The Autumn Republic

Chapter 50

Nila ran back down the hallway toward the minister’s office, only to stop and dash back to help Bo along. Sorcery enveloped them both and a blast rang in her ears, nearly knocking her off her feet.

“Caught it in time,” Bo said, sweat beading on his forehead. “Keep moving.”

The blasts continued. Each time magic came close to incinerating them, she could feel Bo’s threads into the Else suddenly pull his own sorcery into the world as a counter. Marble flooring erupted behind them, spraying shards and dust into the air, knocking holes in the walls and ceiling. Flame and wind buffeted the air around them, but it all bounced harmlessly off of Bo’s shields of air.

“Wait, wait!” Nila said. “If we go this way, we’ll lead them straight to the minister.”

“Can’t be helped.” Bo hobbled on ahead, out the back of the office and into the servants’ stairwell. Nila looked down the stairs and could still see the fleeing minister’s staff. Back out in the hallway Brudanian soldiers had gained the landing and were taking up positions in doorways and behind columns.

Nila stepped away from Bo and leaned into the hallway, stretching out one hand, plucking at the air with the other. Flames shot from her fingers, rolling and snaking through the doorway. A bullet splintered the door frame beside her head, but she didn’t allow it to distract her. She focused on the heat of the flames, dragging sorcery through the Else and into this world.

She stiffened suddenly as an icy feeling crept up her spine, as if she had suddenly found herself plunged into shadow on a sunny day. “Bo, what just happened to me?” Her fire trickled off, expunged by her sudden doubt, and she dared not move.

Bo hobbled up beside her, his prosthetic clicking. “Well done,” he said. “You’ve set the building on fire, but I’ll give you points for the effort. That thing you felt was me, by the way. Come on.” He grabbed her by the arm and they made for the back stairwell.

“What did you do?” she asked as she helped him on the stairs.

“Quiet,” he whispered. “Trick an old lover taught me. I took a tiny bit of your aura and left it where we were just standing. Leaves a splash of color in the Else that burns like a person and covers our tracks. They’ll see through it quickly, but it might give us time to get behind them.”

They passed the fourth floor and Nila rushed through the door and into the office beyond, approaching the door to the main hallway. Soldiers stood down the hall, gathered around the main staircase, muskets pointed cautiously upward. Among them was a female Privileged – Lourie, she had no doubt.

“Now?” she asked.

“No, down one more floor.”

“We’ll give up the advantage of height.”

“I’d rather give up the high ground if it means we’re not trapped. Besides, you set fire to the top floor.”

They returned to the stairwell and descended to the third floor. Bo approached the servants’ door, sweat now pouring down his face, grimacing with every step on his prosthetic. He’d lost his cane somewhere in the chaos. Nila ran ahead of him and grabbed the door, but was suddenly thrown backward by a burst of sorcery. She slammed into the wall, plaster falling on her shoulders, the breath knocked out of her.

A man strode through the remains of the door. He wore Privileged gloves and he was big, as big as Colonel Etan. Bo made a warding gesture, which the man seemed to brush away. He grabbed Bo by his wrists and swung him around and into the banister. It cracked beneath Bo’s weight and both men toppled backward and plunged from sight.

Nila gathered herself off the floor and ran down the steps after them. They lay on the next landing, Bo underneath the behemoth of a Privileged, wrists pinned at his sides. The big Privileged laughed and cracked his forehead against Bo’s nose. Bo screamed with pain.

Nila grabbed the man by the back of his neck. He whirled, spittle flying from his mouth as he threw her off of him. His eyes twitched toward her hands, checking for gloves, before he turned his attention back to Bo.

“Shouldn’t be looking at me,” Bo said, blood bubbling from his nostrils.

Nila’s burning fingers seared through the man’s spine as easily as a shovel through snow. He gave a strangled scream before she was in his lungs, and he died with her hand around his heart. She shoved the body off of Bo.

“Are you all right?”

“I’ve felt better.” He wiped at the blood streaming from his nose. “Up, quick.”

She helped him to his feet, and then there was a great whining sound. The building trembled, and blades of hot iron suddenly leapt through the wall above their heads, raining wood and plaster upon them.

