Powder Mage Trilogy 01 - Promise of Blood

by Brian McClellan

  “Leave Adro,” Rozalia said. “That’s what I’ll do, when my work here is done. Here.” She dug something from a pocket sewn into her jacket and pressed it into Nila’s hand. A hundred-krana coin.

  “Thank you,” Nila said. Rozalia waved dismissively and picked her way down the alley, away from the barricades. Nila waited a few moments, thinking of the coin in her hand and the silver hidden outside the city. She could still see Bystre from the alley. His body lay unmoving beneath the constant exchange of gunfire between royalists and Adran soldiers. Nila made a fist around the coin. It was enough for new clothes and a coach all the way to Brudania. Along with her silver, it was enough for a new life.

  She saw Field Marshal Tamas in her mind as he coolly gunned down Bystre.

  She couldn’t start a new life, not with memories of what had happened.

  Chapter 12

  Shouldercrown Fortress rested on the jagged ridgeline of South Pike Mountain. Its bastion walls were sloped and smooth despite the harsh weather at this altitude, a testament to the powerful sorceries that had built and warded them five hundred years ago. To the southeast, the amber plains of Kez rolled out in the distance. To the northwest, the far mountains that ringed Adro could be seen past the hills and forests. Adopest nestled like a diamond on the teardrop tip of the Adsea. To the north, South Pike’s peak smoked ominously.

  Adamat turned away from the edge of the bastion. Seeing the whole world laid out like that made his head spin, and he wanted to head back into the town—a whole town inside the bastion, that’s how large it was!—yet the Mountainwatch soldier had told him to wait here for Privileged Borbador. They could have offered him a room. It was far below freezing at this height. Seemed they wanted to see him shiver.

  Adamat was exhausted physically and mentally. Even with modern roads the trip was five days by coach, and they had barely stopped to rest. His body hurt from sitting on an uncomfortable, constantly jostling seat. His head pounded from too little rest. Rozalia’s cryptic warning about a woman trying to summon Kresimir had given him nightmares the few times he caught any sleep. What was wrong with him? He was a modern man. An educated man. Kresimir was a myth, an embodiment of monastic power that kept the peasants in line.

  “What are you doing?”

  SouSmith paused in the middle of loading one of his short-barrel pistols. The weapon looked like a toy in his big hands. “What does it look like?”

  “You think he’s going to kill us?” Adamat asked. “Just for asking a question?”

  “Last Privileged almost did us in.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “This is a Privileged, SouSmith. If he doesn’t want to talk to us, he waves a hand and sweeps us from this bastiontop.”

  SouSmith shrugged. “You paid me to be a bodyguard, eh?”

  “Yes.” Adamat sighed. SouSmith didn’t seem to understand. This was a Privileged. There was no guarding anybody against one of these.

  “Even a Privileged has to come through me to get ya.” SouSmith resumed loading the weapon.

  Adamat stifled a smile and realized the words had banished some of his nervousness. He was up here on the roof of the world, a five-day journey from Adopest. He was at a Mountainwatch. Everyone knew the Mountainwatch was filled with convicts and cutthroats and the very hardest men in the Nine. They tended the high passes, manned the mines and the timber yards, and they were Adro’s first defense against a foreign invasion. Adamat trusted his country with the Mountainwatch far more than he trusted them with his life.

  “What’s a Privileged doin’ out here anyway?” SouSmith finished loading his pistols and stuck them in his belt. He leaned against one of the fixed guns that faced toward Kez.

  “Exiled.” Adamat watched his breath come out white.

  “What for?”

  “Officially? There was a shift in power within the royal cabal, and Borbador was on the wrong side. Unofficially, rumor has it he slept with Privileged Khen’s favorite concubine.”

  SouSmith grunted a laugh. “And he kept his skin?”

  “Of course I did.”

  The Privileged approached them from the town within the bastion. He was far enough away that he shouldn’t have heard any of that. He wore a long reindeer-skin jacket that went to his knees, and boots, pants, and a hat to match. He was shorter than Adamat had expected. Under a ruddy beard, loose skin hung from what once had been jowls. The Mountainwatch was kind to no one—not even a Privileged.

