“Actually,” Garius commented idly, “those weren’t legionares, Your Grace. We lost nearly two hundred legionares in our last action against the Icemen, and we burned them three days since. Those men were veterans. The Icemen slipped over the Wall in several places two nights ago. Those men fell defending their steadholts and families, before our cavalry and Knights could arrive to help.” He spoke in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone. “But they fought and fell as legionares. They deserved to be sent off as legionares.”
On the ground below, High Lord Antillus bowed his head, and covered his face with both his hands. He just stood that way for a moment, not moving. Even from there, Isana could feel the echoes of his grief and guilt, and the sympathetic pains that rippled through the men around her who could see him-men who obviously cared about him.
Aria let out a low sigh. “Oh,” she whispered. “Oh, Raucus.”
The grizzled centurion growled an order, and the engineers below marched out in good order. A moment later, Antillus, too, departed, walking back toward the base of the Wall and out of sight.
“I’ll remind him that you’ve come,” Garius murmured.
“Thank you, Garius,” Aria murmured.
“Of course, Mother.” The young Tribune walked briskly away.
Within a few moments, Antillus Raucus came up one of the staircases Isana had noted before, Garius walking just behind his left shoulder, the grizzled engineering centurion behind his right. The High Lord walked straight over to Isana and bowed politely, first to her, then to Aria.
“Your Highness. Your Grace.”
Isana returned the gesture as gracefully as she could. “Your Grace.”
Raucus was a large, rawboned man, brawny as a house built from raw timber. His craggy face reminded Isana startlingly of Tavi’s young friend Maximus-though it was worn with more years of care and discipline, and sharpened with more bitterness and anger. His hair was dark, shot through with flickers of iron-and his eyes were hollow with weariness and grief. “I regret that I could not be on hand to greet you myself,” he said, his voice empty. “I had duties that required my personal attention.”
“Of course, Your Grace,” Isana said. “I… Please accept my condolences for the suffering of your people.”
He nodded, the gesture empty of any real meaning. “Hello, Aria.”
“Hello, Raucus.”
He gestured at the bare patch of earth and something hot and unpleasant shone in his eyes. “You saw what I just did?”
“Yes,” Aria said.
“If my men didn’t make it a point to steal their swords and take them home at the end of their service, while I make it a point to look the other way, it would have been the women and children of those steadholts in the fire,” he snarled.
Aria pressed her lips together and looked down, saying nothing.
Antillus turned his hard gaze back to Isana, and said, “There’s only one kind of peace you can make with the Icemen.”
Isana lifted her chin slightly and took a slow breath. “What do you mean?”
“They’re animals,” Antillus spat. “You don’t bargain with animals. You kill them, or you leave them alone. You can talk all you want, First Lady. But the sooner you realize the truth of that, the sooner you can help me and Phrygia do what is necessary to get some real help down to the south.”
“Your Grace,” Isana said cautiously. “That isn’t what the First Lord-”
“The First Lord,” Antillus said, scorn seething from every syllable. “He has no idea what life is like up here. He has no idea how many legionares I’ve buried-most of them sixteen- and seventeen-year-old children. He has no idea what the Icemen are, or what they are capable of. He’s never seen it. Never had to wash the blood off him. I have. Every day.”
“But-”
“Don’t you dare think you can walk in here for half of one hour and tell me about my own domain, Your Highness,” Antillus snarled. “I will not be bullied around by Gaius’s pet-”
“Raucus,” Aria snapped. Her voice was barely more than a whisper, but it shook the air between the three of them with its intensity.
The High Lord closed his mouth and glared at Lady Placida. Then he looked away from her and shook his head.
“Perhaps you could use some rest,” Aria suggested.
Raucus grunted. A moment later, he said, to Isana, “Your savage is here. Camped out with my savages. You’re to meet in the morning. Garius will show you to your chambers.”
He spun, his scarlet cloak flaring out, and stalked away, out of the torchlight.
Isana shivered again and rubbed her arms with her hands.
“Ladies,” Garius said, “if you’ll follow me, please, I will show you to your rooms.”
The art of compromise?
How in the world was she supposed to find a compromise when one side of the conflict, at least, simply did not want to find a peaceful resolution?
CHAPTER 15
Marcus paused outside the Princeps’ cabin at the sound of raised voices within.
“What is it you think we’re supposed to do, Magnus?” Maximus demanded in a blunt tone. “The Princeps-and every Cane in the range of Shuar, apparently-believes that it is necessary.”
“It is an unacceptable risk,” answered the Legion’s valet, his voice crackling with precisely restrained anger. “The Princeps of Alera simply does not wander the land of a foreign power alone, vulnerable and unsecured.”
“It’s not as though he’s a helpless babe,” pointed out Antillus Crassus’s calmer, more measured voice. “Perhaps my brother has a point, Magnus.”
Marcus smiled faintly. He knew Crassus well enough by then to know that the young man had a better head on his shoulders than to agree with Maximus about sending the Princeps into the heart of a Canim nation alone. But siding with his brother would neatly undermine Maximus’s objection when Crassus capitulated.
“Octavian’s life is irreplaceable,” Magnus stated. “If every single life in this expedition had to be sacrificed to see him safely back to Alera again, it would be our duty to do everything in our power to make sure that it happened as rapidly and efficiently as possible. We are expendable, gentlemen. He is not.”
“I am neither a gentleman nor expendable,” the young Marat woman interjected. “Nor do I see how the deaths of all of your people could possibly get my Aleran safely home again. You’ve seen him on the open water. Do you honestly think he could manage a ship on his own?”
There was a beat of startled silence, then Magnus said, his tone sour, “I was speaking in hypothetical terms, Ambassador.”
“Ah,” Kitai said, her tone wry. “Explain again to me the difference between hypothesis and make-believe.”
“All right,” said Octavian in his resonant baritone. Already, Marcus thought he could hear the gravity of greater authority settling into the young man’s voice. “I think we’ve beaten this particular gargant to death.”
“Your Highness-” Magnus began.
“Magnus,” Octavian said, “I am, for all practical purposes, a prisoner-as is our fleet. The Shuarans control the harbor. If I do not go to see Warmaster Lararl after claiming the protection of his respect, there’s nothing to stop them from turning those stone throwers on us and sending us all to the bottom of their harbor-including me. That isn’t the way to get me safely back to Alera.”