Chapter 37

Amara watched the vord's first assault go up in flames.

It had all worked more or less according to plan. When the firecrafters had lit the oil-lined little tunnels, the flame had rapidly spread down them, out to a distance of about half a mile, creating a steady source of flame. Black smoke had begun oozing up through the air holes.

Then, when the concealed High Lords sent a vast gale of wind sweeping across the plain, they had exploded. The ground erupted with fire and gouts of shattered coal in long lines spaced about twenty yards apart. Oil had splattered everywhere, along with the coal, and within moments the whole plain had been devoured by fire.

Beside her, Bernard peered through the sightcrafting she held between her outstretched hands. He grunted with satisfaction. "Tavi did this at the Elinarch, only backward," he told High Lord Riva.

"How's that?" Riva asked.

"At the Elinarch," Amara said, to spare her husband's jaw, "he heated the paving stones first, to drive assaulting Canim off them and into the town's buildings. Then he set the buildings on fire."

Riva stared out at the plain of fire before them and shuddered. "Ruthless."

"Indeed," Amara said.

"The boy finishes what he begins," Bernard said. His mouth quirked up at one corner. "His Highness, the boy."

Riva turned to look at the two of them thoughtfully, frowning. "Do you think he's really on the way?"

"Said he was," Bernard said.

"But he has so few men."

Bernard snorted. "Boy didn't have anyone but an unarmed slave with him when he stopped the Marat at Second Calderon." He turned to face Riva and met his eyes. "He says he's coming to fight, believe him."

Lord Riva stared back at Bernard, his eyes thoughtful. Out on the plain, the fires had begun to die down - leaving half a mile of red-hot coals underfoot. The air over the plain wavered madly in the heat. Burning vord chitin smelled utterly hideous, she noted. There was a dull roar of windstreams overhead as the High Lords, their task completed, returned to friendly lines.

"Bernard," Amara said quietly.

Her husband glanced out at the plain and nodded. He turned to Giraldi, and said, "Sound the retreat. We fall back to the next wall."

Giraldi saluted and passed the order along to the trumpeter. Soon, the signal was echoing up and down the length of the wall. Centurions began barking orders. Men began to withdraw down the stairs leading from the walls and form into their units. Marat gargants had rolled up a few moments before, their long, slow steps covering ground rapidly. The wounded were being loaded onto beasts whose saddlecloths had been prepared to carry hurt men safely.

"Count Calderon," Riva said, his voice becoming somewhat stilted and formal, "I realize that our relationship has been... a distant one. And that you have doubtless already worked very hard to prepare the valley's defenses. Nonetheless, I should like to volunteer my skills and those of my engineers to do whatever we can to help."

Bernard eyed him again.

"I'm not a very good soldier, Your Excellency," Riva said. "But I know about building. And some of the finest architects and engineers in the Realm ply their trade in my city."

Bernard glanced at Amara, who smiled very faintly and pretended to be watching for the enemy.

"Be honored, Your Grace," Bernard said. "Giraldi, here, will show you to Pentius Pluvus. He's kept books and schedules for us on this project. He'll know where you and your folks can help the most."

Riva offered Bernard his hand. They clasped forearms briefly, and Riva smiled. "Good luck to you, Count."

Bernard answered him with small, sad smile. "To all of us."

Riva and Giraldi departed. Bernard gave orders to the rest of the command staff to begin the retreat to the tower. Amara moved to stand beside her husband and twined her fingers with his. Bernard stared out at the fields of glowing coals. Grass fires had begun at the edges of the burning coal, where the heat had leached the water from the land nearby.

Beyond the curtains of wavering heat, the vord were massing, moving, flowing like a single being with a million limbs. It was impossible to make out any details, beyond the fact that they were there - and that more and more of them kept coming.

Amara shuddered.

"Shouldn't we go?" she asked her husband.

"There's a little time," Bernard said. "That's the beauty of this plan. It does two things at once. Kills the vord and gives us time to fall back to a stronger position."

He fell silent and resumed staring to the west.

Amara said, very quietly, "You're thinking about Isana."

"She's my sister," Bernard said.

"You heard what Ehren said."

Bernard's expression hardened. He clenched his fist and slammed it into one of the low merlons on the wall. A webwork of cracks shot through it. "The Queen has her."

