Amara sighed and slipped out of her armored coat. If only the Elder Frederic, now the acting Steadholder, hadn't been the steadholt's gargant master. The great beasts were of unsurpassed utility on a steadholt, but they stank - not unpleasantly, but enormously. They smelled very, very large. It was not the sort of addition to the décor one could readily ignore.

Unless you worked with gargants every day, she supposed.

On the other hand, Amara was exhausted. She dropped her weapons and armor next to the large simple bed and cast herself down upon it with a groan. A genuine mattress, by the furies. She hadn't slept on anything but a bedroll or the cold ground since the fighting had resumed. But even so, she just couldn't shake her sense of discomfort. It had, in fact, progressed to a sense of absolute unease.

Amara sat up, lifted her boot to the bed, and bent over it to unlace it. She seized the handle of the knife concealed there and called upon Cirrus to lend her arm speed as she threw it at the empty space next to the gaping fireplace, not six feet in front of her.

The dagger flickered through the air with a hissing hum, and steel met steel in a sharp chime and a shower of green sparks.

Amara flung herself over the bed without waiting to see the outcome of the throw. She grabbed her weapon belt along the way, drawing her gladius and holding the belt loosely in her still-aching left hand. The metal-fitted sheath dangling near the end of the belt, next to its heavy buckle, would make as good an improvised weapon as she was likely to find in these quarters. She gauged the distance from the bed to the door.

"Don't bother," said a woman's voice calmly. "You wouldn't reach it. And I cannot permit you to flee." A windcrafted veil fell, revealing...

It took Amara a moment to recognize Invidia Aquitaine, and even then she only did it because she recognized the chitin-armor and the creature upon her breast. The woman's long, dark hair was gone. So was most of her lily-white skin, replaced by mottled red burn scars. The corner of one eye sagged beneath a scar, but they were otherwise the same, and her calm, implacable gaze was chilling.

"If you leave now," Amara said, her voice cool, "you might escape before the Placidas catch up to you."

Invidia smiled. It did horrible things to the scars on her face. One of them cracked and bled a little. "Dear Countess, don't be ridiculous. They do not know I am here, any more than you did. Count yourself fortunate that I have not come here to harm you."

Amara checked the distance to the door again.

"Though I will," Invidia said, "if you attempt anything foolish. I am sure that you are aware how little hesitation I would have should I need to kill you."

"As little as I will have when I kill you," Amara replied.

Invidia's smile widened. The blood tracked over her lip and one very white tooth. "Feisty little thing. I'll dance if you wish. But if we do, you're a dead woman, and you know it."

Amara clenched her teeth, seething - because crows take her, the woman was right. Out in the open, with room to maneuver, Amara had a real chance of surviving against Invidia. In this smelly chamber, surrounded by stone? She would be dead before her scream reached the nearest guard. There was nothing she could do to change that, and the knowledge terrified and infuriated her.

"Very well," Amara said a moment later, stiffly. "I'll bite. Why are you here?"

"To negotiate, of course," Invidia said.

Amara stared at her for a long moment. Then she whispered, "Murdering bitch. You can go to the crows."

Invidia laughed. It was a bitter, unsettling sound, made eerie by some strange convolution of her burn-scarred throat. "But you do not even know, Countess, what I have to offer."

"Treachery?" Amara guessed, her voice venomously sweet. "That's your usual service, after all."

"Precisely," Invidia said. "And this time it will work in your favor."

Amara narrowed her eyes.

"What's happening out there, Amara, is the end of everything. Unless the Queen is stopped, Alera is finished."

"And you're going to... what, exactly? Kill her for us?"

She bared her teeth. "I would, were it possible. I cannot. She is too powerful. By far."

"Then I'd say you have little to offer us," Amara replied.

"I can tell you the location of her hive," Invidia said. "Where you can find her. Where she is most vulnerable."

"Please do."

Invidia settled her fingers a little more solidly on the grip of her sword. "I'm desperate, Countess. Not an idiot. I won't give you that without guarantees."

"Of?" Amara asked.

"My immunity," she responded. "A full pardon for any actions leading up to and during this conflict. My estate on the northeast border of the Feverthorn. I will accept banishment to it and house arrest there for the remainder of my life."

"And in exchange," Amara said quietly, "you give us the location of the vord Queen."

"And I will participate in the attack," Invidia replied. "If every High Lord still under arms pits his strength against her, if she can be caught in her hive, and if the timing is properly arranged, it might be an even match. And that's the best chance you're going to have between now and the world's end, which I estimate will be less than a week from now."

Amara wanted to snarl her defiance and scorn at the burned traitor, but she forced herself to step back from the emotions while she drew in a slow breath. Millions of lives were at stake. She could not let her weariness, her fear, or her anger guide her actions. She was a Cursor of the Realm, by training and by service, and she owed her teachers - even Fidelias - more than to mindlessly toss out an angry reply like a furious child.

It took her more than a minute to calm her mind, to slow her breathing, to reach a state of clarity and think about the traitor's offer.

"There's an issue of credibility," Amara said. "Specifically, you have none. Why shouldn't we assume that this offer is a trap to lead our most powerful crafters to their deaths?"

"Can you afford skepticism at this point, Amara?" Invidia asked. "The Queen is no fool. She knows that you will do whatever you can to kill her. She and her kind have been playing this game for a long, long time. She has no intention of allowing you to see her, much less attack her - and even if you defeat this army, in weeks there will be another upon your doorstep. What power remains to Alera is insufficient to stop her. She already controls too much territory, and you do not have the manpower necessary to retake it. Can you afford not to trust me?"

Tags: Jim Butcher Codex Alera Science Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net