Chapter
40
Taniel drew his knife and threw himself forward.
He grasped the Prielight Guard by the chest and pushed both himself and the guard backward through the door. They tumbled down the stairs, a jumble of limbs and grunts and curses. Taniel was able to arrest his own fall by grabbing onto the walls of the spiral staircase.
The Prielight went down a few more steps and landed with his back against the wall, dagger drawn. He wiped blood from the corner of his mouth.
“Guards!” the Prielight yelled.
The Prielight sprang upward, swinging his knife. Taniel dodged one blow and then another. Despite being at a disadvantage in the tower stairs, the Prielight was incredibly fast, forcing Taniel to dance away from quick jabs at his feet.
Taniel swung down for the Prielight’s head, only to have the guard move out of the way. The counterstrike sparked against the stone steps beside Taniel’s foot.
Taniel stomped on the Prielight’s wrist to trap his hand, and leaned over, stabbing quickly at the neck.
He felt the Prielight’s fist slam into his groin. Nausea swept through him as he fell with his back to the stairs. His stomach felt like it had flipped. The Prielight Guard scrambled up the stairs and raised his knife.
Taniel planted both feet on the Prielight’s chest and shoved.
The guard cried out in dismay as he tumbled back down the stairs.
Taniel turned to run back up to the tower when something caught his eye. There was a figure on the stairs, just down from where he and the Prielight were fighting. In the darkness it seemed no more than a shadow, and Taniel felt cold fingers creep up his spine.
The specter wore a mask with a single eyehole, and long white robes.
Kresimir.
Taniel flew up the stairs, propelled by fear. He slammed the tower door behind him and checked the far window. A straight drop into the Addown. No telling how deep the river was there. The fall could still kill him, and even if he survived it, he’d be swept down the river into Budwiel.
But better to take his chances than face certain death at Kresimir’s sorcery.
Taniel felt his pockets. The bloody sheet was gone. If he left without it, all this was for nothing.
There, in the middle of the floor. He must have dropped it when he attacked the Prielight. Taniel snatched up the strip of linen and stuffed it into his belt.
The tower door opened.
The Prielight charged him without hesitation. Taniel grappled with the guard, shoving them both toward the far window.
Over the Prielight’s shoulder he caught a glimpse of Kresimir.
“Stop,” the god said.
The voice was like the toll of a bell echoing in Taniel’s head.
The Prielight staggered away from Taniel, clutching at his ears. Taniel grabbed the Prielight by the shoulders and shoved him toward Kresimir, then sprinted for the window.
Just a few steps and he lunged, throwing himself as far from the keep walls as possible. The wind whistled by his ears as he fell, his heart in his throat, the dark water of the Addown rushing up to meet him.
Taniel plunged into the inky depths, the force of the impact pushing the breath from his body. His feet sank into the silt at the bottom of the river and he could feel himself torn by the current as his fingers desperately groped for the surface. His lungs burned. His jaw ached from trying to force himself to keep it closed.
A moment later and he breached the surface, gasping for air.
The keep was already behind him and pulling away quickly as he was swept along by the river. It didn’t take long to realize that he was being dragged toward the banks. He felt his leg slam into a rock and then he was again plunged beneath the water for a moment. He sputtered back to the surface.
People in the keep were shouting and pointing after him. He’d have to strike for the opposite bank of the river and float it all the way down to Budwiel. The current was fast enough to keep him ahead of any pursuing Prielight Guards, and he might be able to disappear in the ruins of the city until the next night. He set his eye on the other bank.
Taniel blinked. Something was wrong.
The river bank no longer slid by. The water was moving – Taniel could feel the current pull at him – but he wasn’t.
Taniel’s stomach lurched as he was suddenly viewing the bank from above it. How could that be? He was still in the water.
Confusion, then realization set in.
He – and a whole lake’s worth of water – had been scooped out of the river by sorcery. It was as if a giant had fetched a drink with a cupped hand and Taniel was in that hand. His stomach lurched as he was lifted higher and then began moving back toward the keep.
Taniel swam to the edge. There was nothing there but a long drop to the hard ground. He reached out probing fingers. They bumped against a wall of hardened air.
A few moments later and Taniel – along with thousands of gallons of water – was dropped unceremoniously in the courtyard of the keep.