  The Privileged stopped a few feet from them. His hands were tucked into his sleeves, but Adamat thought he caught sight of the white of Privileged’s gloves.

  “It wasn’t hard, really,” the Privileged said. “I told Magus Khen that my best friend would come after him if he killed me.”

  “And who’s that?”

  “Taniel Two-Shot. I’m Privileged Borbador. Call me Bo.”

  Adamat extended a hand. Bo took it in his gloved hand with surprising strength. “Inspector Adamat. This is my associate, SouSmith.”

  Bo squinted at SouSmith. “The boxer?”

  “That’s right,” SouSmith said, surprised.

  “Used to go see you fight when I was a kid,” Bo said. “Taniel and I would sneak off and watch you. He lost a lot of money betting against you.”

  “And you?”

  “Made me wealthy—for a kid.”

  Adamat examined the man. He knew little about this Privileged beyond city rumor. It was never wise to know too much about any members of the royal cabal. “Seems strange, a Privileged and a powder mage being friends.”

  “Met long before either of us knew what we were,” Bo said. “I was an orphan when Taniel befriended me. Tamas let me live in the basement. Even paid for a governess. Said that if Taniel was going to have friends, they’d be educated. It was a shock to all of us when the magus seekers dowsed me out. I haven’t seen Taniel since he went to Fatrasta.”

  “Aren’t Privileged allergic to powder?”

  “My eyes puff up whenever I’m around him,” Bo acknowledged. “Always wondered about that as a kid. So. What brings a gentleman like you to the Mountainwatch? You don’t look like Tamas’s assassins.”

  “We’re not assassins,” Adamat said quickly. “Though I don’t blame you for wondering. I am working for Field Marshal Tamas. I doubt you’d still be alive if he wanted you otherwise.”

  Bo swayed backward on his feet. “He doesn’t know,” he murmured.

  “Doesn’t know what?”

  “Nothing. Why did you seek me out?” His conversational tone disappeared, his smile fading.

  “What is Kresimir’s Promise?”

  Bo watched him for a few moments. “You’re serious?”

  “Quite.”

  “Tamas sent you all the way up here to ask me that?”

  “I came on my own,” Adamat said. “But I’m searching for the answer on behalf of Field Marshal Tamas.” Half disbelief, half mockery, Bo’s reaction stirred some disquiet in him.

  It seemed as if relief washed over Bo. He cracked a smile, then began to chuckle. “Let me guess,” he said. “When Tamas slaughtered the royal cabal, their dying words were something along the lines of ‘Don’t break Kresimir’s Promise’?”

  Adamat gritted his teeth. This Privileged was beginning to irk him. He seemed to find great mirth in knowing what Adamat did not. “Yes,” he said. “You laugh at the dying words of sorcerers? Was it some kind of morbid joke? A spell woven to baffle anyone who killed them?”

  Bo’s chuckle tapered off. “Not at all. Those Privileged were in deadly earnest. A spell can be woven, a ward of sorts, that will speak itself upon a sorcerer’s death. A joke? No. That’s the kind of thing I might do. But not those men. They believed every bit of it.”

  “And what does it mean?”

  “Kresimir’s Promise.” Bo rolled the words around in his mouth like a bite of something sour. “Legend has it when Kresimir formed the Nine, he chose nine kings to govern the nations he’d creat
ed. To each king he assigned a royal cabal of sorcerers to protect and advise him. He called them the Privileged. The kings, seeing that the Privileged were men of great power, told Kresimir that they were worried that the royal cabals might turn against them and take power for themselves. So Kresimir gave them a promise.

  “He promised them that their lines would rule the Nine forever—that their seed would never bring forth barren fruit, as it were. Kresimir told his newly appointed Privileged that if anyone were to end one of those lines through violence, he would return personally and destroy the entire nation.” He leaned back when he’d finished speaking, like a schoolboy who had remembered his lesson. “What do you think of that?”

  “I’m a man of reason…” Adamat said. Yet he couldn’t help the shiver that went up his spine.

