his teeth.

The woman began to sprint in the opposite direction.

Taniel aimed his pistol and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed across the quad. Taniel nudged the bullet at the last second to avoid hitting a student, cursing under his breath. The bullet missed the Privileged and lodged in the wall of the library. There was a scream. Students began to run.

Taniel took off after her, jamming the pistol into his belt and drawing his spare. She rounded the edge of the library, and Taniel skidded to a halt. She could be waiting just around the corner. Her sorcery would tear him apart before he could fire a shot. Taniel looked around. His eyes fell on the tower back behind the administration building.

The bell tower was the highest point on the campus. He backtracked, heading through the administration building and across a botanical garden. The garden was enclosed, giant sheets of glass held together in a latticework of iron above. He nearly fell into the pond trying to leap it, regained his footing, and headed for the door to the bell tower.

He took the stairs of the tower two at a time. He paused in a window about halfway up and surveyed the quad. He guessed he was five stories above the ground. No sign of the Privileged. He went up to the next window and looked. There. She was heading across the quad between the museum and a great galleried building with large letters proclaiming it to be Banasher’s Hall.

Taniel swung his rifle from his shoulder. He closed his eyes, breathing the calm of a powder trance, and refocused. When he opened them again, he could see her as if she were standing five paces away. She was a handsome woman, with sharp features and a mole above one brow. She walked briskly, still wearing her academic gown. She’d put on her Privileged’s gloves. She glanced over her shoulder once.

“Rozalia!” The call echoed across the quad.

Taniel started. The Privileged jumped too, a wild look in her eyes. Taniel settled his finger on the trigger.

Sorcery ripped across his vision. Chunks of sod flew in the air, followed by lines of fire erupting from the ground all around the Privileged. Taniel blinked spots from his eyes.

Dirt rained down, obscuring half the quad. Julene walked toward the area, gloved hands held high. She shrieked laughter.

Taniel caught a glimpse of an academic robe. He lifted his rifle to his shoulder and snapped off a shot. The bullet ricocheted inches from the Privileged’s head, cracking against an invisible shield with a sound like a spoon tapping glass. Taniel swore.

A lightning bolt slammed into Julene. She slid backward, her feet dragging turf. She somehow kept upright, hands raised above her head. A crackle of energy, and the lightning bolt returned to the Privileged. The thunder knocked Taniel backward.

Taniel rolled a few steps before arresting his fall. He retrieved his rifle and dropped a bullet down the barrel, then drew a powder charge from his pack and crushed it between his fingers. He returned to the window, leveled his rifle, and fired.

The Privileged spun about, blood spurting from her shoulder. She caught herself on knees and one hand and looked up toward Taniel’s bell tower.

“Oh, pit.”

She made an angled chopping motion with one hand.

Taniel squeezed his eyes shut. Nothing. He cracked one eyelid. The world was moving. From beneath him, he heard the terrible grinding sound of stone on stone.

Taniel’s heart leapt into his throat. The tower was falling. Clutching his rifle, he leapt from the window.

He opened his mouth, but found he had no breath to scream. The glass panels of the botanical garden rushed to meet him. His feet hit first, legs crumpling beneath him, and then the glass shattered. He fell the last twenty feet and landed on his shoulder. He rolled onto his back and gasped. Shards of glass as big as a man lay everywhere around him. He was lucky none had landed on him.

Powder mages were stronger in a trance. They could withstand far more damage than a regular person, and ignore far more pain. Yet a fall like that should have killed him, or at least broken bones.

The ground rumbled. Taniel felt himself rolled by the shock wave as the entire top half of the bell tower slammed into the building beneath it. Stone ground together, wood splintered. Taniel threw his hands over his head.

When he looked up, the dust was settling. He slowly climbed to his feet.

His rifle lay twenty feet away. He stumbled toward it, stepping over rubble and broken glass. His body ached, but nothing was broken. He checked his kit for his sketchbook. It was still there. He retrieved his rifle. “You and I are surviving far too much these days.”

Another thunderclap made him stagger. He limped out of the garden and into an adjoining building, avoiding the debris from the tower. He found a hall where he could look out onto the quad. The end of the hall had been destroyed—the tower had landed on the administrator’s office. He hoped no one had been inside.

