Powder Mage: The Autumn Republic Part 38

Lady Cheris interjected, "But how?"

"Believe me, ma'am. It wasn't Claremonte."

"I'll believe you when I know how you can be certain," Cheris said. "He has the means and the motive. He almost certainly ordered it done."

"Bah." Ricard stopped his pacing just long enough to fetch and light another cigar. "If Adamat says it's not Claremonte, then it's not Claremonte. But who?"

"I don't know yet. I've only just begun my investigation. You have enemies, don't you?"

"No," Ricard said, sounding somewhat offended. "I make friends. It's what I do best. Friends are far more useful than enemies."

Adamat gave Ricard a long look.

"Well, maybe. All right, yes. I have enemies. But not an overabundance of them."

"Any of them who would want you killed?"

"I don't know if any of them hate me that much. Perhaps some of the other union bosses. One or two of them have been angling for my job for the last couple of years."

"Who?"

"Jak Long, the head of the blacksmiths' union. Lady Hether, the head of the street cleaners' union."

"She died in the bombing," Cheris said quietly.

"Oh. Right." Ricard stabbed his finger into the air. "The gunsmiths of Hrusch Avenue might have had something to do with it. They certainly know gunpowder, and they don't like that I've been trying to unionize them."

"Do you have candidates for a new textile union head?" Adamat asked, voicing a sudden thought before it slipped his mind.

"Of course. I can't stand any of them."

"And you have the power to just appoint one?"

"Technically. In an emergency. It would make a lot of people very angry, though."

"There's a foreman in the textile mill off of Vines Avenue. Her name is Margy. Very intelligent. Might shake things up a little if you appointed her."

"An unknown," Cheris said. "Intriguing."

"It's just a thought. She's politically conservative, vocal about her opinions, but not a troublemaker. She has no love of Tamas or the council, but there's no chance that she'd back Claremonte. Not after he leveled all of the churches in the city."

"Fell!" Ricard yelled. "Fell, where are you, d.a.m.n it!"

The woman appeared in the doorway before he finished his sentence. She gave a slight bow at the waist. "You called, sir?"

"Look into a woman named Margy. See if she'd make a good candidate for the head of the textile union as an appointee. She's a foreman in the mill in..."

"On Vines Avenue," Adamat supplied.

"Yes. On Vines."

"Yes sir. Good afternoon, Inspector."

"Good afternoon, Fell."

"I'll send a man over, sir," Fell said to Ricard.

"Do it quietly. I don't want anyone getting wind of this."

The grandfather clock on the far side of the room suddenly chimed twice. Lady Cheris removed a pocket watch from the folds of her dress and checked it, then approached Ricard, kissing him lightly on the cheek. "I have to go."

"Come by tonight?"

"Of course."

She bid Adamat a good afternoon and left quickly. Ricard moved over to her spot by the window, his fist under his chin. "What was that?" Adamat asked.

"What was what?"

"The kiss. Are you two...?"

Ricard flashed him a tight grin. "Perhaps a little."

"I remember you mentioning that she hated you."

"It's an alliance of convenience. For both of us."

"So she doesn't hate you?"

"Oh, she does. And I hate her back. We've been on-and-off lovers for the last fifteen years. You know how it goes. Pa.s.sion, politics."

"And you've never told me?"

"A man has to have some secrets."

"You've been married to various wives for much of that time."

Ricard gave a noncommittal shrug. "Cheris is very smart. And ambitious. That's attractive to me. And my money and ambition are attractive to her. It's a match made in the pit. We'll be back to trying to kill each other after this whole thing is over."

"Interesting choice of words."

"What? Oh. I know what you're thinking," Ricard said. "Cheris didn't try to have me killed. She'd have nothing to gain from it. She's not in my will and most of the other union bosses hate her. Without my support she'd be out of the union within a year."

"I see." Adamat wasn't convinced. He'd have to go through his memories later and try to sort out anything he knew about Cheris-or anything Ricard had mentioned about her. If the two had been lovers for that long, they had certainly hid it well. It reminded Adamat that boisterous and loud though Ricard could be, he also had a talent for subtlety that most people missed.

"Something good has come about from this whole affair with Claremonte," Ricard said.

"Oh?"

"Apparently I have the support of the religious right."

Adamat couldn't help but bark a laugh. "Is that a draft in the room, or has the pit frozen over?"

"Cigar?" Ricard offered after a quiet laugh. "Gla.s.s of wine?" Without waiting for an answer, he shouted for Fell again.

The undersecretary appeared once more in the door, a bottle of wine already in one hand and two gla.s.ses in the other. "Ahead of you, sir."

"Adamat, have I told you that I couldn't live without this woman?"