Amara put her hand on his fist and squeezed gently. Bernard closed his eyes and made a visible effort to relax. His fist came unclenched a moment later.

"I hoped this would draw her out," he whispered. "She'd run from a confrontation, but she might lead us back to Isana."

"The vord Queen is anything but stupid," Amara said. "She must know that we plan to kill her."

Bernard grunted. "We've got to make her come out. Show herself. If we can't do that, this is over."

"I know," Amara said quietly. "But so does she."

Bernard rubbed at his jaw again. "How's Masha?"

"According to Olivia, she's frightened," Amara said. "She knows that there's something bad going on."

"Poor thing," Bernard said. "Too bright for her own good."

"For her own peace of mind, perhaps," Amara said. "Not necessarily the other."

He grunted an agreement. "Suppose we shouldn't waste any more time here." He put two fingers to his lips and let out a sharp whistle. The horses they were riding nickered and came trotting over to the stairs nearest them.

Amara eyed him, smiling a little. "How do you do that?"

"It isn't hard," Bernard said. "You just - "

He stopped talking abruptly as a plume of gaseous white vapor suddenly billowed up from the far side of the field of coal. Amara felt her breath catch in her throat as she watched. The plume thickened, doubling in size and doubling again. At its edges, it became translucent.

"Steam," Amara breathed.

"Watercraft?" Bernard murmured. He looked up. Only a few white, innocent clouds raced across the sky, none of them dropping rain. "How?"

Amara frowned, then said, "They must have diverted a river. Like Aquitaine did at Alera Imperia."

Bernard thought it over for a moment, then nodded. "The Little Goose is about a mile and a half past that last hill. Would it be possible to move it that far?"

Amara tried to picture the intervening terrain in her mind, especially elevation. "It shouldn't be," she said. "We must be thirty or forty feet higher here than at the river's nearest point."

The plume doubled and redoubled again, and the rising column of steam began to approach their position on the wall.

Bernard whistled. "Serious crafting. And they did it far enough out so that even if the Queen was in on it, we'd never come within sight of her. Invidia's idea, you think?"

Amara shrugged. "It would take several crafters working together to accomplish this. Water is heavy. To make it move against its nature that way - I'm not sure if even Sextus could have done it."

Bernard spat on the ground in frustration. "I make it maybe three-quarters of an hour before they can walk right on up to the wall again."

Amara shook her head. "Less."

"Figured we had two, three hours at least." Bernard clenched his jaw and turned to descend the steps toward the waiting horses. "We'd better get moving."

Chapter 38

Tavi had been tricked.

Kitai, of course, had been in on it.

He hadn't meant to sleep, not with so much work left to do securing the city. But between the recent bleeding for Marok and the enormous effort the furycrafting of the Rivan gates had required, he had already been exhausted. And Kitai had been particularly... he searched his thoughts for the proper descriptive word. "Athletic" didn't seem to convey the proper tone. "Insistent," while an accurate description, fell somewhat short in any but the most objective sense. He decided that his language lacked entirely a word sufficient to the task of describing such hungry, joyous, utterly uninhibited passion.

There had been food, at some point, discreetly left on the wagon's seat. Tavi suspected, in retrospect, that it had been laced with a tiny amount of aphrodin, which would explain both his, ah, extreme focus on the evening as well as the nearly comatose state he'd found himself in afterward.

He looked down at Kitai's hair. As he lay on his back, she was pressed up against his flank, her head pillowed on his chest. Her fine white hair veiled her face, except for the softness of her lips. A strong, slender arm draped over his chest. Her leg was half-thrown over his thigh. She was sleeping heavily, occasionally emitting a sound that an uncharitable (and unwise) person might have called a snore.

Tavi closed his eyes in contentment for a moment. Or perhaps they had simply wanted one another that much. Either way, he couldn't find it in himself to be upset about being given a night's... sleep, however duplicitously it had been arranged.

She murmured something in her sleep, and Tavi felt a stirring of vague, flickering emotion from her, rapidly shifting from one feeling to another. She was dreaming. Tavi stroked her hair with one arm and spread his focus, trying to get a sense of the camp around him. If something had gone amiss during the night, there would be some sense of it. And the air itself, the general emotional ambiance in a Legion camp, could tell him a great deal about the state of mind of his soldiers.

