The Crimson Campaign

Chapter 26

Taniel found Major Doravir in the Wine’s End, an upper-class gentleman’s club that had been appropriated for use by the army as an officers’ mess hall. The room was lined with rich crimson damask and smelled heavily of cigar smoke. The armchairs scattered throughout the club had been upholstered with the furs of big cats from the Gurlish continent. In one corner, a sergeant was playing a grand piano. The conversation was somber and muted, though a few officers seemed to note Taniel’s entrance.

Taniel paused in the doorway and adjusted the collar of his dress uniform – a gift from Mihali. Most of his possessions had been lost when South Pike collapsed, including his various uniforms. Somehow the fat chef had gotten Taniel’s measurements and had had a new one made for him. It even had the proper silver buttons with powder kegs on them.

He examined the room slowly, hat tucked under his arm, and tried not to think about the provosts waiting outside for him. If he failed to apologize, he imagined they’d take him straight back to his quarters.

Taniel spotted Major Doravir near the bar, playing cards with an older officer of about fifty and two other majors. He took a deep breath and crossed the room, weaving his way through the chairs, giving a small nod to the few men who called out to him.

Major Doravir, her back to the wall, couldn’t possibly have missed his presence, but she didn’t bother to look up when Taniel stopped beside her table.

The older officer – a colonel by his uniform, though Taniel couldn’t place the face – was speaking.

“And I said to them, it’s the lack of noble blood. I understand Tamas’s cull was a political thing, but there’s no arguing that the lack of nobility among his officers has cheapened the whole army. By Kresimir, if he couldn’t…” The old officer paused, frowning at Taniel. “Ah, Captain. Fetch me another beer. Now, where was I? If he couldn’t… get to it, Captain, I’m thirsty.”

Taniel ignored the colonel. “Major Doravir,” Taniel said.

Doravir glanced up from her cards. “You’re being rude to Colonel Bertthur.”

Bertthur? Where did he know that name from? “My apologies, Colonel” – Taniel didn’t look at the man – “but I must speak with Major Doravir.”

“It’s ‘Colonel’ now,” Doravir said, touching the bars at her collar. “And whatever you have to say to me” – she set her cards facedown on the table and leaned back in her chair – “can be said in public.”

Taniel swallowed a mouthful of bile. “Congratulations on your promotion, Colonel.”

“I say,” Bertthur stood up.

“Sit down, sir,” Taniel snapped. “This has nothing to do with you. Colonel Doravir, I’d like to offer my deepest apologies for any” – Taniel rolled the sentence around in his head, trying not to spit it out – “insult I may have given you with my recent conduct.”

Taniel couldn’t help but notice that the murmur of conversation had completely disappeared. It felt as if a hundred sets of eyes were staring at him. They probably were.

“Colonel Bertthur is my husband,” Doravir said. “Apologize to him.”

Husband? The man must have been twenty years her senior.

“I did,” Taniel said. “And I apologized to you. Now if you’ll excuse me.” Taniel turned on his heel.

He paused when Bertthur cleared his throat. “Was that Taniel? Tamas’s brat?”

Keep walking, Taniel told himself.

“Two-Shot,” Bertthur said. “Come back here this instant. Colonel Etan!”

Taniel froze. Etan was here?

“Colonel, isn’t this the man who got you crippled?”

“He’s the man who saved my life,” Etan’s voice returned.

“He saved my life, too!” someone shouted.

“And mine!”

“Bah. I remember you now, Two-Shot,” Bertthur said. “It must have been five, six years ago. A whiny little bastard. A piss-poor soldier. You’d rather run off with that dark-haired whore of yours, neglecting your training. I never saw anything in you. Huh. Looks like she didn’t either.”

A whore? Vlora? He might have wanted to call her that and worse when he’d caught her with that fop at the university, but Taniel would be damned if he’d let some fool officer go on about his love life. He balled his hands into fists and slowly took a breath to calm himself. He didn’t have to listen to this. He could just walk away.

“Bertthur, I think you’ve had enough,” Etan’s voice said. “Perhaps it’s time to retire for the evening.”

“Go to the pit, Etan,” Bertthur went on. “Taniel, I can see that things haven’t changed. No respect for authority. No military decorum. You’ve just traded one whore for another.”

“Bertthur!” Etan’s voice held some warning.

“But now it’s a savage whore! What will he think of next? I bet your father is rolling over in his grave every time you bed that bitch.”