Fell poured two gla.s.ses and handed one to Adamat, who swirled it around and took a sip. He eyed the undersecretary cautiously. a.s.sistant, political liaison, seductress, bodyguard, a.s.sa.s.sin. Trained at the most exclusive finis.h.i.+ng school in the world, Ricard had said. Somewhere between a slave and an indentured servant, Fell was the most capable person Ricard had brought onto his staff in... well... ever.

Could she have betrayed him?

Adamat pushed the thought away. Ricard had let Fell completely into his confidence. If she wanted to kill him, she could have done so any number of ways. She could have killed or destroyed him several times over in the last few months. Unless she had something more long-term in mind...

"Ricard."

"Yes?"

"Can Claremonte really win?"

"What? Of course not. He's a foreigner. He destroyed historic public property. The man is a menace."

"Seriously, Ricard."

Ricard returned to his pacing, wine in one hand and cigar in the other. He paused on the opposite side of the room and drained the rest of the gla.s.s in one long draught.

This wasn't going anywhere. Adamat turned to Fell, who had slipped into a chair along the back wall of the suite. She had one foot tucked under her and the opposite knee pulled up to her chest-no mean feat in a black tailored suit. "Can Claremonte win?" he asked her.

She glanced at Ricard, then said, "He has a good chance. He has managed to gain a remarkable amount of support in just the last few weeks-much of it had already been arranged through intermediaries."

"Lord Vetas?" Adamat asked, the very name making his skin crawl.

"Some," Fell admitted. "That's what he'd been in town doing, after all. Paving the way for Claremonte. When we took Vetas, we got a list of names of people he'd bribed, cajoled, and threatened into backing Claremonte. Some of them we've been able to turn. Others are still in his pocket."

"But it's worse than we thought."

"Much worse," Fell said. "Several of the prominent gunsmiths have backed him and-coincidentally-the Brudania-Gurla Trading Company has signed countless new contracts for Hrusch rifles. Dozens of big merchants are campaigning for him and will not even see our people. We think they fear the Trading Company and the power they have over s.h.i.+pping. His public approval is high because of his perceived protection of the city."

"I saw that in the newspaper the other day," Adamat said. "He claims that the Kez haven't dared attack the city ever since his army arrived. No word about Field Marshal Tamas or the Adran army."

"Of course," Ricard said. "This is politics, after all."

Adamat let out a disbelieving sigh. "He could win... and a foreigner would hold the highest position in our country. You realize that Tamas would never let that happen."

"He can't stop it."

"Have you met Tamas? He would storm the city and kill Claremonte himself. I don't see how we could dissuade him."

"This will be the first election in the history of Adro," Fell said. "If Tamas disrupts that, he will destroy everything we've worked for."

Ricard said, "We'll have to deal with that when we come to it. In the meantime, we still have a murderer at large."

"You're worried he'll try again?" Adamat asked. "You've certainly tightened security."

"Of course I am. I don't have hearing in one ear because of whoever planted that bomb, and several of my top union bosses are dead or injured. They'll try again, or I'm a shoemaker." Ricard gave Adamat a fraught look, and Adamat realized how incredibly desperate his friend had become. He put on his airs, but the attempt on his life had shaken him deeply. And he was really worried that Claremonte would win the election.

"We have another problem," Ricard said quietly.

"Another?" Adamat tried not to sound too tired. He failed.

Ricard hesitated a moment.

"Go on," Adamat said. "Tell me."

"Charlemund has escaped."

"Excuse me?" The former Arch-Diocel of Adro was not only a traitor but a formidable killer. "I thought he was in a coma."

"He was," Fell said. "We think that Taniel Two-shot's savage Bone-eye put him in that coma in order to bring Taniel back. Some kind of magical exchange. Whatever it was, it wore off. We had Charlemund hidden, tied down. His body was guarded at all times. He escaped and disappeared without a trace. We still haven't figured out how."

"Sweet Kresimir," Adamat swore.

"He got away about three weeks ago," Ricard said. "Cut his ropes and knocked out his guards and just walked off. We've had people quietly combing the city for him ever since."

"No sign of him?"

"None at all. Like he vanished into thin air."

Adamat nodded tiredly. "I'll keep my ear to the ground. I'm going to go down to the ruins of your headquarters. They're still sealed off, correct?"

"Yes," Fell said. "We asked the police to keep everyone out, and we have one or two of our own men down there keeping an eye out."

"Good. I'm going to see if the police missed anything. Do you think I could borrow you for a couple of hours, Fell?"

Fell looked to Ricard, who nodded. "Go ahead. I hope you can find something."

"As do I."

"Thanks for your help," Ricard said. "You don't know how much it means to me to have someone I can trust doing the footwork. I would send Fell out, but she's running my whole campaign. This investigation could take months."

"You sure you can spare her at all?"

"For a few hours. We need to find out who did this."

"I'll work on that," Adamat said. "You work on winning the election. Because if you don't, Field Marshal Tamas is going to start another war, and this one will have Adopest right in the center of it."