“Run, run!”

Tamas didn’t bother to find his horse, but rather threw another powder charge into his mouth and ran all the way to Skyline Palace.

Taniel ran beside him, rifle clutched in his hands, blood caked around his nostrils and at the corner of his mouth. They reached the winding road that snaked its way up the hill to Skyline. Tamas stopped them both there, gasping for breath. The powder trance spiked his adrenaline, giving him strength and energy, but he was far too old to do this for long. He could hear cannons and muskets firing, and smoke rose from the hill above them.

Olem must have started the attack.

“Find the girl,” Tamas said. “I’ll look for Kresimir’s body.”

“Do we have a plan?”

“If we can get Ka-poel out and maybe Kresimir himself, we might have leverage over Claremonte,” Tamas said. “I’ll distract him.”

“That’s suicide.”

“That’s why I’m doing it.”

Taniel clutched at Tamas’s jacket. “I can survive his sorcery.” Tamas could hear the earnestness in his son’s voice, the insistent, almost pleading tone. He wanted to be the one to go in after Claremonte. Tamas would not allow that.

“Cheris almost squashed you like a bug, Taniel. You won’t do any better against her other half. Get Ka-poel. Get her out of the building. If we have her, we have leverage. Those are your orders.”

Taniel let his hands fall from Tamas’s sleeve. There were several moments when Tamas thought his son might argue. Taniel gritted his teeth, anger slowly turning to resolution. Finally, he nodded.

They continued up the road until they reached the extensive gardens in front of Skyline Palace. It looked like a war zone. The cannons had stopped firing, but the crack of rifles and the screams of men filled the air. Tamas heard a very un-powder-like detonation and could sense the sorcery emanating from the building.

“Too small for a god,” he said. “Claremonte must still have some of his Privileged here. Keep an eye out.”

“I see her,” Taniel said, his eyes focused on something far away, half-lidded from looking into the Else. “She’s in the throne room.”

“If Claremonte is still hiding his true power, he might be impossible to find. I…” Tamas opened his own third eye and swept his gaze from one end of the palace to the other. Opposite the throne room, all the way at the other end of the palace, the Privileged wing where Tamas had slaughtered the royal cabal shone like the sun in the Else. The power felt like it might burn his face, and he knew that it could only be Brude. “Never mind. He’s not hiding.”

A fact that couldn’t mean anything good.

Tamas searched until he spotted some of his soldiers crouching behind one of the immense marble fountains in the garden. “Taniel, do you remember the trapdoor in the gardens behind the throne room? I showed it to you when you were a boy.”

“Vaguely.”

“It’s behind a statue of Manhouch the First – old man, big ears. Go in that way. You’ll come out in a passage right behind the royal throne.”

“All right.”

“Get at it, soldier.”

Taniel nodded and stepped away, only to stop and look back. Tamas met his eye.

“Dad?” Taniel said.

“Yes, son?”

“Be careful.”

“You too.”

Taniel was off at a crouching run as he ran from bush to bush, covering his approach. Tamas went the opposite direction, toward the group of his soldiers he’d spotted earlier. He came up behind them and threw himself down behind the fountain where they hid. “Report!”

One of the soldiers, a woman of about forty with a major’s stripes on her uniform, snapped to attention. “Sir! We’ve encountered heavy resistance, sir. They’ve got marksmen in all the windows and at least three Privileged inside. They had around a thousand men in the gardens, but we were able to sweep through with our superior numbers.”

Tamas had expected Claremonte to have some kind of contingency for if he lost the election. After Adamat’s information that the ships hadn’t been fully loaded, Tamas had had his men follow them up the river to where they disgorged the rest of their troops. Those troops had then circled back around to garrison Skyline Palace.

But Tamas wasn’t making the same mistake he’d made attacking Charlemund’s manor. He now had over twenty thousand men closing in on the palace.

Whether that would mean anything in the face of a god… “Casualties?” he asked.

“No idea, sir, but it has to be at least fifteen hundred men. Those Privileged were unleashed the moment we took the gardens.”

“Where are they?”

“North side of the palace grounds, where the fighting is heaviest.”

