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Fidelias flinched His grimace darkened to a scowl
Odiana looked back and forth at the sudden silence and then offered, in a helpful tone, "Shall I fetch the branding irons, then?"
Fidelias turned to theh, for the moment" He focused his eyes on Aldrick and said, "Give et her to see coarded Fidelias with a steady gaze and then shrugged "Very well,&039;&039; he said "Love, would you?"
Odiana stepped around Aldrick&039;s stool, eyes focused intently upon Fidelias "Do you intend to assist her in any way or to atte ish to know?"
Fidelias&039;s mouth quirked up at the corner, and he focused on the water witch "Yes, I do No, I don&039;t The sky is green I am seventeen years old My real name is Gundred" The woman&039;s eyes widened, and Fidelias tilted his head to one side "You can&039;t tell if I&039;, &039;love? I&039;er than you since before you were born" His gaze flicked past Odiana to Aldrick "It&039;s in et her to talk In for a sheep, in for a gargant"
The swords to offer me your word of honor?"
The Cursor&039;s lip curled "Would it matter if I did?"
"I&039;d have killed you had you tried," Aldrick said "A quarter hour No ently by one arlare at both Fidelias and Amara and then left
Fidelias waited until they were gone, then turned to A
"Why?" she asked him "Patriserus Why would you do this to hi "I have served as a Cursor for forty years I have no wife No fa and defending the Crown Carrying itsits enemies&039; secrets" He shook his head "And I have watched it fall For the past fifteen years, the house of Gaius has been dying Everyone knows it What I have done has only prolonged what is inevitable"
"He is a good First Lord He is just And as fair as anyone could want"
"This isn&039;t about what&039;s right, girl It&039;s about reality And the reality is that Gaius&039;s fairness and justice has h Lords chafe at the taxes he lays upon theion"
"They always have," Ae that the taxes are necessary The Shieldwall protects them as well Should the icemen come down from the north, they would perish with the rest of us"
"They do not see it that way," Fidelias said "And they are willing to do so about it The House of Gaius is weakened He has no heir He has named no successor So they strike"
Amara spat, "Attica Who else?"
"You don&039;t need to know" Fidelias crouched down in front of her "Amara Think about this Ever since the Princeps was killed, it has been inwith Septimus The royal line was never very fertile-and the death of his only child has been taken as a sign by many His tiht"
Fidelias snarled, "Get it out of your head, child" He spat on the ground, face twisted in fury "The blood I&039;ve shed in the Crown&039;s service The ht? Are their deaths vindicated because I serve this First Lord or that one? I&039;ve killed I&039;ve done worse, in the na can stop that now"
"And you have cast yourself in the role of what, Fidelias? The slive that rushes in to poison the wounded buck? The crow that soars down to peck at the eyes of helpless men not yet dead?"
He looked at her, eyes flat, and gave her a s "It&039;s easy to be righteous when you are young I could continue to serve the Crown Perhaps prolong the inevitable But how many e nothing but the
ti Children, like you, would co"
Amara let her voice resonate with conte me"
Fidelias&039;s eyes flashed "Make this easy on yourself, Amara Tell us ant to know"
"Go to the crows"
Fidelias said, without anger, "I&039;ve broken er than you Don&039;t think that because you&039;re my student, I won&039;t do it to you" He knelt down to look her in the eyes "Amara I&039;m the saether Please" His hand reached for her grirasp "Think about this You could throith us We could help ain"
She returned his gaze, steady Then said, very quietly, "I&039;ht you were, too"
His eyes hardened like ice, brittle, distant, and he stood up A at his boot "Fidelias," she said, pleading "Please It isn&039;t too late We could escape, now Bring word back to the Crown and end this threat You don&039;t have to turn away Not from Gaius And" She sed and blinked back tears "And not from me"
There was a pained silence
"The die is cast," Fidelias said, finally "I&039; his leg frorasp, and walked out of the tent
Amara stared after him for a moment, then looked down, to where she had palmed the knife Fidelias always kept in his boot, the one he didn&039;t think she knew about She shot a glance up to the tent, and as soon as the flap fell, she started attacking the dirt that pinned her She heard voices talking outside, too quietly to be understood, and she dug furiously
Dirt flew She broke it up with the knife and then frantically dug it aith her hands, shoving it away,as little noise as she possibly could-but even so, her gasps for breath grew louder, bit by bit, as she dug
Finally, she was able to h loose earth forward to wriggle She reached out an arround as hard as she could and used it as a piton to pull herself forward, up A sense of elation rushed through her as she strained and wriggled and finally started snaking her way free of the confining earth Her ears sang with a rush of blood and excitement
"Aldrick," snapped the water witch, froirl!"
