lead the Legions and the Canim," Fidelias said quietly. "Not alone. But... if you made your will known to Varg, then Valiar Marcus could serve as Crassus's advisor, his huntmaster. Varg would give him the chance to stand on his own merits in that case. And I would direct him as best I could."
"You know the Canim," Octavian said. "Better than anyone else I have." His eyes glinted. "You've spent time with Sha, I think."
"I've met the Cane," Fidelias said calmly. "He seems most professional."
"And have you ever met Khral?"
"I do not believe my duties as First Spear ever brought me into contact with him, my lord."
Fidelias inclined his head, his mouth touched with amusement at one corner.
The Princeps turned to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Thank you, Marcus."
Fidelias dropped his eyes. "My lord..."
"Whatever else you've done," Octavian said gently, "I have seen you. I have trusted you with my life, and you have trusted me with yours. I have seen you work tirelessly to serve the First Aleran. I have seen you give your body and heart to the Legion, to your men. I refuse to consider the idea that it was all a ploy."
Fidelias looked away from him. "That hardly matters, sir."
"It matters if I say it matters," Octavian growled. "Crows take me, if I am to be First Lord, we're going to establish that from the outs - "
The earthcrafting went beneath Fidelias so swiftly, so softly, that he hardly noticed it. He froze in place and narrowed his eyes, sending his own awareness into the ground beneath them.
A second passed by him. And a third.
They were all heading in the same direction - toward the command tent, the center of the camp.
"... if I have to crack every skull in the Senate to..." Octavian frowned. "Marcus?"
Fidelias's hand went to his side, where his sword would normally be. It was, of course, gone. "Sir," he said, his voice tight, "there are earthcrafters passing beneath us at this very moment."
Octavian blinked. Powerful the young man might be, but he didn't have the subtlety, the awareness, that could only come from decades of experience. He hadn't sensed a thing. But once he closed his own eyes for a moment, frowning, he let out a blistering curse. "Friendlies would never attempt to enter the camp like that. The vord had a number of Citizens in their control."
"Aye."
"Then we can't send legionares against them. It will be a bloodbath." He "listened" for a moment more, then opened his eyes. "They're heading for command," Octavian said shortly. Only his eyes showed strain. "Kitai's there."
"Go," Fidelias said. "I'll bring the Pisces after you."
"Do it," Octavian snapped, and before he was finished speaking, he took a single bounding step and leapt into the air on a roaring gale of wind. Within another heartbeat, he had drawn his sword, and white-hot, furious fire burned forth from the blade.
Fidelias turned to sprint toward the center of the camp. As he went, he began bellowing orders that carried even over the hollow roar of Octavian's monstrous windstream.
He did not need to be doing such things at his age, but he tried to focus on the positive: At least he wasn't running in full armor. And, thank the great furies, the Princeps hadn't taken Fidelias flying alongside him. Even so, some part of Fidelias noted with amusement that he wasn't simply following Gaius Octavian, unarmed and unarmored, into the leviathan's mouth.
He was sprinting.
Chapter 42
Tavi didn't know how many earthcrafters the vord had collared and enslaved, but given how quickly Alera said that they had affected repairs upon the causeways, it was either a great many Citizens with lesser gifts or a few very powerful ones. Either way, Kitai was in the command tent, averting friction between the Antillan brothers and the Canim, and between the command staff of the Free Aleran and Maestro Magnus, and unaware of what was coming.
Tavi dived at the command tent, a dangerous maneuver when flying so low - but he managed to land perhaps twenty feet off without breaking his legs or ankles, then promptly redirected his windstream to catch the command tent and tear it neatly up off its posts and stakes like an enormous kite. A dozen people in the tent, staff and guards, Aleran and Canim, came lurching to their feet. Half a dozen of them, including Kitai, had already drawn steel before Tavi got a clear look at them.