She sighed. "Honestly. It isn't as though I mind your business, but Gracchus seems to be taking your chastisement a bit far."
"I'll manage," he said. "As long as I can get a bath at the end of the day."
"Then I'll not keep you from it," she said, and smiled.
Tavi bowed his head to her and left the tent. He crossed the little green courtyard, where the blind woman played her reed pipe. The tent where wine and girls were served erupted into a louder round of roars and shouts than were normal this early in the evening, drowning out the reed pipe for a time. Bors turned his head toward the sound, the motion reminding Tavi of a dog taking note of activity in its territory.
Tavi walked to another tent, this one bright blue and green. Inside, several alcoves had been partitioned with heavy drapes, each one containing a large, round wooden tub large enough to fit two or three people comfortably. Loud splashing and a woman's giggles came from one of the curtained chambers. In another, a man slurred out a quiet song in a drunken voice. Zara appeared from behind another curtain and nodded to Tavi. Then she emerged, holding a gunny-sack, and wrinkled her nose at the smell as he entered.
Tavi slipped into the alcove and drew the curtain shut. He removed his filthy clothing and passed it out through the curtain to the waiting girl. She took it from him with brisk motions, tucked it into the gunnysack, and carried it out at arm's length, to have it laundered, swiftly dried, and brought back to him.
A large bucket of lukewarm water sat beside the tub, a washcloth upon it. Tavi used it to wipe the worst of the grime from his body before testing the steaming water. He added a bit more hot water from a large container on a swinging arm next to the tub, then sank into it with a sigh. Warmth enfolded him, and he luxuriated in it for a time. The work Gracchus had assigned him was as strenuous and tiring as it was distasteful, and he looked forward to soaking tired muscles in hot water at the end of each day.
He thought about his family for a moment and felt bad to have missed their reunion in Ceres. He had to admit, though, that it would have been awkward speaking to his aunt now that she had thrown her support to Lord and Lady Aquitaine. So long as the conversation didn't come anywhere near politics, things might have been all right-but Tavi's training as a Cursor meant that he was involved with politics nearly every waking moment, in one fashion or another.
He'd missed his uncle, too. Bernard had always shown Tavi the consideration and respect that he'd never realized were all too uncommon. Tavi felt proud that his uncle had proven himself a hero of the Realm, and on more than one occasion, and he had been looking forward to Bernard's reaction upon seeing Tavi after his years of education and training. Bernard had worked hard to make sure Tavi had the raw materials to build an honorable life for himself. Tavi wanted Bernard to see with his own eyes what his nephew had made with them.
And Kitai...
Tavi frowned. And Kitai. She would have been there. If Tavi had not felt the little lonely pangs that had plagued him since leaving her in Alera Imperia, it was not because he no longer desired her company. She was often in his thoughts, especially her laughter and her pointed wit, and if he closed his eyes he could picture her face-exotic and arrogantly lovely with her canted Marat eyes, white silken hair, her long, strong limbs, tight with shapely muscle, skin softer than...
In the other alcove, the woman's giggles segued into quite different high-pitched sounds, and Tavi's body reacted to the thoughts of Kitai and the sounds of the nearby doxy with an almost-violent enthusiasm. He ground his teeth, suddenly sorely tempted to follow Max's advice. But no. He needed all of his focus and attention to be on his duty, to be alert for even the smallest scrap of intelligence he could report back to the First Lord. The last thing he wanted to do with his time was to undermine his own effectiveness with foolish-if undeniably alluring-distractions.
Besides. He didn't want one of Cymnea's girls there with him. He wanted it to be Kitai.
His body made its agreement with the sentiment uncomfortably clear.
Tavi groaned and sank under the water for as long as he could hold his breath. When he surfaced, he seized the nearby bowl of soap and a clean washcloth and scrubbed his skin until he thought it might slough off, struggling to turn his thoughts to something less involving. Clearly, he missed Kitai. Clearly, he wanted to be near her as much as he ever had. But if so, then why had the odd, uncomfortable sensations of loneliness that had spurred him to speak about her ceased?
He had always felt the pangs when he thought about... her presence, he supposed. Her voice, her touch, her features all felt like something perfectly natural to his world, as much a part of it as sunshine and air. When he had been touching her, even only so much as holding hands, there had been a kind of peaceful resonance in the touch, something warm, reassuring, and deeply satisfying. It was the memories of their loss that had brought on the unpleasant sensation of loneliness. Even now, the memories should, by all rights, have brought on more of the same.
