The Crimson Campaign (41 page)

Nila could hear the dull thumps of flesh on flesh. Grunts, a few quiet curses – those came from the woman.

The pair tumbled back into the room. Nila screamed as both of them tumbled over her outstretched feet.

They struggled on the floor, legs intertwined, the knife pressed flat between them. Nila kicked indiscriminately. She wanted them away from her. The knives, the anger – one slip, and Nila could be dead.

Fell rolled off of Vetas and sprang to her feet.

She struck at him, fast as a viper. Vetas, still on his knees, caught the knife on the metal of his wrist irons. She struck again, and again, and each time Vetas moved impossibly fast to block her. Between the strikes he managed to regain his footing.

They circled warily, and Nila pulled herself into the corner as much as possible.

She hoped they’d kill each other. But what then? She had no way of getting the irons off her hands.

Fell and Vetas seemed at an impasse. Their circling stopped. Fell changed hands with her dagger, then changed back.

Nila didn’t hesitate. Months of anger and fear came to a head, and with a shriek of rage she kicked Vetas in the back of the leg.

Fell struck out at Lord Vetas at the same time. The blow to Vetas’s leg sent him leaning backward. The knife slid past his eye, cutting one cheek badly. He caught Fell’s hand, deftly sliding the garrote around her wrist, and swung about.

Fell had no choice but to follow his swing, or risk losing her hand. Vetas stepped close to her, and she tried to step away. It was like some kind of grisly dance.

Vetas slammed his head forward into Fell’s cheek. The woman staggered backward, hitting the window.

Vetas had let go of his garrote. Dazed, Fell couldn’t have seen the kick coming. She took a boot square to the chest, and tumbled out the window.

Vetas turned to Nila. There was a quiet click, and his wrist irons fell off. He held the key up in one hand.

Nila shrank away from the darkness in his eyes.

“You bet the wrong way, laundress,” he said. He tossed the key on the floor. “You’ll pay for that tonight. I promise. If not you, then the boy will.”

He left the room, leaving Nila to let the sobs wrench themselves from her throat. Her whole body shook. She crawled over to the key. It took a few minutes with her trembling hands to get it into the lock and free herself.

She stared at the destruction. Two dead soldiers, a broken window, and Lord Vetas was gone. She took the time to collect herself. Deep breaths stopped the sobs, and she dried her tears. This wasn’t the time to give in to emotion.

She could run. She knew that.

But if she ran, Vetas would do unspeakable things to Jakob. It was no empty threat. He wouldn’t hesitate.

Nila crept down the stairs, only to find the other two soldiers dead in the hallway on the first floor. One’s head was twisted at an impossible angle. The other had been bayoneted with his own rifle.

There was a crowd gathering in the street looking at the bodies through the open door. A woman was screaming for the police. Someone pointed at Nila.

It only took a moment to find a back door to the building. Nila took it, slipping down an alleyway and into the crowd.

She had to make her way back to Vetas’s house and try to get Jakob away.

Adamat put his head down and charged into the gaping hole left in Vetas’s headquarters by Bo’s sorcery.

He shot the first man to raise a weapon, and then tossed aside his spent pistol and drew his cane sword.

Oldrich’s soldiers were the first to follow Adamat into the fray, their bayonets making short work of Vetas’s goons. The eunuch’s men followed them in, and Adamat could hear pistol shots and the sounds of fighting from the other side of the buildings. They’d formed a cordon around Vetas’s headquarters. Now they just had to tighten it.

A horizontal pillar of flame shot through the wall of one of the rooms inside, missing Adamat by not more than a few feet, the heat of it sending him reeling to one side.

The flame splashed over one of the eunuch’s men, sending him screaming, running into the street. The pillar grew longer by the second, extending into the street and completely enveloping Privileged Borbador.

Adamat felt his heart leap into his throat. If Bo died, Vetas’s Privileged would kill them all…

The flames abated, leaving Bo standing unhurt, like a rock that had been pounded by the surf. Bo advanced, his hands held out in front of him, fingers plucking at invisible strings.

Wind tore at Adamat’s coat and buffeted through the innards of the building, knocking men from both sides off their feet before slamming through the wall and pushing back the pillar of flame. Bo raised his hands above his head and was suddenly running forward, his jaw locked and determined.

