by Jim Butcher
“Araris,” Isana said quietly, and held up her hand.
His eyes remained on Aquitaine for another hot second. Then he glanced at her, frowning, as she silently urged him to understand what she was going to do. After an endless number of heartbeats, Araris visibly relaxed and returned to his position by the door.
Aquitaine watched the swordsman withdraw and turned back to Isana, frowning thoughtfully. He stared at her for a long moment, then slowly lowered his hand, and said, “Your answer is no.”
“Your offer is . . . reasonable, Lord Aquitaine,” she said. “Very, very reasonable. And your arguments are sound. But the price you ask is too high.”
“Price?”
She smiled slightly. “You would have me give my world to this plan. Abandon things it has taken a lifetime to build. Embrace deceits and empty ideas. It would leave my mind and heart a wasted heath, as burned and empty and as useless as all those farms you destroyed to slow the vord.”
Aquitaine looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he nodded, and said, “I do not understand. But I must accept your answer.”
“Yes. I think you must.”
He frowned. “Octavian knows he must protect himself against me. And I, for my part, must similarly protect myself against him. If it is possible, I will avoid a direct confrontation. I have no particular desire to do him harm.” He met Isana’s eyes. “But these things have a way of taking on a life of their own. And I will see the Realm whole, strong, and ready to defend itself.”
She inclined her head to him, very slightly, and said, “Then your wisest course will be to accept the will of Gaius Sextus, Lord Aquitaine.”
“Gaius Sextus is dead, lady.” He bowed just as slightly in reply. “And look where accepting the will of that old serpent has brought us.”
Aquitaine nodded once to Araris and strode from the room.
Araris shut the door behind the High Lord and turned to Isana. He exhaled slowly, and only then did he lift his hand from his sword.
Isana padded over to him and their arms slid around one another. She held him very close to her, leaning her cheek against his chest. She stayed there for several moments, closing her eyes. Araris’s arms tightened around her, holding her without pressing her too hard against the steel links of his armor. As they stood close, Isana felt the cool reserve of the metalcrafting he’d been using to contain his emotions as it receded.
For some time, there was only his presence, the warmth of his love, as steady as any rock, and Isana let that warmth push back the cold of her worries and fears.
After a little while, she asked, “Did I do the right thing?”
“You know you did,” he replied.
“Did I?” she asked. “He had a point. He had several.”
Araris made a growling sound in his throat. After a moment, he said, “Maybe. So ask yourself something.”
“What?”
“Could you live a lie?”
She shuddered. “I’ve done it before. To protect Tavi.”
“So did I,” he said. “I was there.” He gestured at his scarred face. “Paid a price for it. And when . . . when I got out from under that burden, it was the best thing that had happened to me since Septimus died.”
“Yes,” Isana said quietly. She lifted a hand and laid it on his scarred face, on the old coward’s brand burned there. She leaned in and kissed his mouth gently. “No. I can’t do that anymore.”
He nodded and rested his forehead against hers. “There it is, then.”
They were still for a while, and Isana finally asked, “What did Aquitaine mean about defending the wrong woman?”
Araris made a thoughtful sound. “Something that happened after Seven Hills,” he said. “Septimus had led one of the cavalry wings personally, in the pursuit of the enemy after we’d taken the field. The rebel command staff had fled to half a dozen different steadholts where . . . where they hadn’t used their slaves kindly.”
Isana shivered.
“One in particular . . . I forget his name. Tall, lanky fellow, a Count. He was good with a blade, and his retainers fought to the death to defend him. It took me, Aldrick, Septimus, and Miles to break their last line of defense. And we barely managed it.” He sighed. “It was ugly before it was done. And this Count had kept a number of body slaves in his chambers. One of them had killed herself when she saw him die. The others weren’t in much better shape. Wasn’t one of them older than sixteen, and they’d all been fitted with discipline collars.”
Isana felt suddenly sick.