But they didn't. Why?
He had just finished rinsing himself of the soap when it hit him, all at once.
Tavi snarled a muted curse, heaved himself out of the tub. He seized a towel, quickly swiped it over his body, and snatched up a plain robe folded on a nearby chair, shoving his still-damp arms into it. He stalked out of the bathing tent into the central yard.
The wine tent was in an uproar of one kind or another, and Tavi emerged in time to see Bors lumber up to its entrance and go inside. He spotted the blind woman beside one of the tents, still playing her reed pipe, and stalked toward her.
"What are you doing?" he hissed at the woman.
The blind woman set her pipe down and her mouth quirked into a smile. "Counting the days until you realized who I was," she replied. "Though I was about to start counting the weeks. "
"Are you insane?" Tavi demanded in a harsh whisper. "If someone realizes that you are Marat-"
"-they will be considerably more observant than you, Aleran." Kitai sniffed.
"You were supposed to be in Ceres at the family reunion."
"As were you," she said.
Tavi grimaced. Now that he knew who "Gerta" truly was, the disguised elements of Kitai's appearance seemed painfully obvious. She had dyed her fine, silvery white hair to crude black and let it grow matted and tangled deliberately. The pockmarks on her face were doubtless some kind of cosmetics, and the blind woman's bandage covered her exotic, canted eyes.
"I can't believe the First Lord just let you ride away."
She smiled, and it showed very white teeth. "No one has ever told me where I may or may not go. Not my father. Not him. Not you."
"All the same. We need to get you out of here."
"No," Kitai said. "You need to learn to whom the Parcian merchant's factor reports his information."
Tavi blinked at her. "How did you..."
"If you recall," she said, smiling, "I have very good ears, Aleran. And as I sit here, I learn much. Few guard their words near a madwoman."
"You've just been sitting here?"
"At night, I can move more freely and learn more."
"Why?" Tavi asked.
She arched her brows. "I do what I have done for years now, Aleran. I Watch you and your kind. I learn of them."
Tavi let out a short, exasperated breath, but touched her shoulder. "It is good to see you."
She reached up and squeezed his hand with hers, her fingers fever-warm, and she made a small, pleased sound. "I did not enjoy your absence, chala"
There was a shriek from the far side of the Pavilion, then a mussed, besotted legionare flew out of the wine tent. Bors came out after him a second later and applied sweeping kicks from his great booted feet to wherever he could reach upon the drunk, until the man had been driven from the Pavilion.
Kitai withdrew her hand from Tavi's, and the spot felt peculiarly cool in the absence of her heated skin. "Now, Scipio Rufus. It will be strange for you to be seen conversing with a simpleton. Go away. You'll scare off the game."
"We must speak again," Tavi said. "Soon."
Kitai's lips curled up into a sensual little smirk. "There are many things we must do, soon, Aleran. Why ruin them with talk?"
Tavi flushed, though the sunset was particularly red tonight, which might have hidden it. Kitai lifted her reed flute to her lips again, hunching down once more into her role. Bors returned from evicting the rowdy drunk and settled down into his spot by the fire. Tavi shook his head and returned to the bath tent to await the return of his laundered clothing.
He closed his eyes and sat listening to Kitai's flute as he did, and found himself smiling.
Vorello's Pool was one of the most beautiful places Isana had ever visited. Centered around a crystalline pool in the base of a rocky grotto, the whole of the dining house had seemingly been built from the trees and vines planted within the grotto and growing as living partitions, bridges, and stairways. Tables were arranged upon rocky shelves around the pool at varying heights. Several tables were set upon flat stones rising from the pool itself, and employees of the hotel would ferry customers out to the tables with graceful boats propelled by furies within the pool's waters.
Furylamps cast luminous color over each table, and the colors constantly, slowly shifted and changed from hue to hue. From a distance, it looked like a cloud of fireflies hovering over the surface of the water. More lights within the pool itself shone up, also changing colors over time, casting shadows up the walls of the grotto and half-shadowing each table.
Singers, mostly young women, stood upon a number of raised rocks or sat upon the low-hanging branches of one of the trees. They sang songs of beauty and sadness in quiet, hauntingly lovely voices. Instrumental music supported the voices, drifting through the restaurant with no evident source.
