Chapter 5
Running boots hammered the ground outside the command tent, and Antillar Maximus shouted the password at the sentries stationed there as if he intended to bowl them out of his way with sheer volume. Tavi looked up from his reports immediately, lifting a hand, and Maestro Magnus stopped speaking. The old Cursor gathered together loose pages from the table, resorting to holding the last several down with one hand. An instant later, Maximus flung the tent's door flap aside, letting in a rush of wind scented heavily with spring rain.
Tavi smiled at Magnus's forethought. No pages went flying. The old Cursor had been wounded only two days before - but he'd taken only a single night's rest after Tribune Foss had released him for duty, and though battered and obviously stiff, he had returned to the command tent the next morning.
"Tavi," Max said, panting, "you need to see this. I've had them bring your horse."
Tavi arched an eyebrow at Max's use of his first name and rose. "What's happening?"
"You have to see it," Max said.
Tavi checked the fittings on his armor to make sure they were tight, slung the baldric of his gladius over his shoulder, and followed Max out to the horses. He swung up, waited for Max and the two legionares currently on guard duty to mount up as well, then gestured for Antillar to lead the way.
In the days since the landing, the Canim and the Alerans had settled down into their camps in good order. Only one sticking point was any cause for concern - the little stream that fed the well in the valley between the two Aleran camps ran so deeply that there was no way to reroute it to within reach of either Legion camp. As a result, all three groups had to use the wells Tavi's engineers had sunk into the rocky ground in the valley, and a series of shallow pools in the approximate center of the Canim camp had been the results.
So far, they had shared the water without serious incident - which meant that no one had been killed, though one Canim and two Alerans had been injured. Tavi followed Maximus to the southernmost gate of the Canim camp. Two of the warrior-caste guards were on duty there, one in the scarlet and black steel armor of Narash, the other in Shuaran midnight blue and black. The Narashan lifted a paw-hand in greeting, and called, "Open the gate for the Warmaster's gadara."
The gate, made from leviathan hide stretched over a frame of enormous leviathan bones, swung open wide, and they entered the Canim fortifications.
"It started about ten minutes ago," Max said. "I told a legionare to stay with it and write down anything he heard."
Tavi frowned ahead of them, idly keeping his horse from sidestepping as they entered the Canim camp, and the wolf-warriors' scent filled the beasts' nostrils. There was a crowd gathered ahead of them, and more were heading that way. Even mounted on a tall horse, Tavi could barely see anything over the craning heads of the Canim in front of him, most standing to their full eight feet or more to peer ahead.
The press of traffic became too much, and Tavi and his men halted, the air around them full of the snarled vowels and growled consonants of the Canim tongue. Max tried to get them moving through the crowd again, but even his legionare's bellow could make no headway against the ferocious, roaring buzz of the Canim crowd.
Deep, brassy Canim horns brayed, and a small phalanx of red-armored Canim warriors came marching stolidly through the crowd like men walking against the current of a quick-running stream. Tavi recognized Gradash, the silver-furred huntmaster - a rank of warrior roughly equal to that of centurion - guiding the warriors. He directed them to fan out around the Alerans, then tilted his head slightly to one side, a gesture of respect. Tavi returned it.
"Tavar," Gradash called. "With your consent, I will take you forward."
"Thank you, huntmaster," Tavi replied.
Gradash bared his throat again and began shouting more commands. In short order, gawkers found themselves savagely shoved aside, and the Alerans' horses began moving forward once more.
They drew near the central watering pool within a moment, and found dozens of Alerans there, mixed in among the Canim to gather around the pool. Tavi saw why, and sucked in a breath through his teeth.
No wonder everyone had come to stare.
A cloaked form stood upon the surface of the water. The cloak was made of rich, grey fabric with a deep hood. Tavi couldn't see any of the features of whoever was beneath the cloak, except for dark lips and a pale, delicate chin. His heart lurched in his chest, even so.
It was the vord Queen.
The troop of Canim soldiers led Tavi and his party to the far side of the pool, where Varg and Nasaug were standing, together with a grey-furred old Cane wearing sections of vord chitin that had been fashioned into armor. He wore a red mantle and hood over that, the cut of which was identical to the garments worn by Canim ritualists - but this was the first time Tavi had seen such a garment made of anything but the pale, supple leather of human flesh.
The vord Queen never moved. Tavi glanced down the line of pools and saw what seemed to be identical images standing upon each of them. Crowds continued to gather.
"Bloody crows," Max swore. "That's a watersending."
Tavi felt his jaw tighten. Projecting an image through a watercrafting was a relatively difficult use of furycraft. Projecting several of them was impossi - Well, not impossible, clearly... but very, very improbable. Tavi wasn't sure if Gaius Sextus himself could have managed it.
"She's just standing there," Max said, frowning. "Why is she just standing there?"
"Ferus," Tavi said to one of his guards. "Go back to the camp. Tell Crassus I want every Knight Aeris we have immediately flying reconnaissance out to fifty miles. I want our Knights Terra to patrol out to ten miles and make sure nothing is tunneling toward us. Cavalry is to ride escort, no group smaller than twenty, back before nightfall."
Ferus slammed his fist to his chest and turned his mount to begin working his way out of the Canim camp.
Max grunted. "You think it's supposed to be a distraction?"
