by Jim Butcher
Isana turned to find a short, slight man with sandy hair smiling at them from the row above the Placidan box, his elbows casually resting on the railing.
“Ehren,” Isana said, smiling. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to Canea with my son.”
The young man’s expression grew sober, and Isana felt him close down, concealing his emotions-but not before she felt his flash of weary frustration, anger, and fear. “Duty called,” he replied, mustering up the effort for another smile as Aria returned to the box. “Ah, Lady Placida. I wonder if I could impose upon you for a seat during the First Lord’s address?”
Lady Placida glanced at Isana, lifting an eyebrow. “By all means, Sir Ehren. Please join us.”
Ehren inclined his head in thanks and swung his legs calmly over the railing, slipping down into the box with a rather cavalier disregard for the solemnity of the Senatorium. Isana had to make an effort to keep from smiling.
Ehren had barely been seated when a single trumpeter blew the fanfare of a Legion captain-and not the notes of the First Lord’s Processional. Murmurs rose through the Senatorium at once as those seated all rose to their feet together-the First Lord only employed that protocol in time of war.
Gaius Sextus, First Lord of Alera, entered as the last notes of the fanfare rang out, flanked by half a dozen Knights Ferrous in the crimson cloaks of the Crown Guard. A tall, powerfully built man, Gaius looked more like a man in his late prime than an octogenarian-except for his silver-white hair, which was, if Isana was not imagining it, even thinner and wispier than it had been the last time she had seen him, several months before.
The First Lord moved like a much younger man, descending the steps from the Senatorium’s entrance to the Senate floor in rapid strides. He passed between the boxes of Lords Phrygius and Antillus-both of which were empty of a High Lord. Lady Phrygia was present, though an elderly, one-eyed lord was evidently standing in for High Lord Antillus and bore the signet dagger of the House of Antillus on a sash across his sunken chest. The murmuring rose to a low tide of sound as Gaius descended to the floor.
“Citizens!” the First Lord said, raising his hands, as he took the Senate floor. His voice, enhanced by the furycraft of the building, rolled richly through the evening. “Citizens, please.”
The Speaker of the Senate-Isana wasn’t sure who it was this year, someone from Parcia, she thought-quickly took the podium. “Order! Order in the Senatorium!” His voice thundered through the enormous theater like a titan’s, quelling the voices of the assembled Citizenry. Isana had the brief, uncharitable thought that the man probably found it quite satisfying. Though upon reflection, how often did the opportunity to have both the justification and the means to shout down half the Citizenry of the Realm present itself? She could think of several days that she would have found it more than mildly satisfying, herself.
Once the noise had dwindled to a low murmur, the Speaker nodded, and said, “We welcome you to this emergency convocation of the Senate, convened at the request of the First Lord. I will now yield the floor to Gaius Sextus, First Lord of Alera, so that he may present information of key importance to the Realm before the august members of this assembly.”
Almost before he was finished speaking, Gaius had stepped up to the podium, confidently assuming the space the Speaker had been occupying a moment before. There was no sense of bluster or swagger in the movement, nor did the Speaker react with anything like chagrin-yet Gaius somehow managed simply to displace the man, the way a large dog will a far smaller one at the food dish, and did so as smoothly and naturally as if the entire world had been expressly ordered that way-and as a consequence, it was. Isana shook her head, simultaneously exasperated with the man’s sheer arrogance and admiring of his restraint. Gaius never used more of his considerable force of personality, will, or furycraft than he absolutely required.
Of course, he never let anything stand between him and what he deemed “required,” either. No matter how many innocent people it might kill.
Isana pressed her lips together and restrained her thoughts on the matter of the ending of Lord Kalarus and his rebellion-and his city and its inhabitants, and all the lands around it and everyone who lived in them. It was not the time to review once again Gaius Sextus’s actions, or to judge them as acts of war, or necessity or murder-or, most likely, all three.
