by Jim Butcher
He closed his eyes for a step or two, thinking of the shock on Amara's face when she had been buried to her chin in rough earth, captured by Aquitaine's most capable henchmen. She had deduced his change in loyalties like a true Cursor, but her logic had not prepared her for her emotional reaction. When she accused him, when he admitted that her accusation was true, there had been a flash of expression in her eyes he could not seem to forget. Her eyes had been filled with pain, shocked anger, and sadness.
Something in his chest twisted in a sympathetic reaction, but he ruthlessly forced it away.
He wasn't sure he regretted that he had pushed his emotions so completely aside, and it was that lack of regret that caused him concern. Perhaps the Steadholder was correct. Perhaps he had lost something vital, some spark of life and warmth and empathy that had been extinguished by his betrayal of the Crown and his subsequent actions in the Calderon Valley. Could a man's heart, his soul, perish and yet leave him walking and talking as if alive?
Again, he pushed the thoughts aside. He had no time for that kind of maudlin introspection now. The bounty hunters had begun to close the distance on Fidelias and Isana.
Fidelias drew his short, heavy bow clear of his cloak and slipped a thick and ugly arrow onto the string. With the practiced speed of a lifetime of experience as an archer and woodcrafter, he turned, drew, and sent his shaft home into the throat of the rearmost bounty hunter.
The bounty hunter's partner let out a shout and charged, evidently unaware that the first man was already dead, Fidelias noted. Amateurs, then. It was an old archer's trick, shooting the rearmost foe so that his companions would continue advancing in the open unaware of the danger instead of scattering for cover. Before the would-be bounty hunter had closed the distance, Fidelias nocked another arrow, drew, and sent the heavy shaft through the charging man's left eye at a range of about five feet.
The man dropped, already dead. He lay on the ground, one leg twitching steadily. The first bounty hunter thrashed around for a few more seconds, his spraying blood pattering on the cobblestones. Then he went still.
Fidelias watched them for a full minute more, then set down his bow, drew his knife, and checked the pulse in their throats to be sure they were dead. He had few doubts that they were, but the professional in him hated sloppy work, and only after he was sure both men were dead, did he take up his bow again.
Perhaps Isana was more right than she knew.
Perhaps he had lost the capacity to feel.
Not that it mattered.
"Steadholder," he said, turning to face her. "We should keep moving."
Isana stared at him in total silence, her face pale. Her schooled mask of confidence was gone, replaced with an expression of sickened horror.
"Steadholder," Fidelias said. "We must leave the streets." She seemed to shake herself a little. She looked away from him, narrowed her eyes, and assumed her mask again. "Of course," she said. Her voice shook a little. "Lead on."
Chapter 39
"Come on," Tavi said. "We've got to go."
"Not yet," Kitai said. She turned to the entry of the tunnel and slipped down into it.
"Crows," Tavi muttered. He set the bottle aside and followed her, hissing, "It drops off on the right. Stay to your left."
He followed Kitai back into the ledge above the alien chamber, and crouched beside her as she stared down at the croach, the slow-moving wax spiders, the motionless Canim.
"By the One," she whispered, her eyes wide. "Aleran, we must go."
Tavi nodded and turned to go.
A wax spider appeared over the rim of the ledge, between them and the way back, and moved with lazy grace down the stone ledge toward Tavi.
Tavi froze. The wax spiders were venomous, but, more to the point, they worked with others of their kind. If this one signaled its companions, they would all come after him together-and while he might escape the slow-moving spiders, he would never outrun the bewitched Canim. He might be able to kill the spider, but not without its alerting the rest of its kind.
He glanced back over his shoulder at Kitai. She could only stare back at him, her eyes wide.
And then the spider's front leg touched lightly down on Tavi's hand, and he had to clench his teeth over a scream.
