Princeps’ Fury

“And a Marat,” Tavi conceded, “are traveling on a special, secret mission with Lararl’s approval, even with Anag here to explain things. Simpler and faster if we avoid them.”

She frowned. “Tell me something.”

“Hmm?”

“Has it ever struck you as strange that the Vord never seem to notice you and me when we are near them? How they simply accept our presence unless we directly oppose them?”

“When we fought them in the tunnels beneath the capital, you mean,” Tavi said. “I thought it very strange, yes.”

“Did you ever wonder why they did so?”

“Oftener and oftener, the past few days,” he said.

“I think it is because we were responsible for waking them,” Kitai said. There was gravity in her voice.

“When we went down after the Blessing of Night, you mean,” Tavi said, his own tone growing more sober. “We had no way of knowing what was going to happen.”

“No,” Kitai said. “But it does not change the fact that the first queen stirred after we stole the Blessing from the center of the Wax Forest. That it emerged and tried to kill us that very night.”

“Until your father threw a big rock at it.”

Kitai let out a low laugh. “I remember.”

“In any case, it isn’t as though they all ignore us. The queen I fought under the Citadel certainly saw me, and was more than willing to fight.” Tavi chewed on his lip. “Though the lower-intelligence Vord, the wax spiders and takers and so on, haven’t ever attacked me unless I attacked them first. It’s almost as though they think we’re other Vord, somehow, until we start getting rowdy.”

“An advantage we could use.”

“Possibly,” Tavi said, nodding.

She rode in silence for a time, then said, the words rushed together, “I’m frightened, chala.”

Tavi blinked and stared over his shoulder.

She shrugged. “What fool would not be? What if I lose you? What if you lose me?” She swallowed. “Death is real. It could take either of us, or both. I cannot think of living without you. Or of you without me.”

Tavi sighed and leaned back slightly against her. He felt her arms tighten around his waist.

“That isn’t going to happen,” he told her. “It’s going to be all right”

“Fool,” Kitai scoffed gently. “You do not know that.”

“Sometimes you don’t know the most important things,” Tavi said. “You believe them.”

“That is completely irrational.”

“Yes,” Tavi agreed. “And true.”

She shifted her position, and he felt her lay her head against his back. Her hair tickled the back of his neck. “My mad Aleran. Making promises he cannot keep.”

Tavi sighed. “Whatever happens,” he told her, “we’ll be together. That much I can promise.”

Her arms tightened again, enough to make him strain a little to draw in his next breath. “I will hold you to that, Aleran.”

Tavi turned to her, awkward on the broad saddle, but enough to kiss her. She returned the kiss fiercely.

Until the taurg bellowed, bucked, and threw them both twenty feet through the air and into an enormous puddle of shockingly cold sludge almost two feet deep. Then the enormous riding beast bellowed in victory and went charging off the road, tossing its horns and bucking all the way.

The shock of the water was so cold that Tavi had trouble catching his breath as he struggled up out of it and onto his feet. He turned to find Kitai still in the muck, her green eyes narrowed as she regarded him.

“I am stuck,” she informed him. “I blame you.”

The other riders caught up to them, their taurga thundering to a halt, bellowing protests along the way. Max and Durias, each on his own beast, stopped closest to them. Durias’s expression was dutifully neutral, but his eyes shone. Max was grinning.

“My lord,” he said, sweeping a particularly florid bow from his saddle, flourishing one hand as he did. “Are we to take our leisure here for a time, then?”

Tavi gave Maximus a steady glare. Then he turned, slogged through the mud to Kitai, put his hands under her arms, and hauled strongly to pull her free of the mud. She popped out abruptly, his feet slipped out from under him, and they both fell back into the freezing mud, Kitai atop him.

“We could put up curtains for privacy if you like, my lord,” Durias said soberly.

The Canim, atop their own mounts, remained a few yards off and none of them were looking in Tavi’s direction-but they all sat with their mouths open, teeth showing, their grins requiring no translation.

Tavi sighed. “Just throw us a line, Max. And catch that bloody taurg before he runs into the ocean.”

“You hear that, Steaks?” Max said to his own taurg. “It wasn’t the Princeps’ fault. Your bloody friend way over there was rebellious. Just you watch and see what happens when royal displeasure falls on uppity insurrectionists.”

“Maximus,” Kitai said. “I am cold. Speak another word, and I will strangle you with your own tongue.”

Max laughed, and produced a coil of rope from his saddlebags.