“Teriana?” Caradoc asked.
“The Six forgive me,” she whispered, then more loudly, “I need you to come with me.”
“I can’t,” he said. “The battle is underway, and I must prepare to deal with the injuries that will come from it.”
“This is urgent. You can come back after.”
“Is it one of them?”
She considered lying to him, then said, “Aye. He’s sick. He’ll die without your help.”
“You yourself told me that these men are godless. That if they learned about Hegeria’s mark, they’d use me until I am dead.”
“I know what I said.” She bit the insides of her cheeks. “But I need him to live.”
The healer’s eyes were too shrewd. Too knowing. “It’s their leader, isn’t it?”
Teriana didn’t answer.
“I do not wish death upon this young man,” he said slowly. “But my clan relies upon me, and I will not jeopardize them for the sake of one.”
“Please reconsider.”
The healer eyed her; then he shook his head. “No.”
I will not let Marcus die. The knife made a cruel little sound as she pulled it out of her boot, the Cel steel wicked sharp. “Start walking.”
“You can’t make me heal this man.”
“You let him die, and I’ll tell the rest of them that you could’ve helped and chose not to,” she whispered in Caradoc’s ear as she led him through the town. “What do you think they’ll do to you then? What do you think they’ll do to your people?”
It was a cruel threat, and she wasn’t certain if she meant it. But she needed his help, and she did not think he’d give it willingly.
“They are godless,” he replied, but the reassuring smile he gave those standing guard told her the threat had worked. “What if Hegeria chooses not to help him?”
It was a real risk. She’d seen firsthand that the gods were taking sides in this, and she did not know where the goddess stood. Except this was Marcus’s only chance, so she had to try. “I suggest you pray it doesn’t come to that.”
The journey back to camp didn’t take nearly as long as her dash through the jungle, and she walked purposefully toward the gates, praying the guards didn’t stop her. Didn’t question her. Didn’t insist on following her to the command tent.
“Stay silent,” she muttered, and not for the first time she was grateful to be the only one who spoke fluent Cel. “You raise a fuss, they’ll cut you down without hesitation.”
“Halt!” one of the guards shouted, and she recognized the voice as that of Avitius, one of her regular gambling companions. “Identify yourselves.”
“It’s Teriana.”
A burning crossbow bolt flew through the air, digging into the ground in front of her, and she carefully pulled it out of the ground and held it up so her face was illuminated.
“Shit,” Avitius said. “When did you leave again? And where the hell are Quintus and Miki? The battle’s begun—the legatus isn’t going to be happy to hear about this.”
“He knows,” she shouted back, hoping volume would hide the quiver in her voice. “This man is an herbarius in Ereni’s town. Marcus had questions for him about medical supplies, or something like that. I’m supposed to keep him here until the battle’s won.”
This was the test. She’d done all she could to earn the trust of the Cel legion, and now it was time to discover whether it would pay off.
Yawning, she rocked on her heels as though the entire procedure bored her, doing her best to ignore the fact that her sweaty shirt was glued to her back. They could refuse to let the healer in. Or worse, they could insist on escorting her back to the tent, and there’d be no way to stop them from discovering Marcus. But what choice did she have? Without the help of a marked healer, he’d die.
Maybe he already has.
“This is the first we’ve heard about this,” Avitius called down, and her fear turned to panic.
“That’s because I was supposed to be back before they marched,” she said, struggling to hide her agitation. She didn’t have time for this. “You can ask Marcus when he gets back, if you doubt me so much.”
They conferred among themselves; then the gate swung open wide enough to admit the two of them. “Stay silent,” she repeated, then pulled Caradoc inside.
“We’re breaking the rules for you,” Avitius said. “The legatus doesn’t confirm your claim, both you and I are going to be sitting pretty for the next few weeks.”
“Good thing I gamble just as well standing,” she replied, watching as they searched the healer for weapons. “And I promise, I won’t let him out of my sight.”