“We took the steadholt’s staff alive, mostly. One of them had put the collars on them. So we got them off three of the girls, but the fourth one . . .” Araris shook his head. “She might have been fourteen. She’d been wearing the collar since she was ten. And she was . . .”
“Wrong?” Isana suggested gently.
“Broken,” Araris replied. “She had no idea how to relate to other people unless it was to offer herself. She could barely dress herself. She’d been regularly given wine and aphrodin. A beautiful child, really, but you could see it in her eyes. She’d been damaged, and she wasn’t coming back.
“Of course, the Princeps extended his protection to her. But she was getting more upset and desperate every day. Like her world had been inverted. She didn’t know where she fit, or what to do. By the time we got back to Alera Imperia, she just shivered and screamed a lot.” He glanced up at Isana. “She was a watercrafter, a strong one.”
Isana inhaled sharply. “But . . . that means that as her gifts were blooming . . .”
Araris nodded. “She got to feel exactly what those men felt when they took her. The poor child. Death would have been kinder than what she went through.” He cleared his throat. “So. She wouldn’t stop screaming and crying until one night she did. Septimus sent Miles to check on her—he’d been making moon eyes at her ever since he first saw her. He wasn’t more than a year or two older than she was. Miles followed the Princeps’ orders and walked in on the girl and Aldrick.”
“Oh, crows,” Isana sighed.
“Miles was jealous, and furious that Aldrick should use her so—though the girl didn’t seem to mind. So he challenged Aldrick to the juris macto on the spot.”
“The famous duel in Alera Imperia,” Isana said.
Araris nodded. “Miles was going to get himself killed, so I nudged him out in front of a wagon. That’s where he got his bad knee. And I took his place in the juris macto.”
Isana frowned up at him. “Why?”
“Because what Aldrick was doing was wrong. Regardless of whether or not it reassured her.” He gave her a brief, wan smile. “There are some things you just can’t ignore.”
She nodded slowly. “Go on.”
“Not much more to it,” Araris said. “I beat Aldrick, but I couldn’t kill him. He was one of the Princeps’ singulares. Like a brother to me. But while he was still on his knees, Septimus walked up to him and castigated him, in front of half of the capital. Cast him out of his company and made it clear in no uncertain terms that Aldrick was to stay out of his sight if he wanted to keep breathing.”
“What happened?”
“No one in Alera Imperia would have let him wash their dishes for free after what Septimus said. So he took the girl and left.”
“Odiana,” Isana said. The image of the tall, dour Aldrick and the sweetly curved dark-haired woman always to be found in his company sprang into her thoughts.
Araris nodded. “I tried to be kind to her, for my part. Helped her eat. Gave her my blanket one cold night, on the way to the capital. I suppose that’s why she helped me at Second Calderon. But afterward, I thought that it would have been better if I hadn’t fought him once Miles was safely in a healing tub. The duel made the events that provoked it public knowledge. Septimus had no choice but to dismiss Aldrick, and as harshly as possible. If I hadn’t handled it that way, maybe Aldrick would have been at First Calderon. Maybe it would have made a difference. Maybe a lot of things would
be different.”
“Do you believe that?” Isana asked.
Araris smiled faintly. “I don’t know. I think about it often, what I might have done differently. But I suppose we all do that with the important choices.”
A knock sounded at the door.
“Ah,” Isana said. “The escort from the Senate, I suppose.” They broke their embrace, and Isana carefully smoothed her dress. “Would you care to open the door, please.”
Araris drew himself back up into flawless military posture and inclined his head to her. Then he went to the door, reached out a hand—
And the door itself flew from its hinges with a squeal of tearing metal, struck Araris full on in the chest, and flung him across the room to crash into the opposite wall.
Men in black armor entered the room, moving swiftly, precisely. One of them flung the door from Araris’s prostrate body. Two more held weapons on the downed swordsman. Two pointed gleaming blades at Isana, who froze, staring wide-eyed.
The men weren’t dressed in black armor.
