Powder Mage Trilogy 01 - Promise of Blood

by Brian McClellan

  Good lad. Adamat turned back to Faye, who was now sitting up in bed. She ran a hand through her hair, pulling at tangles.

  “You’d better have a good explanation,” she said. “What has happened? Is there danger to the children? To you? Is this about some new job you’ve taken? I told you to stop snooping after noblemen’s wives and going on about other people’s business.”

  Adamat closed his eyes. “I’m an investigator, my dear. Other people’s business is my business. There will be riots. I want you and the children out of the city within the hour. Just a precaution, of course.”

  “Why will there be riots?”

  Damned woman. What he’d give for an obedient wife. “There has been a coup. Manhouch will face the guillotine at noon.”

  He had the brief satisfaction of watching her jaw drop. Then she was on her feet, headed toward the closet. Adamat watched her for a moment. Her body was more angular than it had once been; sharp elbows and wrinkled skin in place of soft curves and a gentle, lovely plumpness. The years since his retirement from the force had taken their toll on her, and she was not as beautiful as in her youth. Adamat pictured himself. He was no one to judge. Short, balding, his round face grown leaner over the years, his mustache and beard thinner. He wasn’t exactly as young as he used to be. Still… he bit his lower lip as he watched Faye, entertaining actions that would need to wait some time.

  She turned, saw him watching her. “You’re coming with us, aren’t you?” she said.

  “No.”

  She paused. “Why not?”

  He should lie. Tell her he had previous commitments. “I’ve become… involved.”

  “Oh no. Adamat, what the pit did you do?”

  He stifled a smile. He loved it when she swore. “Not like that. No. Tonight’s summons. Field Marshal Tamas has a task for me.”

  She scowled. “Only he’d have the rocks to pull down a king. Well, stop grinning and summon a carriage and help the children with their shoes.” She made a brushing motion with her hand. “Go on!”

  Twenty minutes later, Adamat watched as his family piled into a pair of carriages. He paid the drivers and stood for a moment with his wife. “If the riots seem to be moving toward you, don’t hesitate to take the children to Deliv. I’ll come find you when things have settled down.”

  Faye’s face—usually harsh, firmly disapproving—was suddenly soft. She was young again in his eyes, a worried girl waiting for her lover to walk the midnight roads. She leaned forward and kissed him tenderly on the lips. “What should I tell the children?”

  “Don’t lie to them,” Adamat said. “They’re old enough.”

  “They’ll worry. Especially Astrit.”

  “Of course,” Adamat said.

  Faye sniffed. “I haven’t been to Offendale since we went on holiday after Astrit was born. Is the house there in good order?”

  “It’ll be small,” Adamat said. “Cozy. But safe. Do you remember our code phrases? The post office is in the next town. I’ll send a letter to Saddie asking her to bring you the mail.”

  “Is all that necessary?” Faye asked. “I thought it was just riots.”

  “Field Marshal Tamas is a dangerous man,” Adamat said. “I don’t…” He paused. “Just as a precaution. Humor me.”

  Faye said, “Of course. Take care of yourself.” Adamat returned his wife’s kiss, then leaned in the window of each carriage in turn, giving every one of the nine children a kiss, two for each of the twins. He stopped at Astrit and knelt down on the floor of the carriage to look her in the eye. “You’ll be away for a couple of weeks. The city is going to be a bit rough.”

  “Why aren’t you coming?” she asked.

  “I’ve got to help make it safer.” He thought of Kresimir’s Broken Promise. The words made him shiver.

  “Are you cold?” Astrit asked.

  He brushed a finger across her cheek. “Yes,” he said. “It’s very chilly. I’d better go in before I catch cold. Have a safe trip!”

  He closed the carriage door and stood in the street, watching them trundle off until they turned a corner. He would miss Faye for many reasons. When it came to his investigations, she was more than a wife to him. She was a partner. She had a vast network of friends and acquaintances and knew how to coerce gossip to find out information that even he could not turn up.

