Chapter
42
The beatings lasted through the night.
They pummeled Taniel with cudgels and fists. He faded in and out of consciousness but was, mercifully, out for most of it. He could feel the cold air on his skin when they finally took him outside. Through bloody eyes he could tell that the sun barely touched the tips of the eastern mountains.
Dawn was here.
Ka-poel might already be dead.
Taniel’s feet dragged behind him as the Prielight Guards carried him through the Kez camp. A thousand voices reached his ears along with the sounds of an army preparing breakfast. Taniel wondered if any of them knew – or cared – who he was.
He was dropped unceremoniously on the ground. Taniel lay facedown, groaning into the dirt. His whole body felt numb and destroyed, smashed to a pulp by Prielight Guards. His body would be one giant bruise in a day or two. If he lived that long.
He felt along the inside of his mouth and wondered at the resiliency of his teeth. Was that Ka-poel’s sorcery at work? Keeping him from breaking bones? His ribs felt broken, though Taniel didn’t think he had the strength in him to check.
Did he?
Taniel opened his eyes. Men moved and worked all around him. A sea of legs and feet.
“One, two, pull! One, two, pull!”
The mantra was repeated again and again. What could they be doing?
He dragged his hand along through the dirt until he could see it. Moved a finger, then another. They were all still working. That was something, wasn’t it? Those cuts on his knuckles. Where had they come from?
Oh. Right.
Those were from Kresimir’s teeth.
Strong hands lifted Taniel to his feet. He swayed back, nearly falling. His arms were lifted, wrists bound together by strong cord.
“Make it tight,” someone said. “He’ll be up there a while.”
Up where?
Taniel’s arms were lifted above his head. He felt the rope between his wrists snag on something and the guards stepped away. Taniel’s legs gave out beneath him, but he didn’t fall.
“One, two, pull!”
Taniel’s whole body jerked as he was lifted from the ground by his wrists.
“One, two, pull!”
Panic caused Taniel to flail about with his legs, but there was nothing beneath him but air. He looked up.
He hung from a hook fastened to an immense beam being lifted perpendicular to the ground. Teams of men pulled on ropes to raise the beam until it pointed at the sky.
The vision of Julene, nailed to a beam in the middle of the Kez camp, her hands gone at the wrists, haunted his memory.
He vomited down the front of himself.
“One, two, pull!”
It took the workers some time to get the beam in place. Taniel’s back finally hit the wood and his feet scrambled for purchase on the beam. There was none to be had.
He was facing the Adran camp. In the early dawn light he could see soldiers gathering on the front lines, pointing and talking. A few officers were examining him through looking glasses. He closed his eyes, unable to bear looking back. Those men he’d thought to lead to victory would see him here now.
He had to warn them. What had Kresimir said last night? He planned to burn the army, and Mihali with it.
A rasping noise reached him. It was guttural and base, but it had a pattern to it. Slowly, Taniel realized someone was laughing.
“Two-Shot,” the voice said.
Taniel craned his neck.
There, not much farther than spitting distance to his left, was another immense beam. They must have moved it up closer to the lines during the night. And still hanging there, the seared stumps of her wrists crossed in some kind of sick entreaty, was Julene.
“Didn’t think I’d see you here, Two-Shot,” she said.
Taniel looked away from the Predeii.
“Sorry, is it my voice? They haven’t given me water in two months.” She stopped and cleared her throat. Another long, raspy laugh. “The problem with not being able to die is just that.” A cough, and then another laugh.
Taniel closed his eyes, hoping she would stop talking.
“You look good, Two-Shot,” Julene said. “I mean it. Look at me. Kresimir tortured me for weeks before he hung me up here. I’m curious why he didn’t do the same to you. Don’t worry. A couple of weeks and you’ll be good as new. Me, though. I’ll never heal. Kresimir made sure of that. I haven’t seen a mirror lately, but tell me, can you still see that charming scar on my face?”
Had she gone mad from hanging from the beam for so long, unable to die? Taniel’s arms were beginning to ache from the strain of holding his weight. They could only get worse as long as he was up here. He finally turned to look at Julene.
