The Crimson Campaign

They locked gaze for a few moments, and Adamat had to remind himself how young Bo really was. Twenty? Maybe twenty-two? His eyes were so much older, like a man who’d seen more than his share of suffering and lived to talk about it.

“Suit yourself,” Bo said.

“You’ll only need one night?”

“Yes.”

“SouSmith,” Adamat said, “go to Sergeant Oldrich, and then the eunuch. Tell them I plan on acting tomorrow, then meet me at the safe house.”

The big boxer nodded and left.

Adamat followed Bo out into the street. The Privileged walked with a purpose, like he had things to do, his head held high and his eyes alert. They had to walk for half an hour before they found a carriage. Bo gave the driver directions and they got inside.

“The eunuch,” Bo said, taking his hands out of his pockets. Adamat realized he wasn’t wearing Privileged’s gloves. “As in ‘the Proprietor’s eunuch’?”

Adamat smoothed the front of his coat. “Indeed.”

“That’s a dangerous friend you have. The cabal tried to kill him a couple times. Failed, obviously.”

“The Proprietor or the eunuch?”

“The eunuch,” Bo said. “The Proprietor had an uneasy truce with the cabal, but Zakary never liked the eunuch. Didn’t try to kill him again after a Privileged he sent after the eunuch wound up dead.”

“The eunuch killed a Privileged?”

“It’s not common knowledge,” Bo said, “but yes.” The Privileged fell silent for the rest of their trip, looking out the window and fingering something beneath his jacket.

The demon’s carbuncle, Adamat guessed. The jewel around his neck that would eventually kill him if he didn’t avenge the death of Manhouch.

“We’re here,” Bo suddenly said.

They climbed out of the carriage in the middle of Bakerstown. The air smelled of hot bread and meat pies, making Adamat’s mouth water. “I’m going to get something to eat,” he said, stopping beside a pie vendor.

“Get me one too,” Bo replied, “then come upstairs.” He disappeared inside a squat brick building sandwiched between two bakeries.

Adamat paid for two meat pies and followed Bo inside. When he reached the top of the stairs, he found himself in a one-room flat. There was a table and a bed, with an old mattress stuffed with straw, and one window looking out into an alley behind the bakery.

Bo stood on a chair in the middle of the room, pressing his fingers gently against the ceiling.

“What are you doing?”

Bo didn’t answer him, but hit the ceiling once, hard. The plaster gave way and a box suddenly dropped into the room, hitting the floor with a crash.

Adamat waved plaster dust away from his face as Bo opened the box. Inside was a pair of Privileged’s gloves and what appeared to be thousands of crisp banknotes, bundled together by silk ribbon.

“I would have expected something a little more… magical,” Adamat said.

Bo pulled on the Privileged’s gloves and flexed his fingers, then began setting stacks of banknotes on the floor next to the box. “I wasn’t raised as a Privileged,” Bo said. “Not like most of the others. I came off the streets originally.”

“So… a box in the ceiling?”

“I’m not stupid. The wards on this box will blow anyone that’s not me halfway across the room if they touch it.”

“Ah.”

“How much did you pay Verundish to let me go?”

“Why?”

“How much?”

“Seventy-five thousand,” Adamat said.

Bo handed him two stacks of banknotes. “Here’s a hundred.”

“I can’t take these,” Adamat said, trying to give them back. “I still need your help, I…”

Bo rolled his eyes. “Take them. I’ll still help you. I don’t care how you got the money, but it couldn’t have been easy. I pay my debts back double, when I can.”

Adamat only put the banknotes in his pockets when he realized Bo wasn’t going to take no for an answer. At a quick guess, Bo had over a million krana in that box. It was a mind-boggling number for a man like Adamat. But to a man like Bo, who’d been a member of the royal cabal, it was probably a trifle.

The Privileged bundled it all up in brown paper and wrapped it with a bow like it was one big package he’d just acquired at the store, keeping back four stacks of krana and secreting them about his person. When he was finished, he stood and nodded to Adamat. “Let’s go.”

Bo wouldn’t let Adamat come with him inside the next time they stopped, nor the time after that. It was the fourth stop, well after dark, when Adamat finally got curious enough to follow him.

They were in one of the more pleasant parts of town, where the growing middle class lived in smart, two-story houses and walked the line between the nobility and the poor. It was not unlike where Adamat himself lived, if a little more crowded.

Bo left the carriage and headed down a long alley between two tenement buildings of spacious flats. Adamat waited for a moment before slipping out after him.

He paused by the edge of the alley, watching around the corner, as Bo knocked on a door. A moment later he was admitted inside.

Adamat inched his way down the alley until he reached a window looking into the flat.