Taniel’s whole body shook. The fury threatened to overwhelm him. He forced himself to remain calm. Slowly, he turned around.

“Bertthur,” Taniel said. “I don’t remember a Colonel Bertthur. I remember a Captain Bertthur. An ass of a man who held his rank only because he was the bastard son of a duke. Field Marshal Tamas swore that man would never hold a higher rank as long as he was left alive.”

Bertthur turned red. “That’s a week in the stocks for you, Two-Shot.”

“You’re a braggart and a fool, Bertthur. You’re a disgrace to the uniform.”

“Two weeks!”

Taniel charged toward Bertthur and the officer shrank back, as if expecting to be punched. Taniel gripped the colonel’s bars on his collar and ripped them off, tossing them to the side.

“A month!” Bertthur roared.

Something soared through the air and struck Bertthur in the side of the face. It looked like mashed potatoes.

“Who did that?” Doravir demanded.

A dinner roll hit Bertthur on the nose. He reeled back, suddenly under assault from every manner of dinner food. Someone flung a whole dish of sauce on him, staining his uniform.

“You’re not a free man anymore, Two-Shot!” Bertthur fumed. “Your father is dead. You’ll see two months in the stocks, and I’ll hand your little savage whore over to my men!”

Taniel took a step forward and plowed his fist into Bertthur’s chin, sending the older man to the ground. He could hear the crack of the bastard’s jaw breaking.

“Provosts!” Doravir shouted.

Damn this. Damn them all. Taniel righted Berrthur’s chair with his foot and leapt up on it.

“Friends,” he shouted, raising his arms for quiet. The officers’ mess suddenly calmed, and to Taniel’s surprise, he had silence within moments. “The General Staff has deceived us all,” Taniel said. “Field Marshal Tamas is not dead. He hasn’t even been captured. He’s leading the Seventh and Ninth through Kez as we speak.”

“A lie!” Doravir shouted.

Tamas raised his voice to drown her out. “Haven’t you wondered where the Kez cavalry are? They’re chasing Tamas!”

Taniel was shoved off the chair by a provost. The man had no sooner laid his hands on Taniel than a major tackled him to the floor. Taniel got to his feet. “We only have to hold these Kez bastards for a few more months! Fall will be here soon and then winter, and Field Marshal Tamas with it!”

A musket butt slammed Taniel in the stomach. He doubled over in pain, but forced himself up. “No retreat! No surrender!”

The officers’ mess erupted in a roar of cheering. Food was flying everywhere. Taniel was forced to the floor by the back of his neck, his face ground into the carpet.

“You’re finished, Two-Shot,” Doravir hissed. “You’re a dead man!”

Taniel didn’t care. The officers would all tell their men, and their men would hold the line. They’d do it for Taniel. They’d do it for Tamas.

Nila felt a sense of dread grow in the pit of her stomach as she neared Vetas’s manor. Black smoke billowed above the street, and men’s screams carried on the wind. The sound of fighting grew more distinct as she drew closer, and above it all a sound that she’d only heard once or twice in her life but was unmistakable – the thump of sorcery.

It had to be Privileged Dourford. She could see the tall Privileged in her mind’s eye, laughing gleefully as he slung sorcery at unknown attackers, burning men to a crisp with the flick of his fingers.

The sorcery seemed to have an echo. There’d be a thump, and then another one just as loud if not louder almost immediately after. The combat was still going on as she rounded the corner of the next street over and approached the manor from the rear. Smoke poured from the windows on all three stories of the manor. Flames licked the smoke, curling like fingers around the window frames. A crash, and then another.

No, this wasn’t any echo.

Sorcery fought sorcery inside the building.

Nila ran toward the manor, her dress gathered in both hands. She remembered hearing the kitchen staff say that Lord Vetas had called a second Privileged from somewhere down south. She was supposed to have arrived this morning. Was that woman fighting Dourford?

There was a great whump and Nila felt her ears pop. She staggered to one side of the street, trying to keep her feet. The flames had disappeared from the manor. Another whump, and the smoke burst from the windows as if propelled by a giant bellows, and no more followed it out.

Nila froze in her tracks, more frightened by the sudden silence than she had been by the sorcery. Who had won? Who had even been fighting? Was Vetas in there? Was he still alive? Could Jakob have survived all of that?

She didn’t know if she could make herself go inside. She took several deep breaths, gathering her courage.

A crack split the air, throwing Nila off her feet. She landed on the street hard enough to scrape the skin off her palm.

