Chapter 11

"You have no idea of the potential for destruction in the forces you are tampering with," Alera said calmly. "None whatsoever."

Tavi stood in his command tent, looking down at a large map of the Realm spread out across an entire tabletop, its corners weighted with small white stones. The air hummed with the tension of a windcrafting that would prevent their voices from carrying outside. His dress-uniform tunic was folded neatly on the cot in the corner, ready for his dinner with Kitai. "Then perhaps you should educate me," he murmured.

Alera looked as she always did - serene, remote, lovely, garbed in grey, her eyes shimmering through one metallic or gemstone hue after the next. "It would be difficult to truly explain, even to you. Not in the time that remains."

Tavi arched an eyebrow at that remark and studied Alera more closely. The human-appearing fury folded her hands before her, the posture of a proper Aleran matron. Had they been trembling? Did the nails look... uneven? Ragged, as if she'd been chewing upon them?

Something, Tavi decided, was definitely off about the fury tonight.

"If it isn't too much trouble, perhaps you could explain what sorts of problems I might be letting myself in for if I go through with the plan."

"I don't see why," Alera responded. "You're going to do it in any case."

"Perhaps."

She shook her head. "What you are asking is going to set certain cycles into motion. The ultimate result of those cycles could be the slow freezing of the world. Glaciers that grow and grow each year, slowly devouring all the land before them."

Tavi had just picked up a glass of watered wine and taken a drink. He half choked on it. "Bloody crows," he croaked. "When?"

"Not in your lifetime," Alera said. "Or in the lifetimes of your children, or their children. Perhaps not in the lifetime of your entire people. Almost certainly, beyond the length of time your written memory will survive you. A thousand years, or two thousands, or three or twenty. But it will come."

"If I do not act," Tavi said, "the vord will destroy my people before the snow flies this year." He shook his head. "The Alerans of thousands of years in the future will never have the chance to exist - and you'll never get to tell anyone that you told them so. The theoretical Alerans of tomorrow will have to look out for themselves."

He half expected her to smile at his commentary. It was the sort of quiet, cerebral humor that the fury seemed to appreciate. She did not respond.

"You'll help us?" he asked.

She inclined her head slowly. "Of course."

Tavi stepped closer to her abruptly, reached down to her folded hands, and lifted them. His heart went up into his throat as he did. The fury before him was a being of almost unthinkable power. If she took exception to his actions...

But she only stood there regarding him with a calm expression. He moved his eyes from hers to her fingertips.

They looked ragged, the material of them frayed, somehow, chewed. Tavi had once seen the bodies of soldiers who had fallen into a river during a battle. The men had drowned, and their remains had not been recovered for more than a day. The fish and other creatures of the river had been at them, biting and snipping off tiny bits of flesh. The wounds had not bled. They had remained cold, inert, grey, as if the bodies had somehow become sculptures of soft clay.

Alera's fingers looked like that - like a wax sculpture an industrious mouse had been nibbling upon.

"What is this?" he asked her quietly.

"Inevitability," the fury replied. "Dissolution."

He frowned for a moment, both at her hands and at her reply. The meaning sunk in a few seconds later. He looked up at her, and whispered, "You're dying."

Alera gave him a very calm, very warm smile. "A simplistic way to view what is happening," she replied. "But I suppose that from your perspective it does share certain superficial similarities."

"I don't understand," Tavi said.

Alera considered her hands in his for a moment. Then she gestured down the length of her body, and said, "Know you how this form came to be? Why it is that I speak to your family's bloodline?"

Tavi shook his head. "No."

She gave him a chiding glance. "But you have conjectured."

Tavi inclined his head to her. "I hypothesized that it had something to do with the mural in the First Lord's meditation chamber."

"Excellent," Alera said, nodding. "The mosaic in the chamber floor is made from pieces of stone brought there from all over the Realm. Through those pieces, the original Gaius Primus was able to communicate with and command furies all across the land to bring him information, allow him glimpses of places far away, and to do his will." She pursed her lips. "That was when I first began to become aware of myself, as a discrete entity. Over Primus's lifetime, I continued to... congeal, I suppose, would be the best word for it. He sensed my presence and, in time, I understood how to speak with him and how to manifest a material form." She smiled, her eyes distant. "The first words I remember actually hearing with my own ears were Primus's: Bother, I've gone mad."

