Powder Mage: The Autumn Republic Part 6

The squad of Adran soldiers camped in the shadow of a ten-foot cascade with their backs to a shallow recess in the cliff wall. One stood guard at the top of the cascade. After several minutes of careful examination Taniel was able to spot the second sentry below the camp, about thirty paces down the valley. It was a good defensive position, impossible to flank.

But Taniel wouldn't be flanking anyone. Not on his own. The waterfall would be the only thing serving to cover his approach.

His lack of vision in the darkness was a blow, but he had been planning for the possibility of this ambush for over a week. He knew the lay of the terrain by heart. This was one of a half-dozen locations along the valley where scouts might have camped, and he'd been right in his a.s.sumptions all the way down to where they positioned their sentries.

Their Adran blues were difficult to see in the dark, but the silver b.u.t.tons gave them away. Taniel felt a sudden misgiving. He'd been raised among these men and women-perhaps not those hunting him, but certainly their comrades. These were his brothers and sisters.

Then why were they hunting him with air rifles? Only Hilanska would have been able to get ahold of so many air rifles in Adro. Only he would be able to gather this many Adran soldiers loyal enough to him that they'd be willing to go after a powder mage. I've killed Adran soldiers before, he reminded himself. General Ket's vile soldiers, sent after him and Ka-poel. I can do it again.

The gravel shifted beneath his feet as he worked his way down to the top of the cascade. The sentry's head turned slightly and the barrel of her air rifle came up. Taniel paused, his breathing shallow. An eternity seemed to pa.s.s until she lowered the barrel of her rifle back toward the ground and she turned to the east, looking down the length of the valley.

Taniel stepped into the stream and felt the cold water leak in through a hole in his boot. Stepping lightly, he worked his way toward the sentry. He put one hand to the end of his musket to unfasten the bayonet.

A cold sweat broke out on the nape of his neck. The bayonet wouldn't budge. He twisted harder, but with no success.

He fought down a rising panic. He could still do this with his bare hands, but the lack of a weapon made it both less certain and more personal.

He set his musket carefully down on the bank of the stream and took three long steps forward, snaking one arm around the soldier's neck and putting the other against the base of her spine. He squeezed instantly, flexing his arm to cut off the flow of air and blood to the brain.

She made a quiet choking noise and dropped her rifle with a clatter into the stream. Taniel's heart leapt at the sound, and he watched over her shoulder for signs of alarm in the camp below them while he counted quietly in his head.

Twenty seconds for unconsciousness. Four minutes to be sure of a kill.

Her desperate clawing slacked off after just eight seconds. Taniel continued to count, and when it was apparent that no alarm would be raised, he squeezed his eyes shut.

Why should he spare any of these soldiers who were hunting him? If a single one lived through the night, they'd raise the alarm with the company back down the valley and Taniel would have two hundred men or more coming straight for him. For Ka-poel.

The soldier stopped struggling entirely at eighteen seconds. Taniel kept his grip tight, pulling her close. The killer's embrace, Tamas had called it.

He felt moisture on his cheeks.

He remembered a time not so long ago, in the mountains far to the east of here, looking down the barrel of his rifle at his best friend, marked for death because he was a Privileged sorcerer.

At thirty seconds he let go of the woman, his rage not enough to fuel his strength. He let her sag in his arms and lowered her gently down to the bank of the stream.

A hand over her mouth felt her shallow breathing. Taniel cursed his weakness and made his way quickly down and around the camp. He paused once when one of the sleeping soldiers stirred, but the soldier merely mumbled something unintelligible and rolled over, going back to sleep.

Taniel could hear his heart thumping in his ears. His original plan, tenuous at best, relied on removing the sentries and then killing them all in their sleep. Brutal, but efficient.

Now what could he do? They'd wake in the morning and find they'd been attacked. They would know they had found him, and what would his attack have accomplished? Nothing.

His steps became hurried and careless as he approached the second sentry from behind. A rock turned, the scree moved, and Taniel cursed out loud.

The man turned toward him, a question on his lips.

Taniel sprinted forward and slammed a fist against the base of the soldier's jaw. Taniel s.n.a.t.c.hed at the front of his uniform and caught his air rifle as it dropped. The man slumped to the ground.

Taniel examined the man at his feet as the moon flashed briefly from behind a cloud. The sentry's features were soft, young, unworn by years on campaign. He looked about eighteen. A recruit?

