“They are,” Invidia said, her voice shaking with unsteady intensity. “You are. Under the lies you tell yourself, part of you hates me. Part of you would love to pluck out my eyes while I screamed.”
“I don’t hate a serpent for being a serpent,” Isana said. “But neither will I permit it to harm me or those I care about. I will kill it if I must, as quickly and painlessly as possible.”
“And that’s what I am to you?” Invidia asked. “A serpent?”
“That’s what you were,” Isana said quietly.
Invidia’s eyes shone with a feverish intensity. “And now?”
“Now, I think you might be a mad dog,” Isana said quietly. “I pity such a poor creature’s suffering. But it changes nothing about what I must do.”
Invidia dropped her head back and laughed. “What you must do?” she asked. She put her fingertip on the table, still smiling, and smoke began rising in a thin, curling thread. “Exactly what do you think you could possibly do to me?”
“Destroy you,” Isana said quietly. “I don’t want to do it. But I can. And I will.”
“If you go shopping for a hat, darling, be sure to get one several sizes larger than the one it’s replacing.” She glared at Isana. “So you were the choice of the flawless Princeps Septimus, over every woman in the Realm actually qualified to be his wife. So your child by him was recognized by Gaius. It means nothing, Isana. Don’t think for an instant that your strength can compare to mine.”
“Oh,” Isana said, “I’m quite sure it doesn’t. It doesn’t need to.” She stared at Invidia for a quiet moment, her expression calm, then she picked up her knife and fork again. “When have you gone too far, Invidia? At what point do the lives your new allies take begin to outweigh your own?”
The expression drained out of the former High Lady’s scarred face.
“When does your own life become something you don’t want to live anymore?” Isana said in that same quiet, gentle voice. “Can you imagine another year of living this way? Five years? Thirty years? Do you want to live that life, Invidia?”
She folded her hands in her lap and stared at Isana, her scarred face bleak and expressionless.
“You could change things,” Isana said quietly. “You could choose another path. Even now, you could choose another path.”
Invidia stared at her, not moving—but the creature on her chest pulsed horribly, its legs stirring. She closed her eyes, stiffening in pain, which Isana could all but feel lance through her own body. She remained that way for a long moment, then opened her eyes again.
“All I can choose is death.” She gestured bleakly to the creature that still grasped her. “Without this, I would die within hours. And if I do not obey her, she will take it from me.”
“It isn’t a very good choice,” Isana said. “But it is a choice, Invidia.”
That rictus of a smile returned. “I will not willingly end my own life.”
“Even if it costs others theirs?”
“Have you never killed to protect your life, Isana?”
“That isn’t the same.”
Invidia arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t it?”
“Not at all.”
“I am what the Realm and my father and my husband have made me, Isana. And I will not simply lie down and die.”
“Ah,” Isana said quietly. “Quite.”
“Meaning what, precisely?”
“Meaning,” Isana said, “that whether you realize it or not, you’ve already made your choice. Probably quite some time ago.”
Invidia stared at her. Her lips quivered once, as if she would speak, but she withdrew into a shell of silence again. Then she took up her fork with a deliberate movement, cut another bite of the hideous croach concoction, and ate it with measured, steady motions.
Now, while she was retreating from the conversation. It was time to push. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, Invidia. I’m sorry that it came to this for you. You have so much power, so much talent, so much ability. You could have done great things for Alera. I’m sorry that it went to waste.”
Invidia’s gaze turned cold. “Who are you?” she asked quietly. “Who are you to say such things to me? You’re no one. You’re nothing. You’re a camp whore who happened to be favored by a man. The fool. He could have had his choice of any woman of Alera.”
“As I understand it,” Isana said, “he did.” She let the simple statement hang silent in the air for a moment. Then she took a breath, and said, “If you will excuse me.” Isana rose from the table and turned as though to walk as far away from Invidia as the chamber would allow. But she listened as she walked. There was no chance whatsoever that Invidia would allow her to have the last word on the matter of Septimus.
“Yes. He chose you.” Invidia bared her teeth. “And see what it earned him.”
Isana stopped in her tracks. She felt as if someone had struck her a hard blow in the belly.
“The contracts were drawn. Sextus was agreed. Everything had been arranged. After he’d shown his power at Seven Hills, it would have been the perfect time for him to take a wife. A wife of breeding, of power, of skill, of education. But he chose… you.”
Isana felt her hands clench into fists.
“Septimus was a fool. He imagined that those he bested would react with the same grace he thought he possessed. Oh, he never went forth to humiliate anyone, but it always seemed to work out that way. In school. In games. In those ridiculous duels the boys used to find excuses to engage in. Little things he didn’t bother to remember would fester in others.”
Isana turned, very slowly, to face Invidia.
The former High Lady stood with her chin lifted, her eyes bright, the un-marred portions of her face flushed and rosy. “It was easy. Rhodus. Kalarus. It barely took a whisper to put the idea in their minds.”
“You,” Isana said quietly.
Invidia’s eyes flashed. “And why not me? The House of Gaius has earned its hatreds over the centuries. Sooner or later, someone would break it to pieces. Why not me?”
Isana faced Invidia and stood perfectly still for a long moment, looking at the other woman’s eyes. Isana smoothed her worn dress down carefully, considering her words and the thoughts behind them, and the burning fires of her own grief and loss that colored all of her mind the color of blood.
Then she drew in a deep breath, and said, “For my husband’s memory, for my child’s future, for those whose blood is upon your hands, I defy you. I name you Nihilus Invidia, Invidia of Nusquam, traitor to the Crown, the Realm, and her people.” She drew herself up straight and spoke in a hard tone barely louder than a whisper. “And before I leave this place, I will kill you.”
Invidia lifted her chin, her lips quivering. A little hiccuping laugh drifted around in her throat. She shook her head, and said, “This world is not for such as you, Isana. Wait a few more days. You’ll see.”
CHAPTER 28
“Crows take it,” Tavi muttered. He tried to mop the rain from his face with a corner of his sopping cloak. “We’ve got another thirty miles to make today.”
“It’s going to be darker than a Phrygian winter in another hour, Captain,” Maximus said. “The men will keep going. But I hate to think what might happen to us if the vord hit us while we’re setting up camp in the dark.”
Tavi looked back at the column behind them. It was a mixed and disorganized sight. The First Aleran and Free Aleran Legions were managing fairly well, especially given how long they’d been cooling their heels on ships in the last few months. They moved ahead at a loping run, their endurance and footsteps bolstered by the earth furies in the causeway. At normal pace, they would be moving as quickly as a man could sprint across open ground. Tavi had been forced to reduce their speed, in part because the men were out of practice. At least they maintained their spacing with acceptable discipline.