Tavi gestured at the crowds. "If it isn't, it's doing a crowbegotten good job of it. No reason to take chances. Come on." Tavi nudged his horse forward until he was standing next to Varg and Nasaug.
"Morning," Varg said, studying the watersending.
"Good morning," Tavi replied.
"I ordered my fastest ships put out to sea already," Varg replied. "Borrowed some of your witchmen to go along and keep an eye on the ocean."
Many of the watercrafters who professionally used their talents to conceal ships from leviathans had grown used to the Canim during the pair of voyages over the past six months. Canim in general were not disposed to admiration of furycrafting, but their ships' crews had been more than mildly impressed with the skills of the witchmen. "You think they're coming in by sea?"
Varg's ears twitched in an ambivalent motion, a Cane gesture that meant more than a shrug but less than "no." "I think that the Queen had to come back here after she went to Canea. I think she did not use one of our ships. They have carried out operations in all terrain. No reason to take chances."
Tavi nodded. "I sent scouts by land and air."
"Expected you would," Varg said, showing his teeth in a gesture that might have been meant to be an Aleran smile of approval - or a Canim gesture of threat. Given Varg's personality, Tavi decided it was probably both. Varg knew Tavi well enough to anticipate his reaction and had wanted him to know it. Such ability was an invaluable asset in an ally. In an enemy, it was terrifying.
Max snorted out a breath, and observed, to Nasaug, "You fellows throw out the most complimentary threats of anyone I ever met."
"Thank you," Nasaug said gravely. "It will be an honor to kill one so courteous as you, Tribune Antillar."
Max barked out a belly laugh and bowed his head slightly to one side, showing his throat to Nasaug. The younger Cane's mouth lolled open in a small Canim grin.
They waited in silence for several more minutes as the crowd continued to grow.
"Ah," Tavi said.
Varg glanced at him.
"That's why the Queen hasn't spoken," Tavi explained. "She's causing her image to appear. And she's waiting for word to spread about it, so that there's time for an audience to gather." He frowned. "Which means..."
"Means she can't see through it," Varg rumbled. "She isn't gaining intelligence this way."
Tavi nodded. It would explain how the vord Queen was making multiple images appear. Sending the projection forth wasn't the difficult part of the watersending. Bringing light and sound back from the other side was the difficult part. "She wants to speak to us," Tavi said. "Everyone, I mean. Crows, she must be causing this image to appear in every body of water large enough to support it." Tavi shook his head. "I wish I'd thought of that."
Varg grunted. "Handy, in time of war. Issue orders to the populace. Alert them to enemy movements. Keep your makers from being taken by surprise. Tell them what you need produced, save the time lost to waiting on messengers." Varg narrowed his eyes. "Vord Queen doesn't need any of that, though."
"No," Tavi said. "She doesn't."
"The vord are orderly. Logical. She must have an objective in this."
"She does," Tavi said. He felt his mouth harden into a line. "It's an attack."
The image stirred, and silence fell over the gathering.
The vord Queen lifted her hand in a gesture of greeting. There was something unnatural in the gesture that made it look like a formal motion, as if she was consciously forcing the movements of her joints to adhere to constraints to which she was not accustomed.
"Alerans," she said, and her voice rang out loudly, amplified to be heard for hundreds of yards in every direction. The Canim nearest the pool folded their ears back against their skulls and erupted into a chorus of snarls in reaction to the explosion of sound.
"I am the vord. I have taken the heart of your lands. I have laid siege to your strong places. I have slain your First Lord. You cannot destroy me. You cannot withstand me."
Silence fell for long heartbeats. The vord Queen let the words sink in.
"The vord are eternal. The vord are everywhere. Among the stars, between the worlds, we conquer. We grow. Against us, no victory is possible. You may withstand us for a time, but in ten years, in a hundred years, in a thousand years we will return, stronger and wiser than before. We are inevitable. Your kind is doomed."
Another silence. Tavi looked around at the crowd. Every face was fixed upon the image of the vord Queen. The Alerans looked pale, or sickened, or simply stared in fascination. Canim body language was more difficult to read, but even the wolf-warriors seemed subdued. This was the face of the creature who had all but wiped out their entire civilization - millions upon millions of Canim, entire nations, the smallest of which was nearly half as large as Alera herself.
But regardless of the individual reaction, every person there watched.
They listened.
"I bear you no personal hatred or animosity. I have no desire to inflict pain or suffering upon any individual. I do what I do to protect my children and allow them to prosper. This world is their legacy. They will have it."
The image moved, deliberately lifting her slender, pale hands. She drew back her hood, slowly, to reveal the exotically beautiful face of a young woman - one who looked, in fact, very like Kitai. She had the same high cheekbones, the same long, fine white hair, the same sharp cleanliness of features softened by full lips and wide, canted eyes. But where Kitai's eyes were brilliant green, the vord Queen's eyes were black, faceted like an insect's reflecting the light in a mesmerizing, alien glitter of colors.
"But I am willing to offer you this chance, Alerans. There need not be war between our peoples. I will take your cities. But for those with the wisdom to bow before the tide of history, I will provide places of safety in which you will be permitted to govern yourselves, to support your families, and to live out the natural course of your lives in complete autonomy, save for this: You will not be permitted to bear children. This is within my power.
