First Lord's Fury (Codex Alera 6)

The crew had engaged the enemy. Evidently, Demos hadn't chosen them first and foremost for their nautical skills. Though they fought in bands of two and three and four, they cooperated against the enemy with the tactical discipline of elite legionares. Several vordknights already lay dead on the Slive's deck, most of them dismembered to boot. As Marcus watched, a grizzled sailor pitched a fishing net over a landing vordknight, entangling its wings in the net's cords. Then he hauled the vord from its feet, while two other members of the crew went to work on the creature with axes.

Elsewhere, the burly bosun flailed desperately at three of the vordknights with his back to the mainmast, his short-handled bill keeping them back but doing them no harm. Marcus elbowed Demos, who stood at his back, and nodded toward the embattled bosun.

Demos growled under his breath and lifted his left hand again. The mainmast itself groaned and bent, and its two lowest spars swept down like a giant's fist, hammering two of the three vordknights flat in a spray of disgusting fluids. The third vordknight leapt back in alarm, beginning to unfurl its wings, but the bosun didn't give the creature time to flee. He closed in with the bill and all but split the vordknight in half with a single, downward-sweeping blow. The bosun kicked the stunned and dying vord over the side of the ship, glanced at Demos, and touched the brim of an imaginary hat.

"Too bad he ran out of whiskey on the way home," Demos commented judiciously. "He fights better when he's drunk."

The ongoing gale had churned up a thickening curtain of ice crystals, and Marcus couldn't see the front of the ship. More vord continued to land, singly and in pairs, and everyone he could see was rushing to hack them down as quickly as possible, anxious to keep the weight of numbers in the Alerans' favor. Another vord landed on the port side, and Demos glided forward to dispatch it before it could be joined by others.

Marcus found himself faced with a foe on the starboard side, but reacted too slowly to force it off the ship and found himself fighting simply to remain alive. His sword matched the scythes of the vordknight, turning one blow after another, and his experience offset the creature's power and fearless aggression, allowing him to stay just outside the critical distances that would allow it to close and cut him to bits.

But he knew that he couldn't keep it up for long. His foe was both stronger and faster than he, and it would only be a matter of seconds before he found himself unable to deny the vord an opportunity for a lethal onslaught. Terror gave him strength enough for the moment, but if the fight didn't change in the next few seconds, he was a dead man.

Marcus's hand found the ship's rail behind him, and he retreated a few steps along it, the vord pursuing. His open hand hit a smooth shape, and he drew a heavy belaying pin from its rack on the rail and flung it at the vordknight's head.

The vord's scythes snapped up to block the missile an instant too late, and it struck the creature between its eyes. The vordknight staggered, and before it could recover, Marcus charged the foe, barreling it off the aft deck and falling six feet to the main deck, all of his armored weight coming down atop the vord. There was a loud popping sound, and vord blood flew out in a nauseating burst. The vordknight collapsed beneath Marcus like an emptied wineskin.

Marcus was shocked silent for an instant by the pain of the fall - and then howled in triumph as he realized that he was still alive. He came to his feet painfully, blinking gore from his eyes, and just as he'd reached them, a warning voice screamed, "Fidelias, behind you!"

Fidelias whirled, half-blinded with vord blood, his blade lifted to a defensive guard to find himself faced with...

Maestro Magnus.

There were no vord in sight.

Fidelias stared at Magnus for a second that seemed an eternity. He watched as the other man's eyes hardened and narrowed. He watched as he saw his own acknowledgment of the truth reflected in the old Cursor's eyes.

He'd just given himself away.

He stood there like that, staring at Magnus, as the gale winds began to ebb. The cloud of icy spray died away to the sounds of the defiant jeers of the Slive's crew. The vord were retreating, but he and Marcus stood frozen.

"I admired you," Magnus said quietly. "We all admired you. And you betrayed us."

Fidelias lowered his sword, slowly. He stared down at it. "How did you know?"

"Accretion of evidence," Magnus replied. "There are a limited number of individuals, by talent, training, and nature, who could accomplish the things you have. Given what you've done, how you've operated, I knew you had to be a Cursor. I made a list. But there aren't many of us old Cursori Callidus left alive, after Kalarus's Bloodcrows were through with us. It was a very short list."

Fidelias nodded. It had only been a matter of time before he was discovered. He'd known that for quite a while.

"You are a traitor," Magnus said quietly.

Fidelias nodded.

"You killed Cursor Serai. One of our own."

"Yes."

"How many?" Magnus asked, his voice shaking with rage. "How many have you murdered? How many deaths can be laid at your feet?"

Fidelias took a deep breath, and said quietly, "I stopped counting back when I still worked for Sextus."

Fidelias wasn't sure when Octavian and the others arrived, but when he looked up, the Princeps was standing beside Magnus, his retinue behind him. His eyes were hard, green stones.

"I watched you murder men not five feet from me on the wall at Garrison," Octavian said quietly. "I watched you try to hang Araris. I watched you stab my uncle and throw him off the wall. You killed people I'd known my whole life in the Calderon Valley. Neighbors. Friends."

Fidelias heard the strangled tone in his voice as something distant and unconnected to his thoughts. "I did those things," he said. "I did them all."

The Princeps' right hand closed into a fist. The pop of his knuckles was like the crackling of ice.

Fidelias nodded slowly. "You knew I could lie to a truthfinder. You needed to elicit the reaction under pressure. This was a trap all along."

"I told you I wanted to test a theory," the Princeps said, his words clipped. "And when Magnus reported his suspicions to me, including word of your covert activities with Sha, it forced me to take action."

The Princeps looked away, squinting out into the distance.

Fidelias said nothing. The silence was profound.

When the Princeps spoke, it was in a near whisper, thick with anger and grief. "I thought I would be proving your innocence."

The words sent a pain through Fidelias's guts as sharp and real as any sword's thrust.