One of the staff showed Isana to a table, set upon a rocky outcropping over the pool, framed by the embrace of the long, strong roots of a tree above. She had hardly settled into her seat before Bernard and Amara arrived, with Giraldi trailing in their wake.
Isana rose to meet her little brother's bearish, affectionate embrace, and knew at once that something had happened. Her entire sense of him was filled with a brimming excitement and mirth that she hadn't felt in him since... Isana drew in a sharp breath. Since he'd been married. She stared at his face for a moment, his own happiness drawing a smile onto her face, then glanced aside at Amara.
The Countess looked as she always did-distant, golden, and difficult to read. She had the warm, honey brown skin characteristic of the folk of sunny Parcia in the south, and her straight, fine hair was almost the precise same shade, giving her, in stillness, the appearance of a statue, some work dedicated to a huntress figure, lean and intense and dangerous. Isana had come to know that it was only part of the Countess's personality. Her beauty could best be seen in motion, as she walked or flew.
Isana glanced aside at Amara, and the Countess avoided her eyes. Amara's cheeks flushed with color, and her usual reserved expression changed, becoming something young and girlish and delighted. She fidgeted in place, and she and Bernard's hands found one another without either of them seeming to be aware of it before she became still again.
"Well," Isana said to her brother. "Shall I order a bottle of something special?"
"Why would you ask that?" Bernard said, his tone smug.
"Because she's not stupid," growled Giraldi. The old centurion, grizzled and stalwart despite his limp, stepped around Bernard to bow politely to Isana. She laughed and gave him a fond embrace. Giraldi smiled, evidently pleased, and said, "But don't buy any special drink on my account. Just something that will make me think the food tastes good if I drink enough of it."
"Then you'll need almost nothing," Amara said. "The food here is wonderful-though the gourmands from my own home city disdain it. They hate it when any cook makes them eat too much by daring to exceed their expectations, I think."
Giraldi grunted and looked around. "I don't know. Awful lot of upper crust in this place." He nodded at a table above their own. "High Lady Parcia, there, having dinner with High Lady Attica's daughter. Couple of Senators, over there. And that's Lord Mandus, from Rhodes. He's the Fleet Tribune in their navy. They aren't the sort of folk that eat decent food."
Amara laughed. "If the meal isn't to your liking, centurion, I'll pay someone to fetch you a steak and a pitcher of ale."
Giraldi grinned and subsided. "Well, then."
Isana paused to regard Amara. There was a warmth in her voice and manner she had never sensed there before. Isana already respected Amara, but to see her and Bernard together and so clearly happy, made it very difficult for her not to share some portion of her brother's affection for the young woman. She was wearing a dress, too, which was unusual in Isana's experience. Isana did not miss the fact that the Cursor wore a gown in the rich green and brown Bernard had chosen for his colors, and not the somber, muted tones of red and blue generally favored for formal wear by the Cursors and other servants of the Crown.
Isana had always maintained a certain distance from the Cursor, the young woman who owed her personal loyalty to Gaius Sextus. Isana's harsh feelings toward the First Lord had spilled over onto Amara. She knew, on some level, that it was unfair of her to hold the sins of the liege against the Cursor who served him, and yet she had never been able to bring herself to give Amara a chance to prove herself in her own right.
Perhaps it was time for that to change. Bernard clearly adored the young Countess, and she had obviously brought Isana's little brother a great deal of happiness. If what Isana suspected was true, Amara might be around for a very long while. That was reason enough to force Isana to face the fact that she owed it to her brother to attempt at least to make peace with the Cursor.
Isana bowed her head to the Countess, and said, "You look lovely tonight, Amara."
The Cursor's cheeks flushed again, and she met Isana's eyes for a moment before smiling. "Thank you."
Isana smiled and turned to sit down as Giraldi drew out her seat for her. "Why thank you, centurion."
"Ma'am," the old soldier said. He waited for Amara to be seated, then lowered himself into his own chair, leaning on his cane and briefly grimacing in discomfort.
"The leg never healed any better?" Isana asked.
"Not that I noticed."
Isana frowned. "Would you like me to take a look at it?"
"Count brought in some big healer from Riva. It's been poked enough. Problem isn't the wound. The leg is getting old," Giraldi said, a small smile on his lips. "It had a good run, Isana. And I can still march. I'll finish this hitch. So don't you worry about it."
