Chapter 31

"The less you say, the better," Rook said. "The less I know about why you're here, the less harm I can do you should the information be taken from me."

Which is precisely why I did not inform you of Bernard's presence, Amara thought.

They had stepped from the slavers' tunnel into one of its adjoining chambers. There was a heady odor coming from a number of tightly fitted barrels against the far wall. Amara recognized the smell of preprocessed hollybells, the flowers from which the drug aphrodin was made. The slavers, it seemed, had used the tunnels as an entry point for smugglers as well as for moving their own merchandise in and out of the city. Doubtless, they had demanded their own extortionate piece of the lucrative enterprise.

"That's a risk I need to take," Amara told her calmly in reply. "You can tell almost as much about my intentions from the questions I ask as from anything I say. If I can't ask you questions, whatever you tell me is going to be of limited use."

Rook smiled grimly. "Believe me, Countess. I think I can make a fair guess at all of your questions."

"Then you must already know what I'm doing here."

"I suspect," Rook said, raising a finger to the collar and shuddering. "I do not know. There is a difference."

Amara studied the other woman for a long moment before she shook her head. "How do I know that you aren't feeding me misinformation?"

Rook considered the question seriously for a moment before answering. "Countess, the First Lord himself came to me on the steadholt where my daughter and I were living. It was seventy-four miles south of here."

Amara had to suppress a shiver. The past tense was certainly appropriate if the steadholt they had seen earlier that very day was any indication. The region that far south of Ceres had certainly been overrun by the Vord.

"He told me what was happening. He told me that if I served him on this mission, he would see to it that my daughter was taken to safety-to anywhere in Alera that I chose. And that if I returned from it, I could join her."

Amara could not suppress the curse that slipped from between her lips. Gaius had given Rook no choice at all: Do what he wished, or perish with her daughter before the oncoming menace. "Rook, I don't know why you-"

Rook held up her hand for silence. Then said, simply, "I sent her to Calderon."

For a moment, Amara couldn't find a response. "Why Calderon?" she finally asked.

Rook shrugged a shoulder and gave her a weary smile. "I wanted her as far from the Vord as possible. With the most capable, forewarned, and best-prepared people I knew. I know that Count Bernard has been trying to warn folk of the Vord for years. I assumed that he would begin preparing his own home to resist them. If I betray you, Countess, my daughter has no one to protect her. I would rather die screaming with blood running from my nose and ears than that."

Amara bowed her head. It was an accurate description of the kind of death that awaited anyone who defied a discipline collar too severely or for too long, or should anyone try to remove the collar save whoever had put it there. The locking mechanism on the collars was fiendishly complex, but Amara had no doubt that Rook could bypass it whenever she chose, given the proper tools.

It would, of course, kill her to remove it.

Rook had defied High Lords and Ladies-and the First Lord himself, in her effort to secure her child when she had been held prisoner against Rook's loyalty by the late High Lord Kalarus. Amara had no doubt whatsoever that the woman would sacrifice her life without hesitation if she thought that by doing so she could protect Masha.

"Very well," Amara said. "What can you tell me?"

"Little," Rook said. She made a frustrated gesture at the collar. "Orders. But I can show you."

Amara nodded once.

Rook turned back to the tunnel and beckoned her. "Follow me."

Veiled to the utmost of her ability, Amara crouched on a blackened rooftop beside Rook, overlooking the city's former Slave Market, the Vord's "recruitment" area.

She'd seen merrier slaughterhouses.

There were several dozen Vord, the low-slung garimlike versions, assembled in the courtyard, waiting in patient coils of gleaming black exoskeleton next to every entrance to and from the place, and Amara suspected that she would see similar sentries at every crossroads and gateway within the city.