Amara stumbled to her feet and looked around wildly She lurched across the tent to grasp the hilt of a sword laying across a table, a light glad-ius little longer than her own forearm, and spun, her body still clumsy from its imprisonment, just as a dark shape filled the entry flap to the tent She lunged out at it, ether to drive the point of the sword in a vicious stroke at the heart of the figure in the doorway-Aldrick
Steel glittered Her blade met another and ept aside She felt her point bite flesh, but not much or deeply She knew she had missed
Amara threw herself to one side, as Aldrick&039;s blade rose in a swift counter, and was unable to escape a cut that flashed a sudden, hot agony across her upper left arirl rolled beneath a table and caacross the table "Nice lunge," he commented "You pinked me No one&039;s done that since Araris Valerian" He smiled then, that wolfish show of teeth "But you aren&039;t Araris Valerian"
Amara never even saw Aldrick&039;s bladehum, and then the table fell into two separate pieces The h theladius at him and saw his sword rise up to parry it aside She dove for the back of the tent, now holding only the little knife, and with a quick h it and heard herself whian to run
She flashed a glance behind her as Aldrick&039;s sword opened the back side of the tent in a pair of strokes and he cah after her "Guards!" the swordsate start to swing shut, and she slipped to one side, ran down a rohite tents, gathering up her skirts in one hand, cursing that she hadn&039;t seen fit to disguise herself as a boy so that she could have worn breeches She looked behind her Aldrick still pursued, but she had left hi slive, and she flashed a fierce smile at him
Caked dirt fell off of her as she ran for the nearest wall, and she prayed that she could get enough of it off of her to call to Cirrus A stepladder rose up to the wall&039;s defensive platfor strides, barely touching it with her hand
One of the legionares, a guard on the wall, turned toward her and blinked
in shock at her Ae of her hand, let out a shout, and drove her hand into the agging and choking, and she ran past him, to the wall, and looked over
Ten feet down to the ground level, and then another seven or eight feet of ditch lay beneath her A crippling fall, if she didn&039;t land correctly
"Shoot!" someone shouted, and an arrow hissed toward her Arasped the top of the ith one hand, and vaulted it, throwing herself out into empty space
"Cirrus!" she called-and felt the stirring of wind around her, finally Her fury pressed up against her, turned her body to a proper angle, and rushed down beneath her, so that she landed on a cloud of wind and blowing dust rather than on the hard ground of the ditch
A back, stretching, covering the ground in leaps and bounds She ran to the north and the east, away from the practice fields, away froant and its supplies The trees had been cut to make the walls of the encampment, and she had to run across nearly two hundred strides of broken stu fold of her skirts, nearly tripping her She ran on, with the wind always at her back, Cirrus an invisible presence there
A hard, looking back over her shoulder
The gates of the caleaht toward her Aldrick rode at their head, dwarfing the riders nearest hih the trees as fast as she could The branches sighed and ing ominously around her The furies of this forest were not friendly to her-which iven the presence of at least one powerful woodcrafter She would never be able to hide from them in this forest, when the trees themselves would report her position
"Cirrus," Aathered beneath her and pushed her up off the ground-but branches wove together above her, ether and presented her with a solid screen A, then turound Cirrus softened her fall with an apologetic whisper against her ear
A branches everywhere-and the forest was growing darker as the roof of leaf and bough closed overhead The beating of hooves caled back to her feet, the cut on her arain, as the horsemen closed in, behind her
She couldn&039;t have guessed how far she ran Later, she only re fire in her lungs and her limbs that even Cirrus&039;s aid couldn&039;t ease Terror changed to sirees, to a sort of exhausted lack of concern
She ran until she suddenly found herself looking back-and into the eyes of a ionare, not twenty feet away The man shouted and cast his spear at her She stumbled out of the path of the weapon and away from the horseman, into a sudden flood of sunshine She looked ahead of her and found the ground sloping down for noin a sheer cliff that dropped off so abruptly that she could not see how far down it went or as at the bottoionare drew his sword in a rasp of steel and called to his horse The animal responded as an extension of the man&039;s body and pounded toward her
Amara turned without hesitation and threw herself off of the cliff
She spread her arathered beneath her in a rush, as her fury flew to obey, and she felt a sudden, fierce exultation as, with a screaale winds, she shot up, up into the autue that cast dirt up in the face of the unfortunate legionare and set his horse to rearing and kicking in confusion
She flew on, up and away from the camp and paused after a time to look behind her The cliff she&039;d leapt from looked like a toy from there, several miles behind her and one below "Cirrus," she usted and swirled a part of itself into that space, quivering like the waves rising from a hot stone
Aht, until she was peering back at the cliff through her spread hands as though she stood noparty eionare who had seen her described her escape, and Aldrick squinted up at the sky, sweeping his eyes left to right Aaze paused, directly upon her He tilted his head to
the ht from before, and the man simply touched one of the trees
Aion&039;s camp
Half a dozen forms rose up over the treetops, which swayed and danced beneath the winds, as though they had been the bushes in a holtwife&039;s herb garden They turned, and as one, they sped toward her Sun glinted off of steel-arhts Aeris," muttered Amara She sed and let her hands fall Normally, she would have been confident of her ability to outrun them But noounded, and already exhausted in body and spirit, she was not so sure
Amara turned and bade Cirrus to bear her north and east-and prayed that the sun would set before her foes caught up to her