"Then your guess is as good as mine."
"Another drill, you think?"
Marcus pursed his lips. "No. I don't think so, sir. I know the captain's mad for them, but this doesn't feel right."
Kellus grunted. "Can't be the Canim, can it? They've never been able to cross the Tiber in numbers."
"Maybe they worked it out," Marcus said. "Either way-"
"On the wall!" came a call from below.
Marcus turned to find a dapper, aging little man in the livery of a Legion valet standing below. "Good morning, Magnus."
"Permission to come up and speak to you?" called the valet.
"Granted." Marcus beckoned the valet, who hurried up the stairs and arrived on the battlements, laboring to catch his breath.
"Centurion, Tribune," Magnus panted, nodding. "We just got a messenger in from the captain. He wanted me to tell your men to stand down."
Marcus lifted his eyebrows.
"It was a drill, then," Kellus said.
Marcus frowned and turned to stare intently at the road to the east. "No," he said quietly. "I don't think it was."
For a moment, there was nothing but the haze of a morning that had not yet become warm enough to burn off all the mist. Then, ranks of marching soldiers appeared in the east. Two long, broad columns of them, in fact, came marching along on either side of the road, leaving room for the relief column's wagons and draft animals in the center. Marcus frowned, and began counting, before he realized what he was actually looking at.
"Two Legions?" he murmured.
"Yes," Magnus said quietly.
"And flying the blue and red," Marcus noted. "Like us."
The senior valet squinted out at the approaching troops. "Ah, I thought as much. These are the Senate's new toys. The Senatorial Guard."
Marcus grunted. "Arnos's pet project, right?"
"The Senator is used to getting what he wants," the valet replied. "And with the war stretching on, his arguments have gained much more support in the Committee, the Senate, and among the Citizenry."
"And now the Senate has its own Legions, too."
The old valet nodded. "Ambitious, that Arnos, commanding two-thirds the fighting power of a High Lord. He controls them completely."
Marcus blew out a breath. "So the good news is that the Canim haven't crossed the river." He said the next sentence a bit louder, knowing word would spread rapidly up and down the wall. "No fighting today."
"And the bad news," the valet said in a quiet tone, "is that-"
"The War Committee has come to Elinarch to play," Marcus said, his tone souring.
"Great furies help us. Yes."
"Thank you, Magnus," the First Spear said. "Looks like this has turned into your kind of fight."
The Legion's senior valet sighed. "Yes. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll toddle off and try to figure out where we're going to put everyone." He nodded to them and departed again.
Kellus came to stand next to Marcus, scowling at the incoming Legions. "We don't need their help here," he said. "We've held it ourselves for two years."
"We've bled for two years, too," Marcus said quietly. "I won't mind letting someone else do that part for a little while, sir."
Kellus snorted and departed to return to his own men, where Marcus thought he should have bloody well been standing to begin with. The young Tribune was right about one thing, though. Arnos's presence here-and in command of two full Legions, no less-was anything but a good sign.
Marcus knew who truly owned Arnos's allegiance.
An hour later, Valiar Marcus and his men returned to their quarters in the city, and Marcus returned to his own tent, aching for sleep. He drew the tent's heavy flaps closed, tied them there, and then began to unfasten his armor.
"May I help you, my lady?" he asked quietly, as he did.
There was a quiet, pleased sound from the direction of his camp stool, simple canvas on a wooden frame. The air shimmered for a moment, and a woman appeared there, seated primly, dressed in a rather plain russet gown. The gown did not suit her features, any more than an old rope halter suited a finely bred horse. She was lovely in a way that few women could match and none could surpass, dark of hair and fair of skin, seemingly in the flower of her late youth.
Marcus knew better. Invidia Aquitaine was neither young, nor particularly flowery. There was nothing delicate or fragile about her. In fact, he reflected, she was one of the more dangerous people he'd ever known.
"I'm not wearing my perfume," she said in a velvet-smooth alto. "I was careful to move nothing in the tent. I'm quite sure you didn't see me through my veil, and I made no sound. How did you know I was here?"
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?"