She was hideous. Most of her hair was gone. Her skin, which once looked young and supple, was now cracked like old leather. Her face had been particularly savaged – the tip of her nose cut off, most of her teeth gone. She grinned at Taniel, as if she knew what must be going through his mind.
There was madness in her eyes.
“Charming as always,” he said. He looked up at his hands, tied about the wrist. They were starting to hurt more now. He tried lifting his legs but gave up after several moments with a groan – half pain, half anger.
“The pain doesn’t go away,” Julene said. “Even after months. Even after your arms are numb it will still throb deep down in your shoulders. I find” – she moved her head slowly to one side, a look of agony moving across her face – ”that switching the arm that holds all the weight gives you some relief.”
Taniel closed his eyes. Would he last that long? Would he still be alive in months, watching his country burn, unable to do a thing?
From the Adran army he saw a rider heading toward the Kez lines with a white flag billowing above him.
A call for truce? Or had that traitor Hilanska finally convinced the General Staff to surrender?
Taniel began to struggle harder. He had to get off this rope.
Tamas found Hailona in the mill’s basement, an old granary. It was the only private room in the place. It smelled of dry old wheat, the scent dusty in Tamas’s nostrils.
Hailona looked up when he knocked on the door frame of the open door. Ruper, the butler, was just inside. He stood when he saw Tamas.
“You killed my little brother,” Hailona said.
Tamas knew that wasn’t fair. Knew he wasn’t in the wrong. Sabon had known the risks of being one of Tamas’s soldiers. But Tamas also knew that convincing Hailona of that would be next to impossible.
“I need your help.”
“Go to the pit. Get out of my sight.”
“Hailona…” Tamas took a step forward.
Ruper got between them, blocking the path to his mistress with his body.
Tamas narrowed his eyes at the butler. “Hailona, I need a way into the governor’s mansion. I’m going to kill the man who killed my wife and your brother.”
Ruper moved forward until his chest touched Tamas’s. “My lady has said for you to leave, sir.”
Hailona held up a hand. “Ruper, it’s all right.” She dried her eyes with a handkerchief. Her hand remained up, as if asking for time to think. After a few moments, she let it drop. “Ruper, I want you to show Tamas the secret passage into the mansion.”
“Are you sure, ma’am?”
“Yes.”
Tamas stepped back from the butler. “Thank you, Halley.”
“Kill the bastard, Tamas,” Hailona said. “Make him suffer.” She took a shaky breath. “Then I don’t ever want to see you again.”
“I understand.”
Tamas left the mill. Vlora was waiting for him out in the rain. She wore a tricorn hat and a greatcoat. She tipped the hat toward Tamas, water pouring off the front. She leaned against a rifle, and he could see her blue uniform beneath the greatcoat and a pistol at her hip.
“Did Olem head back to the army?”
She nodded.
“Where are the others?”
“Waiting.”
Tamas nodded. A few minutes later Ruper joined them in the street and they made their way out of Millertown. At the edge of the mill district, lounging around the outdoor seating of an otherwise abandoned streetside café, was Tamas’s powder cabal.
He’d only brought the best. The ones that Sabon had been training during the summer in Adopest were still in the city. They didn’t have the experience or training for a mission like this.
His powder cabal was outfitted much the same as Vlora, in greatcoats and tricorn hats. Every one of them had as much weaponry and powder at they could carry, from pistols to swords and daggers. Tamas felt a smile touch his lips. Eight men and women, every one of them a talented powder mage. As good as an army, as far as he was concerned. Tamas checked the streets quickly for any sign of Kez patrols, then turned to his mages.
“We’re going to provide a distraction so that the Deliv can rescue the political prisoners being held by the Kez,” Tamas said. “Gavril is among those prisoners. I’d like to be there to get our man out, but we have a more important task.
“Ours is to cut the head off this Kez abomination of an occupying army. We’re going straight for the throat. You all know my history with Duke Nikslaus, so you all know that I choose to do this with some… relish.”
There was a low chuckle among the powder mages.
“But as I said, we’re to provide a distraction. I intend on luring in as many soldiers as possible. There will be Wardens, no doubt. Perhaps several dozen. The odds, despite our skills and talents, will be very heavily against us. This mission smacks of revenge for me. I won’t ask you to throw your lives away for my vengeance.”