Tamas craned his neck to look out from behind his cover and toward the north. At the north wing of the palace was the throne room. Taniel was walking into a full-on battle. “Where’s Colonel Olem?”

“We cracked the main palace door in two volleys from our cannon. Five minutes ago he led two companies into the palace to try to clear it out. Haven’t heard from him since, but the marksmen’s fire on this side of the building has died down.”

“Have your men tighten the perimeter. I’m going in after the colonel.”

“We’ll send a company with you.”

“Excellent.”

Just a few minutes later Tamas approached the front doors of Skyline with two hundred soldiers at his back. The mighty silver-plated doors had been rent asunder by light artillery. The entryway was littered with the bodies of the dead and dying, both Adran and Brudanian alike, and he left ten of his men to move the wounded back out into the relative safety of the royal gardens.

He paused in the mighty foyer and, by the pattern of the dead and wounded, could see the progress of the battle heading off to his left and up the stairs around one corner. Olem had led his men toward the throne room to try to come out behind the Brudanian soldiers who were holding the northern palace doors. The sheer size of the palace could easily swallow up Olem and his two companies. The thought made Tamas wish he’d brought an entire brigade with him.

He felt tired, his strength waning. Every old, sorcery-healed scar ached, and the memories of how he got them all seemed to flow together. He remembered the campaigns in Gurla and the countless charges and battles. He recalled his flight from Kez after his attempted assassination of Ipille, and the years of planning his own monarch’s fall that ended in Manhouch’s head in a basket. The battle against the royalists and his flight across northern Kez toward Alvation all seemed to blend together.

He was so tired, and this needed to end.

“You, Captain,” Tamas said, splitting his force in two, “bring your platoon and come with me. Major, take the rest of the men up to the second story and work your way north. There are a half-dozen galleries between here and the throne room that will give you the high ground. Give Colonel Olem what reinforcement he might need from above.”

“Sir?” the major asked. “Where are you going?”

“I have a score to settle.”

Taniel worked his way through the gardens and hedgerows, past the fountains and statues, over the decorative walls and around the north face of Skyline Palace.

The fighting grew thicker, bullets whizzing over his head, black powder smoke hanging like a fog over the ruined gardens. The smoke gave him strength and clarity of mind as he avoided the clusters of Brudanian troops and sprinted behind the lines of Adran soldiers slowly advancing on the palace.

He moved like a man possessed as he rounded the northeast corner of the palace, sprinting with all his strength. He cut across a polo lawn and heard the crack of muskets and the whiz of bullets cutting through the air behind him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a squad of Brudanian soldiers leave their cover in pursuit, but he left them behind as he cut through a hedge maze, throwing himself through the prickly walls of greenery with an arm over his face.

He came out on the other side of the maze and descended a hill into a grove of birch trees in a hollow behind the palace. The sound of fighting was muffled and distant, and this part of the garden was overgrown but untouched by the conflict. A dry streambed, once fed by the same pumps that kept the fountains going, meandered through the grove.

Taniel approached the back wall of the palace, passing the statue of the old King Manhouch the First. He ran his hands over the thick stone blocks of the foundation, ransacking his memory for an image of the entrance his father had showed him sixteen years ago.

He continued along the wall for twenty paces, feeling every crack and nook to no avail, his heart beating harder with every second that passed without finding the entrance. Back at the statue he gazed for several moments at the wall – all that lay between him and Ka-poel – before taking a step back.

The fall might have broken his neck if he hadn’t dropped his rifle to catch himself. His leg plunged into a hole in the grass below his feet, and he wiggled his foot in the empty space, unsure if his eyes were playing tricks on him. Reaching down, he cleared away the grass to find an opening easily big enough for a man worked into the landscaping in a way that made it impossible to see.

He crawled in on all fours, sliding his rifle along ahead of him. Within ten paces the passage turned and opened up into a narrow corridor. He was able to stand and keep moving forward. The ground was damp beneath his feet, cobwebs tugging at his face and arms.

The corridor ended abruptly, leaving Taniel at a dead end. The only sounds he could hear were his own nervous breaths and the distant, almost inaudible cracks of musket and rifle fire.