  “Of course you are,” Bo said. “Most men these days are. It’s a stupid legend. One of many stories to keep the royal cabals in their place. Kresimir’s reign was almost fourteen hundred years ago—at a guess. It could have been longer. Not even the kings really believe it, and only the very oldest members of the royal cabal do.” Bo reached up and touched something beneath his coat. “No, there are far more effective ways to keep tabs on the royal cabal.”

  “What should I tell Tamas?” Adamat asked.

  Bo shrugged. “Tell Tamas what you like. Tell Tamas to worry about important things, like feeding the people or”—he pointed out over the bastion wall toward Kez—“them.”

  Adamat took a deep breath. He let it come out slowly. “So that’s it, then,” he said.

  “That’s it. Though,” Bo added, “I don’t know why you couldn’t find that in the library. There are a dozen books that mention it.”

  “Burned,” Adamat said. “Pages missing and passages snubbed out. By a Privileged, in all likelihood.”

  Bo scowled. “Privileged should know better. Books are important. They link us to the past, to the future. Every written word gives us another hint about how to control the Else.”

  “Bo!” a voice called from the bastion town.

  He turned around.

  “We’re going to the quarry!”

  “Five minutes!” Bo yelled back. He removed his hands from his sleeves and flexed his gloved fingers. “Bastards are getting lazy,” he said. “They think just because they have a Privileged, they can get me to cut stone, fell trees, and clear avalanches. Cleaning up after that quake nearly wrung me out last week. Well, I’m sorry my answer wasn’t very dramatic. If you see Taniel Two-Shot, give him my hello.”

  Bo was halfway back to the town when Adamat remembered the message he’d promised to give. He jogged to catch up with the Privileged.

  “There was a message,” he said.

  “From Taniel?”

  “No, from a Privileged named Rozalia.”

  Bo shrugged. “Don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “Well, she told me to give you a message.”

  “And?”

  “These were her words: ‘She is going to summon Kresimir.’ I don’t know which ‘she’ the woman was talking about. I don’t think she meant herself. I…”

  Bo had frozen in place. All color drained from his face. He stumbled to one side. Adamat caught him. “What does it mean?”

  Bo pushed him away. The man’s teeth were chattering. “Pit and damnation. Get away! Go on, get back to Adopest. Tell Tamas to mobilize his army! Tell Taniel to get out of the country. Tell him… Shit!” The last word was a snarl, and Bo went sprinting across the bastion back toward the town.

  Adamat stood in place, stunned.

  SouSmith walked up beside him, tapping old tobacco out of his pipe. “He’s an odd one,” he mused.

  “I don’t like this,” Tamas said.

  “I don’t think anyone does, my friend.”

  Tamas glanced back at Sabon. The Deliv stood beneath a large parasol, eyes on the distant barricades. Sweat beaded on his clean-shaved head like water on a cold glass. The day was unseasonably hot for this early in the spring. The sun shone overhead, drying up the last of a few weeks’ worth of damp weather.

  “Will the men understand?” Tamas said.

  “Ours, or the mercenaries?”

  “Mercenaries are pragmatic. They’ll be paid either way. My own soldiers—will they lose faith in me after an act like this?”

  Olem stood a few feet away. He turned to regard Tamas, though the question had not been directed at him.

  “I think not,” Sabon said. “They may not like the feel of it. War is supposed to be a gentleman’s game, after all. They’ll understand, though. They will respect that you won’t throw lives away in a needless battle. They will respect that you don’t want to shell your own city.”

  Tamas nodded slowly. “I’ve never resorted to assassination before. Not in twenty-five years of command.”

  “I can remember a few times you should have,” Sabon said. “Remember that shah we fought in southeastern Gurla?”

  “I try not to.” Tamas leaned over and spit. He lifted his canteen to his lips, still watching the barricades. He could hear musket shots and the occasional report of artillery from about two miles away, where Brigadier Ryze was commanding an assault on the armory. “I’ve met some bad men in my day,” Tamas said, thinking of the shah. “But that man was a monster. He’d have a man’s entire extended family buried alive if he questioned a command.”

  “You had him gelded,” Sabon said.

  Olem choked. He tossed his cigarette on the ground and began coughing smoke.