They were covered in vord chitin. The gleaming steel bands of discipline collars shone upon their throats.
There was a light tread in the hall, and a slender figure covered in a great, dark cloak entered the room. A slender, feminine, snow-white hand rose to point a single, green-black fingernail at Isana. “Yes,” hissed an alien, buzzing voice. “Yes. I recognize the scent. That is she.”
“Lady,” urged a quiet voice from the hall. “We cannot circumvent the sentry furies much longer.”
The vord Queen—for she could be no one else—prowled across the room to Isana and seized her wrist in a crushing grip. Isana bit down on a cry of pain as something broke with a quiet crack.
“Bring them both,” the Queen all but purred. “Oh, yes. Now it is my turn.”
CHAPTER 9
“Tribune Antillar,” Tavi said. “I need you.”
Max looked up from his lunch, blinking in confusion at the tone of Tavi’s voice. But though Max was Tavi’s friend, he was also Legion. He rose at once, banged a fist to his chest in salute, and fell into step beside Tavi before he’d finished chewing his last bite of food. As Tavi stalked out of the mess hall, he spotted Crassus pacing across the camp, speaking earnestly to one of the Legion’s centurions.
“Tribune Antillus!” Tavi barked. “Centurion Schultz! With me.”
Crassus and Schultz reacted in almost precisely the same way Max had. Tavi never slowed his steps, and they hurried to fall into pace behind him and Maximus. Tavi headed for the Canim encampment without speaking further, but they hadn’t gone a hundred yards before hooves thundered over the ground, and Kitai swung herself down from her horse, her expression dour. She stared intently at Tavi for a moment, then started walking next to him.
A surge of relief and pleasure at seeing her face briefly suppressed the anger and calculation that drove his current steps. “When did you get back?” he asked.
“Just now, Aleran. Obviously.” She looked at him again, as though to reassure herself that he was still there. “I felt something.”
“Two Canim just tried to kill me.”
Kitai’s lips peeled back from her teeth. “Varg?”
“No way to know for certain. But it isn’t like him.”
Kitai growled. “His people. His responsibility.”
Tavi grunted, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with her. “Were you successful?”
She eyed him, and said, not without a measure of scorn, “Aleran.”
Tavi bared his teeth in a fierce grin. “Of course. I apologize.”
“As well you should,” Kitai said. “What do you hope to accomplish?”
“I will get answers from Varg,” Tavi said.
“What?” blurted Max. “The Canim tried to kill you?”
“About five minutes ago,” Tavi said.
“Then why the crows are we walking toward their camp?”
“Because I need to move fast before this becomes something bad,” Tavi said. “And because that’s where Varg is.”
“And if he did send them to kill you, what’s going to stop him from finishing the job when you get there?”
“You are,” Tavi said.
Max scowled. “Oh. I am.”
“Don’t be a hog about it,” Tavi said. “Crassus and Schultz deserve to contribute, too.”
Max let out a growling sound. “Bloody Legions,” he muttered, under his breath. “Bloody Canim. Bloody crazy First Lords.”
“If you want to stay here . . .” Tavi began.
Max glowered at him. “Of course not.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Schultz is competent. But it would all go to the crows if my little brother was in charge, and he outranks Schultz.”
“Technically speaking,” Crassus said, “I also outrank you.”
“Do not,” Max said. “We’re both Tribunes.”
“I got there first.”
“We got there at the same time. Besides, I got assigned to the First Aleran six months before it formed,” Max replied.
Crassus snorted. “As a centurion. A fake centurion.”
“Doesn’t matter. Seniority’s mine.”
“Children,” Tavi chided. “You don’t see Schultz bickering about such things, do you?”
“If it please the captain, sir,” the plain-faced Schultz said, “I am not a part of this.”
Kitai grinned, showing her canine teeth. “Schultz has the best sense among them. He merits command for that alone.”
Schultz ignored the comment with noncommissioned stoicism.
