The Crimson Campaign

She removed her hand from his shoulder and returned to lean against the column. “Being a powder mage was never illegal here in Deliv. Nor was it ever state-sponsored, like in Adro. Our parents thought he should have joined the Deliv army. But if he had, they would ignore his gifts. As if he wasn’t a powder mage at all. When you came along and asked him to join you and be in the first powder cabal in the world, he was ecstatic. I’ve never seen him so happy. My parents didn’t understand.”

“He never told me,” Tamas said.

“He wouldn’t,” Hailona said. She smiled at Tamas, and he remembered how beautiful she had been all those years ago. “You’re his best friend.”

“And he was mine.”

The smile disappeared. “Was?”

“He’s dead, Halley.”

She took a quick step back, then another. “What? No. Not Sabon.”

“Shot. By a Kez Warden. One of Duke Nikslaus’s men.”

“You… you let him die?”

“I didn’t. It was an ambush, I…”

The softness in her eyes a moment ago was gone. Any love, any feeling, also gone. She breathed heavily, clutching at her dress, her eyes filled with horror. She turned and fled down the belfry stairs.

“Halley!”

Tamas heard the door to the chapel slam below. He fell back against the bell, felt it rock slightly from his weight without making a sound. He shook his head and stared out into the rain sightlessly.

Was all he left behind misery and death? Sorrow, widows, and grieving families? He made his hands into fists. How dare she blame him? Sabon was his best friend. His closest confidant for the last fifteen years.

No, she was right to blame him. He was a harbinger of death, it seemed. Not to be trusted with the lives of anyone dear.

It was perhaps an hour before Tamas heard the chapel door open below. A slow, measured step lit upon the stairs. Tamas frowned, wondering who it was for only a moment before the mint-tinged smell of cigarette smoke wafted up the stairwell.

“Sir,” Olem said as he joined Tamas. He wore a greatcoat and forage cap pulled down over his eyes, soaked from the rain. Beneath the coat, his Adran blues. He wore the colonel’s pins Tamas had given him last night. That seemed like an eternity ago.

“I thought you ran out of those.” Tamas looked at the cigarette between Olem’s lips.

Olem drew it from his mouth, turned it sideways as if it were a peculiar thing, and blew smoke out his nose slowly before returning the cigarette to its place. “Stopped at a tobacconist on the way through town.”

“I see you have your priorities straight.”

“Of course. You don’t look so well, sir.”

Tamas looked back out across the city. “Sometimes I feel like a pestilence.”

“That argument,” Olem said after a moment’s consideration, “could be made.”

“You make me feel so much better.”

“I try, sir.”

“What are you doing here? I told Vlora to give the signal, not order you here. And how the bloody pit did you get past the river in broad daylight?”

“I pretended I was a Kez colonel pretending to be an Adran colonel,” Olem said. “It was disturbingly easy.”

“They didn’t ask for papers or proof?”

“In this rain?” Olem gestured at the downpour. “You don’t understand an enlisted man, sir. Nobody asks for bloody papers in this kind of weather.”

“Sloppy.”

“I call it lucky. I also have news.”

Tamas straightened up. “What kind of news?”

“A Deliv army is about a day and a half outside the city. Coming from the west. Our outriders spotted them just a few hours ago.”

“How big?”

“Several brigades, at least.”

“Pit.”

“That’s not a good thing, sir?”

“Maybe. We need to launch an attack soon.”

“We won’t be ready, sir.”

“We have to. Something to tell the Deliv that there is more going on here than meets the eye. Otherwise their brigades will fall on us, thinking we are the ones holding the city.

“Come with me,” he said, heading for the belfry stairs. “And keep a hand on your pistol. I might be starting a fight I can’t win.”

Vlora was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

“My powder mages?” he asked.

“Waiting in an abandoned factory a quarter mile from here.”

Tamas gestured for her to join him. He checked the street outside the chapel before crossing over to Millertown. The ground was muddy from the rain, a frothy slurry of refuse and garbage. They cut through several alleyways to avoid Kez patrols and then entered one of the larger mills.

A pair of Deliv partisans guarded the door. They let Tamas pass through, eyeing Vlora and Olem suspiciously. Tamas climbed the stairs to the second floor.

Demasolin was examining a report while a few of his captains and spies looked on. He glanced up when Tamas entered, but did not greet him.

Tamas counted the men in the room. Six of them, if it came to a fight.

Tamas removed his gloves and threw them on the table for emphasis. “Why didn’t you tell me about the army?” he demanded.

Demasolin glanced up again. “What army?”

“Don’t be bloody coy with me. You’ve got the entire city running with your spies. I know you can get people in and out. There’s a Deliv army just over a day’s march from here.”

“You didn’t need to know.” Demasolin returned to reading his report.