Putting his ear to the wall, he waited for several moments of silence before he pushed gently with both hands. There was a click and the wall gave way to reveal another dark hallway. He could see a source of light at one end, which proved to be the hairline crack of what Taniel could only assume was another hidden doorway.

This door slid to one side in complete silence, leaving Taniel with a view of a well-lit, curtained-off corner of a room. He recognized that corner. The tall windows, the blue-and-crimson trim, the tapestries gilded with the dueling lions of the Manhouch family crest.

He was in the throne room, directly behind the throne itself.

He crept forward until he reached the curtain, moving it to one side cautiously with his finger. A sudden blast made him jump, withdrawing behind the curtain and pointing his rifle ahead of him. A few shouts followed the blast, and musket shots echoed somewhere nearby. When he was certain those blasts weren’t meant for him, Taniel leaned forward to peek past the curtain again.

The throne room appeared deserted. Dust covered the floor, though it was crisscrossed with footprints, and a couple of the torches were lit. The big double doors at the far end of the room were open about a foot. While Taniel watched, two Brudanian soldiers rushed inside and threw their backs to the door. They wore the uniform but neither held a weapon. Taniel could sense sorcery, and his suspicion that they were Privileged was confirmed when one held up his rune-covered glove.

He said something to his companion, then leaned into the crack of the door, and a blast of ice slipped from his fingers and disappeared. The other Privileged’s fingers danced in the air, and Taniel heard another concussion beyond the doors.

Taniel wasted no time. He wrapped a bullet in cotton and rammed it down the barrel to join the one already loaded, then stuck a spare powder cartridge between his teeth. He got down on one knee and with an elbow propped on the opposite knee he slid the barrel of his rifle through the curtain. He opened his third eye to see the Privileged clearly, then pulled the trigger.

In one instant he burned the powder charge between his teeth, sending the energy behind the foremost bullet. The lead balls flew out of the chamber, one after the other. He let the first fly true and put his focus behind the second, nudging it with his sorcery, adjusting his aim by just a few feet.

The two Privileged dropped together, their brains scattered across the inside of the throne room door. Taniel swept the curtain aside and ran forward. He had to find Ka-poel and get her out of here. He could sense her nearby, he–

“Ahem.”

The sound made Taniel spin.

Ka-poel sat on the throne, her legs dangling above the dais, hands on the armrests, leaning back like she owned the chair. She was wearing new pants and a shirt beneath a brand-new duster, and appeared unharmed, though she was flanked by a pair of Brudanian soldiers. One of them held an air rifle, leveled at Taniel, while the second held a pistol pointed at Ka-poel.

“Lower your rifle, powder mage,” the soldier with the pistol said.

“Ka-poel, are you all right?”

“Lower it!”

Ka-poel seemed unbothered by the pistol barrel pressed against her neck. She gave Taniel a thumbs-up.

Slowly, his eyes on the two soldiers, he lowered his rifle to the ground. Reaching out with his senses, he found no trace of powder on the two men. The pistol looked off, and though he’d never before seen its like, he guessed it operated on air cartridges as well.

“Pistols,” the soldier said, while his partner took two steps down the dais, his aim unfaltering. “Take them slowly from your belt and throw them over there.”

“Just wait a minute,” Taniel said. Both soldiers were big men, as big as grenadiers, with weathered faces and the lean, muscular build of professional killers.

“Do it now!” the soldier shouted. He grabbed Ka-poel by the arm roughly and jerked her from her seat on the throne. “You even twitch and I will–” His sentence cut out in a cry of pain.

Everything happened at once. Ka-poel slipped the soldier’s knife from his belt while he talked and rammed it into his groin. Taniel drew his pistol while the soldier with an air rifle whirled toward his partner.

Taniel’s shot was rushed and went wide, blasting a chunk of wood out of the throne. He tossed the pistol aside and drew his spare, and in the time it took him to do that, Ka-poel stepped forward and smacked the barrel of the air rifle to one side and slid the knife across the second soldier’s throat.

