by Jim Butcher
Are you in, snowcrow?
Sep
PS—How’s the little snowcrow? He set anything on fire yet? When do I get to meet him? And his mother?
Isana stared at the letter and blinked away tears.
Septimus. She could hear his voice as she read the words.
She sniffed before anything could dribble down her nose and looked at the date on the letter. A second letter was visible in the envelope. She opened it and read it is as well.
The handwriting was not Septimus’s. It was angular, sharply leaning to the right, and in places the paper had been torn, as if the quill had been pressed too viciously to the surface of the fine paper upon which it was written.
Raucus,
By the time I got wind of anything and made it to Calderon, it was hours too late. But I was there when they found him. I know that by now the official story has reached you, but it’s nothing but smoke.
Septimus died with five of the finest blades in the Realm in a circle around him. And it wasn’t the Marat alone who did for him. Firecrafting and earthcrafting were both involved. I saw it with my own eyes.
Septimus was the only heir, and his father was arrogant or incompetent enough to allow him to be murdered, despite Septimus’s appeals for his aid, for pressure upon the Senate, for direct action against the ambitious bastards who eventually killed him. The First Lord did nothing, and our Realm is doomed to division and self-destruction as a result. He doesn’t deserve my loyalty, Raucus. Or yours.
I know you won’t believe me, you slow-witted northern snowcrow. And even if you did, you’d never come with me down the road I’ve chosen.
If the House of Gaius can’t defend and protect its own child—and a soul like Septimus’s at that—then how can it do so for the people of the Realm?
I don’t ask you to help, old friend.
Just stay out of my way.
Good-bye.
Attis
“My Lady Isana?” Araris asked quietly.
Isana blinked and looked up from the letter.
Behind them, the Antillan Legions prepared for battle, men rushing about with the calm hurry of practiced professionals. On the fields below, the Vord had engaged the surviving Legions. Isana watched as the First Aquitaine, banners surrounding High Lord Aquitainus Attis himself, literally threw itself into the teeth of the pursuing Vord and stopped them cold, not a hundred yards from the slowest of the fleeing refugees.
“Attis Aquitaine was never his enemy,” Isana breathed, her voice numb. “Rhodes. Kalare.”
“Isana?” Aria asked.
Isana wordlessly passed her the letters. “A week. It’s dated a week before we wed. He was almost the same age Tavi is now.”
Aria read the letters. Isana waited until she looked up again.
“Rhodes and Kalare,” Aria said. “Gaius killed Kalarus personally. And he as much as sent Rhodes out to be butchered by the first Vord attack.”
“Revenge,” Isana said quietly. “It took him more than two decades, but the old man had it all the same.” She shook her head. “And Invidia Aquitaine had sought marriage to Septimus. I never knew that. He never said anything.” Isana smiled faintly, bitterly. “And he spurned her. For a steadholt girl from the back end of nowhere.”
“She was a part of it,” Aria whispered. “The cabal that killed him. That’s what Septimus’s letter means. If one reads between the lines.”
“Citizens and lords,” Isana sighed. “Wounded pride. Ambition. Vengeance. Their motivations seem so . . . average.”
Aria smiled faintly and nodded toward Raucus, who was the center of the swirl of activity. “I think you’ve been given ample opportunity to observe that Citizens and lords can be idiots as easily as anyone else. Perhaps more so.”
Isana gestured at the letters. “Read the letter. It’s in every flourish and scratch. Attis hated Gaius. Hated the corruption, the ambition of his peers.”
“And became what he hated,” Aria said quietly. “It’s happened to many men before him, I suppose.”
Fire blossomed in the midst of the First Aquitaine, the light of a burning sword that was clearly visible, even from that distance, in broad daylight. The Legion roared in response, the sound distant, like the surge of waves crashing on a shoreline. The Legion drove into the mass of the Vord, killing and crushing, lances of fire lashing into the largest of the Vord, spheres of white-hot flame enveloping the heads of the behemoths and sending them crashing down to crush their fellows.
