First Lord's Fury (Codex Alera 6)

Amara's imagination treated her to the image of what havoc might result from a strongly talented young Citizen determined to bypass a group of stubbornly resistant guards, outside a much larger group of High Lords with a good many reasons to be nervous. She shuddered. "No. I'm sure we can find an alternative."

The curtain to the command tent opened, and a small, slender figure emerged, innocuous among the armored forms crowding the night. The sandy-haired young man slipped into the shadows and walked away calmly, effectively invisible amidst the bustle of the stirring camp.

"There," Amara said. "There's our option." She dodged a pair of Phrygian Lords and pursued the unobtrusive young man.

Two steps before she reached him, he turned, blinking, his expression mild, even anxious to please. Amara, however, recognized the subtle centering of his balance and took note of the fact that she couldn't see one of his hands, which was quite likely touching the hilt of a dagger concealed beneath his rather loose and travel-worn coat.

"Ah," Amara said, spreading her hands at her sides, to show them empty. "Sir Ehren."

The young man blinked up at her, his gaze flicking over her, then over Veradis, who came hurrying up behind her. "Ah. Countess Calderon. Lady Veradis. Good evening, ladies. How may I serve you?"

Amara reflected that it had quite probably been Sir Ehren, who was serving as one of Aquitaine's primary intelligence agents, who had both added her to the no-admittance list around Lord Aquitaine and managed to see to it that she received a copy of the list, a pride-preserving courtesy that had prevented an unpleasant scene. She liked Ehren, though in the wake of Gaius Sextus's death, she was uncertain of where his loyalties ultimately lay - but as a classmate of Octavian's, she judged it unlikely that he would have mild, passive inclinations about the succession, regardless of whom he decided to support.

"Well," Amara said. "That's a more complicated question than it would at first seem."

Sir Ehren arched an eyebrow. "Ah?"

"Gaius Isana has been abducted," Amara said, and watched the young man's reaction very closely.

Ehren had been trained to school his reactions, just as she had. He had also been trained to falsify them. She knew the signs to look for, which would mark a reaction as genuine or false. He would, of course, know that she knew it, and could potentially modify his response to take advantage of the fact - but she judged that it would take someone with more experience in life than Sir Ehren currently possessed to deceive both her own trained eyes and ears and the watercrafting senses of someone as skilled as Veradis. Particularly if she clubbed him over the head with the news rather than taking a more subtle approach.

Sir Ehren's reaction was a complete nonreaction. He simply stared at her for a moment. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "She's been... bloody crows." The voice that emerged from the young man was a great deal more strident - and frustrated - than she would have expected to accompany his face and bearing. "Abducted. Of course she has been. Because obviously there isn't enough going wrong tonight." He glared at her. He had a rather effective glare, Amara thought, despite the muddy hazel color of his eyes and the fact that he stood nearly half a foot shorter than she did and was thus compelled to glare up at her. She had to make a conscious effort not to take a step back. Veradis did step back from him. "And I suppose," he said, "you want me to help."

Amara faced the young man mildly. "You... do seem to be having that sort of evening, Sir Ehren."

"Crows," he said wearily. The word betrayed a wealth of exhaustion. He hid it well, but Amara could see the signs of strain on his young face. If he'd been any older, she suspected, the past weeks would have aged him ten years. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. The change in the young man was nearly magical. His expression became mild again, his posture diffident, nearly servile. "I'm not sure how you could trust anything I did to help you, Countess."

"She couldn't," Veradis said quietly, and took a step closer to the young man, extending her hand. "But I could."

Ehren eyed Veradis. A skilled watercrafter's ability to sense the truth in another, when it was freely shared, was the bane of all manner of deceptive enterprise - and if trusted too casually, was a wellspring of fresh deceptions in its own right. As someone who had spent years becoming skilled in that particular expertise, he probably regarded it with almost as much distrust and wariness as Amara did.

"How could this possibly harm the Realm, Cursor?" Veradis asked, smiling slightly.

Ehren warily took her hand. "Very well."

"One question," Veradis said quietly. "Whom do you serve?"

"The Realm and people of Alera, and the House of Gaius," Ehren replied promptly. "In that order."

Veradis listened with her head tilted slightly to one side. As the young man spoke, she shivered slightly, withdrew her hand, and nodded to Amara.

"I note," Amara said drily, "that your choice of loyalties, Cursor, is not quite the Academy standard."

Ehren's mild eyes flickered with something hard, and he began to say something but seemed to think better of it. Then he said, "One should bear in mind that at the moment, there are two scions of the House of Gaius in the Realm. I'm working with the one that's actually here."

Amara nodded. "Isana was taken from - "

"I know where she was staying," Ehren said. "And I know the security precautions protecting her. I designed them."

Amara arched an eyebrow. If that was the case, then it seemed likely that Ehren was serving as Aquitaine's de facto minister of intelligence. That he was, in effect, the spymaster of what remained of the entire Realm.

He watched her reaction and grimaced. "Gaius sent me to Aquitaine with his last letters. In them, he commanded me to serve him to the best of my conscience, or to inform him that I could not do so and depart, and to do him no harm. And he recommended me to Aquitaine as the most trustworthy Cursor he could pass on, at the moment."

Amara felt a small pang in her chest at that.

But then, Gaius hadn't been able to trust her. She'd walked out on her oath. With good reason, perhaps, but the fact remained that she had turned away from his service.

"The same went for Sextus's physician, by the way," Ehren said. "Not as though Aquitaine needs one, but you never know. He's around here somewhere..." The young man shook his head. "I'm sorry, I'm wandering. Too many things going on." He scrunched up his eyes, and said, "Right. The First Lady. The attack had to be aerial. Any other approach would have garnered too much of a reaction from the furies protecting the inn."