and watch you. He lost a lot of money betting against you.”
“And you?”
“Made me wealthy—for a kid.”
Adamat examined the man. He knew little about this Privileged beyond city rumor. It was never wise to know too much about any members of the royal cabal. “Seems strange, a Privileged and a powder mage being friends.”
“Met long before either of us knew what we were,” Bo said. “I was an orphan when Taniel befriended me. Tamas let me live in the basement. Even paid for a governess. Said that if Taniel was going to have friends, they’d be educated. It was a shock to all of us when the magus seekers dowsed me out. I haven’t seen Taniel since he went to Fatrasta.”
“Aren’t Privileged allergic to powder?”
“My eyes puff up whenever I’m around him,” Bo acknowledged. “Always wondered about that as a kid. So. What brings a gentleman like you to the Mountainwatch? You don’t look like Tamas’s assassins.”
“We’re not assassins,” Adamat said quickly. “Though I don’t blame you for wondering. I am working for Field Marshal Tamas. I doubt you’d still be alive if he wanted you otherwise.”
Bo swayed backward on his feet. “He doesn’t know,” he murmured.
“Doesn’t know what?”
“Nothing. Why did you seek me out?” His conversational tone disappeared, his smile fading.
“What is Kresimir’s Promise?”
Bo watched him for a few moments. “You’re serious?”
“Quite.”
“Tamas sent you all the way up here to ask me that?”
“I came on my own,” Adamat said. “But I’m searching for the answer on behalf of Field Marshal Tamas.” Half disbelief, half mockery, Bo’s reaction stirred some disquiet in him.
It seemed as if relief washed over Bo. He cracked a smile, then began to chuckle. “Let me guess,” he said. “When Tamas slaughtered the royal cabal, their dying words were something along the lines of ‘Don’t break Kresimir’s Promise’?”
Adamat gritted his teeth. This Privileged was beginning to irk him. He seemed to find great mirth in knowing what Adamat did not. “Yes,” he said. “You laugh at the dying words of sorcerers? Was it some kind of morbid joke? A spell woven to baffle anyone who killed them?”
Bo’s chuckle tapered off. “Not at all. Those Privileged were in deadly earnest. A spell can be woven, a ward of sorts, that will speak itself upon a sorcerer’s death. A joke? No. That’s the kind of thing I might do. But not those men. They believed every bit of it.”
“And what does it mean?”
“Kresimir’s Promise.” Bo rolled the words around in his mouth like a bite of something sour. “Legend has it when Kresimir formed the Nine, he chose nine kings to govern the nations he’d created. To each king he assigned a royal cabal of sorcerers to protect and advise him. He called them the Privileged. The kings, seeing that the Privileged were men of great power, told Kresimir that they were worried that the royal cabals might turn against them and take power for themselves. So Kresimir gave them a promise.
“He promised them that their lines would rule the Nine forever—that their seed would never bring forth barren fruit, as it were. Kresimir told his newly appointed Privileged that if anyone were to end one of those lines through violence, he would return personally and destroy the entire nation.” He leaned back when he’d finished speaking, like a schoolboy who had remembered his lesson. “What do you think of that?”
“I’m a man of reason…” Adamat said. Yet he couldn’t help the shiver that went up his spine.
“Of course you are,” Bo said. “Most men these days are. It’s a stupid legend. One of many stories to keep the royal cabals in their place. Kresimir’s reign was almost fourteen hundred years ago—at a guess. It could have been longer. Not even the kings really believe it, and only the very oldest members of the royal cabal do.” Bo reached up and touched something beneath his coat. “No, there are far more effective ways to keep tabs on the royal cabal.”
“What should I tell Tamas?” Adamat asked.
Bo shrugged. “Tell Tamas what you like. Tell Tamas to worry about important things, like feeding the people or”—he pointed out over the bastion wall toward Kez—“them.”
Adamat took a deep breath. He let it come out slowly. “So that’s it, then,” he said.
“That’s it. Though,” Bo added, “I don’t know why you couldn’t find that in the library. There are a dozen books that mention it.”
“Burned,” Adamat said. “Pages missing and passages snubbed out. By a Privileged, in all likelihood.”