There were half a dozen guards posted around the wagon at a distance obviously meant to be discreet, but they couldn't have helped but overhear everything, unless Kitai had remembered to put up a windcrafting. Or one of the men had. Tavi found that fact to be far less embarrassing than he would have a year before.

There were a great many bad things in the world, which perhaps helped put such things into perspective. There was nothing earth-shattering about others knowing that he and Kitai enjoyed one another's company.

The guards were on alert and calm. A pair of valets, nearby, had the sense of men going about routine tasks - making breakfast, then. The general air of the camp was one of anticipation. Fear blended with excitement, rage against the invaders mixed with concern for fellow Alerans. The men weren't stupid. They knew they were about to go to war, but there was not a trace of despair - only anticipation and confidence.

That, by itself, was very nearly the most valuable attribute a Legion could possess. Legion captains had known for years that the expectation of victory breeds victory.

He should get up and get moving, rousing the nearer men, playing the role of a Princeps with boundless power, confidence, and energy. But the simple bedroll felt extremely comfortable. He turned his attention to the warm, relaxed, sleeping presences beside him, and -

Presences?

Tavi sat bolt upright.

"You didn't tell me," Tavi said quietly.

Kitai looked sideways at him, then away. She thrust her arms into the steel-stained padded vest she wore beneath her mail and began to buckle it on.

Tavi pressed gently. "Why didn't you tell me, chala?"

"I should never have come here with you," Kitai said, her voice hard. "I should have remained in my own bedroll, alone. Crows take it, I knew you would sense it if we were together. I was weak."

Tavi heard his own voice gain an angry edge. "Why didn't you tell me, Kitai?"

"Because your people are insane about the birth of children," she snarled. "What may happen! What may not happen! When it must happen, and within what order of events! Circumstances over which they had no control whatsoever dictate how they will be treated for the rest of their lives!" She finished buckling the vest and glared at him. "You should know this. Better than anyone."

Tavi folded his arms and met her gaze. "And how did you expect things to be made better by keeping this from me?"

"I..." Kitai stopped speaking and slithered into her mail shirt, a task made awkward by the cramped space of the wagon. "I did not wish you to aim your further insanity at me."

"Further insanity?" he demanded. "Don't bother with the armor, Kitai. You won't be using it."

She lifted her chin as she began binding her hair back into a tail. "There? You see? Because I carry our child, you expect me to sit quietly in some stone box until it is time to give birth."

"No," Tavi said. "I expect you to keep our..." He tried not to choke over the word. "... child... safe."

"Safe?" Kitai eyed him. "There is no such place, Aleran. Not anymore. Not until the vord are put down. There are only places where it will take longer to die."

Tavi had no real answer to that. He leaned back on his heels and stared at her for a long moment.

"This is why you insisted on a courtship," he said. "On us sleeping apart."

Kitai's cheeks flushed. "It... is another reason, Aleran." She swallowed. "There were many reasons."

Tavi leaned forward and offered her his hand.

She took it.

They held hands for a quiet moment.

"Our child," Tavi said.

She nodded, her eyes wide and difficult to read.

"When did you know?"

"Toward the end of the voyage back from Canea," she said.

"How long?"

She shrugged, and for one of the few times in Tavi's memory, failed to look calm and confident. "Six months. If the father was Marat. But our people and yours... this has never before happened." She swallowed, and Tavi thought that she looked, in that instant, fragile and beautiful, like a flower coated in ice. "I do not know what will happen. No one knows what will happen."

Tavi sat in total silence for a long moment, trying to get his head around such a simple and enormous truth.

He was going to be a father.

He was going to be a father.

A little person was going to come into the world, and Tavi would be his father.

Kitai's fingers stroked over his hand. "Please tell me what you are thinking."

"I'm..." Tavi shook his head, at a loss. "I'm thinking that... that this changes things. This changes everything."

"Yes," Kitai said in a very small voice.

Tavi blinked, then seized both her hands in his. "Not between you and me, Kitai. This doesn't change that."

She searched his eyes, blinked twice, and a tear rolled down each cheek before she remembered her watercrafting and closed her eyes.

Tavi suddenly drew her hard against him so that he could put his arms around her. "Don't," he said quietly. "Don't you dare think you need to hide them from me."

She turned her face against his chest, and her slender arms suddenly tightened on him. He was abruptly reminded that she was very nearly as strong as he was, despite the difference in their sizes. And she was wearing chain mail. Very chilly chain mail. Tavi winced but didn't move.

