girls are all checked. She didn’t look like a whore. She was strong, weathered. The Beadle’s lover, maybe. I’ve never seen her before in my life.”
“Could the Beadle have been training someone in secret?”
“Apprentices are never secret,” Tamas said. “Privileged are too suspicious to allow that.”
“Their suspicions are often well founded,” Sabon said. “There has to be a reason for her presence.”
“I know. We’ll deal with her in good time.”
“If the others had been here…” Sabon said.
“More of us would be dead,” Tamas said. He counted the bodies again, as if there might be fewer this time. Five. Out of seventeen of his mages. “We split into two groups for precisely this reason.” He turned away from the bodies. “Any word from Taniel?”
“He’s in the city,” Sabon said.
“Perfect. I’ll send him with the magebreaker.”
“Are you sure?” Sabon said. “He just got back from Fatrasta. He needs time to rest, to see his fiancée…”
“Is Vlora with him?”
Sabon shrugged.
“Let’s hope she gets here soon. Our work is not yet done.” He raised a hand to forestall protests. “And Taniel can rest when the coup’s over.”
“What must be done will be done,” Sabon said quietly.
They both fell silent, regarding their fallen comrades. Moments passed before Tamas saw a smile spread on Sabon’s wrinkled black face. The Deliv was tired and haggard, but with a hint of restrained joy. “We succeeded.”
Tamas eyed the bodies of his friends—his soldiers—again. “Yes,” he said. “We did.” He forced himself to look away.
A painting stood in the corner, a monstrosity with a gilded frame on a silver tripod befitting a herald of the royal cabal. Tamas studied the painting briefly. It showed Zakary in his prime as a strong young man with broad shoulders and a stern frown.
A far cry from the old, bent body in the corner. The bullet had entered his brain in such a way as to kill him instantly, yet his lifeless throat had gasped the same words as the others: “You can’t break Kresimir’s Promise.”
Cenka was white as a mummer’s painted face after the first of the Privileged cried out as they died. He’d demanded that Tamas summon Adamat here, to the heart of their crime. Tamas hoped that Cenka was wrong. He hoped that the investigator found nothing.
Tamas left the cabal’s wing of the palace, Sabon following close behind.
“I’ll need a new bodyguard,” Tamas said as they walked. It pained him to speak of it, with Lajos’s body still cooling.
“A Marked?” Sabon asked.
“I can’t spare one. Not now.”
“I’ve had my eye on a Knacked,” Sabon said. “A man named Olem.”
“He’s a soldier?” Tamas asked. He thought he knew the name. He held his hand just slightly below his eyes. “About this tall? Sandy hair?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his Knack?”
“He doesn’t need sleep. Ever.”
“That’s useful,” Tamas said.
“Quite. He has a strong third eye as well, so he can watch for Privileged. I’ll have him briefed and by your side for the execution.”
A Knacked wouldn’t be as useful as a powder mage. Knacked were more common, and their abilities were more like a talent than a sorcerous power. But if he could use his third eye to see sorcery, he would be of some benefit.
Tamas approached the barred doors of the chapel. A pair of Tamas’s soldiers emerged from the shadows by the wall, muskets at the ready. Tamas nodded to them and gestured at the door.
One of the soldiers removed a long knife from his belt and slid it between the doors to the chapels. “He flipped the Diocel’s latch,” said the soldier fiddling with the knife, “but he didn’t even bother to stack anything in front of the door. Not very enterprising, if you ask me.” He flipped up the lock and he and his companion pushed the doors open.
The chapel was large, as were all the rooms in the palace. Unlike the rest of the palace, however, it had been spared the seasonal remodeling customary of the king’s whims and remained close to what it must have looked like two hundred years ago. The ceiling was vaulted impossibly high, with boxes for the royalty and high nobles set about halfway up the walls in between columns as wide across as an oxcart. The floor was tiled in marble designed in intricate mosaics of various shapes and sizes, while the ceiling contained paneled depictions of the saints as they founded the Nine Nations under the god Kresimir’s fatherly gaze.
Two altars sat at the front of the chapel, raised slightly above the benches, next to a