First Lord's Fury

CHAPTER 40

“Let me deal with this,” Invidia snarled. “Give me our earthcrafters and the behemoths, and that wall won’t last five minutes.”

“No,” said the Queen. She paced back and forth beside the pool of water, staring down at it. Her tattered old gown rustled and whispered. “No, not yet,” she said.

“You saw the losses they inflicted.”

The Queen shrugged a shoulder, the motion elegant, at odds with the stained finery she wore. “Losses are to be expected. Especially here, at the last. They revealed hidden capabilities without destroying us, which we will overcome in our next encounter. That is a victory.” She looked up at Invidia sharply. “However, I do not understand why you did not warn me about the great fury in the mountain.”

“Because I didn’t know about it,” Invidia replied, her voice tight. “Obviously.”

“You said you had been here before.”

“To pick up Isana in a wind coach,” Invidia said. “Not to plan an invasion.”

The vord Queen stared at Invidia for a moment, as though she hadn’t quite understood the difference. Then she nodded slowly. “It must be another disparate Aleran experience.”

Invidia folded her arms. “Obviously. It wasn’t a part of the context.”

The Queen tilted her head. “But you intended to conquer Alera.”

“I intended to take it whole,” she said, “by co-opting its system of gover nance. The use of military force was never a preferred course of action. Certainly, there was little probability that I would ever have a need to attack this remote little valley. With the exception of providing a convenient and predictable place for the Marat to attack, it’s been of no historical importance whatsoever.”

At that, Isana looked up from where she sat, near the imprisoned Araris’s feet, and smiled.

Invidia’s presence became suffused with sudden rage, only slowly gathered back under control. The burned woman turned to the Queen, and said, “Every moment we spend here with our forces doing nothing brings complications.”

“They are not ‘our’ forces, Invidia,” the Queen said. “They are mine. And you still think like an Aleran. My troops will not desert in the face of starvation. They will not cast their allegiance with another. They will not hesitate to obey nor refuse to attack an enemy at my command. Do not fear.”

“I am not afraid,” Invidia said, her voice coldly precise.

“Of course you are,” Isana said calmly. “You’re both terrified.”

Invidia’s cold eyes and the Queen’s alien ones both swiveled to come to rest on her. Isana thought that such eyes looked like weapons, somehow, and dangerous ones at that. She further thought that by all rights, she should be frightened herself. But given the past days, she found herself having difficulty giving fear much credit. In her first days in captivity, perhaps fear would have moved her more strongly. Now… no. She was really rather more concerned with the fact that she’d not bathed in days than that her life might come to an end. Terror had worn into worry, and worry was an old companion to any mother.

Isana nodded to the Queen in mock deference, and said, “You’ve been dealt a harsh blow by the first Aleran force actually prepared to resist you. They didn’t have it all their way, of course, because you are unwholesomely powerful. But even so, the valley stands, and thousands of your warriors are no more. And they are ready to continue fighting. The fight seems hopeless to you, and yet they stand and fight and die—which makes you think that perhaps the fight is not hopeless. Yet you cannot see how that would be. You fear that you have overlooked some detail, some fact, some number that might change all of your careful equations—and that terrifies you.”

Isana turned to Invidia, and said, “And you. I almost feel sorry for you, Invidia. At least you had your beauty. And now even that is gone. The only haven left for you, your best hope, is to rule a kingdom of the childless, the aging, the dying. Even if you take your crown, Invidia, you know that you will never be admired, never be envied, never be a mother—and never be loved. Those who endure this war to live under you will fear you. Hate you. Kill you, I should imagine, if they can. And, in the end, there won’t even be anyone left to remember your name as a curse. Your future, no matter what happens, is a long and terrible torment. The brightest end you can hope for is a swift and painless death.” She shook her head. “I… do feel sorry for you, dear. I have good reason to hate you, yet you’ve served yourself a fate worse than any I would ever have imagined, much less wished upon you. Of course you’re afraid.”

She folded her hands in her lap, and said, calmly, “And both of you are now worried that I have realized so much about you both. About who you are. About what moves you. You’re both wondering what else I know. And how else I might use it against you. And why I have revealed what I know here, and now. And you, lonely Queen, wonder if you have made a mistake in bringing me here. You wonder what Octavian inherited from his father—and what came from me.”

Silence filled the hive. Neither of the two half women to whom she spoke moved.

“Do you think?” Isana asked in a conversational tone, “that it might be possible to have hot tea with our dinner tonight? I’ve always found a good cup of tea to be most…” She smiled at them. “Reassuring.”

The Queen stared at her for a time. Then she whirled to face Invidia, and said, “You may not have the remaining crafters,” she hissed. Then, the hem of her tattered gown snapping, the vord Queen stalked from the hive.

Invidia looked after the Queen, then turned to Isana. “Are you mad? Do you know what she could do to you?” Her eyes flickered with disquieting light. “Or what I could do to you?”

“I needed her to leave,” Isana said calmly. “Do you wish to be rid of her, Invidia?”

The burned woman gestured in burning frustration at the creature clamped to her. “It cannot be.”

“What if I told you that it could?” Isana asked, speaking in a calm, almost-toneless voice. “What if I told you that the vord possess the means to cure you of any poison, to restore the loss of any organ—even to restore your beauty? And that I know its name and can make a fair guess at where it might be?”

Invidia’s head rocked back at Isana’s words. Then she breathed, “You’re lying.”

Isana offered the woman her hand calmly. “I’m not. Come see.”

The other woman took a step back from Isana, as though the offered hand contained pure poison.

Isana smiled. “I know,” she said calmly. “You could be free of them, Invidia. I think it is very possible. Even against the Queen’s will.”

Invidia lifted her chin. Her eyes burned, and her scarred face twisted into what looked like physical pain. Terrible hope pulsed from her, and though she tried to hide it, Isana had been too near her, through too much, for too long. There was no more hiding it from her finely tuned senses. Though it sickened her to do it, Isana faced her calmly and waited for the pressure of that hope to drive the other woman to speak.

“You,” Invidia rasped, “are lying.”

Isana shook her head slowly, never looking away from the other woman’s eyes. “Should you wish to change your future,” she said calmly, “I am here.”

Invidia turned and stormed from the hive. Isana heard a roaring windstream bear her away—leaving her in the hive alone. Except, of course, for perhaps a hundred wax spiders, most of them motionless but not asleep. If she moved toward the exit, they would swarm her.

Isana smoothed her skirts again and sat calmly.

Waiting.