Chapter 49

The Senator's thugs, Isana thought, lacked refinement. She had expected to be bound, of course, but they could at least have found a clean cloth with which to hood her.

She blinked and considered that thought for a moment. It sounded, to Isana, remarkably like what someone like Lady Aquitaine would have been thinking, in her position. Until the battle of Second Calderon, Isana's largest practical worry had been the organization of the kitchen at her brother's stead-holt. Had she really become so jaded to the dangers of Aleran politics since then that she felt herself qualified to criticize the nuances of her own abduction?

She couldn't help it. She found herself shaking with quiet laughter.

Araris stirred, and she felt the motion as they sat, backs together, leaning gently against one another. "What is it?" he murmured.

"I'm just appreciating the irony of human nature," Isana said, voice pitched very low.

She could hear the smile in his voice. "Any part in particular?"

"Our ability to face enormous adversity, yet retain the capacity to complain about the little things."

"Ah," Araris said. "I wondered if they made these hoods out of old horse blankets as well."

Isana laughed again, mostly a shaking of her shoulders that made little sound, and Araris joined her.

"The sounds of fighting have died down," Isana noted a moment later.

"Yes," Araris said.

"Have the Legions won?"

"They haven't lost yet," Araris replied. "Those trumpet calls were a general retreat."

"They were pushed back from whatever they were attacking, then," Isana said.

"Whatever they were holding," Araris corrected. "A failed assault sounds different. And there are too many wounded."

Isana had been trying hard not to think about the moans and screams of wounded men, coming from not far away. "It's different, then?"

"In an assault," Araris said, "you're fighting on the enemy's ground. Pushing forward. When men fall, it's harder to get them to the rear. And once the retreat is on, a lot more men fall. More of them get left behind, taken prisoner or killed. A defense is different. It's your ground. You've got men standing by to carry the wounded back to your healers and fresh men to step into the places of the fallen, covering their retreat. You wind up with a lot more wounded."

Isana shuddered. "That's horrible."

"It's a horrible situation," Araris acknowledged quietly.

"Rather like ours," Isana said.

He was silent.

"That bad?" Isana asked, nudging her back gently against his.

"You said the right thing to Navaris," he said. "Making her question whether or not she should make the decision for Arnos. It bought us a little time. But she brought us into the Legion's camp in a covered wagon, and in hoods. Then they dumped us directly into this tent, which is guarded. And I'm fairly certain that we're among the men of the First Guard. Nalus is Captain of the Second Senatorial, and he'd bloody well want to know all about any hooded prisoners in his own camp."

"No one knows who we are," Isana said quietly. "No one knows we're here."

"Precisely," Araris said.

"Do you think he'll kill us?"

Araris considered that for a moment. Then he said, without malice, "He'd better."

"What?"

"You're a Citizen of the Realm, Isana. His hirelings assaulted and kidnapped you on his orders. Ehren's a bloody Cursor of the Crown. If he survived, he's going to be able to make a terrible stink, legally speaking. Arnos's best chance to survive it-"

"-will be to make sure there are no witnesses to corroborate Ehren's version of things."

"Probably/' Araris said. "Besides, if he doesn't kill us, I'll take him."

The matter-of-fact tone to his quiet voice was chilling. Isana found herself leaning slightly harder against him. "What do we do?" she asked. "Escape?"

"Realistically speaking, we've no chance, even if we get loose. Well just provide them a wonderful excuse to kill us and make apologies later. Heat of battle, confusion, such a tragedy."

"What, then?"

"If you get the chance, keep Arnos talking for as long as you can," Araris said. "And we wait."

"Wait?"

"He isn't going to leave us here," Araris said.

Isana had no doubt to whom the singulare referred. "We are secret prisoners in the camp of what might as well be an enemy Legion, which is itself surrounded by an army of Canim. He is alone. He might not even know where we are. I believe he'll try, of course, but..."

At that, Araris burst into a low, rich laugh, loud enough to be heard outside the tent. It was, Isana realized, the first time she'd heard him make such a sound, and her own heart reacted with a senselessly juvenile little burst of happiness to hear it.

"Quiet in there!" barked a man's voice, one of the Senator's thugs, or some random legionare pressed into duty as a sentry.

