The Autumn Republic

Chapter 49

“Inside, inside!” Taniel yelled, grabbing Ricard’s delegates and advisers and shoving them through the balcony door into the office. “Run!”

A female voice screamed, “Ricard!” and Taniel turned to see Adro’s First Minister gaping at the black spire as it plummeted toward him. Taniel dashed across the balcony, snatched Ricard by the shoulders, and lifted him bodily, plowing both of them through the glass of the balcony window and into the office behind it. They landed in a heap among a shower of glass. Taniel rolled them both across the floor to get farther away from the window, looking up in time to see the black stone slam through the balcony where they’d just been standing. The air erupted into a blast of plaster dust.

Taniel felt a surge of sorcery so close it tickled the back of his neck, and he threw Ricard off of him. He leapt to his feet, sword in hand, only to find Bo standing near the office fireplace with his fake leg braced, hands outstretched.

“Taniel,” Nila said. “You should move.”

Taniel looked around, then up, to find the roof above him split by the spire’s capstone, a black chunk of basalt the size of a small house suspended just above his head. Ricard was on his feet now and Taniel shoved him back, out of the way.

Bo grunted, and rolled his gloved fingers. The stone lifted and was flung out into Elections Square.

Ricard brushed himself off. “There are people down there!”

“People up here, too, and I wasn’t gonna hold that very long,” Bo said.

Ricard seemed to think better about arguing with Bo and instead called for Fell. “Is everyone safe?”

“I think so.” Adamat’s voice came out of the gloom of the dust.

“Downstairs, quickly,” Ricard said. “There will be people trapped beneath the rubble. Dear Adom, what the pit happened? Was that an accident?”

Taniel followed Ricard out into the hallway where the dust had begun to clear, and Adamat was pale as a ghost. “No,” Adamat said. “That was no accident. Brude’s other half was in Sablethorn.”

Taniel froze in his steps. “Fell. Get my rifle. Now!” He began to run toward the stairs, everything else forgotten. If Brude was down there, whatever half it was, there would be no one to stop him. Taniel didn’t think even he could do much, but he remembered Kresimir’s blood on his knuckles. If he really was a god-killer, then he might be the only one who could do anything.

Taniel felt something hit him from behind, knocking the breath from him and slamming both him and his attacker against the wall. He threw the other person away from him and struggled to his feet, only to find Nila crouched beside him, both her bare hands wreathed in blue flame.

The sorcery that cut through the air where he had just been standing had sliced a cannonball-sized hole in the floor and the ceiling. The blast had come from beneath him, and he could sense multiple Privileged somewhere below. Taniel scrambled along on his hands and knees. “Back to the office!” he yelled.

Bo, crouching awkwardly with his prosthetic, snatched him by the sleeve. “Get your rifle and take the back stairs. They’ll need you out there. I’ll take care of this.”

“You’re sure?”

“Trust me.” Bo slapped him on the shoulder, and Taniel ran back down the hallway, taking his rifle from Fell and fixing the bayonet as he ran, passing through two doors until he reached the servants’ stairwell behind Ricard’s new office.

He took the stairs a flight at a time, leaping like a madman from landing to landing. At the bottom he ran down a short hallway and kicked a side door open, then sprinted out into the dust-filtered sunlight. He stood blinking for several moments, trying to get his bearings, when the concussion of an immense blast threw him straight back into the building.

“She’s down there, Nila. The bitch who took my leg.”

Nila was about to ask how Bo knew, but the awareness at the edge of her newfound sorcerous senses told her enough. There were Privileged two floors beneath them. Their presence was muted in the Else, as if they’d been taking great care to conceal themselves, but they were most certainly there. And based on what Bo had told her about cabal Privileged, they probably had a company of soldiers with them as well.

“What do we have protecting the People’s Court?” she asked.

Bo responded, “Two companies of Adran soldiers.”

“They’ll get torn to ribbons by three Privileged.”

“Five Privileged. And I agree.”

Nila tried to think of who they could depend on to help them, and found a knot in her stomach. She and Bo were the Adran Cabal. And Tamas’s powder mages had their hands full with whatever power had just toppled Sablethorn. Her heart thundered in her ears. She had her back to the marble banister and there were five floors of the People’s Court between her and the ground. After watching the top of Sablethorn destroy the balcony and nearly flatten Taniel, she felt as exposed as if she were stripped naked. “What do we do?” she asked. “Follow Taniel out the back?”

“Good idea. Get everyone out that way as quickly as possible, and hope that their soldiers haven’t already cut us off. This is my fight.”

“This is our fight,” Nila corrected. “Fell! Get everyone out the back. Empty the top floor if you can, because there’s no going this way.”

