Princeps’ Fury

Riva stared at Gaius for a startled moment, his eyes wide, then flushed dark red with anger. His hands opened and closed several times as he realized that the First Lord had all but openly threatened him with the juris macto.

Lord Aquitaine’s gaze snapped to Gaius like a falcon’s and locked upon him.

Amara tensed suddenly.

The First Lord was taking a terrible risk. In his prime, Amara would have thought Gaius the match of any crafter in Alera-but she knew, better than almost anyone, how much of the First Lord’s apparent strength was an act of bravado, a display of sheer will. Beneath the outer show of energy and drive, Gaius was a weary old man, and Riva, despite his less-than-legendary intellect, was, after all, a High Lord of Alera, and wielded tremendous power.

The status of Octavian’s legitimacy was far from set in stone. Should the First Lord die today, especially given the need for strong leadership, Aquitainus Attis might well attain the throne he’d been seeking for so long.

Gaius had to know that. But if the thought troubled him, it did not show in his expression or bearing. He faced Riva with perfect aplomb, waiting.

In the end, Riva’s uncertainty proved a better defense than any furycraft. The portly High Lord harrumphed, and growled, “My apologies for speaking out of turn, Speaker, Senators, my fellow Citizens.” He glowered at Gaius. “I will refrain from pointing out the obvious until the proper time.”

Aquitaine’s mouth spread into a lazy grin. Amara couldn’t be certain, but she thought she saw him incline his head, very slightly, to Gaius, a fencer’s gesture of acknowledgment.

Gaius went back to speaking as though nothing had happened. “The Vord have not limited their attacks to military forces. Civilian populations have been attacked and massacred without mercy. Given the nature of our defeats on the battlefield, a great many people never received word about their presence, or did not hear about them until it was too late for them to escape. The loss of life has been staggering.”

Gaius paused to sweep his gaze around the Senatorium. Again, when he spoke, he did so with detached precision. “More than one hundred thousand Aleran holders, freemen, and Citizens alike have been slain.”

Cries rang out amidst an ocean-surf swell of gasps that ran through the Senatorium.

“Four days ago,” Gaius said, “the Vord reached the southernmost holdings of High Lord Cereus. Lord Speaker, honored Senators, his daughter and heir, Veradis, is here to give testimony to the Senate and to speak on behalf of His Grace, her father.”

Gaius stepped back as the Speaker rose and leaned into the podium again for a moment. “Will the Lady Veradis please come before the Senate?”

Amara watched as a slender, serious-faced young woman rose, her pale, wispy hair drifting like cobwebs as she moved. Bernard leaned close to her, and murmured, “Cereus has a son, does he not? I thought he was the heir to Ceres.”

“He was,” Amara said. “Apparently.”

“Thank you,” Veradis said, the building’s furies projecting her words throughout the Senatorium. She had a voice to match her face-low, for a woman, and quite somber. “My father sends his regrets that he cannot be here himself, but he is in the field with our Legions, slowing the Vord in an effort to give our people a chance to flee. It is at his command that I have come here to beg the aid of the First Lord and of his brother High Lords in Ceres’ most desperate hour.” She paused for a moment, frozen, then cleared her throat. The first several words of her next sentence were tight, constricted. “Already, my brother Vereus has fallen to the invaders, along with half of the Legion under his command. Thousands of our holders have been slaughtered. Nearly half of the lands in my lord father’s care have been consumed by the Vord. Please, my lords. After what Kalarus’s rebellion did to our lands…” She lifted her chin, and though her expression was perfectly composed, Amara could see the tears glistening on her cheeks. “We need your help.”

With perfect poise, Veradis descended from the podium and returned to her seat in her House’s box, and Amara abruptly felt certain that the young woman was unaware of her own tears, or she would have contained them, using her watercrafting if necessary.

Pausing to elicit a nod from the Speaker, Gaius resumed the podium. “Our current estimates place the enemy numbers at somewhere between one hundred and two hundred thousand-but frankly, this tells us relatively little. We have limited knowledge of their capabilities as individuals, but know almost nothing of their potential working in mass coordination.”

“You know one thing,” interjected a quiet voice, enhanced despite the fact that the speaker was not standing at the podium. Lord Aquitaine regarded Gaius steadily. “You know that they are extremely dangerous. In all probability, more so, pound for pound, than an Aleran Legion.”