The spider stopped, luminous eyes whirling. It touched his hand with one forelimb for a moment, then used two of its front legs to gently run over his arm and shoulders. He remained rigidly still. The spider's limbs traced lightly over him, darting from his skin to the underside of its head and back several times, before it simply moved forward, stepping on his hand, elbow, then shoulder and crawled over him without attacking, without raising its whistling alarm cry, and without seeming otherwise to notice him.
Tavi turned his head slowly, only to watch the spider repeat its performance upon Kitai, then glide over her and down to the end of the ledge where it crouched and vomited out a patch of pale green croach, which it then began spreading over the ledge.
Tavi traded a long stare with Kitai, perplexed, and wasted no more time in heading back into the tunnel and away from the croach-filled cavern.
"Why did it do that?" Tavi blurted as soon as he had left the tunnel. "Kitai, it should have raised a warning and attacked. Why didn't it?"
Kitai emerged from the tunnel a second later, and even in the sullen light of the Canim lamp, he could see that she was pale and trembling violently.
Tavi stood absolutely motionless for a second. "Kitai?" he asked.
She rose, her arms wrapping around herself as if cold, and her eyes did not focus upon anything. "It must not be," she whispered. "It must not be."
Tavi reached out to her, laying his hand upon her arm. "What must not be?"
She looked up at him, her expression fragile. "Aleran. If… the old tales. If my people's tales are correct. Then these are the vord."
"Um," Tavi said. "The what?"
"The vord," Kitai whispered, and shuddered as she did. "The devourers. The eaters of worlds, Aleran."
"I haven't ever heard of them."
"No," Kitai said. "If you had, your cities would lie in ashes and ruin. Your people would be running. Hunted. As ours were."
"What are you talking about?"
"Not here, Aleran. We must go back." Her voice rose in panic. "We cannot stay here."
"All right," Tavi said, trying to sound soothing. "All right. Come on." He took up Varg's lamp and headed back up out of the Deeps, looking for the markings he'd left on the walls at intersections as they walked.
It took Kitai several moments to slow her breathing again. Then she said, "Long ago, our people lived elsewhere. Not in the lands we have today. Once we lived in a manner like your own people. In settlements. In cities."
Tavi arched an eyebrow. "I've never heard that. I didn't think your folk had any cities."
"No," Kitai said. "Not anymore."
"What happened to them?"
"The vord came," Kitai said. "They took many of our people. Took them as you saw those wolf-creatures in that cavern. They, too, had been taken."
"Taken," Tavi said. "You mean controlled? Enslaved, somehow?"
"More than that," she said. "The wolf-creatures you saw have been devoured. Everything within them that made them who they were is gone. Their spirit has been consumed, Aleran. Only the spirit of the vord remains-and the taken are without pain, or fear, or weakness. The vord spirit gives them great strength."
Tavi frowned. "But why would the vord do such a thing?"
"Because that is what they do. They spawn. Make more of themselves. They take, devour or destroy all life, until there is nothing else under the sky. They create themselves into new lives, new forms." She shuddered. "Our people have kept the tales of them. Dozens of horrible stories, Aleran, preserved over lifetimes beyond knowing. The kind that make even Marat stay close to their fires and huddle shivering in their blankets at night."
"Why keep those stories, then?" he asked.
"To help us remember th
em," Kitai said. "Twice, the vord all but destroyed our people, leaving only small bands running for their lives. Though it was long ago, we keep the stories to warn us should they come again." She bit her lip. "And now they have."
"How do you know? I mean, Kitai. If the Marat have worked so hard to remember them, why didn't you just point at them two years ago, and say, 'Oh look, it's the vord'?"
She let out an impatient hiss. "Am I speaking only to myself?" she demanded. "I told you, Aleran. They renew and reshape their forms. They are shapechangers. Each time the vord destroyed my people, they appeared as something different."
"Then how do you know it's them?"