They strode out from the camp on the hill and went down toward the larger Canim encampment. The gate guards saw Tavi and the others coming. One of the guards, a Cane with whom Tavi was not familiar, held up a hand, signaling for Tavi to halt and be identified, standard procedure for the Canim camp.
Tavi took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was not making a standard visit.
Instead of halting, he called strength from the earth, leaned back, and kicked the wooden palisade gates open with a resounding crash. The two Canim on guard, caught behind the gates as they opened, were flung to the ground on either side—and every set of black and scarlet Canim eyes in view turned to focus on what had happened.
“I seek my gadara, Varg,” Tavi stated in the snarling tongue of the wolf-warriors, loudly enough to be heard by the watching Canim. “Let any who wish to stand in my way step forth now.”
The way toward the center of the Canim camp was abruptly vacated.
Tavi stalked forward, trying to appear as though he longed for nothing so much as an excuse to vent his rage upon any Cane luckless enough to draw his attention. He had enough experience with them to know how important body language and confidence was to communicating effectively with them. His main worry was that some young warrior might believe his stance and attitude were bravado, a bluff, and decide to call him on it.
He had already killed two Canim. Given how implacable Varg and the warrior caste had become about protecting what remained of their people, it might already be too late to salvage anything out of the situation. Once blood was spilled, the Canim could become less than rational.
Come to think of it, Alerans weren’t much different.
Kitai fell into place beside Tavi, her green eyes narrowed, her expression hard. “You do not believe Varg is behind this,” she said beneath her breath.
“No. If he wanted me dead, he’d bring a sword and do it himself.”
Kitai nodded. “Therefore, someone else sent the killers.”
“Yes,” Tavi said.
Kitai frowned thoughtfully for a moment. Then she said, “I see. You fear that whoever sent the killers knew that they would die.”
Tavi nodded. “Likely, they are already working to spread word among the Canim.”
Kitai narrowed her eyes. “They will accuse you of murder.”
“I’ve got to get to Varg first,” Tavi said. “Before word has time to spread.”
K
itai glared at a pair of warriors in blue-and-black steel armor, golden-furred Shuarans who had never faced Aleran Legions on the battlefield and who might therefore be more willing to challenge the Aleran party. One of the pair looked like he might—but his companion, a larger Cane, flicked his ears in amusement and watched the Alerans pass with unconcealed interest.
Kitai grunted in satisfaction. “And before word has time to spread among the Alerans, too.”
Tavi nodded. “That’s why we’re doing this the noisy way.”
She cast him a single worried glance. “Not all enemies are like Varg. Be cautious.”
Tavi snorted out a breath through his nose and fell silent again as they finished their march through the camp uncontested.
As Tavi approached the center of the camp, he spotted a dozen of the most senior of the Canim warrior caste, their armor covered in so many scarlet patterns that little, if any, black steel could be seen. They were all resting in nonchalant poses around the entrance to the dugout shelter Varg used as a command post.
Several were sitting on their haunches, as if loitering in groups of two and three, passing the time. Two more were playing ludus on an oversized board with enlarged pieces. Another pair were facing one another with wooden practice swords. The two Canim did not engage their blunt blades. One was posed in a defensive stance, blade held across his body. His opposite held his own blade gripped over his head, parallel to the line of his spine.
As Tavi grew closer, the positions of each warrior shifted at what appeared to be precisely the same time. The first Cane slid a step to one side and shifted the angle of his blade. His partner eased half a step forward in dancelike synchronization, turning his body, and brought his own blade down and forward to a full extension, the sword’s wooden tip stopping just short of the other Cane’s blade. They both froze again, only to change positions once more a few breaths later. As the positions settled, the first Cane dropped his jaws open in an easy grin. The second let out a rumbling snarl of disappointment. The two lowered their blades, inclined their heads to one another in a Canim bow, and turned to observe the approaching Alerans as if their contest had concluded when it did by pure coincidence.