  He headed back to the house, stopping for a moment only as he saw a movement in a doorway across the street. A young man in a long, stiff coat emerged from the shadows and headed off in the opposite direction from the carriages. He spared one glance for Adamat and doubled his step.

  Adamat watched the young man go, making sure the stranger felt his gaze. One of Palagyi’s goons, no doubt. Adamat would hear from him shortly. Adamat returned to the house, locking the door behind him, and went immediately to the study. He dug through his desk drawers until he found a stack of stationery.

  The sun had finally touched his study window, looking in over the houses and the distant mountains, when Adamat finished addressing letters. His hand ached from writing, and his candle had burned to a nub. He yawned, letting his mind wander for a moment, when the faint scratching sound of metal on metal caught his ear.

  Adamat pushed the whole stack of letters into a desk drawer and locked it. He picked up his cane and twisted until it clicked, then walked through the house, listening for the sound. He reached a rear door, small and old, that led to an overgrown trellis in what amounted to their garden between their house and the one behind it. The garden could be reached from the house itself or from a small corridor that ran between two houses, which contained a locked gate.

  Adamat jerked the door open, cane in hand. Three men stared back at him. Two of them wore the faded coats and simple brimmed hats of street workers. The one’s knees and shirtsleeves were stained black—likely from shoveling coal into a furnace—and the second, the lockpick, wore clothes much too big for him, the common practice of a street thief who wanted to secret a number of things about his person. The third man was richly dressed, a gray overcoat over a sharp black waistcoat, and had shoes shined well enough that one could check one’s teeth in them.

  The lockpick gaped up at Adamat from his knees.

  “You’re making enough noise, you might as well have knocked on the front door,” Adamat said. He sighed and lowered his cane and spoke to the best-dressed of the three. “What do you want, Palagyi?”

  Palagyi seemed surprised to see him here. He pushed at a pair of round spectacles that rested more on his chubby cheeks than on his thin nose. The man was an oddity, with a body that would seem more at home in a circus than anywhere else. He had a round belly that hung far over his belt, but his arms and legs were no thicker than a sapling. It made him look like an oversized cannonball with sticks for arms.

  He was a longtime street thug who had just enough ruthlessness to rise to legitimate businesses and not quite enough intelligence to leave his dark life behind him. Aptly suited as a banker. Adamat cataloged his criminal record in his mind in an instant.

  “Word had it that you’d skipped town,” Palagyi said.

  “You mean the word of that inbred you’ve had skulking around my house for the last couple of weeks?”

  “I have a reason to keep my eye on you.” He seemed annoyed that Adamat was actually still there.

  Adamat gave a long-suffering sigh and watched Palagyi grind his teeth. Palagyi hated when he wasn’t taken seriously. He’d changed little since he was just a half-drunk loan shark. “I’ve got two months until my debt is due.”

  “There is absolutely no way you’re going to gather seventy thousand krana in two months. So when I hear your family is skipping town in the middle of the night, I think perhaps you’ve decided to take the coward’s way and run for it.”

  “Careful who you call a coward,” Adamat said. He reversed his grip on his cane.

  Palagyi flinched. “I took my last beating from you long ago,” he said, “and you’re no longer protected by th
e police. You’re just one of us now, an ordinary gutter rat. You shouldn’t have taken out a loan with me.” He laughed. It was a tinny sound that grated on Adamat’s nerves.

  It was Adamat’s turn to grind his teeth. He’d not taken out a loan from Palagyi, but from a bank belonging to a friend. That friend proved a bad one when he sold the loan to Palagyi for nearly one hundred and fifty percent of its worth. Palagyi had promptly tripled the interest and sat back and waited for Adamat’s new publishing business to fail. Which it had.

  Palagyi wiped a tear of mirth from his eye and snorted. “When I learn that one of my biggest private loans has sent his family out of town just two months before his loan is due, I check on it personally.”

  “And try to break into his house?” Adamat said. “You can’t clean me out and throw us onto the street until after I’ve defaulted.”

