The Autumn Republic

The cowhide was swept aside and a woman of about fifty ambled into the room wearing an Adran-blue army jacket with the quartermaster’s pin on her collar. She was a slim woman, carrying most of her weight around her hips, and her graying hair was tucked into a bun behind her head.

“How can I help you, my dear?” she asked, dropping carelessly onto a powder keg.

“My name is Risara,” Nila said, smoothing the front of her skirt. “I’m the secretary to Counselor Mattias of Adopest and I need access to the brigade records.”

“Well then.” The quartermaster sniffed. “I’ll have to clear that with General Hilanska.”

Nila produced an attaché case from beneath her arm and opened it on her lap, taking great pains to leaf through the official-looking documents within. She withdrew one in particular and handed it to the quartermaster. “This is a warrant granting me access to whatever records I wish to see. Do you think this is something the general wants to deal with during the current turmoil?”

The quartermaster read the warrant over twice. Nila tried not to let her nervousness show. The warrant was perfectly valid, but Bo had warned her that the army operated outside civilian judicial purview-whether legal or not.

“All right,” the quartermaster said, handing the document back to Nila. “What do you want to see?”

Nila tried not to show her surprise at being granted access so easily or to let on that she didn’t actually know what she was looking for. What would help her track down Taniel? His movements before his reported death? “Give me a copy of all requisition reports of the last two months.”

“All of them?” The quartermaster rocked back on her powder keg. “That’s several hundred pages.”

“Get a scribe in here. I’ll wait.”

The quartermaster grumbled under her breath and began sorting through the crates piled in one corner. Nila waited, trying to put on as patient an air as possible. Lord Vetas had forced her to run many of his errands-not all of them strictly legal-and she had quickly learned that if she only acted like she belonged someplace most people would assume she did.

“Is there anything else you need?” the quartermaster said, wrist-deep in sheaves of paper. “I don’t want to have to go through all this again.”

“What records do you have on individual officers?”

The quartermaster lifted a pile of worn yellow paper almost as thick as Nila’s hand was wide. “You’d have to see the general’s adjutant for that.”

“Of course.” Nila took the records from the quartermaster and leafed through them. “Do you need to make copies?”

“They’re all in triplicate. That’s why the column for order signatures is blank. I’ll have another copy made up when someone has time. Anything you’re looking for in particular?”

Nila hesitated a moment. If she mentioned her goal, it might raise suspicion. But the idea of combing through all those reports was incredibly daunting. “Do you know if Captain Taniel Two-shot made any requisition orders?”

“He did.” The quartermaster scratched her head for a minute as if to run through her memory. “There are a few dozen, I think. I can’t tell you the exact days, but any requests made by a powder mage are marked with a ‘pm’ in the order column.”

“You’ve been most helpful. Thank you. Do you mind if I look through the copies here?”

The quartermaster shrugged her bony shoulders. “Fine by me. You’ll have to excuse me for a moment, though. I’ll just be takin’ a piss.”

Nila was left alone with the records. It took her a few minutes to get a feel for how the pages were organized. They were covered in small script and several columns. Names, dates, orders, and whether they were fulfilled. There were notes in half a dozen different handwritings-various quartermasters, she assumed. Once she found the first ‘pm’-a request by Taniel for more powder, which was denied-it wasn’t hard to spot more.

She had just found the fifth powder request when she heard the old quartermaster behind her.

“Right there,” the woman said. Nila glanced up out of politeness, only to see herself trapped in the small building by two big soldiers. The men wore dark-blue Adran uniforms with red trim and tall bearskin hats. Not regular soldiers. Grenadiers.

“Ma’am,” one of them said, “would you come with us, please.”

Nila’s heart was in her throat. “Is something the matter?”

“Please,” he said again. “Come with us.” He glanced behind him, as if nervous. “Try not to make a ruckus, ma’am.”

Nila didn’t see that she had much choice. She could yell and scream, with only a small chance of attracting Bo. But even then, what could Bo do? For the purpose of this mission they were not in a friendly camp. “Of course, just let me gather my things.” Nila scooped up the requisition orders, securing the whole thing with a string, and forced them into her attaché case before following the men out of the building.

“Stay with us, please,” one of the men said in a low voice before moving on ahead. The other, Nila noted, fell back some ten paces. It was almost as if they didn’t want to be seen with her.