Just enough to keep him going. To fend off exhaustion and sharpen his eyes. Not enough for him to risk going powder blind.
He hoped.
Hailona ascended the belfry steps and joined Tamas at the top, where he stood beside the enormous bronze bell. He tipped his hat to her.
"Halley," he said.
"Tamas."
They stood in silence for several minutes.
Tamas stole a glance at her once or twice. He'd been unfair in his first assessment last night. She was still a regal woman. Stately, her back straight, arms held just so in a way that said she was equally comfortable in a silk gown worth more than a soldier makes in a year and in the plain brown wool that she wore now.
It wasn't that she had aged poorly. She had just aged.
They all had, he reflected. He himself, Hailona, Gavril. She'd been the governor of Alvation for almost three decades. She'd ruled beside her first husband for twenty years, then alone at the king's bequest for another ten. That was more than enough to age a woman beyond her years.
"You never came back," she said suddenly.
"Halley … "
She spoke over him. "I never really expected you to. I don't blame you. Not terribly, anyway. I see now what your goals were, what has driven you the last fifteen years. I can't say I agree with them, but I understand, at least."
Tamas had had dozens of lovers over the few years immediately after Erika died.
He only regretted one of them.
"You caused me a lot of pain after you left," Hailona went on, "when I still thought you might come back for me. You came and stayed for a few months, and then disappeared. But … I want you to know something. I want you to know that you made me feel amazing in those few weeks. Like a woman who could stand up against the world. That in my long life, only two men made me feel that way: you and my first husband."
"Your second husband … "
Hailona gave a choked laugh. Tamas glanced out of the corner of his eye to find that her face was red and she held a handkerchief to her mouth. "My husband is a coward. Pit, I can't even say his name." She sighed, leaning against a column beside the bell. "I respect him. He's one of the finest merchants in southern Deliv, but he's also one of the biggest cowards in southern Deliv. I do not love him."
Tamas stared out into the pouring rain and pondered the unsaid words. She didn't love her husband – but she loved Tamas. He swallowed a lump in his throat.
He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, Halley. For what it's worth. I'm sorry."
"You're sorry … " She laughed again. It came out a half sob.
Tamas felt his heart being torn in two. This woman beside him was a powerful creature. She could stand up beside Lady Winceslav among the best women to seek his hand in marriage, before the world found out just how bitter of an old widower he really was.
Hailona smoothed the front of her dress and visibly calmed herself. "I met the general of the Kez army when they first arrived," she said, her tone suddenly businesslike.
"They took us by surprise. Marched in, pretending to be Adrans. He gathered all the nobility together at the governor's mansion that first night. Told us we were prisoners in the city. He had an impeccable Adran accent. Spoke Deliv equally well. Not a trace of Kez. I was convinced, at first.
"Then I started thinking. I knew you. From Sabon's letters I guessed he had great influence in your decision making. Neither of you would ever attack Deliv. Then I thought maybe one of your generals had gone mad. Gone rogue. This general – he seems a madman. Dangerous and deadly."
"Did you see his hands?" Tamas interrupted softly.
Hailona frowned. "No. He kept them tucked away beneath his coat. I thought it strange, now that you mention it, but didn't give it a second glance."
"He doesn't have any," Tamas said.
"No hands?" Hailona seemed taken aback. "I feel like I would have heard of a Kez general with no hands."
"It was a … recent development," Tamas said. "And he's not a general. He's a Privileged."
"How could a Privileged have no … oh." She stared at him in silence for several moments. "You took them, didn't you?" Another long pause. "You hate Privileged so much?"
"I hate him so much." Tamas tried to keep the emotion out of his voice. He wasn't successful. "Duke Nikslaus was the one who arrested and beheaded Erika, and then brought me her … her … "
He felt her hand touch his shoulder gently. He squeezed his eyes shut. Felt the tears swelling within them. He would never forgive himself for failing Erika.
"Tamas," Hailona said.
He cleared his throat. "Was Sabon really disowned?"