Besides the Vord, several hundred Alerans filled the Slave Market. The majority of them were imprisoned in the various different cages required to hold strongly gifted furycrafters. Firecrafters were those imprisoned beneath the steady rain-shower trickle of water that poured down from pipes overhead. Earthcrafters were being held in cages suspended several feet from the ground. The windcrafters, as Amara well knew, would be inside the low brick cubes of solid stone, with no access to air but for what could come in through a few holes no larger across than Amara's thumb. A metal cage sufficed for woodcrafters, though they were placed far opposite the courtyard from the heavy wooden beams that restrained the metalcrafters inside.

Most interesting were the cages that had to take multiple layers of precautions to contain their prisoners-doubtless the captured Citizenry. One metal cage that swung high off the ground and was simultaneously drizzled with water and fine black dirt caught Amara's eye, particularly. The cage held a number of damp, mud-spattered figures, only two of them armored men captured during the battle. The other four were women, probably taken when the Vord overran their homes to the south. All of them-and most of the prisoners Amara could see, for that matter-lay in the loose-limbed stupor of the aphrodin addict.

Amara watched as a pair of silver-collared guards dragged a drug-disoriented prisoner from one of the stone windcrafter pens, a young man in shattered armor. They dragged him across the courtyard to the stage where the auctions were held, and up onto it. They slammed him down hard onto the surface of the stage, though the young man-a boy, really-hardly seemed to be in any condition to stand upright, let alone offer resistance.

A pair of extremely attractive young women on the stage, wearing little more than scraps of cloth and gleaming silver collars, approached him. One of them silently began unknotting the thong of a necklace or amulet the young man wore on his neck and took it away, drawing the first feeble stir of protest from him that Amara had seen.

The second girl knelt and caressed his hair and face for a moment, before sliding a slender-necked bottle to his lips. Amara saw the girl's lips urging him to drink. The young man did, his eyes still dazed, and a moment later slumped even more wearily to the floor of the stage-more drugs.

And then Kalarus Brencis Minoris mounted the steps and walked over to him, his movements brisk.

Amara shivered, staring at the son of High Lord Kalarus, the young man whom she had last seen weeping and running for his life on the slopes of some fury-forsaken mountain near his former home, stumbling over the corpses of hundreds of recently deceased elite soldiers. Brencis was dressed in fine silks of pure white, unsoiled by any mud or blood. His long dark hair curled gorgeously, as if freshly touched by hot curlers and a brush. His fingers were crusted with rings, and chains lay in looping ranks upon his chest.

They didn't conceal the silver collar around his throat.

Fascinated and repelled, Amara gestured, willing Cirrus to carry the words on the stage, dozens of yards distant, to her ears.

"My lord," said one of the scantily clad girls. Her words were slurred with wine or aphrodin or both. "He is ready, my lord."

"I can see that," Brencis said testily. He reached into an open chest that lay on the stage and drew out a handful of slavers' collars, shaking them in careless irritation until only one remained in his grasp. He settled in front of the dazed soldier, slipped the collar around his neck, drew a knife, and cut his thumb with it. He shoved his bloodied thumb viciously against the catch of the collar, drawing a choking gasp from the young man.

Amara shivered.

She watched as the collar went to work on him. She was familiar with the basic theory behind the device. It used multiple furycrafted disciplines to flood the targets' senses with ecstatic euphoria at first, pacifying them completely. Not that the collar needed much help in the case of the young soldier, dazed and drugged as he was. Even so, there was a visible arching of his body, and his eyes rolled, then fluttered closed.

That would go on for a while, Amara knew. Long enough that when the sensation ceased, it would almost seem like pain, all on its own. When the brutal agony the collars were capable of inflicting at their owner's will set in, it would seem that much worse by comparison.

"This is the truth, soldier," Brencis said, wiping his bloodied thumb on the man's tunic. "You serve the Vord queen now, or her highest representative. Which means that for the moment, you serve me, and anyone I choose to place over you. Take any action you know is against your new loyalty's interests, and you'll hurt. Serve and obey, and you will be rewarded."

