Chapter 27
Amara and Bernard took their next major risk about an hour before sundown.
They had been drawn to what had been a small but obviously prosperous steadholt by the presence of several of the lizard-shaped Vord who loitered outside the place, instead of rushing about on the hunt, as had all the creatures they had seen thus far. Amara and Bernard had slipped past the guards and into the steadholt, to find that the Vord had overrun the place and set it up as some kind of base of operations.
A vordknight crouched at the peak of the steadholt's main hall, as motionless as any statue. The croach had spread over most of the ground and was growing up the walls of every building. The steadholt's well was completely blocked off by the waxy substance. One of the doors to the barn had been torn from its hinges and lay on the ground, already buried in the wax.
Pale wax spiders glided busily back and forth, tending the croach as bees might their honeycomb. All of them that Amara could see emerged from the shadowy interior of the barn and returned to it once their tasks were complete.
Bernard drew close enough to her side to touch her and pressed his fingers lightly against one of her ankles. She tapped his forearm with her fingertips twice, lightly, to acknowledge his signal. Then, one at a time, they slipped on the broadened shoes that they had made specifically for walking on the croach. The waxy substance served the Vord as sustenance and as a kind of sentinel. The weight of an adult human would break the resinous surface, spilling out the faintly luminous liquid within like blood and immediately drawing the attention of the wax spiders who stood watch over it.
Bernard and Octavian, in one of their regular written planning sessions, had between them come up with an idea for broad-bottomed shoes that would spread out the weight of an adult onto a larger surface, reducing the stress upon the croach. With them, the two should be able to walk, carefully, on the croach without breaking its surface or summoning a swarm of its guardians.
In theory.
In practice, the shoes were bloody difficult to use, and Amara suddenly felt very glad that she had insisted that Bernard have a swift-release mechanism built into the pads of leather and still-flexible wood. If they didn't work the way that they had hoped, Amara wanted to be able to get the ungainly things off her feet as rapidly as possible.
With their stealth-craftings still wrapped securely about them, they walked-waddled, really, Amara thought-along the inner wall of the overrun steadholt toward the cavernous barn, until they finally stepped onto the croach itself. Amara moved as carefully as she ever had in her life, stepping forward with the awkward motion the shoes demanded, an unusually high lift of the knee, then the first foot forward onto the glowing surface, then the whole of her weight brought slowly to bear upon the forward foot, so that the broad pads of the shoes spread her weight. She supposed that were she a character in a dramatic tale, she'd have one hand on her sword and one eye upon the nearest of the spiders-but that was perfect nonsense. She was a great deal more interested in making sure that she kept her balance and that the edges of the shoes didn't come down at too sharp an angle, tearing the croach and revealing their presence to foes who were, in all likelihood, too numerous to fight successfully in any case.
Amara took one step, then another. No whistling, warbling outcry went up around her. She paused to look back as Bernard stepped onto the croach. Her husband was a great deal larger than she was, and heavier, and his shoes proportionately wider-and therefore more clumsy. Even from barely more than an arm's length away, Amara could hardly see more than his outline, but she saw him move with the same steady patience with which her husband did everything else as he stepped onto the croach behind her.
No cry went up. The shoes were working. So far.
Amara turned her focus back to her own movements, leading the way, and tried to tell herself that she was walking like a graceful, long-legged heron, and not like a waddling duck, in the broad shoes. It wasn't far to the door of the barn-twenty feet, or a little more. Even so, it seemed to take at least an hour to walk the distance. That was ridiculous, of course, and Amara told herself so quite firmly. But her throat was so tight and her heart pounding so loudly that she wasn't sure she could have been expected to hear herself very clearly.
It could only have been a few moments later that she pressed her back against the stone wall of the barn and leaned cautiously forward to peer inside to see what it was that the Vord were standing watch over so diligently.
It was a larder. Amara could think of no other way to describe it.
The croach was deeper there, rising in murky swirls to a foot off the stone floor of the barn and more.
People-bodies-were sealed within it. Amara could make out few details. The croach was translucent, but shapes beneath it remained murky and mercifully indistinct. The bodies were not twisted in the shapes of death. They simply lay peacefully, as though the folk who had met their deaths there had fallen asleep and been sealed into waxy tombs. Some of the more indistinct shapes, deepest in the croach, were too thin to be bodies-but they might, Amara realized, be bones, the flesh eaten from around them by the croach.
Except for three who had been standing, sealed into the croach where it lined the wall behind them. They had been two men and a woman, their limbs restrained by the waxy resin-and their bodies had been damaged badly before they died.
They had, Amara realized, been tortured.
She took swift stock of the three bodies. They were not clad as holders, but in the greens and browns, in the cloaks and leathers of woodsmen, even as she and her husband were. In fact, taking into account that their faces had been distorted by pain as they died...
She felt a chill run through her.
She recognized them all. She'd been at the Academy with the young woman, Anna, who had been from a steadholt near Forcia. She'd gone through her basic training as a Cursor with Anna, before graduating the Academy and being apprenticed to Fidelias.
The Vord had captured, tortured, and murdered three of her fellow Cursors, men and women chosen specifically for this mission for their ability to remain unheard and unseen. For all the good it had done them.
Her belly twisted nauseatingly, and she turned her face away. For a second, she fought to control her stomach. Then she forced herself to look again, to think.