He picked up the soldier's air rifle, running his hands over the length. It had a long, smoothbore barrel not unlike a musket, with a firing mechanism where the flintlock would be and a rounded air canister instead of a stock. Terrible weapons to a powder mage, their expense and unreliability had kept them from becoming more common in the Kez army. Tamas had banned them completely from Adro.

To break the mechanism on the weapon was no terrible difficulty. But Taniel needed to send a message.

He held his hand up to the night sky, looking at the moonlight through the gaps in his fingers. He remembered killing those Adran soldiers-the Dredgers. Remembered putting his hand into the man's mouth after he spoke of raping Ka-poel and curling his fingers around his teeth, grasping and pulling. He remembered feeling the tendons of the man's jaw snap as he'd ripped his jawbone from his body.

And all of that without the powder. Only his rage and Ka-poel's strange sorcery to spur him on.

Taniel grasped the barrel of the air rifle in both hands and flexed. Slowly, the barrel gave way. He bent it all the way to a right angle, his muscles screaming in protest at the force required.

He then snuck back up to the camp. He found a burlap sack and gathered all of the air canisters, then stripped the men of their rations and kits-he gathered a knife, a sword, and enough food to feed himself and Ka-poel for over a month.

He left them all sleeping soundly in their bedrolls. They'd wake in the morning-or when their sentries regained consciousness-to find themselves robbed.

And in the center of their camp, just beside the fire, a neat pile of eleven air rifles, each of them bent into an L-shape.

CHAPTER.

7.

Nila waited northwest of the Adran camp, her dress damp from the gra.s.s beneath her. The stars above were hidden by a veil of clouds, and despite the thousands of cook fires in the camp to the southeast and Bo's warm body by her side, she felt utterly alone in the wilderness.

During the day she knew she would have seen the plains of southern Adopest stretching all the way to the mighty Black Tar Forest that skirted the Charwood Pile Mountain Range to their west. To the east was the Adsea, and the Adran Mountains to the south that separated Adro and Kez.

She had once been told that they were called the Adran Mountains by Adro and the Kresim Mountains by Kez. She rubbed her hands together to get them warm and wondered how these mountains were labeled in the maps of those outside of Adro or Kez. The autumn chill was here and the leaves would fall from their trees any week now. All her clothes were in the luggage on top of their carriage where they'd left it in the Adran camp.

And inside that was the corpse of an a.s.sa.s.sin with a melted face.

"Are you still going to help Adamat find his son?" she asked. It occurred to her, just after she'd spoken, that if Bo was willing to lie to Adamat, he wouldn't hesitate to hide the truth from her.

Bo shifted beside her. They had slipped out of the camp with little trouble, some trick of Bo's sorcery, stepping around soldiers and sentries as if they were invisible. He hadn't said much since then.

"I keep my word," Bo said. The slight hesitation. The regret in his voice. He didn't want to.

"You're thinking you shouldn't have brought Adamat and Oldrich along in the first place," Nila said quietly.

Bo snorted but said nothing.

"Well?"

"Of course I am. It proved nothing but a complication. Certainly it got us a meeting with Hilanska, but I only endangered their lives and made it harder for us to get anything done. On my own I could have slipped into the camp, tortured a few key people for information, and gotten out again."

It was odd the way Bo expressed regret over endangering the lives of those men in one breath and spoke of torturing innocent soldiers in the next. In Nila's mind those two items were mutually exclusive, and yet she still thought of Bo as a good man. Was she wrong, or was it more complicated than that?

Bo waved a hand dismissively, as if in response to something she didn't say. "He's out of harm's way by now."

"Can you be sure?"

"The missing prisoners have certainly been discovered," Bo said. "If Hilanska wanted to make much ado about it, there would be search parties combing these fields already. Perhaps riders going after Colonel Etan. No. Hilanska will sweep it under the rug. Perhaps he doesn't have the time or manpower to organize a search." Bo's head tilted toward Nila and she thought she could make out the shadow of a smile on his face. "Perhaps the a.s.sa.s.sin with a melted head has discouraged pursuit."

Nila cleared her throat. She didn't want to talk about that. Pit, she didn't want to remember that. The feel of the man's skull giving way beneath her burning hand would give her nightmares for months. She shuddered. "What are we watching for out here?"

"Spies," he said.

She couldn't help but scoff. "Spies? Out here? It's pitch-black!"

"Don't look toward the fires of the camp. Even at this distance they can damage your night vision."

She had been doing just that, wishing she had someplace warm to sleep tonight. Her teeth began to chatter and she scooted a little closer to Bo. "We're out in the middle of nowhere. Why would a spy come up here?"