Lightning shot at Bo. He batted it aside with one hand as he scaled the rubble into the building, then leapt through the inner wall with a roar.

The house shuddered and shook as the two Privileged locked in battle. Adamat stopped in his tracks as he realized they could all be killed by the slightest mistake by either of the Privileged. One finger twitched the wrong way, one hand pushed aside accidentally, and every one of them would be dead.

The Privileged’s flames had lit curtains on one side of the house. The fire spread to the table, quickly, and black smoke filled the ruined building.

He had to find Faye.

A man with a scar cutting across his lips stumbled toward Adamat, half blinded by the smoke. He swung a small sword wildly, crashing into a chair. Adamat leapt back, blocking a second swing with his cane sword, then a third. He felt the handle of his cane shift beneath his fingers – it was not meant to block the flailing sword of a man this big, and would splinter from the shock.

He leapt inside the scarred man’s guard and drove the cane sword between his ribs. The man lurched back, bellowing in pain, and Adamat let him go.

“Faye!” he yelled. “Faye!”

The smoke was getting thicker. Where would Vetas have kept her? The basement? Did he have other prisoners here? The boy had been on the second floor when Adamat saw him in the window weeks ago, but the boy was not his concern.

Adamat heard a woman’s scream. It was coming from upstairs.

The building was being quickly abandoned. Men ran past Adamat, some of them fighting the flames, some of them fighting each other. Adamat blinked through the tears brought on by the smoke. There, the staircase.

He made his way to the stairs. The house creaked. The flames were moving quickly now, spreading across the furniture at alarming speeds. There was paper everywhere, even in the foyer. Parchments and books, tables against all the walls. It looked more like a clerk’s office than a place where Lord Vetas planned whatever campaign he was waging.

What if he wasn’t keeping Faye here? What if she was somewhere else and the scream Adamat had heard was another?

Smoke filled the staircase as Adamat made his way up it. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, pressing it over his face. He stood dismayed at the top of the stairs, staring down a long hallway and a row of at least a dozen doors. The heat from downstairs was growing. It would spread up the stairs at any moment – if the smoke didn’t kill him, the flames would. It would take too long to search the place. How could he find Faye in time?

“Faye! Faye!”

Adamat tried the first door. Locked. He kicked it open. A small room with two soiled beds and a nightstand. Empty.

He drew his foot back to kick open the next door when a scream came from farther down the hall. He rushed toward the source of the sound. One of the doors was open. He swung around the corner, cane sword raised.

Faye stood over the body of a man, a bloody candlestick in one hand. On her face she wore a look so vicious that Adamat scarcely recognized her. Adamat saw the face of a small boy peeking out from behind a curtain on the other side of the room.

“Faye!”

She looked up and nearly collapsed when she saw him. She dropped the candlestick and might have fallen had Adamat not caught her.

They stared at each other for one long moment, and Adamat wondered if it was perhaps she who was supporting him and not the other way around, as his knees felt like so much jelly.

“Where’s Josep?” Adamat asked.

“Gone. They took him.”

“I’ll get him back,” Adamat said. He looked at the boy. “That’s the Eldaminse child, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Faye said. “Come on.” She held out a hand to the boy. “Don’t be afraid, this is my husband.”

Adamat stared at his wife. “I…” he said.

“Shh.” She pressed a finger to his lips. There were tears in her eyes. “We have to go.”

Adamat nodded. “Quickly, let’s —” He stopped in the hallway. The smoke was too thick, and there were flames leaping from the staircase. He tore off his jacket. “Press this to your face,” he said to Faye, and gave his handkerchief to the boy. He led them away from the stairs, down the hallway and toward the front of the building. They might have to jump to the rubble below, but a broken leg was much preferable to being roasted alive.

Adamat froze as a great groaning noise rose above the sound of the flames. Was it the house creaking under the strain of the battle or some kind of sorcery?

“This way,” Faye said, pulling him back into action. She led him around the corner, where another staircase went down to the first floor. There were no flames shooting up this one, but he took it cautiously.

Something slammed through the staircase wall and tumbled down the stairs into a pile of smoldering clothes. Adamat thrust Faye behind him, pointing at the pile with his sword.

Coughing, sputtering, it stood up.