“He needs an escort,” the legionnaire replied.
“I’m pretty sure I can mind one man for the length of time it takes Marcus to return.” Teriana made a face as she walked backward into the camp, tugging Caradoc with her. “I thought this was supposed to be an easy fight? After all the bragging I’ve heard, I’m surprised they aren’t back already.”
The legionnaires laughed, and she held her breath.
“Keep an eye on him,” Avitius said. “This one’s on you, Teriana.”
She grinned and saluted, then headed straight for the command tent, lifting a hand in greeting to those standing guard outside. “This man is Ereni’s herbarius. Marcus wants to talk to him. I’m supposed to keep him entertained. Amarin’s in there, too.”
One of the legionnaires shrugged and waved her inside, Ereni having spent enough time here that having one of her people inside was no cause for comment. Not with the maps and gold kept under lock and key.
The first thing Teriana noticed when she pushed through the flaps was the silence. And a knife carving her from stem to stern wouldn’t have gutted her so completely. No.
Amarin had stood when she’d entered, and she had to tear the question from her throat. “Is he…?”
He shook his head, and a faint prickle of hope filled her. “Not yet.”
“But very nearly,” Caradoc said, pushing past her. Amarin’s face darkened at the sight of him, but his lack of reaction only confirmed how far gone Marcus was.
“Nothing can be done, Teriana,” he said. “If none of the greatest physicians in the Empire were able to cure him, there is no chance a herbarius from some backwater fishing village will do better.”
She bristled, but there was no time for arguments. “Well?” she demanded of the healer.
He dropped to his knees, and she knew from past experience that he was weighing and measuring the life left in the legionnaire, his god mark allowing him to see where and what damage had been done. “He’s close to death.”
“I can see that.”
“This will cost me.”
“So will doing nothing. You know the stakes, so make your choice.”
If her soul wasn’t already forsaken, it was now. Teriana had been raised to believe that a healer’s touch was a gift, not something one demanded. And certainly not something one forced on pain of death.
The healer bowed his head. “Hegeria willing, the damage can be repaired. However, the affliction is part of him, and there is nothing I can do to keep it from happening again.”
“I understand.” Her fingers felt like ice, and her knees trembled as she crouched next to Marcus’s head. “If you help him, I’ll … I’ll be in your debt.”
“No, you won’t,” Caradoc replied, and he reached and removed the narrow tube that was all that kept Marcus alive.
“No!” Amarin gasped, but Teriana shoved him back.
“This is his only chance.”
And it wasn’t going to work. Marcus twitched, his pasty skin turning blue. Whether Caradoc had done it on purpose or Hegeria had refused his call, the healer was letting him die, and it was her fault. Her fault, but she’d make him pay.
Jerking the knife out of her boot once more, she leveled the blade at Caradoc, and only then did she see that he’d aged. And though she’d witnessed it a dozen times before, the imp
ossibility of watching the years drain from the healer to save another still struck her to the core. His grey hair turned white, skin wrinkling and mottling, his shoulders drooping as though they’d carried a great burden for half a century or more.
And Marcus’s color was returning, his breathing steadying and losing the horrible gasping wheeze.
The healer collapsed.
Neither she nor Amarin moved, both of them staring, transfixed. Then the servant reached down, his fingers hesitating over Caradoc’s throat before pressing where a pulse should be. He shook his head. “He’s dead.”
A dull roar filled Teriana’s ears; then she crawled on her hands and knees to the corner and retched. Her body spasmed and jerked as though it were trying to rid itself of the horrible press of guilt, but the feeling kept growing and expanding and … the Six help her, she’d killed a man—a marked healer, an innocent—to save her enemy. To save the man set on conquering the entire world. What had she done? What had she become?
“Teriana?” Marcus’s voice. His hands on her shoulders. “What has happened? Who is this dead man?”
She shrugged his hands off, refusing to respond, because what answer could she possibly give that wouldn’t make things worse?