Muddy water from the Addown cascaded across the limestone cobbles. Taniel got to his feet, ankle-deep in water, and looked around wildly.
“On your knees!”
Prielight Guards poured into the courtyard, shouting in Kez. There were dozens, and when Taniel reached out with his senses, he was dismayed to find they were carrying air rifles – no powder on any of them.
He reached for his knife, only to find it gone, lost in the river. One of his pistols was missing as well, and the other one soaked through. The powder would be useless. He drew it from his belt anyhow and flipped it over. On the walls above, Prielight Guards aimed their air rifles.
“Down!” The first guard to reach Taniel menaced him with a long pike. “On your knees, swine.”
He seemed surprised when Taniel darted forward, past the head of the pike, and cracked his pistol butt across the man’s face. Taniel discarded the pistol and plucked the pike from the Prielight’s fingers. He braced himself. This, he realized, was a fight he could not win.
An air rifle popped, and then another. Bullets ricocheted off the courtyard cobbles. Taniel sprinted toward the closest Prielight. Keep moving, he told himself. Make a harder target. And get among the guards so that, at the very least, some might get hit by friendly fire in the confusion.
“Stop.”
Taniel staggered, almost dropping the pike. He suddenly felt woozy and out of breath. Again, the word tolled like a giant bell.
Prielight Guards threw down their weapons and shrank to their knees, clutching at their ears.
Taniel forced himself to keep going. Every step was like slogging through a bog.
“I said stop.” Kresimir appeared at one of the courtyard doors. The water of the Addown he’d dumped in the courtyard seemed to shrink beneath his feet and dry up, so that when he stepped it was on parched cobbles.
Taniel kept moving. His body wanted to stop, but he knew he couldn’t. He had to press on. To get away from the god.
“Why do you not obey my orders?” Kresimir’s voice was the deepest bass Taniel had ever heard. It rang within his ears. The god tilted his head to one side, as if curious. He pointed at the cobbles. “Kneel.”
“Go to the pit,” Taniel spat. His whole body shook from the effort of moving.
“Kneel!”
The keep quaked. One of the Prielight Guards screamed. Taniel could feel Kresimir’s confusion behind the mask.
“Take him,” Kresimir whispered.
Prielight Guards surged to their feet. It was a struggle for Taniel just to move as he tried to react to their advance.
Fighting was out of the question.
Taniel’s pike was taken from him. Someone slammed the butt of an air rifle into his back, dropping him to his knees.
“A spy, my lord,” the guard captain said. “Another assassin.”
“From who?”
Fingers curled into Taniel’s hair and his head was wrenched back so that he looked up at Kresimir. “Answer your god, cur,” the guard captain said.
Taniel cleared his throat and spit the contents at Kresimir’s feet.
The butt of a rifle smacked across his face.
“Amateurs,” Taniel said. General Ket’s provosts had hit him harder than that.
“Adran, my lord,” the guard captain said.
Kresimir took a small step back. “Who ordered you here?” He paused a moment, and then, “Why does he not answer? His god compels him.”
The next blow was a pike handle to Taniel’s chin that he feared had dislocated his jaw. Something hit him in the stomach. He was dragged up by the hair and hit again, then again. Amateurs these were not. Compared with these, the first blow had been gentle.
“Answer your god,” the guard captain said.
Taniel remained silent.
“Break his arm.”
One Prielight took ahold of Taniel’s wrist, bending it painfully back, and then brought a knee up against his elbow as one might break a branch for the fire. Taniel gritted his teeth, trying not to scream. Once. Twice. Three times.
“Break it,” the guard captain said again.
“I can’t. It’s like trying to break a cannon barrel.” The Prielight rubbed at his knee.
“Get a hammer.”
“Fools.” Kresimir’s voice made the Prielights cower. He stepped up and looked down on Taniel.
Taniel felt the warmth of sorcery like the slow approach of a flame.
“Beg,” Kresimir said.
Taniel shook his head.
“Beg!” Kresimir’s jaw twisted with sudden strain, and Taniel felt the heat come on quickly. He drew back involuntarily, ready for the worst kind of pain.
