He gathered her up with his left arm and all but crushed her to his chest. Amara clutched him back, feeling the warmth and strength of him against her. “It’s about time,” she whispered.
“I leave you alone for an hour, woman,” he said, his voice shaking. “And I find you running around with a younger man.”
She let out a choking little laugh that threatened to bring out more sobs and held him for another few heartbeats. Then she pushed gently at him, and he rose, lifting her to her feet. “We c-can’t,” she said. “There are more of them around.”
The dull cough of a nearby firecrafting thudded through the air in punctuation. There was an extended roaring sound, and a cloud of dust began to emerge from farther in the city, joining the smoke and fire.
“More of the crafters the vord took?” Bernard said. “Why are they here?”
“They came for the Citizens,” Amara said. “At least one of them was nearby under a veil. He hit me hard enough to let the other catch up with me.”
As she finished speaking, there was a howl of wind above them, and a pair of dark forms streaked by, firelight flickering on steel, showers of sparks exploding irregularly between them. Two others darted after the first pair, converging on them from different angles and altitudes. A few seconds later, far overhead, multiple spheres of white-hot fire burst into life in a rapid line of explosions. Distant, staccato thumps followed. Then a series of deep blue streaks answered the spheres, flashing in the other direction. A hissing drone, like a rainstorm hitting a hot skillet, followed a few moments later.
“Bloody crows,” Bernard breathed. “This is not a smart place to be.”
“No,” Amara said. “Those are good signs.”
Bernard frowned at her.
Amara gestured wearily at the sky. “The enemy crafters must have been working in stealth, picking off our Citizens as they tried to help the city. They had probably been doing it for half an hour or more before I ever arrived. If there’s open battle now, it means that those stealthy operations ceased to be useful to the enemy. Lady Placida must have gotten the word out to her fellow Citizens.”
Bernard grunted. “Maybe. Or maybe half of the enemy crafters are making a big show of it while the rest lurk and wait for a chance to ambush distracted Citizens.”
Amara shivered. “You are a devious man.” Then she glanced down at the plaza and back to Bernard. “What are you doing up here?” she asked.
“Watching Aquitaine,” he said. His voice was quiet and completely neutral. “His singulares got torn up something terrible by that bull fury. The ones who could walk had to drag out the ones who couldn’t. Left him there all alone.”
“Watching him,” Amara said quietly. “Not watching over him.”
“That’s right.”
Amara bit her lip. “Despite the loyalty a Citizen owes to the Crown and its heirs.”
The fingers of her husband’s blood-encrusted right hand clenched into a fist. “The man’s directly responsible for the deaths of more than four hundred of my friends and neighbors. Some of them my own bloody holders. According to Isana, he makes no secret of the fact that he may someday deem it necessary to kill my nephew.” He stared out at the lone figure in the plaza, and his quiet voice burned with heat without growing louder, while his green eyes seemed to gather a layer of frost. “The murdering son of a bitch should count himself lucky I haven’t paid him what he’s owed.” His lips pressed together, staring at Attis’s motionless, focused form amidst half a dozen enormous furies. “Right now, it’d be easy.”
“We need him,” Amara said.
Bernard’s jaw clenched.
Amara put a hand on his arm. “We need him.”
He glanced aside at her, took a slow breath, and made a motion of his head that was so miniscule that it could hardly be recognized as a nod. “Doesn’t mean I have to like—”
His head whipped around, and his body began to follow before Amara heard the light tread upon the stone roof. She turned to see a faint blur in the air, someone hidden behind a windcrafted veil and approaching with terrifying speed. Then there was a sound of impact and Bernard let out a croaking gasp, doubling over. The blur moved again, and Bernard’s head snapped violently to one side. Teeth knocked loose from his jaw rattled onto the roof like a small handful of ivory dice, and he crumpled to the floor beside them, senseless or dead.
Amara reached for Cirrus and her weapon simultaneously, but their attacker flung out a nearly invisible arm and a handful of salt crystals struck her, sending the wind fury into disruptive convulsions of ethereal agony. Her sword was not halfway from its sheath before a thread of cold steel, the tip of a long, slender blade, lay against her throat.
The blade shimmered into visibility, then the hand behind it, then the arm behind the hand, and suddenly Amara found herself facing the former High Lady of Aquitaine. Invidia stood clad all in black chitin, and that same horrible, pulsing parasite-creature was locked about her torso. Her hair was dark and unkempt, her eyes sunken, and her skin had an unhealthy pallor.
“And to think,” Invidia said. “I’ve spent the last half an hour scouring this entire plaza looking for the singulares I was sure Attis had hidden. Quite unlike him to use nonexistence as camouflage, though I suppose it did make them impossible to find. Hello, Countess.”
Amara shot her motionless husband a glance, swept her eyes over the plaza below, and clenched her teeth. “Go to the crows, traitor.”
“Oh, I have,” Invidia said lightly. “They’d begun to peck at my eyes and lips when the vord found me. I am disinclined to repeat the experience.”
Amara felt a chill smile stretch her lips. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”
“Come, Countess,” Invidia replied. “It is far too late for any of us to seek redemption for our sins now.”
“Then why haven’t you killed me and had done?” Amara replied, lifting her chin to bare more of her throat to Invidia’s blade. “Lonely, are we? Missing the company of our fellow human beings? Needing some scrap of respect? Forgiveness? Approval?”
Invidia stared at her for a moment though her eyes looked through Amara as though she weren’t there. A frown creased her brow. “Perhaps,” she said.
“Perhaps you should have thought of that before you began murdering us all,” Amara spat. “You aren’t wearing a collar, like the others. They’re slaves. You’re free. You’re here by choice.”
Invidia let out a harsh laugh. “Is that what you think? That I have a choice?” Amara arched an eyebrow. “Yes. Between death and destroying your own kind. You could defy the vord and die of the poison still in you—die horribly. But instead you’ve chosen to let everyone else die in your place.”
Invidia’s eyes widened, and her lips peeled back from her teeth in an unnatural grimace.
“The truly sad part,” Amara said, naked contempt ringing in her voice, “is that in the end, it will make no difference. The moment you are more of a threat than an asset to them, the vord will kill you. You selfish, petulant child. All the blood on your hands has been for nothing.”
Invidia’s jaws clenched, and spots of color appeared high on her cheeks. Her whole body began shaking. “Who,” she whispered. “Who do you think you are?”
Amara learned into the blade and met Invidia’s eyes with her own. “I know who I am. I am the Countess Calderonus Amara, Cursor of the Crown, loyal servant of Alera and the House of Gaius. Though it cost me my life, I know who I am.” She bared her own teeth in a wolfish smile. “And we both know who you are. You’ve chosen your side, traitor. Get on with it.”