“Either one of them is at least a match for you,” Amara said quietly. “If they come together, you won’t have a chance.”
“Not if, Countess,” Aquitaine said, thoughtfully. He slid his finger over the hilt of the sword in an unconscious caress. “I believe I’ve had my fill of ‘if ’s. When. And we’ll see about that. I’ve never been bested yet.” He pursed his lips, staring at the battle, then gave himself a little shake, and said, “Take word to Riva. Then return to me here. I will have more work for you.”
Amara arched an eyebrow at him. “You’d trust me enough for that?”
“Trust,” he said. “No. Say instead that I have insufficient
distrust
of you to make me willing to waste your skills.” He smiled that razor-thin smile again, and waved a hand vaguely toward the battle lines. “Frankly, I find you a far-less-terrifying enemy than our guests. Now go.”
Amara considered the man for the space of a breath. Then she nodded to him, somewhat more deeply than she needed to. “Very well,” she said, “Your Highness.”
CHAPTER 19
In the hours that followed, Isana listened to the vord Queen assault and savage the collected military might of the Realm.
She never left the glowing green chamber beneath the earth. Instead, she simply stared upward, into the glowing light of the
croach
, and gave Isana a running commentary of the battle. In neutral, unhurried tones, the Queen reported the outcomes of maneuvers and attacks.
Isana had seen enough of the war with the vord to translate the words into images of pure horror in her thoughts. She stood beside Araris, checking every so often to be sure that his nose and mouth were still uncovered. His skin, beneath the surface of the
croach
, did not appear to be irritated or burned—yet. But it was hard to be certain. It was like looking at him through tinted and ill-shaped glass of particularly poor quality.
“I find it . . . I believe this is a form of anger, though not a particularly potent example,” said the vord Queen, after several moments of silence. “There is a word for it. I find the Aleran defense to be . . . irritating.”
“Irritating?” asked Isana.
“Yes,” the Queen said, staring upward. She pointed with one black-clawed finger. “There. The workers and noncombatants are fleeing the city. And yet I cannot, quite, reach them. Their destruction would all but assure the end of this war.”
“They are defenseless,” Isana said quietly.
The vord Queen sighed. “If only that were true. Assigning nearly half the population as expendable protectors is wastefully unnecessary. Most of the time. It won’t make a difference in the end, but for now . . .” She lifted a hand and let it fall again, a gesture that somehow contained her irritation, her passing annoyance, and the fate of Alera, all in the same imagined handful. “This world has been ferociously competitive since long before my wakening.”
“Those are women,” Isana said quietly. “The aged, the sick. Children. They are not a threat to you.”
The vord Queen’s eyes glinted oddly. “The women can produce more of you, and that cannot be tolerated. The aged and sick . . . there might be some merit in continuing to allow them to drain your people’s resources, but their experience and knowledge might tip a balance, which would prove costly.”
“And the children?” Isana said, her voice growing colder despite herself. “What harm could they possibly do you?”
The vord Queen’s lips spread in a slow, bitter smile. “Your children are indeed no threat. Today.” She turned her eyes from the ceiling and stared at Isana for a time. “You think me cruel.”
Isana looked from Araris’s slack, unconscious face to the vord Queen. “Yes,” she hissed.
“And yet, I have offered your people a choice,” the Queen said. “A chance to surrender, to accept defeat without losing their own lives—which is more than your people have ever offered me. You think me cruel for hunting your children, Grandmother, but your folk have hunted mine, and killed them in tens of thousands. Your folk and mine are the same, in the end. We survive, and we do so at the expense of others who seek nothing more than to do the same.”
Isana was silent for a long moment. Then she asked, very quietly, “Why do you call me that?”
The vord Queen was also quiet for a time. Then she answered, “It seems fitting, as I understand such things.”
“Why?” Isana pressed. “Why would you consider Tavi your father? Do you truly believe yourself his child?”
The vord Queen moved her shoulders in a shrug that did not look as though it came naturally to her. “Not in the sense that you mean. Although, like you, I did not choose those whose blood would merge to create mine.”
