by Jim Butcher
Tavi frowned. “Are you saying that I and my people must do the same if we are to survive?”
“I am not the one making a choice. I have no opinion. I only share facts.”
Tavi nodded slowly and gestured with one hand. “Please continue.”
Alera frowned pensively. “It was not until the original Primus threw down all who opposed him, carrying out brutal war in the name of establishing peace, that they began to come to their senses. To build something greater. To lay the foundations of the Realm as you know it today.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Laws. Justice. Art. The pursuit of knowledge. It all came from a single source.”
“The ability to kill,” Tavi whispered.
“Strength is the first virtue,” Alera said. “That is not a pleasant fact. Its dis tastefulness does not alter the truth that without strength to protect them, all other virtues are ephemeral, ultimately meaningless.”
She leaned forward slightly. “The vord have no illusions. They are willing to destroy every living thing on this world if that is what it takes to ensure the survival of their kind. They are death incarnate. And they are strong. Are you prepared to do what may be necessary for your people to survive?”
Tavi lowered his eyes and stared at the ground.
There was more he could do to help the war effort. Much more. There were steps he could take that he would have believed utterly unthinkable a year before. His mind had always been a steady fountain of ideas, and now was no exception. He hated himself for giving birth to such monstrous concepts, but the Realm was fighting for its life. In the dead of night, when he could not sleep, when he was most afraid of the future, the steps would come to him.
Those steps could only be taken upon the broken bodies of the dead.
Principles were shining, noble things, he thought. Those who worked hard enough to keep them polished them lovingly—but the simple fact was that if he wanted any Alerans at all to survive, he might have to sacrifice others. He might have to choose who lived and who died. And if he was to truly be the First Lord of the Realm, the leader of its people, he would be the one to make that choice.
It would, in fact, be his duty.
A flood of emotions he rarely permitted himself to feel flowed over him. Grief for those already lost. Rage for those who might still die. Hatred for the enemy who had forced the Realm to its knees. And pain. He had never asked for this, never wanted it. He did not want to be the First Lord—but neither could he walk away.
Necessity. Duty. The words sounded vile in the lonely vaults of his mind.
He closed his eyes, and said, “I will do what is necessary.” Then he looked up at the great fury, and his words sounded hard and cold to his own ears. “But there is more than one kind of strength.”
Alera stared at him for a long moment, then slowly inclined her head. “And so there is, young Gaius,” she murmured. “And so there is.” With that, she was gone.
Tavi sat on his camp stool, feeling exhausted, limp and tired as a wrung-out dishrag. He struggled to see the path before them all, to imagine its twists, turns, and forks. There were times when an odd kind of certainty suddenly blossomed in his thoughts, a sense of crystalline understanding of the future. His grandfather, like the First Lords before him, was rumored to have the gift of foreknowledge. Tavi didn’t know if it was true.
The vord had to be stopped. If Alera could not throw them down, their path would end, abruptly and in total silence. No one would know that they had ever been.
But even if they somehow won through, the havoc inflicted by the war, the horrible price in pain and grief and loss paid by the people of Alera would leave them in no condition to do battle with the chaos of the great fury’s dissolution. A people already steeped in violence and war would still be drunk on rage and blood, blind to any other path.
When they ran short of foes, they practiced their skills upon one another. Of course they had. It was all they knew.
How to stop it? Provide his people with another enemy, to focus their wrath outside of themselves? Tavi glanced toward the Canim camp and shivered. He thought of Doroga and Hashat—and Kitai. His stomach turned in slow, revolting knots.
It couldn’t be allowed to happen. Such a struggle would not be quick. The blood-thirst of a generation of Alerans at war would be only temporarily slaked, and in the end it would change nothing. They would turn upon themselves.
Gaius Octavian, the young First Lord of Alera, sat alone and followed the possible paths in his mind. He clenched his fists, hoping in vain for an answer to come, for certainty to suddenly flow through him.
But it didn’t.
