The Autumn Republic

“It’s not that. The field marshal wants me to remain a colonel. I just…”

“You don’t think you can do it?”

Olem ashed his cigarette and rubbed out the embers with his boot. “It’s not for me. But you? A Privileged! That’s incredible. I always thought you were more than a laundress.” He gave her a smile, and the crack in his façade revealed a deep exhaustion.

“Laundering is a good job,” Nila said, somewhat more defensively than she’d meant to. She cleared her throat. “Is that why you courted me? Because you thought I was something more? A spy, perhaps?” Had his interest been fake? She wanted to feel angry at the thought, but found she didn’t have the energy.

Olem took a drag on his cigarette and looked her in the eye. “Not a spy.” He cleared his throat, then added, “I’m glad you’re a Privileged. We’ll need you before this is all over.”

Need her to do more killing, he meant. The suggestion brought on a wave of nausea. Nila could still see the blackened skeletons, could still smell the smoking human remains.

“Ah. Here they come,” Olem said, saving Nila from having to respond. A train of mounted men came into sight over a rise, holding torches and lanterns. They paused before the sentries and were waved on and ten minutes later they reached Nila and Olem.

Olem called to ask how the mission had fared. A major responded that they had succeeded, and a cheer went up among the group. Nila heard one of the sentries call to another.

“Taniel Two-shot is alive! He’s come back!”

The word spread like wildfire and Nila couldn’t help but smile at the cheers that erupted a few moments later from the camp behind them. Taniel, it seemed, was well loved.

A man rode up to Olem. His hair was dirty, a black beard concealing his weary, pinched face. His skin was a patchwork of bruises and scars. He wore an Adran jacket over his shoulders, a powder keg insignia pinned to it. Taniel Two-shot, Nila presumed. In the saddle behind him was the most striking girl Nila had ever seen.

She was a savage, her pale skin splattered with ashen freckles, her cropped hair red enough to match the torchlight-a far brighter shade than Nila’s own auburn curls. While the man gave Nila a curious glance and then looked past her to Olem, the girl caught her gaze and held it for a moment before giving her a wink and a mischievous smile.

The man nodded to Olem, and Olem said, “You better go see your father. You’ll want to know he’s given orders for Bo to go free.”

Taniel gave a relieved sigh and flicked his reins. His companion twisted in her saddle to look back at Nila and Nila watched her in return until they disappeared into the camp.

“So that’s the field marshal’s son?” she asked.

Olem sucked on his cigarette. “It is.”

“And the girl?”

“Ka-poel.”

“She’s a savage sorceress? I’ve heard rumors about her.”

“Yes.” Olem crushed the butt of his cigarette beneath his boot. “She is, as the field marshal put it, something else entirely.”

Nila saw Bo a little way down the line. He was surrounded by soldiers, his suit rumpled and his hair disheveled. She wanted to run to see how he’d gotten on, but the sting of being left behind-in a war zone, no less-rooted her feet to the ground.

“Hello, Nila,” Bo said jovially as he rode up. He gripped the saddle horn with both hands and it became quickly apparent that they were tied tightly. The two big Adran infantrymen closest to him didn’t take their eyes off him. “Hello, Olem.”

“Privileged,” Olem said with a nod.

“Am I allowed out yet?”

Olem nodded to the men watching Bo, and he was soon dismounted and untied, rubbing the feeling back into his wrists. One of the guards handed him back his gloves, which he took without a fuss, and Bo and Nila were soon left alone.

“Well,” Bo said. He put the gloves into his pocket and nodded, as if to himself. “Glad that’s over. Where are we bunking down? And I’m famished, let’s go-”

Nila put her whole arm behind the slap. She felt the impact all the way to her shoulder and into her frame, and it spun Bo half around again. There was an audible gasp from over a dozen soldiers who had seen it.

Bo held his cheek and stared at her. The thought that she’d just slapped a Privileged with every ounce of her strength made her knees a little weak, but she whispered to herself that she was a Privileged too, now. For good and for ill.

“What the pit was that for?” Bo demanded.

“For leaving me in a war zone.”

He rubbed furiously at the side of his face. “I swear I’m going to kill the next person who hits me. You look fine! What the pit are you so mad about?”

“I…” Nila’s voice suddenly caught in her throat. The image of charred bits of bone and flesh floated before her eyes, and her fingertips tingled-and not just from the slap. She could still feel the flow of the sorcery through her, the terror and the ecstasy as she became a conduit for destructive forces. Her vision swam.

Bo caught her as she swayed. He led her away from the dismounting soldiers, holding her by the elbow, and when he spoke, the anger in his voice was replaced by concern.