Raucus gave her a hard, bitter smile, hovering just outside what Araris had taught her would be the striking range of his weapon. “Gaius would be reason enough. That treacherous snake doesn’t deserve the loyalty of the worms that will feast on his corpse.”
“As much as I would like to,” Isana replied, her tone frank, her sword at a low guard position, one that would be easiest on her arms to maintain, “I cannot say that I disagree with you, sir.”
Raucus frowned. His stance shifted subtly, as he lifted his sword to a high guard, both hands on the weapon’s handle, the blade almost directly in line with his body.
It was something of a ludicrous ready stance for such a short weapon, but all the same, it dictated that Isana had to adjust to the new potential threat. She lifted her blade to a similar stance, overhead, but with her arms slightly to one side, holding the weapon’s length across her body.
“Eastern style,” Raucus noted in a calm, professional tone. “Araris always loved bringing out that Rhodesian tripe in his high defense.”
He took a step forward, closing into range, and swept a blow down at her. Isana managed to divert it, at the cost of another long sliver of steel from her blade, but then Raucus’s shoulder and hip slammed into her as he continued forward, his entire mass impacting simultaneously along the center of her balance. Isana was flung violently back to the snow, and desperately wrought a working, flattening it to smooth ice, so that she slid several yards backward.
Raucus had taken quick steps forward to follow up the attack, but as his feet touched the slick ice, he was forced to slow. Another effort of will, and the snow gathered beneath her, lifting her to her feet again. She brought her sword up, her back against the wall of whirling snow that still enfolded them, and faced him, ready.
Raucus lifted his weapon to her in a smooth salute. “The Rhodesian school never allowed enough for brawling techniques, in my opinion.” He began to pace around the icy patch, stalking her. “What do you have against Gaius?”
“He murdered my husband,” Isana said, with far more heat than she’d intended. “Or stood by and allowed it to happen. It’s the same to me.”
Raucus froze in place for an instant, before he continued his stalk. “Then why are you here toadying for him?”
“I’m not,” Isana replied. “I’m here for my son.” She decided to test a theory, and took a quick step forward, lashing out in a conservative slash at the fingers gripping his sword.
Raucus parried her with the automatic ease of ridiculously disparate skill, nearly taking the sword from her hands-but he waited for her to step back out of range, rather than immediately counterattacking.
He wants to talk. Just keep him talking.
“Your son,” Raucus said. “You and Septimus.”
“Yes,” Isana said.
Raucus’s eyes flashed in anger, and his arm blurred. Three inches of steel simply vanished from the tip of her sword and went spinning away to land hissing on a patch of ice. Isana hadn’t even felt the impact, it was so focused and powerful.
“The Princeps now,” Antillus spat. “Proper and proud.”
And it suddenly struck her, like blinding light on snow.
She knew the source of Antillus’s obstinate rage.
She retreated from the next attack. “It isn’t about Gaius at all,” she breathed aloud. “It’s about me. And it’s about Maximus.”
Raucus flung another burst of flame at her, hot but badly aimed. She was able to defend against it with more snow raised about her.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he snarled.
“Yes, I do,” she said. “At first I thought you must have hated Tavi-but he’s your friend’s son, Raucus. You and Septimus knew and trusted one another. And I don’t think that even after all those years, you’re the kind of man to forget a friend.”
“You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about!” Raucus snarled. His sword whipped out twice more, biting away another inch of her blade each time.
Isana’s voice shook with fear, and she smoothed the ground between them to ice, trying to create more space between them. “I do. Septimus did something you did. He fell in love with a freeman-with me. But he did something else you didn’t dare to do. He married her.”
“You think it’s that simple?” Raucus demanded. He gestured once at the ground and-
– and fire blossomed within the earth itself. Isana felt the sudden rush of ice and snow melting, sublimating at once to mist as the ground warmed to the heat of a southern summer in the space of an instant.
“Crows take you,” Raucus hissed, and came forward, sword raised to kill.
She couldn’t fight the heat in the earth, to send ice through it to cool it again-not in time to save her life. But she could use that warmth. She reached out to all that mist and vapor and forced it down, into the warm earth-transforming it almost instantly to soupy mud that swallowed Raucus to midthigh.
And leaving her suddenly, viciously weary. She’d performed too many craftings, done swiftly and powerfully rather than with grace and efficiency, and it was taking the inevitable toll.
The High Lord let out a roar of frustration and simply flung his sword at her.
Isana’s sword-what was left of it-snapped in an immediate, basic parry, one of the first Araris had taught her, and one of six that that he’d said he had time to drill into her muscle memory.
It simply wasn’t fast enough.
She felt her mangled gladius brush the oncoming weapon, then a tremendous impact in her belly, and she was lying on her back in the snow.
She turned on her side, dazedly, and felt something horribly wrong. It wasn’t pain, precisely. It was more like a quivering, trembling, silvery sensation that shot up and down her spine and throughout her limbs.
She looked down and saw that the High Lord’s sword had sunk to its hilt in her abdomen.
Her curtain of snow had fallen. Silence had swallowed the land. From the walls, there was not a single sound, not a cry, not a single human voice.
Scarlet was spreading onto the snow around her.
She lifted her head to see Raucus just staring at her. His face had gone pale. His right hand was still lifted from his throw, fingers loosely curled.
“I don’t think it was simple,” Isana gasped. The words hurt to speak. “I think you were young. I think you fell in love with a freeman, Max’s mother. And I think your father, your mother, whoever might have been in your life was horrified. There was a war to be fought along the Shieldwall-always a war. W-w-what would happen if the heir of Antillus didn’t have the furycrafting talent he needed to fight it?”
The cold was getting through her coat. Or following her blood back up to her veins. Or she was simply bleeding to death. Regardless, Isana had little time to reach the man.
“Y-you had n-no way of knowing if M-maximus would be strongly talented. I th-think you had to set his mother aside to marry. F-for strong bl-bloodline. For alliances with Kalare and its watergrain fields.”
Raucus began slogging his way out of the mud, moving toward her.
“Y-your f-father was k-killed on the Wall that year. Wh-when Crassus was born. You must have been gone most of the time after that. F-fighting.” She nodded to herself. Of course he would have had to be gone. Learning how to command, proving himself to his troops. It would have taken enormous effort and dedication to do so.
“You w-were in the field when Septimus died. And when Max’s mother died.”
“Isana, stop,” Raucus said. He pulled himself from the mud.
The cold grew deeper, but somehow less unpleasant. Isana laid her head on one outflung arm and tried to keep her eyes open. “And you knew Max suffered at Dorotea’s hands. But there was nothing you could do. You couldn’t acknowledge him over Crassus. You couldn’t cut yourself off from Dorotea to wed his mother. You must have t-tried and been denied by Gaius.” She smiled faintly. “He’d never have let you v-violate the traditional laws of legitimacy. Kalare would have raised a crowstorm over it in the Senate. And you were young. And Septimus’s friend. Easier to ignore you.”