“Citizens,” he began, his sonorous voice serious, sober. “I come to you tonight as no First Lord has for hundreds of years. I come to you to warn you. I come to you to call you to duty. And I come to you to ask you to go beyond all that duty requires.” He paused, to let the echoes of his voice roll through the darkening evening. “Alerans,” he murmured. “We are at war.”
CHAPTER 6
“Well of course we’re at war,” Amara murmured crossly to Bernard. “We’re practically always at war. There’s constant low-level conflict with the Canim, an ongoing conflict on the Shieldwall that’s been in progress for generations, the occasional argument with a horde of screaming Marat and their beasts…”
“Shhhhh, love,” Bernard said, patting her hand with his. They were fairly far up in the seating above the box of the High Lord of Riva, but Bernard hadn’t bothered establishing his own colors to reflect those of Riva’s. The green and brown of the Count of Calderon tended to fade into the landscape around his home-but among the scarlet-and-gold-clad Citizens of Riva, it had the opposite effect. That did not, Amara reflected, appear to disturb her husband.
“I just don’t see the point in playing up the drama of this,” Amara said, folding her arms. “He’s let the dramatic pause go on long enough.”
“It’s a large room,” Bernard said, glancing around. “Give him a moment. Can you see where Ehren’s gotten off to?”
“He’s sitting with your sister in Lady Placida’s box,” Amara said idly.
“Isana?” Bernard scowled. “Of course it was too much to ask for Gaius to leave her in peace.”
“Hush, pause over,” Amara said, squeezing Bernard’s hand.
“An enemy which has previously only been a theory, a vague concern, has become a very real, very present threat to the Realm,” Gaius continued. “The Vord have come to Alera.”
Amara felt Bernard’s body grow tense beside her.
“At the moment, it would appear that they landed and established themselves sometime late last summer, after the end of the Kalare Rebellion, in the wilderness region to the southwest of the city.”
“Good place for it,” Bernard rumbled.
Amara murmured her agreement. The area was an ideal place for the Vord to establish themselves and begin to spread. It was richly forested and thick with game, while simultaneously being almost empty of human inhabitants. It was, in fact, for that very reason that they had approached the city of Kalare through that region with the First Lord, when he had made his now-famous furyless trek to Kalare to unleash Kalus, the great fire fury beneath the mountains near the former city of Kalare, before the mad High Lord Kalarus could use it to take down as many people as possible with him when the Legions finally brought him to bay.
“We discovered their presence just under one month ago,” the First Lord continued. “When they began attacking the southernmost patrols from the area around the Waste. A number of teams of Cursors and combat patrols of Knights were dispatched to determine enemy numbers and whereabouts.” He paused and swept his gaze around the Senatorium. “Casualties were heavy.”
“Bloody crows,” Bernard snarled. His right hand closed into a fist, his knuckles popping. “If they’d been careful enough, they should have… No one listened.”
“You tried,” Amara murmured. “You tried, love.”
“The nearest Legion, one of the re-formed interim Kalaran Legions, was dispatched to secure the region,” Gaius continued. “They engaged the Vord under near-ideal circumstances thirty miles south of the Waste and were overwhelmed within an hour. With the exception of two Knights Aeris, who escaped to bring word of the L
egion’s fate, there were no survivors.”
The murmurs died.
Gaius continued speaking in a dispassionate tone. “The entirety of the other forces in the region, including the Senatorial Guard and both interim Kalaran Legions, marched at once, linked up, and gave battle to the enemy at the northern edge of the Waste. We cannot be certain what happened at that point-there were apparently no survivors from the second engagement.”
Shocked silence ruled the Senatorium.
Gaius turned to the broad, shallow pool in the center of the floor and waved his hand at it. The water’s smooth surface rippled at once, then resolved itself into the familiar mountains, valleys, and rivers of a map of Alera itself, in full color, the cities of each High Lord marked by a disproportionately large model of their respective citadels-including the sullen, fiery mountaintop of Mount Kalus, where the city of Kalare once stood. Thanks to the furycrafting of the Senatorium’s builders, Amara could clearly see the model in the pool, even from the high seats, and she regarded it intently, along with every other soul present.
