powder kegs!” He was off, giving orders, throwing about his ham-sized fists.
“Wait,” Taniel said. Jaro must have been the Watchmaster. “He’s second in command?”
“Used to be Watchmaster, before he started drinking,” Bo said. Mozes had gone off after Gavril, and Fesnik went to fetch a rifle.
“Sure, he was a competent guide, but… him?”
“Yes. Him.” Bo shook his head. “He, uh… well, it’s not my place to tell you. Gavril’s our man, don’t worry. Ah,” he added, glancing over the bulwark. “I see they’re getting ready to hit back.”
A company of men had left Mopenhague. Another company was lining up behind them, and then another. It looked like they were going to try an early rush. It would be close to dark before they got close enough to take a shot. But the war had started.
“Next!” a man called.
Nila shuffled to the head of the line. She stood on the front step of the House of Nobles, at the heart of the Adran army in their new headquarters. Somewhere behind her, the guillotines that had taken the nobility were long gone, but the stains from the blood they’d shed still remained. The sun beat down on her shoulders, the wind mussing her auburn curls. She smoothed her hair against her head. In her new dress she looked a hundred times richer than anyone else in the unemployment line.
The man behind the table looked her up and down. “You don’t look like you need a job,” he said. He wore a blue Adran army uniform with the staff emblem of a quartermaster on his breast beneath three service stripes.
“I’m a laundress,” Nila said, holding her head high. “I keep my clothes pristine.”
“Laundress, heh? Dole, the Noble Warriors of Labor need any laundresses?”
A man sitting behind the next table over looked up at Nila. “No,” he said. “Boss says we have too many already.”
Nila shifted her skirt around. “I heard the army was looking for laundresses.”
“Lass, a girl with your looks should not join the army.” The quartermaster leaned back. “It’s just a bad idea.”
“I heard they pay well. Provide a tent and everything. I could make ten times what a soldier does.”
“That’s true,” the quartermaster said. “But I wouldn’t brag about it if I were you. We pay better than the union for someone with skills. Are you sure?”
“I need the money,” Nila said. She jerked her head toward the empty spot the guillotines had once held. “My last employer wound up losing his head, and no one else pays as well.”
“Hear that story a lot these days,” the quartermaster said. “You’re not one of those royalists, are ya?”
Nila leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “My lord took me to bed twice a day since I was eleven,” she said, injecting as much venom as she could into her voice. “I spit on his head when it dropped.”
“I see.” The quartermaster chewed on the end of his pen. “You’ve got fire. Something tells me you can handle yourself. Still, I’ll put you working for the officers. Safer with them. Usually. Can you sew? I think the field marshal needs a seamstress.”
“That would be perfect,” Nila said, smiling the first real smile she’d had in weeks.
Chapter 21
Tamas awoke to the sound of his own labored gasps. He sat up, leaning on his elbows, struggling to breathe. It felt like a millstone sat upon his chest. He kicked away the blankets that were wrapped around his feet and sat up, leaning over the edge of his bed.
He slept in his office on the top floor of the House of Nobles these days, forsaking the thick cushions of the royal sofa for a simple but comfortable soldier’s cot set up in the corner of the room. The cot, heavy-duty canvas, was soaked through with his sweat, as were his bedclothes and hair. He wrapped his arms about himself, suddenly shivering as his sweat began to cool. The clock, visible by bright moonlight, said it was half past three in the morning.
His dreams came back to him, like memories of long years ago, broken and blurry. His hands shook when he thought of them, and it wasn’t from the cold. Men died in his dreams—soldiers he’d known his whole life, friends and acquaintances, even enemies. Everyone he’d ever known. They lined the rim of South Pike Mountain and one by one they leapt into a fiery cauldron. Taniel was there too, though his fate was obscured. He shuddered. Where was Vlora in those dreams?