Cavalry alae, launched from the Legions flanking the First Aquitaine, pressed into the gap, harassing and crushing the disordered Vord—while the Legion re-formed and retreated, screened by the shock of the cavalry’s charge. The Legion withdrew perhaps three hundred yards from its original stand against the Vord and reset its lines as the cavalry retreated, in turn, behind them.
Again the Legion clashed with the Vord, who were coming thicker and in greater coordination. The First Aquitaine was joined by its brother Legions on either side—Second Placidan, Isana thought, and the Crown Legion, judging by the banners. Again, the Vord were driven back. Again, the cavalry charged and covered the infantry’s withdrawal. Another three hundred yards were gained—but more and more armored forms were being left still and silent on the ground, to be overrun by the inhuman foes.
Isana watched as the Legion repeated its maneuver against the enemy, but each time the Vord came more thickly, and each time the Legions gained less ground before they were forced to turn and face them again.
“Why hasn’t Antillus attacked yet?” she asked. She looked over her shoulder to Araris, who waited patiently at her back. “If they don’t move soon, the Legions down there will be destroyed.”
Araris shook his head. “No. Aquitaine’s got them right where he wants them.” He pointed at the thickening lines of the Vord. “He’s tempting them into concentrating, readying for a final push.”
“Bloody right he is,” Antillus Raucus said, riding his horse closer, and surveying the battlefield below. “His fliers have spotted us up here. He’s gathering all those great bloody bugs into one place so that I can—” He smashed one fist into the open palm of his other hand, the sound shockingly loud in the comparative quiet of the hilltop. “Not bad work,” he added, in a tone of grudging admiration, “for someone who isn’t much more than an amateur.”
“How long?” Araris asked him.
Raucus pursed his lips. “Five minutes. Next retreat, they’ll push up, and we’ll have them.” He signaled one of the Legion staff waiting nearby and called, “Five minutes!”
The call went up and down the lines of troops and officers, spreading with rapid and precise discipline. Antillus nodded to himself, a sense of confidence and satisfaction radiating from him, now that he was close enough for Isana to sense his emotions. He cleared his throat, and said, “Your Highness?”
“Yes?”
“May I have a moment to speak to you alone?”
Isana arched an eyebrow, but inclined her head to him. “Lady Placida. Araris. Would you give us a moment, please?”
Aria and Araris both murmured assent and walked their horses several yards away. It wasn’t solitude, precisely, but it was as close to a private conversation as they were likely to come by, in the midst of an army preparing to move.
“You never asked me,” Raucus said bluntly. “You never asked me why I had given the order to bring my Legions south. Why I had decided to trust my people’s safety to your word. You just got out of bed and demanded a horse so you could come along.”
“Politely,” Isana said. “I demanded politely. I distinctly remember using the word ‘please.’ ”
Raucus showed his teeth when he laughed. “Crows and bloody furies. It looks like Septimus knew what he was talking about after all.”
Isana returned his smile. “I assumed you would tell me when you were ready.”
“You never asked why I was . . . so set against you, either, when you came to the Wall.”
; “I assumed the same.”
He gestured at the letters she once again held in her hand. “You read them?”
“Of course.”
“You could have been with them,” he said, simply. “You could have been one of the treacherous slives who killed him. Get a child on him, kill him, and put the child on the throne once he was grown. “
Isana drew in a slow breath. “Do you think that now?”
Raucus shook his head. “I followed you here because of what you showed me on that field at the foot of the Wall.”
“What was that?”
The High Lord stared at her for a moment, and then out at the desperate battle unfolding below them. “Any man with a brain in his head looks for three things in anyone he’ll follow: will, brains, and a heart.” His eyes grew distant. “Gaius has the first two. He’s one fearsome old cat.” He gestured at himself. “I’ve the first and last. But those things aren’t enough. Gaius never felt much for his people. He had their fear and respect. Never their love. I took care of my men as best I could. But I let my fear for them blind me to what else was happening.”