"By the signs," she said. "Folk going missing. Being taken. The vord begin their work in secret, so that they are not discovered before they have a chance to multiply and spread. They strive to divide those who oppose them so that their enemies may be weakened." She shuddered. "And they are led by their queens, Aleran. I understand it only now: That creature, the one from within the heart of the Valley of Silence, the one you burned-it was the vord queen."
Tavi paused to look for the next marking. "I think I saw it. Here."
"In the cavern?"
"Yes. It was covered in a cloak, and issuing orders to a Cane who had not been… been…" He made a vague gesture.
"Taken," Kitai said.
"Taken." Tavi told her about the conversation between the cloaked figure and Sarl.
Kitai nodded. "You saw it. The vord plans to kill your headman. It wishes to create enough chaos to increase their numbers without being noticed. Until it is too late."
Tavi found his paces quickening. "Crows. Could they do such a thing?"
"The second time they ravaged my people, we were not able to stop them-and we had faced them before. Your people know nothing of them. So they seek to weaken you, divide you."
"The vord queen is using Sarl," Tavi murmured. "Divide and conquer. He provided her with soldiers to begin her work, and his caste has been hurling storms at Gaius in order to weaken him and force him to spend most nights in his mediation chamber, so that they have an idea of where he will be when they try to kill him. And the queen knows that if Alera is weakened, the Canim will attack us. She wants the Canim to attack and weaken us further-and in the process they will take losses as well. They'll leave themselves more vulnerable to the vord."
Kitai nodded. "In our tales they turned our peoples upon one another in much the same way."
"Crows," he swore quietly. Tavi thought of the long stair down to the First Lord's meditation chamber. After the first guard station, there were no other entrances or exits from the stairwell or the chambers below.
It was a death trap.
Tavi walked even faster. "They know where Gaius is. Twenty Canim might be able to fight their way to him. We have to stop them."
Kitai kept pace. "We will warn your warriors, lead them here, and destroy the vord."
"Sir Miles," Tavi said.
Kitai looked at him blankly.
"He's a war leader," Tavi clarified. "But I'm not sure he'll attack."
"Why would he not?"
Tavi clenched his jaw and pressed ahead, in a hurry but not stupid enough to go sprinting through the tunnels until he was hopelessly lost. "Because he doesn't like me very much. He might not believe me. And if I tell him I got the information from a Marat, I'll be lucky if he only storms out of the room."
"He hates us," Kitai said.
"Yes."
"Madness," Kitai said. "The vord are a threat to one and all."
"Sir Miles will understand that, too," Tavi said. "Eventually. I'm just not sure there's enough time for him to be stubborn." Tavi shook his head. "Maestro Killian is the one to convince. If I do that, he'll order Miles to do it."
They reached the last marking Tavi had left on the wall and entered familiar tunnels again. Tavi picked up his pace to an easy run, mind racing over what he had to do, how best to get it done.
He registered a sudden motion in front of him, and he flinched to one side just as a hooded attacker with a heavy truncheon appeared from behind a veil of furycrafting and swung it at him. The club glanced off his left arm, and Tavi felt it go suddenly numb. Kitai snarled somewhere behind him. Tavi hit the wall, stumbled, and barely managed to keep from falling. He drew his knife and turned to confront the attacker, just in time to see the truncheon in motion only inches from his face.
There was a flashing burst of bright lights, then everything went black.
Chapter 40
Dawn had not yet come when Amara and Bernard woke together. They shared a slow, soft kiss, then without a word they both rose and began to don their arms and armor. Just as they finished, there was a step outside the makeshift room, and Doroga pushed the curtain of cloaks aside. The Marat's broad, ugly face was grim.
"Bernard," he rumbled. "It is dawn. They come."
Chapter 41
Isana accompanied the assassin to a wine club on a quiet, dimly lit section of Mastercraft Lane, where the finest craftsmen in all of Alera plied their trades to the wealthy clientele of the city. The wine club itself was located between a small complex of buildings specializing in statuary and a furylampmaker's workshop. There was no sign over its door, no indication that it was anything but a service entrance or possibly the entrance to a countinghouse or some other business that did not require walk-in customers.