Tavi let out a short, choking laugh.

She smiled at him. "The mosaic was the focus upon which this form was predicated. It was what drew thousands upon thousands of furies with no individual identity into something more." She put a hand flat to her own chest. "Into Alera."

"And when my grandfather destroyed Alera Imperia, the mosaic was destroyed with it," Tavi said.

"Unavoidable, from Sextus's perspective. Had it remained intact, the vord Queen would have possessed it. She would almost certainly have understood what it meant and attempted to control me through it. She might even have succeeded."

"And that's why the First Lords never spoke of you to anyone," Tavi said quietly. "Why there's not a word of you in any of the histories."

"No foes of the House of Gaius could attempt to usurp control of me if they did not know of me."

"But they could kill you," Tavi said quietly.

"Indeed." She drew in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "In a very real sense, I have been killed by the vord invasion - but it took a certain length of time for me to form. It will likewise take time for me to return to my original state."

"I hadn't... I didn't realize," Tavi said. "I'm so sorry."

She arched an eyebrow. "But why? I do not fear what is to come, young Gaius. I will feel neither loss nor pain. My time in this form is almost done. All things must come to an end. It is the way of the universe."

"After so long helping my family and the Realm, you deserve better."

"In what way is that relevant? What one deserves and what one experiences are seldom congruent."

"When they are, it is called 'justice,' " Tavi said. "It's one of the things I'm supposed to help provide, as I understand the office."

Alera's smile took on a bitter undertone. "Bear in mind that I have not always helped your family or your people. I am unwilling to place any creature before any other. And every action I take mandates a reaction, a balance. When Sextus wished me to moderate prevailing weather in the Vale, it would cause half a dozen furystorms elsewhere in the Realm. When he would ask me to lend strength to the great currents of wind, it would spin off cyclones hundreds of miles away. Until the vord came, I and my kin had killed more Alerans than any foe your folk had ever faced." Her eyes glinted with something savage and cold. "The argument could be made, young Gaius, that what is happening to me is justice."

Tavi took that in for a moment, mulling it over in his mind. "When you are gone... Things will change."

Her eyes went unreadable. "Yes."

"What things?"

"Everything," she said calmly. "For a time. The forces so long bound up in this form must settle out to a balance once more. The countryside of all the Realm will become more active with wild furies, more turbulent, and more dangerous. Weather patterns will shift and change. Animals will behave oddly. Plants will grow at unnatural rates, or wither for no apparent reason. Furycrafting itself will be unstable, unpredictable."

Tavi shuddered, imagining the chaos that would grow from such an environment. "Is there no way to prevent it?"

Alera looked at him with something almost like compassion. "None, young Gaius."

Tavi sank down onto a camp stool and put his elbows on his knees, his head bowed. "Nothing. You're sure."

"All things end, young Gaius. One day, you will, too."

Tavi's back hurt. Some motion during the fight with the Canim assassins had pulled a muscle. It would be simple to ease the pain in a tub, a mild watercrafting. Even if he didn't have a tub, the discomfort was minor enough to alleviate with a few moments of intense focus. But at the moment, he wasn't sure he was capable of that. His back hurt.

"You're telling me," he said, "that even if we somehow overcome the vord, it won't be over. Someday soon, the land itself is going to turn against us. We might overcome this nightmare only to drown in chaos."

"Yes."

"That's... a lot to have in front of me."

"Life is unfair, uncaring, and painful, young Gaius," Alera said. "Only a madman struggles against the tide."

She didn't make a whisper of sound, but Tavi lifted his eyes to find Alera kneeling, facing him, her face level with his. She reached out and touched his cheek with her frayed fingertips. "I have always found the particular madness of the House of Gaius singularly intriguing. It has fought the tides for more than a thousand years. It has often failed to attain victory. But it has never conceded the struggle."

"Has it ever faced something like this?" he asked quietly.

"When the first Alerans came here, perhaps," Alera said, her eyes distant. "My memories of it are very distant. It would be centuries before I knew your people. But they were few. So very few. Eleven thousand lives, perhaps."

"About the same size as a Legion and its followers," Tavi said.

