The Autumn Republic (47 page)

“You know the results?” Ricard asked.

“If I didn’t already, I do now. I heard the cheering from the streets.”

Taniel could hear nothing but the pounding of his own heart. The room was deathly silent, and though the guests didn’t know Claremonte’s true nature, there was a palpable air about him that threatened danger. Taniel caught Vlora’s eye, and saw the pistol in her belt half drawn.

“And,” Claremonte continued, “well earned, I say.” He swept one leg back in a graceful bow. “Congratulations, Mr. First Minister, and to you, Second Minister. I wish you all the greatest success!” He stepped forward suddenly and shook Ricard’s hand, ignoring the shocked look on Tumblar’s face.

“You’ll be leaving the city, then?” Taniel asked, his voice low.

Claremonte met his eye, the corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “As I gave my word. I just have a few things to wrap up before I go. Well done, Mr. Two-shot. Enjoy your victory.”

Claremonte was gone before Taniel could respond. He withdrew graciously, offering congratulations to Ricard’s staff and waving all the way out the door. Slowly, the conversation resumed, and Taniel pulled himself out of the middle of the room and made his way over to Vlora. Just as he reached her, he heard another champagne cork pop and turned to find Ricard holding the foaming bottle.

“Fell,” Ricard shouted. “Tell Tamas to start the parade!”

Taniel gripped the hilt of his sword and turned to Vlora. “Get to your position.”

Tamas lay his hand on the neck of his charger to calm the horse as it stepped nervously in place at the head of a long column of sharply dressed Adran soldiers. The column snaked along the main road leading out of Adopest in the midst of a great crowd.

He could sense the excitement of his men. Though every one of them stood at parade rest with feet apart and eyes forward, bayoneted rifles down, he could feel the buzz of energy that emanated from and surrounded them as Adran citizens gathered along the streets ahead laughed and children ran up and down the sides of the column, throwing garlands of fresh flowers, trying to loop them around the bayonets.

“Field Marshal Tamas!” a voice shouted above the din.

Tamas looked up, and it was Olem, who pointed out one of Ricard’s men riding toward them down the main avenue out of the city. The man shouted, but his voice was drowned out by the mob of revelers.

“Speak up!” Olem shouted back.

The messenger pulled up a dozen paces away. “We’ve won! Ricard Tumblar is the First Minister of Adro! Lord Claremonte has admitted defeat.” Tamas could hear the news being relayed by the citizens lining the street and watched the exclamations and the curses. There was a clamor as the information was spread, opinions barked back and forth. A fistfight broke out, but was quickly put down by the people themselves.

Tamas exchanged a look with Olem, and could see his own optimistic trepidation reflected in the bodyguard. “Well. That’s that, then.”

“We hope,” Olem said.

“We hope,” Tamas echoed. “Colonel, if you’ll do the honors.”

Olem pointed to a nearby drummer boy, and a long, steady beat suddenly broke through the noise. People all along the road paused in their celebrations.

“General Arbor, the parade is at your command.”

General Arbor swung his horse around to face the column behind them. “Parade!” he bellowed. “Attention!” The sound of five thousand pairs of boots shuffling together rang out as every man came to attention. “Parade advance!” The drummer boy clicked his sticks four times on the rim of his snare, then snapped out the beat, and the column moved forward.

Tamas sat straight on his charger, sword over his right shoulder, as they marched into the crowded city streets, the path clearing ahead of them. He could hear happy shouts, and saw flower garlands thrown from the tops of buildings to float down onto the marching soldiers.

The parade led through the Factory District and the New City, winding up and down a dozen streets as the people cheered and waved. Women reached out to touch the soldiers as they passed, and men shouted congratulations. Tamas saw more than one tavern owner running up and down the column to tell the soldiers they could drink for free all night at his pub.

Tamas kept his back straight and his bearing regal, but he watched the crowds and the shop windows and the rooftops with trepidation. Every time he thought he could give in to his pride and let himself relax, he felt as if hostile eyes were on his back. He tried to tell himself that old instincts never died. He tried to tell himself that it was finally over.