Kresimir suddenly threw himself backward, a wail escaping his lips. It grew louder and louder, and might have shattered the stones of the keep had it been longer. As it was, Taniel thought that for a moment it would drive him mad. The god fell to the ground, swatting at invisible flames, whimpering.
Taniel felt the chuckle rise within him. It burst forth from his mouth like a funny thought at an inopportune moment.
Ka-poel’s wards. It had to be.
Kresimir couldn’t break them.
Kresimir cowered on the cobbles. His mask had fallen off. He stared at Taniel through one eye of fear. The other eye was pus-filled, oozing black liquid over a swollen, purple cheek. “What did you do to me?” Kresimir asked.
Taniel couldn’t stop laughing. “Oh,” he said. “That wasn’t me. You met Pole.”
Taniel tried to move. He still couldn’t.
Kresimir groped blindly for his mask. He returned it to his face and climbed to his feet, but did not approach Taniel again.
“Fetch the Adran traitor,” Kresimir said. There was fear in his voice. “Have him identify this spy.”
Taniel waited on his hands and knees, head sagged from exhaustion. Kresimir had sent his men out just thirty minutes ago.
“A traitor,” Kresimir had said. Who was it? Taniel had suspected all along that it might be Ket. She’d been too enthusiastic about ordering the retreats. Maybe Doravir.
Of course, it might be someone lower. A general’s aid, or even courier. Plenty of people had access to the kind of sensitive information that would give the Kez the edge.
Taniel had a feeling it wasn’t a lower-ranking officer, though. He suspected a colonel, or maybe even a general.
Kresimir paced slowly in one corner of the keep courtyard. Every few minutes he’d turn his one good eye toward Taniel.
Taniel stared back in defiance. He’d brought down this god. He’d put a bullet in Kresimir’s eye. He’d proved a god could feel pain.
He wouldn’t give Kresimir the satisfaction of watching him grovel.
Of course, Taniel knew he might think otherwise after a few days of torture. He had to be realistic. Ka-poel’s wards seemed to protect him from sorcery. Perhaps even from permanent physical damage. But he knew from experience that he could still feel pain.
Funny, that. Her protection might just be his undoing. The Kez could torture him indefinitely.
Footsteps approached from a hallway adjoining the courtyard. Taniel rocked back on his knees. He’d see this traitor and spit in his eye before he died.
“My lord, you summoned me?”
Taniel’s head jerked around.
The traitor was an older, heavyset man. He wore the epaulets of a general, and the left sleeve of his blue Adran uniform was pinned across the shoulder to make up for the missing arm.
General Hilanska.
“Who is this assassin?” Kresimir gestured toward Taniel.
“My lord?” Hilanska turned. His eyes grew wide at the sight of Taniel, and his mouth worked silently for a moment.
“You know him?”
“I do indeed, my lord. He is the very man you seek: the eye behind the flintlock. Taniel Two-Shot.”
“I feared…” The words came from Kresimir’s mouth as a whisper.
Taniel got to his feet. It was like trying to stand beneath the weight of the entire keep, his knees buckling beneath him, legs shaking from the effort.
“I’ll kill you,” he said to Hilanska.
“Was he sent here?” Kresimir asked.
The general seemed troubled. “No, my lord. He should be under arrest in the Wings of Adom camp right now.”
“Why?” Taniel demanded. “My father trusted you!” Everything that had happened: the arrest, the court-martial, the attack on Ka-poel. Had that all been Hilanska?
“He mentioned someone named Pole,” Kresimir said.
Hilanska frowned. “I don’t know anyone… ah. There is a girl named Ka-poel.”
“Is she a great sorcerer? Why did I not know of her?”
Taniel surged forward. The guards clustered around, menacing him with pikes and air rifles. “Not another word, Hilanska!”
“She’s just a child, practically. Two-Shot’s companion. A savage.”
“And a sorcerer?”
“A Bone-eye. A savage magician of some kind. Negligible powers.”
“Kill her.”
Taniel snarled wordlessly. He felt a pike blade catch his shoulder, tearing through his skin and flesh as he forced his way through the circle of Prielight Guards. One of the guards threw himself in front of Taniel. Barely even slowing down, Taniel snatched the guard by the throat and crushed his windpipe.
Hilanska turned to run, but he was too slow. Taniel leapt after him, fingers grasping, ready to crush the traitor’s skull between his palms.