By way of demonstration, Brencis idly shoved one of the half-naked girls across the soldier. She made a purring sound and nuzzled her mouth against his throat, sliding one of her thighs over his.

"Listen to her," Brencis spat, contempt in his voice. "Everything she says is true."

The girl pressed her mouth against the young man's ear and began whispering. Amara couldn't make out much of what she was saying, beyond the words "serve" and "obey." But it seemed simple enough to work out-the girl was emphasizing what Brencis had already told the soldier, reinforcing the commands while his mind was being bent out of shape by the collar and the drugs.

"Bloody crows," Amara whispered, feeling sick. She'd known that the collars had been developed for the control of even the most violent criminals-and she'd heard it argued many times that the potential for abuse in the collars was far greater than most of the Realm realized, but she'd never seen it before. Whatever was going on down there, it must have its roots in the techniques High Lord Kalare had used to create his psychotic Immortals.

And, Amara thought, it gave them control of previously free Alerans. It worked. Or at least it worked often enough to give the Vord queen an Aleran honor guard. Those who had never really been motivated by anything higher than self-interest, it seemed, were easily turned, if the men accompanying Rook were any kind of measure.

"Brencis!" came a croaking cry from one of the cages. "Brencis, please!"

Amara focused on the source of the voice-a young woman in the Citizens' cage, probably attractive, though it was difficult to tell through the mud.

Brencis sorted through various collars in the chest.

"Brencis! Can't you hear me?"

"I hear you, Flora," Brencis said. "I just don't care."

The young woman sobbed. "Please. Please, just let me go. We were betrothed, Brencis."

"It's funny, life's little twists and turns," Brencis said conversationally. He glanced up at the cage. "You always did like to play with aphrodin, Flora. You and your sister." His mouth twisted into a bitter sneer. "A pity there are no Antillans around to complete the evening for you."

The young woman started sobbing, a broken little sound. "But we were... we were..."

"That was in a different world, Flora," Brencis said. "That's done now. In a few more weeks, there won't be anything but Vord. You should be glad. You get to be a part of the winning side." He paused to run an idly admiring hand over the flank of the whispering young woman lying atop the dazed soldier behind him. "Even if you wind up with too little mind to do anything but help soothe the new recruits. The process does that to some of them, which is just as well. So we clean them up into little aphrodin dream boys and girls and let them whisper."

Flora wept harder.

"Don't worry, Flora." He directed a venomous gaze at the cage. "I'll make sure you have a pretty boy to keep you company when it's your turn. You'll enjoy the process. Most of them do. Volunteer to go through it again, usually." He looked at a pair of the collared guards nearby, and said, "What are you two standing around for? Get the next one."

Amara crept slowly back from the edge of the building and settled down next to Rook. Then she turned and descended to the relative safety of the building, which had been a prosperous tailor's residence, before the Vord came. Rook followed her.

Amara sat for a moment, simply absorbing the horrific, machinelike pace of the way the captured Alerans' very humanity was being destroyed.

"I know you aren't supposed to speak of it," Amara said quietly. "But I need you to try."

Rook swallowed. She lifted her fingers to the collar at her throat, her face pale, and nodded.

"How many have been taken?" Amara asked.

"Several h-" Rook began. She sucked in a breath, squeezing her eyes shut, and her face beaded with sweat. "Seven or eight hundred at least. Maybe a hundred who didn't need to be..." Her face twisted into a grimace. "... coerced. Of the rest, only a little more than half of them come out of it... functional. The rest get used to help recruit more or are given to the Vord."

"As slaves?" Amara asked.

"As food, Countess."

Amara shivered. "There were hundreds of people up there."

Rook nodded, her breath coming in steady, consciously regulated timing. "Yes. Any strongly gifted crafter captured by the Vord is brought here now."

"Where are the collars coming from?"