Isana felt the little spike of disappointment and regret in Giraldi's voice, but it was a small thing beside his resolve and his pride-or perhaps more accurately, his self-satisfaction, a form of inner peace. Giraldi had been badly wounded in battle against the vord at the Battle of Aricholt, but he had never faltered in his duty, never failed to fight in defense of the Realm. He had spent a lifetime in the Legions and in service to the Realm, and made a difference by doing so. That knowledge formed a bedrock for the old soldier, Isana reasoned.
"How have your presentations gone?" she asked, looking at Giraldi, then Bernard.
Bernard grunted. "Well enough."
"Well enough with soldiers," Giraldi corrected. "The Senators are all certain that we poor countryfolk have been bamboozled by the Marat, and that the vord aren't really anything to worry about."
Isana frowned. "That hardly sounds encouraging."
Bernard shook his head. "The Senators won't be doing the fighting. The Legions do that."
To Isana, he sounded like a man trying to convince himself of something. "But doesn't the Senate administer the Crown's military budget?"
"Well," Bernard said, frowning. "Yes."
"We've done all we can," Amara said, and put her hand over Bernard's. "There's no reason to blame yourself for the Senate's reaction."
"Right, " Giraldi said. "His mind was made up even before you threatened to rip his tongue out for him."
Isana blinked at Giraldi, then at Bernard. Her brother cleared his throat and blushed.
"Oh, dear," Isana said.
A server arrived just then with a light wine, fruit, and bread, and told them that the evening meal would be served shortly.
"What about you, Steadholder?" Amara asked, once the server had withdrawn. "What were the results of the League's summit with the abolitionists?"
"Complete success," Isana replied. "Senator Parmos addressed the entire assembly this afternoon. He's going to sponsor Lady Aquitaines proposal."
Amara's eyebrows lifted. "Is he?"
Isana frowned. "Is that such a surprise?"
"Yes, actually," Amara said, frowning. "From my understanding of the situation in the Senate, any emancipation legislation would have been blocked by the southern Senators. Between Rhodes and Kalare, they have votes enough to kill any such motion."
Isana arched an eyebrow. Amara's information was doubtless obtained from the Crown's intelligence network. If Amara had been unaware of the shift in the balance of power, then it was entirely possible that the First Lord was, too. "The Rhodesian Senators have cast their support to the abolitionists."
Amara stiffened in her seat. "All of them?"
"Yes," Isana said. "I thought you'd know already."
Amara shook her head, her lips pressed together. Isana could feel the Cursor's anxiety rising. "When did this happen?"
"I'm not sure," Isana said. "I overheard two members of the League discussing it during Lady Aquitaine's tour. Perhaps three weeks ago?"
Amara suddenly rose, her voice tight. "Bernard, I need to contact the First Lord. Immediately."
Bernard frowned at her in concern. "Why? Amara, what's wrong?"
"It's too much," Amara said, her eyes focused elsewhere, her voice running in quick bursts that mirrored her furious thought. "Kalare's being forced into a corner. He won't take covert measures. He can't. Between emancipation laws and the letter... we're not ready. Oh, crows, not ready."
Isana felt the Cursor's anxiety begin to change into rising fear. "What do you mean?"
Amara shook her head rapidly. "I'm sorry, I don't dare say more. Not here." She looked around quickly. "Bernard, I need to get to the river, immediately. Isana, I'm sorry to disrupt the dinner-"
"No," Isana said quietly. "It's all right."
"Bernard," Amara said.
Isana looked across the table at her brother, who was frowning deeply, eyes focused on the sky above the open grotto.
"Why, " he asked quietly, "are the stars turning red?"
Isana frowned and stared up at the sky. She could not see the full glory of the stars in the furylit beauty of the city of Ceres, but the brightest stars were still visible. The entire western half of the sky was filled with crimson pinpoints of light. As she watched, the white stars overhead burned sullen, and the scarlet light spread like some kind of plague to the east, marching slowly and steadily forward. "Is it some kind of furycrafting?" she murmured.
In the grotto around them, the singers fell quiet one by one, and the music trailed off to silence. Everyone started staring up and pointing. A confused tide of emotion pushed against Isana's senses.
Amara looked around them. "I don't think so. I've never seen anything like that. Bernard?"
