condemned to die, Fidelias ex Cursori. But we are at war. Therefore, when you die, you will do so usefully. If you truly are a servant of the Realm, I have a better death for you than this one."
Fidelias stared up at him for a moment, and his features twisted into something like pain. Then he nodded in a single jerky spasm.
Tavi extended his hand, and Fidelias took it.
Chapter 25~26
Chapter 25
The fleet reached Phrygia in the false light of predawn, when the eastern sky had just begun to turn from black to blue. Starlight and moonlight on the snow made it easy to see, and Antillus Crassus and a handful of Knights Pisces had flown ahead to bring official word of the fleet to Phrygius Cyricus, Lord Phrygius's second son and seneschal of the city while his father was in the field.
"Times are changing," Fidelias said. "I don't think anyone's ever outrun the wall's grapevine without flying."
"What makes you say that?" Tavi asked him.
The Cursor gestured up at the wall, where a surprisingly sparse number of faces looked out from the battlements. "If they'd gotten wind of something like this, the whole city would have turned out."
Tavi glanced back behind him, at the seemingly endless river of masts and sails gliding over the ice. It had been an impressive sight when he'd first taken it in, even to someone who had sailed with a veritable armada over the deeps. To the folk and legionares of Phrygia, most of whom had never seen a tall ship, much less the open sea, it must be awe-inspiring, scarcely believable.
He glanced aside at Fidelias, who stood beside him in the tunic, breeches, and cloak of a civilian. He was unarmed. Two Knights Ferrous stood within sword reach of him, their weapons sheathed, their hands hovering near the hilts. Maximus stood on Tavi's other side and kept track of Fidelias's movements with an oblique eye.
Tavi studied him for another reason. Fidelias looked different than Valiar Marcus. Oh, his features hadn't changed, though Tavi supposed they might do so gradually, should Fidelias wish to reassume his former appearance. It was something subtler than that, and much deeper. The way he spoke was part of it. Marcus had always sounded like an intelligent man, but one who had been given little education, a hard-nosed and capable soldier. Fidelias's voice was smoother and more mellifluous, his inflections elegant and precise. Marcus had always held himself with parade-ground rigidity, and moved like a man carrying the extra weight of Legion armor, even when he wasn't wearing any. Fidelias looked like a man coming near to the end of an exceptionally vigorous middle age, his movements both energetic and contained.
Then Tavi hit on it, the real thing that separated Valiar Marcus from Fidelias ex Cursori.
Fidelias was smiling.
Oh, it wasn't a grin. In fact, one could hardly tell it was a smile at all. But Tavi could definitely see it in some subtle shift of the muscles in his face, in the scarcely noticeable deepening of the lines at the corners of his eyes. He looked... content. He looked like a man who had made his peace.
Tavi had no intention, however, of removing the guards tasked with watching him. For that matter, Tavi himself would be watching the man like a hawk. Fidelias ex Cursori had lived a lifetime in an exceptionally dangerous, treacherous line of work. It had made him into an exceptionally dangerous - and treacherous - individual.
"Our next step," Tavi told him, "is to gather whatever information Cyricus has that we don't. We'll use it to plan our next movement."
"That would seem logical," Fidelias said.
Tavi nodded. "I'd like you to be present."
Fidelias arched an eyebrow and glanced up at him. "Is that an order?"
"No," Tavi said. "It would be meaningless. What would I do if you refused? Put you to death?"
Fidelias's eyes wrinkled at their corners. "Ah, true."
"It is a request. You have more field experience than Magnus, and you may have some insight into the thinking behind the current leadership of the main Aleran forces. I would value your advice."
Fidelias pursed his lips. "But would you trust it?"
Tavi smiled. "Naturally not."
The older man let out a quick bark of a laugh. He shook his head, and said, "It would be my pleasure, Your Highness."
Phrygius Cyricus, Seneschal of Phrygia and commander of its defending Legions, was sixteen years old. He was an almost painfully thin young man, dressed in the white-and-green livery of the House of Phrygius,