Princeps’ Fury

They landed on the causeway, and the lord never took his eyes off her the whole way down. He stopped ten feet from her and faced her silently, one hand on his sword.

“No,” Amara told him tiredly. “I haven’t been taken.”

The man seemed to relax, at least by a fraction. “You understand, of course, that security is a priority.”

“Of course,” Amara said. “I’m sorry, sir. I recognize that you are of the Placidan Citizenry, but I can’t remember your name.”

The lord, who looked about Amara’s age, but who could have been twenty years older, if he had watercrafting enough, gave her a tired smile. He needed a shave. “Crows, lady. I can barely remember it myself. Marius Quintias, at your service.”

“Quintias,” Amara said, bowing slightly. “I am Countess Calderonus Amara. The people with me are the Knights and Citizens my husband and I rescued from the Vord. They’re tired, cold, and hungry. Is there a haven for them nearby?”

“Aye,” he said, nodding as he swept his gaze around. There was a faint, but undeniable note of pride in his voice. “For the moment, at least.”

For the first time, Amara looked at her surroundings.

A battle had been fought there, on the causeway beneath the Redhill Heights. The earth was torn with furycraft and the tread of thousands of feet. Black patches marked where firecrafting had scorched the ground. Broken weapons lay strewn about the ground, here and there, along with spent arrows, broken shields, and cloven helms.

And there were dead Vord.

There were thousands upon thousands of dead Vord. They carpeted the earth for hundreds of yards behind her.

“I wouldn’t go walking this countryside alone for the time being, Countess,” Quintias said. “But if you’ll come to the camp, you can sleep safe, at least, once your people have cleared inspection.”

“Inspection?” Amara asked.

“No one comes into the camp unless we’re sure that they aren’t taken or working with the Vord, lady,” Quintias said without rancor. “We’ve had taken trying to slip in and cause trouble since about an hour after the battle.”

“I see,” she said quietly. “It’s imperative, sir, that I speak to the First Lord at once. I have information he will need.”

Quintias nodded sharply. “Then let’s get moving.”

They took to the air again, and Quintias and a dozen of his Knights escorted them ahead, flying low and slow, the effort laborious. They would be exhausted when they landed-which was, she suspected, the point. If they had been intent on causing mischief, their fliers, at least would be in no condition to do so.

It took them little time to reach the camp-a camp set up behind the interlocked palisades of no fewer than nine Aleran Legions. Half a dozen of them were flying the blue-and-white banners of Antillus, which was, Amara would have sworn, an obvious impossibility.

Beyond the neat white tents of the Legion camps was a small sea of humanity numbering in the tens of thousands if not the hundreds. Armored legionares of one of the Placidan Legions were waiting, and Legion healers were coming forward to help (and presumably to verify the humanity of) the most recent arrivals.

Quintias beckoned Amara, and she followed him through the Placidan camp, to a single Legion camp standing behind the front line. The red-and-blue banners of the First Lord flew over it, and she found herself hurrying her steps as she passed through the Crown Legion’s camp, toward its commander’s tent. It was awash in activity, with couriers and officers alike coming and going.

“I’ll tell the First Lord you’re here,” Quintias said, and entered the tent. He came out only a few moments later, and beckoned Amara. She followed him inside.

A crowd of officers stood around a sand table in the center of the room, their quiet discussion buzzing. “Very well then, gentlemen,” said a quiet, cultured baritone. “We know what needs to be done. Let’s be about it.”

The officers saluted with the kind of precision and discipline Amara knew never would have been seen during peacetime, a rattle of fists striking armor, and then began to disperse.

“He wanted to hear from you first thing,” Quintias told her. “Go ahead.”

Amara nodded her thanks to the man and walked forward to speak to the First Lord-and stopped in her tracks in shock.

Aquitainus Attis turned to her, his expression calm and confident beneath the shining steel circlet of the First Lord that he wore upon his brow, and nodded. “Countess Amara, welcome. We have much to discuss.”

* * *

Isana walked into the command tent at the temporary camp and was unsurprised to find it empty except for Lord Aquitaine. The tall, leonine lord stood over the sand table, staring down at it as if reading a poem he could not quite comprehend.

“Your brother’s wife is quite resourceful,” he said quietly. “Not only did she arrange the escape of more than three hundred Knights and Citizens who would have been enslaved by Vord, and destroy their capability of adding any more to their tally, on the way here she also managed to compile a surprisingly complete estimate of the spread of the croach from the reports of the various hostages and her own observations.”

“The only part of that which surprises me is hearing that she shared it with you,” Isana replied in a level tone.

Aquitaine smiled without looking up from the map sculpted into the sand on the table in front of him. “Honestly, Isana. The time for our petty squabbles is past.”

“Petty,” Isana said quietly. “My pardon, Lord Aquitaine. I labored under the misconception that the death of hundreds of my friends and neighbors in Calderon was not a petty matter.”

Aquitaine looked up at Isana and regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, the steel coronet at his brow gleaming in the light of the tent’s furylamps. Then he said, “Let us suppose for a moment that what happened at Calderon had gone differently-that the Marat had wiped out the population of the valley, just as they did in Septimus’s day. That I had positioned myself to stop the horde and won the favor of the Senate and various other parties.”

“And if it had happened that way?” Isana asked.

“It might have saved millions of lives,” Aquitaine said, his voice quiet and hard, and it gained in intensity as he spoke. “A stronger First Lord might have prevented Kalare’s rebellion, or been able to end it with something other than a cataclysm that left a quarter of the Realm in chaos and anarchy that became an ideal breeding ground for the crowbegotten Vord.”

“And you believed that you were the proper person to choose who would live and who would die.”

“You saw where Gaius’s constant games and manipulations took us. You can see it in the smoking ruin where Alera Imperia used to stand. You can see it in Kalare and the Amaranth Vale. You saw it the night they murdered Septimus.” Aquitaine folded his hands behind his back. “Why not someone else? And if it is to be someone else, why not me?”

“Because you are not the heir to the throne,” Isana replied. “My son is.”

Aquitaine gave her a brittle smile. “The Realm is on its knees, Isana. Your son is not here to lead. I am.”

“He will return,” Isana said.

“Perhaps,” Aquitaine said. “But until he does, he is a theoretical leader-and we are facing days of deathly practicality.”

“When he comes back,” Isana said, “will you honor his claim? His birthright? He is Septimus’s son, Lord Aquitaine.”

Aquitaine’s expression flickered and he glanced down at the table again for a moment, frowning.

“If he comes back,” he said, with quiet emphasis on the first word, “then… we will see. Until that day, I will do as I think best for the Realm.” His eyes flicked back up to her, and became hard and cold as agates. “And I will expect your support.”