"The war can end. The fighting can end. The death and famine and suffering can end. I will open the Amaranth Vale to be resettled by your people. And while you are there, you will have my protection. No outsider will be permitted to harm you. The full might of the vord will shield you. My power will allow you to live long lives, free of every pestilence and plague known to your kind.
"I beg you to see reason, Alerans. I offer you peace. I offer you health. I offer you safety. Let the strife between us end. Your leaders have not protected you. Your Legions have been laid waste. Millions of lives have been lost to no purpose. Let it end.
"I make you this offer. Any Aleran who wishes to enter my protection must do only this: Come, unarmed, to any part of the world within the sphere of our control. Tie a band of green cloth around your arm. This will be the signal to my children that you have bowed to the natural order. You will be fed, given care, and transported to places of safety, freedom, and peace."
There was nothing but silence.
Bloody crows, Tavi thought. That's brilliant.
"Fail to set aside your irrational need to continue this conflict, and you will leave me no other choice." Her hands rose to replace the hood, veiling her alien beauty again. Her voice dropped to a quiet, calm, uninflected murmur. "I will come for you."
Tavi stopped himself from shuddering, but only barely. Max didn't bother to try.
"Tell your neighbors. Tell your friends. Tell any who were not here to see that the vord offer you peace and protection."
Silence reigned. No one moved.
Max said, very quietly, "Peace and protection. You think she's serious?"
"No children," Tavi murmured back. "A stranglehold takes longer to kill than does a clean thrust - but it makes you just as dead."
"You don't feel it when you go, either," Max replied.
"At least now I know why," Tavi said.
"Why what?"
"The vord Queen is keeping a steadholt of Alerans captive, near Alera Imperia. Like animals in a zoo. It was an experiment, to see if it could be made to work."
Max blinked at him. "How did you know about that?"
"Crown secret."
Max grimaced. "If everyone heard this, in all Alera... Tavi you know that there are going to be people scared enough to do anything."
"I know."
"If we lose even part of our people to desertion or surrender, it could kill us. We're at the brink."
"That's why she's doing it. I said it was an attack, Max."
Varg looked over at Tavi with narrowed eyes, his ears pricked forward. The Cane was close enough to have heard even their lowered voices.
"What are we going to do about it?" Max sighed. "Crows, look at them."
Everyone, Canim and Aleran alike, stared at the image of the vord Queen. Their fear and uncertainty filled the air like woodsmoke.
"Tavar," Varg growled suddenly. "Your helmet."
Tavi glanced at the Cane. Then he drew his helmet off and passed it over to Varg.
The Warmaster of the Canim leapt up onto the low stone wall on the edge of the pool, helmet in hand. He stalked through the shallow water until he stood before the image of the vord Queen.
Then he swept the helmet in a horizontal arc, catching the water that formed the hooded head of the vord Queen, decapitating the watery image.
Then he flung back his head and drank the helmet empty in a single draught.
Varg rose to his full nine feet in height before roaring, his basso voice a challenge to the volume of the watersending itself, "I AM STILL THIRSTY!" His sword rasped clear of his scabbard as he lifted it high and faced the Canim soldiers. "WHO WILL DRINK WITH ME?"
Thousands of eyes focused on the Warmaster. The silence became something brittle and crystalline, something that was on the brink of shattering, changing. Fear and rage and despair surged in the air, like the confused, shifting winds that preceded a storm or the currents that could rip swimmers in any direction when the tides began to change.
Tavi dismounted and strode forward to stand beside Varg. His hobnailed boots clicked on the stone of the wall and splashed through the water. He took back his helmet from Varg's grasp, swept it through the watery heart of the image of the vord Queen, and drank deeply.
Steel rasped on steel as ten thousand swords sprang free of their sheaths. The sudden, furious roar of the Canim shook the air with such force that the water of the pools danced and jumped as if under a heavy rainstorm. The watersendings could not maintain their integrity in the face of that disruption, and they collapsed, splashing back down into the pools, shaken to bits by the enraged howls of Canim and Aleran alike.
Tavi joined them, shouting in wordless anger, and drew his sword, lifting it high.
The storm of approval from the Canim redoubled, making the plates of Tavi's lorica vibrate and rattle against one another, resolving into a thundering chant of, "VARG! TAVAR! VARG! TAVAR!"
Tavi exchanged a Canim salute with Varg, then turned and went back to his horse. He mounted up on the dancing, nervous animal and beckoned Max and his second guard. As they rode from the Canim camp, the crowd, still howling his Canim name, parted before and around them in an armored sea of swords and fangs and wrath.
Tavi kicked his mount into a run and headed back to the First Aleran's camp.
"What are we going to do?" Max called as they rode.
"What we always do when the enemy attacks us," Tavi said. He bared his teeth in a wolfish smile. "We're going to hit back."
Chapter 6
Invidia entered the massive, dome-shaped structure where the vord Queen took a daily meal and shuddered as she always did. The walls were made of faintly glowing green croach. There were swirls and mounds of it everywhere, splayed into abstract shapes that were both beautiful and revolting. The ceiling stretched fifty feet overhead, and Invidia could have used the massive space beneath it to teach a class in flying.