Traitor.
Traitor.
Traitor.
34
TERIANA
The late-afternoon sun was blindingly bright, the air full of the smell of sweat from the crowd of thousands standing before the platform. Teriana’s eyes drifted over their heads to fix on the Cel banner flapping from the pole Marcus had ordered erected in the city’s center, having officially claimed Galinha as liberated from Urcon’s unlawful rule. How long, she wondered, until liberated turned into conquered?
Marcus coughed softly, jerking her attention from the flag to his face, a shot of panic lancing through her. But he only cocked one eyebrow at the page she clutched with sweating hands. Translate.
Clearing her tired throat, she belted out the crimes of the line of men and women standing under guard on the platform, then their sentence. They were thieves, all, and for their crimes they’d each lose an index finger and spend a month in prison. Ereni and the other imperators had agreed to the laws to which their clans—and their enemies—would abide, but Teriana wondered whether they realized that those laws were a version of the Empire’s laws, carefully curated by Marcus to ensure they’d agree to them. As were the punishments.
The cheers of the crowd were almost loud enough to drown the screams as the fingers were removed, methodically and efficiently, a pair of medics calmly cauterizing and bandaging the injuries before more soldiers dragged the criminals off to the bulging prison that the engineers were working to expand and fortify.
Averting her eyes from the spray of blood, Teriana wiped the sweat from her brow and took a long swallow from the waterskin hanging at her belt. They’d been at this for hours, and she wanted to be done. Needed to be done with this seemingly endless day of listening and translating the testimonies of the citizens of this city. For years, they’d lived in fear under Urcon’s rule—his soldiers and cronies milking every last copper from the people, even as they’d thieved, raped, murdered, and terrorized. Now all that was over.
Until it is replaced by a new regime.
“We’re almost through,” Marcus murmured, and his elbow bumped hers as he reached for the last sheet of paper listing names and crimes.
His touch made her skin tingle, and though she should’ve moved to give him more room, Teriana stood her ground, greedily anticipating the next time his hand would brush hers. For longer than she cared to admit, she’d been acutely aware of his presence, everyone else fading into the background when he was near. She’d justified it with a thousand different reasons and maybe they hadn’t been lies, but neither had they been the truth.
As she took another mouthful of water, her mind drifted to the early hours of the morning when they’d returned the healer’s body to the town. After prying an explanation out of her and Amarin, Marcus had given life to her lie, appearing visibly irritated that the herbarius had the audacity to die before he’d had the chance to speak with him about supplying the legion, and openly chastising those who’d allowed Teriana to bring him into camp after dark for breaking protocol, because to do otherwise would’ve drawn more attention. He hadn’t even given Felix and Servius the truth, telling them after they’d orchestrated the switch that Teriana had procured a tonic from the Arinoquian that had relieved his attack, though the contents of the concoction remained a mystery.
With Caradoc shrouded on a litter carried between two of Marcus’s men, he’d accompanied her to the town, ostensibly to undo any damage that had been done.
The expressions on the Arinoquians’ faces when they’d arrived would remain burned on Teriana’s soul for the rest of her life, several of them falling to their knees in tears as they realized their healer was dead. Caradoc had been born in that town—was likely related to many of them in some fashion—but his loss was greater than that. Having a child marked by Hegeria was considered one of the greatest gifts the gods could give, because it allowed the clan to survive illness, conflict, and disasters. They would feel the healer’s death long after their grief faded to dust.
“Is there anything I can do?” Marcus asked once he’d ordered his men back to camp. “Gold or some other form of recompense? Anything?”
She shook her head. “Would be an insult. They believe his death was the will of the gods, not something to be profited from.” Besides, if anyone deserved to pay, it was her. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t expected Caradoc to die from healing Marcus—he had. And it was because she’d given him no choice. A healer’s touch was a gift, and she’d stolen it to save the life of the man leading the Cel tide.
