by Jim Butcher
Tavi raised a hand. “We’ll solve that problem when we come to it. We still don’t know much about the internal situation at Antillus. Crassus?”
“My father’s banner isn’t flying there,” Crassus replied, his expression still showing his disturbance at Varg’s proposed diplomacy. “His seneschal, Lord Vanorius, is probably running the city. I think it would be wise for me to arrive ahead of the fleet, Your Highness, and let him know what’s happening.”
Tavi grimaced. “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” he said. “I’ll send you up as the fleet begins to debark, but a city full of frightened people might not react reasonably. I want to be on land with the Legions and the Canim warriors in good order by the time they’re able to respond.”
Crassus exhaled through his nose and nodded stiffly. “As you wish.”
Tavi turned back to the map. “Let’s see,” he said. “Vord are winning. Two-thousand-mile march. No supplies. Ten months to go before the survivors are wiped out.” He turned back to them. “I think that’s about it. Any questions?”
The last member of the campaign council wore the blue-and-red tunic of a Legion valet. His wispy white hair drifted around his mostly bald pate, his eyes were watery, and his hands, though covered with liver spots, were steady. “Ah. Your Highness?”
“Yes, Maestro Magnus?”
“As your de facto commander of intelligence, I…” He shrugged diffidently. “Believe that it’s just possible that I should be aware of the source of your information.”
He spoke the last several words through clenched teeth.
Tavi nodded soberly. “I can see why you’d feel that way.” He looked around at the rest of them. “Crassus and his Knights Aeris have found us a decent patch of ground to land upon. We’ll move in with the Legions and warriors first and debark the civilians as time allows.” Tavi turned to Varg, and said, “We’ll have to move quickly. I’ll do everything I can to make sure that your folk have whatever shelter is available.”
“So that the vord overrun them in a few days?” Nasaug asked.
Varg turned slightly toward his get with a faint, low growl of reproof. He faced Tavi without blinking. “His point is valid.”
Tavi inhaled deeply and nodded. “You’re right, of course. They’ll need the protection of the city’s walls.”
Max shook his head gravely. “Old Vanorius is not going to like this.”
“He doesn’t need to like it,” Tavi said bluntly. “He just needs to do it.” He paused and softened his tone. “Besides, I can’t imagine he’ll be too upset about gaining several thousand Canim militia to help him defend the walls.”
Varg let out an interrogative growl, his head tilting slightly.
Tavi regarded him steadily. “Did you think I’d expect you to leave your civilians here alone and unguarded?”
“And if you get us to do some of the fighting for you,” Varg said, “so much the better for your folk.”
“You aren’t the vord,” Tavi said, simply. “We can work out our problems later.”
Varg stared at him for a moment, then tilted his head slightly to one side. “Tavar,” he rumbled, rising. “I will see to the preparations as you suggest.”
Tavi returned the Canim-style bow, careful to use exactly the same degree and duration as Varg. “It is appreciated, Warmaster. Good day. And to you, Nasaug.”
“Tavar,” the younger Cane growled. The pair of them left the cabin, almost seeming to fold in on themselves to fit through the door. The others took that as their cue to be about their own duties and also filed out.
“Magnus,” Tavi said quietly. “A moment.”
The old Cursor paused and looked back at Tavi.
“The door,” Tavi said.
Magnus shut the door and turned to face him. “Your Highness?”
“I’m sorry I cut you off earlier. I hope I didn’t entirely sever both legs.”
“Your Highness.” Magnus sighed. “This is no time for levity.”
“I know,” Tavi said quietly. “And I do need your help. My intelligence is… incomplete. I’ll need you to speak to whoever Lord Vanorius has bringing in information and sort out exactly where Aquitaine is and how we might contact him.”
“Your Highness—”
“I can’t tell you, Magnus,” Tavi said in a calm, quiet voice. “I’m quite certain my grandfather never revealed all of his sources to you.”
Magnus regarded Tavi thoughtfully for a few moments. Then he bowed his head, and said, “Very well, Your Highness.”
