Chapter 31

"What do you mean, they missed?" Fidelias snapped. He gritted his teeth and folded his arms, leaning back in the seat within the litter. The Knights Aeris at the poles supported it as it sailed through low clouds and drifting snow, and the cold seemed determined to slowly remove his ears from the sides of his head.

"You really do hate flying, don't you?" Aldrick drawled.

"Just answer the question."

"Marcus reports that the ground team missed stopping the Cursor from reaching Count Gram. The air team saw a target of opportunity and took it, but they were detected before they could attack. The Cursor again. The two men with Marcus were killed in the attack, though he reports that Count Gram was wounded, probably fatally."

"It was a bungled assault from the beginning, not an opportunity. If they weren't forewarned before, they are now."

Aldrick shrugged. "Maybe not. Marcus reports that the Cursor and the Steadholder with her were subsequently arrested and hauled off in chains."

Fidelias tilted his head at Aldrick, frowning. Then, slowly, he started to smile. "Well. That makes me feel a great deal better. Gram wouldn't have arrested one of his own Steadholders without getting the whole story. His truthfinder must be in command now."

Aldrick nodded. "That's what Marcus reports. And according to our sources, the truthfinder is someone with a patron but no talent. House of Pluvus. He's young, no experience, not enough crafting to even do his job, much less to be a threat in the field."

Fidelias nodded. "Mmm."

"Lucky accident, it looks like. There was a veteran that was going to be set out with nearly two cohorts tertius, originally, but the paperwork got done incorrectly and they sent out a green unit instead."

"The crows it was an accident," Fidelias murmured. "It took me nearly a week to set it up."

Aldrick stared at him for a moment. "I'm impressed."

Fidelias shrugged. "I only did it to lessen the effectiveness of the garrison. I didn't think it would pay off this well." He wiped a snowflake from his cheek, irritably. "I must be living right."

"Don't get your hopes up too far," the swordsman responded. "If the Marat lose their backbones, all of this will be for nothing."

"That's why we're going out to them," Fidelias said. "Just follow my lead." He leaned forward and called to one of the Knights Aeris, "How much longer?"

The man squinted into the distance for a moment and then called back to him, "Coming down out of the cloud cover now, sir. We should be able to see the fires… there."

The litter swept down out of the clouds, and the abrupt return of vision made Fidelias's stomach churn uncomfortably, once he could see how far down the ground was.

And beneath them, spread out over the plains beyond the mountains that shielded the Calderon Valley, were campfires. There were campfires that spread into the night for miles.

"Hungh," Aldrick rumbled. He stared down at the fires, at the forms dimly moving around them for several moments, while they sailed over them. Then turned to Fidelias and said, "I'm not sure I can handle that many."

Fidelias felt the corner of his mouth twitch. "We'll make that the backup plan, then."

The litter glided to earth at the base of a hill that rose up out of the rolling plains. At its top stood a ring of enormous stones, each as big as a house, and within that circle of stones stood a still pool of water, somehow free of the ice that should have covered it. Torches rested between the

stones, their emerald flame giving strange, heavy smoke. It gave the place a garish light. The snow on the ground gave the whole place an odd light, and the pale, nearly naked Marat could be seen keeping out of the light of the nearest torches, watching them curiously.

Fidelias alighted from the litter and asked the same Knight he'd spoken to before, "Where is Atsurak?"

The Knight nodded up the slope. "Top of the hill. They call it a horto but it's up there."

Fidelias rolled his ankle, frowning at the pain in his foot. "Then why didn't we land at the top of the hill?"

The Knight shrugged and said apologetically, "They told us not to, sir."

"Fine," Fidelias said, shortly. He glanced at Aldrick and started up the hill. The swordsman fell in on his right and a step behind him. The slope made his feet hurt abominably, and he had to stop once to rest.

Aldrick frowned, watching him. "Feet?"

"Yes."

"When we wrap this up tomorrow, I'll go get Odiana. She's good at fixing things up."

Fidelias frowned. He didn't trust the water witch. Aldrick seemed to control her, but she was too clever for his liking. "Fine," he said, shortly. After a moment, he asked, "Why, Aldrick?"

The swordsman watched the night around them with neutral disinterest. "Why what?"

"You've been a wanted man for what? Twenty years?"

"Eighteen."

"And you've been a rebel the whole time. Fallen in with one group after another, and they've all been subversives."

"Freedom fighters," Aldrick said.

"Whatever," Fidelias said. "The point is that you've been a thorn in Gaius's side since you were barely more than a boy."

Aldrick shrugged.

Fidelias studied him. "Why?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because I like knowing the motivations of the people I work with. The witch follows you. She's besotted with you, and I have no doubt that she'd kill for you, if you asked her to."

Again, Aldrick shrugged.

"But I don't know why you're doing it. Why Aquitaine trusts you. So, why?"

"You haven't worked it out? You're supposed to be the big spy for the Crown. Haven't you figured it out yet? Analyzed my scars or poked into my diaries, something like that?"

Fidelias half-smiled. "You're honest. You're a murderer, a sellsword, a thug-but an honest one. I thought I'd ask."

Aldrick stared up the hill for a moment. Then he said, tonelessly, "I had a family. My mother and my father. My older brother and two younger sisters. Gaius Sextus destroyed them." Aldrick tapped a finger on the hilt of his sword. "I'll kill him. To do that, I have to knock him off the Throne. So I'm with Aquitaine."

"And that's all there is to it?" Fidelias asked.

"No." Aldrick didn't elaborate. After a moment of silence, he said, "How are your feet?"

"Let's go," Fidelias said. He started back up the hill again, though the pain made him wince with every step.

Perhaps ten yards short of the summit of the hill, a pair of Marat warriors, male and female, rose out of the shadows around the base of the stones at the top of the hill. They came down toward them, through the snow, the man holding an axe of Aleran manufacture, the woman, a dark dagger of chipped stone.

Fidelias stopped short of them and held up his empty hands. "Peace. I have come to speak to Atsurak."

The man stepped up close to him, his eyes narrowed. He had the dark, heavy feathers of a herdbane braided through his pale hair. "I will not permit you to speak to Atsurak, outsider, while he is at the horto. You will wait until-"

Fidelias's temper flashed, and it was with a flicker of annoyance that he reached down into the earth to borrow strength from Vamma and dealt the axe-wielding warrior a blow that lifted the Marat's feet up off the ground and stretched him out senseless in the snow.

Without pausing, Fidelias stepped over the silent form of the fallen Marat. He limped up to the lean female warrior and said in exactly the same tone, "Peace. I have come to speak to Atsurak."

The Marat's amber-colored eyes flicked up and down Fidelias, bright

beneath heavy, pale brows. Her lips lifted from her teeth, showing canine fangs, and she said, "I will take you to Atsurak."