One of his mages, a girl not much older than Vlora by the name of Leone, spoke up. “You expect to die here, sir?”
“I never expect to die in battle. An expectation like that has a habit of coming true. However… there are times, more than others, when the chances I’ll lose are much greater.”
“That’s a fancy way of saying he expects to die,” Vlora said.
Tamas shot her a look.
“Sir.” Andriya raised his hand.
“Yes?”
“I signed on to kill Kez. I’ve got fifty-seven notches on my rifle from the last two months. I wanted a hundred by the end of the campaign. Will there be forty-seven Kez there?”
“I’d expect.”
“Very good, sir. I’m coming.”
“The rest of us are, too,” Vlora said quietly.
“Thank you.”
“Not doing it for you, sir,” Andriya said. “Doing it to kill Kez.”
“I appreciate it all the same. Ruper. If you please?”
They followed the butler through the streets, dodging Kez patrols as they went. Tamas watched the patrols from the shadows. There was an urgency in their step, and an extra vigilance. Tamas recognized the look. He’d seen it before in the eyes of comrades in Gurla, patrolling an unfriendly city on the last day before a withdrawal with the expectation – and fear – that anything could happen.
The governor’s mansion was back in the same wealthy part of town as Hailona’s manor. Their small group dashed from walled garden to walled garden until they reached a small wooded park well off the main street. Ruper led them into the woods to a groundskeeper’s shack.
It was a small building, barely large enough for all of them standing. Ruper moved a table, then pulled up an old rug and tossed it aside to reveal a trapdoor. He lit a lantern, and they descended into a cellar.
The cellar was rough-cut, descending past topsoil and into the clay earth. From a quick glance, it could have been any root cellar, about four feet wide and a dozen long, with a small room at the far end. When they reached the room and turned the corner, a sharply angled tunnel led off into the darkness.
Tamas counted nearly four hundred paces, sloshing through mud, trying to keep his greatcoat from scraping the damp sides of the tunnel, before they ascended a set of stone steps and came out in a somewhat more spacious basement. It was a stone room, with a dust-covered wardrobe in one corner, a double bed, and an empty musket rack. At the opposite side of the room a spiral staircase led upward.
“This room and passage,” Ruper said, his first words since joining them, “were made as an escape route long ago, when unrest was common in this part of Deliv.” Ruper gestured toward the staircase. “That will take you up to the second floor. It comes out from behind a false bookshelf into the main office of the governor. I’ll return to my mistress now.”
Tamas caught Ruper by the shoulder before he could go back down into the passage. “Tell Halley that… tell her I’m truly sorry I never came back.”
Ruper pulled himself from Tamas’s grip and headed down into the passage with the only lantern, leaving Tamas and his mages in darkness.
Tamas took a small touch of powder to his tongue, letting him see ever so slightly in the utter blackness. He headed up the staircase slowly, as quietly as he could. It creaked beneath him as the wrought iron ground together beneath his weight.
At the top of the staircase there was light. It came in through a pair of holes just a couple inches too short for Tamas to look through comfortably. He set his face against the wall, gazing through the looking-holes.
He could see very little. A double door on the opposite side of the room. A candelabra. The top of a sofa. He opened his third eye.
There were blots of color in the Else. Just bright enough to be Wardens, but too far away from him to be inside the governor’s office. No sign of a Privileged.
Tamas pushed gently on the door.
It rolled forward silently, then slid to the side with nothing more than a touch of a finger. Tamas stepped out into the governor’s office. It was a large room, with dozens of gilded candelabras, shelves full of books, two magnificent fireplaces, and a grand window that looked out over the courtyard in front of the manor.
The room was empty.
Tamas let out a sigh of relief and called softly for his Marked to come up. They filed into the room, tracking mud on the pristine red carpets. He directed them with hand signals to cover the doors and windows.
They checked the adjoining rooms and the hallway immediately outside.
Vlora joined him by the bay window a few minutes later. “No one in these office suites, sir,” she said. “A couple of Wardens downstairs by the front door. Andriya says he can hear soldiers talking in the servants’ quarters on the first floor.”