Spiderlike creatures, the keepers, swarmed over the croach, their many-legged, translucent bodies fading eerily into the ambient glow of the walls, floor, and ceiling. If a keeper wasn't moving, one could all but stumble over it, so well did they blend with the massive construction. Hundreds of the creatures swarmed through the place, climbing smoothly up the walls and across the ceiling, a constant and irritating motion.
In the center of the dome was the high table from the banquet hall of the High Lord of Ceres along with its chairs. It was a gorgeously carved, massive construct of Rhodesian oak, a gift to the current High Lord's great-grandfather. One could have seated half a cohort of legionares along its length without once hearing armored shoulder plates click together.
The vord Queen sat at one end of the table, her hands folded primly upon its tablecloth. The tablecloth was grimy, stained with the great furies only knew what fluids, and had not been cleaned.
The Queen made a gesture with one pale hand to the seat on her left.
Invidia's customary seat was at the Queen's right hand.
If Invidia had, for some reason, been replaced, she knew it was unlikely that she would leave the dome alive. She controlled an urge to moisten her lips and focused upon her body, preventing her heart from racing faster, her skin from breaking into a cold sweat, her pupils from contracting.
Calm. She had to remain calm, confident, and competent - and most of all, useful. The vord had never heard of such a thing as a retirement. Unless one counted being buried alive and dissolved by the croach.
Invidia walked across the floor, nudging a slow-moving keeper out of her way with one foot. She sat down beside the Queen. She had to survive the meal. Always, survive. "Good evening."
The Queen stared down the table and was silent for a moment, her alien eyes unreadable. Then she said, "Explain the gestures Alerans make to show respect to their superiors."
"In what sense?" Invidia asked.
"Soldiers do this," the Queen said, lifting her fist to her heart and lowering it again. "Citizens bend at the waist. Mates press their mouths together."
"The last isn't quite a gesture of respect," Invidia said, "though the others are. They are an acknowledgment of the other's status. Such an acknowledgment is considered to be necessary and favorable to the order of society."
The Queen nodded once, slowly. "They are gestures of submission."
Invidia did arch an eyebrow this time. "I had never really considered them such. However, that is a valid description, if an incomplete one."
The Queen turned her unsettling eyes to Invidia. "Incomplete in what sense?"
Invidia considered her answer for a moment before saying, "Gestures of deference and respect are far more than simply acknowledging the greater power of another. By accepting such a gesture, the person who receives it also acknowledges an obligation in return."
"To do what?"
"To protect and assist the person making the gesture."
The Queen's eyes narrowed. "He who holds the greatest power has obligation to none."
Invidia shook her head. "But no matter how powerful an individual may be, he is only a part of a greater whole. Gestures of respect are a mutual acknowledgment of that fact - that both the giver and the receiver are part of something greater than they, each with his role to play within the whole."
The vord Queen frowned. "It... acknowledges the need for structure. For order. That for the good of all, that which must be, will be. It signifies acceptance of one's part of that order."
Invidia shrugged. "At its core, yes. Many Alerans never give such gestures any serious consideration. They are simply a part of how our society functions."
"And if such a gesture is not given, what results?"
"Unpleasantness," Invidia replied. "Depending upon the person who has been slighted, there could be repercussions ranging from retaliatory insults to imprisonment to a challenge to the juris macto."
"Justice by combat," the Queen said.
"Yes," Invidia replied.
"The rule of strength over the rule of law. It seems to reject the ideals of Aleran social order."
"On the surface. But the fact of the matter is that some Alerans are a great deal more powerful, in a direct and personal sense, than nearly all of the rest. Attempting to force a particular behavior out of such individuals by any direct means could lead to an equally direct conflict, in which a great many people could be harmed."
The Queen considered that for a moment. "Thus, indirect means are used to avoid such situations. The lesser are encouraged to avoid provoking a direct confrontation from one of greater power. Those of great power must consider the possibility of direct conflict with someone who is their equal before taking action."
"Precisely," Invidia replied. "And the safest way to manage conflicts is through the rule of law. Those who too often ignore the law in favor of the juris macto become outcasts within the society and run the risk of another Citizen taking matters into his own hands."
The Queen folded her hands on the tabletop and nodded. "Among the vord," she said, "we rarely contemplate indirect means of conflict resolution."
Invidia frowned. "I had not realized that any internal conflict existed among your kind."
The Queen's expression flickered with something that was both chagrined and sullen. "It is rare." Then she straightened, cleared her throat - an artificial sound, since as far as Invidia could tell, she never did it at any other time - and asked, "How was your day?"
It was the signal to begin the ritual of dinner. Invidia never grew any more comfortable with it, despite the repetition. She replied politely and made inane, pleasant conversation with the Queen for a few moments as the wax spiders, the keepers, trooped toward the table bearing plates, cups, and cutlery. The insectlike vord swarmed up the table's legs in neat ranks, setting a place for the Queen, for Invidia...
... and for someone who was apparently to sit at the Queen's right hand. The empty chair with its empty plate setting was unnerving. Invidia covered her reaction by turning to watch the rest of the keepers bringing forth several covered platters and a bottle of Ceresian wine.
Invidia opened the bottle and poured wine into the Queen's glass, then into her own. Then she looked at the glass in front of the empty seat.
"Pour," the Queen said. "I have invited a guest."
Invidia did so. Then she began uncovering platters.