As she watched, the entire coastline southwest of Mount Kalus began to turn a dirty brown-green, as if being coated with some sort of moldy sludge that began to spread steadily over the ground to the north and east, sliding inexorably forward, over the Waste that was all that remained of the city of Kalare, and continuing toward the Amaranth Vale beyond it. Amara recognized it after a moment-the croach, the strange, waxy substance that grew all around the Vord wherever they began to spread, choking out all other life.
The croach continued to spread, sweeping into the Vale and halfway through it.
“The enemy has come this far-a distance of nearly two hundred miles from the first point of contact-in less than a month. The substance you see represented on the map is known as the croach. It is some kind of mold or fungus that grows in the Vord’s wake, killing all other plant and animal life.”
A befuddled-looking, portly old country Count, his gold-and-scarlet tunic patched and faded, sat on the bench beside Amara, shaking his head. “No,” he murmured beneath his breath. “No, no, no. This is some kind of mistake.”
“Our aerial scouts have confirmed that the entire area represented here has been covered entirely,” Gaius continued. “Nothing lives there now that is not Vord.”
“Oh come now,” sputtered Lord Riva, rising, his jowls flushed and sweating. “You cannot expect us to believe that some kind of fungus is a threat to our Realm?”
The First Lord glanced at the High Lord of Riva and narrowed his eyes. “My lord, you have not been recognized by the Speaker of the Senate. You are out of order. The floor will open for questions and debate as soon as it is practical, but for the moment, it is essential that-”
“That you force these histrionics upon us?” Riva demanded, gathering momentum. “Come now, Gaius. Winter is all but upon us. The first freeze will destroy this… infestation, at which point competent military leadership should suffice to contain and destroy the invaders. I see no reason why these theatrics-”
Gaius Sextus turned toward the High Lord of Riva.
“Grantus,” Gaius said in an even tone. “I do not have time for this. Every moment of delay puts more lives at risk.” His expression hardened. “Perhaps even your own.”
Riva stared at Gaius for a startled moment, his eyes wide, then flushed dark red with anger. His hands opened and closed several times as he realized that the First Lord had all but openly threatened him with the juris macto.
Lord Aquitaine’s gaze snapped to Gaius like a falcon’s and locked upon him.
Amara tensed suddenly.
The First Lord was taking a terrible risk. In his prime, Amara would have thought Gaius the match of any crafter in Alera-but she knew, better than almost anyone, how much of the First Lord’s apparent strength was an act of bravado, a display of sheer will. Beneath the outer show of energy and drive, Gaius was a weary old man, and Riva, despite his less-than-legendary intellect, was, after all, a High Lord of Alera, and wielded tremendous power.
The status of Octavian’s legitimacy was far from set in stone. Should the First Lord die today, especially given the need for strong leadership, Aquitainus Attis might well attain the throne he’d been seeking for so long.
Gaius had to know that. But if the thought troubled him, it did not show in his expression or bearing. He faced Riva with perfect aplomb, waiting.
In the end, Riva’s uncertainty proved a better defense than any furycraft. The portly High Lord harrumphed, and growled, “My apologies for speaking out of turn, Speaker, Senators, my fellow Citizens.” He glowered at Gaius. “I will refrain from pointing out the obvious until the proper time.”
Aquitaine’s mouth spread into a lazy grin. Amara couldn’t be certain, but she thought she saw him incline his head, very slightly, to Gaius, a fencer’s gesture of acknowledgment.
Gaius went back to speaking as though nothing had happened. “The Vord have not limited their attacks to military forces. Civilian populations have been attacked and massacred without mercy. Given the nature of our defeats on the battlefield, a great many people never received word about their presence, or did not hear about them until it was too late for them to escape. The loss of life has been staggering.”
Gaius paused to sweep his gaze around the Senatorium. Again, when he spoke, he did so with detached precision. “More than one hundred thousand Aleran holders, freemen, and Citizens alike have been slain.”
Cries rang out amidst an ocean-surf swell of gasps that ran through the Senatorium.