Isana's brother shook his head. "Never saw anything like it." He glanced at Giraldi, who shook his head as well.
The confusion around Isana became something thicker, almost tangible, and tinged with more than a little fear. Over the next several seconds, the tide of emotion continued to grow, getting rapidly more distracting. Seconds after that, the sensations pressed so loudly against Isana's thoughts that she began to lose track of which were her own emotions and which came from without. It was excruciating, in its own way, and she suddenly found herself in a battle to hold on to her ability to reason. She put her hands to the sides of her head.
"Isana?" said Bernard's voice. It sounded like it was coming from very far away. "Are you all right?"
"T-too many people," Isana gasped. "Afraid. They're afraid. Confused. Afraid. I can't push it out."
"We need to get her out of here," Bernard said. He stepped around the table and picked Isana up. She wanted to protest, but the pressure against her thoughts was too much to struggle against. "Giraldi," he said. "Get the coach."
"Right," Giraldi said.
"Amara, watch for those two that were shadowing us. Be ready to knock someone down if you have to."
Isana heard Amara's voice grow suddenly tense. "You think this is an attack of some kind. "
"I think we're unarmed and vulnerable," Bernard said. "Move."
Isana felt her brother walking and opened her eyes in time to see the grotto's pool passing beneath them as he walked over an archway. Desperate, she reached out to Rill, calling up the fury to let the emotions washing over her pass through her, into the water. If she could not stand against the tide of emotion, perhaps she could divert it.
The pressure eased, though it was strenuous to maintain the redirection. It was enough to let her remember her name and to have the presence of mind to look up and see what was happening.
Sudden excitement, exaltation and battle lust washed over her, near enough to make her feel as though she stood too close to a forge. She looked up and saw confusion, patrons and staff rising and moving toward the exits, and among them she saw a number of men in the clean white tunics of restaurant staff moving with professional, calculated haste, expressions sharp with eagerness and purpose.
Even as she watched, one of the men closed in behind Mandus, the Rhode-sian Fleet Tribune, seized his hair, bent his head back, and cut his throat with swift efficiency.
More excitement made Isana look up. Three more men stood on the ledge above them, crouched and ready to leap. Each wore a white tunic, each bore a short, curved, cruel-looking sword, and steel collars shone upon their throats.
Her own sudden terror destabilized her crafting and plunged her into an ocean of confusion and fear.
"Bernard!" she cried.
The three assassins leapt down upon them.
Without Isana's warning, Amara would surely have died.
Her eyes were scanning what lay before them, looking for the two men who had shadowed her and Bernard after the presentation at the amphitheater. A shrill scream of horror drew Amara's eyes to the far side of the grotto, where she saw Fleet Tribune Mandus, his throat opened, the cut hopelessly deep and precise, fall to his knees and slump to his side to die on the floor.
When Isana cried out her warning, Amara had her back to the assassins. She spun and managed to dart aside from the nearest man's first, sweeping cut. Two of the men were falling upon Bernard and Isana, and burdened as he was with his sister, Bernard would never be able to defend himself.
Amara called to Cirrus, and her fury came rushing down into the grotto at her call. She hurled a raw gale at the two men, catching them in midair. She flung one of them over the side of the walkway and he fell toward the pool. The other managed to get his hand on an outthrusting branch of one of the trees and flipped himself neatly down to the ground beside Bernard. The assassin turned to Amara's husband, sword in hand, but Amara had delayed him for the few critical seconds that would have made the attack a success.
"Giraldi!" Bernard bellowed. He turned and all but threw Isana into the grizzled soldier's arms. Then the Count of Calderon seized one of the heavy hardwood chairs, and with a surge of fury-born strength, swung the sixty-pound chair into the assassin, driving the man hard into a rocky wall of the grotto.
Amara turned to throw her hand out and force her own attacker back with a blast of wind, but the man hurled a small cloud of salt from a pouch at his belt, and Amara felt Cirrus buck in agony upon contact with the substance, the fury's concentrated power dispersed, temporarily, by the salt.
The average hired cutter did not venture forth with a pouch of salt at hand and ready to throw-which meant that the man had come for Amara, specifically.
The assassin advanced with the speed of a professional fighter and sent two quick cuts at her. Amara dodged the first cleanly, but the second blow slid over her hip and left a long, shallow cut that burned like fire.