Two more spiders, she realized, were busy repairing a trail of damage in the croach inside the building-footprints. Human footprints. They led from the doors to the dead scouts.
The Vord were without pity but also without rancor. None of the other bodies showed signs of torment. They were simply... devoured.
Alerans had done this, she realized.
Alerans had done this.
Amara saw in her mind's eye the Alerans surrounding the Vord queen at the battle of Ceres and shivered again-this time with raw rage.
She felt her husband's presence next to her, the brush of his body against hers as he looked at the inside of the barn as well. She felt it when the same realization reached him, when his body tensed suddenly and one of his knuckles made the softest of creaks beneath his gloves as his hand tightened into a furious fist.
She touched his wrist, willing her rage into frozen stillness, and the two turned to begin making their torturously slow way across the croach again, and out of the steadholt. They took off the croach shoes and ghosted back into the countryside. Without a word, Amara stepped back and let her husband take the lead.
Whoever had tortured the scouts had done so within hours of when Amara had found the bodies. Whoever the culprits had been, they were obviously tied in some fashion to the Vord, to the Alerans who had been helping them-the source of the Vord's furycraft. They were therefore a lead to the heart of Bernard and Amara's mission, and in all probability, they had left a trail.
Bernard took the lead. He would find them.
It took the best part of two days of almost unceasing, agonizingly cautious movement to catch up to the traitors who had tortured the scouts. Their trail led back to Ceres.
The Vord had taken the city.
Croach was growing within the walls. As the sun set, it threw up a sullen green light upon the grey-white stones of the city, making them look eerily translucent, like jade illuminated from within. From outside the walls, the city was eerily still and silent. No watchmen called. No bells tolled. No clip-clop of horses' hooves rattled from the stones. There were no voices, no singing from the wine houses, no mothers calling their children in as the sky settled from twilight to night.
One could hear, very faintly, the murmuring of the city's fountains, still flowing despite the Vord presence. And, every so often, the eerie, warbling call of one of the Vord echoed up from one of the streets or rooftops within.
Amara shivered.
She got close enough to Bernard to be seen clearly and signed to him. Quarry. Where?
Bernard pointed at what had been the High Lord's citadel in the middle of the city and added the sign Maybe.
Amara grimaced. She'd been thinking the same thing herself. The citadel would be the most secure place in Ceres. If she were an Aleran among a horde of Vord, she would want the thickest walls and strongest defenses around her when she slept. Agreed. Proceed?
Bernard signaled agreement. Begin where?
A good point. They could do without walking in through the front gates, relying purely upon their furycrafted veils to protect them from detection. Amara, like most Cursors, knew about a dozen different ways to enter all of the High Lords' cities unobtrusively. It was a far easier matter in a large city than in smaller towns, really.
She signaled Bernard to follow her and started for the slavers' tunnels that ran under the west wall of the city.
The tunnels had been sealed prior to the Vord attack, of course, but as she had fully expected, they had been opened by panicked inhabitants of the city as they fled. The tunnel entries all showed the rough, outward-flung ripples of stone moved aside in haste by earthcrafters of mediocre talent, and were wide enough, just barely, for an adult carrying a heavy pack to slip through. Best of all, none of the three entrances within easy reach showed any sign of the Vord, either upon the ground outside or within the tunnels themselves. The only marks were the tracks of booted feet.
It was a good sign. The bulk of the Vord forces had pursued the First Lord and the Legions as they fled to the north. It meant that the city was probably only lightly occupied, rather than being a seething hive. They might be able to move with more speed once they were within.
Amara slipped into the dark mouth of the nearest tunnel. Furylamps were still burning inside, though they were of poor quality and spaced widely.
She drew close to her husband, once within, and crafted a globe of still air about their heads and shoulders that would not allow their words to escape into the close confines of the tunnels. "Lucky," she breathed, her voice a whisper, harsh from disuse. "We still have light enough to move by."
Her husband drew her a little closer to his chest and made a low rumble in his throat. "I'd think it was too convenient if I hadn't lived the past week."
"They can't be strong everywhere," Amara replied. "If there were that many of them, they wouldn't have needed to pursue the First Lord so closely."
Bernard frowned at that and nodded slowly. "He's still a threat to them." He glanced around at the tunnel, his eyes wary but more confident. "What is this place?"
"The slavers in Ceres had a problem," Amara said. "A ready market, opposed by organizations of fanatic abolitionists, who would attempt to disrupt shipments of slaves and murder slavers as creatively as possible. The slavers created these tunnels as secure means in and out of the city."
"Somehow," Bernard said, a hint of a smile on his lips, "I think that whatever happens, that problem has been permanently solved."
Amara found herself tittering on the edge of a half-hysterical giggle. "Yes, I suppose so."
Bernard nodded down the tunnel. "Smells foul, though. Where does it lead?"
"The auction house, in the western city square. It's less than five hundred yards from the citadel."
"Excellent," Bernard said. His eyes went back to hers. "How are you?"
Amara thought it was the simple humanity of the question, in the face of the horror they had seen, that made her chest pang so sharply. She was tired. She ached in every limb and every joint. She was hungry, shaky, and terrified on such a steadily ongoing basis that it had begun to lose its bite and fade into numb indifference. The reminder of a kinder, gentler world, of the times they had shared speaking quietly, or sleeping beside one another, or making love, flared up in a hideously bright, dangerous fire inside her.
