by Jim Butcher
Her lips spread in a snarl as another sphere of fire bloomed practically upon her, and the earth itself heaved and bucked into a dome that shielded her from the blast. A second motion sent the contents of two healing tubs abruptly hurtling toward the vord Queen like two enormous, transparent stones. The blasts of water smashed the vord to the ground.
Dorotea cried out in sudden agony and clutched at the silver collar at her throat, her body contorting.
Tavi ground his teeth and forced steel into his limbs, his mind, dismissing the pain as something unimportant. The former High Lady had pushed the vord into an open, unoccupied space to one side of the tent. Tavi lifted his sword and sent a thunderbolt of seething fire, whiter than the light of the sun, writhing into the form of some vast and deadly serpent, lancing toward her.
The vord Queen’s smile was gone. Her glittering black eyes widened as the sun-fire streaked toward her. She crossed her forearms in front of her with another brassy scream, and the blast of fire struck her, burning again at Tavi’s vision with a furious light bright enough to blind him though he had closed his eyes to shield against it.
He opened them again, peering.
The entire side of the tent was gone in a great, gaping circle, the canvas charred to fine ash, cut as neatly as with shears. The ground all around the blast area was several inches lower than it had been a moment before and smoothed to glowing glass.
Except for one small circle around the vord Queen. She stood up slowly, uncrossing her arms, and that gleeful smile spread over her face again as she stood over Tavi. Though her tattered old gown was singed black over most of its surface, she was apparently unharmed.
He let out a panting snarl and fought his way up to one knee, sword in hand.
“I came here only to weaken you, Father,” the Queen said in a purring voice. “This was more than I dared to hope for. Perhaps there is such a thing as good fortune, after all.”
A movement sent a fire-sphere toward Tavi. He caught it on his sword, willing the weapon to absorb the heat, to make it burn all the more brightly—but the effort made his vision tighten down to a narrow tunnel. His heart was racing, faster than he’d ever felt it. He couldn’t breathe. She was coming, so fast, faster than he could see, even clawing for the speed of windcrafting, and he couldn’t get his sword to move—
Maximus slammed into the vord Queen with a roar of pure rage, his armored body hurtling into her, a self-contained avalanche of steel. He carried her past Tavi and through a second upright, shattering it to kindling, and bringing two-thirds of the remaining canvas of the large tent down upon them all like an enormous, smothering blanket.
Tavi lifted his sword and cut an opening almost before the canvas could settle. He stumbled upright, through the opening, only to see the vord Queen neatly duplicate his maneuver using her talons, drag a metal tub out with her, and slam it with savage force onto a thrashing lump beneath the canvas—one that sagged and abruptly went still.
The vord turned toward Tavi, a wild grin twisting her lips, showing him teeth that were very white, with threads of green-black running in crazed lines over their surfaces.
Tavi lifted his sword, calling more heat to it, more light furiously shining forth. He couldn’t move. His body was shaking, too weak. He knew that he now stood nearer death’s door than he ever had before, though his furycraft allowed him to stay on his feet.
“Your grandfather,” the vord Queen said, “died just that way. Defiant to the last, his sword in hand.”
Tavi showed her his teeth, and said, “This isn’t a guard position. It’s a signal fire.”
The Queen tilted her head, her eyes narrowed, and a steel balest bolt hit her in the ribs, just below her left arm. It didn’t pierce her pale, seemingly soft skin, but the sheer force behind the bolt struck her from her feet and sent her down. She was up again almost instantly. Thirty yards away, all but invisible in the dark and the mist, Fidelias dropped his balest—and swung a second such weapon, already loaded, from his back, lifting it to his shoulder to shoot as he shouted, “Go!”
Windstreams rose in a howl as the Knights Pisces came streaking past Fidelias, thirty strong, some of them passing only inches over his head. A solid wall of wind preceded them, slamming into the vord Queen, forcing her back and away from Tavi like a leaf driven by a gale.
