Amara let out a blistering curse. “That’s what that little slive meant.” At Ehren’s glance, she clarified. “Kalarus Brencis Minoris. The vord Queen’s slave-master. Before I killed him, he said he’d been focusing on recruiting more earthcrafters, as ordered.”
Ehren hissed between his teeth. “I remember the report now. We should have put it together.”
“Hindsight is always better,” Amara said, walking beside him.
“But isn’t that a good thing?” Veradis asked. “If the roads are restored, perhaps Octavian’s forces can get here more quickly.”
“It’s unlikely they’ve repaired all the causeways,” Amara replied. “Most probably they’ve rebuilt a single artery for their own use, to move an attack force here rapidly. They’re coming up from the south, mainly, near the capital. Octavian is far west and a bit north of us.”
“And he’s only got two Legions.” Ehren sighed. “Assuming he got back from Canea with everyone and all those freed slaves stuck to their banners. Maybe fifteen thousand men, total.”
“Sir Ehren,” Amara repeated. “Where are we going?”
“Gaius Attis,” Ehren said, pronouncing the name without the hesitation of unfamiliarity, “retained a certain number of skilled individuals for his personal use. I have the authority to dispatch them as needed.”
“Singulares?” Veradis asked.
“Assassins,” Amara said, without emphasis.
“Ah. A little of both,” Ehren replied. “Attis felt a need to be sure he had a hand ready to move quickly, if necessary.”
“To strike at Octavian if it seemed possible,” Amara said.
“I rather think they were primarily intended for his ex-wife,” Ehren replied. “Primarily.”
Amara gave him a sharp glance. “And you are in charge of them? You know when they are to be used? And you have the authority to send them to help us?”
Ehren bowed to her from the waist, without slowing down.
Amara watched him steadily. Then she said, “You are either a very good friend, Sir Ehren—or a very, very good spy.”
“Ah,” he said, smiling. “Or a little of both.”
They walked to the rear corner of the camp, where the tents that were usually reserved for critical noncombat personnel were pitched, according to the standard format for a Legion camp. They usually housed smiths, farriers, valets, cooks, mule skinners, and the like. Ehren walked straight to an oversized tent that displaced four of the regulation-sized structures, opened the flap, and walked in.
A dozen swords leapt from their scabbards in slithering, steely whispers, and Amara straightened from ducking into the tent to find a blade not six inches from her throat. She looked down its length, to the oft-scarred hand that held it in a steady grip, and let her gaze track up the arm of the swordsman to his face. He was enormous, dark of hair, his beard clipped in a short, precise cut. His eyes were steely and cold. It didn’t seem that he held the sword so much as that the weapon seemed to grow from his extended hand. Amara knew him.
“Aldrick,” hissed a woman’s voice. A small, richly curvaceous woman wearing a plain linen gown with a tight-fitting leather bodice stepped out from behind the swordsman. Her hair was dark and curly, her eyes glittering, darting left and right at odd intervals. The smile on her face did not match the eyes at all. Her hands opened and closed in excitement, and she licked her lips as she slid closer to Amara and pushed the end of the blade very gently down. “Look, lord. It’s the nice wind girl who left us to die naked in the Kalaran wilderness. And I never thanked her for it.”
Aldrick ex Gladius, one of the deadliest swordsmen in Alera, hooked a finger down into the back of the woman’s bodice and dragged her close to him, leaving his sword extended. She leaned against his pull. He didn’t seem to notice. He slid a hand around her waist, when she was close enough, and pressed her shoulders back against his mailed torso. “Odiana,” he rumbled. “Peace.”
The fey-looking woman twitched several more times, her smile widening, and subsided. “Yes, lord.”
“Little man,” Aldrick rumbled. “What’s she doing here?”
Ehren smiled up at Aldrick, standing diffidently, as though he weren’t bright enough to notice all the naked steel in the room and too innocent of the ways of violence to understand how much danger he was in. “Ah, yes. She’s here to, ah, there’s a special mission for you all, and you’re to do it.”
Amara glanced around the tent. She recognized some of the men and women in it, from long before, during her graduation exercise from the Academy. Back before her mentor had betrayed her. Back before the man she’d pledged her life to support had done the same. They were the Windwolves—mercenaries, the long-term hirelings of the Aquitaines. They were suspected in any number of dubious enterprises, and though she could not prove it, Amara was certain that they had killed any number of Alerans during their employers’ various schemes.
They were dangerous men and women one and all, strongly gifted at furycraft, known as an aerial contingent, Knights for hire.
“Hello, Aldrick,” Amara said calmly, facing the man. “This is the short version: As of now, you are working with me.”
His eyebrows climbed. His eyes went to Ehren.
The little man nodded, smiling and blinking myopically. “Yes, that’s correct. She’ll tell you what you need to know. Very important, and I’ve other messages to deliver, good hunting.”
Ehren nodded and bumbled out of the tent, muttering apologies.
Grimacing, Aldrick watched him go and eyed Amara. A moment later, he put his sword away. Only then did the others in the room lower and put away their weapons.
“All right,” he said, staring at Amara with distaste. “What’s the job?”
Odiana stared at her with what Amara could only describe as malicious glee. Her smile was unsettling.
“The usual,” Amara said, smiling as though her innards hadn’t spent the last moments shimmying and twisting in fear. “It’s a rescue.”
CHAPTER 13
“You’ve barely touched the meal,” Kitai said quietly.
Tavi glanced up at her, a stab of guilt hitting him quickly in the belly. “I…” The sight of Kitai in the green gown hit him even more heavily, and he lost track of what he’d been about to say.
The silken gown managed to satisfy propriety while simultaneously placing every one of the young woman’s beautiful features on display. With her pale hair worn up in an elegant coil atop her head, the rather deep neckline of the gown made her neck look long and delicate, giving the lie to the slender strength he knew was there. It left her shoulders and arms bare as well, her pale skin smooth and perfect in the glow of the muted furylamps inside the pavilion he’d had set up on a bluff overlooking the restless sea.
The silver-set emeralds she wore at her throat, upon a gossamer-thin wire tiara, and on her ears flickered in the light, gleaming with tiny inner fires of their own. A subtle firecrafting had been worked into them by a master artisan at some point in their past. The second firecrafting that went with them, an aura of excitement and happiness, hung around her like a fine and subtle perfume.
She arched one pale brow in challenge, her lips curving up into a smile, waiting for an answer.
“Perhaps,” he said, “I’ve developed a hunger for something other than dinner.”
“It is improper to have one’s dessert before the meal, Your Highness,” she murmured. She lifted a berry to her lips and met his eyes as she ate it. Slowly.
Tavi considered sweeping the tabletop clear with one arm, dragging her across it and into his arms, and finding out what that berry tasted like. The notion struck him with such appeal that he had lifted his hands to the arms of his chair without even realizing it.