And he would have, had Kresimir not stepped between them.
The god raised a hand, and Taniel felt that same sluggish weight fall upon him.
He tore through it, batting away Kresimir’s hand. His body didn’t feel like it was his own, and he gave in to the rage flowing through him.
Taniel expected his fists to strike steel when he touched the flesh of the god. Instead, Kresimir crumpled before him, crying out. Taniel’s knuckles cracked hard against Kresimir’s jaw, then his face. Kresimir’s mask clattered to the ground, and Taniel found himself straddling the god, pounding away.
Kresimir’s nose was a fountain of blood, and his teeth gave way to the beating.
Taniel’s fingers curled around the god’s throat when the Prielights pulled him away. He flailed about with his fists, sending several of the Prielights to the floor before he himself was beaten down.
“Don’t kill him!” Kresimir shrieked, scrambling to get to his feet. His face was crimson, his white robes soaked with blood. “Don’t kill him,” he said again. Kresimir returned the mask to his face and backed slowly away from Taniel. “Hang him high. I want the world to see what becomes of a man who thought he could kill God.”
The Prielights dragged Taniel across the hall. He kicked and screamed, throwing what punches he could. As he was pulled out of the hall, he could hear Kresimir speaking once again to Hilanska:
“Tomorrow I burn the Adran army.”
“Are you sure, my lord? What about Adom?”
“He will burn with the rest.”
Adamat spent the night in the arms of his wife and rose early to make his way to the riverfront.
It was only about seven o’clock, but a thin crowd had already turned out. By the blaze of the sun rising in the east over the abandoned Skyline Palace, Adamat could tell it would be a beautiful day. Few clouds hung above him. The sky was blue and gold.
He found a spot where the crumbling wall of the old city overlooked the Ad River as it came into Adopest but before it hooked around the bend and met up with the Adsea. Adamat sat on the wall and dangled his feet over the edge, eating a meat pie he’d bought from a vendor in the street. He still felt burdened by the loss of Josep. Perhaps Faye was right – the other children needed him now. He had to somehow protect them from this new threat.
He hoped that Josep would forgive him.
No sign of ships on the river to the north. Perhaps Ricard had oversold it. Surely the Trading Company merchantmen couldn’t sail all the way down the Ad River so quickly?
Yet still he waited. Ricard had not given an estimate of when Lord Claremonte’s ships would arrive, and Adamat did not want to miss it. He had no plans, no grand schemes to throw Lord Claremonte from his goals. Adamat could only watch. Something told him that this day would be one to live in his mind forever.
By eleven o’clock, the crowd had thickened to the point that carriages could no longer navigate the streets. Noise filled the air as people shouted among themselves. No one really seemed to know what was going on. Their only information came from the newspaper article that Ricard had run the night before.
There was certainly excitement in the streets, and the police were out in full force. More than one old veteran wore faded Adran blues and sported a fifty-year-old musket on his shoulder. Other men had brought their whole families out and were picnicking on the old city wall. Pastry bakers and meat pie vendors were hawking their snacks to the crowd.
Adamat bought a newspaper from a newsie lad and perused Ricard’s front-page article. It was a rousing speech that called the people out to defend their city against the oppressions of foreign invasion and tyranny. Adamat lowered the newspaper to watch a pair of children splashing in the muddy water of the Ad like it was a carnival day.
He flipped through the newspaper while he waited for Claremonte’s ships. Unsubstantiated rumors out of Kez that Field Marshal Tamas was still alive. Fresh news from Deliv that an Adran army was besieging one of their cities – preposterous.
The slow rise of shouts throughout the throng brought Adamat’s nose out of his newspaper.
Ships on the horizon.
They began as white dots slowly creeping down the river and steadily drew closer as the afternoon went on. They were moving at an almost reckless pace, especially for merchantmen navigating a freshwater river. They came on at full sail with the current, the wind at their backs.
It was two o’clock before the ships finally reached Adopest. Adamat had never sailed on an oceangoing vessel and had only been to ocean port cities a handful of times in his life. Most of his knowledge of them came from books, but he could tell the lead vessel was a fourth-rate ship of the line, and he counted twenty-three gun ports on just one side. It seemed to be the biggest of the ships, and it waved the green-and-white-striped flag, in the center of which was a laurel wreath, that was the emblem of the Brudania-Gurla Trading Company.