“I still don’t understand,” Isana said gently.
“Septimus had all three, lady,” Raucus replied. “You showed me your will when you stayed my attack on the Icemen, and when you challenged me and wouldn’t back down. Even when you bloody well knew you should have.
“You showed me your heart when you fought me as you did—to the death, without flinching. When you lay bleeding with—” He shook his head, as though flinching from the image, but forced himself to continue. “With my sword in your guts. But your concern was for me. I felt it in you. It was no act, lady. You were willing to die to open my fool eyes. There was no scheme in that, no puppet strings. You meant what you said.”
“Yes,” Isana said simply.
“That’s two,” Raucus said. “But when I realized that you staged the whole thing to happen where the Icemen could see—and bloody sense everything that was going on, you showed me you had the brains as well. Sunset came alone into my personal chambers, after we’d seen to your wounds, and gave me his hand and his word that his folk would abide by the truce until we returned from battling the Vord.” Raucus shook his head, and a small note of what might have been wonder entered his voice. “And he meant it. It won’t resolve everything overnight. Maybe even not in my lifetime, but . . .”
“But it’s a start,” Isana said.
“It’s a start, Your Highness,” Raucus said. “Septimus, my friend, chose you. And chose well.” He bowed his head to her, and said, simply, “I am yours to command.”
“Your Grace,” Isana said.
“Highness?”
“These creatures have destroyed our lands. Murdered our people.” Isana lifted her chin. “Pay them for it.”
When Antillus Raucus looked up, his eyes were hard, cold, and clear. “Watch me.”
CHAPTER 42
Once Lady Aquitaine and the Vord queen were gone with their retinues, the courtyard was strangely silent. Only a handful of Vord remained, along with a similarly reduced contingent of collared guards—and the prisoners, of course.
Of which, Amara was very much aware, she herself was currently the most endangered.
She shivered in the cold, her muscles aching from the effort, hardly able to do more than curl her body up as tightly as possible to keep from succumbing to the chills.
“You and your husband crippled my father,” Kalarus Brencis Minoris said in a quiet, deliberate tone. He walked toward her, the silver band of a discipline collar in his hand. “Not that there was a great deal of love lost between Father and me, but my life grew harder after the old slive was trapped in his bed. Do you have any idea how much damage you had to do to his spine to leave him broken like that?”
“H-h-he should have held still,” Amara said. “I’d have been glad to kill him.”
Brencis smiled. “My father always appreciated defiance from his women. I never really had the same tastes—but I’m beginning to see the appeal.” He crouched over Amara, the collar swaying in front of her eyes. “Rook was my first, you know. I think I was about thirteen. She was a couple of years older.” He shook his head. “I thought she liked me. But I realized later that she must have been acting under orders.” He bared his teeth, a hideous expression, completely disconnected from anything resembling a smile. “Just as she must have been doing tonight.”
Amara stared at him for a long, silent moment. Then she said, “It’s not really your fault you were raised by a monster, Brencis. M-maybe you never really had a chance. And I can’t bl-blame you for wanting to survive.” She smiled back at him. “So I’m going to give you one last chance to do the right thing before I k-kill you.”
Brencis stared at her for a second, uncertainty flickering in his eyes. Then he let out a short bark of a laugh. “Kill me? Countess,” he told her, “in a little while, I’m going to my bed. And you’re going to be happy to go with me.” He glanced idly around the courtyard. “Perhaps I’ll bring one of my girls, so that she can bathe you. We’ll see if we can broaden your horizons.”
“Use your head, fool,” Amara said. “Do you think for one moment that you’re going to survive the Vord?”
“Life is short, Countess,” he replied, bitterly. “I have to take what I can from it. And right now, I’m taking you.”
She hadn’t noticed that he’d smeared his bloodied thumb to the collar, but it went around her neck like a band of ice.