Kitai left her face against his chest for a time, and her tears, warmer than his ever were, made his skin damp.

"I did not know what you would do," she said a few moments later, her arms never loosening. "What you would think. We didn't do things in the right order."

Tavi was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "You were worried about our child being thought of as a bastard?"

"Of course," she said. "I've seen Maximus's scars. I saw how mad Phrygiar Navaris became. I've seen others who are... who are outsiders. Abused. Because they are not legitimate. As if simply by being born they are guilty of a crime. I did not know what to do."

Tavi was quiet for a time and stroked her hair with one hand. Then he said, "There are two things we could do."

She made a sniffling sound and listened.

"We could arrange things so that the child was not thought of as a bastard," he said.

"How?"

"Oh, we lie, of course. We get married at once and simply say nothing else, and when the child is born we marvel that he - "

"Or she," Kitai interjected.

"Or she must have come early."

"Will that not be found out? A truthfinder would realize that was a story immediately."

"Oh," Tavi said, "everyone would realize it was a story. But no one would say anything about it. It's what is called a 'polite fiction' among people who care about such things. Oh, there might be some sniggering, some remarks made behind our backs, but it wouldn't be seriously challenged."

"Truly?"

"Happens all the time," Tavi said.

"But... but it would still be used against the child. Laughed at behind his back. Used to taunt him - "

"Or her," Tavi interjected.

"Or her," Kitai said. "It will forever be a weakness that someone else will be able to exploit."

"That's up to the child, I daresay," Tavi said.

Kitai considered that for a moment. Then she said, "What other thing might we do?"

Tavi gently tilted her head up to look at him. "We do as we please," he said calmly, "and dare anyone to disagree. We give our child all of our love and support, ignore the law where it could hurt him, and we challenge to the juris macto anyone who tries to do us harm over the issue. We do something for all the bastard children of the Realm, starting with our own."

Kitai's eyes flashed a brighter shade of green as something fierce kindled to life in them. "We can do this?"

"I don't see why not," Tavi said. "I'm going to be the First Lord, after all. Anyone who is going to turn against me will do it regardless of what excuse they use. Anyone who supports me will do so regardless of what order we did things in."

Kitai frowned at him. "Chala," she said quietly, "I do not care about other Alerans. I care about what you will think."

He took her hands between hers, and said, "I am told that a Marat woman's custom is to offer a potential mate a trial by contest before The One."

She smiled slowly. "You've been asking about it?"

"The professor who gave me the assignment was most insistent," he said drily. "I have drawn a few conclusions from this fact."

"Yes?" Kitai asked.

"That since the woman chooses the contest, she has ample opportunity to reject her suitor. If she doesn't care for him, she simply selects a contest at which he is unlikely to prevail. Say, a young woman of Horse doesn't care for the attentions of a Wolf suitor, she challenges him to a horseback race."

Kitai's eyes danced, but her tone and expression were both serious. "The One witnesses the contest. The Marat most worthy prevails. This is known, Aleran."

"Of course," Tavi said. "I doubt that The One cares for his children to be forced to mate with those whom they do not desire."

"Many young Marat males would disagree with you quite loudly. But in this, you are very nearly as wise as a Marat woman," Kitai said solemnly. "Not quite. But very nearly."

"I seem to recall a trial by contest between a certain beautiful young Marat woman and a foolish Aleran youth. It was quite a number of years ago, and the trial was held in the Wax Forest near the Calderon Valley. Dimly though I recall such an ancient time, I seem to remember that the young man was victorious."

Kitai opened her mouth to reply hotly, then seemed to think better of it. She let out a rueful chuckle. "Only because the young woman willed it so."

"How is that any different from any other young Marat woman who wishes to accept a young man as a mate?"

Kitai arched an eyebrow at him. "It..." She tilted her head. "It... is not."

"Well, then," he said. "According to the laws and customs of your people, for which I have the deepest respect, we have been married for a number of years. The child is perfectly legitimate."

Kitai narrowed her eyes, and a smile haunted her lips. "We are not wed. That was not a proper mating trial."

"Why not?" Tavi asked.

"Because it was not intended as such!" Kitai said.

Tavi waved a hand airily. "Intentions count for far less than the consequences of the actions born from them. You are my wife."

"I think not," Kitai said.