“Thank you,” Tavi said. “Now. You’ve been giving Marcus odd looks for weeks. I want to know why.”
Magnus shook his head. After a moment, he said, “I’m not sure I trust him.”
Tavi frowned. “Crows, man. Valiar Marcus? Why not?”
“He…” Magnus sighed. “It’s nothing I can quantify. And I’ve been trying for weeks. There’s just… something off.”
Tavi grunted. “Are you sure?”
“Of course not,” Magnus replied, automatically. “Nothing’s sure.”
Tavi nodded. “But you haven’t let go of it, either.”
“It’s my gut,” Magnus said. “I know it. I just can’t figure out how I know it.” He lifted a hand and pushed white hair back from his eyes. “It’s possible I’m going senile, I suppose.” He peered at Tavi suddenly. “How long have you known about Sextus?”
“Since a few days after we escaped Canea,” Tavi said quietly.
“And you said nothing.”
Tavi shrugged. “What would it have changed except to frighten everyone and make us appear more vulnerable to the Canim?” He shook his head. “Everyone sitting on slow ships with nothing to do but chew on bad thoughts—we’d have had blood on the decks in a week. This way, by the time word gets around, we’ll be in the middle of operations. Everyone will have work to turn his hand to.”
Magnus sighed. “Yes. I suppose it was necessary to keep it quiet.” He shook his head, his eyes gleaming faintly for a moment. “But please, Your Highness. Don’t make a habit of such things. My heart can only take so much.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Tavi said. He nodded to Magnus and turned back toward his desk. “Oh, Maestro.”
“Hmm?”
Tavi looked up from a weary slump on his chair. “Valiar Marcus has saved my life. And I, his. I can’t imagine that he would ever turn against the Legion. Or against me.”
Magnus was silent for a moment. Then he said, quietly, “That’s what everyone always thinks about traitors, lad. It’s why we hate them so.”
The old man left the cabin.
Aquitainus Attis, the man who had been striving to take the Crown of Alera for most of his lifetime, was now only a heartbeat away from taking it incontestably. Could there be one more knife lurking, awaiting the right moment to strike?
Tavi closed his eyes. He felt fragile. He felt frightened.
Then he rose abruptly, stalked across the room, and began donning his armor, a suit taken from a legionare who had perished of his wounds after the evacuation to replace the one he’d lost in the harbor city of Molvar. The familiar weight of Aleran lorica settled upon him, cold and solid. He slung his sword at his hip and felt the cold power of the steel singing quietly down the length of the blade.
There was work to be done.
Best be about it.
CHAPTER 3
“Keep your back straight,” Amara called. “Turn your heels out a little more!”
“Why?” called the girl on the pony. She was riding in the practice ring the small detachment of Garrison’s cavalry troopers had set up. It was, in essence, a four-foot-deep pit lined with soft earth, about two hundred yards long and half that across.
“It will help you maintain your balance,” Amara called from the side of the pit.
“My balance is good already!” the girl insisted.
“It is right now,” Amara said. “But when Ajax does something you weren’t expecting, you might
find differently.”
The little girl had dark, curly hair and muddy hazel eyes, and was eight years old. She lifted her head and sniffed in a gesture that Amara found reminded her rather intensely of Kalarus Brencis Minoris. She folded her arms over her stomach and shivered a little. “Try to use your legs more, Masha,” she called. “Keep your head level. Pretend you’ve got a cup of water balanced on it, and that you don’t want to spill any.”
“That’s silly,” Masha called back, smiling at Amara as she went past. She shouted merrily, over her shoulder, “Why would I take a cup of water on a pony ride?”
Amara found herself smiling. Smiles had been a rare enough thing over this long and quietly heartless winter. Between all the great and terrible things that had been happening to the Realm, it was all too easy to lose track of one life lost, even if it had been lost in an act of courage and dedication to the Realm. One life balanced against all those lost was not a measurable fraction.
But that detail hadn’t mattered to Masha when Bernard had told the little girl that her mother wouldn’t be coming back to her.
