day or two,” Julene said. “This is getting personal. I want the bitch dead.”
“So you don’t know her?”
“Of course not.”
She was lying. Tamas could tell by the way her eyes hardened when she spoke. It was a small tell, and he’d only recently figured it out, but Julene put a little extra fire into her lies when she wanted to be believed. Now, why wouldn’t she tell the truth?
“You think you can handle her if she tries something?” Tamas said.
“Of course. Every time we’ve begun to fight, she’s run. At the very least I will scare her off.”
“Be there,” Tamas said. “In an hour. Bring Gothen and Taniel and his pet savage. And don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’ll only be there to protect you,” Julene said.
Tamas stood next to a repaired field gun and watched a line of men make their way over the barricade under a white flag. Olem was on the other side of the gun, leaning against the barrel, speaking quietly to Sabon. Vlora stood somewhere behind him with Brigadiers Ryze and Sabastenien, the only two mercenary commanders posted in the city. From a building across the street Taniel trained his rifle on the barricades. Julene tugged idly at her gloves, her magebreaker partner beside her. A whole company of Adran soldiers stood at attention twenty paces back. Tamas wanted General Westeven to know exactly how bad his odds were.
This would be a crucial meeting. Tamas felt he held most of the cards, but General Westeven was an incredibly capable commander. He could ruin Tamas’s plans simply by protracting the civil war.
Tamas withheld judgment. The royalists had been crouching behind their barricades for eight days. They were dirty and disheveled, but they showed no signs of imminent starvation or even fatigue. Behind ramshackle barricades they may be, but General Westeven would see that every man and woman at his disposal slept on a good bed and had plenty to eat—not hard, when they had captured the city’s main granaries. The royalists were eating better than most of the city right now.
Tamas floated in a light powder trance, allowing him to examine faces at a distance with ease. He knew General Westeven, a tall, bald man with bloodspots on his scalp. Age had reduced the general to little more than skin stretched over bones, his whole body moving slowly from advanced rheumatism. Still, that was no reason to underestimate him. His mind was sharp as a fine dagger.
Tamas didn’t recognize a single one of the men with the general. They were nobles, judging by their bedraggled finery. Men who’d slipped through his soldiers’ nets the night of the coup, or were too minor to warrant attention.
He did recognize the woman with them. It was the Privileged who’d killed Lajos and the rest. She looked none the worse for the wear despite the wounds Taniel had supposedly given her. Perhaps Taniel was wrong. Maybe he’d missed. Tamas locked eyes with her for a moment. She returned his gaze unflinchingly.
Taniel wasn’t known to miss.
There was a pause among the royalist group and a brief argument before they finished their trek down the street and formed up opposite Tamas and his mercenaries. There were twenty of them, and Westeven was the only soldier of the whole lot. This wasn’t opposition, Tamas realized with disgust. This was a committee.
“Field Marshal Tamas,” said a fat noble with a stained cummerbund. “Order your men to stand down! We’ve come beneath a flag of truce.”
Tamas glanced at the soldiers behind him. They were at attention, their rifles shouldered. “Westie,” he said. “Good to see you.”
Westeven returned his nod. “Would it were under different circumstances, my friend.”
“There’d be no hard feelings if you stepped away from this lot right now. You’d be a formidable ally in rebuilding the country.”
“The way I see it,” Westeven said, “is that you are the one destroying it.”
“Surely you can see the corruption?” Tamas said. “Nothing short of the destruction of the nobility would have saved Adro.”
Westeven’s eyes were tired, his face strained. He seemed as if he desperately wanted to say yes. “There is more at stake here than you know. And you killed my king, Tamas. I can’t forgive you for that.”
“Your king was about to give the whole country to the Kez!” Tamas’s voice rose sharply. Westeven was a smart man. No, a brilliant man. How could he not see what Tamas was trying to do? How could he