Despite the late hour, the door opened promptly when the assassin knocked, and a liveried servant conducted them down a hall and into a private room without speaking to them.
The room was cozy and lavishly appointed-a circle of small divans meant to be lounged upon on one's side while chatting and sipping wine. One of the divans was occupied.
Invidia Aquitaine lay upon her side, beautiful in the same silk gown she had worn at Kalare's fete. A crystal goblet in her hand was half-filled with a pale wine. Additionally, she wore a translucent drape of fabric over her features-a veil, Isana judged, meant to provide the legal pretense of anonymity should the evening's discussion somehow come under the scrutiny of the law.
Lady Aquitaine looked up as they entered and inclined her head pleasantly. "Welcome, Steadholder. I presume that my associate talked you into the meeting."
"He was persuasive-under the circumstances," Isana replied.
Lady Aquitaine gestured toward the divan across from her. "Please, relax. Would you care for a taste of wine? This is an excellent vintage."
Isana stepped over to the indicated divan but did not recline upon it. Instead, she sat upon its very edge, her back rigidly straight, and frowned at Lady Aquitaine. "I've no stomach for most wine," she replied. "Thank you."
Lady Aquitaine's pleasant smile faded into a neutral mask. "This might be easier for you if you indulged somewhat in the pleasantries, Steadholder. They do no harm."
"Nor serve any purpose, except to waste time," Isana replied. "And time is of importance to me at the moment. I came here to discuss business."
"As you wish," Lady Aquitaine replied. "Where would you like to begin?"
"Tell me what you want," Isana said. "What would you have of me?"
She took a slow sip of wine. "First, your public support of Aquitaine and my lord husband," she said, "who would become your political patron. It means that you would appear in public wearing the colors of Aquitaine-particularly at the presentation at the conclusion of Festival. You may be asked to attend dinners, social functions, that sort of thing, with my husband providing transport and covering any of your expenses."
"I work for a living," Isana said. "And I am responsible for a steadholt with more than thirty families in it. I'd do poor service to them constantly running off to social occasions."
"True. Shall we negotiate upon a reasonable number of days each year, then?"
Isana pressed her lips together and nodded, forcing herself to contain her emotions carefully.
"Fine. We'll work that out. Secondly, I would require your support as a member of the Dianic League,
which would require you to attend a convocation of the League once each year and engage in written discourse over the course of the rest of the year."
"And within the League, you wish me to support you."
"Naturally," Lady Aquitaine said. "And finally, we may ask you to support certain candidates for the Senatorial elections in Riva. As your home city, you will be able to vote in the elections, and your opinion will inevitably carry some weight with your fellow Citizens."
"I want something understood, Your Grace," Isana said quietly.
"What might that be?"
"That I know full well the extent of you and your husband's ambitions, and have no intention of breaking the laws of the Realm to help you. My support and participation will extend as far as the letter of the law-and not an inch farther."
Lady Aquitaine raised both eyebrows. "Of course. I wouldn't dream of asking you for that."
"I'm sure," Isana said. "I simply want us to understand one another."
"I think we do," Lady Aquitaine replied. "And what would you ask in return for your support?"
Isana drew in a deep breath. "My family is in danger, Your Grace. I came here to contact the First Lord and get help sent back to Calderon, and to warn my nephew of a potential threat to his life. I have been unable to contact either of them on my own. If you would have my support, then you must help me protect my kin. That is my price."
Lady Aquitaine took another slow sip of wine. "I shall need to know more about what you require, Steadholder, before I can make any promises. Please explain the circumstances in greater detail."
Isana nodded, then began to recount everything Doroga had told them about the vord, the way they spread, where they had gone, and the danger they represented to the whole of the Realm. When she finished, she folded her hands in her lap and regarded the High Lady.
"That's… quite a tale," she murmured. "How certain are you of its truth?"