With a word and a savage slash of his hand, he darkened the tent’s furylamps.
No one should see the First Lord weep.
CHAPTER 12
Amara and Lady Veradis descended onto the forward command center of the Legions surrounding Riva, where the banners of multiple High Lords declared the presence of the most potent powers of the Realm. A nervous young Placidan Lord in charge of aerial security nearly roasted them almost before they had a chance to give him the appropriate password. Amara had been forced to redirect the full force of her windstream into the young man’s face, all but scattering him and the squad of Knights Aeris accompanying him from the sky. It was a flier’s traditional means of communicating extreme displeasure at the stupidity of a fellow flier, providing a humiliating and discomforting but generally harmless rebuke.
“You’re really quite amazing with windcrafting, Countess,” Veradis said. The young healer had always seemed to be a woman of great self-possession to Amara, but there was something nervous and quick to the rhythm of her speech tonight. “Honestly. I don’t think even my father controls his power that precisely.”
“I’m a flier. Your father has several other furycrafts to practice and a city to administrate.”
Veradis made no reply, and Amara cursed her thoughtless words. High Lord Cereus certainly had no city anymore. Ceres was a memory, its people a band of scattered and widely dispersed refugees—where they survived at all. “What I meant to say,” Amara said quietly, “is thank you, lady.”
Veradis gave her a strained nod as they moved out of the circled furylamps of the landing area. Other fliers were streaming in. Amara saw Lord and Lady Placida descending, an unlikely-looking couple: He was stout, plain, and blocky, a man who looked more like a blacksmith or woodworker than a High Lord of Alera. She was tall, regal, a fiercely beautiful woman with long red hair barely constrained by a long braid and an aura of fiery intensity. Both wore Legion armor and carried swords. She carried a slender dueling blade, while Lord Placida bore a great monster of a sword on a belt over one shoulder, a weapon suitable for felling gargants and medium-sized trees with a single stroke.
“Countess Calderon,” Lady Placida said. She hurried off the landing area as other fliers descended, nodding to Amara and to Veradis. “Veradis, hello, child. Countess, do you have any idea what’s going on?”
“Lady Aria, Lady Isana has been taken,” Veradis said. “Men came to her quarters at the inn. They circumvented the furies watching it and took her and Sir Araris.”
“What?” Lady Placida asked, her face growing darker.
“In the middle of all of this?” Lord Placida said, waving a hand around at the Legions. He looked up at his wife, and said, “She doesn’t have significant strategic value. Could it be personal?”
“You’re assuming it was the enemy who took her,” Lady Placida said, glancing up at the banners overflying the command tent, foremost among them Lord Aquitaine’s. “As the focus of Octavian’s support here at Riva, she has a great deal of political value.” Her hand strayed to her sword, and she snarled, “I’m going to—”
Placida frowned, staring at nothing, and put his hand over hers before she could draw the blade. “No,” he said. “Temper, my love. Think. Attis is cold-blooded, not stupid. Raucus would take his head off.” He paused, and allowed, “Or you might.”
“
Thank you,” Lady Placida said, stiffly.
“Or I suppose I might,” he mused, taking his hand from hers and drumming his fingers on the baldric of the greatsword. He narrowed his eyes in thought. “Which . . . could be what the enemy had in mind. Especially now that we know Octavian is on his way.”
“Sow division among us? Could these creatures understand us that well?” Lady Placida asked. Some of the anger seemed to ease out of her.
“Invidia could,” Placida pointed out.
“I should have called her out years ago,” Lady Placida said, scowling.
Lord Placida harrumphed, uncomfortably. “It wouldn’t have been very lady-like of either of you.”
“There’s no way to know what’s happened yet,” Amara said, cutting across them. “And no, Lady Placida, I don’t know what’s going on. I was hoping you would.”
“The pickets must have seen an approaching force,” Placida said confidently. “Our forces are already moving to man the outer palisades. That’s the only thing that would have raised this much racket from the Legion captains.”