The parade proceeded toward the bridge over the Ad River, and Tamas raised his fist at the sight before him.

“Parade halt!” General Arbor yelled.

The brigade came to a stop and Tamas eyed the lone wagon abandoned in the middle of the road not far from the bridge. He felt his hand creeping toward the butt of his pistol and could see Olem’s sword half drawn.

“Orders, sir?” Olem said.

“Wait.” Tamas glanced at the surrounding buildings. There was no sign of ambush, no Brudanian uniforms flashing in windows.

Suddenly, a dozen revelers ran out into the street and surrounded the wagon. With some effort, they managed to push it out of the way, and a young girl climbed to the top of the wagon waving an Adran flag, planting herself like a conquering hero.

“Parade advance!” Arbor called.

They passed over the river and continued on to Elections Square, where the greatest part of the crowd had gathered. The balcony of Tamas’s office – now the office of the First Minister of Adro – was festooned with Adran blue and red, banners stamped with the teardrop symbol of the Adsea draped halfway down the building.

The crowd was cleared away from the middle of the square as the parade marched in and fell into rank before the People’s Court. Tamas looked up to see Ricard Tumblar on the balcony, decked out in his finest suit, Taniel standing beside him looking somber in his uniform.

Tamas let a smile crack his stony visage.

“Sir?” Olem asked.

“My son. Second Minister of Adro. Strange twist of fate.”

“He doesn’t look happy about it.”

“He’s not. Not at all. He’ll keep his promise, though.”
He had better
, Tamas added mentally.

The soldiers had fallen in, and a hush descended on the square, quieter than the day Tamas had stood on that same balcony and announced to the crowd that the reign of Manhouch was over. Tamas let out a slow breath, blinking away the wonder, and realized that he’d now come full circle. The plans of so many years had finally come to fruition.

“Is it over, Olem?” he asked, hearing the emotion in his own voice. “Is it finally over?”

Olem didn’t answer. Ricard had raised his hands. “People of Adro! Friends! Brothers! Sisters! I’m humbled to stand before you today as your new First Minister.” The cheers lasted for several minutes before Ricard could finally speak again. “My friends, the tyranny of kings is over. The doubt and anticipation of the last eight months of tragic war is over. Today, on the last day of autumn, we have become a republic. I am proud to be here, the first among equals.

“My friends, none of this would have been possible without the extraordinary efforts of the Protector of Adro, Field Marshal Tamas, and his powder mages and soldiers. You owe them your freedom. Your lives. Your love.”

The cheers were deafening. Tamas felt a tear roll down his cheek, but he did not move to wipe it away. He kept his eyes fixed on Ricard.

“My friends! I…”

A sound reverberated across the square, cutting Ricard off and causing a stir among the gathered crowd.

“My friends,” Ricard started again.

The groaning and creaking continued, and Tamas turned to see the crowd chattering restlessly. A cloud cast a shadow over the assembled masses, and Tamas removed his hat to look about him. Where was the sound coming from?

The groaning grew in intensity, and the slightest movement caught Tamas’s eye as a creak gave way to the grinding of stone on stone.

“Scatter!” he bellowed.

Sablethorn, the mighty prison of the Iron King, tilted and wobbled like a wooden top before ponderously tipping and falling across the square. He sat upon his horse transfixed, watching it descend upon him as if reality itself had slowed. His mouth opened, and he stared for a moment before he was suddenly jerked to the side as his horse bolted, and he looked to see Olem galloping ahead, Tamas’s reins in his hands.

He twisted in his saddle to see the spire topple, the structure crumbling as it fell. Black basalt blocks the size of oxen tumbled across Elections Square. The tip of the spire smashed through the balcony and ripped through the front of the People’s Court.

Tamas jerked his reins from Olem’s hands and pulled up, whirling toward the destruction. “Taniel!”

He threw his arms up to protect his face as the dust cloud enveloped him.

“I
nside, 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.”