Captain's Fury

Arnos's mouth twitched, and incoherent gobbling noises came from it.

"I call you to account, traitor!" Tavi thundered, and a nearby wall gave way beneath the shuddering earth and fell. "I call you to the juris macto! And may the crows feast on the unjust!"

Chapter 52

"If you kill me now," Araris said quietly to Navaris, "no one will ever know."

The sword-slender woman stared at Araris with dead eyes.

Then she shrugged.

"I'll get over it."

Isana felt the cutter's decision the instant she'd made it, and a blossom of mad, unholy glee flared out from Navaris as she turned to Araris and lifted her sword.

"No!" Isana cried, struggling against the ropes.

Without warning, the earth suddenly shook.

Navaris staggered, reaching out to seize the tent's central pole to keep from falling. The tent sagged to one side, and its flap fell open, revealing a lurid twilight outside. The earth continued to rumble, and Isana could hear stone falling on stone. Somewhere in the background, a strident male voice thundered in furious speech.

Navaris stared around in angry surprise and shuffled to the tent's opening over the still-trembling ground, eyes roaming back and forth.

Isana felt a sense of bafflement from Araris that must have matched the incredulity on her own face, and just then there was a sharply whistled birdcall from outside.

A voice lifted up in what Isana recognized as a Marat war cry, and the tent was suddenly ripped away around them. Isana had to twist her head down against one shoulder to avoid a trailing rope. The tent flew off, and Isana had time to see a pair of leggy Marat coursers, bearing their barbarian riders, gallop off, dragging the tent behind them.

The sky was lit with red light, which seemed to cast shadows that were somehow subtly wrong for a sunset, until Isana realized that was because they were. The ruddy light of sunset poured in from the west. This light came from almost directly to the south.

Kitai appeared from the shadows behind a dilapidated stone building. The Marat girl was dressed just as she had been when Isana saw her last, though she bore a heavily recurved Marat bow in her hands, complete with an arrow tipped with razor-sharp, glossy black stone.

Navaris saw her, too. The cutter took a smooth step to Isana's side and rested her sword against the Steadholder's throat.

"Kitai," Isana breathed.

"Good evening," Kitai said pleasantly. She peered at the sky to the south, then turned to Navaris. "What do you make of that?"

Navaris jerked her head to one side in a gesture of suspicion and fixed Kitai with a steady stare.

"I didn't think you knew. I don't know what it is, either," Kitai said. She shook her head and then tipped one end of her bow at Isana. "Walk away from them both, Phrygiar Navaris, or you will die."

Navaris's mouth twitched up into a little smirk.

"Yes," Kitai admitted. "You could probably stop my arrow. But can you stop twenty?"

She twisted up her lips and gave another trilling birdcall, and the shadows boiled over with leather-armored Marat warriors rising from concealment. Every single barbarian bore a bow like Kitai's, and every one of them had a stone-tipped arrow nocked to it.

"Stone-headed arrows, Navaris," Kitai said, her voice steady and empty of malice. "From every direction. No way to see them all. No metal for you to sense."

Navaris's expression went blank. Her eyes flicked around, taking stock of her situation.

"Walk away," Kitai repeated.

Twenty Marat warriors drew their bows at the same time. The creak of the weapons' curved staves and straining strings sounded like an old barn in bad weather.

Navaris never flinched. "If you shoot, I will kill her before I die."

"Yes," Kitai said in a patient tone. "Which is why I have not shot you. Yet. Walk away."

"If I step away from her, what is to prevent you from killing me?"

"Your death doesn't belong to me," Kitai said. "We flipped a coin. I lost."

Navaris lifted her eyebrows.

"Go," Kitai said. She raised her voice, presumably addressing the Marat present. "Neither I nor any of mine will harm you or seek to prevent you from leaving."

Navaris considered that for a second. One eyelid twitched several times, and Isana felt dizzy from the variety and disorienting intensity of the emotions flooding from the cutter. Navaris experienced terror, contempt, joy, hunger, lust, and howling satisfaction all at the same instant, all jumbled up inside her thoughts. Isana could sense the barrier of will that generally kept that hurricane of violent emotion in check.

The barrier quivered like the earth beneath their feet, but it did not break. The formless, colorless mass of will suddenly blanketed the strong emotions, and they vanished into the void that was Phrygiar Navaris. The woman lowered her blade, nodded her head once, and walked with quick, quiet steps from the circle of Marat archers as the red light began to fade from the sky.

Kitai moved directly to Isana's side and knelt down beside her. The Marat woman's eyes never wavered from Navaris's departing form. Once she was gone, Kitai drew a knife, and muttered, "Crazy bitch."

She cut Isana and Araris free of their bonds, and rose. "Hurry," she said. "There's no time."

Araris managed to stagger to his feet, but Isana simply couldn't. Her limbs and back knotted themselves tight when she tried it, and to her embarrassment she found herself unable to stand.

"Help her," Kitai snapped, and Isana found herself being lifted by a pair of brawny young barbarian riders, one of them under each arm. Kitai made an impatient sound and started through the ruins. Araris hobbled after her, and Isana's bearers more or less dragged her along with her tingle-numbed toes dragging the ground, passing too close to the nearest hospital area. The pain and fear of the wounded slammed against her like a frost-coated leather lash.

Isana struggled to brace herself against it, focusing on her surroundings until they had passed the hospital. The red light in the sky had faded almost completely, and was now only a dim band of sullen red on the southern horizon.

"Kitai," Isana said. "Where are we? How did you get here?"

"The ruins outside Mastings," Kitai replied shortly. "My mother-sister's kinsmen lowered a rope for me in the dark. I was sent to find you."

"Why?"

"To prevent Arnos from using you as hostages against Octavian, obviously."

"Kitai!" Isana breathed.

Kitai shrugged. "They all know by now, Isana. Right now, my Aleran is declaring himself and challenging Arnos to the juris macto."

"What?" Araris demanded. Horror pulsed off of him in a nauseating cloud.

"The juris macto," Kitai said seriously. "It means 'trial of the fist.' Though it isn't a literal fistfight. I still do not understand why your people insist on naming things by calling them something else. It is insane."

"I know what the juris macto is."

"Araris," Isana asked, her voice shaking. "What's wrong?"

"He's the challenger," Araris spat. "What is he thinking?"

"I don't understand," she said. "Can't you stand for him? Champion him?"

"No!" Araris half shouted. "He's the challenger. He can't have a champion. He has to engage in it personally, or the law won't recognize its outcome as valid."

"Tavi can't have a champion?" Isana felt the bottom of her stomach fall out. "But Amos can." She went cold. "Great furies. Navaris will be his champion."

Araris spat to one side. "That's what she does."

"I told him he should have let me handle it," Kitai said. "But after escaping one prison and stealing Varg from another, suddenly Aleran law is important again."