by Jim Butcher
“And he’s only got two Legions.” Ehren sighed. “Assuming he got back from Canea with everyone and all those freed slaves stuck to their banners. Maybe fifteen thousand men, total.”
“Sir Ehren,” Amara repeated. “Where are we going?”
“Gaius Attis,” Ehren said, pronouncing the name without the hesitation of unfamiliarity, “retained a certain number of skilled individuals for his personal use. I have the authority to dispatch them as needed.”
“Singulares?” Veradis asked.
“Assassins,” Amara said, without emphasis.
“Ah. A little of both,” Ehren replied. “Attis felt a need to be sure he had a hand ready to move quickly, if necessary.”
“To strike at Octavian if it seemed possible,” Amara said.
“I rather think they were primarily intended for his ex-wife,” Ehren replied. “Primarily.”
Amara gave him a sharp glance. “And you are in charge of them? You know when they are to be used? And you have the authority to send them to help us?”
Ehren bowed to her from the waist, without slowing down.
Amara watched him steadily. Then she said, “You are either a very good friend, Sir Ehren—or a very, very good spy.”
“Ah,” he said, smiling. “Or a little of both.”
They walked to the rear corner of the camp, where the tents that were usually reserved for critical noncombat personnel were pitched, according to the standard format for a Legion camp. They usually housed smiths, farriers, valets, cooks, mule skinners, and the like. Ehren walked straight to an oversized tent that displaced four of the regulation-sized structures, opened the flap, and walked in.
A dozen swords leapt from their scabbards in slithering, steely whispers, and Amara straightened from ducking into the tent to find a blade not six inches from her throat. She looked down its length, to the oft-scarred hand that held it in a steady grip, and let her gaze track up the arm of the swordsman to his face. He was enormous, dark of hair, his beard clipped in a short, precise cut. His eyes were steely and cold. It didn’t seem that he held the sword so much as that the weapon seemed to grow from his extended hand. Amara knew him.
“Aldrick,” hissed a woman’s voice. A small, richly curvaceous woman wearing a plain linen gown with a tight-fitting leather bodice stepped out from behind the swordsman. Her hair was dark and curly, her eyes glittering, darting left and right at odd intervals. The smile on her face did not match the eyes at all. Her hands opened and closed in excitement, and she licked her lips as she slid closer to Amara and pushed the end of the blade very gently down. “Look, lord. It’s the nice wind girl who left us to die naked in the Kalaran wilderness. And I never thanked her for it.”
Aldrick ex Gladius, one of the deadliest swordsmen in Alera, hooked a finger down into the back of the woman’s bodice and dragged her close to him, leaving his sword extended. She leaned against his pull. He didn’t seem to notice. He slid a hand around her waist, when she was close enough, and pressed her shoulders back against his mailed torso. “Odiana,” he rumbled. “Peace.”
The fey-looking woman twitched several more times, her smile widening, and subsided. “Yes, lord.”
“Little man,” Aldrick rumbled. “What’s she doing here?”
Ehren smiled up at Aldrick, standing diffidently, as though he weren’t bright enough to notice all the naked steel in the room and too innocent of the ways of violence to understand how much danger he was in. “Ah, yes. She’s here to, ah, there’s a special mission for you all, and you’re to do it.”
Amara glanced around the tent. She recognized some of the men and women in it, from long before, during her graduation exercise from the Academy. Back before her mentor had betrayed her. Back before the man she’d pledged her life to support had done the same. They were the Windwolves—mercenaries, the long-term hirelings of the Aquitaines. They were suspected in any number of dubious enterprises, and though she could not prove it, Amara was certain that they had killed any number of Alerans during their employers’ various schemes.
They were dangerous men and women one and all, strongly gifted at furycraft, known as an aerial contingent, Knights for hire.
“Hello, Aldrick,” Amara said calmly, facing the man. “This is the short version: As of now, you are working with me.”
His eyebrows climbed. His eyes went to Ehren.
