struck in the same motion. A shower of bright green sparks flared up, and the enemy flier she'd struck went soaring past her into an uncontrolled spin, trailing a bright scarlet spiral of blood. He slammed into a wall with sickening force, as Lady Placida shot straight upward, turning to engage the other two vord-taken Citizens.
As the leading foe closed on her, Lady Placida reached out with one hand, and a wooden banner pole thrusting from the side of a tower suddenly twisted in place and lashed out like a club, striking one of the enemy fliers in the hip and sending him tumbling. The second flier closed to sword range, and sparks lashed out in emerald fountains as his blade met Lady Placida's, chiming half a dozen times as the two swept past one another.
Lady Placida spun in the air to face Amara, blood coursing from a cut on one cheek. "Countess!" she cried. "Find the Princeps!" Then she spun again, her lips locked in a defiant snarl, as the pole-struck Citizen swept past her, blade in hand. The light and steely music of the clash of powerful metalcrafters rang through the fire-choked night.
Amara stared up at Lady Placida for a heartbeat, torn, but her duty was clear. Even more than its most capable furycrafters, the Realm needed leadership. Princeps Octavian might be on his way, but he was not here. Princeps Attis was. If Alera lost him now, in these chaotic circumstances, the confusion of sorting out who would take command could mean the destruction of the Legions as well as the civilians they fought to protect. They might never reach the fortifications at Calderon.
She turned and willed Cirrus to plunge them both into the nearest plume of smoke, the better to hide from any pursuit, and rushed southward through the city's towers. The route was treacherous, deadly. Slender stone bridges arched between some of the towers, and she nearly took her head off on one of them, concealed as it was in smoke and shadow. Banner poles and stone carvings thrust from the towers, too - but she dared not fly at street level. Below, where the refugees and lower-class civilians had dwelt in numbers, laundry lines frequently crisscrossed the streets. Hitting one at flight speed would be lethal.
She found the southern plaza within moments - a broad, wide-open space of furycrafted stone that had been used as a market practically since Riva's founding. A lone figure stood in the precise center of the plaza - and even from her elevation, Amara recognized the bearing and profile of Gaius Attis.
In a circle around him, filling most of the rest of the plaza, stood more than a dozen feral furies, the smallest of them larger than a bull gargant. A serpent, its scales made of granite and obsidian, coiled upon itself, its back broader than a large city street. The deadly, wispy form of the wind-shark Amara had seen before came next, swirling and pacing in a circle all around Attis. A bull formed of knotted roots and hardwood boughs snorted and tossed its head, each of its horns longer than a legionare's spear, while its cloven hooves scraped and scored the stone of the plaza.
The air fairly shimmered with power, the energies of those enormous, aggressive furies thickening it until Amara felt that she could hardly breathe. She stared down for a few seconds, stunned. Furies of that size and strength were tremendously powerful, the sorts of beings that could only be mastered by the most powerful Citizens in the Realm. If anyone had commanded even one of these beings, it had been someone with the skill and power of a High Lord.
And Gaius Attis was, quite calmly, holding a dozen of them in their places, like so many unruly schoolchildren.
As she watched, he lifted one arm, his hand clenched into a fist, the gesture a beckoning, like a man hauling in on a heavy rope. The fury that faced him most directly, a long, lizardlike creature made of muddy water, arched as if in sudden agony and let out a howl like a thousand boiling teakettles. Then it simply flew into individual droplets of water, driven as if before a hurricane's winds - directly toward Gaius Attis. His head dropped back and he let out a low cry of pain. Then, without a pause, he whirled toward the fire fury shaped like an animate, walking willow tree, flinging out his hand, and the water of the