She looked away from him and spoke with a shaking voice. "I... I can't. Not yet. We still have work to do."
His hands rose to her upper arms and squeezed gently. His voice came out warm, quiet, steady. "It's all right, love. Let's be about it. We need to consider-get down!"
She froze in surprise for an instant, even as her husband's arms drove her to her knees. She lost her balance and would have toppled to one side had he not caught her.
At his curt gesture, she dropped the interdicting windcrafting and they were immediately assaulted by the sounds they would have heard had she not been holding it in place.
Voices echoed in the tunnel. Feet thudded in a careless clatter. Someone-perhaps even their quarry-was in the tunnels with them, and they were crouching in a narrow corridor like perfect fools. No amount of concealing furycraft would do them any good if one of the Vord sympathizers physically blundered into them.
The volume of the voices rose. The tunnels rendered them completely unintelligible, but their tone was clear: an argument. Then a pair of shadowy forms backlit by a dingy furylamp emerged from a cross tunnel ahead of them and turned to proceed farther into the stinking depths of the tunnel that led toward the auction house, away from Amara and Bernard.
She traded a look with her husband. Then the pair of them rose to their feet and began stalking after the retreating figures.
The tunnel widened and became much higher after only a few more yards, its shape far more regular, sloping gently upward as it moved farther into the city. Their footing was good. It was not difficult to move more swiftly than they had in days, their feet, long used to silence, making no more sound on the stones than they had over the soft earth. Amara felt a fierce surge of exaltation spread through her limbs, making weariness vanish, and found her hand upon her sword. She wanted to punish these men, whoever they were, who had turned against their own kind, to butcher them as ruthlessly and efficiently as possible. She wanted to strike back at the horrors who had overrun the Vale and visited so much pain and destruction upon its holders.
But vengeance wouldn't bring anyone back. Indulging her own need for action would not assist the First Lord in stopping the Vord. No matter that it felt right. She had to be cold, rational, just as Fidelias had always taught her. Or tried to teach her, at any rate. Crows take his treasonous eyes.
She took her hand slowly from her sword. There was still a job to do.
"... and you know what she's going to say when we get back," snarled the voice of a man in the group in front of them. They had drawn close enough to the sympathizers for their discussion to be understood. "That you should have brought them all back here to be processed."
"Crows take the highborn bitch," snarled another man's voice. "She said to find out what the Cursors were up to. She never said anything about recruiting them."
The first man's voice became plaintive, blending frustration and anxiety in equal amounts. "Can't you explain it to him? Before we're all killed for incompetence?"
A woman's voice-a familiar one, though Amara couldn't place it immediately in the echoing tunnel-answered him. "It doesn't matter to me either way. He'll kill the two of you. I have something else to offer him."
"Whore," spat the second man.
"One can retire from whoredom," the woman replied, her tone cool. "Idiocy is for life-which, in your case, is probably about thirty minutes."
"Maybe I should just enjoy myself in the time left to me, then," the man said in an ugly tone. There was the sharp sound of an open-handed blow on skin, followed by scuffling feet and tearing cloth.
"Ranius!" barked the first man, his voice high and panicked.
"She's just a whore," Ranius growled. "One who needs to be put in her place. You can have a turn after I'm d-"
There was the sharp, sudden sound of snapping bone.
It was followed instantly by a heavy thud.
"Oh, crows," the first man screamed, his voice rising to a falsetto shriek.
"Apparently he's done, Falco," said the woman, her voice perfectly calm and polite. "Do you want your turn?"
"No. No, no, no, look," Falco babbled, his voice quick and shaking. "I never had a problem with you. Okay? I never tried to lay a hand on you. I never said a thing to you while you were... questioning the prisoners."
The woman's voice took on a hard, contemptuous edge. "Those people died for Alera. The least you can do is say the words. Ranius and I weren't questioning them, Falco. We were torturing them to death. And you did nothing. Bloody crows, you're gutless."
"I just want to live!"
"Everyone dies, Falco. Scramble all you want, but in the end you wind up like Ranius, there, no matter what you do."
"You shouldn't have killed them," Falco said. "You shouldn't have killed them. He's going to be furious."
"They died hard," the woman said. "But it was a cleaner death than they would have had if we'd brought them back. Cleaner than we're going to get."
"Why didn't you stop Ranius?!" Falco whined. "You could have stopped him. You know what's going to happen to us when we tell him what happened to the Cursors. You're smart. You knew..."
Falco's voice trailed off into tense silence.
"You've still got half an hour," the woman said in a level tone. "You want to be quiet now."
"You did it on purpose," Falco blurted. "You wanted the Cursors dead. So they couldn't talk. You're betraying him." He drew in a breath and his voice turned horrified. "You're betraying them."
There was a low sigh from up the tunnel. "Crows take it, Falco..."
"You lied to him," Falco continued in a dazed voice. "How the bloody crows did you lie to him?"
"Lying is easy," the woman replied quietly. "Getting people to believe what you want them to believe is considerably more difficult. It helps to be able to distract them with something."
"Oh, crows," Falco moaned. "Do you know what's going to happen to us when he finds out?"
The woman's voice was calm-almost compassionate-and Amara finally placed it. "He isn't going to find out."
