The Crimson Campaign(The Powder Mage Trilogy)(71)

So he did.

The look of surprise on Gavril's face as Tamas's fist connected with his stomach gave Tamas a jolt of satisfaction. He followed it up with another punch, doubling Gavril over.

"I lost my wife, you bastard," he growled.

Gavril wrapped his arms around Tamas and lifted him with a bellow. Tamas felt a thrill of fear as his feet left the ground. To a man with Gavril's strength, he might as well have been a child.

He brought his elbow down on Gavril's back, eliciting a yell from the big man.

Gavril lifted him high, then pounded him into the ground. Tamas felt the air leave his lungs, the feeling leave his legs, and his vision blurred. He hacked out a cough and dug one hand into the fat of Gavril's stomach.

They rolled in the dirt for what felt like hours. Swearing, kicking, punching. It didn't matter how hard Tamas hit Gavril, nothing seemed to stop him. Even without a powder trance, Tamas still considered himself a pit of a fighter. Gavril broke his holds. Absorbed his punches. And he gave as good  –  or better  –  than he got.

Tamas climbed to his feet and kicked Gavril. His brother-in-law shoved him backward, and Tamas felt his back hit the rocks of the cairn.

"Stop!" he said.

Gavril looked up, his face bruised, one eye blackened and his nose bloody. He saw the cairn behind Tamas and lowered his fist.

Tamas limped away from the cairn and lowered himself against an old fallen log.

He felt along his ribs. One of them might have gotten cracked. His face felt like a rug after the housekeeper had beat it for an hour. The back of his jacket had ripped  –  he could tell just by moving his shoulders. One of his boots was on the other side of the cairn, and Tamas didn't even remember it coming off.

"You want to know what happened to me?" Tamas said.

Gavril grunted. He lay on the ground across from Tamas, legs splayed.

"That night we buried Camenir is the night I decided to kill Manhouch." Tamas gathered up a wad of spit and hawked it into the dirt. It was red. "I decided to start a war. Not for the people's rights or because Manhouch was evil or any of the other drivel I tell my supporters. I started a war to avenge my wife and my brother."

Tamas took a deep breath and stared at his stockinged foot. His sock had ripped a week ago and his big toe stuck through it. "I couldn't do it in a world of grief. I had to feel out my friends. Charm my enemies. That was the first step: to convince them I was still Adro's favored son. Manhouch's protector. The next step was putting Manhouch's head in a basket.

"Then, of course, the war. Which"  –  Tamas held up one finger  –  "I almost didn't go through with. The earthquake and the royalists nearly knocked me off my course. My heart bled when I saw the shambles in which Adopest had been left. But Ipille sent Nikslaus and put me back on my path to vengeance."

Tamas let his finger drop. "The path will end when I cut out Ipille's heart for taking my family."

The air was still. The only sound that of the water where the two rivers met.

"That was a nice speech," Gavril said.

"I thought so."

"Had that memorized long?"

"Most of it for years," Tamas said. "Had to do a little improvising. Never thought I'd be giving it to you."

"Who, then?"

Tamas shrugged. "My grandchildren? My executioner? Taniel's the only one who knew the real reasons I planned the things I did."

The sound of a horse whinnying brought Tamas's head around. Up on the bluff, perhaps a hundred feet away, were two riders. He squinted into the afternoon sun as his fingers looked for his pistol. It had come out of his belt and lay a dozen paces to his left.

The riders began to head down the bluff toward him. The glare of the sun lessened, and he recognized two familiar faces: Olem and Beon je Ipille.

"Company," Tamas said.

Gavril craned his neck and looked toward the bluff. "Is that Beon and Olem?"

"Yes."

"I could break Beon's neck. Bury him next to Camenir. Would be poetic justice in that."

"My  –  our  –  quarrel isn't with Beon. It's with his father."

"I've heard Beon is Ipille's favorite."

"Ipille's ‘favorite' son changes every six months or so. Beon just lost a major battle with me. I think if we killed him now, Ipille would say he deserved it."

"Not a loving father."

"No."

Olem and Beon came to a halt some dozen paces off. Olem looked down at Tamas's dislodged boot, then around the gully. "Seems there was a fight," he said.