“Good work.”
“What now?”
“We wait.”
“Are you sure Nikslaus will come back here, sir?”
“I have a good guess.”
Andriya returned to the room at that moment. “Sir, luggage in the master bedroom.”
Tamas checked his pocket watch. It was just after six o’clock. “Timing will be everything.”
Tamas watched out the bay window. There were a dozen or so soldiers in the yard. They stood at attention, facing the gate, muskets on their shoulders. Tamas spotted a Warden in one corner of the yard, barely visible from his vantage point.
He checked his watch every few minutes. Would Nikslaus come back here? Had the news already reached him that Tamas was coming for him? Maybe he’d read Nikslaus wrong. Maybe Nikslaus would rather flee than attempt to catch Tamas.
Tamas brought his attention back to the courtyard outside as several horsemen came through the front gate. They were followed closely by a carriage decked out with lace curtains and fine gilding. It pulled around the turnabout and came to a stop. Tamas was so close he could have tossed a rock through the window and hit the top of the carriage.
The door opened and a Deliv woman stepped out. She looked about sixteen. She wore a fine gown that displayed her ample bosom. Tamas felt a wave of disappointment as she got her feet on the gravel drive and looked around regally.
Not Nikslaus.
Tamas stepped away from the window.
“Sir!” Vlora motioned him back over. Someone else was getting out of the carriage. It seemed a struggle for him, leaning his forearms against the door frame. It was a man. He wore white Privileged’s gloves. A Warden appeared from the mansion, grasping one of the arms and helping the man down. His face was partially concealed by a tricorne hat.
Tamas prayed the Privileged would turn his head just a little bit so Tamas could get a look at his identity.
The Privileged stopped to talk to one of the soldiers. The voices were too low for Tamas to make out. The soldier gave the Privileged a brisk nod, then turned to the others. “We leave in two hours!” he said loudly. “Anyone who’s not ready to move out by dark will be shot.”
Tamas’s gaze was still locked on the Privileged in the tricorne. It had to be Nikslaus! But Tamas still couldn’t see his face. Whoever he was, he chatted amiably with the young lady beside him.
They had just mounted the steps to the mansion when a messenger came galloping hard into the courtyard and came to a stop in a spray of gravel. The messenger leapt from his horse and ran to the Privileged.
Tamas felt his heart begin to beat faster.
The messenger saluted and breathlessly gave his report. The Privileged pushed him away with an elbow and spun toward the mansion.
Tamas heard the doors below burst open. The Privileged’s voice echoed through the building.
“Get everyone!” he screamed. “All my Wardens, to me! I want five hundred soldiers here in twenty minutes. Give the order! We leave within the hour!”
“But, sir,” Tamas heard someone say, “the city!”
“I don’t give a pit about the city. Deliv can enter the war with Adro for all I care. He’s here, you fool! He’s here!”
“Nikslaus,” Tamas whispered.
Tamas watched as messengers scrambled out the front mansion drive, going out to give Nikslaus’s orders.
“Well, Demasolin,” Tamas muttered, “you have your distraction.”
Urgent steps sounded on the staircase in the foyer accompanied by Nikslaus’s frantic orders.
Tamas looked down to find one hand already on the grip of a pistol, the other on the hilt of his sword. His fingers itched.
“He’s coming,” Andriya hissed from his station by the door.
“Do we wait for him here?” Vlora said.
Tamas blinked and saw the bodies of Deliv politicians hanging from the steeple of the Alvation cathedral. He saw Sabon’s dead eyes gazing up at him from Charlemund’s gravel drive, and the countless soldiers Tamas had lost trying to catch Nikslaus.
He saw Erika’s head floating before him. Her face, frozen in horror, blond hair caked with blood, skin severed neatly at the neck. He saw Nikslaus’s grin as he presented Tamas with the head of his dead wife.
Tamas poured an entire powder charge into his mouth. His body felt like it was on fire as energy coursed through him. Vlora must have seen something on his face.
“Pit,” Vlora swore. “Andriya, get out of the way.”
Tamas burst through the double doors of the office, drawing his pistol in one hand.
“Nikslaus!” he bellowed.