Varg looked over at Tavi with narrowed eyes, his ears pricked forward. The Cane was close enough to have heard even their lowered voices.
“What are we going to do about it?” Max sighed. “Crows, look at them.”
Everyone, Canim and Aleran alike, stared at the image of the vord Queen. Their fear and uncertainty filled the air like woodsmoke.
“Tavar,” Varg growled suddenly. “Your helmet.”
Tavi glanced at the Cane. Then he drew his helmet off and passed it over to Varg.
The Warmaster of the Canim leapt up onto the low stone wall on the edge of the pool, helmet in hand. He stalked through the shallow water until he stood before the image of the vord Queen.
Then he swept the helmet in a horizontal arc, catching the water that formed the hooded head of the vord Queen, decapitating the watery image.
Then he flung back his head and drank the helmet empty in a single draught.
Varg rose to his full nine feet in height before roaring, his basso voice a challenge to the volume of the watersending itself, “I AM STILL THIRSTY!” His sword rasped clear of his scabbard as he lifted it high and faced the Canim soldiers. “WHO WILL DRINK WITH ME?”
Thousands of eyes focused on the Warmaster. The silence became something brittle and crystalline, something that was on the brink of shattering, changing. Fear and rage and despair surged in the air, like the confused, shifting winds that preceded a storm or the currents that could rip swimmers in any direction when the tides began to change.
Tavi dismounted and strode forward to stand beside Varg. His hobnailed boots clicked on the stone of the wall and splashed through the water. He took back his helmet from Varg’s grasp, swept it through the watery heart of the image of the vord Queen, and drank deeply.
Steel rasped on steel as ten thousand swords sprang free of their sheaths. The sudden, furious roar of the Canim shook the air with such force that the water of the pools danced and jumped as if under a heavy rainstorm. The watersendings could not maintain their integrity in the face of that disruption, and they collapsed, splashing back down into the pools, shaken to bits by the enraged howls of Canim and Aleran alike.
Tavi joined them, shouting in wordless anger, and drew his sword, lifting it high.
The storm of approval from the Canim redoubled, making the plates of Tavi’s lorica vibrate and rattle against one another, resolving into a thundering chant of, “VARG! TAVAR! VARG! TAVAR!”
Tavi exchanged a Canim salute with Varg, then turned and went back to his horse. He mounted up on the dancing, nervous animal and beckoned Max and his second guard. As they rode from the Canim camp, the crowd, still howling his Canim name, parted before and around them in an armored sea of swords and fangs and wrath.
Tavi kicked his mount into a run and headed back to the First Aleran’s camp.
“What are we going to do?” Max called as they rode.
“What we always do when the enemy attacks us,” Tavi said. He bared his teeth in a wolfish smile. “We’re going to hit back.”
CHAPTER 6
Invidia entered the massive, dome-shaped structure where the vord Queen took a daily meal and shuddered as she always did. The walls were made of faintly glowing green croach. There were swirls and mounds of it everywhere, splayed into abstract shapes that were both beautiful and revolting. The ceiling stretched fifty feet overhead, and Invidia could have used the massive space beneath it to teach a class in flying.
Spiderlike creatures, the keepers, swarmed over the croach, their many-legged, translucent bodies fading eerily into the ambient glow of the walls, floor, and ceiling. If a keeper wasn’t moving, one could all but stumble over it, so well did they blend with the massive construction. Hundreds of the creatures swarmed through the place, climbing smoothly up the walls and across the ceiling, a constant and irritating motion.
In the center of the dome was the high table from the banquet hall of the High Lord of Ceres along with its chairs. It was a gorgeously carved, massive construct of Rhodesian oak, a gift to the current High Lord’s great-grandfather. One could have seated half a cohort of legionares along its length without once hearing armored shoulder plates click together.
The vord Queen sat at one end of the table, her hands folded primly upon its tablecloth. The tablecloth was grimy, stained with the great furies only knew what fluids, and had not been cleaned.
The Queen made a gesture with one pale hand to the seat on her left.
Invidia’s customary seat was at the Queen’s right hand.
If Invidia had, for some reason, been replaced, she knew it was unlikely that she would leave the dome alive. She controlled an urge to moisten her lips and focused upon her body, preventing her heart from racing faster, her skin from breaking into a cold sweat, her pupils from contracting.
Calm. She had to remain calm, confident, and competent—and most of all, useful. The vord had never heard of such a thing as a retirement. Unless one counted being buried alive and dissolved by the croach.
Invidia walked across the floor, nudging a slow-moving keeper out of her way with one foot. She sat down beside the Queen. She had to survive the meal. Always, survive. “Good evening.”
The Queen stared down the table and was silent for a moment, her alien eyes unreadable. Then she said, “Explain the gestures Alerans make to show respect to their superiors.”
“In what sense?” Invidia asked.
“Soldiers do this,” the Queen said, lifting her fist to her heart and lowering it again. “Citizens bend at the waist. Mates press their mouths together.”
“The last isn’t quite a gesture of respect,” Invidia said, “though the others are. They are an acknowledgment of the other’s status. Such an acknowledgment is considered to be necessary and favorable to the order of society.”
The Queen nodded once, slowly. “They are gestures of submission.”
Invidia did arch an eyebrow this time. “I had never really considered them such. However, that is a valid description, if an incomplete one.”
The Queen turned her unsettling eyes to Invidia. “Incomplete in what sense?”
Invidia considered her answer for a moment before saying, “Gestures of deference and respect are far more than simply acknowledging the greater power of another. By accepting such a gesture, the person who receives it also acknowledges an obligation in return.”
“To do what?”
“To protect and assist the person making the gesture.”
The Queen’s eyes narrowed. “He who holds the greatest power has obligation to none.”
Invidia shook her head. “But no matter how powerful an individual may be, he is only a part of a greater whole. Gestures of respect are a mutual acknowledgment of that fact—that both the giver and the receiver are part of something greater than they, each with his role to play within the whole.”
The vord Queen frowned. “It… acknowledges the need for structure. For order. That for the good of all, that which must be, will be. It signifies acceptance of one’s part of that order.”
Invidia shrugged. “At its core, yes. Many Alerans never give such gestures any serious consideration. They are simply a part of how our society functions.”
“And if such a gesture is not given, what results?”
“Unpleasantness,” Invidia replied. “Depending upon the person who has been slighted, there could be repercussions ranging from retaliatory insults to imprisonment to a challenge to the juris macto.”
“Justice by combat,” the Queen said.
“Yes,” Invidia replied.
“The rule of strength over the rule of law. It seems to reject the ideals of Aleran social order.”