She smiled. "And so it was. A Legion from another place, lost, and come here to my lands." She gestured toward the entrance to the tent. "The Canim, the Marat, the Icemen. All lost travelers." She shook her head sadly. "The others, too. Those that your people exterminated, over the centuries. So much lost to fear and necessity."

"When they came here, they had no furycrafting?" Tavi asked.

"Not for years."

"Then how did they do it?" he asked. "How did they survive?"

"With savagery. Skill. Discipline. They came from a place where they were unrivaled masters of war and death. Their enemies here had never seen anything like them. Your forebears could not return whence they had come. They were trapped here, and only victory gave them survival. So they became victors - no matter the cost."

She met his eyes calmly. "They did things you would scarcely believe. They committed the most monstrous and heroic deeds. The generations of your people in that time became a single, savage mind, death incarnate - and when they ran short of foes, they practiced their skills upon one another."

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 slightly, 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."

"What are the odds they could have brought the First Lady down anywhere inside the city or encampment without being seen?" Amara asked.

"Bad," Ehren replied frankly. "She's been everywhere since the capital. Helped a lot of people. She's better known on sight among the populace than Sextus ever was." He sighed and faced Amara squarely. "Aquitaine wasn't behind it. He couldn't have done it without me finding out."

Amara grimaced. "You're sure?"

"Very."

"Then it was the enemy," Amara said.

"It seems likely," Ehren said. "We know that the vord Queen still controls a cadre of skilled Knights Aeris and Citizens."

"If the vord have her... if they flew out, they could be miles from here by now," Veradis breathed.

"Aquitaine is occupied," Amara said. "And the temptation for him to remain occupied is going to be great."

Ehren tilted his head to one side, a gesture of allowance, while spreading the fingers of one hand. He looked torn.

"Help us," Amara said.

"There is a lot more at stake here than one woman's life," Ehren replied quietly.

"Cursor," Amara said, "you learned from my example that it was wrong to blindly follow a First Lord. That you could find yourself used. So it is time to ask yourself whether you serve the Realm first - or the people who are the Realm. Gaius Isana was Steadholder Isana first. And freeman Isana before that." She smiled tightly, and delivered the next sentence flat, without the coating of gentleness that would have made it slide home like a well-honed knife. "And she was your friend's mother before that."

Ehren gave her a sour look but leavened it with a nod of thanks, that she hadn't driven that last home in the properly manipulative Academy fashion.

"Aquitaine has all that remains of the Realm to stand with him tonight," Veradis said. "Who does the First Lady have?"

Ehren tapped a toe several times on the ground and nodded once, sharply. "Come with me."

They followed him as he started through the encampment, moving at a quick walk. "Where are we going?" Amara asked.

"Every scrap of battlecraft we have is being focused right now," Ehren said. "There's a force of better than five hundred thousand vord closing on us. They'll reach the defenses within the hour."

"How did they get here so swiftly?"

"We're not sure," Ehren said. "But logic suggests that they repaired the severed causeways."

"What?" Veradis demanded. "Could they possibly have done that in the time they've had? It would take our own engineers months, maybe years."

"The work isn't complicated," Ehren said. "Just heavy and repetitive. If they had enough gifted earthcrafters focused on the task it could be done relatively quickly. The causeways weren't built by Citizen-level skills. For healing over the cuts, a powerful Citizen with the proper knowledge could theoretically repair several miles a day."

Amara let out a blistering curse. "That's what that little slive meant." At Ehren's glance, she clarified. "Kalarus Brencis Minoris. The vord Queen's slave-master. Before I killed him, he said he'd been focusing on recruiting more earthcrafters, as ordered."

Ehren hissed between his teeth. "I remember the report now. We should have put it together."

"Hindsight is always better," Amara said, walking beside him.

"But isn't that a good thing?" Veradis asked. "If the roads are restored, perhaps Octavian's forces can get here more quickly."

"It's unlikely they've repaired all the causeways," Amara replied. "Most probably they've rebuilt a single artery for their own use, to move an attack force here rapidly. They're coming up from the south, mainly, near the capital. Octavian is far west and a bit north of us."

"And he's only got two Legions." Ehren sighed. "Assuming he got back from Canea with everyone and all those freed slaves stuck to their banners. Maybe fifteen thousand men, total."

"Sir Ehren," Amara repeated. "Where are we going?"

