"Sire," Cereus said with a nod, closing the door behind him.
"Your Grace," Gaius replied. "A moment." He closed his eyes briefly, then lifted his hand from the wounded Knight. The man lay there pale and still, but his chest was still moving, and he was no longer bleeding. "Thank you."
"No thanks are necessary, sire. Whatever those other jackals want to pretend, Sextus, you are the First Lord of Alera and my lord. I only did my duty."
"Thank you all the same," Gaius replied quietly. "I'm sorry about Vereus. He was a fine young man."
The High Lord glanced out the coach's window at the coming darkness. "Veradis?"
"Safe," Gaius said. "And will be so while I have breath in my body."
Cereus bowed his head. He took a deep breath, and said, "Thank you."
"No thanks are necessary," Gaius said, smiling faintly. "Whatever those jackals want to pretend, I am your lord. Duty flows uphill and down." He frowned again and looked out the window. "I'll have our Legions in position to support Ceres in another week. What can you tell me about the Vord advance?"
Cereus looked up wearily. "That it is accelerating, despite everything we can do."
"Accelerating?" Ehren blurted. "What do you mean?"
The old High Lord shook his head and spoke without any inflection. "I mean, Sir Ehren, my lord, that my city does not have a week.
"The Vord will be upon us in two days."
Chapter 13~14
Chapter 13
Amara held the arrow nocked firmly against the bowstring, and kept enough steady pressure against it to ensure a swift and certain draw, but not too much to tire her arm. It had been a surprisingly difficult skill to learn, at least until she'd developed enough of the proper musculature to use the bow her husband had made for her. She took a slow step forward and put her foot down silently, her eyes focused into the middle distance, at nothing, the way she'd been trained. The forest was almost silent in the stillness just before dawn, but Cirrus, her wind fury, carried every tiny sound to her ears as clearly as if it'd been a voice speaking from directly beside her.
Trees creaked in tiny breaths of wind. Sleeping birds stirred, their feathers rustling. Something scuttled among the higher branches of a tree, probably a squirrel getting an early start on the day, or a night rodent of some kind crawling back to its nest. Something rustled, perhaps a deer making its way through the brush-
- and perhaps not.
Amara focused Cirrus on the sound and located a second rustling, that of cloth on cloth. Not a deer, then, but her target.
She pivoted toward the sound, in perfect silence, moving slowly to keep it, focusing on maintaining her own invisibility. Learning to master the use of the furycrafted cloth had been simpler than she had expected-certainly easier than employing a windcrafted veil. All she had to do was maintain a low level of concentration, focusing on the colors of her surroundings, drawing them in from what she saw, and the cloth would absorb and mimic them, rendering her into little more than a blur of background color. Granted, the original designer of the cloth, an expensive clothier in Aquitaine, had nearly shrieked the skies down when she'd heard how her invention, designed as the absolute pinnacle of wealthy fashion, was to be used.
The thought made Amara smile. Just a little.
She couldn't see anything where her ears told her something should be, but that didn't matter. She drew the bow in a slow, practiced motion, and loosed the arrow.
The arrow flew, swift and straight, and from the empty air appeared a form of blurred color that eventually resolved itself into the shape of her husband. The blunted wooden arrow hadn't been a deadly threat, but as he cast back his own color-shifting cloak and rubbed at his ribs, wincing, Amara found her own side twinging in sympathy.
"Ouch," she murmured, parting her cloak and revealing herself. "Sorry."
He looked around for a moment until he spotted her and shook his head. "Don't be. Well done. What did you think?"
"I had to use Cirrus to track the sound of your movement. I never saw you, not even when I knew where you where."
"Nor I, you, even tracking you with earthcraft. I'd say the cloaks work then," Bernard said, his wince of pain broadening into a grin. "Aquitainus Invidia may not have given a crow's feather about the Realm, but it seems that her fashion sense is going to be of service."
Amara laughed and shook her head. "When that seamstress heard we wanted her to break those gowns down and refashion them into traveling cloaks, I thought she was going to start foaming at the mouth-the more so when one was to be made for you."
Bernard made his way quietly through the brush, as always seeming to pass through it with hardly a branch or leaf disturbed by his presence, despite his size. "I'm sure a liberal dosing of silver and gold eased the symptoms."
"That will be up to Gaius's accountants," Amara said smugly. "I had a letter of credit with the Crown's seal upon it. All she could do was pray that I wasn't some sort of confidence artist watercrafted into the semblance of Calderonus Amara."
Bernard paused for a moment, blinking. "My."
She tilted her head. "What is it?"
"That's... the name of my House."
Amara wrinkled up her nose at him and laughed. "Well, yes, my lord. So it would seem. Your letters are all signed His Excellency, Count Calderonus Bernard, remember?"
He didn't smile in reply. His expression was, instead, very thoughtful. He fell into a pensive silence as they walked back to their camp, after the final tests of their new equipment. Amara walked beside him without saying anything. It never helped Bernard to prod at him while he was forming thoughts. It sometimes took her husband time to properly forge the things in his head into words, but it was-at least usually-worth the wait.
"It's always been a job," Bernard said at last. "My rank. The way being a Steadholder was. Something I did for my livelihood."
"Yes," Amara said, nodding.
He gestured vaguely toward the northeast, toward Riva, and their home in Calderon. "And it's been a place. Garrison. The town, the fortress, the people who lived there. The problems to be solved and so on. Do you follow?"
"I think so."
"Calderonus Bernard was just that fellow who was supposed to make sure everyone had somewhere to go during furystorms," Bernard rumbled. "And who made sure that men with more time on their hands than sense didn't bother people trying to work for a living, and who was trying to build up a lasting peace with his neighbors to the east rather than occasionally being eaten by them."