First Lords Fury

us in person?"

  "Essentially, yes," Aquitaine said. "The extra time to prepare will hardly hurt, either. " He glanced over at Ehren and nodded. "You have the full authority of the Crown to recruit the necessary firecrafters, evacuate anyone left in that corridor of approach, and deny its resources to the enemy. See to it. "

  "See to what?" Raucus said.

  "In order to slow the croach and compel the Queen to reveal herself," Ehren said quietly, "we'll need to starve it. Burn out anything that grows. Salt the fields. Poison the wells. Make sure that it has nothing to help it set down roots between the current line of advance and Riva. "

  Raucus's eyes widened. "But that means. . . bloody crows. That's nearly three hundred miles of settled, arable land. Some of the last such in Alera that's still free. You're talking about burning down the best of the croplands we have left. Destroying thousands of our own people's steadholts, cities, homes. Creating tens of thousands of additional refugees. "

  "Yes," Aquitaine said simply. "And it will be a great deal of work. Best get started at once, Sir Ehren. "

  Ehren's stomach twisted in revulsion. After all that he had been through since the vord had come, he had seen more than enough of destruction and loss inflicted by the enemy. How much worse would it be to see more of Alera destroyed - this time at the hands of her own defenders?

  Especially when, deep down in his guts, he knew that it wouldn't make any difference. Whatever they did, this war could end in only one way.

  But they had to try. And it wasn't as though the vord would destroy those lands any less thoroughly, when they came.

  Ehren put his fist to his heart in a salute and bowed to the First Lord. Then he turned and left the tent, to arrange the greatest act of premeditated destruction ever perpetrated by Aleran forces. He only hoped that he wasn't doing it for nothing - that in the end, the desolation he was about to create would serve some sort of purpose.

  As such things went, Ehren thought, it was a rather small and anemic hope, but the slender little Cursor decided to nurture it anyway.

  After all.

  It was the only one he had left.

  Gaius Isana, the theoretical First Lady of Alera, wrapped her thick traveling cloak about her a little more securely and stared out the window of the enclosed wind coach. They must be very close to her home now - the Calderon Valley, once considered the farthest, most primitive frontier in all of Alera. She looked down at the landscape rolling slowly by, far beneath them, and felt somewhat frustrated. She had only infrequently seen Calderon from the air, and the countryside beneath her stretched out for miles and miles and miles all around. It all looked the same - either wild forest, with rolling mountains that looked like wrinkles in a tablecloth, or settled land, marked by broad, flat swaths of winter fields being prepared for spring, its roads running like ruler lines between steadholts and towns.

  For all that she knew, she could be looking at her home at that precise moment. She had no reference point with which to recognize it from this high.

  ". . . which has had the effect of reducing the spread of sickness through the refugee camp," said a calm young woman's voice.

  Isana blinked and looked at her companion, a slender, serious-looking young woman with wispy, white-blond hair that fell in a silken sheet to her elbows. Isana could feel the girl's patience and gentle amusement, tainted with an equally gentle sadness, radiating out from her like heat from a kitchen oven. Isana knew that Veradis had doubtlessly sensed her own bemusement as Isana's thoughts wandered.

  Veradis looked up from a sheaf of notes and arched a faint, pale eyebrow. The barest hint of a smile haunted her mouth, but she maintained the fiction. "My lady?"

  "I'm sorry," Isana said, shaking her head. "I was thinking of home. It can be distracting. "

  "True enough," Veradis said, inclining her head. "Which is why I try not to think of mine. "

  A spear of bitter grief flashed from the young woman, its base fashioned from guilt, its tip from rage. As quickly as it appeared, the feeling vanished. Veradis applied her furycraft to conceal her emotions from Isana's acute watercrafting senses. Isana was grateful for the gesture. Without a talent for metalcrafting to balance the empathic sensitivity native to any watercrafter of Isana's skill, strong emotions could be as startling and painful as a sudden blow to the face.