"Down!" Bernard thundered. Amara threw herself to the ground just as Bernard flung the heavy hardwood chair. It struck the assassin with a dull, crunching sound of bones breaking upon impact and drove the man hard against the trunk of a tree.
The assassin bounced off the tree trunk, seized the chair, and flung it out over the grotto and into the pool. Though his rib cage was horribly deformed by the power of the blow Bernard had dealt him, the man's expression never changed-an odd little smile beneath wide, staring eyes.
Amara stared at the assassin in shock as he lifted his sword and came at her again, hardly slowed by the blow that should have killed him. She started to back away, but felt empty air beneath her heels and instead spun and leapt, arms reaching out to seize an overhanging tree branch. The assassin's sword whipped at the air behind her, missing, and with a snarl of fury the man lost his footing and plunged into the pool below them.
Behind Bernard, the first assassin rose from the blow her husband had dealt him, and though his left arm dangled uselessly, broken in many places, he came forward with his sword, wearing the same staring, mad smile as the other man.
Bernard put the dining table between himself and the assassin, then drew back a booted foot and kicked it at him. It struck the assassin and knocked him off-balance, and in the second it took him to recover it, Bernard raised a hand and clenched it into a fist, snarling, "Brutus!"
Bernard's earth fury, Brutus, came to his call. The stone arch heaved and rippled, and suddenly the rock stretched itself into the shape of an enormous, stone hound. Green gemstones glittered where a dog's eyes would be, and Brutus's mouth opened to show rows of obsidian black fangs. The fury rushed forward toward the assassin, ignored several blows from the assassin s sword, and clamped his jaws down on the man's calf, locking him in place.
Without an instant's hesitation, the assassin swept his blade down and severed his own leg just below the knee to free it from Brutus's grasp. Then he rushed Bernard again, awkward and ungainly, blood rushing from the wound. He let out an eerie cry of ecstasy as he did. Bernard stared at him in shock for half a second, then the man was on him. Brutus tossed its great head and threw the severed leg aside, but it would take the fury endless seconds to turn around. Amara gritted her teeth but was effectively trapped, hanging there from the branch. She could climb up, then to the ground again, but by then it would be over-and Cirrus would not recover in time to let her fly to Bernard's aid.
Everything slowed down. Somewhere on one of the levels far above their own, there was a flash of light and a thunderous explosion. Steel rang on steel somewhere else. More screams echoed around the grotto.
Bernard was not slow, especially for a man his size, but he did not have the speed he would need to have a fair chance of combating the assassin unarmed. He lunged to one side as the man swung, putting his body between Isana's and the man's steel blade. The blade struck, and Amara's husband cried out in pain and fell.
The assassin seized Bernard by the hair-but instead of cutting his throat, he simply threw the wounded man aside and raised his sword to strike down at Isana.
Desperate, Amara called to Cirrus-not to push her toward the assassin, but away. She clung to the branch as the weakened wind fury pushed her back. She pushed with all of her strength, then abruptly released the crafting. The branch, bent by the force of the wind, suddenly snapped back. Amara swung on the branch as it did and used its backsweep to propel her, feetfirst back toward the assassin.
She drove her heels into the assassin's chest, all her body rigid to support the vicious blow. She struck cleanly and hard, and the force of the blow snapped the man's head forward and back. She heard bones break, and the assassin fell into a limp mass of bloodied flesh with Amara atop him.
She rolled away from him and seized his sword, crouched on all fours, blood staining her green gown. She stared in shock at the man. The assassin still clung to life, madness burning in his eyes as he let out a final, short, violent cry. "Brothers!"
Amara looked up. Several of the attackers in the grotto had finished their bloody work, and at the dying man's call, the faces of another dozen men with metal collars and lunatic eyes turned toward her. Their path to the exit, a walkway through the trees and a second stone arch, was already filled with more of the men. They were cut off.
"Bernard," she said. "Can you hear me?"
Bernard pushed himself to his feet, his face pale and tight with pain. He glanced back and forth and saw the men approaching and reached for another heavy chair. He let out a choke of pain as he picked it up, and Amara could see a stab wound in the slablike muscles of his back.
