"Then what is?"
Tavi felt his face flush, and he looked away from Lady Placida.
She sighed. "I suggest you be grateful that you are both alive," Lady Placida said. "It's something of a miracle that you are."
"Tavi?" asked Max. His voice was weak, thready.
Tavi turned to his friend immediately. "I'm here. Are you all right?"
"Had worse," Max murmured.
"Maximus," Lady Placida said firmly. "You must be silent until we can get you to a proper bed. Even if it is in a cell. You're badly hurt."
Max shook his head a little. "Need to tell him, Your Grace. Please. Alone."
Lady Placida arched a brow at Max, but then nodded and rose. At her gesture, the fire falcon took wing toward her, vanishing into nothingness as it did. She walked calmly back to the legionares and began speaking with them.
"Tavi," Max said. "Went to Sir Nedus's."
"Yeah?" Tavi leaned closer, his heart pounding in time with his head.
"Attacked outside his house. Sir Nedus is dead. So are the coachmen. The courtesan. So are the cutters."
The bottom fell out of Tavi's stomach. "Aunt Isana?"
"Never saw her, Tavi. She's gone. There was a blood trail. Probably took her somewhere." He started to say something else, but then his eyes rolled back into his head and closed.
Tavi stared numbly at his friend as the legionares gathered around him and carried him away to imprisonment. Afterward, he went to Sir Nedus's manor, to find the civic legion already moving over the grisly scene there. The bodies had all been laid out in a line. None of them were his aunt.
She was gone. Probably taken. She might already be dead.
Max, the only person who could maintain the illusion of Gaius's strength, was in jail. Without his presence as Gaius's double, the Realm might already be destined for a civil war that would let its enemies destroy them entirely. And it was Tavi's decision that had led to it.
Tavi turned and began to walk, slowly and painfully up the streets to the Citadel. He had to tell Killian what had happened.
Because there was nothing else that he could do for either his family, his friend, or his lord.
Chapter 25
Amara woke to the sensation of something small brushing past her foot. She kicked her leg at whatever it was, and heard a faint scuttling sound on the floor. A mouse, or a rat. A steadholt was never free of them, regardless of how many cats or furies were employed to keep them at bay. She sat up blearily and rubbed at her face with her hands.
The great hall of the steadholt was full of wounded men. Someone had gotten the fires going at the twin hearths at either end of the hall, and guards stood by both doors. She rose and stretched, squinting around the hall until she located Bernard at one of the doors, speaking in low voices with Giraldi. She crossed the hall to him, skirting around several wounded on cots and sleeping palettes.
"Countess," Bernard said with a polite bow of his head. "You should be lying down."
"I'm fine," she replied. "How long was I out?"
"Two hours or so," Giraldi replied, touching a finger to the rim of his helmet in a vague gesture of respect. "Saw you in the courtyard. That wasn't bad work for a, uh…"
"A woman?" Amara asked archly.
Giraldi sniffed. "A civilian," he said loftily.
Bernard let out a low rumble of a laugh.
"The survivors?" Amara asked.
Bernard nodded toward the darker area in the middle of the hall where most of the cots and palettes lay. "Sleeping."
"The men?"
Bernard nodded toward the heavy tubs against one wall, upended now and drying. "The healers have the walking wounded back up to fighting shape, but without Harmonus we haven't been able to get the men who were intentionally crippled back up and moving. Too many bones to mend without more watercrafters. And some of the bad injuries…" Bernard shook his head.
"We lost more men?"
He nodded. "Four more died. There wasn't much we could do for them-and two of the three healers left were wounded as well. It cut down on what they could do to help the others. Too much work and not enough hands."
"Our Knights?"
"Resting," Bernard said, with another nod at the cots. "I want them recovered from this morning as soon as possible."
Giraldi snorted under his breath. "Tell the truth, Bernard. You just enjoy making the infantry stay on their feet and go without rest."
"True," Bernard said gravely. "But this time it was just a fortunate coincidence."
Amara felt herself smiling. "Centurion," she said, "I wonder if you would be willing to find me something to eat?"
"Of course, Your Excellency." Giraldi rapped his fist against the center of his breastplate and headed for the nearest hearth and the table of provisions there.
Bernard watched the centurion go. Amara folded her arms and leaned against the doorway, looking outside at the late-afternoon sunshine pouring down upon the grisly courtyard. The sight threatened to stir up a cyclone of fear and anger and guilt, and Amara had to close her eyes for a moment to remain in control of herself. "What are we going to do, Bernard?"
The big man frowned out at the courtyard, and after a moment, Amara opened her eyes and studied his features. Bernard looked weary, haunted, and when he spoke, his voice was heavy with guilt. "I'm not sure," he said at last. "We only got done securing the steadholt and caring for the wounded a few moments ago."
Amara looked past him, to the remains in the courtyard. The legionares had gathered up the fallen, and they lay against one of the steadholt's outer walls, covered in their capes. Crows flitted back and forth, some picking at the edges of the covered corpses, but most of them found plenty to interest them in the remains too scattered to be retrieved.
Amara put her hand on Bernard's arm. "They knew the risks," she said quietly.
"And they expected sound leadership," Bernard replied.
"No one could have foreseen this, Bernard. You can't blame yourself for what happened."
"I can," Bernard said quietly. "And so can Lord Riva and His Majesty. I should have been more cautious. Held off until reinforcements arrived."
"There was no time," Amara said. She squeezed his wrist. "Bernard, there still is no time, if Doroga is right. We have to decide on a course of action."
"Even if it is the wrong one?" Bernard asked. "Even if it means more men go to their deaths."
Amara took a deep breath and responded quietly, her voice soft, her words empty of rancor. "Yes," she said quietly. "Even if it means every last one of them dies. Even if it means you die. Even if it means I die. We are here to protect the Realm. There are tens of thousands of holders who live between here and Riva. If these vord can spread as swiftly as Doroga indicated, the lives of those holders are in our hands. What we do in the next few hours could save them."
"Or kill them," Bernard added.
"Would you have us do nothing?" Amara asked. "It would be like cutting their throats ourselves."
Bernard looked at her for a moment, then closed his eyes. "You're right, of course," he rumbled. "We move on them. We fight."
Amara nodded. "Good."
"But I can't fight what I haven't found," he said. "We don't know where they are. These things laid a trap for us once. We'd be fools to go charging out blind to find them. I'd be throwing more lives away."
Amara frowned. "I agree."
Bernard nodded. "So that's the question. We want to find them and hit them. What should our next step be?"
"That part is simple," she said. "We gather whatever knowledge we can." Amara looked around the great hall. "Where is Doroga?"