Rook let out a bitter, pained laugh, and withdrew what must have been half a dozen slender silver collars from a pouch on her belt, tossing them aside like refuse. "Dead slaves, Countess. They litter the ground in this place."

Amara bent over and picked up one of the collars and stared at it. It didn't feel like anything other than metal, slightly cool, and smooth underneath her fingertips. "How is it done?" she asked Rook. "The collars, the drug. It isn't enough to do that."

"You'd be surprised, Countess," Rook said, shuddering. "But there's more to it, as well. Brencis does something to each collar as he attaches-" She jerked in pain, and blood suddenly ran from one of her nostrils. "As he attaches it," she gasped. "His father knew how and taught him. He won't t-tell anyone how. It p-protects his life, as long as the V-Vord want more crafters to s-serve them."

She clenched her teeth over a scream and pressed one hand to her mouth to muffle the sound, the other to the center of her forehead, as she crumpled slowly to the floor.

Amara had to look away from the woman. "Enough," she said gently. "Enough, Rook."

Rook rocked back and forth on her knees, falling silent, her breath coming in gasps. She nodded once to Amara, and slurred, "Be 'llright. Minute."

Amara touched her shoulder gently, then rose to stare out the window at the courtyard without through a window that had been broken, its jagged edges stained with drying blood. The cages were packed. Amara began to count the number of prisoners, and shook her head. Hundreds of Alerans waited there to be taken into the service of the Vord.

Brencis had just put the collar around the throat of a woman in a fine, soaking-wet silk gown. She writhed on the platform while he stood over her, an expression of revulsion and hunger and something Amara could not put a name to on his beautiful face.

"You'd better report in," she said quietly. "Do your best not to give anything away."

Rook had recovered somewhat. She held a cloth to her face, cleaning the blood from her mouth and chin. "I'll die first, Countess," she whispered.

"Go."

Rook departed without a further word. Amara watched as she entered the courtyard a few moments later, walking briskly toward Brencis. Again, she beckoned, and Cirrus brought the sound to her.

Brencis looked up at Rook as she approached.

Rook's stance and bearing had changed completely. There was a liquid, sensual grace to her movements, her hips shifting with a noticeable, swaying rhythm as she walked.

"Rook," Brencis spat, his voice irritated. "What took you so long?"

"Incompetence," Rook replied in a throaty purr. She pressed her body full-length against Brencis's and kissed him.

The young slaver returned the kiss with ardor, and Amara's stomach twisted in revulsion.

"Where are the two I sent with you?" he growled.

"When they realized I was going to tell you what they'd done, they thought they'd leave my body somewhere dark and quiet. After they'd raped me." She kissed his throat. "I objected. I'm afraid they're the worse for wear. Should I go recover their collars, my lord?"

"Tell me?" Brencis said. The anger had faded from his voice, a different kind of heat replacing it. "Tell me what?"

"The fools questioned the Cursors too hard," Rook said. "I told you we should have recruited them."

"Couldn't take the chance that they'd... mmmm. That their minds would break down." He shook his head. "You're earthcrafting me, you little bitch. Mmmm. Stop it."

Rook let out a wicked little laugh. Her ripped shirt chose that moment to slip, exposing naked skin. "You love it, my lord. And I can't help it. I took them with my bare hands. It was close. That always leaves me in a mood." She pressed against him in a slow undulation of her body. "You could take me here if you wished it. Who could stop you, my lord? Right here, before everyone. There are no rules any longer, no laws. Shall I fight you? Would that please you, to force me?"

Brencis turned to Rook with a growl, seizing a handful of her hair in a painful grasp, jerking her head back as he kissed her with near-bruising violence.

Amara turned away, sickened. She would return to the tunnels until nightfall.

She had killed men before.

But this was the first time she'd ever wanted to.

Chapter 32

Isana had been back in her chambers in the wall for perhaps two minutes before there was a diffident knock at the door, followed by the decidedly nondiffident entry of High Lady Aria Placida.