The child’s wants were simple: She wanted her mother. That single lost life had turned a little girl’s world into bleak desolation. Masha hadn’t spoken for more than a week and was still plagued with nightmares. At first, Amara and Bernard had tried to calm her down and send Masha back to her own bed, but the trip down the hall was simply too far to walk for the fourth time in an evening when one hadn’t slept properly for several days. Now, as often as not, the child simply stumbled down the hall and into their bed for the comfort and warmth offered by someone who cared, and slept snuggled up firmly between them.
Great furies knew that Masha deserved a chance to smile and to feel joy.
Even if it might not last.
The quiet morning was broken by the distant roar of windstreams being raised to carry multiple flights of either couriers or Knights Aeris into the bright spring skies. Amara frowned back at Garrison, then murmured to her wind fury, Cirrus, and held up her hands before her face. The fury bent the light passing between her hands to give Amara a better field of view, and she saw several distant, dark shapes against the blue skies, racing northwest, southwest, and east.
She frowned. Anyone flying east from Garrison passed out of the lands of Alera altogether and into the wild country where the barbaric Marat held dominion. In the general direction of the southwest lay the vast encampment at Riva. To the northwest lay the Shield city of Phrygia, now all but empty of her native defenders and groaning under the weight of the refugees from the vord-taken portions of the Realm—which made it little different than Calderon.
Amara took a moment to sweep her gaze down the valley, once more surveying the acres and acres and acres and acres of tents, lean-tos, converted carts and wagons, stone domes crafted directly up from the earth, and other makeshift shelters. There had not been room at Riva for more than a tithe of the folk displaced by the invasion. They had been shuffled out to cities lying between Riva and Phrygia, including up to the Shield city herself, and the Calderon Valley had willingly taken up its fair share of the burden. And then the acting First Lord had promptly tripled that burden.
It had been mildly nightmarish to come to terms with what the invasion meant. With the ground frozen by winter, scanty supplies, and practically nonexistent medical care, the very old and the very young had suffered terribly. Pyres for the dead had burned every single night. With the advent of the spring thaw, fury-accelerated crops had begun to alleviate the food shortage—but for many Alerans, the food had come weeks, or only days, too late.
Masha’s original pony had been left behind when she had been evacuated from the leading edge of the vord invasion, as a means to convince the child’s mother, Rook, to undertake a mission for the Crown. Ajax had arrived only days before, a gift for the child from Hashat, the leader of the Horse Clan of the Marat. Had the horse come but a fortnight sooner, it would almost certainly have been stolen, slaughtered, and eaten by starving refugees.
Bernard had undertaken the refugee problem with the practical energy typical, as far as Amara could tell, among the longtime residents of the Calderon Valley. A lifetime spent fending for themselves on a savage frontier had given them a sense of self-sufficiency, confidence, and independence that was unusual among freemen. To her husband, the sudden influx of Alerans had not merely been a problem: It was also an opportunity.
Within weeks, the effort to provide shelter for every soul in the valley had become an organized drive, assisted by Bernard’s squad of Legion engineers and the holders of the valley, who seemed to regard the incoming tide of strangers as a challenge to their sense of hospitality. And once that drive was done, Bernard used the structure he’d established among the refugees to turn their hands to improving Calderon’s defenses and vastly widening the lands that could be cultivated for food crops.
It was incredible, what people could do when they pulled together.
The sudden thunder of hooves jerked Amara from her reverie as a large man rode up on a muscular bay gelding. The horse protested being drawn to a halt and complained loudly as it lashed the air with its front hooves. That scream, in turn, flickered down to little Ajax in the training ring. The pony promptly hopped up into the air and twisted his body with the sinuous ease of a cat. Masha let out a shriek and went flying.
Amara whipped a hand forward, sending Cirrus out to slow and cushion the child’s fall, and a sudden geyser of wind erupted from near the ring’s floor. Between Amara’s effort and the soft earth (intentionally prepared for just such an occasion as this), the child landed more or less safely.