One side of the house collapsed, crashing in on itself. She stared, openmouthed, as the walls crumpled and part of the roof slid off one side, clay shingles falling into the alley with a sound like a thousand wind chimes in a hurricane.

Nila climbed to her feet and was running toward the house before she could think. Her palm throbbed, her dress bloody, but she didn’t care about that. Jakob was still inside, up on the second floor. His nursery faced the other street, and even at this angle she could tell that if he was inside, he’d been crushed. But maybe he was lucky. Maybe he’d been under the bed, or protected by the door frame, or…

The back wall of the manor suddenly blew outward, sending plaster, furniture, and bits of what looked to have once been a human out into the street.

A man stood in the wreckage. He was of medium height, with ruddy muttonchops on an otherwise clean-shaven face and loose pants and matching jacket that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a street in the bankers’ quarter. He wasn’t particularly handsome, nor was he ugly, but Nila felt a jolt when she first saw him.

He held his hands high, fingers poised in white Privileged’s gloves as he looked down on the mess he’d just made all over the thoroughfare. The gathering crowd pulled back in fear. A woman fainted when she realized what the juicy red meat scattered in the street was. A man vomited.

The Privileged surveyed the gathered crowd and lowered his hands. He turned and disappeared inside the wreckage of the house. Before he did, however, Nila caught sight of something on his gloves: the symbol of the Adran Mountains with the teardrop of the Adsea beneath them.

This wasn’t just any Privileged. This was a member of the Adran royal cabal.

Something told Nila that Dourford hadn’t stood a chance.

Nila picked her way through the wreckage and ducked beneath a beam, entering the house as close as she could get to the servants’ stairs.

The sitting room was completely crushed. She could hear a man calling for help, and another moaning. A body lay in the mangled timber, covered in plaster dust, unmoving. She heard someone speaking from the other room. It sounded like Lord Vetas.

Nila moved slowly into the kitchen. It remained almost completely untouched by the collapse, but it seemed that the servants’ stairs had taken the worst of it. She wouldn’t be climbing up to the second floor that way.

She stepped over to the door to the dining room and listened. Silence, but she could hear someone moving. She looked through a crack in the door. She heard herself gasp at the sight of a woman, body hanging limply from dripping shards of ice, nailed to the back wall of the dining room. She wore Privileged’s gloves. Vetas’s other Privileged?

Someone spoke. A man’s voice. He was saying…

Lord Vetas slammed into the back wall of the dining room hard enough to rattle the remains of the house. Something shifted in the wreckage, and Nila heard someone scream. Lord Vetas, though, didn’t make a sound. The Adran Privileged stepped into view. He spoke quietly, his face angry. He grabbed Lord Vetas by the chin and forced him to look at the dead Privileged.

The Adran Privileged stepped back suddenly. His voice was suddenly calm and collected. Nila heard him say, “I bet you were the type of child who tortured animals for fun. Tell me, did you ever pull the wings off of insects? Answer me!”

Nila had some satisfaction in seeing Vetas pull back in fear. His mouth moved, the word too low to hear.

“That’s what I thought. How does it feel?”

Nila pulled away from the door. Vetas’s scream drowned out the calls of the wounded and dying in the rest of the house. She turned toward the kitchen, looking for another way to get through the wreckage. Panic set in. She had to find Jakob. She had to get away from the house. Even as she began to breathe harder, the adrenaline setting in, a wave of relief swept over her. Vetas was gone. If he wasn’t dead yet, he would be. That bastard had finally found someone stronger and crueler.

She put him from her mind. He wasn’t worth another thought. Jakob, though…

“Nila?”

Nila’s gaze darted around the kitchen. A child’s voice. Where had it come from?

“Nila, quick, hide in here.”

She found Jakob in the bottom of the pantry, tucked behind a sack of flour. She glanced at the door to the dining room. “There’s no room for me in there,” she said, helping him out of the pantry.

“What about Faye?” Jakob asked. “And Uncle Vetas.”

A moan emanated from the dining room. Nila took Jakob by the shoulder and pushed him out through the broken wall the same way she’d come in.

The crowd outside had retreated to what they deemed a safe distance from the house, seemingly content to wait for the police and fire brigades to arrive. Someone grabbed Nila by the arm as she pushed her way through the throng. She shoved them off without a comment, not bothering to look back, and kept her grip on Jakob’s shoulder.

Her mind was already racing. She still had her buried silver outside the city. She had no money, no clothes but the ones on her back. They’d have to walk all the way to the city limits, find the silver, and then tomorrow they could come back into the city and find a place to sell it.

