Princeps’ Fury

Invidia stared at her in deadly silence for a long moment.

Amara bared her teeth at her in a humorless smile. “You may have lived through the attack, but High Lady Aquitaine didn’t survive it.”

“Enough of her survived to settle accounts, Countess,” Invidia said in a quiet voice. “More than enough to deal with you. And your husband.”

Amara felt a little chill of fear go through her.

Invidia smiled. “Ah. I thought as much. Where is dear Count Calderon? I can’t imagine him to be the sort to let you accept a mission such as this alone.”

“He’s dead,” Amara said, keeping her tone as flat as she could.

“Liar,” replied Invidia, without an instant’s hesitation. “Oh, you could deceive me about many things, child. But not about him. He’s too close to your heart.” She rose slowly, eyes again on the creature upon her breast. This time, it didn’t stir as she moved. “This needn’t be any more unpleasant than it already has been, Countess.”

“Meaning it will go easier for me, if I cooperate with you, I presume,” Amara said.

“Precisely.”

“Go to the crows. And take your friends with you.”

Invidia’s smile widened. “Where is your husband, Countess?”

Amara faced her in silence, except for the rattling of her belt buckle against the stones of the courtyard as she shivered in the cold.

“I told you,” Invidia said, her smile widening.

“Some of your people adequately understand the situation,” the Vord queen said, stepping forward to stare down at Amara. “But so many of the others refuse us. Even given the chance to survive, they ignore their own best interests in favor of… intangibles. There is no gain in it, no sense, no reason.”

Amara had felt the touch of a Vord queen’s mind before, though she had not known it at the time. It was a subtle thing, a fluttering of thought and emotion as tenuous and delicate as a strand of spiderweb stretched across a wooded path.

“Where is Bernard?” Invidia prompted in a gentle voice.

Amara ground her teeth and focused upon her surroundings, upon how cold she was, separating herself from her thoughts and emotions-just as she would when attempting to deceive a skilled watercrafter. And then she drew up every memory of Bernard that she could summon-his steady silence in the field, his gentle humor telling a story of his day over di

The Vord queen exhaled slowly, and said, “Her mind is disciplined. She hides him from me.” The pale, strange-eyed being turned away, and Amara felt the touch of its thoughts vanish. “Interesting.”

“Give me an hour,” Invidia said. “She’ll be less able to concentrate once we’ve spent some time with her.”

“We have work to do, and no time to waste on such pursuits,” the queen replied. She looked over her shoulder and stared at Amara, dark eyes glittering. “Come.”

Invidia rose, but looked at Amara with narrowed eyes. “That could cost us her mind, along with its contents.”

The Vord queen hadn’t slowed down. “The order of probability that she will know anything more useful than that we have already gained is very low. The risk is acceptable.”

“I understand,” Invidia said. She stared at Amara for another moment, then shook her head. “Farewell, Countess. When next we meet, I suppose it will be on friendlier terms.”

Amara’s heart pounded harder as the fear grew. “What do you mean?”

The shriek of the Vord queen echoed across the courtyard, and seconds later the air was filled with the thunder of Vord taking to the night sky on green-black wings.

“Brencis did an excellent job on my ribs, my lung, and my stomach,” Invidia said. “So don’t fear, Countess. I leave you in capable hands.”

Brencis stood over Rook’s motionless corpse, his face empty of anything but an odd, fey heat. He looked from the corpse to Amara, very slowly, his eyes unfocused.

“Brencis,” Invidia said, as the collared Alerans began to gather around her before she took to the sky. “Collar her.”

Amara’s scream of protest and horror was lost in the howl of a dozen windstreams lifting Invidia and her escort away from fallen Ceres.

CHAPTER 38

Isana could count on her fingers the number of times she had worn trousers. It wasn’t because it would have been terribly outrageous. Plenty of women could and did wear them on steadholts, especially those involved in gathering herbs in the forest, working around animals, or laboring in the fields. She’d simply preferred her gowns and dresses.

The flying leathers felt decidedly odd, especially the trousers, but they were quite warm. That was a necessity, Araris had cautioned her, when wearing metal armor in such cold weather. The metal itself would be cold enough to freeze to her skin if it had the help of a droplet of sweat or spittle. Or tears.

Or blood.

She shivered and adjusted the sword belt that held her long, armored coat closed. She checked the weapon again, sliding the gladius a bit out of the sheath and back in. The cold could freeze the weapon into its sheath if one wasn’t careful.

Aria, standing beside her, said, “There they are. Finally.”

Isana glanced up at the dark grey sky. “He was hoping for the weather to worsen,” she said. “A blizzard would make a public duel problematic.”

Aria sighed. “Probably.”

Isana didn’t turn around to face the Shieldwall. Once again, they stood on the meeting ground where they had spoken with the Icemen. The snow all around it was stirred into odd hummocks and bare spots, where the massive watercrafting she had wrought had disrupted the usual pattern of smooth drifts.

“Aria,” Isana said. “If I should… If today should not end well for me…”

“Ahhh,” Aria said. “That’s why you chose me to be your second instead of Araris.”

“I don’t think he’d be able to help himself. He’d tear into Antillus immediately.”

“And what makes you think I won’t?” Lady Placida asked, her tone completely calm.

Isana glanced aside at the High Lady and noted that Aria wore her slender sword at her side.

“Oh, not you, too,” Isana sighed.

Lady Placida gave Isana a smile that was startlingly wolflike. “Never fear. I’ll leave his hide intact. But I’ll flay his conscience from his bones.”

Isana nodded. “If nothing else… I think it will give you a genuine chance to talk him into doing the right thing.” A motion toward the edge of the trees drew her eye. A massive shape loomed there in the shadows of early dawn-Walker, the gargant. Doroga appeared from the shadows and leaned on his long-handled cudgel, a hundred yards away. He gave her a slow, respectful nod, which Isana returned.

Aria sighed. “I can’t believe it’s come to this. I can’t believe the young man I knew would… do this. But Raucus changed, after he married Kalarus Dorotea. They could barely stand one another, but their fathers had arranged it all. It was supposed to unite the northern cities with the south, you know.” She shook her head, and said, “Here they are.”

Isana turned slowly, gravely, to face Lord Antillus.

She honestly wasn’t ready for the sight that greeted her.

Every member of the Legion and every single person who was part of the Legion’s support structure, or so it seemed, had come to the top of the Wall to watch the duel. A river of humanity stretched for a mile, perhaps more, along the dark, massive structure. When Isana had walked out in the dark before dawn, she hadn’t really been paying too much attention to what was going on around her, she supposed, and it hadn’t been light enough to see very far.

Her potentially useful death, it seemed, would have an enormous audience.