She removed her hand from his shoulder and returned to lean against the column. "Being a powder mage was never illegal here in Deliv. Nor was it ever state-sponsored, like in Adro. Our parents thought he should have joined the Deliv army. But if he had, they would ignore his gifts. As if he wasn't a powder mage at all. When you came along and asked him to join you and be in the first powder cabal in the world, he was ecstatic. I've never seen him so happy. My parents didn't understand."
"He never told me," Tamas said.
"He wouldn't," Hailona said. She smiled at Tamas, and he remembered how beautiful she had been all those years ago. "You're his best friend."
"And he was mine."
The smile disappeared. "Was?"
"He's dead, Halley."
She took a quick step back, then another. "What? No. Not Sabon."
"Shot. By a Kez Warden. One of Duke Nikslaus's men."
"You … you let him die?"
"I didn't. It was an ambush, I … "
The softness in her eyes a moment ago was gone. Any love, any feeling, also gone. She breathed heavily, clutching at her dress, her eyes filled with horror. She turned and fled down the belfry stairs.
"Halley!"
Tamas heard the door to the chapel slam below. He fell back against the bell, felt it rock slightly from his weight without making a sound. He shook his head and stared out into the rain sightlessly.
Was all he left behind misery and death? Sorrow, widows, and grieving families? He made his hands into fists. How dare she blame him? Sabon was his best friend. His closest confidant for the last fifteen years.
No, she was right to blame him. He was a harbinger of death, it seemed. Not to be trusted with the lives of anyone dear.
It was perhaps an hour before Tamas heard the chapel door open below. A slow, measured step lit upon the stairs. Tamas frowned, wondering who it was for only a moment before the mint-tinged smell of cigarette smoke wafted up the stairwell.
"Sir," Olem said as he joined Tamas. He wore a greatcoat and forage cap pulled down over his eyes, soaked from the rain. Beneath the coat, his Adran blues. He wore the colonel's pins Tamas had given him last night. That seemed like an eternity ago.
"I thought you ran out of those." Tamas looked at the cigarette between Olem's lips.
Olem drew it from his mouth, turned it sideways as if it were a peculiar thing, and blew smoke out his nose slowly before returning the cigarette to its place. "Stopped at a tobacconist on the way through town."
"I see you have your priorities straight."
"Of course. You don't look so well, sir."
Tamas looked back out across the city. "Sometimes I feel like a pestilence."
"That argument," Olem said after a moment's consideration, "could be made."
"You make me feel so much better."
"I try, sir."
"What are you doing here? I told Vlora to give the signal, not order you here. And how the bloody pit did you get past the river in broad daylight?"
"I pretended I was a Kez colonel pretending to be an Adran colonel," Olem said. "It was disturbingly easy."
"They didn't ask for papers or proof?"
"In this rain?" Olem gestured at the downpour. "You don't understand an enlisted man, sir. Nobody asks for bloody papers in this kind of weather."
"Sloppy."
"I call it lucky. I also have news."
Tamas straightened up. "What kind of news?"
"A Deliv army is about a day and a half outside the city. Coming from the west. Our outriders spotted them just a few hours ago."
"How big?"
"Several brigades, at least."
"Pit."
"That's not a good thing, sir?"
"Maybe. We need to launch an attack soon."
"We won't be ready, sir."
"We have to. Something to tell the Deliv that there is more going on here than meets the eye. Otherwise their brigades will fall on us, thinking we are the ones holding the city.
"Come with me," he said, heading for the belfry stairs. "And keep a hand on your pistol. I might be starting a fight I can't win."
Vlora was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
"My powder mages?" he asked.
"Waiting in an abandoned factory a quarter mile from here."
Tamas gestured for her to join him. He checked the street outside the chapel before crossing over to Millertown. The ground was muddy from the rain, a frothy slurry of refuse and garbage. They cut through several alleyways to avoid Kez patrols and then entered one of the larger mills.
A pair of Deliv partisans guarded the door. They let Tamas pass through, eyeing Vlora and Olem suspiciously. Tamas climbed the stairs to the second floor.