“Kresimir is off the table,” Ipille said.
“More like under it,” Taniel murmured.
Tamas gestured his son to silence. “Those are our terms.”
“Such generosity,” Ipille grunted. “Shall I give you my firstborn as well?”
“I already have Beon, though I suppose he’s only the thirdborn.”
The Kez Privileged swallowed a laugh and received a glare from Ipille. “Shall I cut off my leg for you, Tamas?” Ipille continued. “Grant you a dukedom? You ask too much.”
“Those are our terms,” Tamas said.
“And they are intractable?”
“Well. This is a negotiation.”
The Kez delegation huddled on their side of the room and Tamas took his own advisers close to the chapel doors for privacy.
“You’re a terrible negotiator,” Lady Winceslav said quietly. “ ‘This is a negotiation?’ ” she mimicked. “You might as well tell him you’ll give up ground.”
“I’ve lost patience in my old age.”
“We did not agree on the bit about Kresimir.”
“Taniel already let slip that we know Kresimir is comatose,” Tamas said with a scathing glance at his son. “And besides, we can take whatever guarantees we want from the Kez. If Kresimir manages to come around, he will destroy us regardless of Kez promises.”
“Then what good will having him in our possession do?”
“Our deaths will be that much quicker,” Olem suggested.
Tamas glared at his bodyguard. “We can discover how to contain him. Or kill him.”
“He won’t budge on Kresimir,” Nila said. The young woman’s voice surprised Tamas.
“Are you skilled in statecraft, young Privileged?” Tamas asked, his irritation leaking through. His side had started to throb, and the conviction with which he’d started the day was waning. Politics was supposed to be an old man’s game, yet it wearied Tamas more than war. He preferred the energy and decisiveness of battle to the machinations of bloated monarchs and their council.
“I agree with her,” Taniel said.
Of course. “Right. On their demands?”
“We won’t pay them a cent,” Lady Winceslav said.
“And it’s unacceptable that we give them any of our land.” Nila again.
“Of course, of course.”
The haggling went on through the afternoon. The Kez made offers, and Tamas countered with his own, only to be rejected. The back-and-forth continued for hours, and they retired for lunch and then dinner provided by retainers from their respective camps.
It was two hours after nightfall when they agreed to conclude for the day and meet again in three days’ time.
“I must consult with my advisers at greater length,” Ipille said. “And discuss the best interests of my people.”
“Because you care so highly for their lives and well-being?” Tamas asked.
Ipille gave Tamas a shallow smile. “The crown is a heavy burden to wear.”
A little later, Tamas mounted his horse and prepared to ride.
“Shall we make camp nearby tonight?” Olem asked.
Tamas shook his head. “I’d rather be back with the army.”
“That’s eight miles from here.”
Tamas looked first to Winceslav, then to Taniel, and then to Nila. “Your preferences?”
“I’ll ride ahead if you camp,” Taniel said.
“And I prefer not to be caught out with the Kez royal guard on the prowl,” said Lady Winceslav.
It was long past midnight when they neared the Adran camp, and Tamas sagged in his saddle. His side hurt and his head felt like a millstone. These negotiations would be drawn out and exhausting. Their only advantage lay in the fact that Ipille would want to finish them before the Deliv army arrived to tip the scales. Deliv would demand to participate in the negotiations from there on out and it would go worse for the Kez.
Tamas was surprised at how high Taniel rode in his saddle. Eager to get back to his lover, no doubt, and maybe farther from the man who was ultimately responsible for his mother’s death. Tamas himself had suppressed thoughts of Erika all day lest he reach across the table and finish the job he’d started with his fingers around Ipille’s throat so many years ago. It had been tiring.
“Sir,” Olem said, breaking in to Tamas’s thoughts. “Something’s wrong.”
Tamas shook his head to rattle away the sleep. “What is it?”
Olem pointed toward the north. The campfires burned on the horizon and the sky, lit by the cloudless moonlight, hung heavy with smoke.
Too much flame and smoke to be cook fires. And there, on the wind-screams?
“Taniel, wait!” Tamas shouted. But Taniel was already well ahead of them, off at a gallop.
Chapter 22
Taniel entered the Adran camp at a full gallop, hurtling past soldiers and camp followers.
The night was full of panicked shouts, punctuated by the screams of the wounded, and the chill air choked with smoke. The flames he had seen from a distance turned out to be fires jumping from tent to tent, burning the trampled grasses and catching everything they could along the way. He passed several bucket brigades working from the nearest streams and soon found himself in a haze of thick smoke near the Eleventh Brigade.
Where his and Ka-poel’s tent had been.
He left his horse with the closest soldier and ran deeper into the chaos. Men milled about, faces obscured by blood and ashes. Taniel grabbed one of them.
“What happened?”
“Surprise attack,” the man shouted, pulling aside the handkerchief covering his mouth. “They came from the west, at least a dozen Privileged and five thousand men!”
“Who?”
“Kez!”
Taniel shoved the man aside and stumbled toward where he thought his tent had been. Five thousand men? A dozen Privileged? The Kez had no Privileged left of any power, and how could they possibly have gotten close enough to launch a surprise attack? The smoke muddled his senses and the darkness disoriented him. The tents in this area were all gone, all burned to cinders. He plowed onward, knowing he’d have to trust to luck as much as memory to find Ka-poel.
He caught sight of a prone figure in the grass. It wore Adran blues and lay unmoving with a rifle a handbreadth from its outstretched fingers. He spotted another body in the gloom, and then another. All Adran. Some of them were little more than charred skeletons, while others looked as if they’d fallen asleep.
Taniel’s head began to pound, and he pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth to protect him from the smoke. His eyes watered terribly. He opened his third eye and, to his horror, found the world drenched in pastels. Sorcery for certain, then.
Perhaps these pastels were just a sign of Bo fighting back? Taniel dismissed that hope. Not even Bo could unleash this much of the Else in a fight. The colors were everywhere, running parallel to the fire in the grass and splattered across the bodies of the Adran soldiers like paint thrown from a bucket.
Where was Bo? Where was Ka-poel? Panic set in and Taniel found himself breathing heavily. He nabbed an Adran soldier by the arm. “Bo?”
The man shook his head.
“Where’s Privileged Borbador?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
As Taniel went on, he found more smoldering bodies strewn haphazardly about the camp as if the area had been shelled by enemy artillery. Taniel counted more and more dead Kez, and found where the Adran soldiers had put up a valiant resistance. Fifty men, all in a line, their corpses charred beyond recognition and only discernible as Adran by the remnants of the Hrusch rifles clutched in their hands.
“Bo! Ka-poel!”
Taniel tripped and bashed his knee, barely noticing the ashes that blackened his new uniform. He pushed himself up and limped onward, shouting for Ka-poel and Bo. Rescuers soon joined him, putting out any embers and checking bodies.