"The crows he won't!" Falco retorted. "They'll know. They always know. I'm not going to have my guts ripped out for those things to crawl in!"
"No," she said. "You aren't."
Falco's voice turned panicked again. "Get away from me!"
There were running footsteps. Then a hissing sound-a knife's blade cutting the air as it was thrown, Amara judged. Falco let out a scream of agony and, from the sound of it, stumbled and fell. There was the sound of quick, light footsteps, then a gurgling sigh.
Amara moved forward until she could see the woman clearly.
She wasn't pretty, precisely, but she was fit, her features strong and appealing. She wasn't particularly tall, but her stance was confident, her motions brisk and sure, blending into a sense of competence that permeated her entire presence. She wore leather flying trousers and a dark blouse. The latter was silk, and it was torn, revealing a swath of smooth skin. Her eyes were the color of rich earth after a rain. Blood speckled her face.
A large man's body lay on the tunnel floor, his head twisted at a grotesque angle, his tongue protruding from between motionless lips: Ranius. A second man lay prone at her feet. He wasn't dead yet, technically, though the blood pumping from his slit throat into a pool on the stone floor was beginning to slow. A small throwing knife protruded from the hollow of one of his knees, precisely centered, sunk to the hilt.
The woman crouched down over him and smoothed the man's hair with her hand. "I'm sorry, Falco," she said quietly. "I can't let you give me away. I'm sorry you had to be afraid for so long. But your life ended weeks ago."
The man on the floor let out a small moan that ended in a little rattle. There was a terrible finality to the sound.
The woman bowed her head for a moment, then took her hand from the man's hair and spoke, her tone a quiet eulogy. "There are worse things to be than a coward. It was cleaner than anything they'd have given you."
She then began cleaning the bloody knife in her hand on his clothing. Once that was done, she jerked the throwing knife from the corpse's leg and cleaned it as well. She rose, her motions still brisk-then froze.
Amara hadn't made a sound or moved, but the woman shifted her grip on her knife and turned to face back down the tunnel, toward her, her body moving into a ready crouch, one hand held out in front of her, the little weapon lifted and ready to be thrown. Her eyes were narrowed, questing up and down the hall, her head tilted slightly, one ear a little forward, and her nostrils were wide as if questing for a scent.
Amara felt a second of sharp amusement. In any tunnels other than those leading to slave pens, she supposed her odor, anything but charming after weeks in the field, might well have given her away.
She put a hand on her husband's chest to warn him back, and took two steps forward, letting her feet strike the stone, slowly lowering the veil around her as she did.
The woman froze for a moment, then her eyes widened in recognition. "Countess Amara?"
"Hello, Rook," Amara said quietly. She stepped forward, lifting her empty hands, and faced the former head of the late High Lord Kalarus's Bloodcrows, the mistress of his personal assassins. Rook's defection and subsequent cooperation with the Crown had been responsible, as much as anything else, for Kalarus's downfall.
But what is she doing here?
After a moment, Amara asked, "Are you going to throw that knife?"
Rook lowered the weapon at once, rising out of her crouch a bit more slowly, letting out a long, steady exhalation. Then she slipped the weapon away and averted her eyes. "Don't talk to me."
"It's all right," Amara said slowly. "I'm a Cursor. I understand what you did. I know you aren't the enemy."
Rook let out a low, bitter croaking sound that might have been intended as a laugh. Then she lifted her chin, still without looking at Amara, and tugged the collar of her torn blouse back from her throat.
A simple steel band gleamed there, a familiar slaver's device.
A discipline collar.
"That's where you're wrong, Countess," Rook said quietly. "I am."
Chapter 28
Isana met the tribal chiefs of the Icemen two days later, at the same place she had spoken with Big Shoulders.
"This is ridiculous," Lady Placida said, pacing back and forth in the new snow. She was huddled beneath layered cloaks and shivering. "Honestly, Isana. Over the centuries, don't you think someone would have noticed if the Icemen were watercrafters?"
"Don't let the cold make you cross," Isana said, struggling to ignore it herself. There was a certain amount watercrafting could do to mitigate the cold, by keeping blood flowing steadily throughout her own limbs, and by convincing the snow and ice not to be quite as chilling to her flesh as it might be otherwise. Combined with a good cloak, it was enough to make her comfortable, but just barely. She doubted Aria had ever had need to practice the combination of techniques before, and despite the fact that her skills were almost certainly greater than Isana's own, the High Lady was the one being forced to pace back and forth.
"It's a simple bit of f-f-fieldcraft," Aria replied, shivering. Several tendrils of red hair slipped from beneath the green of her hood and danced back and forth over her face in the chill northern wind. "So simple that every single legionare in the northern Legions can learn it. And it takes someone of your skill at watercraft to even notice it's being used from five feet away. Surely you aren't saying that not only are the Icemen capable of furycraft, but that they're as skilled as Aleran Citizens, to boot?"
"I don't believe anyone using that firecrafting to stay warm is capable of thinking very clearly when the Icemen are nearby," Isana said calmly. "I believe there is some sort of unanticipated side effect occurring-one that caused you to be provoked quite easily at the first meeting."
Aria shook her head. "I think you're exaggerating the fact that-"
"That you nearly assaulted Doroga, an ally who was there to help us and who had offered us no harm?" Isana interrupted gently. "I was there, Aria. I felt it with you. It was not at all in character for you."