Each platter bore a perfectly square section of the croach. Each was subtly different than the next. One looked as if it had been baked in an oven - badly. The edges were black and crisp. Another had sugar sprinkled over its surface. A third was adorned with a gelatinous glaze and a ring of ripe cherries. A fourth had been coated with what had once been melted cheese - but it had been scorched dark brown.
Invidia sliced each piece into quarters, then began to load the Queen's plate with a single square from each platter. After that, she served herself the same.
"And our guest," the Queen murmured.
Invidia dutifully filled the third plate. "Whom are we entertaining?"
"We are not entertaining," the Queen replied. "We are consuming food in a group."
Invidia bowed her head. "Who is to be our companion, then?"
The Queen narrowed her insect eyes until only glittering black slits were visible. She stared down the length of the enormous table, and said, "She comes."
Invidia turned her head to look as their guest entered the glowing green dome.
It was a second queen.
It shared its features with the Queen: Indeed, it might have been her twin sister - a young woman little older than a teenager, with long white hair and the same glittering eyes. There, the similarities ended. The younger queen prowled forward with alien grace, making no effort at all to mimic the motion of a human being. She was completely naked, and her pale skin was covered in a sheen of some kind of glistening, greenish mucus.
The younger queen walked forward to the table and stopped a few feet away, staring at her mother.
The Queen gestured to the empty chair. "Sit."
The younger queen sat. She stared across the table at Invidia with unblinking eyes.
"This is my child. She is newly born," said the Queen to Invidia. She turned to the young queen. "Eat."
The younger queen considered the food for a moment. Then she grasped a square in her bare fingers and stuffed it into her mouth.
The Queen observed this behavior, frowning. Then she took up her fork and began cutting off dainty bites with it, eating them slowly. Invidia followed the elder Queen's lead and ate as well.
The food was... "revolting" fell so far of the mark that it seemed an injustice. Invidia had learned to eat the raw croach. The creature keeping her alive needed her to ingest it in order to feed itself. She had been startled to learn that it could taste even worse. The vord had no grasp of cooking. The very notion was alien to them. As a result, they couldn't really be expected to do it very well - but that evening they had perpetrated nothing short of an atrocity.
She choked the food down as best she could. The elder Queen ate steadily. The younger queen was finished within two minutes and sat there staring at them, her expression unreadable.
The younger queen then turned to her mother. "Why?"
"We partake of a meal together."
"Why?"
"Because it might make us stronger."
The younger queen absorbed that in silence for a moment. Then she asked, "How?"
"By building bonds between us."
"Bonds." The younger queen blinked slowly, once. "What need is there for restraints?"
"Not physical bonds," her mother said. "Symbolic mental attachments. Familiar feelings."
The young queen absorbed that for half a dozen heartbeats. Then she said, "These things do not improve strength."
"There is more to strength than physical power."
The young queen tilted her head. She stared at her mother, then, unnervingly, at Invidia. The Aleran woman could feel the sudden heavy, invasive pressure of the young queen's awareness impinging upon her thoughts. "What is this creature?"
"A means to an end."
"It is alien."
"Necessary."
The young queen's voice hardened. "It is alien."
"Necessary," repeated the elder Queen.
Again, the young queen fell silent. Then, her expression never changing, she said, "You are defective."
The enormous table seemed to explode. Splinters, some of them six inches long and wickedly sharp, flew outward like arrows. Invidia flinched instinctively, and barely managed to get her chitin-armored forearm between her and a flying spear of wood that might have plunged through her eye.
Sound pressed so hard against Invidia's eardrums that one of them burst, a wailing thunderstorm of high-pitched, shrieking howls. She cried out at the pain and reeled out of her chair and back from the table, borrowing swiftness from her wind furies as she went, embracing the weirdly altered sense of time that seemed to stretch instants into seconds, seconds into moments. It was the only way for her to see what was happening.
The vord queens were locked in a fight to the death.
Even with the windcrafting to aid her, Invidia could barely follow the movements of the two vord. Black claws flashed. Kicks flew. Dodges turned into twenty-foot bounds that ended at the nearest wall of the dome, whereupon the two queens continued their struggle while crouched on the wall, bounding and scuttling up the dome like a pair of dueling spiders.
Invidia's eyes flicked to the ruined table. It lay in pieces. A ragged furrow was torn through one corner, where the younger queen had surged forward, plunging through the massive hardwood table as if it had been no more a hindrance than a mound of soft snow. Invidia could scarcely imagine the tremendous power and focus that would be required for such a thing to happen - from a creature who had been born, it would seem, less than an hour before.
But swift and terrible as the young queen might have been, the match was not an even one. Where claws struck the elder Queen, sparks flew from her seemingly soft flesh, turning the attack aside. But where the younger queen was hit, flesh parted, and green-brown blood flew in fine arcs. The vord queens fought a spinning, climbing, leaping duel at a speed too swift to be seen clearly, much less interfered with, and Invidia found herself tracking the motion simply to know when she might need to leap out of the way.
Then the elder Queen made a mistake. She slipped on a slickened spill of the younger queen's blood, and her balance faltered for a fraction of a second. There was not time enough for the young queen to close in for a more deadly blow - but it was more than time enough for her to dart behind the elder Queen and seize the fabric of the dark cloak. With a twisting motion, she wrapped the cloak around the elder Queen's throat and leaned back, pulling with both frail-seeming arms, tightening the twisted fabric like a garrote against her mother's neck.