Ricard’s secretary gave a sharp nod and began to urge the people back down the hallway.

“You sure you’re here with me?” Bo asked.

“Of course, you fool. I’m your responsibility now. Who the pit else is going to teach me how to be the best Privileged of the century?”

“This isn’t a few thousand Adran infantry. These are cabal Privileged.”

Nila swallowed hard. “I know.”

“All right. Here we go.” Bo climbed to his feet, his prosthetic jerking and wobbling beneath him. “Lourie! Hey, Lourie!”

“Borbador!” A voice came back from downstairs. “Why aren’t you running yet? That last shot could have been for you, but I figured I’d give you a sporting chance. Is your powder mage friend dead?”

“You missed, actually.”

There was a pause. “That’s a pity.”

“Lourie, do you have a favorite eye?”

“What?”

“Just answer the question,” Bo shouted.

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to keep that one in a jar after I strangle you with your own entrails.”

“What are you doing?” Nila hissed.

“Just having a conversation,” Bo said. “What does it sound like?”

Lourie’s voice returned, “Oh, come now, Borbador. You weren’t using that leg too much.”

“You won’t be using your eye too much either.”

“Bo,” Nila said. “What the pit is going on? Why aren’t they trying to kill us?”

“Because they’re taking up positions. The moment we open up on each other, people are going to die. They want to be very certain it’s not them.” Bo leaned back, closing his eyes, hands held out in front of him with one elbow on the marble banister for support. His fingers twitched and moved, tracing tiny patterns in the air.

“What are you doing?”

“A few quick wards,” Bo said. “And finding out where they’re all positioned.”

Nila could feel him tugging at the Else. Whereas her own experiences with sorcery had been torrents of power pulled from the other side, Bo seemed to be threading the Else carefully, using just a trickle of sorcery for his purposes. She couldn’t tell exactly what he was doing with the wards, or even how he was making them, but she marveled at the quick, almost casual precision.

“Borbador,” Lourie shouted, “why don’t you join the Brudanian cabal and I’ll come up there and we can kill the bloody minister together? You’re wasting your talents, Borbador. You can’t fight a god. Why I–”

Bo’s fingers twitched and there was a terrifying scream from below them. Silence followed for a moment, and Bo said, “I was also trying to figure out which one was Lourie.”

“I’ll take that as a no,” Lourie shouted up to them.

“Damn it,” Bo grunted. “I missed. Run.”

Tamas struggled to his feet, coughing and choking, thrashing blindly in the dust that filled the air. He briefly spotted his charger running from the wreckage of Sablethorn, following the fleeing crowds of revelers, and checked himself to be sure nothing was broken as a result of being thrown off his horse. He seemed whole, but his head was pounding and his left elbow didn’t want to bend.

How many had been crushed by the collapse? How many were dead, or trapped beneath the rubble?

The tower had been leaning ever since the earthquake many months before. Had this been a freak accident? He hoped – he prayed – that it was. But instinct told him it had been arranged by Claremonte and that something else would follow. For now all he could do was regroup and prepare for the worst.

Tamas pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and tied it around his mouth against the dust. “Olem! Olem! Pit.”

“Sir, are you all right?” It was General Arbor, emerging from the rubble, a soldier a quarter his age limping along with his help.

“Fine, fine. Do we know how many are buried?”

“I think most of us got away in time, though we can’t be sure. Lost my damn teeth!”

“Glad that’s all you lost. Have you seen Olem?”

“No.”

Tamas was suddenly launched from his feet. One moment he was speaking to Arbor and the next moment he was on the ground, his own voice sounding distant as he shouted for a report. He shook his head, ears ringing, trying to figure out what had happened. It felt, and sounded, like a munitions depot had exploded beneath his feet.

His vision swam and his head pounded, the whole world sounding like a muffled bell. He put his hands on his ears and hid his head, trying to regain his senses. With some effort he got to his feet.

General Arbor was up already, the body of the infantryman he had been helping crushed beneath a piece of basalt. Arbor’s face was red, and spittle flew as he barked commands that Tamas couldn’t hear. Arbor took him by the elbow and Tamas pointed to his ears. The general nodded.

“Sir.” The voice seemed small and distant, but Tamas turned to find Olem at his side. The bodyguard was coated in dust and splattered with blood, but it didn’t look like it was his own. “Sir, we’ve got to go! We’re under attack!”

“Who?”

Before Olem could answer, Arbor raised his hand and pointed toward the rubble of Sablethorn. Tamas flinched away from a sudden blinding light, and he held up one hand as he tried to see. Slowly, the light faded and resolved itself into a glowing figure a dozen feet above the wreckage. Sorcery swirled around her in white ribbons, and the clothes she wore dissolved beneath her own unveiled power.