The ships furled their sails and drifted downriver. Adamat could see sailors rushing about the deck, and Brudanian infantry staring passively back at the crowd awaiting them in Adopest. The gun ports were open.
If Claremonte was invading, his ships could destroy most of the city without even disembarking crews and soldiers.
There was no motion among the longboats. The infantry seemed content to stand on the ships and do nothing, and the sailors were…
Adamat watched them carefully. What was going on? He cursed his limited knowledge of seafaring. Crossbeams were lowered, sails unhooked and stowed, and very soon it dawned on Adamat that they were taking down the mast.
He didn’t even know that ships could do that. It made sense, though. While the bridges along the northern Ad had been replaced for the passage of masted ships, the ones in downtown Adopest had not. If Claremonte wanted to get his fleet onto the Adsea, where it would be most effective, he’d have to drop the masts completely, float down the river, and reinstall them on the open water.
Adamat desperately wanted to do something. This immense crowd of people seemed to have no direction. Like him, they simply watched while the masts were lowered. What more could they do? The ships sat at anchor out in the river, and they were heavily armed. It would have taken the Adran army to stop them.
He was surprised at how quickly the masts were removed, and Adamat gave up his seat on the edge of the wall to walk with the ships as the anchors were raised and they headed downriver.
He was even more surprised when the ships weighed anchor once more between the bridges, coming to stop just a half mile from the outlet to the Adsea.
They’d stopped, he noted, next to the towering Kresim Cathedral in the new city.
Adamat descended the old city wall and fought his way through the throng to cross the bridge and head toward the Kresim Cathedral. He cast his gaze toward the ships every so often, but nothing had changed. Still a flurry of activity on board. Still no sign of lowering the longboats or firing the cannons.
Between the Kresim Cathedral and the Ad River was an amphitheater where the Diocels of the Church could address significant crowds. By the time Adamat reached it, the amphitheater was overflowing with people trying to get a better look at the tall ships.
It was a death trap. Adamat cursed everyone inside that amphitheater for their stupidity. Hundreds would die if Claremonte opened up with a single salvo.
Adamat thought he spied a familiar face nearby, and muscled his way toward the river. There was Ricard, surrounded by his assistants and the other union bosses, Fell at his side.
“Ricard, what the pit is going on?” Adamat demanded.
“No idea,” Ricard said. He seemed just as confused as the rest of the crowd, and regarded the ship with caution. “I’ve got my boys out in force, armed to the teeth with whatever they could find, but if Claremonte opens fire, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. We can only stop him if he tries to come ashore.”
“And who would be stupid enough to do that?” Adamat asked.
“Look,” one of the union bosses said, “they’re lowering a longboat.”
Adamat peered toward the ship. Sailors scurried about the deck, and suddenly a longboat swung out and was lowered into the river. A rope ladder was dropped, and men began to descend onto it.
“Give me a looking glass,” Adamat said. Fell handed him hers.
He found the longboat and examined it for a few moments. There were a half-dozen Brudanian soldiers. Some rowers. A few men in top hats.
Adamat stopped and focused on one face in particular.
“He’s here,” Adamat said. “In the longboat.”
“Who?”
“Claremonte.”
“How the pit would you know?”
“I saw his likeness once. A small portrait at a Trading Company stock house, back before he rose to be head of the company.”
“Let him come, the bastard,” Ricard said. “We’ll be ready for him.”
Claremonte looked anything but worried. He laughed at something one of the rowers said, then clapped a soldier on the back. He was a striking man, with high cheekbones that contrasted with a body grown soft with age and wealth. His eyes were alive and happy, nothing like his late lackey, Lord Vetas.
The longboat rowed away from the ship, Lord Claremonte standing in the bow like a commander leading the invasion of a foreign land.
Which, unless Adamat was completely wrong, was what he was.
But where were his men? Why would he come to land practically alone, into the teeth of a waiting mob who’d been told he was coming to take their homes from them?
The longboat stopped about some distance from the shore and threw down an anchor. Lord Claremonte stood up straight, facing the amphitheater, and spread his hands.
“Citizens of Adopest,” he began, a smile on his face, the words booming inhumanly across the river.