Jim Butcher - Cursors's Fury

Tavi stared out at the burning ships, so far away, and thought about all the implications their presence would mean. It meant that whatever the Canim had done in the past, matters had altered, and drastically.

For all of Alera’s history, conflict with the Canim had been for control of the various islands between Alera and the Canim homeland-harsh, pitched fights for seaside fortifications, mostly, usually with a naval battle or two mixed in. Every few years, Canim raiding ships would hurtle from the deep seas to Alera’s shores, burning and looting towns where they could, carrying away the valuables to be had there, and occasionally seizing Alerans and dragging them off to a fate no one had ever been able to ascertain. Whether they wound up as slaves or food, it was certainly an unpleasant ending.

More infrequent were larger Canim incursions, some of which had curled around the coastline to the seafaring cities like Parcia, and dozens of ships swept down together in a much larger attack. The Canim had burned Parcia to the ground some four hundred years before and had leveled the city of Rhodes no fewer than three times.

But Ehren had said that this invasion force was infinitely larger than any previously seen. And they had no intention of striking at Alera and returning to their homeland. The Canim, for whatever reason, were there to stay, and the implications of that were terrifying.

For the Canim, their attack upon Alera was literally a do-or-die situation. They had nothing to lose, everything to gain, and they would be certain that the only way to ensure their own safety would be to destroy the folk of Alera, le-gionare and holder, city and steadholt alike. They were trapped, desperate, and Tavi well knew the kind of berserk, fearless ferocity any trapped creature could display.

He watched the fires for a moment more, then said to Kitai, “This is the first time I’ve ever seen the sea. I wish it hadn’t been like this.”

She did not answer him-but her warm hand slipped to his, and their fingers intertwined.

“How did you see the fires in the first place?” Tavi asked Kitai. “What were you doing all the way out here?”

“Hunting,” she said quietly.

Tavi frowned. “Hunting what?”

“Answers.”

“Why?”

“Because I killed the man you wished to make talk. I thought it proper to make amends for that discourtesy.” She looked from the distant pyres to Tavi. “When you were returning to your camp with the prisoners, I saw the High Lady of Antillus ride from the city by the great bridge. Since then, I have tracked her. She has gone to ground nearby. I can show you where. Perhaps she will have the answers you wanted to find.”

Tavi frowned and stared at Kitai for a moment. “Do you have any idea how dangerous she is?”

Kitai shrugged. “She did not see me.”

Tavi gritted his teeth for a moment, then said, “She’s too much for us to handle.”

“Why?” Kitai said.

“She’s a High Lady,” Tavi said. “If you had any idea all the things she could do…”

“She is a coward,” Kitai said, contempt in her tone. “She lets others do all her killing for her. She arranges accidents. Things in which she will never be found and blamed.”

“Which does not mean that she couldn’t burn us to cinders with a flick of her hand,” Tavi said. “It can’t be done.”

“Like taking Max from the Grey Tower could not be done, Aleran?”

Tavi opened his mouth to argue. Then he closed it again and scowled at Kitai. “This is different.” He narrowed his eyes. “But… why in the world would she be all the way out here? You say she’s camped?”

Kitai nodded. “A narrow gulch not far from here.”

Tavi’s legs ached terribly, and his belly was going to be screaming for food once he got the long run out of his system. Lady Antillus was a deadly opponent, and with no witnesses, out here in the wilderness, she would almost certainly kill them both if she became aware of them-but the chance to learn more about any arrangements the traitorous Citizen might have made with the enemy was irreplaceable. “Show me, “ he told Kitai.

She rose and led him farther into the night, over the crest of the hill and down its far side, where the ground rose to the rocky bones of ancient mountains that had been worn down to rounded hills, broken here and there by jagged fissures. There, the heavy, low foliage and large trees of the river valley gave way to lower scrub brush, scrawny evergreens, and patches of brambles that, in some places, had grown into thickets several feet tall.

Kitai tensed slightly, as she began to walk along a thicket, and she slowed down to stalk forward in careful, perfect silence. Tavi emulated her, and she led him through a narrow opening in the thicket. After a few feet, they were forced to drop to a crawl. Small thorns jabbed at Tavi, no matter how carefully or slowly he moved, and he had to clench his teeth and strangle his own painful exhalations before they could give him away.

Ten apparently endless yards later, they emerged from the thicket into a comparatively heavy growth of evergreens, and Kitai prowled slowly forward in the relatively open, pine-needle-covered spaces beneath the trees, until she came to a halt and beckoned to Tavi. He eased up next to her, lying on his stomach beside her and staring out and down through the tree’s branches, into a small, semicircular area located within one of the larger fissures in the stone hills. Water trickled down a rock face, into a pool barely larger than a steadholt cook’s mixing bowl, then continued on its way down through the stone.

The low campfire, sunken into its own little pit to hide its light better, was not more than twenty feet from where they lay. Lady Antillus sat beside the pool, evidently in the midst of a conversation with a small and vaguely human-shaped water-sculpture that stood on the surface of the tiny pool.

“You don’t understand, brother mine,” Lady Antillus said, her tone agitated. “They aren’t here with an overly large raiding force. They came in hundreds of ships, Brencis. Which they then burned behind them.”

A tinny, petulant voice came from the water-sculpted figure. “Don’t use my name, foolish child. These communications may be intercepted.”

Or eavesdropped upon, Lord Kalarus, Tavi mused.

Lady Antillus let out an exasperated sound. “You’re right. If we’re overheard, someone might suspect you of treason. If all the Legions and killings and abductions haven’t managed it already.”

“Rising up against Gaius is one thing,” the water figure said. “Being found in collusion with the raiding Canim is something else. It could motivate the neutral High Lords to come out against me. It might even draw a rebuke from the northern Lords-including your own dear husband, and I have worked far too hard to allow that now.” The figure’s voice became quiet and dangerous. “So guard. Your. Tongue.”

Lady Antillus’s back straightened in subtle, frightened tension, and her face turned pale. “As you wish, my lord. But you have yet to see my point. The Canim haven’t come here merely to create this cloud cover to slow down the First Lord’s troops. They haven’t come here simply to raid and provide a distraction to divide his forces. They intend to stay .”

“Impossible, ‘ Kalarus responded. “Preposterous. They’d be swept back into the sea before the summer is out. They must know that.”

“Unless they don’t,” Lady Antillus said.

Kalarus snarled something incoherent. “Are you at the meeting point?”

“To conclude the bargain. Yes.”

“Impress upon Sari the futility of his position.”

Lady Antillus hesitated before saying, “He’s powerful, my lord. More so than I would have been willing to believe. His attack upon the command of the First Aleran was… much more intense than I would have thought possible. And came more swiftly than we had believed. I was forced to… to leave several minor matters unattended.”