“I thought they were more than a week away,” Amara said.
“If it’s any consolation, Countess, so did I,” Lady Placida said. She glanced at the command tent again as more trumpet signals came drifting on the wind, clearly torn. “Our Legions are in the center of the defenses. We must be there to stand with them, Countess.”
Amara nodded. Crafters with the power of the Placidas would be integral components of any battle plan. There was no one to substitute for them. “I’ll keep you informed as to what I find.”
“Do,” Lady Placida said. She put a hand on Amara’s shoulder and squeezed. “As soon as I’m free, I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
Amara managed not to wince. It might have been a measure of how much pressure Lady Placida was under that she had misjudged the fury-enhanced strength of her own fingers.
Placida took his wife’s arm and gestured toward the command tent. “We’ll find out whatever we can from Attis. Dear?” The two of them nodded to Amara and Veradis and strode toward the command tent, passing a squad of heavily armed legionares.
“Should we go, too?” Veradis asked.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have permission to be inside command,” Amara said. “Something about being considered Gaius Sextus’s personal assassin, I suppose.” Indeed, the legionares on duty outside the tent were watching Amara closely. “And I doubt that you have permission, either.”
“No. I’m supposed to be remaining here as a civilian watercrafter when the Legions enter battle.” She frowned at the guards, and said, “If we wait here doing nothing, it may be hours before anyone can be sent to Lady Isana’s aid.”
“That’s true.”
Veradis frowned more severely. “I suppose we might go in anyway.” She eyed the guards. “They seem like perfectly decent soldiers to me, though. I’m not sure I could do it without injuring them, and they haven’t earned that. And I dislike the notion of creating work for some poor healer.”
Amara’s imagination treated her to the image of what havoc might result from a strongly talented young Citizen determined to bypass a group of stubbornly resistant guards, outside a much larger group of High Lords with a good many reasons to be nervous. She shuddered. “No. I’m sure we can find an alternative.”
The curtain to the command tent opened, and a small, slender figure emerged, innocuous among the armored forms crowding the night. The sandy-haired young man slipped into the shadows and walked away calmly, effectively invisible amidst the bustle of the stirring camp.
“There,” Amara said. “There’s our option.” She dodged a pair of Phrygian Lords and pursued the unobtrusive young man.
Two steps before she reached him, he turned, blinking, his expression mild, even anxious to please. Amara, however, recognized the subtle centering of his balance and took note of the fact that she couldn’t see one of his hands, which was quite likely touching the hilt of a dagger concealed beneath his rather loose and travel-worn coat.
“Ah,” Amara said, spreading her hands at her sides, to show them empty. “Sir Ehren.”
The young man blinked up at her, his gaze flicking over her, then over Veradis, who came hurrying up behind her. “Ah. Countess Calderon. Lady Veradis. Good evening, ladies. How may I serve you?”
Amara reflected that it had quite probably been Sir Ehren, who was serving as one of Aquitaine’s primary intelligence agents, who had both added her to the no-admittance list around Lord Aquitaine and managed to see to it that she received a copy of the list, a pride-preserving courtesy that had prevented an unpleasant scene. She liked Ehren, though in the wake of Gaius Sextus’s death, she was uncertain of where his loyalties ultimately lay—but as a classmate of Octavian’s, she judged it unlikely that he would have mild, passive inclinations about the succession, regardless of whom he decided to support.
“Well,” Amara said. “That’s a more complicated question than it would at first seem.”
Sir Ehren arched an eyebrow. “Ah?”
“Gaius Isana has been abducted,” Amara said, and watched the young man’s reaction very closely.
Ehren had been trained to school his reactions, just as she had. He had also been trained to falsify them. She knew the signs to look for, which would mark a reaction as genuine or false. He would, of course, know that she knew it, and could potentially modify his response to take advantage of the fact—but she judged that it would take someone with more experience in life than Sir Ehren currently possessed to deceive both her own trained eyes and ears and the watercrafting senses of someone as skilled as Veradis. Particularly if she clubbed him over the head with the news rather than taking a more subtle approach.