“Why would you care?” Isana asked. “Why should it matter to you whether or not you refer to me in a way that is appropriate to Alerans?”
The Queen tilted her head again, her expression abstracted. “It should not matter.” She blinked her eyes several times in rapid succession. “It should not. And yet it does.”
Isana took a deep breath, sensing something vital stirring beneath the vord’s cool, smooth surface. She wasn’t sure if she was speaking to the Queen as she murmured, “Why?”
The vord Queen folded her arms abruptly over her chest and turned away, a motion that appeared quite human. She looked up at the glowing ceiling above her, at the other walls of the room—anywhere but at Isana.
“Why?” Isana asked again. She took a step closer. “Does the answer to the question matter, to you?”
Frustration and a desperate, unfulfilled need flared through the chamber, bright and solid against Isana’s watercrafting senses. “Yes. It matters.”
“And finding the answer is important to you.”
“Yes. It is.”
Isana shook her head. “But if you destroy us, you might never know the answer.”
“Don’t you think I
know
that?” the vord Queen spat. Her eyes flared wide open as she bared her teeth in a snarl. “Don’t you think I
understand
? I sense as you do, Grandmother. I
feel
everything,
everything
my children feel. I feel their pain and fear. And through them, I feel
your
people as well. I feel them screaming and dying. I am so filled with it that I could almost split open down the middle.”
A calm, hard voice spoke into the chamber, causing Isana to flinch in surprised reaction. “Be cautious,” said Invidia Aquitaine. “You are being manipulated.” The former High Lady entered the chamber, attired in the formfitting black chitin-armor apparently worn by all of the Aleran Citizens who served the vord.
The vord Queen turned her head slightly, her only acknowledgment of Invidia’s words. She frowned, and swiveled her unsettling eyes back to Isana. Silence stretched for a time before she asked, “Is this true?”
Isana stared at Invidia. She had heard Amara’s descriptions of the creature clinging to Invidia’s torso, its bulbous body pulsing in a rhythm like a slow heartbeat. But seeing it happening, seeing the blood that seeped weakly from where the creature’s head thrust into the woman’s chest, was a different matter altogether. Invidia had been many things to Isana—ally and manipulator, mentor and murderess. Isana had ample reason to hate the former High Lady, she supposed. But looking at her now, she could summon forth nothing more than pity.
And revulsion.
“That is a matter of viewpoint,” Isana replied to the vord Queen, her eyes never leaving Invidia. “I am attempting to understand you. I am attempting to enable you to understand us more clearly.”
“Knowledge may make you more able to prevail against me,” the Queen said. “It is a sensible course of action to pursue. But the reverse is also true. Why would you seek to allow me to understand your kind better?”
Invidia stepped forward. “Isn’t it obvious?” she asked, her voice calm. She looked nowhere but at Isana. “She senses the emotions in you, just as I do. She hopes to draw them out of you, to use them to influence your actions.”
The Queen’s mouth twisted into a chill smile. “Ah. Is that true, Isana?”
“From a certain point of view,” Isana replied. “I hoped to reach out to you. To convince you to cease hostilities.”
“Invidia,” the Queen said, “how would you evaluate her skills at watercrafting?”
“As the equal of my own,” Invidia replied smoothly. “To be cautious, I would say that she was my equal at least.”
The vord Queen absorbed that for a moment. Then she nodded. “In your judgment, is there anything she could directly accomplish by this method?”
“Only to learn how pointless it is to try,” Invidia replied, her voice tired.
“There is without question emotion like our own inside you. But you do not feel it in the same way we do. It does not influence your decisions or judgment.” She stared at Isana without any emotion showing on her face or in her manner, and said, “Believe me. I’ve tried. It is already over, Isana. If you would reduce the pain and suffering our people experience, you should advise them to surrender.”
“They would not listen,” the Queen said dismissively. “And besides, I’m not letting her go.”
Invidia frowned. “Then I see no value in keeping her—or her lover—alive.”
“Let us say that it is for the good of the Aleran people,” the Queen said.
Isana jerked her gaze from the treacherous High Lady to the Queen. “What?”
