Princeps’ Fury

The cold grew deeper, but somehow less unpleasant. Isana laid her head on one outflung arm and tried to keep her eyes open. “And you knew Max suffered at Dorotea’s hands. But there was nothing you could do. You couldn’t acknowledge him over Crassus. You couldn’t cut yourself off from Dorotea to wed his mother. You must have t-tried and been denied by Gaius.” She smiled faintly. “He’d never have let you v-violate the traditional laws of legitimacy. Kalare would have raised a crowstorm over it in the Senate. And you were young. And Septimus’s friend. Easier to ignore you.”

“Stop talking,” Raucus said.

Isana let out a small laugh. “No wonder you challenged him over Valiar Marcus. He’d not dare to deny you that acknowledgment, one that was within your rights to grant. And you’d have been too happy for an excuse to fight him if he did.”

Raucus grasped the hilt of his sword.

Isana put her hand on his wrist, gripping it as hard as she could. “And then, after denying you, he acknowledges Septimus’s son by a freeman. A son without furycraft to his name. And after he’s already manipulated Maximus into being friends with him, to boot. You must have been so angry.”

She leaned up, seeking his eyes desperately. The grey sky had begun to turn black. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that happened to you. That the Realm made your life this way. That you lost the woman you loved and were forced to keep one you hated. It’s unjust, Raucus. Septimus would never have allowed it to go on.

“But he’s gone. And if there’s going to be a future, for your friend’s son, for your sons, for the Realm, you have to set that a-anger aside.”

She couldn’t see anything at all by then.

“Please, Raucus,” she said. She knew her voice wasn’t coming out in more than a whisper. “I’m asking you to take a horrible chance. But without it, there won’t be anything for any of us. Please. Help us.”

There was a wrenching burst of fire in her belly. She didn’t move, though. It was easier not to. She could hear footsteps somewhere.

“Aria!” Raucus screamed, his voice anguished.

Cold. And blackness.

CHAPTER 39

Shuar was dying.

As they rode toward the ships, Tavi realized that the roads of the last free nation of Canea had become charnel houses. Though the majority of the Vord emerging from the tunnels had flowed toward the north and west, to assault the fortifications from their unprotected rear, thousands more had spread out to haunt the roads of the land. There, they had found easy pickings in fleeing Canim families as panic descended upon the countryside. Corpses of the Canim makers-their farmers and artisans-lay exposed to the weather, untended. Their cattle had been slaughtered beside them.

The Canim had not died easily. Corpses of Vord attackers were heavily mingled with the fallen wolf-people, and in places it seemed that larger groups had managed to fend off their attackers. In others, what had probably been mounted patrols from the fortification had attacked the Vord, pursuing them off the roads, leaving trails of crushed chitinous forms into the rolling landscape. All the same, the previous few days had been a nightmare of blood and death for the Shuarans.

Without the steady reinforcements from the Vord’s tunnel or the coldly logical will of the Vord queen to guide them to where they were needed, the roads had become less deadly. The Vord still lurked across the countryside, but they were fewer in number, their movements random and unfocused-if no less deadly for anyone caught outnumbered in the open or by surprise. Of course, if the second Vord queen commanding the enemy forces at the Shuaran fortifications changed position, the Vord’s lack of coordination could change in an instant. Tavi’s group raced along the roads, pressing the taurgs to their best pace.

Twice, they were attacked by small groups of wandering Vord, but Max’s firecrafting and Varg’s and Anag’s balests shattered the armor and wills of the Vord before they could close to combat, and once they had traveled far enough from the site of the Vord emergence, encounters with the enemy and their handiwork declined abruptly.

They rode for the night and the rest of the day, stopping only occasionally to water the taurga. An hour or so before sundown, they came across a small stream where perhaps two hundred Canim had stopped to rest and drink. None of them wore armor, though many carried the sickle-swords that were, for them, simple harvest tools. Several of the makers were wounded, some badly so. Though Canim were never a particularly noisy people, the silence that fell on the group as they came riding up was tangible. Tavi could acutely feel the weight of their stares.

He wondered, for an amused moment, if they found the Alerans as strange and intimidating as he had found Varg and the guards of the Canim embassy in the Citadel, the first time he had encountered them.