"Can you fly?" he asked, his voice quiet. He closed his eyes for a moment, and the chair in his hands abruptly twisted and writhed, suddenly as lithe as a willow branch. The various pieces of the chair elongated and wound and braided themselves together into a thick fighting cudgel as if of their own volition, a massively heavy club that would prove deadly when driven by an earthcrafter's physical strength. "Can you fly?" he asked again.
"I'm not leaving you."
He shot a quick glance at her. "Can you carry my sister out?"
Amara grimaced and shook her head. "I don't think so. Cirrus was hurt. I don't think I could lift myself out yet, much less her."
"I've got her, Bernard," Giraldi said, grimacing. "But you should take her. I'll rear-guard you while both of you get out."
Bernard shook his head. "We stay together. Either of you ever seen men fight like these?"
"No," Amara said.
"No, sir."
"There are a lot of them," Bernard commented. Indeed, the nearest band of half a dozen had made their way down the pathway above them and were nearly close enough to rush them. At least a dozen more blocked their escape and slowly closed so that they would attack in time with the first group. Fires burned on some of the upper levels. A pall of smoke tainted the air and concealed the bloody stars.
"Yes," Amara agreed quietly. She hated that her voice shook with her fear, but she could not stop it. "Whoever they are."
Bernard put his back to Amara's, facing the men coming from farther down the slope. "I'll set Brutus on them," he said quietly. "Try to knock them down. We'll try to run through them."
The plan was hopeless. Brutus, though terribly powerful, was anything but swift, and would be of only limited use in close-quarters combat. Not only that, but employing the fury on its own would rob Bernard of the lion's share of the strength the fury could provide him. These men, whoever they were, were capable and madly determined. They would never reach the door.
But what else could they do? Their only other option was to fight back-to-back until they were slain. Bernard's plan offered at least a wisp of hope, strictly speaking, but Amara knew that it was only a matter of choosing between final deeds before the end.
"Ready?" he asked quietly.
Amara ground her teeth. "I love you."
He let out the low, satisfied growl he often uttered after kissing her, and she could hear the fighting grin that stretched his lips. "And I you."
She heard him take a deep breath, just as the men above them prepared to leap down, and he let out a roar. "Brutus!"
Once again, the great stone hound bounded up out of the earth. It lurched toward the group coming up the rocky shelf, and bayed, its mountainous voice the basso rumble of stones grating together under enormous strain. The first assassin raised his weapon, but the stone hound simply hurtled into him, ducking its head and slamming its shoulder into the man's chest. Blood burst from the assassin's mouth in a sudden froth. Brutus swung his great head and threw the assassin back into a pair of his companions.
One of them screamed and fell from the ledge to land upon his back on a stone standing a few inches out of the surface of the water. He let out a short gasp and slipped limply beneath the pool's surface. The other stumbled, and Brutus plunged over the man, paws landing like sledgehammers, crushing the assassin into a shapeless mass.
Bernard charged in behind Brutus, and Amara darted along in his wake. Behind her, the men on the upper level had paused for a second at Bernard's yell, then leapt forward in what seemed a superhuman grace and disdain for pain or death.
Bernard's cudgel struck down another attacker on the first swing, but she heard the snarl of pain the movement drew from him. Brutus continued his charge, but by then, the assassins farther back in the line had spotted the stone hound. One of the men bounded over Brutus entirely, invisible to the earth fury while airborne, and engaged Bernard. Behind him, other assassins rapidly backed up to the wooden bridge, getting their feet up off the stone of the grotto.
Amara heard a breath behind her and barely had time to turn and parry a heavy slash from the nearest of the attackers behind them. The force of the blow knocked her back into Bernard, whose forward momentum had died as the assassin in front of him menaced him with his blade. Amara parried another blow, her back to her husband's, calling upon Cirrus to provide whatever quickness he could to her limbs. Her riposte was a silver-and-scarlet blur of bloodied steel that struck the man on the neck, just above the steel collar.
Her cut had been too shallow to open the artery in the man's neck, but he let out a shout that sounded more like a sound of pleasure than agony and pressed his attack more furiously than ever.
Bernard let out a shout of effort, followed by a heavy thudding sound behind her. Steel whistled in the air, and Bernard cried out again.
"No!" Amara screamed, terror making her voice shrill.
And then, behind the attackers coming down the walkway at her, Amara saw a man in the somewhat grimy white tunic of a cook or scullion, in contrast to the clean white smocks that the assassins wore. He was of medium height and build, and his hair was long, shaggy, and greying. He landed on the walkway in catlike silence, a worn old gladius in his right hand, and with a single simple, ruthlessly efficient motion drove the blade through the base of the nearest assassin's skull.