The elder Queen bent into a sinuous bow, straining against the strangling cloth, her expression quite calm as her dark eyes fell with a palpable weight upon Invidia.
The Aleran woman met her eyes for a pair of endless seconds before she nodded once, rose, lifted her hand, and with an effort of will and furycraft caused the air within the nose, mouth, and lungs of the young queen to congeal into a nearly liquid mass.
The response was immediate. The younger queen twisted and writhed in sudden agony, still holding on desperately to the twisted cloak.
The elder Queen severed it with a slash of her claws, slipped free, turned, and with half a dozen smoothly savage movements tore the younger queen open from throat to belly, removing organs along the way. It was calmly done, the work of an old hand in a slaughterhouse more than the intense uncertainty of a battle.
The young queen's body fell limp to the floor. The elder Queen took no chances. She dismembered it with neat, workmanlike motions. Then she turned, as if nothing at all had happened, and walked back to the table. Her chair remained in its place though the table had been ruined.
The Queen sat down in her chair and stared forward, at nothing.
Invidia walked slowly over to her side, righted her own fallen chair, and sat down in it. Neither of them spoke for a time.
"Are you hurt?" Invidia asked, finally.
The Queen opened her mouth, then did something Invidia had never seen before.
She hesitated.
"My daughter," the Queen said, her voice a near whisper. "The twenty-seventh since returning to Alera's shores."
Invidia frowned. "Twenty-seventh...?"
"Part of our... nature..." The vord shivered. "Within each queen is an imperative to remain separate. Pure. Untainted by our contact with other beings. And to remove any queen that shows signs of corruption. Beginning several years ago, my junior queens have universally attempted to remove me." Her face was touched by a faint frown. "I do not understand. She did no physical harm to me. Yet..."
"She hurt you."
The Queen nodded, very slowly. "I had to remove their capacity to produce more queens lest they gather numbers to remove me. Which has hurt us all. Weakened us. By all rights, this world should have been vord five years ago." Her eyes narrowed, and she turned her faceted gaze upon Invidia. "You acted to protect me."
"You hardly needed it," Invidia said.
"You did not know that."
"True."
The vord Queen tilted her head, studying Invidia intently. She braced herself for the unpleasant intrusion of the Queen's mind - but it did not come.
"Then why?" the Queen asked.
"The younger queen clearly would not have permitted me to live."
"You might have struck at both of us."
Invidia frowned. True enough. The two queens had been so intent upon one another, they would hardly have been able to react to a sudden attack from Invidia. She could have called up fire and obliterated them both.
But she hadn't.
"You could have fled," the Queen said.
Invidia smiled faintly. She gestured to the creature latched upon her chest. "Not far enough."
"No," the vord said. "You have no other place to go."
"I do not," Invidia agreed.
"When something is held in common," the Queen asked, "is it considered a bond?"
Invidia considered her answer for a moment - and not for the benefit of the Queen. "It is often the beginning of one."
The vord looked at her fingers. Their dark-nailed tips were stained with the younger queen's blood. "Do you have children of your own?"
"No."
The Queen nodded. "It is... unpleasant to see them harmed. Any of them. I am pleased that you are not distracted by such a thing at this time." She looked up and squared her shoulders, straightening her spine - mirroring Invidia herself. "What is the proper Aleran etiquette when an assassination interrupts dinner?"
Invidia found a small smile on her mouth. "Perhaps we should repair the furniture."
The vord tilted her head again. "I do not have that knowledge."
"When my mother died, my father apprenticed me to all the finest master artisans of the city for a year at a time. I think mainly to be rid of me." She rose and considered the broken table, the scattered splinters. "Come. This is a more demanding discipline than flying or calling fire. I will show you."
They had just sat back down at the repaired table when the whistling, trilling alarm shrieks of wax spiders filled the air.
The Queen came to her feet at once, her eyes opening very wide. She stood perfectly still for a moment, then hissed, "Intruders. Widespread. Come."
Invidia followed the Queen outside into the moonlit night, onto the gently luminous croach that spread around the enormous hive. The Queen started downslope, pacing swiftly and calmly, as the trilling alarm continued to spread.
Invidia heard angry, high-pitched buzzing sounds unlike anything she had encountered. The creature on her chest reacted to them uneasily, shifting its many limbs and sending anguish pouring through her body in a fire that threatened to rob her of breath. She fought to continue walking in the Queen's shadow without stumbling, and finally had to put her hand to her knife and draw upon a pain-numbing metalcrafting to let her continue.
They came to a broad pool of water that had gathered at the center of a shallow valley. It was no more than a foot deep and perhaps twenty across. The shallow waters teemed with the larval forms of the takers.
Standing upon the waters in the center of the pool was a man.
He was tall, half a head over six feet at least, and was dressed in gleaming, immaculate legionare's armor. His hair was dark, cropped short in a soldier's cut, as was his beard, and his eyes were intensely green. There were fine scars visible on his face, and upon him they looked as much like a military decoration as the scarlet cloak secured to his armor with the blue-and-scarlet eagle insignia of the House of Gaius.
Invidia found herself drawing in a sharp breath.
"Who?" the Queen demanded.