A night or two spent sleeping in the street wouldn’t kill them.

They were four blocks away, when Nila noticed that everyone she passed was staring at her. It was another block before Jakob pointed at her dress and she realized that the blood from her palm was everywhere. It looked like she’d been rolling in it. Two more streets down and they reached a string of shops.

“Do you need help, ma’am?” a passing gentleman asked, pressing a handkerchief to his mouth. He looked queasy at the sight of her.

She showed him her palm. “Just skinned it, is all,” she said, trying to keep her tone level. “Looks worse than it is.”

The gentleman seemed relieved. “There’s a doctor right over there,” he said, pointing two shops down. “She accepts walk-ins.”

“Thank you so much,” Nila said.

She waited for a moment until the gentleman continued on his way. She had no way to pay for a doctor. She’d have to deal with the pain until…

Nila remembered the silver necklace with the large pearl hanging about her neck. A “gift” from Vetas.

The doctor was an older woman in a white dress and sharp eyeglasses perched on her nose. She was seeing a patient, but one look at Nila’s bloody dress and she rushed to see what was the matter.

Nila did her best to make small talk as the doctor cleaned and then wrapped her wound. She had fallen, Nila told the doctor. A nasty fall, but nothing was sprained. Payment? “Oh, my. I seem to have left my pocketbook at home. Can you keep this necklace until I return to pay you?”

The arrangement was struck, and Nila even borrowed a fifty-krana note against the necklace. She pulled Jakob out the door, relieved that he’d stayed quiet through the entire exchange.

Nila had only gone another half a block before a thought struck her.

The Privileged. The one who’d come out victorious and then torn Vetas’s arms off – he was a member of the Adran royal cabal.

“Jakob,” Nila said, directing him over to a street side café, “can you wait here for a few minutes?”

Jakob’s eyes grew wide. “Don’t leave me alone.”

“Just for a few minutes. Here, let me buy you glass of milk. Sit right here, inside, and wait for me to come back.” She paused, thinking. “If I don’t come back, I want you to ask directions to the nearest barracks. Tell the commanding officer that you’re looking for Captain Olem. He’ll be away, fighting on the front, but the officer will help you find someplace to stay.”

“You’re not coming back for me?”

“I am,” Nila said, “but just in case I don’t, that’s what you’re to do.”

The boy seemed to take stock of her confidence and straightened his back. “Yes, Nila.”

She bought him a glass of milk and put him on a chair just inside the café, asking the waiter to keep an eye on him for half an hour. Ten krana bought her an old apron from the café, and she wrapped it around her middle. It concealed the blood on her dress nicely.

Then Nila backtracked her way to Lord Vetas’s manor.

The police had arrived, and the fire brigades were crawling all over the manor. A white sheet had been laid over the remains of Dourford, and the fire brigades pulled a twisted body from the wreckage. All of Lord Vetas’s men had disappeared, along with whomever they were fighting. The number of police kept her from wanting to get any closer to the building.

She began to make a circuit of the area, checking each of the nearby streets. Surely there were lookouts, or… or… someone!

Nila found nothing. Lord Vetas’s men, the Adran soldiers, the cabal Privileged; they’d scattered to the wind.

She widened her search.

It wasn’t until five streets over that she caught sight of a man with ruddy muttonchops and a pressed suit of clothes walking along the thoroughfare with a wide rug, rolled thick enough that it might have a body inside, over his shoulder. He wasn’t wearing any Privileged’s gloves, but Nila knew it was the same man – the cabal Privileged.

She ran to catch up with him. He walked slowly under the weight of the rug and he was whistling loudly to himself. Surely this couldn’t be the same man?

He turned a corner.

Slowly, Nila crept up to the edge of the building. Maybe it wasn’t him. Privileged didn’t carry things themselves. They had servants for that.

She rounded the corner and nearly screamed.

About ten feet down the alley, the man was sitting on his rolled rug. He had his feet up on an old wine barrel as if he’d been there all day.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Nila glanced into the street. Surely he wouldn’t harm her. Not on a busy street in broad daylight.

“Sir,” she said. How to talk to a Privileged? She’d spent some time with Rozalia when she was with the royalists months ago, but that had made her just as uncomfortable. Privileged were not to be trusted. “My lord?”

His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t correct her. This was the same man, all right. And he didn’t like someone noticing that he was a Privileged. She braced herself, ready to run.

“Yes?” he asked, his voice amiable.

