And the two men who’d orchestrated it stood together, elbow to elbow.
A simmering fury filled Lydia as she watched them, a slow smirk forming on Lucius’s face, while the legatus’s remained cold and impassive as any statue. The last legionnaire voted right as the burning edge of the sun disappeared from sight, and a horn blasted, signaling the polls had closed.
“It’s finished,” the legatus said. “We’ll excuse ourselves from the city and return to camp. Consul.” He inclined his head, the movement rigid, as though he’d had to force himself to do it. As though, improbable as it might be, the young man wasn’t entirely happy about the outcome.
“Indeed,” Lucius said, wiping sweat from his head with one hand, then drying it on his clothing. “Send them back, but I want you to stay. We’ve business to discuss.”
The legatus’s hands flexed, the tendons standing out against his golden skin. “With the Senate?”
“No,” Lucius replied. “You and I. Attend me at my villa within the hour.”
Lydia circled around the column so that Lucius wouldn’t see her as he ambled inside, but her attention went immediately back to Marcus. He stood stock-still, staring out over his men but not even seeming to see them. It wasn’t until the big Atlian officer whistled, the sound cutting through the silence of the Forum, that the legatus jerked out of his thoughts. He strode down the steps, pushing his helmet on his head before mounting the waiting horse.
“Back to camp,” he ordered, voice carrying across the lines of men.
Except he wasn’t going back to camp. He was going to meet Lucius alone, and on the assumption that whatever they planned to discuss related to why this legion had helped put Lucius in power, Lydia intended to hear every word.
13
KILLIAN
It had only taken days in his role as captain of Princess Malahi’s bodyguard before Killian began questioning his decision not to take the King up on an engagement with the headsman.
Malahi’s plan was ambitious—to convince the High Lords that Serrick’s rule was not favored by the Six and to vote to put her on the throne in his place, using her hand in marriage as the prize. And it was an incentive that none of them would ignore. Even without the crown in play, Rowenes was the wealthiest of the twelve houses courtesy of large gold mines on the western edges of their territory. To marry the future High Lady Rowenes would mean eventually gaining access to all that wealth, and the High Lords of the land were nothing if not predictable in their greed. That it would be the easiest route for one of them to take the throne only sweetened the pot.
But the plan had moved beyond ambitious when Serrick announced to the Council of Twelve his intention to conscript all men of fighting age to the Royal Army. With the exception of Damashere and Keshmorn, whose lands had fallen to Rufina’s armies, every one of the High Lords had abruptly discovered that their presence was sorely required back on their lands, all of them fleeing on ships hours before the law was enacted, limiting Malahi’s ability to win them over to her plan. Nothing short of an act of the gods would drive those cowards of men to step foot in Mudaire—not when it meant Serrick subsequently dragging them to the front lines with him to fight.
Especially given it was a fight Mudamora was losing.
Rufina’s army was moving east from the Liratora Mountains like a dark tide, driving Mudamora’s Royal Army slowly backward. Refugees fled in droves toward the safety of Mudaire’s walls. Though that safety was relative. Fell things had crossed the mountains with the Seventh’s armies beyond even the corrupted. Strange creatures prowled the land and skies, hunting in the darkness, and stories came with the refugees of farms and villages found empty of life and drenched in blood, half-consumed corpses left abandoned for the crows. Fields and forests were crisscrossed with blight, the smell of rot riding the wind all the way to the coast.
Already the city struggled beneath the burden of feeding its people, and with those with means fleeing south in droves, soon merchant ships would have no incentive to transport food and supplies to Mudaire, because there would be no one left in the gods-damned city able to pay for them. And with escape on foot bordering on suicidal given the creatures that prowled the night, Mudaire was more prison than city. It was