Princeps’ Fury

Isana bowed her head and set the dispatches aside. She had seen what war could do to the steadholts of the Calderon Valley. She had seen the slaughtered livestock, the burned-out buildings, the broken, discarded bodies. Isanaholt had been spared the scythe, so far. But it could easily, so easily, be her own stock that was hacked apart, her own outbuildings fired, her own people piled in pathetic windrows of empty flesh on the bloodied earth.

She set the dispatches aside and bowed her head. Was it selfish of her to worry so for the people on her own steadholt when so many other steadholts were in danger? When so many other steadholts had already been overwhelmed by the enemy? She was claiming the title of First Lady. She had a responsibility to far more people than the folk of a single tiny steadholt-yet they were Alerans, too.

Besides, was there really any choice? Could she not fear for them?

There was a brisk knock at the door and Isana looked up as the door opened to reveal Antillus Raucus. She could hear the movement of feet on stone in the hallway outside. Evidently, the High Lord had been accompanied by singulares when he came calling. Isana wasn’t sure if she was amused by the fact that he might have felt threatened enough to need them. More likely, he had brought them as witnesses to verify that he had not attempted any wrongdoing in coming to speak to her.

Or to restrain Araris while he did carry out said wrongdoing.

The big Antillan High Lord filled up the doorway, a broad-shouldered, ruggedly handsome man who looked, Isana realized, a great deal more like Maximus than his legitimate son, Crassus. That explained a great deal about Maximus’s upbringing.

She rose and inclined her head with as much poise and restraint as she could convincingly pretend to. “Your Grace.”

Raucus ground his teeth as he returned the gesture with a bow, then said, voice tight and hard, “Your Highness.”

“Have you come to concede and accompany me south with your Legions, sir?” Isana inquired.

“I have not.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Then what brings you here? Strictly speaking, you should have sent your second to speak to mine.”

“I already spoke to your second,” Raucus replied. “And I don’t send others to do things for me when it’s clearly my obligation to act.”

“Ah,” Isana said. “I did not send Aria to you, sir. If she has spoken to you, she took it upon herself to do so.” She reflected for a second, then added, “As out of character for her as that seems.”

Raucus’s mouth twitched at one corner, more bitter than amused, and he shook his head. “She couldn’t talk you out of it either, eh?”

“Something like that,” Isana said.

“I came here to offer you a chance to leave,” Antillus said, his tone steady, his words carefully neutral. “Take Rari and Lady Aria and get off my land. We won’t mention your challenge again. To anyone.”

Isana considered that for a moment. It was a significant gesture. Many folk in the southern portions of the Realm often sneered at the tendency of the more conservative to defend vigorously such notions as their sense of personal valor, but the fact was that in the war-torn north, such a thing was a survival trait. Without the personal courage to face his foes-and more importantly, his legionares’ belief in that courage-Antillus Raucus would face a horde of problems that could otherwise be avoided. When men had to stand on the battlefield, their courage itself a weapon that was every bit as deadly to the enemy as swords and arrows, one could not afford to appear as a coward to one’s men.

By offering Isana a chance to simply depart, Raucus was running the very real risk of appearing, to his men, to have been skittish about taking her on-particularly after the clash of their furycraft before the walls earlier that day. Granted, if Isana left quietly, and no one said anything further about it, that damage would be minimized, but there were bound to be rumors, regardless.

She supposed it made sense, from Raucus’s perspective. The man simply could not accept that the threat facing the Realm was greater than that which he’d spent his entire life-and the lives of who knew how many of his legionares- fighting.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I can’t do that.”

“You’re strong,” he said in that same distant, uninflected tone. “I’ll give you that. But you aren’t stronger than I am.” His gaze was steady. “If you see this through, I’ll kill you. Don’t think I won’t.”

Isana gestured at the table. “You’ve seen the dispatches. You know the danger.”

His features shifted subtly, hardening. “I’ve spent my life fighting a war no one in the south can be bothered about. Burying men no one down there mourns. Seeing steadholts devastated. I know what they’re going through, Your Highness. I’ve seen it more than once, visited on my own people.”

“Then it should make you more eager to stop it-not less.”