Sir Ehren’s reaction was a complete nonreaction. He simply stared at her for a moment. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “She’s been . . . bloody crows.” The voice that emerged from the young man was a great deal more strident—and frustrated—than she would have expected to accompany his face and bearing. “Abducted. Of course she has been. Because obviously there isn’t enough going wrong tonight.” He glared at her. He had a rather effective glare, Amara thought, despite the muddy hazel color of his eyes and the fact that he stood nearly half a foot shorter than she did and was thus compelled to glare up at her. She had to make a conscious effort not to take a step back. Veradis did step back from him. “And I suppose,” he said, “you want me to help.”
Amara faced the young man mildly. “You . . . do seem to be having that sort of evening, Sir Ehren.”
“Crows,” he said wearily. The word betrayed a wealth of exhaustion. He hid it well, but Amara could see the signs of strain on his young face. If he’d been any older, she suspected, the past weeks would have aged him ten years. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. The change in the young man was nearly magical. His expression became mild again, his posture diffident, nearly servile. “I’m not sure how you could trust anything I did to help you, Countess.”
“She couldn’t,” Veradis said quietly, and took a step closer to the young man, extending her hand. “But I could.”
Ehren eyed Veradis. A skilled watercrafter’s ability to sense the truth in another, when it was freely shared, was the bane of all manner of deceptive enterprise—and if trusted too casually, was a wellspring of fresh deceptions in its own right. As someone who had spent years becoming skilled in that particular expertise, he probably regarded it with almost as much distrust and wariness as Amara did.
“How could this possibly harm the Realm, Cursor?” Veradis asked, smiling slightly.
Ehren warily took her hand. “Very well.”
“One question,” Veradis said quietly. “Whom do you serve?”
“The Realm and people of Alera, and the House of Gaius,” Ehren replied promptly. “In that order.”
Veradis listened with her head tilted slightly to one side. As the young man spoke, she shivered sli
ghtly, withdrew her hand, and nodded to Amara.
“I note,” Amara said drily, “that your choice of loyalties, Cursor, is not quite the Academy standard.”
Ehren’s mild eyes flickered with something hard, and he began to say something but seemed to think better of it. Then he said, “One should bear in mind that at the moment, there are two scions of the House of Gaius in the Realm. I’m working with the one that’s actually here.”
Amara nodded. “Isana was taken from—”
“I know where she was staying,” Ehren said. “And I know the security precautions protecting her. I designed them.”
Amara arched an eyebrow. If that was the case, then it seemed likely that Ehren was serving as Aquitaine’s de facto minister of intelligence. That he was, in effect, the spymaster of what remained of the entire Realm.
He watched her reaction and grimaced. “Gaius sent me to Aquitaine with his last letters. In them, he commanded me to serve him to the best of my conscience, or to inform him that I could not do so and depart, and to do him no harm. And he recommended me to Aquitaine as the most trustworthy Cursor he could pass on, at the moment.”
Amara felt a small pang in her chest at that.
But then, Gaius hadn’t been able to trust her. She’d walked out on her oath. With good reason, perhaps, but the fact remained that she had turned away from his service.
“The same went for Sextus’s physician, by the way,” Ehren said. “Not as though Aquitaine needs one, but you never know. He’s around here somewhere . . .” The young man shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’m wandering. Too many things going on.” He scrunched up his eyes, and said, “Right. The First Lady. The attack had to be aerial. Any other approach would have garnered too much of a reaction from the furies protecting the inn.”
“How could they have done it at all?” Veradis asked.
“We don’t have unlimited furypower at our disposal,” Ehren said, his voice carrying a slight edge. “The enemy has furycraft, too. We thus have a finite number of secure furies. Many of them had been diverted to protect the majority of the political and military resources of the Realm, which were at the Senate meeting.”