The High Lady pressed her lips together, frowning. "The Icemen hadn't yet arrived."
"Yes, they had," Araris put in gently. "We just didn't know it yet."
Aria lifted one hand in a gesture of concession. "Then why doesn't it happen constantly? Why only when the Icemen are near?"
Isana shook her head. "I don't know. Perhaps there's some kind of resonance with their own emotions. They seem to be able to project them to one another in some fashion. Perhaps we're experiencing some of their reaction to us."
"So now you're saying that they're firecrafters as well?" Aria asked-but her eyes were thoughtful.
"All I'm saying is that I think we'd be wise not to assume that we know everything," Isana said evenly.
Aria shook her head and glanced at Araris. "What do you think?"
Araris shrugged. "From a strictly logical standpoint, it's possible. The Icemen follow the heaviest storms down from the north, so it's always coldest when they meet legionares. It stands to reason that nearly everyone would be using the warmth crafting."
"And no one was looking for that kind of influence," Isana said. "Why would they think intense anger at one of Alera's enemies was strange?"
Aria shook her head. "Centuries of conflict over some sort of hypothetical furycrafting side effect?"
"Only needs to happen for a few minutes at the wrong time," Doroga interjected from several yards away.
Everyone turned to regard the barbarian, who stood beside his huge gargant, leaning his shoulders against Walker's tree trunk of a leg.
"First impressions are important," Doroga continued. "Icemen don't look like you. That makes you people nervous."
Araris grunted. "A bad first meeting. Tempers flare. There's a fight. Then more encounters and more fights."
"Happens long enough, you call that a war," Doroga said, nodding.
Lady Placida was silent for a moment. Then she said, "It can't possibly be that simple."
"Of course not," Isana said. "But a single pebble can start a rockslide."
"Three hundred years," Doroga said, idly kicking at the snow. "Not over territory. Not over hunting grounds. No one gains anything. You're just killing each other."
Aria considered that for a moment and shrugged. "It does seem a bit irrational, I suppose. But after so much killing, so much death... it takes on a momentum of its own."
The Marat grunted. "Thought I heard someone say something about a rockslide less than a minute ago. But maybe I imagined that."
Aria arched an imperiously exasperated eyebrow at the barbarian.
Doroga smiled.
Aria sighed and shook her head, folding her arms a little closer to her chest. "You don't think much of us, do you, Doroga?"
The barbarian shrugged his heavy shoulders. "I like the ones I talk to. But taken as a whole, you can be pretty stupid."
Aria smiled faintly at the barbarian. "For example?"
The chieftain considered for a moment with pursed lips. "Be my guess that your folk never even considered that you might have it backward."
"Backward?" Lady Placida asked.
Doroga nodded. "Backward. Icemen don't follow the storms when they attack, Your Grace." He gave Aria a shrewd look as a particularly cold gust of wind threw up a brief, blinding curtain of snow. "The storms," he called, "follow them!"
The snow kept Isana from seeing Aria's face, but she clearly felt the startled little flicker of surprise-and concern-that suddenly permeated the woman's emotions.
The wind died away, and as suddenly as that, nine Icemen stood in a loose circle around them.
Isana felt Araris and Aria immediately touch shoulders with her and with each other, forming an outward-facing triangle. Araris exuded nothing-no tension, no discomfort, no fear: She sensed nothing but the steady confidence and detachment of a master metalcrafter withdrawn into communion with his furies, ignoring all emotion and discomfort to stand ready against a threat. That presence bolstered Isana, granted her confidence she badly needed, and she studied the newly appeared Icemen closely.
There were differences in them, Isana saw at once. Instead of bearing similar styles of weaponry and adornment, as the group with Big Shoulders had, each of the nine was perfectly distinctive.
Big Shoulders was there again, fur and leathers and a handmade but obviously functional spear in his hands. But the Iceman beside him was at least a foot taller and far thinner, with a barely perceptible orange tint to his white fur. He carried a large club made out of what looked like the leg bone of some enormous animal, though Isana had no idea what could possibly grow femurs six and a half feet long. The fur around his head was threaded with seashells, a hole bored through each of them to make them into beads.
The Iceman on the other side of Big Shoulders was shorter than Isana, and probably weighed three or four of her. He was clad in a mantle and breastplate of what looked like sharkskin, and carried in one hand a broad-headed, barbed harpoon carved from some kind of bone, and wore over his shoulder a quiver of what looked like smaller versions of the weapon.
Walker let out a low, trumpeting huff that was equally a greeting and a warning, and Doroga nodded to Big Shoulders. "Morning."
"Friend Doroga," Big Shoulders said. He gestured to the orange-tinted Iceman beside him, and said, "Sunset." He made a similar gesture to the harpoon-bearing Iceman on his other side, and said, "Red Water."
Doroga nodded to each of them, then said, to Isana, "Sunset is the eldest of the peace-chiefs. Red Water is the eldest war-chief."
Isana frowned. "They have different leaders, then?"
"Divide areas of authority between tasks of peace and tasks of war," Doroga corrected her.