"That will be all, Araris," she said over her shoulder, her tone neutral. She shut the door firmly and folded her arms as she stared at Isana.

Isana arched an eyebrow at the other woman, then moved her hand in a rolling gesture, beckoning her to speak.

Lady Placida's face quivered through several half-formed expressions that never quite congealed into any single emotion before she finally blurted, "Have you lost your mind?"

To her own complete surprise, Isana burst into laughter. She couldn't help it. She laughed and laughed until she had to sit down on the edge of the small chamber's bed, her eyes watering, her sides aching.

It took a few moments to get herself under control again, and when she did, Aria was staring at her with a distinctly uncomfortable expression on her face. "Isana...?"

"I was just thinking," Isana said, her words still quivering with the edges of the laughter. "Finally. I know how it must feel to be Tavi."

Aria opened her mouth, closed it again, and let out an exasperated sigh. "From a watercrafter of your skill, that's a remarkably ironic statement."

Isana waved her hand. "Oh, you know how teenagers are. There's so much emotion piled up in them that you can hardly sort out one from the next." She felt the smile fade a little wistfully. "That was the last time I spent more than a few weeks around him, you know. He was fifteen."

Some of the rigidity went out of Aria's stance. "Yes. My own sons were off to the Academy at sixteen, then the Legions after that. It hardly seems fair, does it?"

Isana met Aria's gaze. "My son doesn't live under my protection anymore. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't need it. That's why I challenged Raucus today."

Aria tilted her head. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Without the northern Legions, the Vord could destroy us all," Isana said, her voice quiet and firm. "When my son comes home, Alera is still going to be here."

"Isana, dear. I understand why you did it. What I don't see is how the bloody crows you think killing yourself is going to accomplish your goal."

"Reasoning with him is useless," Isana said. "He's too wrapped up in the conflict here, in the loss. You saw him at the funeral."

Aria folded her arms against her stomach. "He's not the only one who feels that way."

"But he is the only one who commands the loyalty of Antillus's Legions." Isana frowned. "Well. I suppose Crassus or Maximus might be able to do so. Crassus has the legal right and Maximus has served multiple terms as an infantryman. I suspect that would give him a strong popularity with-"

"Isana," Aria interrupted quietly, "you're babbling. My nieces do this to my sister when they're trying to avoid discussing something."

"I am not babbling," Isana said.

"Then at the risk of making you feel somewhat foolish, I should point out that neither Maximus nor Crassus is in Alera. Even if you succeed in your duel-which I regard as something as close to impossible as anything can be-then what will you have gained? Raucus will be dead, in which case the Legions will almost certainly not abandon their posts on the walls. Anyone that is appointed to stand as regent until Crassus returns will certainly not pursue a radical change in policy.

"And," she added, "if you lose, you will be dead. Raucus will almost certainly do exactly as he has been doing."

"I'm not going to lose," Isana said, "and he's not going to die."

"In a duel to the death-one which you instigated." Aria shook her head. "I know you didn't go to the Academy, but... there is something called 'diplomacy, ' Isana."

"There isn't time," Isana said quietly. "Just as there wasn't time earlier today, Aria." She felt her cheeks heat slightly. "When I hit you. For which I must now apologize."

Aria opened her mouth, then pressed her lips into a line and shook her head. "No. In retrospect... it may have been for the best."

"Necessary or not, I wronged you. I'm sorry."

Some of the rigid tension eased slowly from Aria's stance, and the sense of angry restraint around her faded slightly. "I wasn't thinking very clearly," she said. "Afterward, I... I felt the way they were communicating with one another. I've never sensed anything like that before. And you felt it yesterday." She shrugged. "You were right about them. I didn't-" Aria's eyes widened, and she looked up at Isana with her mouth open. "Great furies, Isana. That's what this is. You're slapping Raucus across the face to get his attention."