Taniel leapt onto the dais, kicking the air pistol away from the bleeding Brudanian. He snatched Ka-poel up in his arms and kissed her, breathing hard. “You’re unhurt?”

She rolled her eyes and wiggled out of his arms.

“Pole, we’ve got to go. Tamas wants you out of here. We’re going to try to negotiate with Claremonte.”

She shook her head vehemently.

“What do you mean?”

She drew her finger across her throat.

“Kill him?”

A nod.

“We can’t, Pole. He’s a god. He’s Brude.”

Another nod.

“You know?”

She rolled her eyes again.

“Look, Pole, I’ve got to get you out of here so I can go help Tamas. He’s going to get himself killed.”

Ka-poel rounded the throne and reached beneath it, dragging an iron strongbox out and onto the dais with a thud. Taniel helped her pull it around in front of the throne. “What’s this?”

As an answer, she went to the soldier holding his blood-soaked groin and rummaged through his jacket, batting away his feeble attempts to stop her. She took a large iron key and used it to open the lockbox. Inside, Taniel recognized the container she’d made of branches to hold Kresimir’s doll. Gingerly, she removed the casket and set it to one side.

“Good,” Taniel said. “Bring that too and we’ll get out of here.” Taniel staggered to one side as sorcery shimmered around him, shaking the entire building. “Was that you?”

No, she mouthed, pointed at his rifle still lying in the middle of the throne room.

Taniel fetched it for her. “We have to hurry,” he said. “Something is happening. That sorcery feels so…” He tried to work moisture into his dry throat. “I’ve never felt anything like it. It’s emanating from the other end of the palace. Where Tamas is.”

Ka-poel pulled the ring bayonet off the end of the rifle, then used the Brudanian’s knife to slice the tip of her finger. She let her blood drip all over the slender blade. The color drained from her face and Taniel had to leap forward to keep her from collapsing. “What are you doing?”

She pushed him away and took a deep breath, steeling herself. Stepping over to the Brudanian soldier, she looked down upon him like a priest might look upon a sacrificial victim, then plunged the bayonet into his heart. The man twitched once and fell still, and Taniel watched as his skin seemed to wrinkle and sag, aging fifty years in a heartbeat.

Taniel couldn’t help but feel ill. There was a part of him that knew he’d just witnessed sorcery as dark as anything the royal cabals did in secret. “Pole?” he said, reaching toward her.

She drew the bayonet from the soldier’s chest and handed it to Taniel. It had not a drop of blood on it, but a thin red line ran from the very tip to the ring. He recognized that red line.

“This is what you did for the redstripes, isn’t it? And to contain Kresimir?”

A nod.

“Did you kill people for those, too?”

Ka-poel shook her head, then mimed a pair of tall ears.

“Rabbits?”

She shrugged her shoulders and made a wheel-like motion with one hand. Taniel got the message: and other small animals.

“This will kill a god?” he asked.

She raised her eyebrows as if to say, I hope so.

“That’s very reassuring, Pole. I don’t suppose you’ll get the pit out of here on your own so I can go help Tamas?”

She shook her head.

“All right. Stay close.”

Nila put a shoulder beneath Bo’s arm and they ran down the next two flights of stairs, spikes of hot iron as big around as Nila’s wrist raining around them.

“How the pit can she do that?” Nila demanded.

“Her primary element is earth. Every Privileged likes to get good at something that’s both effective and physically terrifying. Mine is ice. Those bloody bolts are hers.”

They reached the bottom of the stairs. She headed for the door leading outside, but Bo stopped her with one hand.

“There are worse things going on out there,” he said.

“What could possibly be worse than raining iron?”

“It’s not strictly iron. It’s compressed matter. Iron is just easier to say. And outside you’ll find a pair of gods fighting.”

“You’re joking.”

Something suddenly shook the building, followed by a deep groaning sound. “That would be them.” Bo grimaced. “Pit, be glad you’re not attuned to the Else like I am. I feel like I’m walking naked through a battlefield. I wish Adom would just kill her already.”

“Well, I think I would have preferred to remain ignorant of what’s going on.”