  “Perhaps I got greedy.” Palagyi smiled thinly. “Now, I’m going to need to know where your family is so that I can check in on them.”

  Adamat spoke through clenched teeth. “They’re at my cousin’s. East of Nafolk. Check all you want.”

  “Good. I will.” Palagyi turned to go, when he stopped suddenly. “What’s your girl’s name? The youngest one. I think I’ll have some of my boys bring her back, just in case you try to slip onto one of those new steamers and make for Fatrasta.”

  Palagyi had just enough time to flinch before Adamat’s cane cracked over his shoulder. Palagyi cried out and stumbled into the garden. The coal shoveler punched Adamat in the belly.

  Adamat doubled over from pain. He’d not expected the man to hit so fast or so hard. He nearly dropped his cane, and it was all he could do to remain standing.

  “I’ll have the police on you!” Palagyi wailed.

  “Try it,” Adamat wheezed. “I still have friends there. They’ll laugh you into the street.” He regained his composure and pulled himself up enough to slam the door. “Come back in two months!” He locked the door and slid the deadbolt.

  Adamat held his stomach and staggered back to his office. He’d have indigestion from that blow for a week. He hoped he wasn’t bleeding.

  Adamat spent a few minutes recovering before he gathered his letters and set out into the streets. He could feel tension growing around him. He wanted to attribute it to the coming conflict that he knew would happen—the revolution that would sweep the city when Manhouch was declared dead, and the chaos that would follow. Adamat prayed that Tamas would keep it in check. A task that might very well prove impossible. But no, the tension was likely just Adamat’s growing headache and the pain in the pit of his stomach.

  Not far from the postmaster’s, Adamat stopped on a street corner to catch his breath. His stride had been unconsciously hurried, his breathing hard, a worried sense of danger lurking in the back of his mind.

  A newsie lad, no more than ten, sprinted into view. He stopped on the corner next to Adamat and took mighty gasps before throwing his head back and shouting:

  “Manhouch has fallen! The king has fallen! Manhouch faces the guillotine at noon!” Then the boy was gone, onto the next corner.

  Adamat snapped himself out of a stunned silence and turned to watch others do the same. He knew that Manhouch had fallen. He’d seen the blood of the royal cabal on Tamas’s jacket. Yet hearing it spoken aloud on a public street made his hands tremble. The king had fallen. Change had been forced on the country, and the people would be forced to choose how they’d react.

  The initial shock of the news passed. Confusion set in as pedestrians changed their plans midstride. A carriage turned around abruptly in the street. The driver didn’t see the small girl selling flowers. Adamat rushed out, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her away before the horses could trample her. Her flowers spilled into the street. One man shoved another in a sudden, hurried dash across the street and was in turn shoved to the ground. A fistfight began, only to be quickly put down by a truncheon-wielding police officer.

  Adamat helped the girl pick up her flowers before she ran off. He sighed. It’s begun. He put his head down and pushed on toward the postmaster’s.

  Chapter 5

  Tamas stood on a balcony six floors above the enormous city square called the King’s Garden, his face in the wind, watching the crowds gather. His two hounds slept at his feet, unaware of the importance of this day. He wore his freshly pressed dress uniform; dark blue with gold epaulettes on each shoulder, and gold buttons—each of them a small powder keg. The lapel, collar cuffs, and wings of his uniform were of red velvet, his belt of black leather. He wore his medals at the insistence of his aides: gold, silver, and violet stars of various shapes and sizes awarded to him by half a dozen Gurlish shahs and kings of the Nine. He held his bicorne hat under one arm.

  The sun was just barely above the rooftops of Adopest, yet he guessed there were already fifteen thousand people below watching as crews constructed a line of guillotines. It was said the Garden could contain four hundred thousand, half the population of Adopest.

  They would find out today.

  His gaze fell across the Garden to the tower that rose like a thorn against the morning sky. Sabletooth had been built by Manhouch’s father, the Iron King, as a prison for his most dangerous enemies, and as a warning to all the rest. It had taken almost half of his sixty-year reign to build and its color had given the Iron King his nickname. It was three times the height of any building in Adopest, an ugly thing, a nail of basalt that looked like it had been ripped from the pages of a legend from before the Time of Kresimir.