“Four days ago,” Gaius said, “the Vord reached the southernmost holdings of High Lord Cereus. Lord Speaker, honored Senators, his daughter and heir, Veradis, is here to give testimony to the Senate and to speak on behalf of His Grace, her father.”
Gaius stepped back as the Speaker rose and leaned into the podium again for a moment. “Will the Lady Veradis please come before the Senate?”
Amara watched as a slender, serious-faced young woman rose, her pale, wispy hair drifting like cobwebs as she moved. Bernard leaned close to her, and murmured, “Cereus has a son, does he not? I thought he was the heir to Ceres.”
“He was,” Amara said. “Apparently.”
“Thank you,” Veradis said, the building’s furies projecting her words throughout the Senatorium. She had a voice to match her face-low, for a woman, and quite somber. “My father sends his regrets that he cannot be here himself, but he is in the field with our Legions, slowing the Vord in an effort to give our people a chance to flee. It is at his command that I have come here to beg the aid of the First Lord and of his brother High Lords in Ceres’ most desperate hour.” She paused for a moment, frozen, then cleared her throat. The first several words of her next sentence were tight, constricted. “Already, my brother Vereus has fallen to the invaders, along with half of the Legion under his command. Thousands of our holders have been slaughtered. Nearly half of the lands in my lord father’s care have been consumed by the Vord. Please, my lords. After what Kalarus’s rebellion did to our lands…” She lifted her chin, and though her expression was perfectly composed, Amara could see the tears glistening on her cheeks. “We need your help.”
With perfect poise, Veradis descended from the podium and returned to her seat in her House’s box, and Amara abruptly felt certain that the young woman was unaware of her own tears, or she would have contained them, using her watercrafting if necessary.
Pausing to elicit a nod from the Speaker, Gaius resumed the podium. “Our current estimates place the enemy numbers at somewhere between one hundred and two hundred thousand-but frankly, this tells us relatively little. We have limited knowledge of their capabilities as individuals, but know almost nothing of their potential working in mass coordination.”
“You know one thing,” interjected a quiet voice, enhanced despite the fact that the speaker was not standing at the podium. Lord Aquitaine regarded Gaius steadily. “You know that they are extremely dangerous. In all probabil
ity, more so, pound for pound, than an Aleran Legion.”
The uproar raised by that statement was instant and vociferous. Everyone knew that the Legions were invincible. For a thousand years, they had been the wall of steel and muscle and discipline that had held against every attacker-and while a legionare might not leave a battle with victory in his grasp, it would only be because it had been pried tooth and nail from his fingers.
And yet…
It had been a very long time since the Legions as a whole had faced any real threat. The Icemen had been largely neutralized by the Shieldwall, centuries before. Conflicts with the Canim had rarely involved more than a few hundred of the wolf-warriors-at least until Kalare had conspired with one of their traitors to bring a literal horde to Aleran shores three years ago. The Marat had won battles against the Legions here and there, but they had never been lasting victories and had only served to make Aleran counterattacks all the more intense and punitive.
The Children of the Sun were long since dead, their Realm rotted back into the Feverthorn Jungle. The Malorandim had been driven to extinction eight centuries ago. The Avar, the Yrani, the Dekh-all gone, nothing left of them but names that Amara dimly remembered from her history lessons. Once they had all been rivals and tyrants to a younger, smaller, weaker Alera.
But the Legions had changed all of that. In conflict after conflict, battle after battle, season after season, century after century, the Legions had laid the foundations for the present-day Realm.
It was boldly done-but boldness had rarely been at a premium in the Legions since Alera had become more settled. High Lords had placed more value upon stable, conservative captains, who would have a care for the pocketbook as well as their legionares.
Could it be that the legendary might of the Legions had passed into legend? Suppose they were not the invincible bulwark against Alera and her foes? Amara folded her arms. She found the idea uncomfortable. To others it would simply be unacceptable-as the occupants of the Senatorium had proven by their reaction to Aquitaine’s statement.