The Queen shrugged a shoulder, a gesture Isana found somehow familiar and intensely uncomfortable. “The Aleran people suffer because they fight. They will never surrender the fight so long as Gaius Octavian is alive. Gaius Attis might give them the ability to resist, for now—but he is a pretender, and your people know it. So long as the true heir to the House of Gaius walks the land, there will always be many who will fight. He must be dealt with.”
The Queen pointed a clawed fingertip at Isana. “Octavian’s mother is in my control. He will be forced to come to me in an attempt to preserve her life. However, by all accounts she has demonstrated irrational resolve in the past. She might destroy herself to prevent Octavian from coming after her—which is why I need the male alive and unharmed. So long as he remains so, she will retain the hope that both of them might escape this place together.”
Isana tried to prevent herself from shivering at the cold, detached calculation in the Queen’s voice, at the calm precision of her logic. She couldn’t.
“I have her,” the Queen said. “Having her will give me Octavian. When he is dead, the rest of Alera will crumble and yield. Better for me and my children. Better for them.”
“Kill them both,” Invidia suggested. “Revenge may draw him to you as surely as concern.”
The vord Queen bared her green-black teeth in a smile. “Ah. His progenitor’s progenitor waited nearly twenty-five years to take his vengeance when the time was right. That bloodline does not seek to redress such imbalances in . . . what is the phrase? In fire?”
“In hot blood,” Isana said quietly.
“Exactly,” said the vord Queen. She turned to Invidia. “Why are you not in the field?”
“Two reasons,” Invidia said. “First, our spies in Antillus report that Octavian and his Legions marched to the north nearly two days ago.”
“What?”
the Queen said. “Where are they now?”
Invidia’s mouth curled into a chilly little smile. “We know nothing more. Your horde arrived at Antillus several hours ago. It has enfolded the city and is taking losses at more than triple the rate of any other besieged city.”
The Queen’s black-jewel eyes narrowed. “Canim conscripts fighting alone cannot put up such resistance.”
“Nasaug’s conscripts have an unusually high degree of training and experience. They are considerably more formidable than the conscripts in Canea,” Invidia said. After the slightest of pauses, she added, “As I warned you.”
The vord Queen’s eyes flashed with silent anger. “Octavian must have some plan for the Shieldwall. It is the only significant structure north of Antillus. I will dispatch airborne warrior forms to patrol the Wall and locate him.”
“The second reason I am here,” Invidia continued, “is because while you have been chatting with the woman who cannot directly harm you, your attention has wavered from the battle. The High Lord and Lady of Placida and my former husband have been freed from the press of the fight to redirect the feral furies we loosed upon them. They have nothing like overt control, but they have driven most of the ferals out of Riva and away from the fleeing civilians. Our own troops are now suffering at least as heavily from their attentions as are the Legions.”
The vord Queen’s eyes widened, and she whirled to stare at Isana.
“I was also hoping,” Isana said mildly, folding her hands in front of her, “to distract your attention from the fight. I thought it might weaken the coordination of your creatures if you weren’t constantly overseeing them.”
The vord Queen’s eyes blazed for a moment, flickering with odd motes of brilliant green light. Then she whirled and strode back into the area from which she had stared at the battle before. “Get back out there. Take my
singulares
. Find and destroy any High Lord or Lady you can isolate. I will see to it that their attention is directed elsewhere.”
Invidia lifted her chin. “It might be better to accept our losses and plan for the next—”
The Queen whirled, her face suffused with rage, and shrieked in a voice like tearing metal, “FIND THEM!”
The sheer volume of the scream slammed against Isana like a fist, and she staggered back against the wall. She sagged there for a moment, her ears ringing, and felt a trickle of heat upon her upper lip; her nose had begun bleeding.
In the stunned seconds of silence after, she found herself blinking dully, staring at the unmoving Araris, his scarred face slack, his eyes opened and focused—
Isana froze.
Araris met her eyes for an instant, gazing through a murky half inch of
croach
. Then his eyes flicked down, and back up to hers. Isana glanced down.