Isana forced herself to set aside the rising sense of panic, smoothing her expression back to calm. "I'm sorry... I'm just so... I'll be all right, Bernard."
"You're sure?" Bernard said. " 'Sana, I... well, when you told me to buy Fade, I did it. Never asked you why. I was sure you had your reasons, but..." A heavy silence fell, and Bernard asked, "Is there anything you should tell me?"
Isana dared not meet her brother's eyes. "Not yet."
Bernard frowned at the answer.
Before he could ask another question, Isana nodded at Bernard's working clothes, his woodland cloak. "Where are you going?"
He hesitated for a moment and gave her a lopsided smile. "Can't say," Bernard said. "Not yet. Mission."
"What mission?" Isana asked. She tilted her head to one side and then said, "Ah, I see. Amara's mission."
Bernard nodded, somewhat sheepishly. "Yes."
"She makes you happy, doesn't she."
Her younger brother's face spread into a little smile. "Yes."
As Isana had Septimus. A little pang went through her, but she covered it with a smile. "From the rumors I've heard," Isana added drily, "very happy."
"Isana," Bernard rumbled, his face flushed.
Isana let her lips curl around a small silent chuckle. "Leaving soon, I take it?"
"Before it gets light. I was about to go," he said. "I was hoping you'd wake first."
"Will you..." She frowned. "Is it..."
He smiled at her and touched her shoulder again. "I'll be fine. I'll tell you all about it when we get back."
She could feel Bernard's confidence and honesty, through his touch on her shoulder, but she also felt uncertainty and fear. Though her brother was not in fear of his life, or ruled by his trepidations, he knew full well that he was going into danger and that nothing in the future was certain.
There was a knock at the door, and Giraldi opened it and stuck his head in. "Your Excellency," he said. "Your skinny Countess just blew past on her way to the tower. Said you should catch up."
Bernard nodded sharply, then turned and gave his sister another, tighter hug. Isana knew that her ribs weren't really about to collapse, as she had endured many such embraces from Bernard in the past, but she finally made a sound of complaint and pushed at him. It was, she sometimes thought, the only way he knew when to stop.
"Giraldi will be with you," he said. "Love you."
"And I you," Isana said. "Good luck."
Bernard bent down and kissed her forehead, then rose, leaving. "Take good care of her, centurion."
"Go teach yer grandmother to suck eggs," Giraldi muttered, winking at Isana.
"What?" Bernard called over his shoulder.
"Sir!" Giraldi answered. "Yes, sir."
"Terrible," Isana murmured. "The lack of discipline in today's Legions."
"Shocking," the veteran concurred. "Steadholder, you in need of anything? Victuals, drink?"
"Some privacy first," Isana said. "Then something simple?"
"I'll find it," Giraldi said.
"Centurion. If you would, please send Fade to speak to me."
Giraldi paused by the door and grunted. "That scarred slave? The one-man Legion?"
Isana stared at him for a moment, saying nothing.
"Seems kind of odd, old Fade would be out there at your Steadholt all those years, and never saw him use so much as a knife. Figured all those scars on his arms were from working his smithy. Then tonight, he just went through those maniacs like they was made of cobwebs. Sort of makes a body wonder who he is."
Isana folded her arms, one finger tapping in slight impatience, and said nothing.
"Hngh," Giraldi grunted, limping out. "The plot thickens."
Fade entered a few moments later. He was still dressed in the simple, blood-sprinkled smock of a scullion, though he wore a Legion-issue sword belt and his old blade at his side. He had acquired a worn, old cloak of midnight blue, and wore the military boots of a legionare. A bloody rag was tied crudely around his left hand, but if the wound caused him pain, he showed no sign of it.
Fade shut the door behind him and turned to face Isana.
"Tavi?" she asked quietly.
Fade took a steadying breath. "On assignment. Gaius has him in the field."
Isana felt the first flutterings of panic. "Gaius knows?"
"I believe so," Fade said quietly.
"Tavi is alone?"
Fade shook his head, letting his long hair fall forward over his face, as usual, hiding much of his expression. "Antillar Maximus is with him."
"Maximus. The boy whose life Tavi had to save? Twice?"
Fade didn't lift his face, but his voice hardened. "The young man who twice proved his loyalty to his friend and the Realm. Maximus laid down his life to protect Tavi against the son of a High Lord. You cannot ask more than that of anyone."
"I don't deny his willingness to lay down his life," Isana retorted. "It is his aptitude for it that concerns me. Great furies, Araris, Antillar has practice at it."
"Lower your voice, my lady," Fade said, his tone warning and gentle at the same time.
She never understood how he could do that. Isana shook her head tiredly. "Fade," she corrected herself, "I'm not your lady."
"As milady wishes," Fade said.
She frowned at him, then dismissed the argument with an idle throwaway gesture of one hand. "Why didn't you stay with him?"
"My presence would have drawn attention to him," Fade said. "Gaius has inserted him into the newly formed Aleran Legion." He gestured at the horrible brand on his face, the coward's mark of a soldier who had fled combat. "I could not have remained nearby him. If I had to fight, it is probable that someone would recognize me, and it would raise a great many questions about why one of Princeps Septimus's singulares, supposedly dead for twenty years, was guarding the young man."
"Gaius didn't have to send him there," Isana insisted. "He wanted to isolate him. He wanted to make him vulnerable."
"He wanted," Fade disagreed, "to keep him out of the public eye and in a safe location."
"By putting him into a Legion," Isana said, her disbelief heavy in her tone. "At the eruption of a civil war."
Fade shook his head. "You aren't thinking it through, my lady," he said. "The First Aleran is the one Legion that will not see action in a civil war. Not with so many of its troops and officers owing loyalties to cities, lords, and family houses on both sides of the struggle. Further, it has been forming in the western reaches of the Amaranth Vale, far from any fighting, and it would not surprise me to learn that Gaius issued orders to send it even farther west, away from the theater of combat."