Tamas gaped. Never had he seen anything like this. Not from Adom or from Julene or even from an entire royal cabal working in concert. He didn’t recognize the woman, but he could guess all the same; this was Cheris, Claremonte’s other half, the second face of the god Brude.

“Get the people back!” Tamas shouted. “Arbor, bring my soldiers into line. I want everything you can give me. Rifles, artillery. Everything!”

“Sir, we should retreat,” Olem said.

“Blast your retreating. I fight here and I die here. Get to the brigades waiting outside the city. Tell them to sack Claremonte’s headquarters at the palace. Kill everyone wearing a Brudanian uniform. For pit’s sake, avoid Claremonte himself!”

“Sir, you can’t–”

“That’s an order, man. Go!” As Olem sprinted away, Tamas drew his pistol and leveled it at the god, squeezing the trigger. The bullet disappeared into the swirling sorcery and had no visible effect. Tamas threw a powder charge into his mouth and chewed, feeling the power course through his veins.

The god rotated toward him, her face serene. Tamas drew his other pistol, aiming it at her eye, and pulled the trigger.

She was gone in the blink of an eye. Tamas stared hard at where she had just been, his pistol still held warily before him. “Where’d she go?”

“Here,” a voice whispered in his ear.

He whirled, but he was too slow. A hand like a steel vise closed around his neck and he felt himself lifted in the air, the breath choked from him. He was turned so that he looked into the eyes of the god.

“I gave you a chance.” Her voice was silky and feminine, but with an echo to it as if spoken inside the immense halls of a cathedral. He could hear the resonance of Claremonte within it. “I did not want this.” Tamas was lifted higher. He grasped at the fingers holding him, but he might as well have tried to pry away the unyielding hands of a marble statue. He struggled with all his strength, the power of ten men flowing through his veins, but it was as nothing to this god.

Cheris shook him like a doll. “I did not want this,” she repeated. “I wanted to do this the easy way. I would have led Adro to greatness. I would have united the Nine once again, toppled the rest of the monarchies, ushering in a modern era of prosperity and unity. I would have erased all memory of the old gods and created a utopia that Kresimir could never have accomplished.

“I could have done this all with bloodless revolution. I told myself that the people would choose wisely. That they would unite behind a man like Claremonte. But they didn’t, and now you’ve forced my hand. I will unite the Nine. I will unite the world. Even if I have to kill half the people on this planet to do it.”

Tamas felt his eyes bulging, his mind screaming from the lack of oxygen. He could feel his own struggles growing weaker. A bullet hit Cheris in the cheek and shattered without leaving a mark, pieces of lead ricocheting into Tamas’s shoulder.

“You obstinate shit,” Cheris said. “I would have had you lead my armies. What a waste.” He felt her fingers squeeze and he knew any moment his head would pop off his shoulders like the head of a dandelion torn off its stem. He thrashed and tore, and out of the corner of his vision he saw the swinging rifle stock.

Cheris did not.

The stock hit her in the side of the face hard enough to shatter the whole length of the weapon. Her head jerked to the side, if only slightly, and she turned to face Vlora with a look of disgust. Tamas was thrown, suddenly able to suck in a breath for only a moment before he hit Vlora and the two of them rolled across the cobbles of the square.

Tamas gasped, air cutting like knives through his injured windpipe. Vlora scrambled to her feet.

“Don’t you see that this is just a game to me?” Cheris demanded. “Do you not see how insignificant you are?”

Andriya, covered in blood and gravel and dust and screaming like a pit-born devil, ran at Cheris with his bayonet fixed. He thrust with enough force to skewer a bull. The blade struck Cheris in the belly, bending like it was made of rubber. Cheris twitched a finger and Andriya’s head exploded, showering Tamas and Vlora in blood. The body stumbled and fell, neck still spurting crimson.

“Fire!” Arbor’s voice bellowed.

The crack of two hundred muskets shattered the air, and Cheris turned toward the sudden hail of bullets and faced the ranks of Adran soldiers, as unperturbed as a man walking into a gentle rain. She lifted her hands, and Tamas opened his mouth to scream a warning to Arbor.

Taniel ran at the goddess with all the speed he could coax out of his body. She turned toward Arbor and the soldiers, and he knew that it would take her but a wink to do the same to them as she’d done to Andriya.

His fist connected with her chin and he heard an audible crack. The goddess spun fully around from his blow, toppling to her knees. She shrugged off the punch – a punch that might have put down an elephant – and was back on her feet in a moment, her face an expression of shock and outrage.

So he punched her again.