She looked at them for an instant, unimpressed and unafraid, her smile undiminished.
Then she let out another brassy, mocking laugh and bounded away, toward the northeast. She leapt into the air, gathering up a windstream of her own that ripped every tent within fifty yards from the earth, vanished behind a veil, and was gone in a howl of cyclonic thunder.
Fidelias tracked the movement with the second balest but didn’t shoot. He came sprinting toward Tavi after that, as the Knights Pisces streaked forward in pursuit—but the men didn’t go far before pulling up and spreading into a defensive formation over the camp. Tavi sagged in relief. If they’d followed her out there, she would surely have torn them to shreds.
“Your Highness,” Fidelias breathed as he reached Tavi. He set the Canim weapon down and began to examine Tavi’s injuries. “Oh. Oh, bloody crows, man.”
“Kitai,” Tavi grated. “Crassus. Back behind me. Dorotea and Maximus under the tent. Foss is dead. I couldn’t stop her.”
“Bloody crows, hold still,” Fidelias snarled. “Stay down. Stay down, sire, you’re bleeding. Stay down.”
“Poison,” Tavi mumbled. “Poison. Check her trail. Think we went by the water tanks. She could have dropped something in.”
“Be still,” Fidelias snarled. “Oh, great furies.”
Tavi felt the metalcrafting slip. A second later, he felt the agony of his wounds rush up as viciously as a rabid gargant.
And then he felt nothing.
CHAPTER 43
Amara felt rather awkward, truth be told, about being given Bernard’s old room at Bernardholt-Isanaholt-Fredericholt, but Elder Frederic had insisted on yielding it to Count and Countess Calderon. She had only seen the chamber once, and that briefly, as Bernard had fetched her a pair of shoes that had belonged to his late wife, back during the hectic hours leading up to Second Calderon.
Her husband had lived a significant portion of his life in that room. It was hard not to feel uncomfortable here. It reminded her how much of his life she had not been present to share. He hadn’t stayed at the steadholt long, after she had come into his life.
She walked around the room, slowly. It was spacious enough, she supposed, for a small family, if they didn’t mind being close, though not nearly as large as the chambers they shared at Garrison. She tried to imagine the large fireplace in one wall, shedding the only light on a quiet winter evening, children sleeping on little mattresses in front of it, their cheeks rosy with—
Amara shook the thought away. She would never give him children, no matter how much she might wish it or fantasize about it. And in any case, the entire exercise was ridiculous. There were more important things she should be focusing on.
The vord had been driven away, and they had not reappeared in the hours of the afternoon, but they would surely not absent themselves for long. The evacuation of the easternmost half of the Valley, moving everyone behind the last redoubt at Garrison, was not yet completed. The vord would surely not wait much longer—which was why she had come to this chamber, to attempt to get some sleep in the time available to her before the enemy arrived. She hadn’t slept in days.
Amara sighed and slipped out of her armored coat. If only the Elder Frederic, now the acting Steadholder, hadn’t been the steadholt’s gargant master. The great beasts were of unsurpassed utility on a steadholt, but they stank—not unpleasantly, but enormously. They smelled very, very large. It was not the sort of addition to the décor one could readily ignore.
Unless you worked with gargants every day, she supposed.
On the other hand, Amara was exhausted. She dropped her weapons and armor next to the large simple bed and cast hersel
f down upon it with a groan. A genuine mattress, by the furies. She hadn’t slept on anything but a bedroll or the cold ground since the fighting had resumed. But even so, she just couldn’t shake her sense of discomfort. It had, in fact, progressed to a sense of absolute unease.
Amara sat up, lifted her boot to the bed, and bent over it to unlace it. She seized the handle of the knife concealed there and called upon Cirrus to lend her arm speed as she threw it at the empty space next to the gaping fireplace, not six feet in front of her.
The dagger flickered through the air with a hissing hum, and steel met steel in a sharp chime and a shower of green sparks.