  “War is most definitely not a gentleman’s game, my friend,” Tamas said. “Else I wouldn’t play.” He glanced at Olem. “Give us a minute.”

  Olem moved out of earshot, still coughing. Tamas joined Sabon beneath the parasol. He produced a letter from his pocket and gave it to Sabon.

  “Your new commission,” Tamas said.

  Sabon took the letter. “What?”

  “I’ve put Andriya and Vadalslav to sniffing out more powder mages. With the royal cabal dead, I think the mages will be more likely to come forward. Not to mention the pay we’re offering,” he said. “They’ve set up shop outside of town, near the university, and will soon be heading to Deliv and Novi and Unice to recruit. I want you with them.”

  “No,” Sabon said, trying to give the letter back.

  “I’m your commanding officer,” Tamas said. “You can’t say no.”

  “I can say no to my old friend,” Sabon said.

  “Why won’t you do it?”

  Sabon grunted. “Andriya and Vadalslav are more than enough to take care of recruits. You’ve sent the others to the Gates of Wasal. Taniel is chasing a ghost around the city, and despite the fact that you assigned Vlora to your staff, you’re still too angry to even speak to her. I won’t leave you without another mage.” He gestured toward the barricades. “The Kez ambassador will be here within a week, and you’ve still got this mess to clean up. Do we even know if the Barbers were successful?”

  “You’re worried about me?” Tamas said. “That’s your excuse?”

  “Worried that you’ll bugger it all up and need someone to clean up things after you.” Sabon paused. They could both hear shouting from beyond the barricade. “Perhaps we should help them,” he said.

  “Damned Barbers can do it themselves,” Tamas said. “I won’t fret if they all get themselves killed. Don’t try to change the subject. Vadalslav said they’ve already found seven candidates with a little talent. They say three of them have potential.”

  “It takes years to fully train a powder mage,” Sabon said. “They need to be taught to control their powers and how to be a soldier all at the same time.”

  “That’s why I want you there,” Tamas said. “You trained Taniel and Vlora practically single-handed. Now Taniel is the best marksman in the world, and Vlora can detonate a keg of powder from half a mile.”

  “That’s not the same, and you know it.” Sabon was angry now, his dark eyes glinting dangerously. “Taniel has bee
n shooting since he could hold a gun. Vlora… well, she’s just a prodigy.”

  “You don’t have to go recruiting,” Tamas said. “But I want you to start a school. You’ll have a line of credit and will have say over all happenings. You’ll never be more than a few hours away from me. If I need help, I’ll summon you immediately.”

  “I have your word?” Sabon said.

  “You have my word.”

  Sabon stuffed the envelope in his pocket. “I want to be here when the Kez ambassador arrives.”

  “Certainly.”

  “And don’t look so pleased.”

  Tamas stifled a smile.

  “Sir!” Olem returned. He pointed toward the barricades.

  A figure was slowly picking his way over the barricades and then down into the street, where he maneuvered among the untouched earthquake rubble. He wore a long white apron over a white shirt and black trousers. The apron front was covered in red.

  The man headed straight toward them. He snapped open a razor, the blade glinting in the sunlight. Tamas saw Olem tense. The razor was touched to the man’s forehead in a mock salute.

  “Teef, sir, of the Black Street Barbers,” the man said. “The barricades are yours.”

  “The royalist leaders?”

  “Dead or captured,” Teef said. “But mostly dead.”

  Tamas snorted. “Women and children?”

  The man snapped his razor shut and opened it again. He nervously ran the flat of the blade gently along his own throat. “Uh, there were a few bad occasions. Some of my boys have problems, sir. I, uh, dealt with it permanently.”

  Tamas squeezed his hands into fists. This has been a mistake. “And General Westeven?”

  “He was dead, sir. As you said he’d be.”

  Tamas had hoped that the wound Westeven had taken in the brief melee after the parley had been just that: a wound. But his whole arm had been gone, and Westeven was old and no powder mage. “Olem, see that the Black Street Barbers are rounded up and kept safe until we have a chance to pay them.”

  “Now, look here,” Teef said, taking a step toward Tamas. Olem was between them in a second, his bayonet a hair from Teef’s bloody apron. Teef swallowed.