The Arinoquians said nothing as she explained that their healer had passed saving the life of a man near death, knowing they would mistake her tears as grief rather than guilt. Hating that she was too much of a coward to correct them.
As they set to building a pyre, Marcus moved to leave, but Teriana caught his wrist and he didn’t argue. The Arinoquians placed the healer’s body on the stacks of wood and fuel, his white hair dangling down one side. Except all she could see was the face of a man with years of life in him, with so much left to offer.
A copper coin was placed on his forehead. “To pay his passage,” she explained. “They’re hoping Madoria takes him so he can be with his family in the afterlife.”
“Copper?”
Swallowing felt like it was tearing her throat apart. “It’s all they can afford.”
Marcus fumbled at his belt, then tripped as he stepped forward, holding out a gleaming gold coin to Ereni. The imperatrix stared at it for a long moment, then nodded, and Marcus carefully replaced the copper coin with the golden one. When he turned, Ereni was holding out a flickering torch, and without hesitation Marcus took it, circling the pyre until the whole of it was engulfed. Then he returned to Teriana’s side.
“You didn’t have to do that.” Why didn’t I?
“It’s only gold.”
And she knew it wasn’t that he had chests full of it back at camp but rather that he valued life over wealth. Over glory. Over the ambition of the Empire. While his end goal ensured his place as the enemy, the many-layered truth that had been uncovered made it impossible to hate him for what he’d done. For what he would do. It was all shades of grey: moral justification for immoral ends. A good man pushed into the role of a villain—not just for the sake of his own survival, but for that of his men. And her control crumbled, tears pouring down her cheeks, because Teriana knew, if given the choice, that she’d do the exact same thing again. Would do whatever it took to protect his life.
Traitor.
The beat of drums pulled her from the uneasy memory, and her eyes fixed on the prisoners the legionnaires were dragging onto the platform. The crowd went mad, rotten fruit and worse sailing through the air to smash against the criminals. The Cel were ca
ught in the crossfire, but they were too well trained to react. And besides, this was the reaction they wanted.
There were ten of them. Murderers and rapists, and Teriana had heard firsthand of the things they’d done to terrorize their own people. To keep them quelled. She’d translated the stories while Marcus and Titus had listened, even Cassius’s wretch of a son losing his color at the things he heard.
“Make them short nooses,” Titus had said before he’d walked out. “Let the bastards choke to death.”
Marcus had said nothing, but to Teriana the ropes appeared of the typical length, as mandated by the Empire, the drop enough to break necks. He waited until his men nodded, then he held up one hand, and to Teriana’s amazement, the crowd fell silent. Then he balled up the sheet of parchment and let it fall to his feet, and she did not need to see the surprised expressions on Servius’s and Felix’s faces to know this was out of character.
He stared at the criminals for another long moment, then gave Teriana a nod before turning to face the crowd.
“For two decades,” he shouted, “you’ve lived under the rule of the tyrant Urcon. For two decades, he has stolen from you. Beaten you down. Burned your homes and stolen your children. Anyone who dares stand against him has found their lives cut short. For two decades, you’ve lived in fear while these murderers”—he jabbed a finger in the direction of the prisoners—“lived like kings off your labors.”
He paused, and Teriana instinctively translated, belting out the words so that everyone in the crowd could hear.
“That fear ends today!”
The crowd screamed their approval.
But not all. Ereni stood stock still among her cheering peers, her jaw tight and her expression fixed on the hanging men. Then it shifted to Teriana. And she knew. Knew that for the first time, Ereni was truly seeing the danger of the Cel invasion. Was seeing that she and her fellow imperators were no longer the ones in control.
“Urcon believes himself untouchable,” Marcus shouted. “He believes himself safe in his fortress surrounded by his mercenary army, but today, Galinha is free. Tomorrow, we begin our march on Aracam. And when we arrive at the gates, it will be Urcon’s turn to know fear!”
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