Araris swallowed his laughter and leaned his head back. Isana felt his head touch hers and leaned into the contact, closing her eyes.

"I've been with him for two years," Araris whispered. "You know his heart, Isana. You helped shape it. You've seen him while we traveled-but you don't see what he's become, and you don't know where it came from the way I do."

"Septimus," Isana whispered.

"You don't know how many times he got us out of trouble like this." Araris paused for a moment. "Well. Perhaps not quite this much all at once. But then, it was never a matter of scale."

"You believe in him," Isana breathed.

"Great furies help me," Araris said. "It's almost insane. But yes." He was quiet for a moment more. Then he said, "I love you very much, you know."

She nodded, gently, so as not to bump their skulls together. "I do know. I love you, too."

"I've been thinking," he said. He hesitated. "I mean. Well, it isn't like it's an entirely new thought, but..."

The awkward little flutter she felt in his confidence was almost painfully endearing. "Yes?"

"If it's possible," Araris said. "I mean... if we both live through this. And if... if things work out to where... I know it probably won't ever be a real possibility, but..."

Isana shivered. "Yes?"

"If. One day. If everything... Would you..." He took a deep breath. "Would you marry me?"

She'd known the direction of his thoughts, from the wildly unsettled sense of his emotions, but she hadn't anticipated her reaction to them.

She laughed. Again. She laughed herself breathless, laboring to keep it quiet.

"Here?" she demanded finally, half-smothered in laughter. "You ask me here? Now? Like this?"

His back had gone completely stiff. "Well," he managed to say after a moment. "Yes. It's..." His voice sobered abruptly. "It's all I have."

She fumbled with her bound, half-numb fingers until she found his. They managed to intertwine some of them, more or less at random.

"It's enough," Isana said quietly.

Araris was carefully still for a moment. "Is... Then... Yes?"

Isana sighed and squeezed his fingers as hard as she could. "Yes."

He suddenly sagged. "Oh," he breathed. "Oh. Oh, good." He shook his head, stroking one of her fingers with one of his. "For a moment there, I was worried."

The absurdity of that statement, all things considered, hit them both at the same time.

They were still laughing together when the tent flap rustled, and Phrygiar Navaris ripped off their hoods, a naked sword in her hand.

Chapter 50

"This one," Tavi said quietly, picking up one of the long blades Durias had brought out for his inspection. He snapped it up to a guard position, whirled it about in a loose circling motion of his wrist, and nodded. He could feel it in the steel, the way it settled in his hand, the subtle vibration of the blade as it ceased motion. The weapon was an old one but of excellent manufacture, its blade notched with battle scars in the torchlight, but still strong, flexible, and true. "What about Ehren?"

'Til take you to him," Durias said. "This way, please, Captain."

Tavi followed the centurion through the darkened Canim camp and was surprised at how much similarity it bore to an Aleran battle camp-though admittedly, the various stations were spread out over a considerably wider area. Perhaps the Canim measured their camp in strides, the way legionares did.

The healer's shelters were crowded, but the sounds coming from them were nothing like those of an Aleran healing tent. Instead of the cries and moans of the wounded, there was nothing but a daunting chorus of snarling and growling in every pitch one could imagine, and it made Tavi glad to be unable to see inside.

Most of the wounded Canim who emerged from the tents were walking under their own power. Those who weren't were almost invariably missing limbs. Somewhere in the background, the mourning howls of individual Canim for their fallen brethren rose into the night sky, haunting and savage and beautiful.

"A year ago," Durias said quietly, "I thought I'd get used to that. Still makes the hairs on my neck stand up."

"We're very different peoples," Tavi said quietly.

Durias turned around and stared at Tavi, his expression surprised. "Huh."

"What's that, centurion?"

"Not sure which surprises me more," he said. "To hear a Legion captain call them 'people' instead of 'animals' or to lump himself into a group with a bunch of slaves who have taken up arms."

"You walk, talk, breathe, eat, sleep. Same as me."

Durias snorted. "Since when has that been reason to regard someone else as an equal?"

Tavi showed Durias his teeth, more in the Canim gesture than the Aleran. "You wear armor, carry a sword-and I'm in your camp."

"Hah," Durias snorted. He shook his head once. "But so what if you're a good talker? Talking is easy."