Ajax, clearly pleased with himself, went running around the ring at full speed, tossing his mane, his tail held high.
“Bernard.” Amara sighed.
The Count of Calderon scowled at the big gelding as he calmed the animal, dismounted, and tied his reins to one of a long row of hitching posts. “Sorry,” he said, and gestured to the horse. “This idiot is practically quivering for someone to sound the charge. I don’t even want to think about what he was like before he was gelded.”
Amara smiled, and the two of them descended into the ring, where Masha lay sniffling. Amara examined the girl for injuries, but she’d received nothing more than bruises. Amara helped her up with her hands and with kind, gentle words, while Bernard narrowed his eyes and focused his earthcrafting on Ajax, slowly bringing the proud little horse to a halt. Bernard pulled a lump of honeyed wax from his pocket and fed it to the horse, speaking quietly as he took up Ajax’s reins again.
“Back straight,” Amara told the child. “Heels out.”
Masha sniffled a few times, then said, “Ajax should be more careful.”
“Probably,” Amara said, fighting off a smile. “But he doesn’t know how. So you need to practice proper form.”
The girl cast a wary glance at the pony, docilely eating his treat from Bernard’s hand. “Can I practice it tomorrow?”
“Better if you get on right now,” Amara said.
“Why?”
“Because if you don’t, you might not ever get back on,” Amara said.
“But it’s scary.”
Amara did smile, then. “That’s why you have to do it. Otherwise, instead of controlling your fear, your fear is controlling you.”
Masha considered this gravely for a moment. Then she said, “But you said fear is good.”
“I said it was normal,” Amara replied. “Everyone feels afraid. Especially when something bad happens. But you can’t let that scare you into quitting.”
“But you quit doing Cursor stuff for the First Lord,” Masha pointed out.
Amara felt her smile fade.
Behind Masha, Bernard rubbed studiously at his mouth with one hand.
“That was different,” Amara said.
“Why?”
“For a lot of reasons you might not understand until you’re older.”
Masha frowned. “Why not?”
; “Come on,” Bernard rumbled, stepping in. He lifted the child into the air as lightly as a piece of down and put her on the pony’s saddle. He was a big man with wide shoulders, his dark hair and beard streaked with threads of silver. His hands were large, strong, and scarred with a lifetime of work—but for all of that, he was as gentle with the child as a mother cat with her kittens. “One more time around the ring, like before,” he said calmly. “Then we’ll need to go get some lunch.”
Masha gathered up the reins and bit her lower lip. “Can I go slow?”
“That’s fine,” Bernard said.
Masha clucked her tongue and began walking Ajax along the outside wall of the ring, her back practically bending backward in its efforts to stay straight. Her toes rested on the pony’s ribs.
“Well?” Amara asked quietly, once the child was several yards away.
“Isana’s coming.”
“Again? She was here three days ago.”
“Senator Valerius has managed to put together a quorum of the Senate,” Bernard said. “He’s planning on challenging the legitimacy of Septimus’s marriage.”
A bad taste went through Amara’s mouth at the words, and she spat on the ground. “There are times when I wish you’d hit that egomaniac quite a bit harder.”
“There was a lot of confusion during the rescue,” Bernard said. “And Valerius wouldn’t shut up. Interfered with my thinking.” He pursed his lips, and mused, “I’ll do better next time we’re in that situation.”
Amara let out a small snort and shook her head, watching Masha ride. “Bloody crows,” she growled a moment later through clenched teeth. “Even now, with everything at stake, these idiots are playing their games. They’ll still be doing deals under the table when a bloody vordknight tears them to shreds—as if the vord are some kind of transitory inconvenience!”
“They have to pretend that,” Bernard said. “Otherwise, they’d be forced to admit that they were fools not to listen to the warnings we tried to give them five bloody years ago.”
“And that would be terrible,” Amara said. She thought about the situation for a moment. “If Valerius is successful, it gives Aquitaine every excuse he needs to keep the crown, even i… even when Octavian returns.”