The Crimson Campaign by Brian McClellan

Taniel.
    Taniel shook his head. He checked the mala pipe. Nothing left. Then the floor. “That thieving Gurlish must have taken the rest of the ball. I got enough to last me weeks.”
    “I know the rate you were smoking that stuff,” Fell said. “I don’t think Kin gypped you. He knows where the money came from.”
    Taniel frowned. Where had the money come from? He looked up at Fell. Ah, that’s right. Ricard.
    “You know,” Fell said, “Ricard’s mala den has much better quality mala. The mats are silk, and the entertainment is better than Kin’s daughter.”
    Taniel felt his stomach lurch. He fell back into his hammock. Kin’s daughter. Taniel didn’t remember anything. “Did I…?”
    Fell shrugged and looked to Ka-poel. Ka-poel gave a slight shake of her head.
    Taniel let out a small sigh. The last thing he needed to do right now was bed a Gurlish mala-den owner’s daughter.
    “What do you want?” he asked Fell.
    Fell tapped her pipe out on her shoe and put it in her pocket, then tossed more cashews into her mouth. “We got word from your father today.”
    Taniel sat up straight. “And?”
    “A few things of note to report. The Kez were preparing to attack the next day. That would be three days ago. He was planning on leading a counteroffensive with his best men.”
    “How many Kez soldiers?”
    “Rumors say a million. Tamas didn’t say.”
    His best soldiers meant the Seventh and Ninth brigades. And rumors of a million? That was twice the size of the army at the Battle of Shouldercrown. Even if it were exaggerated ten times, Tamas was still leading ten thousand men against a hundred thousand. Bloody brash fool.
    It somehow made it worse that Tamas would probably win.
    “Oh,” Fell added, as if as an afterthought. “He asked after you.”
    Taniel sniffed. “‘Where’s my damned useless son? I need him on the line.’ Something like that?”
    “He asked if you’d made any recovery and if the doctors thought his presence would help in any way.”
    “Now I know you’re lying,” Taniel said. “Tamas wouldn’t leave a battlefield for anyone.” Not even me. Especially not me.
    “He’s been very worried. We sent word that you seemed better, but who knows if it reached him before the battle.” Fell reached into her paper bag for another cashew, a small smile on her lips.
    “But you didn’t tell him I’m awake?”
    “No. Ricard thought that perhaps you’d like some time to recover.”
    So Taniel’s entreaties to keep his father in the dark had done some good.
    “More like he’s worried that Tamas will send for me the minute he knows I’m not laid out.”
    “That too,” Fell admitted.
    “Of course.” Taniel fell back into his hammock and sighed. He felt tired and used. What was he, other than a tool for others? “That old bastard Tamas —”
    He was cut off by the sound of a door upstairs banging open. The stairs into the den shook, and a young man burst into the room. Fell got to her feet.
    “What is it?” she said.
    The messenger looked around wildly at the den. His chest heaved from hard running. “Ricard wants you at the People’s Court immediately.”
    Fell crumpled up the empty cashew bag and tossed it to the floor. “What has happened?”
    The messenger looked at Taniel, then at Ka-poel, and back to Fell. He seemed on the verge of collapse.
    “We’ve word from Budwiel. The city has fallen, put to the torch. Field Marshal Tamas is dead.”
     
    Nila sat beside the window, the curtains only slightly parted, and watched the world stroll by in top hats and coats, canes clicking on the cobbles, women tipping their bonnets back to enjoy the sun on their faces. The summer heat bore down on Adro, but no one seemed to notice. The weather was far too nice to care.
    She wished she was out there enjoying it. Her room was too stuffy, and Vetas’s men had nailed shut all the windows in the house. The air was thick and humid, stifling, and moment to moment she felt as if she was