"I know," Tavi said solemnly. "But in this, you are less wise than an Aleran male. Still, one must tolerate occasional fits of irrational passion from one's wife. So in your judgment, what needs to happen to make this a proper mating?"

"A proper challenge!" she replied. "You cannot dare think that..." Her voice trailed off, and she said, "Oh."

Tavi arched an eyebrow at her this time and waited.

"You..." She looked down. "You truly think the child is... that this is all right?"

"Why shouldn't it be?" he replied quietly. He dropped the playful, bantering tone. "Kitai, what does it matter what excuse we use to accept the child? So long as the child is welcomed and loved? Isn't that the important thing?"

"Yes," she said simply. She closed her eyes, and said, "Thank you, Aleran."

"There's nothing to thank me for," he said. Then he touched her chin and lifted her eyes to his. "If our child is to be born, Kitai," he said, in little more than a whisper, "I've got to do everything in my power to protect it. I've got to. I can't do anything else. It is who I am. Do you understand?"

"I understand that you mean to leave me behind," she said softly. "To go into this war alone."

"I must," he said. "Kitai, it would kill me if I lost you. But now, it would kill someone else, too."

She shook her head slowly, never blinking. "I will not stay behind, Aleran."

"Why not?"

She was quiet for a moment, thinking. Then she said, "Do you remember when I said that the vord could do nothing to us?"

"Yes," he said.

"Do you know why I said it?"

"No," he said.

She put her hands on his face, and whispered, "Death is nothing to me, chala. Not if we are together. Death is not to be feared." She leaned forward and kissed his mouth, very gently. Then she rested her forehead against his. "Being taken from one another. That terrifies me. It terrifies me. I will go to any wasted wilderness, to any horrible city, into any nightmare to keep you at my side, chala, and never flinch. I never have. But do not ask me to leave you. To send you into danger alone. That, I cannot do. That is who I am. And that is why I did not tell you. Because I knew who you were."

Tavi inhaled slowly, understanding. "Because both of us can't be true to ourselves. Someone has to change."

"How can we stay together in the face of that?" she asked. There was something desperate in the quiet words. "How can you respect me if I abandon my beliefs? How can I respect you if you abandon yours?"

"And how could either of us respect ourselves," Tavi said.

"Yes."

Tavi took a slow breath. Neither spoke for a long time. The noise of the camp around them was growing louder as it began to get ready for the day's march.

"I don't know what to do," Tavi said. "Yet. But there's time. I'll think on it."

"I've had weeks," Kitai said. "I haven't thought of anything."

"It'll take us another two days, maybe more, to reach Calderon. There's time."

Kitai closed her eyes and shook her head. More tears fell. Tavi could feel a nauseating fear in her he had never felt from her before.

"I'll think of something," he said gently. "Take off the armor."

She hesitated.

"It's all right," he said. "Take it off."

She did, very slowly. Tavi helped her unbuckle the vest. He slid it from her. Then he grasped the hem of her shirt and lifted it slowly. With his hands, he guided her lovingly down onto the bedroll again.

Then, very gently, as if he might shatter her to so many chips of ice if he moved without utmost caution, he laid his hand over her belly, spreading his fingertips over her pale skin until his palm rested against her. The child was too small yet to show to the eye. But he closed his eyes and once more could feel the small, contented presence there, within Kitai's own quiet, controlled terror.

"Can you feel? Have you tried?" he asked her.

"I can't," she said, her voice quietly miserable. "I overheard some midwives talking. They said that you can't sense the baby with furycraft when it's in your own body. It's too much like you. And the child is too little to have moved in me yet."

"Give me your hand."

Tavi took Kitai's hand and intertwined her fingers with his. He focused, and his sense of her presence suddenly leapt into something far more vibrant and detailed than simple proximity could accomplish alone. He concentrated on her, then upon the little presence, sharing its warmth and peace with Kitai.

Her green eyes went very wide. "Oh," she said. Her eyes filled with tears. "Oh, chala." She suddenly broke into a smile, still weeping, and let out a quiet little laugh. "Oh, that's beautiful."

Tavi smiled at her and leaned down to kiss her very gently.

The three of them stayed like that, in the quiet, just for a little longer, treasuring that moment. Neither of them said it, but they both knew. Such moments were swiftly growing rarer and rarer.

And, in the next few days, they might even become extinct.