The man dropped as if he'd simply fallen asleep. His killer glided forward to the next assassin on the walkway, dark eyes gleaming behind the curtain of ragged hair. The next man in line fell to the same stroke, but dropped his blade to the stone with a clatter of metal, and the next assassin in the line whirled around.
"Fade?" Amara shouted, parrying again.
The slave never slowed. A quick bob to one side stirred some of the hair from around his face, revealing the hideous scarring on one entire cheek, the Legions' brand burned into cowards who had fled the field of battle. Fade's blade moved in graceful, deceptively lazy-looking circles, shattering the assassin's weapon with contemptuous ease, then sheared off the top quarter of the man's skull on the next stroke. Fade kicked the dying man into the one in front of him and simply strode down the rock walkway. His sword arm moved in small, simple, unspectacular-looking movements, shattering blades and bodies with equal, dispassionate ease.
Assassins fell, every single injury a blow to the neck or head, and when Fade's sword struck them they did not move. Ever again.
The last one, Amara's opponent, shot a swift glance over his shoulder. Amara howled her defiance and swung her captured, curved blade with both hands. She struck true, and buried the weapon to the width of its blade in the assassin's skull. The man stiffened and twitched, sword falling from his fingers.
Fade gripped the sword's hilt and ripped it from the assassin's skull, simultaneously sending him falling from the ledge, then murmured, "Excuse me, Countess."
Amara gaped for a second, stunned, then slipped aside to let Fade through. The slave nudged Bernard to one side, into the grotto wall, caught a blow intended for the Steadholder on his blade. Fade moved forward to the wooden walkway like a dancer, swords spinning, blocking, killing. The assassins pressed forward to attack.
They died. They never came close to touching him.
In the space of four or five seconds, Fade slew nine or ten men, left a legless casualty on the stone behind him for Brutus to crush, and kicked another off the walkway and into the pool below. On the far side of the walkway, he dropped into a crouch, swords ready, eyes scanning all around him.
"F-fade?" Bernard rumbled.
"Bring Isana," the slave snapped to them. "Countess, take the lead." He dropped the curved sword and glided back over the bridge to get a shoulder beneath Bernard's arm and assist the dazed Count to his feet.
"Fade?" Bernard said again, his voice weak and confused. "You have a sword?"
The man did not answer Bernard. "We have to get them out of here, now," he told Amara. "Move and stay together."
Amara nodded and managed to gather up the Steadholder and stagger along behind the swordsman.
"What are you doing here?" Bernard asked. "I thought you were in the capital, Fade?"
"Be quiet, Count," Fade said. "You're losing blood. Save your strength."
Bernard shook his head, then suddenly jerked, tensing. "I-isana!"
"I've got her," Giraldi grunted.
Bernard blinked once, then nodded and bowed his head, hobbling along only with Fade's help.
Corpses and blood littered the restaurant. The collared assassins had spared none they could reach. Elderly men and women, even children lay where they had fallen, wounded, dead, or dying. Fade led them to the street outside the restaurant, where the nightmarish results of the attack seemed intensified. Many had managed to flee the restaurant, though their wounds had been mortal. Wounds that sometimes looked minor could prove fatal within a moment or two, and many who thought that they had escaped the slaughter had only survived long enough to die on the street.
People screamed and shouted, rushing back and forth. The signaling horns and drums of Ceres' civic legion were already converging on the spot. Other folk lay on the ground, curled up into a tight ball, sobbing in incapacitating hysteria, just as Isana was. Amara realized, with a sickening little burst of illumination, that whatever had incapacitated Isana had done it to those folk as well.
They were all watercrafters, the only folk who might possibly save the lives of many of the wounded. They had all been struck down, and though others struggled to close wounds and stop bleeding, they had little more than cloth and water to work with.
Blood had spread into a scarlet pool, half an inch deep and thirty or forty feet across.
And then the great chimes in Ceres's citadel began to ring in deep, panicked strokes, sounding the alert to the city's legions. Horns began to blow the Legion call to arms.
The city was under attack.
"Bloody crows," Amara whispered, stunned.
"Move!" Fade snarled. "We can't let her-"