CHAPTER 40

For the first time in history, Alera Imperia braced herself for war beneath a canopy of wheeling crows.

Ehren stood on a southward-facing balcony of the First Lord’s citadel, where Gaius was the center of a swarm of activity while the Legions prepared to defend the city. From there, he could overlook all the prepared defensive positions, descending through the city’s defensive rings.

Alera Imperia had been built to withstand a siege-originally, at any rate. Her avenues ran in concentric, descending circles around the citadel, with cross streets laid out in straight lines from the city’s heart, like the spokes of a wheel. Each avenue was approximately fifteen feet above the next level of the city, and the stone buildings lining each avenue had been reshaped by Legion engineers, so that their outer edges had become defensive walls. The streets had been sealed, except for a single avenue between each level, alternating on opposite sides of the city. Now, the only way to the citadel was a long corridor of streets faced with stone walls, so that even if the enemy took one gate, they would be faced with another and another before they reached the citadel itself.

Against conventional tactics, Alera Imperia could theoretically hold against an attacker almost indefinitely.

Against the Vord… Well. They would soon find out.

“… and Third Rivan will also be on the first tier,” Aquitainus Attis was saying, nodding to the city gates behind the actual, massive walls of battlecrafted stone, far below the citadel. “First and Third Aquitaine, Second and Third Placidan, and the Crown Legion are camped on the north side of the city, outside the walls.”

“I cannot agree with this measure,” muttered a man Ehren recognized as the senior captain of the Rhodesian Legions. “We may not be able to open and close sally ports to get your men back inside when the Vord arrive.”

“It’s the right move,” Captain Miles said. “A mobile force can exploit any opening they leave us as they approach the city. They could inflict more damage than months of fighting from defensive positions.”

Lord Aquitaine gave the Rhodesian captain a very level stare.

“Of course,” the man said, averting his gaze.

Aquitaine nodded once and continued speaking as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “Further reinforcements from Forcia, Parcia, and Rhodes are unlikely at best, though they may be able to strike into the enemy’s flanks in the Vale.”

Which, while it could prove important in the long run, would not help them now, Ehren thought.

The First Lord cleared his throat and spoke in a quiet, clear tone. “What is the status of the civilian evacuation?”

“The last of them are leaving now, sire,” Ehren supplied. “All who were willing to leave, at any rate. The Senatorial party offered their personal armsmen as a security force.”

“I’m sure,” Gaius murmured. “The southern refugees?”

The people who had already fled so far from their homes had been heartbroken when they were told that the capital held no safety for them. Many of them were too sick, weary, hungry, or wounded to keep running. “We made sure those who were worst off were given space on wagons, sire,” Ehren said. “We also gave them all the food they could carry.”

Gaius nodded. “And the food stores?”

“We’ve enough to feed the Legions for sixteen weeks at normal rations,” Miles responded. “Twenty-four if we immediately begin cutting them.”

No one responded to that, and Ehren was fairly sure he knew why: none of the men there felt confident that they had sixteen weeks remaining to them, least of all the First Lord.

The voices of the circling crows were harsh.

Ehren entered the First Lord’s private chambers and found Gaius Caria at the liquor cabinet.

“My lady,” he said quietly, surprised. He paused to bow his head to her. “Please excuse me.”

Caria, Gaius’s second wife, was tall and lovely and fifty years younger than the First Lord, though the natural appearance of a skilled watercrafter kept her looking even younger than that. She had long hair of dark chestnut, narrow, clean features, and wore a blue silk dress of impeccable style and cut. “I should say so,” she said in a calm, cold voice. “What are you doing here?”

“The First Lord ran out of his tonic. For his cough,” Ehren said, all but stammering. Whether or not he’d had legitimate business here, he wasn’t comfortable with the concept of being alone with another man’s wife in his own bedroom. “He sent me for another bottle.”

“Ah,” Caria said. “And how is His Majesty?”

“His physician is… concerned, my lady,” Ehren said. “But of course, he is handling the matter of the defense of the Realm quite well.”

Her voice gained the faintest hint of a sharp edge. “Of course he is. Duty before all.” She stepped aside from the cabinet, then turned to walk out of the First Lord’s chambers.

Ehren hurried over to liquor cabinet and found its door unlatched.

That meant nothing, in itself-but Ehren knew Gaius. He was not the sort of man to leave doors unlatched behind him. He opened the cabinet and found the various bottles inside standing in neat rows-except for one. The full bottle of the First Lord’s tonic was askew, and the cork that sealed it was improperly seated.

But who would have tampered with the First Lord’s…

Ehren turned and was across the room in several long strides, seizing Lady Caria’s wrist, and spinning her toward him. He dug his fingers into her wrist, twisting, and a small glass vial fell from her fingers and to the floor. Ehren released her and snatched it up.

“How dare you!” Caria snarled, and fetched him a backhanded blow that fell on his chest and flung him back across the room.

Ehren managed to fall correctly, or he might have broken something on the marble floor. Even so, the fury-assisted blow had driven the breath from his lungs.

“How dare you lay a hand upon me, you arrogant little slive,” Caria snarled. She turned one palm upright, and fire kindled between her fingers. “I should burn you alive.”

Ehren knew that his life was in very real danger, but he could barely move his arms and legs. “The First Lord,” he wheezed, “is expecting me with his medicine.”

Caria’s eyes flicked down to his chest and back up to his face. Her expression twisted in something like frustration, and she clenched her fist, snuffing the fire that had sprung there.

Ehren glanced down as well. The silver coin on his necklace, the unofficial sign of a Cursor working personally for the First Lord, had fallen free of his tunic.

“I suppose it hardly matters now,” Caria said, her tone positively vicious. She turned with haughty deliberation and began walking away again.

Ehren looked down at the vial in his hand. It was stoppered tightly, with perhaps half a fingertip’s width of grey-white powder at the bottom. Poison, almost certainly.

“Why?” he croaked. “Why do this now, of all times?”

Caria paused at the doorway and looked back over her shoulder, a small smile on her lips. “Habit,” she murmured in a velvet voice.

Then she left.

“Helatin,” Sireos said in a firm tone of voice. The physician sat at a table in an antechamber next to Gaius’s command center, a dozen glass vials of colored liquid in wire racks in front of him, along with the now-empty vial Ehren had taken from Caria. “More specifically, refined helatin.”

Ehren shook his head. “I don’t understand. I thought that was a medication.”

“Medicine and poison are separated by quantity and timing,” Sireos responded. “Helatin is a stimulant, in small quantities. It’s part of his tonic, in fact. The body can process a small amount without harm. Larger amounts, though…” He shook his head.