  At the moment Sabletooth was full to capacity with nearly six hundred nobles and many of their wives and oldest sons, as well as another five hundred courtiers and royal dignitaries that couldn’t be trusted on their own. When Tamas closed his eyes, he thought he could hear wails of anguish, and he wondered if it was his imagination. The nobility knew what was coming to them. They had for a century.

  Tamas turned away from his view of the city when the door behind him clicked. A soldier stepped out onto the balcony. His solid blue uniform with a silver collar matched Tamas’s, with a gold sergeant’s triangle pinned to the lapel, and stripes of service above his breast to indicate ten years. The man looked to be in his midthirties. He wore a finely trimmed brown beard, though military regulation forbade it, and his hair was cut short above his ears. Tamas gave the man a nod.

  “Olem, sir. Reporting.”

  “Thank you, Olem,” Tamas said. “You’re aware of the duties I need you to perform?”

  “Bodyguard,” Olem said, “and manservant, errand boy. Anything the field marshal bloody well pleases. No disrespect meant, sir.”

  “I take it those were Sabon’s words?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tamas suppressed a smile. He could like this man. Too free with his tongue, perhaps.

  A thin ribbon of smoke rose from behind Olem.

  “Soldier, is your back on fire?”

  “No, sir,” Olem said.

  “The smoke?”

  “My cigarette, sir.”

  “Cigarette?”

  “All the latest fashion. Tobacco as fine as snuff, sir, and half the price. All the way from Fatrasta. I roll them myself.”

  “You sound like an advertisement.” Tamas felt annoyance creeping on.

  “My cousin sells tobacco, sir.”

  “Why are you hiding it behind your back?”

  Olem shrugged. “You’re a teetotaler, sir, and it’s well known among the men you won’t abide smoking either.”

  “Then why are you hiding it behind your back?”

  “Waiting for you to turn around so I can have a hit, sir.”

  At least he was honest. “I had a sergeant flogged once for smoking in my tent. Why do you think I’ll treat you any differently?” That had been twenty-five years ago, and Tamas had almost lost his rank for it.

  “Because you want me to watch your back, sir,” Olem said. “It goes to logic that you won’t hand out a beating to the man you expect to keep
you alive.”

  “I see,” Tamas said. Olem hadn’t even cracked a smile. Tamas decided he did like the man. Against his better judgment.

  They examined each other for a moment. Tamas couldn’t help but watch the ribbon of smoke rising from behind Olem. The smell reached him then. It wasn’t terribly unpleasant, less pungent than most cigars, but not as pleasant as pipe tobacco. There was even a minty tinge to it.

  “Do I have the job, sir?” Olem asked.

  “You really don’t need sleep?”

  Olem tapped the middle of his forehead. “I have the Knack, sir. Runs in the family. My father could smell a liar from a mile away. My cousin can eat more food than a hundred men, or none at all for weeks. My particular Knack? I don’t need sleep. I even have the third sight, so you know it’s the real thing.”

  Men with a Knack were considered the least powerful among those with sorcerous ability. It usually manifested itself as one very strong and particular talent, though some were quite powerful. There were plenty of men who claimed to have a Knack. Only those with a third eye—the ability to see sorcery and those who wield it—were truly Knacked.

  “Why haven’t you been swept up as a bodyguard before?”

  “Sir?”

  “With a talent like that you could be running security for some duke in Kez and making more money than a dozen soldiers. Or perhaps serving overseas with the Wings of Adom.”

  “Ah,” Olem said. “I get seasick.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Bodyguards to the rich need to be able to sail with them. I’m useless on a boat.”

  “So you’ll watch my back as long as I don’t go sailing?”

  “Pretty much, sir.”

  Tamas watched the man for another few moments. Among the troops, Olem was well known and well liked—he could shoot, box, ride, and play cards and billiards. He was an everyman as far as soldiers were concerned.