"If I'd thought a slap across the face would do the job," Isana said wryly, "I would have stopped before I dropped the challenge onto him." She shook her head. "I have to reach him. I have to get through his anger and his pride. And there's no time, Aria."

Lady Placida stood silently for several long seconds. Then she said, "I've known Raucus since I was fourteen years old. We were... close, back then, at the Academy. And this is dangerous, Isana. Very dangerous." She glanced at the door and then back to her. "I'll go talk to him."

"It isn't going to change his mind about the duel," Isana said.

"No," Aria said calmly. She gave Isana a slight smile. "But perhaps there will be a miracle and his stiff neck will bend half an inch." She nodded. "At least I can lay a foundation you might be able to build upon."

"Thank you," Isana said quietly.

"Thank me if you survive," Aria replied, and slipped quietly out of the room.

Several hours later, Isana had taken a private meal and sat reading dispatches from the south, sent by water fury and transcribed for her and for Lord Antillus.

Matters had grown worse. Ceres was overrun, and the Vord were harrying the Aleran forces, who had been forced to fight a series of desperate actions to slow the advancing horde enough to allow desperate civilians to flee. Teams of engineers were dismantling causeways as they went, destruction that would take decades of effort to repair-if it ever was.

Losses in the Legions were hideous-worse than anything seen in Kalarus's rebellion or in the battle with the Canim. Militias were mobilizing all throughout Alera, with priority given to those younger men who had most recently left the Legions-but virtually every male in the Realm had served at least a single two-year term in the Legions, and everyone was being called upon to take up arms again.

The problem, of course, was in supplying those arms. Legionares were not allowed to keep their weaponry and armor upon leaving the Legion-they were left to be used by the recruits arriving to take their places. Most legionares retired to their steadholts, where the only weapons readily available, affordable, and necessary were bows and the occasional hunting spear.

In the cities, of course, there were the civic legions-but they were peacekeepers and investigators, not soldiers. Lightly armored, generally more familiar with truncheons than swords, and used to operating in an entirely different manner than armies in the field, they were of more use organizing refugees and preventing crimes among the displaced population than in actual combat with the enemy. In both cities and in the smaller towns, each lord and Count would generally maintain a small body of personal armsmen, but those rarely consisted of more than twenty or thirty men. There were similarly a limited number of professional soldiers, generally roving from job to job, plying the trade of violence out from under the rigid structure of the Legions. But all in all, there were fewer weapons available than hands to wield them, and peaceful steadholt smithies across the Realm were desperately forging steel for use in Alera's defense.

The thought of that chilled Isana. Back at her own steadholt-her former steadholt, she supposed wistfully-there would be a flurry of activity. Harvest would have been well over a few weeks ago. Elder Frederic would be at Araris's old forge, laboring on weapons instead of horseshoes. Children would be gathering slender branches, smoothing and straightening them into arrow shafts, while their older siblings were taught how to fletch feathers, fix nocks, and secure arrowheads onto them.

Isana bowed her head and set the dispatches aside. She had seen what war could do to the steadholts of the Calderon Valley. She had seen the slaughtered livestock, the burned-out buildings, the broken, discarded bodies. Isanaholt had been spared the scythe, so far. But it could easily, so easily, be her own stock that was hacked apart, her own outbuildings fired, her own people piled in pathetic windrows of empty flesh on the bloodied earth.

She set the dispatches aside and bowed her head. Was it selfish of her to worry so for the people on her own steadholt when so many other steadholts were in danger? When so many other steadholts had already been overwhelmed by the enemy? She was claiming the title of First Lady. She had a responsibility to far more people than the folk of a single tiny steadholt-yet they were Alerans, too.

Besides, was there really any choice? Could she not fear for them?

There was a brisk knock at the door and Isana looked up as the door opened to reveal Antillus Raucus. She could hear the movement of feet on stone in the hallway outside. Evidently, the High Lord had been accompanied by singulares when he came calling. Isana wasn't sure if she was amused by the fact that he might have felt threatened enough to need them. More likely, he had brought them as witnesses to verify that he had not attempted any wrongdoing in coming to speak to her.

