The Autumn Republic

“The captain of the hotel will already gut me for destroying whatever system he had in place down here. Might as well infuriate Ricard as well. Get someone to help me carry these upstairs.” He rubbed at his temples. “Pit, how am I going to get this out of the city? From everything Flerring told me, it’s a terrible idea to transport the stuff by carriage. Too bumpy.”

“Ma’am?” a voice called down the basement stairs.

Fell stepped into the basement hall and called back. “Yes?”

“I think we’ve found something.”

Adamat was on his feet in moments. He followed Fell up the stairs, where Draily waited. The woman led them both into the kitchen and stopped beside the silver cabinet. “Had to get the captain to open it up for me.” She opened one of the doors and knelt in front of it. “You’ll want to look yourselves. I don’t really want to reach in there.”

Adamat lay on the wood floor beside the silver cabinet and took Fell’s lantern.

On the bottom shelf, behind the silver serving platters, was a wooden crate. It held glass vials with corks in the top and each one was filled with a clear liquid. Adamat suddenly felt his heart hammering in his ears.

“Bloody pit,” he said.

“It’s there?”

“Yes.”

Fell gave an audible sigh of relief.

“Fetch Flerring the Younger,” Adamat said. “Probably best to have one of her professionals deal with the stuff. Post a heavy guard on this room, but try to do it quietly. And get me the kitchen staff. I want every single one of them here for questioning by this evening.”

Fell barked orders to her people. Adamat felt her hand on his arm. “Excellent work, Inspector.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Adamat said, still lying on the floor, unable to take his eyes off the innocuous-looking bottles of blasting oil.

“Why?”

“There are two bottles missing.”

CHAPTER 38

Tamas crept through the riverside rushes, knee-deep in the cold water of the Addown River.

He had one pistol in his belt, the other held with the barrel pointed skyward, and the sword at his side leaving a slight furrow against the current of the river. The night was crisp, his breath visible to his powder-enhanced senses. Somewhere off to his left, a fish jumped in the water, and he heard Andriya start behind him.

“Shh,” Tamas said quietly. “Don’t get twitchy on me.”

Tamas was ready to reprimand him for a smart remark, but Andriya behaved himself. They pushed forward, frogs going silent at their advance but no sign of alarm in the fortress up ahead of them.

Fortress, Tamas reflected, was a stretch. The stone building was only two stories tall, with a twelve-foot wall that stretched from the riverside a hundred feet to the main highway. The whole thing was little more than an inspection station where government officers could check both carts on the road and barges in the water for contraband and tax dodgers heading between Adopest and Budwiel.

Before the revolution, it would have been staffed by just eight to ten servants of the crown. The Kez, when they swept past this point, had reinforced the whole building. Small-caliber cannons had been mounted along the wall and a sixteen-pound artillery piece had been placed on the end of the stone wharf that stuck out into the Addown. Tamas guessed that they’d left no less than a forty-man garrison.

Tamas approached the base of the wharf, his eyes on the top of the inspection station. Torches lit the wall, and he could see the bobbing of a bayonet that betrayed the presence of a guard.

Something touched his arm and Tamas stopped, looking back. Andriya pointed into the rushes, and after a moment Tamas could see a nest where a yearling goose eyed him angrily.

He waded deeper into the water to avoid the nest, then shoved his pistol in his belt and tightened his sword against his thigh. He reached up until he could feel the stone ledge above him, and with a quick motion he was up on the wharf.

Tamas drew his belt knife and padded toward the artillery piece sitting at the end. A Kez sentry leaned against it, his soft snores reaching Tamas’s ears. He stiffened as Tamas’s knife took him between the ribs and a moment later his body lay behind the cannon. Tamas looked back toward the inspection station just in time to see Andriya, silent as a gliding owl, slip over the battlements above the second story. Tamas heard a pain-filled grunt and had to remind his hammering heart that he could hear far better than the guards inside.

He stole through the door to the inspection station. The garrison, if he remembered, correctly, would be on the second floor. He paused at the foot of the stairwell, a sound catching his ear, and went back past the door to the wharf.

Four Kez soldiers were playing dice in the tiny mess hall by the light of a single lantern. Tamas eyed them through a slit in the door. They were intent upon their game and likely a little drunk. He decided to take care of the sleeping ones upstairs first.