Amara clung to Bernard as three of the new arrivals settled on the roof while the other three stayed aloft. Old High Lord Cereus, his white hair orange in the firelight, came down beside the Lord and Lady of Placida, while Phrygius, his son, and High Lord Riva stood guard in the air.
“Aria,” Amara called. “The Princeps needs a healing tub, immediately.”
“Hardly,” Attis said, his tone calm. “That’s rather the point of firecrafting the sword’s blade, after all. It’s all but impossible to heal a cauterized wound.”
“Oh, be quiet,” Amara snapped. After clenching her jaws for a moment, she added, “Your Highness.”
Aria went to Gaius Attis, took a brief look at his injuries, and shook her head. “The city is lost. We’re rendezvousing with the Legions’ rear guard now. We’ve got to move.”
“As you wish,” Attis said. “Thank you, by the way, for intervening. I’d hate to give her the satisfaction.”
“Don’t thank me,” Aria replied tartly. “Thank Amara. Without her warning, I might not be alive at all.” She bent over, grunted, and hauled the wounded man up and over one armored shoulder.
“Hurry!” called one of the men above them. “The vord have breached the wall!”
Without a word, High Lord Placida picked up Bernard. Cereus slipped one of Amara’s arms over his shoulders and lifted her to stand beside him, favoring her with a kindly smile. “I hope you don’t mind letting me do the honors, Countess.”
“Please,” Amara said. She felt quite dizzy. “Feel free.”
The six of them lifted off the roof in a roar of wind, and Amara saw little point in staying awake for what followed.
CHAPTER 22
The ice ships flew over the bitterly cold miles at a speed that, at times, beggared the wind that drove them. Marcus felt fairly sure that such a feat was mathematically impossible by any reasonable standard. The captain of the ship he rode upon had been to the Academy, or so he claimed. He said something about the momentum upon the slight downhill slopes gradually adding up, and that the pressure on the ships’ steel runners actually turned the ice immediately beneath them into a thin layer of water.
Marcus didn’t care about explanations. It all seemed awfully shady to him.
The fleet stopped every six hours, to make repairs that were inevitably made necessary by the battering the wooden hulls endured and to give ships that had been forced to stop for repairs a chance to catch up with the rest of them. Marcus savored the rests. The entire fleet had seen the wreckage of the ships that had overbalanced and failed, and there wasn’t a thinking being among them who hadn’t realized exactly what condition his corpse would be in should his own ship run afoul of bad fortune.
But the most recent rest period had been a mere hour ago. The next would not come until after dawn.
Marcus stood in the prow of the ship as it followed its companions east. The night sky had not yet begun to brighten with the approach of dawn, but it couldn’t be far away. He watched the fleet soar over the endless ice road before them for a time, his thoughts turning in circles that slowly grew quieter and less important. A little while later, when the first blue light had begun to form in the east, Marcus yawned and turned to pace back down the deck toward the closet-sized room that was his cabin for some sleep. He didn’t know if the jolting ship would allow him any rest, but at least, for a change, his own thoughts wouldn’t be keeping him from his sleep.
He opened the door to his cabin, paused at a sudden scent, then scowled and stepped into the unlit room, shutting the door behind him. “Bloody crows. When did you get on the ship?”
“At the last stop,” Sha rumbled in the quietest voice he could manage.
Marcus leaned his shoulders back against the door and folded his arms over his chest. In the cramped confines of the cabin, he was all but touching the lean Cane, and he had no intention of triggering a potentially violent response by making physical contact with the Hunter. “What word do you bring?”
“None,” Sha said. “For there is none to bring. Our problem remains unchanged.”
Marcus grunted. “Meaning that your leader and mine will be forced to duel.”
“So it would seem,” Sha said philosophically. “Though they have both faced such things before and survived them. The stronger will prove it upon the other.”
Marcus grimaced. “That’s a loss to both of our peoples, no matter who wins.”
“Has a solution occurred to you?”
“Not yet,” Marcus said. “But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t there.”
Sha let out a thoughtful growl. “It may yet be possible to strike down my lord’s enemy, Khral.”
“I thought his proper title was Master Khral of the Bloodspeakers.”
“Khral,” Sha repeated.
Marcus felt himself smile in the darkness. “Gaining what, by removing him?”
“Time. There will be a delay while a new leadership is established among the bloodspeakers.”
“Which could create additional problems of its own.”
“Yes.”
“What would be the cost of buying such time?”
“My life,” Sha said simply, “offered in apology to my lord after the deed was done.”
Marcus frowned in the darkness. He was about to ask if the Cane was willing to make such a sacrifice, but the question was a foolish one. If Sha said that he would go through with such a thing, he most certainly would. “Is your life yours to end?”
“If, in my best judgment, it is in the service of my lord’s honor? Yes.”
“Would not the loss of your service greatly hamper your lord in the long term?”
There was a brief, intense silence. “It might,” Sha said, a growling undertone of frustration in his voice. “In which case, I would be neglecting my duty to him by following this path. It is hard to know the honorable course of action.”
“And yet you do not serve his interests by continuing to allow Khral to hold power.” Marcus narrowed his eyes in thought. “What you need to do…”
Sha waited in patient silence.
“You can’t assassinate this Cane for fear of making him a martyr among your people. Correct?”
“Even so.”
Marcus scratched at his chin. “An accident, perhaps? These ships are dangerous, after all.”
“My lord would never condone the collateral loss of life that would require. Or forgive himself for it. No.”
Marcus nodded. “Difficult to push him under the runners of his ship without being seen.”
“Impossible,” Sha said. “I spent the last two days looking for the opportunity. He hides in his cabin, surrounded by sycophants. Cowardly.” He paused a beat, and allowed, “If practical.”
Marcus drummed his fingertips on the cool steel of his armor. “What happens if he isn’t assassinated? What if he just… disappears. No blood. No evidence of a struggle. No one ever sees him again.”
Sha let out another rumbling growl, one that raised the hairs on the back of Marcus’s neck despite the fact that he was beginning to understand it as a sound accompanying pensive moments for the Cane. “Disappear. It is not… common to our service.”
“No?”
“Never. We serve our lords, but in the end we are his weapons, his tools. He abides by our work as if he had done it with his own hands. If my lord could best solve his problem by killing another Cane, he would do so with his own blade. When he cannot do so, for reasons of tradition or because of the code, and his Hunters are sent, it is understood that they are yet his weapons.”
“And that protects him from the consequences of his actions?”