The little man nodded, smiling and blinking myopically. “Yes, that’s correct. She’ll tell you what you need to know. Very important, and I’ve other messages to deliver, good hunting.”
Ehren nodded and bumbled out of the tent, muttering apologies.
Grimacing, Aldrick watched him go and eyed Amara. A moment later, he put his sword away. Only then did the others in the room lower and put away their weapons.
“All right,” he said, staring at Amara with distaste. “What’s the job?”
Odiana stared at her with what Amara could only describe as malicious glee. Her smile was unsettling.
“The usual,” Amara said, smiling as though her innards hadn’t spent the last moments shimmying and twisting in fear. “It’s a rescue.”
CHAPTER 13
“You’ve barely touched the meal,” Kitai said quietly.
Tavi glanced up at her, a stab of guilt hitting him quickly in the belly. “I…” The sight of Kitai in the green gown hit him even more heavily, and he lost track of what he’d been about to say.
The silken gown managed to satisfy propriety while simultaneously placing every one of the young woman’s beautiful features on display. With her pale hair worn up in an elegant coil atop her head, the rather deep neckline of the gown made her neck look long and delicate, giving the lie to the slender strength he knew was there. It left her shoulders and arms bare as well, her pale skin smooth and perfect in the glow of the muted furylamps inside the pavilion he’d had set up on a bluff overlooking the restless sea.
The silver-set emeralds she wore at her throat, upon a gossamer-thin wire tiara, and on her ears flickered in the light, gleaming with tiny inner fires of their own. A subtle firecrafting had been worked into them by a master artisan at some point in their past. The second firecrafting that went with them, an aura of excitement and happiness, hung around her like a fine and subtle perfume.
She arched one pale brow in challenge, her lips curving up into a smile, waiting for an answer.
“Perhaps,” he said, “I’ve developed a hunger for something other than dinner.”
“It is improper to have one’s dessert before the meal, Your Highness,” she murmured. She lifted a berry to her lips and met his eyes as she ate it. Slowly.
Tavi considered sweeping the tabletop clear with one arm, dragging her across it and into his arms, and finding out what that berry tasted like. The notion struck him with such appeal that he had lifted his hands to the arms of his chair without even realizing it.
He took another slow breath, savoring the image in his mind, and the desire running through him, and with a moment’s struggle, sorted out which were his own ideas and which were hers. “You,” he accused, his voice coming out much lower and rougher than he’d intended, “are earthcrafting me, Ambassador.”
She ate another berry. More slowly. Her eyes sparkled as she did. “Would I do such a thing, my lord Octavian?”
It became a real effort of will to remain seated. He turned to his plate with a growl and took up a knife and a fork to neatly slice off and devour a piece of the beef—real, honest Aleran meat, none of that leviathan-chum they’d been forced to choke down on the voyage—and washed it down with a swallow of the light, almost transparent wine. “You might,” he said, “if it suited you.”
She took utensils to her own roast. Tavi watched her, impressed. Kitai generally took to a good roast with all the delicacy of a hungry lioness and often gave the impression that she would respond in a similar vein should anyone attempt to usurp her share. Tonight, if she did not move with the perfect smoothness of a young woman of high society,
her behavior was nonetheless not too terribly far off the mark. Someone, presumably Cymnea, had been teaching her the etiquette of the Citizenry.
When had she found the time?
She ate the bite of meat as slowly as she had the berries, still watching his eyes. She closed her own in pleasure as she swallowed, and only a moment after did she open them again. “Are you suggesting that I would prefer it if you tore this dress from me and ravished me? Here? On the table, perhaps?”
Tavi’s fork slipped, and his next piece of roast went flying off the table and onto the ground. He opened his mouth to reply and found himself saying nothing, his face turning warm.
Kitai watched the roast fall and made a clucking sound. “Shame,” she purred. “It’s delicious. Don’t you think it’s delicious?”
She ate another bite with the same, torturously slow, relaxed, elegantly restrained sensuality.
