The Autumn Republic

Adamat found himself running forward with a dozen soldiers. The dust began to settle and clear as he threw himself to his knees beside the bloody body lying on the gravel drive not far from where the palace door had recently stood.

Field Marshal Tamas was missing a hand, and his clothes were black with blood. The blood on his brow was smeared as if someone had held him. His body lay alone, broken. Adamat pressed his hand to the field marshal’s neck, feeling for a pulse. He felt his stomach fall as he relayed the news. “He’s dead.”

Someone let out a choked sob. The quickly growing crowd split, and Adom plodded to the body, kneeling opposite Adamat. He scooped his arms beneath Tamas, lifting the body the way a child might lift a doll.

“Where’s Taniel Two-shot?” a soldier asked.

Another shouted, “Get Colonel Olem!”

Adom cleared his throat and looked toward the gaping ruin. “Taniel Two-shot is dead. There lies his grave. You may look, but you won’t find the body.” He ignored the questions thrust at him by the gathered soldiers and pulled Tamas’s body tight to his chest.

And there, among the ruined splendor of Skyline Palace, Adamat saw a god weep for the hero of Adro.

CHAPTER 53

Nila paced the marble floors of the People’s Court, her footsteps echoing in the early morning silence. It was less than a week since she and Bo had bested what remained of Claremonte’s cabal, and memories of the fight still gave her nightmares. She never wanted to set foot in this building again. Yet here she was.

“Why are they making us wait?” she asked.

Bo sat on one of the hard benches nearby bouncing a rubber ball off the opposite wall of the hallway, pausing every other bounce to squeeze the ball experimentally. He did not wear his gloves, and his right hand had a pink scar from the healing job done by the Deliv Privileged. “Because,” he sighed, “they’re trying to show us who holds authority now.”

“That’s arrogant.”

“Welcome to the world of politics, my dear,” Bo said.

Nila stopped pacing and crossed her arms. She’d had very little sleep and she had a full day ahead, and she could feel her mood already beginning to turn for the worse. “I’m not going to play their games.”

“This is your life, now.”

The thought made her want to retch. For five days they had been interrogated by politicians and pulled into late-night meetings with Vlora, Ricard Tumblar, and a hundred men and women whose names she couldn’t possibly remember as they tried to force some kind of order onto the government in the wake of Tamas’s death.

“I should just leave,” she said.

Bo frowned. “You’re welcome to whenever you like. I would be very sad.”

She resumed her pacing. “You’d get over it.”

“I would never!”

You got over Taniel’s death awfully quick, she wanted to say. But she dared not utter it out loud. No sense in driving a wedge between them when they so desperately needed to present a unified front to the world.

“You must admit,” Bo said, “while less exciting than being shot at and chased, and battling sorcery, at least spending all day in meetings won’t make you shit your pants. In there”-he pointed to the closed door down the hall-“they won’t try to take your life. Just destroy your career.”

“The joke is on them,” Nila said. “I don’t want this career.”

“Then you’re the best woman for it. Come on, they’ve kept us waiting long enough.” Bo got up, adjusting his prosthetic and pulling on his gloves.

Nila drew a pair of gloves out of her pocket and tugged them on. She didn’t need them, but she’d found in the meetings over the last few days that people took her far more seriously when she wore them.

Bo held the door for her, and she brushed past the secretary who tried to stop her as she went into the inner chamber.

Nine sets of eyes looked up as she and Bo entered the room. Nila only recognized two of the men and three of the women, but she knew these were the newly elected regional governors of Adro. They, the new Hall of Magistrates, and First Minister Ricard Tumblar made up the three legs of the new Adran government.

The governors sat around a half-moon table, a light breakfast being cleared from before them. Governor Ratchel, a woman of about fifty with short gray hair and hands curled and bent from rheumatism, scowled.

“We’re not ready for you yet,” Ratchel said.

“Yes,” Bo said with a charming smile, “but we’re burying Field Marshal Tamas in less than six hours in a ceremony in front of millions. We don’t have time for your shit. If you want something from us, get on with it.”

A round of indignant scoffs went up from the governors. Ratchel, to her credit, merely fixed Bo with an annoyed squint. “The time has come to determine the place of the Adran Cabal within our new government,” she said. “Or to determine if the cabal even has a place among us.”

“Are you trying to tell me the Adran government would dare continue in this strife-laden modern era without a cabal?” Nila asked, feigning shock.