“You’re a Privileged,” she said. “From the Adran Cabal.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think that?”

“I saw you splatter Lord Dourford across the cobbles about an hour ago.”

“That was his name?” the Privileged said. “I thought he looked familiar. That pompous prick was a member of the Kez Cabal. Bah, I’m surprised they let him in. Less talent than a Knacked.” He looked her up and down. “Now what can I do for you? Make it good, because I’ll have to kill you after.”

Kill her? Nila had no doubt he would, given the need. Members of the royal cabals were notoriously cruel. She cleared her throat and straightened her back. “Due to your duty as a member of the royal cabal, I will give into your protection Jakob Eldaminse, next in line for the crown of Adro.” She let out a sharp breath, only now realizing that she’d been holding it.

The Privileged’s eyebrow remained cocked. Slowly, as if realizing that she was serious, the eyebrow lowered. He threw his head back and laughed.

Nila felt a nervous smile dance upon her lips. Had she said something funny? “You’ll do it, then?”

“What? Oh, pit no. You think I want some noble brat hanging on my hip? That kid is, what, four?”

“Six.”

“Six. Right.” The Privileged stood up. “The Adran nobility is dead. They’re not coming back.” He paused and looked around. “Where is the boy, anyway?”

“Hiding.”

“Smart.”

“Sir,” Nila said. “My lord, you have to. He has no one else to protect him.”

“He seems to have you.”

“I’m just a laundress.”

“You dress like a waiter.”

“The apron? No, I’m a laundress.”

“I’m pretty sure that you’re a waiter,” the Privileged said.

It took her several moments to realize that she was being teased.

“My lord!” she said in a voice that she hoped was commanding, “you have to protect Jakob Eldaminse.”

“No, I don’t.” The Privileged sighed as if suddenly tired, and though he’d looked to be in his midtwenties just a moment ago, he suddenly seemed elderly. “I’m done with the Adran nobility.” He blinked and then seemed to look more closely at her. “Have we met before?”

She shook her head.

“Oh well. I should be off. This rug won’t keep all day.”

Nila felt a rising panic inside her. It hadn’t worked. The Privileged wouldn’t protect Jakob. It wasn’t as if she were trying to hand the boy off, she told herself. It was that he needed better protectors than she. “You’re not going to…”

“Kill you? No. You’re trying to hide one of the last living members of Manhouch’s extended family. You’re not going to tell anyone about me anytime soon.”

“I will,” Nila said.

“Excuse me?”

“I will tell them. Unless you swear to protect Jakob.”

“You’re adorable.”

“I’m serious.”

“I’m sure you are.” The Privileged bent and lifted one edge of the rug, tipping it upward against the wall and examining it for a moment as if figuring out the best way to get it back on his shoulders.

Nila felt numb. What would she do now? Sure, she could get ahold of some money, but what then? “Your rug is bleeding.”

“So it is,” the Privileged said, glancing at the dark stain soaking through the fabric. “I thought I cauterized those wounds.”

A cold finger crept its way up Nila’s spine. “Who is that?” she asked.

“Him? Some idiot named Vetal or something.”

“Vetas?”

“Yeah. Him.”

Nila stormed over to the rug and kicked it. Then again, then again.

The Privileged grabbed her by the arm, pulling her away. “He’s unconscious,” he said, “and I want him alive so that I can torture him some more. For information,” he added.

Nila stumbled away from the rug and leaned up against the wall of the alley. She felt like she was going to be ill. Everything had been so clear in her mind as she’d escaped Vetas’s grasp. Now it was full of questions. Part of her wanted to cry. She quelled the feeling and stared at the wall, trying to come up with some kind of plan.

She was surprised to find the Privileged still standing there a few moments later.

“Don’t you have something to do with that?” she said, jerking her chin at the rug.

The Privileged stepped closer. Nila refused to step back.

“My name’s Bo,” he said.

Nila sniffed.

“Look, I won’t keep the boy,” Bo said. “I’m not in any position to protect him. I’m a hunted man myself. But I can give you two a few days of safety while you figure out what to do.”

“Why?”

Bo chuckled. “Because you’re brave enough to demand things of a Privileged on your own, and from what I gather, you know this fellow” – he tapped the rug with his toe – “and because you’re rather attractive. A few days is all, though.” He pulled a pencil and paper from his breast pocket and scribbled something on it. “I have to go put my rug into storage. Gather the boy and meet me at this address. For Kresimir’s sake, make sure you’re not followed.”