"Gaius Attis," Ehren said, pronouncing the name without the hesitation of unfamiliarity, "retained a certain number of skilled individuals for his personal use. I have the authority to dispatch them as needed."

"Singulares?" Veradis asked.

"Assassins," Amara said, without emphasis.

"Ah. A little of both," Ehren replied. "Attis felt a need to be sure he had a hand ready to move quickly, if necessary."

"To strike at Octavian if it seemed possible," Amara said.

"I rather think they were primarily intended for his ex-wife," Ehren replied. "Primarily."

Amara gave him a sharp glance. "And you are in charge of them? You know when they are to be used? And you have the authority to send them to help us?"

Ehren bowed to her from the waist, without slowing down.

Amara watched him steadily. Then she said, "You are either a very good friend, Sir Ehren - or a very, very good spy."

"Ah," he said, smiling. "Or a little of both."

They walked to the rear corner of the camp, where the tents that were usually reserved for critical noncombat personnel were pitched, according to the standard format for a Legion camp. They usually housed smiths, farriers, valets, cooks, mule skinners, and the like. Ehren walked straight to an oversized tent that displaced four of the regulation-sized structures, opened the flap, and walked in.

A dozen swords leapt from their scabbards in slithering, steely whispers, and Amara straightened from ducking into the tent to find a blade not six inches from her throat. She looked down its length, to the oft-scarred hand that held it in a steady grip, and let her gaze track up the arm of the swordsman to his face. He was enormous, dark of hair, his beard clipped in a short, precise cut. His eyes were steely and cold. It didn't seem that he held the sword so much as that the weapon seemed to grow from his extended hand. Amara knew him.

"Aldrick," hissed a woman's voice. A small, richly curvaceous woman wearing a plain linen gown with a tight-fitting leather bodice stepped out from behind the swordsman. Her hair was dark and curly, her eyes glittering, darting left and right at odd intervals. The smile on her face did not match the eyes at all. Her hands opened and closed in excitement, and she licked her lips as she slid closer to Amara and pushed the end of the blade very gently down. "Look, lord. It's the nice wind girl who left us to die naked in the Kalaran wilderness. And I never thanked her for it."

Aldrick ex Gladius, one of the deadliest swordsmen in Alera, hooked a finger down into the back of the woman's bodice and dragged her close to him, leaving his sword extended. She leaned against his pull. He didn't seem to notice. He slid a hand around her waist, when she was close enough, and pressed her shoulders back against his mailed torso. "Odiana," he rumbled. "Peace."

The fey-looking woman twitched several more times, her smile widening, and subsided. "Yes, lord."

"Little man," Aldrick rumbled. "What's she doing here?"

Ehren smiled up at Aldrick, standing diffidently, as though he weren't bright enough to notice all the naked steel in the room and too innocent of the ways of violence to understand how much danger he was in. "Ah, yes. She's here to, ah, there's a special mission for you all, and you're to do it."

Amara glanced around the tent. She recognized some of the men and women in it, from long before, during her graduation exercise from the Academy. Back before her mentor had betrayed her. Back before the man she'd pledged her life to support had done the same. They were the Windwolves - mercenaries, the long-term hirelings of the Aquitaines. They were suspected in any number of dubious enterprises, and though she could not prove it, Amara was certain that they had killed any number of Alerans during their employers' various schemes.

They were dangerous men and women one and all, strongly gifted at furycraft, known as an aerial contingent, Knights for hire.

"Hello, Aldrick," Amara said calmly, facing the man. "This is the short version: As of now, you are working with me."

His eyebrows climbed. His eyes went to Ehren.

The little man nodded, smiling and blinking myopically. "Yes, that's correct. She'll tell you what you need to know. Very important, and I've other messages to deliver, good hunting."

Ehren nodded and bumbled out of the tent, muttering apologies.

Grimacing, Aldrick watched him go and eyed Amara. A moment later, he put his sword away. Only then did the others in the room lower and put away their weapons.

"All right," he said, staring at Amara with distaste. "What's the job?"

Odiana stared at her with what Amara could only describe as malicious glee. Her smile was unsettling.

"The usual," Amara said, smiling as though her innards hadn't spent the last moments shimmying and twisting in fear. "It's a rescue."