  Not that Isana could blame the young woman for feeling it. Veradis's father was the High Lord of Ceres. She had seen what happened to her home when the vord came for it.

  Nothing human dwelt there now.

  "I'm sorry," Isana said quietly. "I wasn't thinking. "

  "Honestly, my lady," Veradis said, her voice calm and slightly detached, a telltale sign of the use of metalcrafting to stabilize and conceal emotion. "You've got to get over that. If you try to avoid every subject that might remind me of Cer. . . of my former home, you'll never speak another word to me. It's natural for me to be feeling pain right now. You did nothing to cause it. "

  Isana reached out to touch Veradis's hand lightly for a moment, and nodded. "But all the same, child. "

  Veradis gave her another small smile. She glanced down at her papers, then back to Isana. The First Lady straightened her spine and shoulders and nodded. "Excuse me. You were saying? Something about rats?"

  "We had no idea that they might be carrying the disease," the young woman said. "But once the security measures were put in place to guard three camps against the vord takers, the rat populations in them were severely reduced. A month later, those same camps had become almost completely free of the sickness. "

  Isana nodded. "Then we'll use the remaining security budget from the Dianic League to begin implementing the same measures in the other camps. Priority will be given to those who are hardest hit by the disease. "

  Veradis nodded and withdrew a second paper from her sheaf. She passed it to Isana, along with a quill.

  Isana scanned the document and smiled. "If you already knew how I was going to respond in any case, why not proceed without me?"

  "Because I am not the First Lady," Veradis said. "I have no authority to dispense the League's funds. "

  Something in the young woman's tone of voice or perhaps in her posture raised an alarm in Isana's mind. She'd felt a similar instinctive suspicion when Tavi had been withholding the truth from her, as a child. A very small child. As Tavi grew, he'd become increasingly capable of avoiding such discoveries. Veradis's skills of evasion simply did not compare.

  Isana cleared her throat and gave the young woman an arch look.

  Veradis's eyes sparkled, and though her cheeks didn't become pink, Isana suspected it was only because the younger woman was using her furycraft to prevent it. "Though, my lady, since lives were at stake, I did issue letters of credit to the appropriate contractors, so that they could go ahead and begin their work, beginning at the worst camps. "

  Isana signed the bottom of the document and smiled. "Isn't that the same thing as doing it without me?"

  Veradis took the document back, blew gently on the ink to dry it, and said, in a satisfied tone, "Not anymore. "

  Isana's ears suddenly pained her, and she frowned, looking back out the window. They were descending. Within a minute, there was a polite tap at Isana's window, and a young man in gleaming, newly made steel armor waved a hand at her from outside. She rolled down the window, letting in a howl of cold air and the roar of the columns of wind that kept the coach aloft.

  "Your Highness," the young officer called, touching his fist to his heart politely. "We'll be there in a moment. "

  "Thank you, Terius," Isana called back. "Would you see to it that a messenger is sent for my brother as soon as we land, please?"

  Terius saluted again. "Of course, my lady. Be sure to fasten your safety straps. "

  Isana smiled at him and closed the coach's window, and the young officer banked up and away, to move back to his place at the head of the formation. The sudden lack of roaring so
und made the inside of the coach seem too still.

  After a silent moment spent rearranging her wind-tossed hair, Veradis said, "It is possible that he knows, you know. "

  Isana arched an eyebrow at her. "Hmmm?"

  "Aquitaine," Veradis said. "He might know about the fortifications your brother has been building. He might know why you came here today. "

  "What makes you say that?"

  "I saw one of Terius's men entering Senator Valerius's tent this morning. "

  Valerius, Isana thought. A repulsive man. I'm really rather glad Bernard found it necessary to break his nose and two of his teeth.

  "Really?" Isana asked aloud. She mused for a moment, then shrugged. "It doesn't matter if he knows, really. He