Amara flung herself over the bed without waiting to see the outcome of the throw. She grabbed her weapon belt along the way, drawing her gladius and holding the belt loosely in her still-aching left hand. The metal-fitted sheath dangling near the end of the belt, next to its heavy buckle, would make as good an improvised weapon as she was likely to find in these quarters. She gauged the distance from the bed to the door.
“Don’t bother,” said a woman’s voice calmly. “You wouldn’t reach it. And I cannot permit you to flee.” A windcrafted veil fell, revealing . . .
It took Amara a moment to recognize Invidia Aquitaine, and even then she only did it because she recognized the chitin-armor and the creature upon her breast. The woman’s long, dark hair was gone. So was most of her lily-white skin, replaced by mottled red burn scars. The corner of one eye sagged beneath a scar, but they were otherwise the same, and her calm, implacable gaze was chilling.
“If you leave now,” Amara said, her voice cool, “you might escape before the Placidas catch up to you.”
Invidia smiled. It did horrible things to the scars on her face. One of them cracked and bled a little. “Dear Countess, don’t be ridiculous. They do not know I am here, any more than you did. Count yourself fortunate that I have not come here to harm you.”
Amara checked the distance to the door again.
“Though I will,” Invidia said, “if you attempt anything foolish. I am sure that you are aware how little hesitation I would have should I need to kill you.”
“As little as I will have when I kill you,” Amara replied.
Invidia’s smile widened. The blood tracked over her lip and one very white tooth. “Feisty little thing. I’ll dance if you wish. But if we do, you’re a dead woman, and you know it.”
Amara clenched her teeth, seething—because crows take her, the woman was right. Out in the open, with room to maneuver, Amara had a real chance of surviving against Invidia. In this smelly chamber, surrounded by stone? She would be dead before her scream reached the nearest guard. There was nothing she could do to change that, and the knowledge terrified and infuriated her.
“Very well,” Amara said a moment later, stiffly. “I’ll bite. Why are you here?”
“To negotiate, of course,” Invidia said.
Amara stared at her for a long moment. Then she whispered, “Murdering bitch. You can go to the crows.”
Invidia laughed. It was a bitter, unsettling sound, made eerie by some strange convolution of her burn-scarred throat. “But you do not even know, Countess, what I have to offer.”
“Treachery?” Amara guessed, her voice venomously sweet. “That’s your usual service, after all.”
“Precisely,” Invidia said. “And this time it will work in your favor.”
Amara narrowed her eyes.
“What’s happening out there, Amara, is the end of everything. Unless the Queen is stopped, Alera is finished.”
“And you’re going to . . . what, exactly? Kill her for us?”
She bared her teeth. “I would, were it possible. I cannot. She is too powerful. By far.”
“Then I’d say you have little to offer us,” Amara replied.
“I can tell you the location of her hive,” Invidia said. “Where you can find her. Where she is most vulnerable.”
“Please do.”
Invidia settled her fingers a little more solidly on the grip of her sword. “I’m desperate, Countess. Not an idiot. I won’t give you that without guarantees.”
“Of ?” Amara asked.
“My immunity,” she responded. “A full pardon for any actions leading up to and during this conflict. My estate on the northeast border of the Feverthorn. I will accept banishment to it and house arrest there for the remainder of my life.”
“And in exchange,” Amara said quietly, “you give us the location of the vord Queen.”
“And I will participate in the attack,” Invidia replied. “If every High Lord still under arms pits his strength against her, if she can be caught in her hive, and if the timing is properly arranged, it might be an even match. And that’s the best chance you’re going to have between now and the world’s end, which I estimate will be less than a week from now.”
Amara wanted to snarl her defiance and scorn at the burned traitor, but she forced herself to step back from the emotions while she drew in a slow breath. Millions of lives were at stake. She could not let her weariness, her fear, or her anger guide her actions. She was a Cursor of the Realm, by training and by service, and she owed her teachers—even Fidelias—more than to mindlessly toss out an angry reply like a furious child.