Tavi found his voice again. “Not half so delicious as you, Ambassador.”
She smiled again, pleased. “Finally. I have your attention.”
“You’ve had it the whole time we’ve been eating,” Tavi said.
“Your ears, perhaps.” She cleared her throat, resting her fingertips upon her breastbone for a moment, drawing his gaze there involuntarily. “Your eyes, certainly,” she added drily, and he let out a rueful chuckle. “But your thoughts, chala, your imagination—they have been focused elsewhere.”
“My mistake,” Tavi said. “Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Kitai replied with a rather smug smile. Her expression grew more serious. “Though not solely for the immediate reasons.”
He frowned and rolled a hand, inviting her to continue.
She folded her hands in her lap and frowned, as if gathering her words together before releasing them. “This enemy is a threat to you as your others are not, chala.”
“The vord?”
She nodded.
“In what way?”
“They threaten to unmake who you are,” she said quietly. “Despair and fear are powerful foes. They can change you into something you are not.”
“You said something like that last winter,” he said. “When we were trapped atop that Shuaran tower.”
“It is no less true now,” she said in a quiet voice. “Remember that I can feel you, chala. You cannot hide these things from me. You have tried to, and I have respected your desire. Until now.”
He frowned at her, troubled.
She slid her hand across the table, palm up. His own hand covered it without the need for a conscious decision on his own part.
“Talk to me,” she urged quietly.
“There was always someone nearby on the ships. Or else we were in lessons and…” He shrugged. “I… I didn’t want to burden you. Or frighten you.”
She nodded and spoke without rancor. “Was it because you think I am insufficiently strong? Or because you find me insufficiently brave?”
“Because I find you insufficiently…” he faltered.
“Capable?” she suggested. “Helpful?”
“… replaceable,” he finished.
Her eyebrows lifted at that. She returned his earlier gesture, rolling her hand for him to continue.
“I can’t lose you,” he said quietly. “I can’t. And I’m not sure that I’m able to protect you. I’m not sure anyone can.”
Kitai stared at him for a moment without expression. Then she pressed her lips together, shook her head, and rose. She walked around the table with that same severe expression on her face, but it wasn’t until she was standing beside Tavi’s chair that he realized that she was shaking with unreleased laughter.
She insinuated herself onto his lap, lovely in the green grown, wrapped her pale arms around his neck, and kissed him. Thoroughly. Her gentle laughter bubbled against his tongue as she did. When she finally drew away, moments later, she put her fever-warm hands on either side of his face, looking down at him fondly.
“My Aleran,” she said, her voice loving. “You idiot.”
He blinked at her.
“Are you only now realizing that forces greater than ourselves might tear us apart?” she asked, still smiling.
“Well…” he began. “Well… well no, not exactly…” He trailed off weakly.
“But that was always true, Aleran,” she said, “long before the vord threatened our peoples. If they had never done so, it would still be true.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged a shoulder. Then she took up his knife and fork and cut another slice of roast as she spoke. “Many things can end lives. Even the lives of Aleran Citizens. Disease. Fires. Accidents. And, in the end, age itself.” She fed him the piece of roast and watched him begin to chew before nodding approval and beginning to cut another. “Death is certain, Aleran—for all of us. That being true, we know that all of those we love will either be torn away from us, or we will be torn away from them. It follows as naturally as the night after sundown.”
“Kitai,” Tavi began.
She slipped another piece of roast into his mouth, and said, quietly, “I am not finished.”
He shook his head and began to chew, listening.
She nodded approval again. “In the end, the vord are nothing special, Aleran, unless you allow them to be. In fact, they are less threatening than most.”
He swallowed, and said, “How can you say that?”
“How can I not?” she replied smoothly. “Think on it. You have a reasonably good mind when you choose to use it. I am certain it will come to you eventually.” She arched and stretched, lifting her arms straight overhead. Tavi found his left hand resting on the small of her back, left bare by the gown. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from stroking that soft skin in a slow circle, barely touching. “Mmmm. That pleases me. And this gown pleases me. And the jewels, too—though I couldn’t wear them on a nighttime hunt. Still, they are beautiful.”
