The Autumn Republic

The woman approached. She looked about thirty, with raven hair, brown eyes, and hollow cheeks-she could have fit in anywhere in the Kez countryside. Her dress was well kept but covered in stains, her knees and elbows caked with mud, likely from crouching in the long grasses on her flight from the Kez camp.

“Would you like to clean up?”

“No time, but I could damn well use a drink.” Her switch to Adran was so flawless that Tamas wondered if he’d imagined her speaking Kez a moment ago.

“Get her some water,” he told Andriya.

“Wine.”

Tamas rolled his eyes but nodded. “All right. I didn’t know we had any spies left in the Kez army.”

“There are few enough,” she said. “There was a purge about seven weeks ago. Like someone gave them a Kresimir-damned list of names. It was pure luck that I didn’t get nabbed as well. I haven’t been able to use any of our normal channels to send reports-you’ve gotten nothing from me for weeks and for that I’m sorry.”

Tamas put his hands behind his back and gave a sharp nod. “Glad you made it out alive.” Inside, he was seething. General Hilanska, no doubt. When this whole thing was over, he was going to drop Hilanska into the deepest part of the Adsea and see how long he could swim with that one arm. “What’s so urgent that you had to leave your cover?”

The woman took an offered wineskin from Andriya and drained half of it before answering. “Aside from the intelligence I haven’t been able to pass on for the last month? I slept with General Fulicote last night. You know who he is?”

Tamas nodded. One of Ipille’s many infantry commanders. As far as Kez command went, he was a decent commander. He’d commanded a brigade in the Gurlish Wars twenty years ago.

“Then you know he’s a teetotaler, like you. Well, last night he was piss drunk.”

“Why?”

“Ipille has ordered the entire Grand Army to make a stand at the mouth of Surkov’s Alley.”

“So? That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable order.”

“So?” the woman retorted, before draining the rest of the wineskin. “So Ipille doesn’t think he can win. He’s been with the army for the last two months and now he’s turning tail and running back to Kez. General Fulicote and all the rest have been ordered on what they know is a suicide mission. Ipille told them that any man who runs from the battle will be caught and publicly flayed.”

“Do you have proof of this?”

The woman removed a letter from her bodice and smoothed it against her skirt before handing it to Tamas. It bore the royal seal of the Kez king, hastily broken by a clumsy thumb. Tamas opened the letter and skimmed the contents. Ipille was ordering his men to make a stand, but the final threat at the end allowed Tamas to read between the lines, just as General Fulicote and this spy had done: The Kez army wasn’t meant as anything more than cannon fodder to slow down Tamas and the Deliv.

Tamas returned to his chair, deep in thought. “What could he possibly gain by this?” he muttered.

“The Kez have all been asking the same thing of you since you attacked after the parley.”

Tamas was up on his feet again. “That was Ipille. He broke that parley.”

“That’s not what his officers think. I’ve managed to spend the night with four senior Kez officers since then and not a single one of them thinks Ipille actually broke the parley. They’re convinced that you and the Deliv fabricated the whole thing so you could push into Kez and try to dethrone Ipille.”

“I would do no such thing.” Tamas shook his head. Why was he explaining himself to a spy? A niggle of doubt had entered his mind. If Ipille hadn’t launched the attack on his men during the parley in order to kidnap Ka-poel, then who had?

He didn’t have time to wonder. If Ipille was fleeing and throwing his whole army away, that meant he had some kind of plan. Whether he meant to force Ka-poel to awaken Kresimir or he planned to retreat to his capital and spend the winter raising levies and trying to forge alliances among the Nine, it didn’t matter. Tamas needed to end this quickly.

“Report to General Arbor, he’ll see that you get somewhere to rest,” he said over his shoulder. “Andriya, get my horse!” He ran into his tent and sorted through his maps until he found one of southern Adro.

Thirty minutes later he strode into Sulem’s command tent. The Deliv king was surrounded by half a dozen members of his royal cabal and five of his generals. “We need to speak,” Tamas said.

Sulem shushed the angry mutters of his generals and cabal with a raised hand. “Everyone out,” he said.

They were alone within moments. “Do you read Kez?” Tamas asked.

“Yes.”

Tamas handed him Ipille’s orders to his general. Sulem read the letter twice and examined the seal. “May I have my Privileged check the authenticity?”

“By all means.”

“Vivia!” Sulem called. The caramel-skinned Privileged arrived a moment later and took the letter with a few words of instruction before disappearing.