"It... it looks like..." Septimus. Except for the eyes, the man at the center of the pool was almost identical to her onetime fianc��. But it could not be him. "Octavian," she said finally, all but snarling the word. "This must be Gaius Octavian."
The vord Queen's claws made a quiet, sickly-stretchy sound as they elongated.
The watery image was in full color, an indicator of excellent control of furycraft. So. The cub had grown into a wolf after all.
The strange buzzing sounds continued, and Invidia could see something striking the watery image, small splashes of water leaping up as if a boy had been throwing stones. Invidia called upon her windcrafting to slow the motion of the objects, to focus more closely upon them. Upon closer inspection, they appeared to be hornets. They were not hornets, of course, but seemed to be of the same general wickedly swift and quietly threatening appearance. Their bodies were longer, and sported two sets of wings, and they flew faster than any hornet and in perfectly straight lines. As she watched, one of the hornet-things struck at the water image, its abdomen bending forward to expose a gleaming, serrated spear of vord chitin as long as Invidia's index finger. It hit the water image with an explosion of force and came tumbling out the other side to fall stunned into the water.
Invidia shivered. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of the things swarming out from innocuous lumps in the croach.
"Enough," the Queen said, raising a hand, and the series of impacts came to an abrupt halt. The buzzing hums ceased, as did the trilling shrieks of the wax spiders, and silence fell. The surface of the pool rippled as thousands of larval takers came up to tear at the bodies of the stunned hornets.
The Queen stared at the image in silence. Minutes passed.
"He copies us," the Queen hissed.
"He understands why we chose to appear this way," Invidia replied. She looked down the shallow valley, focusing upon her windcrafting to magnify her sight of the next larval pool. An image of Octavian stood there as well. "He means to address all of Alera, as we did."
"He is that strong?" the Queen demanded.
"So it would seem."
"You told me his gifts were stunted."
"It would appear that I was mistaken," Invidia replied.
The Queen snarled and stared at the image.
A moment later, it finally spoke. Octavian's voice was a resonant, mellow baritone, his expression calm, his posture confident and steady. "Greetings, Alerans, freemen and Citizens alike. I am Octavian, son of Septimus, son of Gaius Sextus, the First Lord of Alera. I am returned from my journey to Canea and have come to defend my home and my people."
The vord Queen let out a rippling hiss, an utterly inhuman sound.
"The vord have come, and have dealt us a grievous wound," Octavian continued. "We mourn for those who have already perished, for the cities that have been overrun, for the homes and lives that have been destroyed. By now, you know that the enemy has overrun Alera Imperia. You know that all of the great cities still standing face imminent attack if they are not besieged already. You know that the vord have cut off tens of thousands of Alerans from retreat to safety. You know that the croach is growing to devour all that we know and all that we are."
Octavian's eyes flashed with sudden fire. "But there are other things that you do not know. You do not know that the Legions of the Shield cities have united with those gathered from other cities into the largest, most experienced, battle-hardened force ever fielded in the history of our people. You do not know that every Knight and Citizen of the Realm has banded together to fight this menace, under the leadership of my brother, Gaius Aquitainus Attis. You do not know that not only is this war not over - it has not yet begun.
"For two thousand years, our people have worked and fought and bled and died to secure the safety of our homes and families. For two thousand years, we have persevered, survived, and conquered. For two thousand years, the Legions have stood as our sword and shield against those who would destroy us."
Octavian threw back his head, his eyes harder than stone, his expression as calm and fixed as the granite of a mountain. "The Legions are still our sword! They are still our shield! And they will defend us from this threat as they have all the others. In a thousand years, when the histories are read, they will mark this season as the deadliest of our time. And in a thousand years, they will still know of our valor, our strength. They will know that the House of Gaius gave their lives and blood, fought with sword and fury against this foe, and that all of Alera stood with us! They will know that we are Alerans! And that this land is ours!"
A surge of emotion rolled over Invidia, so intense that she staggered to one knee. It combined exaltation and hope and terror and rage, all bound together so inextricably that they could not be separated from one another. She fought to strengthen her metalcrafting, to blunt the impact of the emotions, and realized with some dull, dazed corner of her mind that the tide was flowing over her from the direction of the little captive steadholt.
Octavian continued, his voice harder and quieter than before. "Like you, I saw the face of the enemy. I saw her offer you peace. But be sure, my country-men, that all she offers is the peace of the grave; that she offers nothing less than the utter destruction of all of our kind, both those living today and those who have gone before us. She asks us to lie meekly upon the earth and wait for our throats to be cut, to bleed painlessly to the death of our entire race."
His voice turned gentle. "I say to you this: The freemen of Alera are free. They are free to do as they think best. They are free to take what measures they wish to ensure the safety of their loved ones. Especially for those folk caught behind the lines, it is understandable that some of you may seek the safety of surrender. That is a choice you must make within your own hearts. When the vord are defeated, no recrimination will be levied, regardless of your decision.
"But as for you, Citizens of the Realm, who have for so long enjoyed the power and privilege of your station, the time for you to prove your worth has come. Act. Fight. Lead those who would stand beside you. Any Citizen who surrenders to the vord will, in the eyes of the Crown, be considered a traitor to the Realm.