The presence of both the head peace leader and senior war leader was a statement, then, Isana realized. The Icemen were equally disposed toward either outcome. It might mean that they did not want her to sense that they would be reluctant to fight-or they might genuinely want to sabotage any possible talk of truce in favor of ongoing hostilities. Then again, perhaps they were simply being sincere.
Isana let out a slow breath, and lowered the defenses with which she habitually shielded herself from the overwhelming emotions of others. She wanted every scrap of insight she could get about the Icemen.
Lady Aria's faint, tightly controlled anxiety became a painful rasp against Amara's senses, as did Doroga's low-key, abiding worry for his daughter. Behind her, very faintly, she could literally sense the presence of Alerans on the Shieldwall, cloaked in their gentle firecraftings against the cold. The wall hummed with a sensation of constant, quiet, long-term emotion that might or might not have stopped short of the line between anger and hatred.
"The young one tells us you are here to seek peace," said Sunset quietly, in accented but intelligible Aleran.
Isana arched an eyebrow and nodded to him. "We are."
Though none of them moved or reacted, Isana felt a ripple of suspicion and uneasiness flicker around the circle of Icemen.
Isana drew in a quick breath, touched Araris's wrist to tell him to stay where he was, and stepped forward, focusing on making her emotions as plain and obvious as they could be. She stepped forward toward Sunset and offered her hand.
There was a flash of suspicious fury, and Red Waters was abruptly between them, the wickedly sharp tip of his harpoon dimpling the skin of Isana's cheek.
Steel hissed as two swords leapt clear of their sheaths, and there was an abrupt surge of light and hot air at Isana's back.
"Aria, no!" Isana snapped in a tone of sudden, iron authority. "You will not do this." She turned-a calm, deliberate motion that nonetheless dragged the tip of Red Waters's harpoon against her cheek in a tingling line.
Aria and Araris stood side by side, weapons in their hands. Aria's left wrist was uplifted, and a small hunting falcon made of pure, white-hot fire perched there, wings already spread, ready to be launched skyward at a flick of her hand.
"High. Lady. Placida." Isana spoke into the silence, putting a ringing emphasis onto each word, her voice rolling across the frozen landscape and rebounding from the distant Shieldwall. "You will put your weapon on the ground and dismiss your fury at once."
Aria tilted her head at a dangerous angle, her eyes focused on one of the largest of the chieftains assembled there. "Isana-"
Isana took two strides to Aria and slapped her smartly across one cheek.
Lady Placida all but convulsed in surprise, overbalanced, and fell on her rump in the snow.
"Look at me," Isana said in a hard, calm voice.
Aria was already staring at her with rather wide eyes. It occurred to Isana that it was entirely possible that no one had spoken in such a tone to the High Lady since before her adolescence.
"We are here on a mission of peace, High Lady. You will immediately desist from your efforts to turn my introduction to the principals of a foreign nation into a bloodbath." She lifted her chin, and said, "Dismiss. Your. Fury."
The little fire falcon vanished in a hiccup of smoke.
"Thank you," Isana said. "Now put your sword on the ground."
Aria gave the assembled chiefs a quick glance, then flushed and did so. "Of course, my Lady."
"Thank you. Araris?"
Isana turned to find that Araris, his sword already thrust point first into the snow, was standing with a folded handkerchief at the ready. He calmly pressed it to her cheek as he said, "You're bleeding."
The tingling on Isana's cheek turned to pain as the cloth touched it. She winced. She'd had no idea that the weapon had been that sharp. "Ah," she said, taking the cloth and holding it against the cut. "Thank you."
Araris nodded once and turned to offer his hand to Lady Placida, helping her up from the snow.
Isana turned back to the Icemen and walked over to face Sunset again. She calmly lowered the bloodied cloth, and felt a slow warmth spread down her cheek. She very deliberately allowed her discomfort and annoyance to show on her face and in her bearing and stared at Sunset.
The older chieftain turned his gaze on Red Waters, and Isana felt a sudden, uncomfortably sharp spike of disapproval. Red Waters evidently felt it even more intensely than Isana had. He swayed slightly under the force of it and took a step back to stand beside Big Shoulders again, radiating a mild sense of chagrin. Amusement flowed around the circle of Icemen.
The Icemen, Isana realized, had just had their own version of the scene that had played out between her and Aria. Sunset had slapped Red Waters down-and the entire time, they never spoke. They hardly moved.
On an impulse, Isana opened her cloak and spread her hands, demonstrating that she was obviously carrying no weapons.
Sunset studied her for a moment, then nodded and passed his bone club over to Big Shoulders. Then he offered her his enormous, shaggy, claw-tipped hand.
Isana laid her own into it without hesitation, exactly as she would to convey her sincerity to another watercrafter. Whatever empathic sense the Icemen used, however it was done, it was obviously just as formidable as her own abilities, even though different. She wasn't afraid that Sunset would harm her. The level of emotional control he had exhibited in conveying his displeasure to Red Waters was humbling.
His enormous hand enfolded hers gently, the claws never touching her skin. The Iceman watched her, expressionlessly.
"I have come here to seek peace between our peoples," Isana said, allowing her feelings to flow down her hand and into Sunset's grasp. She felt a brief urge to giggle. It was entirely possible that the Aleran arrogance that Doroga had warned her about was in play again. What made her suppose that she would be able to hide her emotions from the Iceman?