It took her more than a minute to calm her mind, to slow her breathing, to reach a state of clarity and think about the traitor’s offer.
“There’s an issue of credibility,” Amara said. “Specifically, you have none. Why shouldn’t we assume that this offer is a trap to lead our most powerful crafters to their deaths?”
“Can you afford skepticism at this point, Amara?” Invidia asked. “The Queen is no fool. She knows that you will do whatever you can to kill her. She and her kind have been playing this game for a long, long time. She has no intention of allowing you to see her, much less attack her—and even if you defeat this army, in weeks there will be another upon your doorstep. What power remains to Alera is insufficient to stop her. She already controls too much territory, and you do not have the manpower necessary to retake it. Can you afford not to trust me?”
“Absolutely,” Amara said. “I am perfectly willing to take my chances with an honest enemy rather than place the fate of the Realm in your demonstrably treacherous hands.”
Invidia tilted her head slightly, her eyes narrowing. “You want something.”
“Think of it as earnest money,” Amara said. “Show me the color of your coin, and there’s a chance we can do business.”
Invidia spread her hands. “What would you have of me?”
“The numbers and disposition of the horde, of course,” Amara said. “Add to that the time and focus of the next attack, and any information you have regarding vord troops present upon the field whom we have not yet observed.”
“Give you all of that information?” Invidia asked. “It would not take her long to realize that she had been betrayed. I would survive her wrath no better than I would the High Lords’.”
Amara shrugged. “That does not, in my view, make the plan any less attractive.”
Invidia’s eyes flashed with silent anger.
“Give me that information,” Amara said quietly. “If it is accurate, we can discuss further cooperative actions. Otherwise, go.”
“Give me your word,” Invidia said. “Your word that you bargain in good faith.”
Amara sneered at her. “You . . . you, Invidia, are asking me for my word? Do you see the irony inherent in that?”
“I know what your word means to you,” Invidia said quietly. “I know that you will keep it.”
“You don’t know what it means,” Amara replied. “You have no idea. You might see integrity in others, see it function, see how it guides them. But you do not know what it is, traitor.”
Invida bared her teeth. “Give me your word,” she said. “And I will give you what you ask.”
Amara narrowed her eyes for a time, then said, “Very well. Within the limits of my power and influence, I give
you my word, Invidia. Deal with me honestly, and I will do what I can to make this bargain for you. Though I must caution you—I do not know what the Princeps’ reaction to your proposal is likely to be. Nor can I control it.”
Invidia stared at her intently while she spoke. Then she nodded slowly. “I do not think the Princeps is going to be of any concern to anyone for much longer.”
“You mean your ex-husband?”
Invidia’s expression twisted into mild surprise. “Is he still alive?”
Amara paused deliberately before she spoke, placing emphasis on that silence. “For now,” she said, finally. “I assume that the First Lady is still being held by the Queen?”
Invidia curled her lips in a grim little smile, pausing for the exact same length of time before she answered. “She is being held in the hive, along with Araris Valerian. You see, Countess? We can do business.”
Amara nodded slowly. “I am listening, Invidia. But not for long.”
“She was right here? In the bloody steadholt? In this bloody room?” Raucus bellowed. “Bloody crows, why didn’t you raise the alarm?”
“Perhaps because Invidia would undoubtedly have killed her?” Phrygius suggested patiently. “Which was presumably why she approached the Countess instead of one of us?”
Raucus scowled. “I mean after she left. We could have brought the bitch down before she got back to her cave or whatever.”
“Perhaps you should let the Countess speak. That way, she’ll be able to tell us,” Lord Placida said mildly.
Lady Placida frowned and moved her hand as if to restrain her husband, but dropped it back to her side again. Old Cereus sat in a chair near the door, frowning.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” Bernard said. “Love?”
“Invidia came here to try to make a deal.”
Everyone simply stared at her in shock, except for old Cereus, who snorted. “That isn’t surprising,” he said. “It’s stupid, but not surprising.”
