Princeps’ Fury

She went out of the room on silent feet, wrapping herself in a windcrafted veil that should keep her unseen to anyone beyond the reach of her sword-a potent advantage if she decided to attack, but not an overwhelming one. A skilled enough metalcrafter would not need his eyes to know where her sword was, and the Vord didn’t seem to have kept anyone alive who was not at least wielding the skill of a Legion Knight at his given talents.

There were several collared Alerans in the main room of the inn, apparently off duty. Three were watching one of Brencis’s whisper-girls dance to music no one but she could hear. Another trio played listlessly at cards, and a silent pair were deep in their cups, drinking with grim, methodical determination. Amara went through the room with every ounce of stealth she could muster, wary of her own balance under the befuddling aftereffects of both collars’ euphoric bonding process. She managed to pass by them without attracting attention, and glided into the Slave Market.

She headed straight for the stone box-cages that held the captured windcrafters.

The cages didn’t have locks, thank goodness, and were held closed by simple bolts. In her current condition, she wasn’t sure how quickly she would have been able to open a more complex mechanism, even though she still had her tools in a pocket on the trouser leg that had survived. Snoring came from some of the cages.

Brencis had to have been slipping them the drugs in their water. She would just have to hope that some of the Alerans inside had been aware and determined enough to refuse it, hoping for their chance at escape.

Amara and Bernard were about to give it to them.

Or at least, she desperately hoped Bernard was.

“Can you hear me?” Amara hissed into one of the slots just under the top lip of the first cage.

It took a moment for someone to answer, “Who is there?”

“I’m a Cursor,” Amara whispered. “And keep your crowbegotten voice down.”

Confused murmurs came from the cage, sleepy voices speaking in blurred words. They were immediately shushed by other voices, which probably made more noise than all of the confused murmurs together.

“Quiet,” Amara hissed, looking around, certain that someone was going to notice the muted commotion any second. “We’re going to get you out of here, but we’re going to get as many people out as we possibly can. Stay alert. Everyone who can fly in a straight line needs to be ready.”

“Open the cage!” someone rasped.

“Be ready,” Amara responded. “I’ll be back.” Then she slipped over to the next cage, and repeated the conversation. And the next. And the next.

The Vord discovered her as she reached the fifth.

She had just shushed the final stone cage filled with captives when one of the lizard-form Vord twenty yards away raised its head, whuffling in through its nose, and let out a shriek that vibrated from the stones of the courtyard.

It must have smelled the blood still on me, she thought. Most animals would react strongly to the scent of bleeding prey. She should have taken a moment to clean herself better-but it was too late for that.

Speed was everything now.

Amara dropped the veil to call upon Cirrus for speed, and slammed open the bolts to the cage before hurling herself back down the line to the next cage and repeating the process.

“Alerans!” she cried, the words oddly elongated to her altered perceptions. “Alerans, to arms!”

She slammed open the bolts to the last cage as a chorus of Vord shrieks arose around them. The captive windcrafters began shoving their way out of the cages in their wake, screaming cries of their own.

“Alera!”

“Fight, you miserable bastards!”

Only Amara’s heightened senses allowed her to see the flicker in the air above her, where the Citizens were caged under multiple layers of counters to their furycraft. There was a small explosion of sparks, where steel had met steel-and another burst of sparks, where a second arrow had struck another of the hinges on the hanging cage with impossible force and precision, and a dozen Citizens were abruptly dropped fifteen feet to the wet stones of the courtyard floor.

Sparks exploded from the second cage of hanging Citizens, and more cries went up.

“To me!” Amara cried, leaping up onto the nearest cage. “Alerans, to me!”

“Cursor, look out!” screamed someone in the darkness.

Amara whirled, sword in hand, to find the Vord that had first raised the alarm bounding toward her. She waited until it was in the air to lean far to one side, striking with Brencis’s sword, and felt the blade crunch through the Vord’s chitinous armor. She had misjudged her balance, though, crows take those bloody collars, and she fell to the stones with the Vord, bleeding vile, dark fluid, scrambling to find her.

There was a crack like a miniature thunderbolt and the creature dropped as still and dead as if crushed by an enormous hammer. One of Bernard’s arrows protruded from the base of its skull, sunk all the way to the green-and-brown fletching.