“It could be coincidence,” Aquitaine pointed out.
“I don’t believe in coincidence, Your Grace,” Fidelias said. “The First Lord is far from blind, and he has powers of furycrafting I can hardly begin to accurately assess. He has called the south winds. He is hastening someone north. Toward the Calderon Valley.”
“Impossible,” Aquitaine said. He rubbed at his jaw with the back of one hand. “But then, Gaius was always an impossible man.”
“Your Grace,” Calix said. “Surely you aren’t seriously considering —”
Aquitaine lifted a hand. “I am, Your Excellency.”
“Your Grace,” Calix hissed. “This common born dog has called me a murderer to my face.”
Aquitaine surveyed the scene for a moment. Then, quite deliberately, took three or four steps away from them and turned his back, as though to study a tapestry hanging on one wall.
“Your Grace,” Calix said. “I demand your justice in this matter.”
“I rather tend to believe Fidelias, Your Excellency.” He sighed. “Work it out among yourselves. I will deal appropriately with whoever is left.”
Fidelias smiled. “Your Excellency, please allow me to add that you stink like a sheep, that your mouth froths with idiocy and poison, and that your guts are as yellow as a springtime daffodil.” He steepled his fingers, regarding Calix, and said, very soft and distinctly, “You . . . are . . . a . . . coward.”
Calix’s face flushed red, his eyes wild, and he moved, a sudden liquid blurring of his arms and hips. The sword at his side leapt free of its scabbard and toward Fidelias’s throat.
As fast as Calix was, Aldrick moved faster. His arm alone whipped into motion, drawing the blade from his hip, across the limp form of the woman on his lap. Steel met steel in a ringing chime only inches from Fidelias’s face. Aldrick slid to his feet, Odiana curling her legs beneath her as she lowered herself to the floor. The swordsman’s face remained upon Calix’s.
Calix eyed Aldrick and let out a sneer. “Mercenary. Do you think you can best an Aleran lord in battle?”
Aldrick kept his blade lightly pressed to Calix’s and shrugged. “The only man who has ever matched me in battle was Araris Valerian himself.” Teeth shone white in Aldrick’s smile. “And you aren’t Araris.”
There was a rasp, and then steel glittered and blurred in the dim light of the hall. Fidelias watched, hardly able to keep up with the speed of the attacks and counters. In the space of a slow breath, their swords met a dozen times, chiming out, casting sparks from one another’s blades. The swordsmen parted briefly, then clashed together again.
And the duel was over. Calix blinked, his eyes widening, and then lifted a hand to his throat as scarlet blood rushed from it. He tried to say something else, but was unable to make any sound.
Then the Rhodesian Count fell to the ground and lay unmoving, but for a few, faint tremors as his faltering heartbeat pumped the blood from his body.
Odiana looked up at Aquitaine with a small, dreamy smile, and asked, “Ought I save him, Your Grace?”
Aquitaine glanced back at Calix and shrugged. “There seems to be little point in it, dear.”
“Yes, lord.” Odiana turned adoring eyes to Aldrick and watched as the swordsman knelt down to wipe his blade clean of blood on Calix’s cloak. The man clenched his fingers and let out a bubbling gasp. Aldrick ignored him.
Fidelias rose and went to Aquitaine’s side. “Was that to your satisfaction, Your Grace?”
“Calix was useful,” Aquitaine said. Then he glanced at Fidelias and asked, “How did you know?”
Fidelias tilted his head. “That he was planning to kill you? Were you able to sense it in him?”
Aquitaine nodded. “Once I knew to look for it. He fell apart as you described the role Rhodes had assigned him. We’ll probably find a furybound dagger in his coat with my likeness and name etched into the steel.”
Aldrick grunted, rolled the not-quite-dead Calix onto his back, and rummaged through his jacket. The telltale bulge Fidelias had seen earlier proved to be made by a small daggerwith a compact hilt. Aldrick let out a hiss as he touched the knife and set it down hurriedly.
Fidelias asked, “Furybound?”
Aldrick nodded. “Nasty one. Strong. I think the knife should be destroyed.”
“Do it,” Aquitaine said. “Now, tonight. Odiana, go with him. I wish to speak to Fidelias alone.”
The pair rested fist over their hearts and bowed their heads. Then Odiana slipped up to the swordsman’s side and pressed to him until he circled her shoulders with one arm. The two left, without looking back.
On the floor, Calix let out his death rattle, and his eyes glazed over, mouth hanging slightly open.
“How did you know?” Aldrick repeated.
Fidelias glanced back at the dead Rhodesian Count and shrugged. “To be honest, Your Grace. I didn’t know. I guessed.”
Aquitaine half smiled. “Based upon what?”
“Too many years in this line of work. And I’ve met Rhodes. He wouldn’t step an inch from his way to help someone else, and he’d cut off his own nose just to spite his face. Calix was being—”
“—too pleasant,” Aquitaine murmured. “Indeed. Perhaps I should have seen it sooner.”
“The important thing is that you acted promptly when you did see it, Your Grace.”
“Fidelias,” Aquitaine said. “I do not like you.”
“You have no reason to.”
“But I think I can respect you, after a fashion. And if it’s to be a choice of who will put the knife in my back, I would rather it be you than Rhodes or one of his lackeys, I think.”
Fidelias felt his mouth tug up at the corners. “Thank you.”
“Make no mistake, man.” Aquitaine turned to face him. “I prefer to work with someone to forcing them to my will. But I can do it. And I can kill you if you become a problem. You know this, yes?”
Fidelias nodded.
“Good,” Aquitaine said. The High Lord covered his mouth with his hand and yawned. “It is late. And you are right about moving quickly, before the Crown has a chance to act. Get a few hours sleep. At dawn, you leave for the Calderon Valley.”
Fidelias bowed his head again. “Your Grace — I don’t have any chambers here, as yet.”
Aquitaine waved a hand toward the slave. “You. Take him to your chambers for the night. Give him whatever he wants and see to it that he is awake by dawn.”
The slave bowed her head, without speaking or looking up.
“Have you studied much history, Fidelias?”
“Only a bit, Your Grace.”
“Fascinating. The course of a century of history can be set in a few short hours. A few precious days. Focal events, Fidelias — and those people who are a part of them become the ones to create tomorrow. I have sensed a distant stirring of forces from the direction of the Valley. Gaius is already arousing the furies of the Calderon, perhaps. History is stirring. Waiting to be nudged in one direction or the other.”
“I don’t know about history, Your Grace. I just want to do my job.”