Marcus finished unlacing the armor and shrugged out of it. The surge of relief in his shoulders and neck at the sudden absence of its weight was heavenly. Then he glanced at her, and said, "Oh. It's you."
Lady Aquitaine gave him a very direct look for several long seconds before her lips parted and a low chuckle bubbled from them. "I have missed you, Fidelias. Very few people have nerve enough to offer me insouciance, these days."
"Doesn't Arnos?" he asked her. "The way I hear it, he never shuts his crow-begotten mouth."
"Arnos offers me a number of assets," Lady Aquitaine replied. "Sparkling wit and clever conversation are not among them. Though I will grant that he is skilled enough in... other social pursuits." Her mouth curled into a merrily wicked little smirk-just a schoolgirl, out to amuse herself, all in good fun.
Fidelias didn't believe it for a moment, of course. "My lady, I don't wish to seem rude-"
"But you had late watch last night, and have not slept, I know," she said, her tone turning businesslike. "I, of course, have other concerns as well." She studied him for a moment, then said, "That face you're wearing. It really doesn't suit you, you know. All the scars. The lumpy nose. It's the face of a mindless thug."
Marcus-Fidelias-sat down on the edge of his cot and began unlacing his boots. "I earned this face, as Marcus."
"So I've been told," she replied. "Valiar Marcus is quite the hero of the Realm." Her eyes remained very steady. "I have wondered, from time to time, if you have forgotten that Fidelias is most decidedly not."
Fidelias froze for just a beat, and sudden trepidation made his heartbeat race. He cursed himself for the slip. He'd been soldiering so much, the past two years, that he'd lost some of his edge for intrigue. Lady Aquitaine would have read his reaction as quickly and easily as she might have looked at a playing card. He forced himself to bottle up his emotions as he finished removing his boots. "I know who I am, and what I'm doing," he said quietly.
"I find it odd," she said, "that you have not reported anything to me about this young captain, Rufus Scipio."
Fidelias grunted. "I've reported to you. Young commander, natural talent. He led the Legion through something that should have killed them to a man, and they wouldn't hear of having him replaced with a more experienced commander, after. He's fought a campaign against the Canim that should go into the history books."
Lady Aquitaine lifted an eyebrow. "He's held on to a single city while taking back less than fifty miles of territory from the invaders. That hardly sounds impressive."
"Because you don't know who and what he's done it against," Fidelias said.
"The War Committee does not seem impressed with it."
"The War Committee hasn't stood to battle against an army of fifty thousand Canim with nothing but a half-trained Legion with an understrength corps of Knights to support it."
Lady Aquitaine bared her teeth in a sudden, brilliant smile. "So military. That suits you, I think." Her eyes roamed over him. "And the exercise has agreed with you, it would seem."
Fidelias kept himself from reacting at all, either to her words, to the sudden low fires in her eyes, or to the subtle wave of earthcrafting that swept out from her, sending a quiet, insistent tug of desire flickering through his body. "My lady, please. Your point?"
"My point," she said quietly, every word growing sharper, "is that rumor is running rampant that this young Scipio commands Legions as if born to it. Rumor has it that he has shown evidence of subtle and potent furycrafting, to such a degree that he withstood attacks that all but annihilated the officers of an entire Legion. Rumor has it that he bears a startling resemblance to Gaius Septimus in his youth."
Fidelias rolled one shoulder as his neck cramped again. "Young men in Legion armor, in Legion haircuts, all look pretty much the same, my lady. He's tall, yes. So are a lot of young men. He's a natural talent at command. But he's got less furycraft than I do. He barely passed his basic crafting requirements for his first term in the Legions. You can look them up, in Riva's records."
Lady Aquitaine folded her hands and frowned at him. "I'll have to take a look at him myself, Fidelias. But frankly, he's too well positioned to ignore. He commands the loyalty of an entire Legion, after all-and a Legion that contains not one, but two sons of Antillus Raucus, both of whom possess their father's talents. And he's operated in complete loyalty to Gaius. I'm not prepared to entertain the notion of a bastard of the House of Gaius running loose with that kind of power to support him. Not now." She smiled, and it was a cold, cold thing. "We're almost there. Gaius will fall. I will not have some upstart playing havoc with my plans now."
Fidelias took a slow breath, keeping himself carefully under control. If Lady Aquitaine sensed the sudden turmoil of his emotions now, he was as good as dead. "A reasonable precaution," he said. "What would you have me dor"
"Remain where you are for now," she said, rising. She flicked a hand, idly, and the features of her face melted, changed, and rearranged themselves into a far plainer set of features that looked nothing like her. Her hair changed colors and took on streaks of grey, and her body slumped slightly, as though aging several years within a few seconds. She lifted a bundle of clothing she'd held in her lap, and looked precisely like any of a hundred washerwomen who worked for the Legion-but for the hard shine in her eyes. "And soon," she said, "when the time is right, my dear spy, I'll send you the word."
"To what?" Fidelias asked quietly.
She paused at the tent's flap and looked at him over her shoulder. "Why, to kill him, of course."
Then she was gone, vanishing into the rising bustle of the camp outside his tent.
Fidelias-Marcus-shut the tent flap again and saw that his hands were shaking. He returned to his cot and lay down upon it.
Kill the captain.
If he did not, he wouldn't survive it. Though they eagerly cultivated betrayal in others' retainers, the Aquitaines did not tolerate it among their own. Fidelias knew. He'd killed half a dozen of them himself, at Lady Aquitaines bidding. He'd turned against Gaius Sextus, his liege. He'd betrayed his fellow Cursors. He'd turned upon his own student, and he knew Amara would never forgive him. He'd done it all at her command, because he had believed that she and her husband were the least destructive choice for Alera's future.
That was before he'd met the captain, before the young man had, somehow, hauled survival and victory out of the ashes of chaos and despair-and personally risked his life to save Marcus's own along the way.