"To circle around the sentries," Bo said. She could see the shadow of his arm as he pointed. "Hilanska's camp is down there. And over there," he said, pointing due south, "about seven miles away is Ket's camp. Beyond them are the Kez. And up there"-he pointed to the northwest-"are the Wings of Adom, a mercenary company in the employ of Adro."

"They're keeping their distance while their employers are fighting each other?"

"Exactly," Bo said, sounding pleased. "Now, because of this schism in the army Hilanska probably doesn't trust his own men, so his spy won't go through the pickets to the south but rather head north, pretending to be a courier on his way to Adopest. He'll leave the road a couple of miles north of the camp and cut across this direction, where he can go to either the Kez, the Adran, or the mercenary camps to meet with his liaison."

"How can you possibly know that?"

Bo chuckled. "I grew up on the streets, and then in Field Marshal Tamas's household. I have an education in strategic deduction and guessing that most Privileged never get. Now, stop asking questions. Open your third eye."

Most everyone with magical ability could use their third eye to look into the Else. It allowed them to see the mark that sorcery had made upon the world and to see anyone else with magical ability. It had been the first thing Bo taught her: looking beyond that which was real to see the sorcery beneath it.

She took a few shallow breaths and let her eyes fall halfway shut, focusing on the muscles around her eyeb.a.l.l.s. The process itself wasn't all that different from crossing one's eyes. A wave of nausea flowed over her, nearly making her double over, but she forced herself to hold on, opening her eyes all the way to look into the Else.

The world she now saw was faint, as if she were viewing it through a thick veil. She could make out the landscape even in the darkness, but it was as if it had been drawn carelessly in a series of pastel colors, like an artist's sketch.

She turned toward the Adran camp, and for a moment it seemed as if the number of campfires had doubled. The glow of Knacked in the Else. The whole camp seemed almost a smudge.

"I'm going to throw up," she said.

Bo whispered in her ear, startling her. "Don't give in to it. The nausea lessens with practice."

"Is this how we're going to spot the spy in the dark?"

"Yes."

"You think the spy will be a Privileged or a Knacked?"

"Not a Privileged," Bo said. "Likely a Knacked. Many spies are. It gives them an edge. And even if they weren't, it wouldn't matter."

"How so?"

"Powder mages can't see regular people in the Else. Neither can Knacked."

"But Privileged can?"

"Yes. It's very faint. If a Privileged is a bonfire and a Knacked is a lantern, then a regular person is a lightning bug. Their color in the Else will be so faint that you might think you're imagining it."

Holding her eyes on the Else was beginning to hurt. Her eyes felt dry and a headache had begun to form just behind her temples. "How can that possibly be of any use?"

"It takes a sharp eye," Bo said. "And practice."

"If this is practice, I don't want to do it anymore."

"I've always hated practicing," Bo said, his voice warm in her ear. "But that's how you get to be better. That's how you become smarter and tougher than the people who will want to harm you. And when you're a Privileged... that becomes everyone."

Nila felt her insides shift uncomfortably. How could anyone keep this up for any length of time? The mere thought of it made her want to vomit.

"You remember how much you hated Lord Vetas?"

Nila nearly lost her grasp of the Else. She didn't trust herself to answer.

"You remember how he made you feel so helpless?" Bo whispered. "Take all that hate and anger and ball it up and put it away. Don't chew on it-that just makes you bitter. Put it aside and use it as a reminder of why you never want to be helpless again. Take your weakness and make it your strength. You'll be a powerful Privileged, Nila. Stronger than anyone I've known. Stronger than me. But you have to work for it."

Nila almost lost her focus again as she bit off a laugh. Powerful? Stronger than Bo? That seemed ridiculous. "How strong are you?"

"Reasonably so. I have my weaknesses, but I make up for them with cunning."

"That doesn't seem honest."

"Lying and cheating are all fair game when your life is on the line. And it always is, in a royal cabal. I might have been cabal head someday. Especially after I learned a number of... secrets."

"What kind of secrets?"

"Ancient sorcery. Like folding the Else upon itself so that other Privileged or Knacked can't see me."

"Who taught you that?"

There was amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice. "A very old woman. She taught me a lot of things that she probably shouldn't have. It came back to bite her in the end." Bo paused. "There's something else you should know about being a Privileged."

"Just one thing?"

"This is rather... personal."

Nila's heart skipped a beat. She had wondered when this would come up. "Oh?" She kept her third eye on the dark area north of the Adran camp, watching for anything that could be movement, and said a prayer of thanks that Bo couldn't see her cheeks turning red.

"You'll have urges."