And ecstasy turned her world into a single, endless white blur.
She felt her body arch against her bonds, and was helpless to stop it. The pleasure wasn’t merely sexual—although it was that, too intensely so to believe. But atop that rapture were layers and layers of other sensations. The simple satisfaction of a hot drink on a cold morning. The heart-pounding excitement she felt when seeing Bernard for the first time in days or weeks. The joy of soaring up through dark, heavy clouds into the clear blue sky. The fierce pleasure of victory over intense competition in the Wind Trials, when she had been at the Academy. The bubbling laughter that followed after the third or fourth excellent joke she’d heard in an evening—and a thousand more, every single happiness, every single joy, every wonderful thing that had ever happened to her, every individual gratification of the body, mind, and heart, all blended into a single, sublime whole.
Brencis, the courtyard, the Vord, the Realm, even her husband—none of it mattered.
Nothing mattered but feeling this.
She knew she’d be weeping if she’d had thought enough for such inanities.
Someone was whispering to her. She didn’t know who. She didn’t care. The whispers didn’t matter. All that mattered was drowning in the pleasure.
She came back to herself, slowly, inside a warmly lit room. It looked like an inn room, a fairly lavish one. There were soft hangings on the walls, and an enormous bed. It was warm—blessedly warm, after the hideous cold of the courtyard. Her fingers and toes were tingling, so intensely that it would have hurt, if anything she felt could have been interpreted as anything but pure pleasure.
She was standing in a tub, and one of the barely clothed girls was taking off her travel-stained blouse. Amara stood in blissful disinterest. The girl began bathing her face and neck and shoulders, and Amara reveled in the warmth, the feeling of the soft washcloth against her skin, the scent of soap in the air.
She became aware of Brencis walking in a slow circle around the tub, unbuttoning his shirt as he went.
Despite his faults, she thought, he really was quite beautiful. She watched him, though the effort of moving her head simply became too much to sustain. She let her eyes follow him, tracking his movements through her lashes when the simple pleasure of feeling herself being cleaned of weeks of grime became almost too delicious to endure.
“Lovely, Countess,” Brencis said. “You are lovely.”
She shivered in response to his voice, and her eyes closed completely.
; “Don’t forget her hair,” Brencis said.
“Yes, my lord,” murmured the girl. Warm water cascaded over her head, and a gentler, softer-scented soap was applied to her hair. Amara just reveled in it.
“It’s too bad, really,” Brencis said. “I had hoped that you would put up more of a fight than this. But you were brittle, Countess. The ones who go this far under, this swiftly—they don’t come back. Do they, little Lyssa?”
Amara felt the girl standing close beside her shiver. “No, my lord. I don’t want to come back.”
Brencis stopped in front of her, smiling slightly. “I’ll bet she has pretty legs. Very long, very slender, very strong.”
“Yes, my lord,” Lyssa agreed.
Amara found herself sleepily returning Brencis’s smile.
“Take the trousers, off, Amara,” he said, his voice holding a quiet, snarling promise in it.
“Yes, my lord,” Amara said drowsily. The soaking-wet leather was stubborn against her pleasure-numbed fingers. “I . . . it’s too tight, my lord.”
“Then be still,” Brencis said, his voice amused. “Very still.”
A dagger, its tip glittering with fascinating, wicked sharpness, appeared in his hand, and he knelt by her side. “Tell me, Countess,” he murmured. “Were you here on Gaius’s orders?”
“Yes, my lord,” Amara murmured. She watched as the knife’s tip, doubtless enhanced by Brencis’s furycraft, sliced effortlessly through the hem of the leather flying trousers over her ankle. He began cutting slowly upward, his knife opening the garment as readily as a boy might peel a fruit.
“And your husband,” Brencis said. “He isn’t dead, is he?”
“No, my lord,” Amara said sleepily. The knife slid over her calf. She wondered if she would feel it if such a sharp blade opened her flesh. She wondered if, in her current state, it would feel good.