Tavi found himself smiling more naturally as they walked. "I didn't talk you unconscious last spring, centurion."

Durias snorted and rubbed at his jaw. "No. No you didn't."

"You've been with Nasaug for almost two years, I take it."

Durias nodded. "I was... He said he got the idea for Free Alera from me."

Tavi lifted his eyebrows. Then he said, "You're the First Spear of your Legion."

"Isn't hard to be First Spear, Captain. You just serve longer than the others. I was the first recruit."

"Bet that's a good story."

Durias shrugged his oversized shoulders.

"But you aren't captain," Tavi noted.

Durias's brief grin showed, and he gestured at his jaw. "Don't have the fist-fighting experience for it, I suppose."

Tavi snorted.

Durias took them past the Canim hospital area and nodded at a patched old Aleran Legion pavilion, converted into a tent with the addition of what looked like reused canvas sails. "Your man's in there."

Tavi stepped forward and noticed Durias standing precisely in the "shadow" of his body, exactly where it would be hardest for Tavi to turn and strike him with the sword he carried. He checked over one shoulder and saw Durias's hand on his gladius. He arched an eyebrow at the blocky young man. "What are you doing, centurion?"

"Preventing misunderstandings," Durias said. "Orders, Captain."

Tavi turned fully toward him, then wordlessly offered his sword, hilt first.

Durias shook his head. "That means more here than it does in your Alera, Captain. Keep yours. Just bear in mind that I have one, too."

Tavi studied the young man for a moment, and realized that he was standing with his back straight, feet spread and ready, hand on his sword, but his weight back on his heels. It was an arrogant stance, by Aleran standards, one that almost begged for a fight-but if he'd been a Cane, Tavi would have recognized it immediately as a stance of nonaggression tempered with caution, as one of respect.

"I'll do that," Tavi said. Then he turned and entered the tent, to find Ehren lying in a tub, his throat bloodied-and an enemy knelt beside him with a scarlet blade in her hand.

Tavi's hand went to his sword instantly-but he restrained himself from drawing steel, and an instant later felt the subtle change in the air behind him as Durias's sword crept half an inch from its sheath.

Antillus Dorotea, High Lady Antillus, the sole surviving sibling of the High Lord Kalarus, and the woman who betrayed the First Aleran to the Canim, glanced up at Tavi as he entered the tent.

Tavi felt her emotions at once-first a flare of anger, swift and hot, then a sudden surge of fear that wiped the anger away. She closed her eyes for a moment, lips pressing together, and he felt the woman will both anger and fear away, replacing them with an intent focus and concentration. She turned her attention back to Ehren, who lay naked in a healing tub, his eyes closed and barely conscious.

She set the knife aside, along with the quill she'd been forced to cut free from the swollen flesh around Varg's original incision. Then Lady Antillus gently pressed Ehren lower in the tub, until his throat was covered by the water, and bowed her head.

A sense of... not contentment, precisely, or well-being, but something of both, something too rich and deep to be called merely satisfaction, suddenly flowed from her, as the torn flesh knitted closed, the mottled bruising around Ehren's throat lightened, and Tavi's friend drew in a sudden, deep, wheezing breath.

Tavi stared at the High Lady, frowning, taking in details of her appearance. Lady Antillus had been a beautiful woman, in an aggressive, knife-edged way. She looked young, of course, as all the watercrafters tended to do. She'd dressed in silk in the blues of her husband's House, and her dark hair had been long and lovely.

Now she wore a gown of grey homespun cloth, very simple, plain, and sturdily made. Her hair had been cut into a much shorter, more practical length, and was bound back with a leather cord. She wore a healer's apron, smeared with both the scarlet of Aleran blood and the much darker hue of the Canim. She wore no cosmetics-which Tavi had formerly never seen her without-and no jewelry, either.

Except for the gleaming steel of a discipline collar around her throat.

"This will only take me a moment more, First Spear, Captain Scipio," she said, her voice still as quiet and rich as Tavi remembered. "I apologize that it wasn't done sooner, but my services were needed for the most badly wounded."

Tavi stared at her for a moment, at a loss for words. "H-high Lady Antillus. Good evening."