Sunset took a deep breath and bowed his head. A brief tide of emotion washed over Isana, every bit of it as real to her as if it was her own; grief, mainly, a sense of loss and regret that had grown to maturity over slow years. But mixed with it was fierce exaltation, weary relief-and tiny, painfully intense sparkles of hope.
"At last," Sunset said aloud. "Your people send a peace-chief."
Isana felt tears washing down her face, stinging painfully as they entered the cut on her cheek. She nodded mutely.
"This will not be easy," Sunset told her. "Too much..." A surge of anger hit her, Sunset's own, though it was under his control. The gentle grasp of his hand never wavered. "Too much..." He flashed another emotion at her: suspicion, and more than that-the expectation of betrayal.
"Yes," Isana said quietly. "But it is necessary."
"Because of the enemy attacking you," Sunset said calmly. "We know."
Isana stared at him for a moment. "You... you do?"
He nodded. "For three years, we have pressed you here, hoping that the enemy would weaken your people in the south. Force you to send your Wall-guardians there to defend your food lands and that your folk would follow and leave us in peace."
And suddenly, Isana understood the attacks of the Icemen of recent years-why the winter storms and howling hordes had always arrived at precisely the correct time to pin the Legions of the north in place. Many folk, she knew, had feared collusion between the Icemen and the Canim-but it had been neither a mindless assault nor a sinister plot. It had been part of a considered campaign.
"That enemy has changed," Isana said. "You do not know this."
"One enemy or another." Sunset shrugged. "It is of little matter to us."
Doroga spoke for the first time. "It should be. Listen to her."
"The foe that comes against us now is not a nation. It does not seek land or control. It is here only to destroy utterly anything that is not itself. It has attacked us without warning, hesitation, or mercy. It will not speak with us of peace. It slaughters innocents and warriors alike-and it will do so to any other than itself whom it meets."
Sunset regarded her for a moment. Then he said, "Until today, I would have said that your people are little different. Many still would."
"This enemy is called the Vord. And when it finishes us, it will come here for you and your people."
Sunset looked at Doroga.
The Marat nodded. "And for mine. The Alerans caused your tribes to set aside your differences. They were a greater enemy. Now comes another enemy-one who will destroy us all if we do not lay our differences aside." Doroga leaned on his cudgel and spoke intently. "You must permit them to withdraw in peace. To let the Wall-guardians travel south and battle our mutual foe. And to leave their people here in peace."
Sunset stared at Doroga for a time. "What have your folk decided?"
"To let the Alerans fight," Doroga said. "My people cannot defeat the Vord-not now. They are too many, too strong. You know that my people have no love for the Alerans. But we will not attack them while the Vord are abroad."
Red Waters spat, "So we should let their warriors leave, but not drive their peoples from these lands? So that when the battle is done, their warriors return and take up their arms again?"
Sunset sighed. He looked from Red Waters to Isana. "He has a point."
Isana frowned and looked at Red Waters, searching for the right words.
Araris stepped up beside her and bowed slightly to Sunset, then to Red Waters. "My people have a saying," he said. "Better the enemy you know than the enemy you don't."
Red Waters stared hard at Araris for a moment. Then Big Shoulders let out a bark of laughter that was startling in how human it sounded. It spread around the circle of Icemen until even Red Waters shook his head, his rigid demeanor relaxing somewhat.
"Our warriors have that saying as well," Red Waters admitted. He nodded at the blood, now freezing into scarlet crystals, on the tip of his harpoon. "But what peace-chiefs say is not always what war-chiefs do. Let us see your warriors depart. Then we will speak again of peace."
"Antillus and Phrygia will never agree to that," Lady Placida murmured. "Never."
"You come to us asking us for peace," Red Waters said. "But you offer us nothing."
Isana met Red Waters's eyes. "It seems to me that peace is not a gift one can give away. It can only be exchanged in kind."
A sharp pulse of approval came from Sunset.
Red Waters answered him with a surge of sadness and caution.
Sunset sighed and nodded. He turned back to Isana, and murmured, "As I said. It will not be easy."
"Too much anger," Isana said. "Too much blood."
"On both sides," Sunset agreed.
He was right, Isana thought. Certainly, Lord Antillus had been less than willing to accept the possibility of peace. The most he'd been willing to believe possible was that he could shake the Icemen up, disrupt them enough to send a single Legion south-
The steady, buzzing hostility of the Shieldwall hummed against Isana's senses.
She had a sudden, horrible suspicion and every Iceman in the circle around her suddenly became more alert.
"Lady Placida," she said quietly. "Can you tell me if there are any Knights Aeris aloft?"
Aria arched a pale copper eyebrow. Then she nodded, closed her eyes, and lifted her face to the snowy skies. A moment later, she drew in a sharp breath. "Furies. More than a hundred. Every Knight Aeris under Antillus's command. But why..." She opened her eyes wide, suddenly, staring around at the assembled chieftains of the Icemen.
"Sunset," Isana said, "you must leave. You and your people are in danger."
"Why?"
"Because what peace-chiefs say is not always what war-chiefs do."
Thunder rumbled suddenly overhead.
Red Waters snarled and made a swift, sharp gesture. The chieftains gathered around him and Sunset. Big Shoulders wordlessly handed Sunset's bone club back to him. Sunset glanced at Isana and sent out a surge of regret. Then he grasped the weapon in his hands and turned to begin shambling away through the snow, the other chieftains gathering around him as the wind began to rise again.
