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Tavi rubbed at his chin, studying Max. His friend’s words were… not what he’d really expected of him. Max had a fantastic instinct for analyzing tactical and strategic situations, a gift that his training at the Academy had sharpened and honed—but this kind of thinking was out of character for his old friend.
Tavi inhaled deeply, understanding. “Kitai came to you to talk about it.”
“Couple of weeks ago,” Max said.
Tavi shook his head. “Bloody crows.”
“I don’t know if it will work,” Max said. “Making your courtship a semi-public event, I mean.”
“Do you think it might?”
Max shrugged. “I think it will give the people who do support you a way to counter anyone who tries to start using Kitai to drum up some opposition. If you’ve courted her with the same consideration that would be expected of a young Aleran lady highly placed in the Citizenry, it lends her a certain amount of status by association.” He frowned. “And besides…”
Tavi sensed his friend’s sudden reluctance to speak. He shook his head, feeling a smile tug wearily at the corners of his mouth. “Max,” he said quietly, “just say it.”
“Bloody crows, Calderon.” Maximus sighed. “I’m the one who treats girls like disposable pleasures. You’ve always been the smart one. The capable one. The one who went to every class and studied and did well. You’re the one coming up with ways to use furycraft that no one’s ever dreamed of before, and you can barely use it. You’ve gone up against Canim and Marat and vord queens alike, and you’re still in one piece.” He met Tavi’s eyes, and said, “I know that you don’t think of Kitai the way I thought of my lovers. She’s not a playmate. You see her as your equal. Your ally.”
Tavi nodded, and murmured, “Yes.”
Max shrugged and dropped his eyes. “Maybe she deserves some romance, too, Calderon. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt you to go out of your way to make her feel special. Not because she can fight, or because she’s practically a princepsa of her own people. But just because you want to show her. You want her to know how much you care.”
Tavi stared at Max for a moment and felt somewhat thunderstruck.
Max was right.
He and Kitai had been together for a very long time. They had shared everything with one another. Whenever she had been gone, it had left an enormous, restless hole somewhere inside him that adamantly refused to be filled. So many things had happened to them together—but he hadn’t ever really spoken to her about the depth of his feelings. She’d known, of course, just as he had been able to sense her devotion to him through the odd link the two of them shared.
But some things needed to be said before they could be truly real.
And some things couldn’t be said. They had to be done.
Bloody crows. He’d never asked her what the marriage customs of her people were. He’d never even thought to ask.
“Crows,” Tavi said, calmly. “I… Max, I think you have a point.”
Max spread his hands. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“All right,” Tavi said. “Then… I suppose that while I’m finding a way to get the rest of Alera to accept the Canim’s help, and figuring out how to defeat the vord, and coming up with enough support to actually be the First Lord, I’ll have to work an epic romance into the schedule.”
“That’s why you’re the Princeps, and I’m just a humble Tribune,” Max said.
“I… I don’t really know much about being romantic,” Tavi said.
“Neither do I,” Max said cheerfully. “But look at it this way. It won’t need to be much to improve on what’s gone before.”
Tavi made a growling sound and reached for his empty mug.
Max opened the door and saluted, banging his right fist against his armored chest, gri
Tavi held on to the mug. It wouldn’t do to throw it at Max in plain view of everyone on deck. He put the mug down, gave Max a look that promised eventual repayment, and said, “Thank you, Tribune. Shut the door on your way out, please.”
Max departed and shut the door, and Tavi sank tiredly back onto his chair. He looked at the maps spread out on his desk—and drew out the one he hadn’t shown the others. Alera had helped him with it. It showed the spread of the vord croach over the face of Alera, like gangrene oozing into the body from an infected wound.
The vord had to number in the hundreds of thousands by now, perhaps even in the millions.
Tavi shook his head ruefully. It said something about the world, he thought, that the vord threat was arguably the second most perplexing problem he had. He wasn’t sure what, but it definitely said something.
CHAPTER 2
“Gentlemen, Warmaster,” Tavi said. “Thank you for coming.” He looked around his cabin at the gathering of what he’d come to think of as his campaign council. “In the next few hours, your troops will be learning what I’m about to tell you. You’ll need to know it first.”
He paused to take a steadying breath and to make sure that his expression and body language were calm. It wouldn’t do to let them see him nervous, given the gravity of what he was about to explain. And it wouldn’t do to let the Canim see him nervous under any circumstances.
“The vord have already attacked Alera,” Tavi said. “The first assault was beaten back, but not broken. Ceres has fallen. As has Alera Imperia. In the time we’ve been sailing home, other cities may have fallen as well.”
Dead silence settled on the ship’s cabin.
Nasaug turned his dark-furred head to Varg. The Canim Warmaster twitched an ear and kept his blood-colored eyes on Tavi.
“What’s more,” Tavi continued, “the First Lord, my grandfather, Gaius Sextus, was slain while fighting a holding action to give the folk of the capital a chance to escape.”
No one spoke, but an almost-silent chorus of moans of shocked disbelief went up from the Alerans present. Tavi didn’t want to keep his tone brisk and businesslike. He wanted to scream his outrage and grief that the vord had taken his grandfather from him before he’d had a chance to get to know Sextus better. But his anger, no matter how hot it burned, wouldn’t change anything.
Tavi forged ahead into the silence. “The Amaranth Vale is completely lost. The vord have somehow suborned Alerans into their service, and now furycraft meets furycraft in battle. In addition, most of the causeways have been cut, to prevent the vord from making use of them, so they ca
“But their hold is far from complete. These stretches of countryside between the lines of the causeways and the cities are as yet unoccupied, probably because the vord deem them lower-priority areas. Our people, though, are cut off. Anyone isolated behind the lines of the croach is trapped. Our best estimates say that they have, at the most, another eight or ten months before the croach fills in the empty areas.”
He turned to them with a cold little smile. “So. We have that long to destroy the vord threat.”
“Bloody crows,” Max breathed. “As long as it isn’t too difficult a chore or anything.”
“Our work is cut out for us,” Tavi acknowledged.
Crassus raised a hand. Max’s younger half brother bore a resemblance to Max, but everywhere Max was rough, the more slender young man was refined. Crassus was an inch shorter and thirty pounds of muscle lighter than his brother, and he had the noble profile of a Citizen of the blood that could have leapt straight from any number of old statues, paintings, or coins. “If the First Lo—If Sextus perished during a holding action, that implies that there was still organized resistance, and that it might still be there. What do we know of the Legions and their strength?”