"Ambushed. We dumped the bodies in the river," Tamas said.

"Of course," Olem said. He didn't sound convinced.

"I thought that you were given orders to stay in the camp?" Tamas said to Olem.

"Sorry, sir," Olem said. "The general here asked me to accompany him as his chaperone so that he did not break his word of honor in leaving the camp."

"And why did you feel the need to follow me?" Tamas turned to Beon.

Beon frowned toward the cairn. "I have heard a story," he said. "Regarding a powder mage, and two huge brothers with great strength." His eyes flicked to Gavril. "An old story, passed around in my father's court. One that my father has taken great pains to stamp out."

"So?" Gavril said, his tone petulant.

Beon seemed unperturbed. "The story caught my childhood imagination. It comes to an end when an entire company of my father's Elite disappeared in the Fingers of Kresimir. Some of their bodies were found. Some weren't. I always wondered if that was really the end of the story."

Tamas and Gavril looked at each other.

Tamas asked, "And you thought you might find the end of the story by following us out here?"

Beon was looking at the cairn again. "I thought, perhaps. I see a powder mage, a widower by my father's orders, and one very large man with great strength. I predict that the story I heard has a sadder ending than my childhood imagination would have hoped." He bowed his head toward them and turned his horse around. "I'm sorry to have disturbed you."
 
 

 

"It did," Gavril called out.

Beon stopped and looked back. "Did what?"

"The story. It had a sad ending."

"No," Beon said. "The story is not over yet. But the ending will be very sad regardless."





CHAPTER




30




The Flaming Cuttlefish was a fisherman's pub. Like The Salty Maiden, it was located out at the end of a pier, suspended about ten feet above the water. Unlike The Salty Maiden, it was packed with all kinds. There were factory workers, seamstresses, millers, and even a few gunsmiths. The pub was known throughout the city for cheap, delicious freshwater oysters. In one corner of the room a fiddler was sawing away a seaman's tune, and the whole pier swayed with the stamp of a hundred feet.

The barmaid had assured Adamat that that was normal.

Adamat nursed his beer and let his eyes wander around the room again. He sat with his back to the wall, watching the exits. No signs of the slaver, Doles, or any of his men. No sign of Adamat's son.

It was near midnight. Doles was supposed to meet him here yesterday, but had never come. Riding out his optimism, Adamat had come back and waited all day, a case filled with two hundred fifty thousand krana in cash sitting on his knee. He was tired and nervous, and every minute that passed he grew angrier.

SouSmith, sitting beside him, stifled a yawn. He was drumming his fingers to the tune of the fiddler, his eyes wandering. Adamat could tell he was losing focus.

"Pit!" Adamat swore, getting to his feet.

SouSmith started. "Huh?" He came alert, looking around for signs of danger.

"He's not coming," Adamat shouted above the music and stamping. "We're done here."

SouSmith followed him out into the night, and for the second time in a week Adamat found himself standing in the dark, on a pier, with nothing to show for himself. He kicked a pier piling and swore when it bruised his toe. He nearly threw his case into the water, but SouSmith grabbed his arm.

"You'll be sorry 'bout that."

Adamat looked down at the case. All of his money; his savings, the money Bo had given him, plus another fifty thousand from Ricard. Yes. He would have been sorry.

"I'll have to go to Norport now," Adamat said. He was already doing the math in his head. He'd have to charter a boat  –  and not just any boat, but a smuggler to get him into the Kez-held town  –  then he'd need to locate Josep and free him from the Kez. There might be Privileged involved, though rumor had it Taniel Two-Shot had killed most of the Kez Cabal on South Pike. Then he'd …

SouSmith shook him by the arm.

"What is it?" Adamat asked, annoyed that his thoughts had been interrupted.

"Norport? You mad?"

"No. I have to get my son back."

SouSmith sighed. He pulled a pipe from his pocket and set it between his teeth, then packed it with tobacco. "Have to let it go," he grunted.

"He's my boy," Adamat said. "How can I let him go?" He slumped against the same pier piling that he'd just kicked.

"He's outta reach," SouSmith said gently.

"No. He can't be." Adamat tried to resume his previous train of thought. So much he'd have to do. "Will you come with me?"

SouSmith puffed on his pipe for a moment. "Yeah."