Jim Butcher - First Lord's Fury

“I watched you murder men not five feet from me on the wall at Garrison,” Octavian said quietly. “I watched you try to hang Araris. I watched you stab my uncle and throw him off the wall. You killed people I’d known my whole life in the Calderon Valley. Neighbors. Friends.”

Fidelias heard the strangled tone in his voice as something distant and unconnected to his thoughts. “I did those things,” he said. “I did them all.”

The Princeps’ right hand closed into a fist. The pop of his knuckles was like the crackling of ice.

Fidelias nodded slowly. “You knew I could lie to a truthfinder. You needed to elicit the reaction under pressure. This was a trap all along.”

“I told you I wanted to test a theory,” the Princeps said, his words clipped. “And when Magnus reported his suspicions to me, including word of your covert activities with Sha, it forced me to take action.”

The Princeps looked away, squinting out into the distance.

Fidelias said nothing. The silence was profound.

When the Princeps spoke, it was in a near whisper, thick with anger and grief. “I thought I would be proving your innocence.”

The words sent a pain through Fidelias’s guts as sharp and real as any sword’s thrust.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” the Princeps asked.

Fidelias closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and drew in a slow breath. “I made my choices. I knew the consequences.”

Octavian stared at him in cold silence, and Fidelias suddenly realized that the posts he’d seen on the deck of the Slive were not replacements for broken spars.

Gaius Octavian turned his back and began to walk away, rigid with anger and pain. Each strike of his boots on the deck was distinct, final. He did not look back when he said, “Crucify him.”

Tavi watched as Magnus and the execution detail left the ship. It included each of the Knights Ferrous on board and a pair of Demos’s most combat-capable sailors. They took Fidelias ex Cursori and the spars for the crucifixion with them.

“Tough to believe,” Max said quietly. “I mean… Valiar Marcus.”

“People lie, kid,” Demos said. “Especially about who they are.”

“I know, I know,” Max said quietly. “I’m just… just surprised, that’s all. He was always so solid.”

“All in your head,” Demos said calmly. “He was what he was. You’re the one who made him solid.”

Max glanced at Tavi. “Sir, are you sure you…?”

Tavi grimaced, and said, “Max, he betrayed my grandfather after swearing to serve him. He gave his own student, back at the Academy, to the Aquitaines to be tortured. He is the only surviving member of the senior Cursori who could possibly have provided details about the organization to Kalarus’s Bloodcrows. I personally witnessed him kill half a dozen legionares defending the battlements at Second Calderon, and the plan he helped execute killed hundreds more. Any one of those crimes merits execution. In time of war, they merit summary execution.”

Max frowned and did not look at Tavi. “Do we know if he’s done anything since he assumed the identity of Valiar Marcus?”

“It doesn’t matter what he’s done since, Max,” Tavi replied, keeping his voice level, completely neutral. “He is guilty of treason. There are a host of crimes a First Lord can choose to be lenient about. There is one he absolutely cannot.”

“But…”

Crassus cut in, overriding his brother’s protest. “He’s right, Max. You know he’s right.”

Demos folded his arms and nodded at Max. “Be glad the fellow did some good before he got caught. It doesn’t give the dead back to their families. The man chose to kill. He crossed a line. He knew his own life might be forfeit because of it.” He nodded in the guard detail’s general direction. “Fidelias knows that. He knows that Octavian doesn’t have any choice in the matter. He’s made his peace with it.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Max asked.

Demos shrugged. “When Magnus spotted him, Fidelias didn’t kill the old man. He could have, easily, and for all he knew, it might have kept his secret. He could have tried to run before the battle was over. He didn’t.”

Tavi listened to it all without paying much attention. Marcus, a traitor. Marcus, who had saved his life only days ago, at considerable risk to his own. Marcus, who had done his best to murder members of Tavi’s family.

Not Marcus, he told himself. Fidelias. There was no Marcus. There never was a Marcus.

There were too many lies. They were starting to make his head hurt. The sun seemed too bright.

“As soon as the execution detail is back on board, please get under way, Captain,” Tavi said. “I’ll be in my cabin.” He turned before anyone could acknowledge him and walked back to his cabin with his head bowed. The curtains were already drawn, leaving the space fairly dark, and he sank down onto his bunk, shaking with postbattle adrenaline.

He had only been there for a few moments when the door opened, and Kitai entered. She walked across the little room, her steps brisk, and Tavi felt the gentle pressure of an aircrafting come up around them, to make their conversation a private one.

“Why are you being an idiot?” she demanded.

Tavi opened his eyes and looked at her. She stood over him with her legs planted in a wide, confident stance “ Chala , do the Marat have a word for ‘diplomacy’?”

Her green eyes began to look almost luminous as her anger grew. Tavi could feel the heat of it pressing against him, simmering inside him. “This is not a time for humor.”

Tavi narrowed his eyes at her. “You disagree with what is happening to M—To Fidelias.”

“I do not know Fidelias,” she replied. “I know Marcus. He does not deserve this.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way, he is guilty of treason, and the law is clear.”

“Law,” Kitai said, and spat on the deck as if the word had carried a bad taste. “He has fought loyally for you for years.”

“He has lied to me for years,” Tavi replied, and considerable heat burned in his own reply. “He has betrayed the trust of the Realm. He has murdered innocents, Citizens and loyal freemen.”

“And risked his life countless times on the field with us,” Kitai snapped back.

Tavi found himself hurtling up off the bed, his voice rising unbidden to a bellowing roar so loud that it made him see stars. “HE TRIED TO MURDER MY FAMILY!”

They both stood there for a moment, Tavi breathing heavily. Kitai looked him up and down, then slowly arched an eyebrow. “Of course. Your judgment is clearly unbiased, Your Highness.”

Tavi opened his mouth to reply, then forced himself to stop. He sat back down on the bunk, still breathing heavily. He stayed that way for a full minute. Then he looked back up at Kitai, and said, “Yes. He hurt me personally. But he did that to a lot of people. Even if the law didn’t mandate an execution, it would be a form of justice to allow him to be sentenced by those he had wronged.”

“No,” Kitai said. “It would be a needlessly bureaucratic form of revenge.” She paused, and added, with a faint wisp of wry humor, “Which, now that I think on it, is a functional description of Aleran law in any case.”

Tavi rubbed at his forehead with one hand. “It had to be this way. If he had run, I could have let him go. But he didn’t.”

“So you will waste him.”

Tavi frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“He knew what would happen to him if he stayed,” Kitai said. “Therefore, he wanted the outcome.”

“He wanted to die?”

Kitai frowned pensively. “I think… he wanted balance. Order. He knew that the things he has done were wrong. Submitting himself to sentencing, to justice was…” She shook her head. “I cannot remember the Aleran word.”