He threw his back to the wall just beneath the window and listened. Another thunderclap. Someone was laughing. Julene. He gritted his teeth at the eerie sound, reloaded his rifle, and stood up.

The quad had been destroyed. Ground was torn up everywhere, more dirt than a hundred men could move with shovels in a day, piled up as if scooped from the ground by a god’s hand and then patted into hills. As he watched, a thin line of fire sprayed from beyond one of the mounds and tore through Banasher’s Hall across the way. Taniel saw faces watching the battle from windows. They were gone in an instant, their final looks of horror frozen in Taniel’s mind as the entire façade of the building crumbled.

Taniel dropped back down behind the wall and took a deep breath. This was no normal fight. No, he’d seen Privileged fight before, on the battlefields in Fatrasta. They tossed fireballs and ice and lightning. But nothing like this. Both Julene and this other Privileged were using forces far beyond Taniel’s comprehension. By the power they showed, they both should have been heads of a royal cabal.

Taniel wondered where Ka-poel was. His head rang after another thunderclap, and his thoughts seemed distant. Hadn’t he sent her off after the Privileged? He hoped she hadn’t done anything stupid. He hoped she was safe.

He peeked out once more. He could see the Privileged. She stood on the top steps of a building kitty-corner to his own. The museum, he thought. He slowly lifted his rifle.

The Privileged’s fingers danced. She thrust one hand outward, fingers splayed, toward the center of the quad. That thin fire erupted from her palm. Julene was lifted up from behind the newly formed hills and thrown bodily into the remnants of Banasher’s Hall. Stone folded around her as she hit, the rest of the building crumpling like a house of paper.

The Privileged wiped her hands on her academic gown and went inside the museum.

Taniel leapt to his feet. He was halfway down the hall before he bothered to question himself. What was he doing? These were forces above his ability to fight. No sense in going after her. What could he possibly do?

He thought of the destruction on the quad. Privileged got tired. Privileged couldn’t go on forever. She couldn’t have much left in her.

The building he had taken shelter in was attached to the museum by a narrow, raised stone walkway. Taniel stole a glance, then dashed down the walkway and leapt through a door. He was in a short hall, practically a custodian’s closet with mops and brooms. Another door, this one open, led to the main hall. He caught sight of galleries filled with ancient relics: mummified corpses, the bones of ancient beasts, pottery from some prehistoric civilization, and stones sparkling with gems. He heard the brisk sound of footsteps on marble.

The Privileged marched through the main gallery. Her shoulder still bled from Taniel’s only solid shot. She glanced to either side. She didn’t seem to see Taniel. She definitely didn’t see the movement of the magebreaker above her.

Gothen leapt the banister of a gallery above and landed on the marble not five feet from her. He came up, face alight with victory, a small sword in his hand.

Taniel gave a yell. Yes! He jumped from cover. They had her now. She couldn’t…

The Privileged threw her arms wide. The academic gown fluttered, then began to glow. Gothen’s eyes grew wide.

Taniel halted. He took one step back as Gothen began to shimmer. Taniel tried to yell for the man to finish the job.

The magebreaker fell to his knees. He opened his mouth in a scream. No sound came out, and his mouth kept opening farther. His jaw fell, and then the rest of him began to drop like a wax figure melting before a blazing fire. His clothes burned off, his sword dripping to the floor as molten steel. His body dissolved into a puddle at the Privileged’s feet.

Taniel leapt behind a pillar. He wondered what good he could possibly do, even as he felt for more powder. He spilled powder all over his hand, brought it up to his nose and snorted. He looked down. There was blood on his hand. It was dripping from his nose. He felt the calm of the powder trance steady his hands.

He gritted his teeth and slid the ring bayonet from his belt. He fitted it over the end of his rifle. His hands began to shake again almost immediately. He double-checked his pistols to be sure they were loaded, and prepared to leap to his feet.

Taniel felt something brush his head.

The Privileged stood beside him. She had one finger pressed against his head.

He let out a trembling sigh. “Do it,” he said.

This close, he saw that she was tired. Her hair was soaked with perspiration. The crow’s-feet in the corners of her bloodshot eyes were deep, lines of exhaustion tugging at her face.