"I can promise you only this: Those who fight will not fight alone. You are not forgotten. We will come for you. My grandfather fought the vord tooth and nail. He fought until he died to protect the lives of his people. Gaius Sextus set the standard by which our posterity will judge us all. I will not accept less from any other Citizen of the Realm. Not from you. Not from myself.
"Our foe is mighty but not invulnerable. Tell your friends and neighbors what you have heard here tonight. Stand. Fight. We will come for you. We will survive." The image fell silent for a moment - and then, unnervingly, turned to stare directly at the vord Queen. "You."
Invidia took a short breath and checked the other pools.
The water images had disappeared.
"That's him," Invidia hissed. "It is Octavian's sending."
"You," Octavian said, staring at the vord Queen. "You killed my grandfather."
The vord Queen lifted her chin. "Yes."
"I offer you this chance," Octavian said, and his voice was cold, calm, and all the more menacing for it. "Leave Alera. Flee back to Canea. Take with you any of your kind you wish to survive."
The Queen smiled with the tiniest twitch of a single corner of her mouth. "Why should I do that?"
"Because I'm coming," Octavian's image said, very quietly, "for you."
The Queen stood as unmoving as stone.
"When I'm finished," Octavian promised, "nothing will be left of your kind but stories. I will burn your homes. I will bury your warriors." His voice grew even softer. "I will blacken your sky with crows."
Gaius Octavian's image sank with perfect, controlled grace into the water.
And then he was gone.
The pool was very still.
The vord Queen lifted her hands and slowly drew up her hood. Then she resettled her cloak around her though Invidia knew perfectly well that she was all but unaffected by temperature. The vord didn't move for several moments - then, abruptly, she let out a hiss and turned, bounding into the air and summoning up a gale of wind to bear her aloft, streaking toward the little steadholt.
Invidia called upon her furies to race after the Queen and caught up to her by the time they had reached the steadholt. They descended together, landing in the central yard. The Queen streaked toward one of the homes, smashed the door to splinters, and darted inside.
Invidia braced herself, her stomach twisting in agonized anticipation. She wished those poor holders no ill - but she could do nothing to save them from the Queen's wrath.
Crashing sounds came from inside the house. Then a wall exploded outward, and the Queen smashed her way into the cottage next door. Again came the sounds of furious destruction. Then the Queen smashed her way into the next cottage. And the next. And the next, moving so swiftly that there was no time for screams.
Invidia drew a deep breath. Then, deliberately, she forced herself to walk to the first house - the one with the little family they had visited weeks before. Invidia could have killed the Queen earlier that evening. If she had, those holders might not have died. The least she could do for them was force herself to look upon what she had wrought by her inaction.
Stones crunched beneath the chitin armoring her feet as she approached, smelling the woodsmoke of the makeshift family's fire. She steeled herself for a moment against what she would see, then stepped through the front door.
The kitchen table was smashed. Pots were strewn everywhere. Broken dishes littered the floor. Two windows had been shattered.
And the little house was empty.
Invidia stared in incomprehension for a moment. Then, in dawning realization, she rushed back out the door and went to the next house.
As empty as the first.
She left the cottage and studied the ground. The stones that crunched beneath her feet were not stones. They were the bodies of hundreds of the vord hornets, their stingers still extended in death, shattered, bent, and twisted.
The vord Queen let out a furious wail, and redoubled sounds of destruction came from inside another home. Within seconds, the place simply collapsed in on itself, and the Queen emerged from it, her alien eyes strange in her furious features, tossing aside a crossbeam as thick as her thigh and several hundred pounds of stone with a flick of one arm.
"Tricked," hissed the Queen. "Tricked. While I listened to his words, he took my steadholt away from me!"
Invidia said nothing. She fought to keep herself calm. She had never seen the vord Queen so angry. Not while she was disemboweling her traitorous child. Not when Gaius Sextus had all but annihilated her army at Alera Imperia. Never.
Invidia was well aware that she was one of the most dangerous human beings on the face of Carna. She also knew that the vord Queen would tear her apart without growing short of breath. She focused on being silent, calm, and part of the background. The raid had been flawless. Octavian had not only let his image stand there to give Alerans time to gather - he had used it to trigger any defenses around the little steadholt, revealing them to the raiders. Once aware of the vord hornets, his men had evidently been able to circumvent them.
She'd sensed the rescue attempt when it had begun. The surge of hope from the other side of the hill. And she'd assumed it was a result of his speech and actually spent effort blocking it out.
She thought it would be best not to mention that fact to the near-berserk Queen. Ever.
"He took the dogs," the Queen snarled. "He took the cat. He took the livestock. He left me nothing!" She looked around her, at the empty shell of the steadholt, and with a gesture of one hand disintegrated a cottage in a sudden sphere of white-hot fire.
Pieces of molten stone flew everywhere. Some of it arched high enough to come raining down like falling stars, several seconds later.
Then the Queen went still again. She stayed that way for a moment and turned abruptly to begin stalking toward the nearest edge of the croach. She made a curt gesture to the Aleran woman as she went.
Invidia fell into step behind the Queen. "What will you do?"
The vord looked over her shoulder at Invidia, her fine white hair in wild disarray, her pale cheek smudged with soot and dust and earth. "He has taken from me," she hissed, her voice quavering with alien rage. "He has hurt me. He has hurt me." Her claws made that stretching-tearing sound again. "Now I will take from him."