“And expensive,” Tavi said. “You wouldn’t believe.”
Kitai rolled her eyes. “Money.”
“Not everyone uses obsidian arrowheads as the basic standard of trade,” he told her, smiling.
“No,” she replied tartly. “Though if it cost an Aleran money every time he wanted to kill something, it might have helped make your people’s history much less interesting reading.” She looked down at him for a moment, smiling, then asked, “Do you think the jewels are beautiful, Aleran?”
Tavi touched her cheek. “I’d like to see you in nothing else.”
Her smile widened. “That,” she said, “would be wholly inappropriate, my lord Octavian.” But her hands very slowly rose to the nape of her neck, and the clasp of the gown. Tavi let out another low, growling sound, and felt his hand curling possessively on the line of her waist.
Hoofbeats came rapidly thudding toward the isolated pavilion. The guards, who were stationed in a loose line forty yards down the hill at Magnus’s insistence, against the possibility of further vord infiltrators, began exchanging passwords with the messenger, whose voice was pitched high with excitement.
Tavi groaned and rested his forehead against Kitai’s… gown for a moment. “Of course. Something happens now.”
Kitai let out a low, wicked laugh, and said, “We could just keep going, if you like.”
“Bloody crows, no,” Tavi said, flushing again. He rose, lifting her as he did, and set her gently down on her feet. “Do I look all right?”
She leaned up and licked the corner of his mouth, eyes dancing, then wiped it with a napkin. She straightened the lines of his dress tunic slightly, and said, “You look most proper, my lord Octavian.”
He growled beneath his breath, something about remembering not to kill the messenger, and walked to draw aside one of the cloths that veiled the pavilion’s interior. A Legion valet was hurrying up the slope beside a messenger in the armor of an Antillan militiaman. The Antillan strode up the hill in the precisely spaced stride of an experienced legionare, stopped before Tavi, and saluted crisply. “Yo
ur Highness.”
Tavi returned the salute. The messenger was a senior centurion of the force defending the city, come out of retirement for the task, and was closer to fifty than forty. “Centurion… Ramus, isn’t it?”
The man smiled and nodded. “Aye, sir.”
“Report.”
“Compliments of the Lord Seneschal Vanorius, sir, and there’s been word from Riva.”
Tavi lifted his eyebrows. “A watersending?”
“Yes, si—” The centurion’s eyes had flicked past Tavi to Kitai, and the words choked in his throat. He coughed sharply, then inclined his head and saluted again. “Ah. Please excuse the intrusion, lady Ambassador.”
Tavi checked, just to be sure the gown was still on. It was. But with Kitai, you never really knew. He couldn’t blame Ramus for faltering, though. She looked stunning. “Word from Riva, centurion?” Tavi prompted.
“Yes, sir,” the man said. “Lord Aquitaine reports that the city is under attack.”
Tavi blinked and arched an eyebrow, permitting himself no further sign of surprise. “Really?”
“How?” Kitai demanded sharply.
“The message wasn’t a long one, sir,” the centurion replied. “My lord Vanorius said to tell you that some kind of interference ended it almost before it had begun. Just that Aquitaine appeared, in his visage and voice, having somehow driven through the interdiction the vord have kept on watersendings until, um, recently, Your Highness.”
“Well, then,” Tavi said. He inhaled once, nodded to himself, then glanced sharply over his shoulder at Kitai.
She nodded, already drawing on a dark traveling cloak. “I will speak to her immediately.”
“Thank you,” Tavi said. As Kitai left he said, to Ramus, “Centurion, please give the Lord Seneschal my compliments and inform him that our plans to depart have just been moved up by thirty-six hours. I’ll be moving the troops tonight. The city must be prepared to receive the auxiliaries and refugees a little sooner than we expected.”
“Yes, sir,” Ramus said, but his eyes were hard with suspicion.