Promise of Blood

“He says he’s Adom reborn,” Tamas went on. “I should have had him arrested, but his cooking is too damned good. Rumor has it he’s been making food for half the regiments. Don’t know how he does it, but the men like him. I’ve got a war about to start and a mad cook quickly becoming the most popular man in the army. And…”

“Out with it,” Taniel said.

“Out with what?”

“You’re rambling. You only ramble when you’re about to ask me to do something I won’t want to do.”

Tamas fell quiet. Taniel watched him struggle internally, emotion barely touching his face. This was the first time he’d been alone with his father in what, four years? He noticed that Tamas was wearing the saw-handled dueling pistols he’d brought him from Fatrasta. They looked well used.

Tamas took a deep breath, his chuckle dying out, and stared at the ceiling.

“I need you to kill Bo.”

“What?”

Tamas explained about the gaes. It was a long explanation, with a great deal of technical detail. Taniel barely listened. There was something about an inspector and a promise. He could tell by his father’s tone that Tamas didn’t want to say it. That it was duty alone that forced his hand.

“Why me?” he asked when his father finally fell silent.

“If Sabon had to die, I’d give him the courtesy of doing it myself. I’d feel like a coward if I had someone else do it.”

“And you think I can kill my best friend?”

“Bo’s very strong, I know. I’ll send help with you.”

“That’s not what I meant. I know I can shoot him. I can probably get close enough without him expecting a thing to do it with a pistol. But do you really think I can bring myself to do it?”

“Can you?”

Taniel looked at his hands. He’d last seen Bo over two years ago, the day he’d gotten on the ship for Fatrasta. Bo had been there to see him off. Yet what was another friend? The world was different now. He’d killed dozens of men. His fiancée had bedded another man. His country no longer had a king. Who was to say Bo had remained the same?

Taniel squeezed his hands into fists. How dare he? How dare Tamas come here and ask him this. Taniel was a soldier, but he was also Tamas’s son. Did that even matter? “I won’t do it if you ask me,” Taniel said. “Not if you ask me as a son. If you give me an order as a powder mage—then I’ll do it.”

Tamas’s face hardened. This was a challenge, and he knew it. Taniel’s father didn’t take well to challenges. Tamas stood up.

“Captain, I want you to kill Privileged Borbador at the South Pike Mountainwatch. Bring me back the jewel he has on his person as evidence.”

Taniel closed his eyes. “Yes, sir.” That son of a bitch. He was really going to make Taniel kill his best friend. Taniel wondered if he should come back and put a bullet in Tamas’s head once he’d finished with Bo.

“I’m sending Julene with you.”

His eyes snapped open. “No. I won’t work with her.”

“Why not?”

“She’s reckless. She got her partner killed, and nearly me too.”

“She said the same thing about you.”

“And you’d believe her over me?”

“She had the courtesy to report to me after you so freely let the enemy go.”

“That Privileged would have killed us all,” Taniel said.

“I’ve given the order.” Tamas turned around, headed for the door. “Marked Taniel, carry out your orders. Then you’ll need some time off to deal with your… personal problems.” He left.

Personal problems? Taniel sneered. He felt something on his arm, looked down. His nose was practically pouring blood. He swore, looking around for a towel. What would help this? Oh yes, some black powder…

Chapter 15

There was a room beneath the House of Nobles, deeper underground than even the sewer systems, that had seen its heyday during the reign of the Iron King. Privileged sorceries held back the musky scent and the darkness and kept the walls from leaking even after the deaths of the men who cast the spells. The room was fifty paces wide, ten paces high, white plaster walls covered in wall hangings long thought lost by those who care about such things. There were tables and chairs, lounges that could be used as beds, crates of canned food, and barrels of water hidden behind silk curtains.

Not even Manhouch had known about his father’s emergency shelter; only a few of the Iron King’s closest advisers, Tamas included, knew about the place, or how to reach it beneath the House of Nobles. The Iron King had been paranoid that the people would rise up against him, or that his spies would turn their knives to his throat. Tamas thought it fitting, then, when it was clear that the place had been in complete disuse since Manhouch XII took the throne, that it should be used to plot the king’s fall.

Since the coup, Tamas’s council of coconspirators had moved their meetings to a less wayward place, far above on the third floor of the House of Nobles, as befitting a government, but Tamas still used the room as a place to find quiet and solitude. None of his staff knew where to find him here, not even Olem and Sabon. He would head back up soon enough.