wore a white shirt and blue soldier’s pants. His face was white and bloodless from his ordeals. Nila wondered what that face would look like after she’d strangled him in his sleep.
Olem removed the curtains from the windows and gathered them all up in his arms. “Sir,” he said, “I’ll help her downstairs with these and be right back up.”
“Take your time,” the field marshal said, waving him off. “Charlemund has sent me some idiotic church decree that must be read by supper.”
“I can take them,” Nila said when they reached the hallway.
Olem tucked the curtains under one arm. “I don’t mind. The field marshal demands time alone now and then.”
“Aren’t you his bodyguard?”
“His manservant, more like,” he said without bitterness. “We’ve tripled the guard on the top floor. Anything that can get through the rest of the boys watching his back would have no trouble with me. Cigarette?”
Nila studied Olem out of the corner of her eye as they went down the stairs. “Thank you,” she said, taking the offered cigarette. He began rolling another one immediately.
“You don’t seem the shy type,” Olem said. “But the boys say you don’t talk much.”
Cold fear seized Nila’s belly. Why would Field Marshal Tamas’s bodyguard be asking after her? “I keep to myself, mostly,” she said evenly.
“That’s what I heard.” He let the conversation lapse for a moment, then, “I didn’t think I’d see you again after that night.”
Nila’s heart jumped. He remembered her? She didn’t want to be remembered. She didn’t want to be recognized. If he knew who she was, maybe he had figured out it was her who’d smuggled Jakob out of the townhouse.
“Oh?” she said when she’d found her voice.
“You seem better suited here than scrubbing livery for some lord,” Olem said. “I like your dress. Better than what you were wearing before.”
Nila tried to picture her uniform under Duke Eldaminse. She found she couldn’t even remember what it looked like. She needed to turn the conversation away from herself. She didn’t need him asking questions.
“You were wearing something different, too,” she said.
Olem fingered the captain’s pin at his lapel. “The field marshal said his bodyguard couldn’t be less than a captain.” He shrugged. “I’m not much of an officer. Never liked them much, myself. I’ll take the pay that comes with it, though.”
Olem removed his cigarette, switched it to his other hand, and put it back in his mouth. He stopped suddenly, forcing her to turn around. “Would you like to see a play tonight?” he asked.
Nila blinked. A play? So he wasn’t interested in her in his capacity as Field Marshal Tamas’s bodyguard. She couldn’t help the relieved grin that spread across her face.
Olem seemed to take that as a yes. “The field marshal insisted I take the night off. Not many better ways to spend it than with a beautiful woman.”
“I’d be honored.” She gave him a little curtsy and what she hoped was her best shy smile.
They reached the laundry rooms beneath the House of Nobles and Olem left her. She looked through her supplies to find something that would get the blood out of the curtains and the field marshal’s uniform. As she scrubbed at the stains, she reminded herself that she was here to kill Tamas. She wouldn’t let Olem stop her or distract her. He seemed a good man, but he served an evil master. Tamas had to die before he could get more blood on his uniform. He’d killed men, women. Even innocent children. He had to be stopped.
Olem mentioned he wasn’t the field marshal’s only guard. If she killed Tamas sometime when Olem was off duty, then he wouldn’t be blamed by the failure. Yes, that would be best. She scrubbed harder at the stains.
Chapter 29
Taniel listened to the sound of hoofbeats steadily climb the mountainside. He leaned on his rifle and took a sniff of powder. He’d been watching the rider’s approach since the sun began to set over the mountains behind him. The rider was coming up from the Kez advance base. He rode under a white flag of truce.
A messenger.
“Go get Gavril,” Taniel told Fesnik. The young watcher squinted into the dusk and nodded, heading back into the town. Fesnik had drawn lots for the evening watch. Taniel had given him some company, mostly for an excuse to see the engineers and masons at work as they repaired the bastion.
Fesnik’s watch would be over when the last light disappeared from the sky. Taniel would go in