Princeps' Fury (Codex Alera 5)

"Yes?"

"May I have a moment to speak to you alone?"

Isana arched an eyebrow, but inclined her head to him. "Lady Placida. Araris. Would you give us a moment, please?"

Aria and Araris both murmured assent and walked their horses several yards away. It wasn't solitude, precisely, but it was as close to a private conversation as they were likely to come by, in the midst of an army preparing to move.

"You never asked me," Raucus said bluntly. "You never asked me why I had given the order to bring my Legions south. Why I had decided to trust my people's safety to your word. You just got out of bed and demanded a horse so you could come along."

"Politely," Isana said. "I demanded politely. I distinctly remember using the word 'please.' "

Raucus showed his teeth when he laughed. "Crows and bloody furies. It looks like Septimus knew what he was talking about after all."

Isana returned his smile. "I assumed you would tell me when you were ready."

"You never asked why I was... so set against you, either, when you came to the Wall."

"I assumed the same."

He gestured at the letters she once again held in her hand. "You read them?"

"Of course."

"You could have been with them," he said, simply. "You could have been one of the treacherous slives who killed him. Get a child on him, kill him, and put the child on the throne once he was grown."

Isana drew in a slow breath. "Do you think that now?"

Raucus shook his head. "I followed you here because of what you showed me on that field at the foot of the Wall."

"What was that?"

The High Lord stared at her for a moment, and then out at the desperate battle unfolding below them. "Any man with a brain in his head looks for three things in anyone he'll follow: will, brains, and a heart." His eyes grew distant. "Gaius has the first two. He's one fearsome old cat." He gestured at himself. "I've the first and last. But those things aren't enough. Gaius never felt much for his people. He had their fear and respect. Never their love. I took care of my men as best I could. But I let my fear for them blind me to what else was happening."

"I still don't understand," Isana said gently.

"Septimus had all three, lady," Raucus replied. "You showed me your will when you stayed my attack on the Icemen, and when you challenged me and wouldn't back down. Even when you bloody well knew you should have.

"You showed me your heart when you fought me as you did-to the death, without flinching. When you lay bleeding with-" He shook his head, as though flinching from the image, but forced himself to continue. "With my sword in your guts. But your concern was for me. I felt it in you. It was no act, lady. You were willing to die to open my fool eyes. There was no scheme in that, no puppet strings. You meant what you said."

"Yes," Isana said simply.

"That's two," Raucus said. "But when I realized that you staged the whole thing to happen where the Icemen could see-and bloody sense everything that was going on, you showed me you had the brains as well. Sunset came alone into my personal chambers, after we'd seen to your wounds, and gave me his hand and his word that his folk would abide by the truce until we returned from battling the Vord." Raucus shook his head, and a small note of what might have been wonder entered his voice. "And he meant it. It won't resolve everything overnight. Maybe even not in my lifetime, but..."

"But it's a start," Isana said.

"It's a start, Your Highness," Raucus said. "Septimus, my friend, chose you. And chose well." He bowed his head to her, and said, simply, "I am yours to command."

"Your Grace," Isana said.

"Highness?"

"These creatures have destroyed our lands. Murdered our people." Isana lifted her chin. "Pay them for it."

When Antillus Raucus looked up, his eyes were hard, cold, and clear. "Watch me."

Chapter 42

Once Lady Aquitaine and the Vord queen were gone with their retinues, the courtyard was strangely silent. Only a handful of Vord remained, along with a similarly reduced contingent of collared guards-and the prisoners, of course.

Of which, Amara was very much aware, she herself was currently the most endangered.

She shivered in the cold, her muscles aching from the effort, hardly able to do more than curl her body up as tightly as possible to keep from succumbing to the chills.

"You and your husband crippled my father," Kalarus Brencis Minoris said in a quiet, deliberate tone. He walked toward her, the silver band of a discipline collar in his hand. "Not that there was a great deal of love lost between Father and me, but my life grew harder after the old slive was trapped in his bed. Do you have any idea how much damage you had to do to his spine to leave him broken like that?"

"H-h-he should have held still," Amara said. "I'd have been glad to kill him."

Brencis smiled. "My father always appreciated defiance from his women. I never really had the same tastes-but I'm beginning to see the appeal." He crouched over Amara, the collar swaying in front of her eyes. "Rook was my first, you know. I think I was about thirteen. She was a couple of years older." He shook his head. "I thought she liked me. But I realized later that she must have been acting under orders." He bared his teeth, a hideous expression, completely disconnected from anything resembling a smile. "Just as she must have been doing tonight."

Amara stared at him for a long, silent moment. Then she said, "It's not really your fault you were raised by a monster, Brencis. M-maybe you never really had a chance. And I can't bl-blame you for wanting to survive." She smiled back at him. "So I'm going to give you one last chance to do the right thing before I k-kill you."

Brencis stared at her for a second, uncertainty flickering in his eyes. Then he let out a short bark of a laugh. "Kill me? Countess," he told her, "in a little while, I'm going to my bed. And you're going to be happy to go with me." He glanced idly around the courtyard. "Perhaps I'll bring one of my girls, so that she can bathe you. We'll see if we can broaden your horizons."

"Use your head, fool," Amara said. "Do you think for one moment that you're going to survive the Vord?"

"Life is short, Countess," he replied, bitterly. "I have to take what I can from it. And right now, I'm taking you."

She hadn't noticed that he'd smeared his bloodied thumb to the collar, but it went around her neck like a band of ice.