Cheris’s head jerked back. She raised a hand, and he felt a sudden pressure build in his ears, but he slapped her hand away and slammed his fist into her gut. She doubled over and he brought his elbow down on her shoulder, dropping her to her knees. He drew his fist back, ready to come down on the base of her spine.

Her punch to his stomach felt like he’d been hit by the prow of a Brudanian ship of the line. He stumbled, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth as he tried to regain his footing, but her second punch snapped his head back, sending him soaring through the air. It was with great surprise that he found himself still alive, forty feet away from the god. He stumbled to his feet, preparing to run at her again, but he could see that he now had the goddess’s undivided attention.

She flexed one hand, and Taniel felt as if a steel cage had snapped in place around him. His arms could barely move. His legs wouldn’t respond. The sorcery closed in on him. His bones and muscles protested against the pressure and it took all the strength he could summon to take one step forward.

Sweat poured off his brow and into his eyes. How was this possible? Not even Kresimir’s magic was this strong against the sorcery Ka-poel had woven into Taniel’s bones. Was Brude really stronger than Kresimir? What if Ka-poel’s wards weren’t powerful enough to hold off this god’s power?

He took another step forward and felt a scream of agony wrench itself from his lips. His vision blurred. He could feel the sorcery pushing down on him with the force of a mountain, but he knew that he had to end this. It was the only way to get back Ka-poel.

Suddenly the goddess was in front of him. He swung one fist and she stepped out of the way, catching his arm and slamming the tip of her finger into his shoulder. He groaned and she reached out one hand, grasping his face, and threw him away from her with an angry grunt.

She raised her hands and leapt into the air. He waited for her to come down upon him with the force of a mortar shell, but she stayed in the air, hovering well above his head. “Your lives are nothing to me. Surrender this battle now or I will lift this entire city into the air and drop it from a hundred miles up. Everything you’ve ever known and loved will die at once and there will be nothing you can do to stop it. Surrender!”

Taniel bared his teeth and looked toward his father, who was now on his feet, leaning against Vlora.

“Why don’t you do it, then?” Tamas demanded. “If we’re so insignificant, why do you hesitate to kill us? Go to the pit.”

The goddess laughed. She spread her arms, and the air began to shimmer. Taniel felt a sudden nausea in the pit of his stomach as his entire body grew weightless. Rubble and paving stones suddenly lifted off the ground. His heart leapt into his throat. There was a groaning, wrenching sound and the earth began to quake. Soldiers were lifted off their feet. Horses panicked and screamed as their hooves left the ground, and an immense cannon rose six feet into the air.

The goddess suddenly fell to the ground. She landed in a crouch and blinked at the world around her as the rubble and dust all settled back down to where it had once been. There were shouts of relief, and some of pain, as men fell back to the ground.

“What is this?” Cheris demanded.

A figure appeared in the haze and the goddess turned to face it. Taniel squinted, trying to make out its identity.

“You’re dead,” the goddess said.

The figure was tall and fat, with black hair. One moment he looked like Charlemund and the next like Mihali. His features warped and slid into something vaguely in between. He wore a white apron and a tall hat and stood with his hands on his hips.

“You’re mistaken,” he said.

Tamas stumbled over to Adom, his senses still reeling from Cheris’s attack. “I’m glad to see you show up,” he said hoarsely.

Adom didn’t respond. He raised his chin at Cheris and she sneered back.

“Get out while I let you leave,” she hissed. “I’ve never been as fond of you as my other half has.”

“You’ve killed them all,” Adom said sadly. “I went looking for them. All of our brothers and our sisters. Novi and Ishtari and Deliv and all the rest. You’ve managed to lure them all back here and murder them. All right under my nose. Only Kresimir and I are left. And you.”

The goddess snorted. “Kresimir won’t last the day. I’ll spare you his fate if you stand down now.”

Adom seemed to consider her threat. He turned to Tamas. “You should go.”

“What do you mean?”

“To the palace. Claremonte – Brude – he’s going to kill Kresimir. You can’t let that happen.”

“But this…”

“You won’t be any help here. Taniel’s the only one who can hurt her, and Ka-poel will need his help at the palace. If Brude kills Kresimir, he’ll do the same thing he has done with all the rest of my brothers and sisters and absorb a portion of his power. Don’t let that happen.”

Tamas tore himself away and began to run. He flinched as a wall of the People’s Court suddenly exploded in a shower of plaster and stone and sorcerous fire flared through the hole. “Vlora, get inside. Get the new minister to safety. Taniel, come with me. General Arbor, evacuate the city center! You’re in command here!”

Tamas turned as he reached the edge of Elections Square and looked back toward the two gods who were now facing off.

Adom drew a ladle from his apron string and leveled it at the goddess.

“Get out of my city!”