Or to restrain Araris while he did carry out said wrongdoing.

The big Antillan High Lord filled up the doorway, a broad-shouldered, ruggedly handsome man who looked, Isana realized, a great deal more like Maximus than his legitimate son, Crassus. That explained a great deal about Maximus's upbringing.

She rose and inclined her head with as much poise and restraint as she could convincingly pretend to. "Your Grace."

Raucus ground his teeth as he returned the gesture with a bow, then said, voice tight and hard, "Your Highness."

"Have you come to concede and accompany me south with your Legions, sir?" Isana inquired.

"I have not."

She arched an eyebrow at him. "Then what brings you here? Strictly speaking, you should have sent your second to speak to mine."

"I already spoke to your second," Raucus replied. "And I don't send others to do things for me when it's clearly my obligation to act."

"Ah," Isana said. "I did not send Aria to you, sir. If she has spoken to you, she took it upon herself to do so." She reflected for a second, then added, "As out of character for her as that seems."

Raucus's mouth twitched at one corner, more bitter than amused, and he shook his head. "She couldn't talk you out of it either, eh?"

"Something like that," Isana said.

"I came here to offer you a chance to leave," Antillus said, his tone steady, his words carefully neutral. "Take Rari and Lady Aria and get off my land. We won't mention your challenge again. To anyone."

Isana considered that for a moment. It was a significant gesture. Many folk in the southern portions of the Realm often sneered at the tendency of the more conservative to defend vigorously such notions as their sense of personal valor, but the fact was that in the war-torn north, such a thing was a survival trait. Without the personal courage to face his foes-and more importantly, his legionares' belief in that courage-Antillus Raucus would face a horde of problems that could otherwise be avoided. When men had to stand on the battlefield, their courage itself a weapon that was every bit as deadly to the enemy as swords and arrows, one could not afford to appear as a coward to one's men.

By offering Isana a chance to simply depart, Raucus was running the very real risk of appearing, to his men, to have been skittish about taking her on-particularly after the clash of their furycraft before the walls earlier that day. Granted, if Isana left quietly, and no one said anything further about it, that damage would be minimized, but there were bound to be rumors, regardless.

She supposed it made sense, from Raucus's perspective. The man simply could not accept that the threat facing the Realm was greater than that which he'd spent his entire life-and the lives of who knew how many of his legionares- fighting.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I can't do that."

"You're strong," he said in that same distant, uninflected tone. "I'll give you that. But you aren't stronger than I am." His gaze was steady. "If you see this through, I'll kill you. Don't think I won't."

Isana gestured at the table. "You've seen the dispatches. You know the danger."

His features shifted subtly, hardening. "I've spent my life fighting a war no one in the south can be bothered about. Burying men no one down there mourns. Seeing steadholts devastated. I know what they're going through, Your Highness. I've seen it more than once, visited on my own people."

"Then it should make you more eager to stop it-not less."

His eyes flashed in sudden anger. "If I take my Legions from the Wall, the Icemen will slaughter thousands of holders who can't protect themselves. It's as simple as that. Never mind what will happen to the rest of Alera if the Icemen decide to press south and grind us to pieces between two enemies."

"What if they're willing not to do that?"

"They aren't," Raucus growled. "Whatever you talked about in half of an hour today, take it from someone who has spent a lifetime dealing with them. They'll fight. That's all there is to it."

"You use that phrase a great deal," Isana said. She rose and lifted her chin, meeting Raucus's eyes. "What if you're wrong, my lord?"

"I'm not."

"What if you are?" Isana demanded, her voice still gentle. "What if you could achieve a truce with the Icemen and take your forces south to the relief of the First Lord? What if you could be saving thousands of lives, right now-but you aren't?"