It was Bo. Flames still licked at his clothes, and his muttonchops were singed. He beat at the flames for a moment, and then scowled through the smoking ruins of the stairwell wall.

Bo held a hand over his head. A
whump
split the air, making Adamat’s ears pop. The flames died instantly. Bo’s fingers jerked to one side, and wind whipped through the house, sucking smoke away like a giant bellows inhaling above a fire.

The staircase was suddenly full of cool, clean air. Adamat gasped in a great breath of it, holding Faye tightly. She clutched the Eldaminse boy to her skirts.

Fire whipped past Bo, over his shoulder. The Privileged turned his head, as if mildly perturbed. Slivers of ice the size of daggers shot from above his head and
thwapped
into something out of Adamat’s sight. Bo nodded to himself.

“You can come down now,” Bo said. “I think it’s safe.”

“You think?” Adamat crept slowly down the stairs until he reached the base.

They passed the kitchen and entered the sitting room at the back of the house. On the near wall, impaled to the masonry by icicles dripping blood, was the other Privileged. It was a woman, Deliv by her dark skin. Bo didn’t spare her a second glance. Faye shielded the Eldaminse boy’s eyes.

“Faye,” Adamat said, “this is Privileged Borbador, the last remaining member of the Adran royal cabal.”

“Forgive me if I don’t shake your hand,” Faye said. “I don’t think I want to touch your hands.”

Bo’s black gloves had been burned off by the flames, but his rune-covered Privileged’s gloves were white and pristine, as if brand-new. He clasped his hands and rocked back on his heels. “Understandable. Where’s Vetas?” he asked.

“Fell has him,” Adamat said.

“That woman, I’d very much like to meet her. Properly, that is.”

Adamat couldn’t help but wonder what that meant. “I don’t think you do,” he said.

“I think I’ll be —”

A scream from outside cut off Bo’s sentence. He cocked his head, like a dog listening for a whistle. “Oh, pit,” he said. “You didn’t tell me there were two.”

“What, another Privileged?” Adamat began casting around for somewhere to hide. But what could protect them? There was no hiding from a Privileged.

Bo sneered, rolling up his sleeves. “Yes,” he said. “Get down!”

The world exploded in a blast of plaster and wood. Adamat was thrown from his feet and knocked about, buffeted by forces beyond his control. He tried to grab for Faye – for anything, but found himself on the ground a moment later.

Everything was silent. Had the attack killed Faye? Or Bo, for that matter? Adamat moved cautiously, not sure whether all the parts of him were intact. A beam had fallen across his chest, the air swirling with smoke and dust. It felt like the whole house had landed on him.

He didn’t feel anything broken, and he was able to move the beam just enough to wriggle out from beneath the rubble. He used his fingers to gingerly feel across the whole surface of his chest. Not much pain.

Adamat climbed to his feet. The Eldaminse boy was nearby, apparently unhurt. Adamat wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or worried that through all the excitement the boy had hardly made a noise.

“Go on,” Adamat said to him, “hide in the kitchen!” The Privileged might still be here. The boy rushed past, and Adamat shook his head to clear it. Where was Faye?

Panic rose inside of him. Faye. She was gone. Separated from him by the blast. The roof had caved in, and he’d avoided most of it… sweet Kresimir, was she beneath the rubble?

“Faye! Faye!”

“She’s right here,” a voice said.

Adamat turned to find the eunuch standing in the doorway. He was holding Faye up beneath one arm. It looked like she’d injured her ankle. They were both covered in plaster dust.

Adamat eyed the eunuch. They’d done it. Taken Vetas. Saved Faye. Would the eunuch turn on him now for blackmailing the Proprietor? Bo wasn’t here. Adamat didn’t even know if the Privileged was alive. Adamat didn’t know where Sergeant Oldrich was. No one would ask questions if the eunuch quietly killed them both and disappeared.

“She’s safe,” the eunuch said.

“Thank you.”

The eunuch was surprisingly gentle as he helped Faye into the room. Adamat stepped toward them, arms out.

The stiletto handle seemed to materialize in the side of the eunuch’s neck. When he opened his mouth, blood poured out, and he dropped to his knees. Faye, suddenly unsupported, toppled to the side, only to be caught by Lord Vetas.