She glanced up with a small smile filled with the awareness of irony. "Oh please, Scipio. High Lady Antillus is a traitor in line for a cell in the Grey Tower, a trial, and an execution. She would most certainly not be aiding you or-unless I miss my guess, from the number of knives he had hidden on him-a Cursor of the Crown."

Tavi frowned at her, tilting his head. "No. I suppose not."

"Call me Dorotea," she said. Tavi could sense gentle regret in her voice, and more of the same sense of deep fulfillment. "I'm a healer. It's what I do now. If you will excuse me." She bent her head back to her healing and closed her eyes.

Tavi shook his head and glanced at Durias.

"Sari managed to capture her two years ago," Durias said, his voice pitched to a respectful quiet. "He put the discipline collar on her himself, and ordered her to do no harm, to obey those who commanded her and heal those who had need."

Tavi drew in a sudden breath, understanding. "Only Sari could have taken the collar off."

"And he died," Durias said quietly. There was real and very deep pain and empathy in the young centurion's eyes as he stared at the former High Lady. "She's stuck with it. If it's removed, she dies."

Tavi exhaled slowly, shaking his head.

"You can't have her," Durias said. "I'm to tell you that."

"There's something a tad hypocritical in your people refusing to free a collared slave, Durias. Is this their idea of justice?"

Durias grimaced. "It isn't that, great furies know. I know what she's going through. So do a lot of other folk around here. But she's too valuable to us-and she deserves to be among folk who know what it's like to live under a discipline collar. Who won't abuse her." He shook his head. "Though there was plenty of that, the first several weeks, before order was established."

Tavi felt sickened, just thinking of it. Granted, High Lady Antillus had been no one's idea of a spirit of mercy and goodness, but all the same, no one deserved the kind of retribution that had undoubtedly been visited on her by newly freed, leaderless slaves. "It isn't just what she's done, or the deaths she's responsible for. It's her son."

A sharp spike of pain jumped across the room to Tavi from Dorotea, a yearning, a sadness, a regret, and a fierce, fierce love. She lifted her eyes to his. "Crassus?" she asked. "Is he... is he well?"

"The last I knew," Tavi said. "He knows what you did. He won't talk about it to me, but I believe he worries for you. He wonders what has become of you."

Ehren's color had much improved, and his chest was rising and falling normally, now. Dorotea lifted her fingers to her collar in a fluttering motion, then lowered them again. "I..." She closed her eyes. "I think it's best if... if Lady Antillus died in the fighting." She opened them again and sought Tavi's eyes. "She did, you know."

"I..." Tavi shook his head. "I don't have time for this."

Dorotea flushed and looked down, bowing her head in a gesture of acceptance. "Where is he?"

"I left him in command of the First Aleran."

Her face went pale, and Tavi had to draw upon the steel in the blade beside him to protect himself from the sudden surge of horror as she turned her head toward the besieged ruins.

"As I said, Dorotea," Tavi said quietly. "I have no time. I need Sir Ehren."

"Y-yes," she said. "Of course." She laid her hand on Ehren's head, bowed her own for a moment, and murmured, quietly, "Wake."

Ehren's eyes blinked open without ceremony. "Eh? Hmmm?" They widened. "Ah!" he said. He took a deep breath, and then several more. "Oh, my word, that's more like it. Thank the great furies tha-"

He turned to thank the healer, saw High Lady Antillus, and let out a squeak. His hands flailed about his naked person, presumably looking for a knife, splashing bloodied water everywhere.

"Ehren," Tavi said. "Ehren!"

The young man went still. He tore his eyes from Lady Antillus to Durias, and then to Tavi. They got a bit wider at each stopping point. "Ah. Well. Some things have happened while I was lying down, I see."

"Yes," Tavi said. "And you've got that look on your face again."

"I can't help it," Ehren said. "You're about to walk to breakfast, aren't you, regardless of who is in the way?"

"Yes," Tavi said.

Ehren sighed. "Let's hear it."

Tavi told him the plan.

"That's insane," Ehren said.

"It could work."

"You aren't going to have anyone come along to bail you out this time," Ehren pointed out.

Tavi grinned. "Are you with me?"

"The plan is insane," Ehren said. "You are insane." He looked around the inside of the tent. "I'll need some pants."