“I want you to stop following me,” she said.

“You killed my friends.”

“The powder mages at Skyline? That was a mistake. No. Not a mistake. I’d have killed them all if I’d have arrived in time to stop Tamas and his foolish coup. I was only there to warn the royal cabal, but I was too late. When I saw that it was finished, I just wanted to be gone.”

“Who the pit are you?”

“My name is Rozalia.”

“What are you?”

She let out a long sigh. “I’m one of the few remaining Predeii. Or I used to be. I’m not in very good shape these days.”

“That means nothing to me.”

“You’re just a foolish boy. You’re all just foolish boys. Privileged and powder mages. None of you know a thing.”

“Then kill me.”

“If I do that, your father will turn out every one of his powder mages. I’ll never be able to rest again.”

Taniel snorted. So she knew who he was.

Rozalia said, “Tell your savage sorceress to stand down. I don’t want to fight her.”

“Pole?” Taniel looked around. No sign of her. “Get out of here,” he called. He thought he caught a glimpse of red hair behind one of the display cases.

“Let me leave in peace,” Rozalia said, “and I’ll leave the country tonight. I swear it. I’m done here.”

“As easy as that?” Taniel’s mind raced. Julene had to be dead after being thrown through an entire building. Gothen was a puddle on the floor. What threat could he possibly be to her? Was she that scared of his father?

Taniel caught Rozalia’s nervous glance toward Ka-poel.

She was scared of Ka-poel? Pole was only a girl.

“Simple as that,” Rozalia said. “I’m leaving this place. Your father has kicked a hornet’s nest and I intend to be gone before the hornets arrive.”

“What do you mean?”

Rozalia shook her head. “You really don’t know, do you? You’re playing with something dangerous—no, more than dangerous. Reckless. But it’s too late now. There’s no chance to restore the monarchy, to undo the damage. Westeven understood, but you others are blind.”

“You’re mad.”

“Ask Privileged Borbador, if you don’t believe me. He’s the last of the royal cabal. He’ll tell you the truth.”

“I will.”

Rozalia lowered her hand. Taniel got to his feet.

“I can’t guarantee that Tamas won’t send someone else after you. But to the pit with this. I’m done.”

“I’ll be on a ship to somewhere far from the Nine within a week,” Rozalia said. “Beyond his reach. Besides, I’ll be the least of his worries.” She turned away.

Taniel kept a wary eye on her as she headed toward the front door of the museum.

“Wait!” He hurried to her side and opened the door. He tried to avoid looking at what was left of Gothen as he passed it.

There were a dozen soldiers within sight. Their rifles were bayoneted and aimed.

“Stand down,” Taniel said. They stared at him. “Stand down, damn it, or we’re all dead men!”

Rifles slowly lowered. Rozalia walked down the steps as if she were a queen with an honor guard. She passed them all and headed toward the front gate of the university. She paused twenty or thirty feet from Taniel and turned back toward him. “Beware Julene,” she said before continuing on.

It was at least an hour later when Taniel caught sight of Julene heading toward him across the quad. This was a different quad, undisturbed, in a quiet corner of the campus. Ka-poel sat cross-legged beside him. He rested with his head against the wall, his hand on his sketchbook. He’d begun drawing Gothen. The man had been brave, and mercenary or not, he deserved to be remembered by someone. Taniel’s head hurt. His body hurt. And the person coming toward him shouldn’t be alive.

Julene looked like she’s been trampled by a herd of warhorses. Her clothing was burned and torn, indecent parts of her bared to the world, though she didn’t seem to care a wit. She strode up to Taniel and paused above him, hands on her hips.

“Where is Gothen?”

“Melted.”

She blanched at this, but recovered quickly enough. “Captain Ajucare said you let her go.”

Taniel nodded. “She’s leaving the country.”

Julene bent over, her face not a hand’s distance from Taniel’s.

“You let that bitch go!” She raised one gloved hand.

Taniel didn’t even remember drawing his pistol. One second his hands were in his lap, folded, the next he held a pistol, the end of the barrel pressing into the soft spot where Julene’s jaw and neck met. Her eyes went wide.

“Go away,” he said.