Bo limped on ahead, leading her through a series of servants’ rooms and out into the main hall of the first floor. “Keep close,” he said. “I’m losing strength. I can only do so much.” His fingers twitched and Nila ducked involuntarily as the ceiling above her exploded. The iron spike that plunged down through the ceiling would have impaled her from head to foot if Bo’s sorcery hadn’t slapped it aside, sending it clattering down the hall.

“What can I do?” she demanded. “I can’t form shields, I’m not that quick!”

“You’ll learn.”

“If I survive this!”

“Good point. Air, can you do air?”

“Only a little.”

“Air behind your fire. The hottest fire you can make. The fire will melt the iron, air will spread the molten metal around you.”

“And shower anyone nearby? That’s mad!”

“This is sorcery!” He stopped her with an arm across her chest. “Shit.” The building shook and they both nearly fell. “One of those bloody Privileged is trying to help Brude. I don’t know if it’ll do anything, but to pit with me if I let him.” He reached out one hand. Nila noted his fingers moving slower, his eyelids drooping. “Damn it, I’m getting tired. This damned leg!”

“Tell me what to do.”

“Privileged. There.” He pointed up and to his right. “Two stories up. Do you feel him?”

Nila reached out with her senses. She could feel that Privileged and she could sense something greater outside the building. It was thick and ominous, far stronger than the Gurlish magebreaker’s sorcery nullification. This turned her bowels to jelly.

“Okay,” she said, her voice shaking.

“Kill him.”

“How?”

“Be creative.”

Nila scowled. Reaching up, she flung her sorcery at the ceiling, her own fire splashing back to singe her clothes before melting through marble, wood, and plaster and boring a black hole right through the guts of the building.

She felt the Privileged wink out of existence, his light in the Else snuffed out. “I did it. I did it!”

“I’m very proud of you. Just don’t let it go to your head. He would have countered you if he had been paying any attention. Keep going, there are still two more of them. Lourie’s still on the fifth floor, but she won’t stay up there long.”

The iron spike came from nowhere, slamming through Bo’s shoulder and flinging him across the hall. His response was almost immediate, his fingers twitching even as he was thrown, spikes of ice flying through the air and impaling the Privileged who had appeared in the stairwell ahead of them.

Bo tried to wrench the spike from his shoulder, screaming as it seared his flesh. His wrists were suddenly pinned to the wall by air, and then a smaller spike went straight through the palm of his right hand.

Nila stared in horror as Lourie strode into the hallway, ignoring her comrade pinioned to the wall with ice like some kind of insect. Nila sneered, raising her hands, but was instantly batted down by an invisible fist.

Her head pounded as she struggled to regain her feet, and watched helplessly as Lourie approached Bo. The Brudanian Privileged stopped in front of him, then turned to regard Nila for a moment. “What are you, his apprentice? You should have carried extra gloves, little girl. A fight like this will burn them off.” She turned to Bo and put a finger under his chin. “I’ll make the offer one last time. But if you want to survive this moment, you’ll beg me to kill this imp you call an apprentice and you’ll laugh as she screams.”

Bo choked a couple of times.

“Well?” Lourie demanded.

“Nila,” Bo croaked. “Remember the magebreaker?”

“You’re not answering me,” Lourie said. “You have five seconds.”

“You have my answer, you bitch.”

Nila struggled to her feet and reached for the Else.

“And what is that answer?” Lourie said, tilting her head forward in a mocking manner.

“Burn,” Bo replied.

Nila tapped into all of her fury, spurred on by memories of her fear and helplessness at the hands of all who had abused her. She used that strength to wrench sorcery from the Else. It poured through her, more power than she could possibly hold. Lourie turned toward the danger, molten matter compressing into a spike above her shoulder and soaring toward Nila. But Nila threw air behind her fire just as Bo had said, and the spike melted to her flames and was splashed away by the air. She heard herself scream as the flames washed over Lourie and plowed on ahead, blasting through columns and walls.

It went on for several seconds before, with a thought, Nila extinguished it, her eyes on the ash that remained of the Brudanian Privileged.

Bo clung to the wall, his mouth slightly open. “Air, huh?” he said. “I’m really glad you figured that out. Now, would you come help me get this out of my shoulder?”