Princeps’ Fury

Raucus, By the time I got wind of anything and made it to Calderon, it was hours too late. But I was there when they found him. I know that by now the official story has reached you, but it’s nothing but smoke. Septimus died with five of the finest blades in the Realm in a circle around him. And it wasn’t the Marat alone who did for him. Firecrafting and earthcrafting were both involved. I saw it with my own eyes. Septimus was the only heir, and his father was arrogant or incompetent enough to allow him to be murdered, despite Septimus’s appeals for his aid, for pressure upon the Senate, for direct action against the ambitious bastards who eventually killed him. The First Lord did nothing, and our Realm is doomed to division and self-destruction as a result. He doesn’t deserve my loyalty, Raucus. Or yours. I know you won’t believe me, you slow-witted northern snowcrow. And even if you did, you’d never come with me down the road I’ve chosen. If the House of Gaius can’t defend and protect its own child-and a soul like Septimus’s at that-then how can it do so for the people of the Realm? I don’t ask you to help, old friend. Just stay out of my way. Good-bye.

Attis 

“My Lady Isana?” Araris asked quietly.

Isana blinked and looked up from the letter.

Behind them, the Antillan Legions prepared for battle, men rushing about with the calm hurry of practiced professionals. On the fields below, the Vord had engaged the surviving Legions. Isana watched as the First Aquitaine, banners surrounding High Lord Aquitainus Attis himself, literally threw itself into the teeth of the pursuing Vord and stopped them cold, not a hundred yards from the slowest of the fleeing refugees.

“Attis Aquitaine was never his enemy,” Isana breathed, her voice numb. “Rhodes. Kalare.”

“Isana?” Aria asked.

Isana wordlessly passed her the letters. “A week. It’s dated a week before we wed. He was almost the same age Tavi is now.”

Aria read the letters. Isana waited until she looked up again.

“Rhodes and Kalare,” Aria said. “Gaius killed Kalarus personally. And he as much as sent Rhodes out to be butchered by the first Vord attack.”

“Revenge,” Isana said quietly. “It took him more than two decades, but the old man had it all the same.” She shook her head. “And Invidia Aquitaine had sought marriage to Septimus. I never knew that. He never said anything.” Isana smiled faintly, bitterly. “And he spurned her. For a steadholt girl from the back end of nowhere.”

“She was a part of it,” Aria whispered. “The cabal that killed him. That’s what Septimus’s letter means. If one reads between the lines.”

“Citizens and lords,” Isana sighed. “Wounded pride. Ambition. Vengeance. Their motivations seem so… average.”

Aria smiled faintly and nodded toward Raucus, who was the center of the swirl of activity. “I think you’ve been given ample opportunity to observe that Citizens and lords can be idiots as easily as anyone else. Perhaps more so.”

Isana gestured at the letters. “Read the letter. It’s in every flourish and scratch. Attis hated Gaius. Hated the corruption, the ambition of his peers.”

“And became what he hated,” Aria said quietly. “It’s happened to many men before him, I suppose.”

Fire blossomed in the midst of the First Aquitaine, the light of a burning sword that was clearly visible, even from that distance, in broad daylight. The Legion roared in response, the sound distant, like the surge of waves crashing on a shoreline. The Legion drove into the mass of the Vord, killing and crushing, lances of fire lashing into the largest of the Vord, spheres of white-hot flame enveloping the heads of the behemoths and sending them crashing down to crush their fellows.