His gaze never wavered. A long, silent moment passed.

"I'll make sure your coach is standing by," he said quietly. "Be gone by morning, First Lady."

He bowed to her again, his back and shoulders stiff, then turned and swept from the room.

Isana felt herself begin to shake a moment later, in simple reaction to the tension and stress. She grimaced and folded her hands in her lap, closing her eyes and willing Rill into her own body, to exert some measure of control over her nerves. She urged blood to flow more smoothly, calmly through her limbs, and felt her hands warm up a little. She crossed the room to sit by the little fire-place, her hands extended, and took deep breaths until her quivering fingers stilled.

Araris entered silently and shut the door. He stood there, a silent presence against her senses, his concern a small thing beside the steady warmth of his love.

"He called you Rari," Isana said, without turning.

She didn't need to see him to know that a small smile had quirked up the unmarred side of his face. "I was in my first term at the Academy when he and Septimus were in their second. I followed them around a lot. Raucus bought me my first..." He coughed and she felt a flush of mild embarrassment from him. "... drink."

Isana shook her head, and enjoyed the feel of the smile that came to her mouth. "Thirty years ago. It doesn't seem like it should have been such a long time."

"Time goes by," Araris replied. "But yes. It doesn't feel like it was all that long ago to me, either." His mouth quirked into a small smile. "Then my knees ache and I see grey hairs in the mirror."

She turned to face him. He was leaning back against the door, legs crossed, arms folded over his chest. Isana walked over to him and ran the fingers of one hand lightly over his hair, caressing the silver that peppered the dark brown. "I think you're beautiful."

He captured her fingers in his, and kissed them delicately before murmuring, "You have gone mad."

She shook her head, smiling, and pressed herself against Araris, laying her head on his armored chest. His arms slid around her a moment later.

"You're taking an awful risk," he told her.

"I have little choice," she replied. "The only way to take the Shield Legions south is with Raucus's cooperation. You know the man. Do you think he would murder an essentially unarmed woman in cold blood?"

"Not back when I knew him. But he isn't the man he was when we were young," Araris said. "He's harder. More bitter. I know you want to try to reach out to him, Isana, but bloody crows."

Isana said nothing. She just held on to him.

"Maybe you should think about his offer," Araris said. "Maybe there's another way."

"Such as?"

"Take him south. Let him see the Vord for himself. Reading dispatches is one thing. Seeing it with your own eyes is another."

Isana inhaled and exhaled deeply and closed her eyes. "Open eyes are of little use when the mind behind them is closed."

Araris stroked her hair with one hand. "True enough."

"And... and there's no time." How could it go so quickly when you needed it most?

"If he... hurts you," Araris said calmly, "I'm going to kill him."

She lifted her head sharply and met his eyes. "You mustn't."

His scarred face was completely immobile. "Mustn't I?"

She framed his face with her hands. "The point of this is to reach his heart, Araris. He's built up layers and layers of defenses around his emotions-and being up here, it's easy to see why. He's channeled his passion into protecting his people, fighting the threat that's right here in front of him. Even if I die, trying to reach him, I might get through. I think he's a decent man, beneath the calluses and scars. If my blood is what it takes to wash them away, so be it."

Araris stared down at her for a long moment.

"Bloody crows," he whispered, finally. "I've never known such a woman as you, Isana."

She found her face warming, but she couldn't look away from his steady gaze.

"I love you," he said, simply. "I'll not try to carry you off before you can go out and get hurt tomorrow. I won't try to change what you are."

She didn't trust herself to speak. So she kissed him. Their arms slid around one another, and time went by on the wings of a falcon.

When he finally broke the kiss, though, there was something cold and hard in his voice.

"But I'm not changing who I am, either," he said in that same calm, steady voice. His eyes flashed and hardened. "And if he hurts you, my love, I'll leave his corpse out there on the snow at the foot of his precious Wall."