"Too late," Aria hissed.
Thunder rolled louder and the clouds whirled in a wide circle and parted, revealing a wheel of Knights Aeris aloft, tiny black shapes against the grey clouds with a circle of blue sky far above. Lightning danced from cloud to cloud and gathered into a wide circle, dancing between the Knights like the spokes of an enormous wagon wheel. Isana could feel the power gathering as the lightning prepared to fall on the retreating chieftains.
Aria cursed under her breath and threw herself aloft, wind rising in a roar to lift her into the skies-but even as she did, lightning burned a searing streak across Isana's vision and struck the ground several yards behind the Iceman chieftains. The wheel of Knights above shifted, and the lightning burned its way toward the Icemen, digging an enormous furrow in the earth as it went.
Isana watched in horror, helpless and furious, searching desperately in her thoughts for some solution. But there was nothing there for the Icemen. Words and good intentions meant less than nothing in this harsh land of stone walls and steel men, covered in ice and...
Snow.
Isana tore off her glove and thrust her hand into the snow, calling upon Rill as she did. The snow was, after all, water. And she had learned, during the desperate battle at sea the previous year, that she was capable of far more than she had ever believed. There had never been, upon her steadholt, a cause to push her abilities to their limits, except in healing-and she had never failed. When she had needed a flood to save Tavi's life, she had managed one, though at the time she had believed it merely the result of her familiarity with the local furies.
But in the ocean, she had learned differently. The limits she had known before had never been imposed upon her by Alera. They had been assumptions within her own mind. Everyone knew that holders were never truly powerful, even in the wilds of a place like Calderon, and she had let that unconscious assumption shape her self-perception. There, immersed in the limitless immensity of the sea, she had found that she was capable of far more than she'd ever believed.
Snow was water. Why not command it as she would any other wave?
She was the First Lady of Alera, by the Great Furies, and she would not allow this to happen.
Isana cried out, and the vast snowfield around the Icemen surged like a living sea, responding to her determination and will. She lifted her arm, feeling a phantom strain around her shoulders as the snow surged around the Icemen and piled up into a vast mound behind them. The lightning surged into that sea of snow, throwing out enormous billows of steam, its heat drowning before it could do harm.
Isana felt it when the sky above them suddenly changed, lightning flowing in from everywhere, surging from over the horizon in every direction to center itself in the whirling eye of the vortex above, its color shifting, changing from blue-white to bright gold-green. The burning shaft thickened and intensified, and Isana felt the surge in power behind it as some other enormous will added its power to the strike.
"Antillus," she heard herself gasp.
The weight settling on her pressed on her chest and drove her to one knee-but she did not yield. She cried out again, lifting her hand, and the snow and steam and ice that continued to shield the retreating Icemen washed and flowed into shape to mirror her fingers, her hand lifted in a gesture of defiant denial. The endless cold of the north clashed with the fire of the southern skies, and steam began to spread from the clash, blanketing the countryside.
"Isana!" she heard Araris call. "Isana!"
He shook her shoulders, and she looked around dazedly at him. She wasn't sure how long she had upheld the defense against Antillus Raucus's strike, but she couldn't see the Knights Aeris. Araris's voice sounded oddly distant.
"Isana!" Araris called. "It's all right. The Icemen are gone! They're safe!"
She lowered her hand, and heard an enormous whuffing rumble behind her. She turned to see fine powdery snow rising in a huge cloud, through the steam, as though settling after a sudden avalanche.
Doroga regarded the steam and settling snow for a long and silent moment. Then he looked at Isana appraisingly.
"I ever invade Calderon again," he said, "it will be in the summer."
Isana stared wearily at him, and said, "I'd see to it that you never got those sweetbread cakes you like. Ever again."
Doroga gave her a wounded look, sniffed, and said to Walker, "Alerans don't ever fight fair."
"Help me up," Isana said to Araris. "He'll be coming."
Araris did so at once. "Who?"
"Just stay by me," she said. She caught his eyes. "And trust me."
Araris lifted his eyebrows as he helped her up. Then instead of answering, he leaned forward and kissed her. After a moment, he drew back from her, and said, "With my life. Always."
She found his hand with hers and squeezed it very hard.
Seconds later, wind roared, and two forms plummeted through the mist and powder. Antillus Raucus landed hard, sending up a cloud of powdery snow. Lady Placida came down beside him, and immediately put one hand on his arm in a gesture of restraint.
"Raucus," Aria said. "Crows take it, Raucus, wait!"
The heavily armored High Lord shook off her arm and stalked straight toward Isana. "You little idiot!" he snarled. "That was our chance to throw them back, force them to reorganize enough to send some relief to the south! What do you think you were doing, you high-handed-"
When he reached her, Isana drew back and smacked him coldly across the face. Hard.
Raucus's head rocked to one side, and when he looked back at her, his lower lip had been cut against one of his teeth and was bleeding slightly. The surprise in his eyes began to be replaced by more anger.
"Antillus Raucus," Isana said, in the instant of unbalance. "I accuse you of cowardice and treachery against the authority of the First Lord and the honor of the Realm. And here, in front of these witnesses, I formally challenge you to the juris macto." She drew in a deep breath. "And may the crows feast on the unjust."
