Invidia took her sword, in its scabbard, in hand, and asked, “How is it used?”
“Eaten, according to Octavian, or squeezed, and its juices applied to wounds.”
Invidia stared at her for a moment. Then she frowned, and said, slowly, “I cannot tell if you are lying to me.”
“Things are never true because we want them to be, Invidia,” Isana said. “Or because we don’t want them to be. They simply are.”
Her spine stiffened. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“That it is not surprising someone who has so thoroughly deceived herself about the truth can’t recognize it when it is spoken to her.”
Invidia’s face turned cold. She drew back her hand and struck Isana’s face with her palm. Quick, sharp pain expanded and dissipated almost immediately, leaving a harsh tingling in Isana’s cheek. As the blow landed, the windcrafting concealing their speech vanished.
Invidia threw her sword at Isana’s chest. “So pleasant to be lectured by a self-righteous camp whore who has stumbled into power.” She sneered, and Isana felt the lash of Invidia’s hatred against her skin like an unseen riding crop. “If you’re so convinced of your cause, draw it. Challenge me to the juris macto. If you can take me, perhaps you will be allowed to rule a Realm of ashes and graves.”
Isana gathered in the slender sword and held it against her stomach without ever looking up at the burned woman. The fire of her emotions was no act—and Isana knew with a sudden chill that while Invidia may have been manipulated into action against the Queen, she had no intention of letting Isana leave alive. “I never wanted a struggle with you, Invidia. All I ever wanted was for my family to be left in peace.”
“Keep it,” Invidia spat. “In case you change your mind.”
Isana looked past the other woman to the vord Queen. Black, alien eyes had focused upon them both. They stayed there for a long moment, then, without comment, returned to the ceiling above.
Invidia literally spat upon Isana. Then she turned and began walking toward the exit. “There have been no troubles moving enough troops onto the bluffs, I trust?”
The vord Queen ignored her.
Isana felt a horrible suspicion begin to grow in her thoughts. The Queen had said nothing about Invidia’s giving her the weapon. At the very least, she would have expected some sort of comment along the lines of how irrational the act was.
But the Queen said nothing.
Evidently, Invidia had been struck by a similar impression, but she seemed to brush it aside. Her steps slowed for an instant, and she slowed in midstride, perhaps poised on the precipice of some decision. Then her eyes narrowed, and her steps quickened. She went to the hive’s entrance and, with a flick of her hand, sent a ball of stuttering red-and-blue light into the world outside.
The hive exploded into motion and violence.
Isana simply couldn’t believe how fast everything had suddenly become. It seemed that for an instant, she could focus on absolutely everything in her field of vision, all at once, no matter where it was.
The hive’s walls vomited forth a horde of wax spiders, the ones that were constantly in attendance, yet managed to remain all but invisible most of the time. She had expected that. It made their sudden appearance, all leathery, translucent bodies and legs and fangs and gently luminescent eyes no less hideous, no less terrifying—and it certainly made the venom on their fangs no less poisonous. But, at least she had expected them.
She had not expected the four creatures that came dropping neatly out of the ceiling—what looked at first like… she wasn’t sure what. Some kind of bizarre furylamp fixture, perhaps. They were spheres, essentially, with blades of gleaming steel standing out in ridges from the inner surface of each sphere, smoothly beautiful—until the bodies of the forms began to unfold with delicate grace into the long legs of creatures that resembled wax spiders—but which were ten times the size, and whose limbs were graced with blades of what was obviously furycrafted steel.
Vord. Made of steel. Isana felt fairly sure that didn’t bode well for whatever Invidia had planned.
Invidia turned as the initial wave of wax spiders leapt at her. Her hand twitched, as if to move toward her sword, then reversed itself, sweeping in an arc with her fingers spread. Blue-white fire slewed forth in a liquidlike spray from her open hand, splashing upon leaping spiders and clinging to them like hot oil, causing them to curl up into lumps of flaming, withered flesh. In an instant, two dozen of the leaping figures were destroyed—but there were far more than two dozen surging toward the burned woman. She swept one leg easily into the air, kicking a leaping spider aside, and brought her heel and foot straight down with a cry, a furycrafting movement that sent a violent jolt through the earth in a wave that spread out from her foot, knocking small and large spiders alike into one another, sending them tumbling over the floor and bringing dust and gravel falling from the holes in the ceiling where the great spiders had landed.
Except for one. One of the large, bladed spiders had already flung itself into the air before the shock wave could shake it, and two of its bladed legs snapped forward from its body, striking with the speed and precision of serpents.
Even then, the former High Lady was not to be undone. One of her hands moved with impossible speed, her chitin-covered forearm catching the blades, sliding them aside—almost. One of the swordlike limbs plunged through the chitin-armor covering her other arm, and emerged from the back of it in a small fountain of blood.
Invidia cried out, seized the weapon-limb, and tore it free of her arm by dint of pure, furycrafted strength, ducking aside as another half dozen weapons flashed toward her from different directions. She fell back toward the entrance, seized another leaping wax spider, and flung it at the blade-thing with such strength that it was slammed several feet back across the floor, staggering under the impact.
Isana could only remain in place, motionless, hoping to avoid any attention, stunned at the display. Invidia’s power had, for an instant, stemmed the tide of hostile vord.
That instant was all that was required.
Blue-white lightning streaked through the entrance to the hive, twin lances arching around Invidia and converging upon the blade-thing in front of her. They struck in a hideously bright flash of light and a roar of sound that was physically painful. Isana felt the breath sucked from her lungs at the sudden change in air pressure. When she could see again a few seconds later, a blackened patch of ground remained where the first blade-thing had been standing, scorched free of vord and croach alike. Scattered pieces of sharp steel littered the ground, all that remained of the creature.
There was a roar of wind and two armored figures rode in on windstreams, miniature gales that carried them down the incline, growing weaker as they descended into the hive, and let both men land on their feet, blazing swords in hand. One weapon burned with cold blue fire, the other blazed with scarlet heat—High Lords Phrygius and Antillus, respectively, Isana thought.
Once more, wax spiders leapt forward, trilling their cries—but this time they faced master metalcrafters with steel in their hands. Quivering, scorched pieces fell to the floor as the two men strode forward, untouched, through the rain of screaming wax spiders.
“In the alcove!” Invidia cried.
Phrygius spun toward the alcove just in time to raise his blade and intercept the dark weapon of the vord Queen. Her sword, a weapon of gleaming dark green-black chitin, met the blazing steel of the High Lord and flexed with unnatural tensile strength, not so much blocking the weapon outright as catching it and flinging it back. The motion surprised Phrygius, who recovered swiftly, but not before the Queen’s sword had left a deep slice in the steel plates of his lorica, the split steel bubbling with frothing green poison. They exchanged a series of blows too swiftly for Isana to keep track of them, circling around one another, darting through short passes. Neither seemed able to gain an advantage.