Tavi stared at Kitai and thought that he'd never seen a creature so beautiful. He leaned over to her and kissed her hard on the mouth. When it was through, they rested their foreheads together, until Kitai's horse sidestepped, and they both nearly plummeted off.
They shared another smile, righted themselves, and returned to the host.
Tavi rode up to Fidelias, who stood talking with Varg. "All right," he said. "It's just ahead. Give the order to get us under way and prepare to sound the attack."
Chapter 50
Invidia stared at the vord Queen, transfixed.
"Do not make a fatal mistake, Invidia," the vord Queen said, her voice calm. "One more dead Aleran means nothing to me. Nor should a few more matter to you, at this point. Kill them. I will keep my word to you."
Invidia bit her lip. Then she bent forward, slowly, her fingers outstretched for the sword's hilt. Once she touched it, something in her seemed to solidify, some resolution that made her expression as smooth and as cold as glass in winter. Her hand seemed to gain strength as she touched the blade. Then she lifted it and turned toward the two Alerans, her eyes hard, the mad, bitter rage pouring off her like smoke from the scorched carcasses around them. "You brought this upon yourselves."
It happened so swiftly. One instant, Invidia was beginning to take a step forward, a dead man's sword in her hand.
The next, there was a hiss of rushing air, the sound of a whip crack, and the jagged point of what looked like a spear tip carved from bone erupted from Invidia's chest, just below her breast, to the left of her sternum. The spear transfixed the burned woman and the creature clutching her body in a single blow, and she arched her back in agony, her eyes flying open wide, her mouth stretching into a breathless scream.
A hand gripping a stone knife emerged from a fraying windcrafted veil, swept around Invidia's body, and with a swift, sure motion, cut her throat from ear to ear.
Invidia Aquitaine fell to the croach, her blood pouring out like a fountain, her eyes wide with shock and terror and rage and pain. She turned her head to stare, bewildered, at the woman who had killed her.
Countess Calderonus Amara stood over her with the bloodied stone knife in hand, and whispered, "Thus are you served in Alera, traitor."
Invidia's eyes rolled back into her head, and her breath rattled in her throat. She sank very slowly to the ground, the legs of the beast upon her breast quivering madly, uselessly. Her own legs twitched and kicked several times, as if she believed herself to be running away from something.
Then her bloodless face fell to one side, staring sightlessly, and she went still.
Isana stared at Amara in shock. The Cursor had been in the hive all along. She must have entered when Antillus and Phrygia did, concealing her presence with a veil - doubtless intending to strike down the vord Queen. But the Queen was surrounded by a wall of blade-beasts, and Invidia had been a perfect target, fully focused upon her own self-conflict and pain.
Amara bent and wrenched the bone spear from the body, bracing one boot against the dead woman's shoulder blades. It was a short weapon, no more than three or three and a half feet long, and thicker than her wrist, decorated with Marat-style carvings. A bone spear, Isana thought, and a stone knife - neither of which would have been sensed by Invidia's metalcrafting. Amara took the primitive weapons in hand and turned to face the Queen, her stance casually arrogant.
The Queen narrowed her black, glittering eyes, and Isana felt a surge of deep, hot anger pulse from her in a single wave, then vanish again. As it happened, the blade-beasts parted, rippling smoothly out of the space between the Queen and Countess Amara.
"That," said the Queen, her diction precise, "was inconvenient."
"In what way?" Amara asked, her tone flippant.
The vord Queen answered, but Isana had realized what Amara was doing. She bit her lip and placed her hand on Aria's calf, her fingers clutching hard. Without the waters of a healing pool to work with, she couldn't tell precisely what shape Aria was in. It was like trying to read a book underwater, with her vision blurred and the ink running - but she could feel it well enough to know that Aria knew precisely what was injured, and that she was, in fact, making an effort to heal it. Silently, Isana threw her support behind Lady Placida's efforts, and she could feel it as the other woman's pains began to recede, as her wounds began to close.
"She was... uniquely useful to me," the Queen said.
Amara flicked some of the blood off the tip of the spear with one finger, and said, "She's still useful. You can eat her."
"Her," said the Queen, her eyes narrowing. "And you."
Amara lifted her spear in silent invitation and gave the Queen a mocking bow.
Isana clutched Aria's leg even harder, pouring all her energy into assisting her.
The Queen and the Cursor both called upon windcrafting to give them speed and abruptly rushed toward one another, streaks of motion. At the last instant, Amara flung the stone knife, and the vord Queen had to intercept it with her blade. Amara dropped into a slide and went by her, barely avoiding the sword's backswing. The Cursor came up onto her feet, rolled beneath another blow as the Queen pursued her, then reversed her facing in midleap and flung the bone spear at the Queen with unearthly speed.
The Queen's blade snapped out and shattered the bone weapon into hundreds of shards, and the frantic pace stilled again. Amara came to her feet weap onless, wearing only light clothing, not even a plated coat. The vord Queen stared at her with glittering black eyes, and said, "I had a bond with her. Why was such a thing so difficult to notice until it was gone?"
She tilted her head, still staring at Amara, and said, "This isn't fun any more."
She flicked her wrist, a distracted motion, and there was a sudden high-pitched, hissing hum. Amara gasped, jerked, and twisted several times, driven back half a pace by some kind of impact.
Isana wasn't sure what had happened until she saw half a dozen creatures, like unthinkably large wasps, writhing on Amara's chest, belly, shoulders, arms, and legs. Each of them sported a stinger as long as a woman's finger, made of serrated and gleaming vord chitin.
Amara looked down at herself, at the enormous wasps, shocked. And then her eyes rolled back in her head, and she toppled to the ground, her back arched into a rigid bow, her limbs thrashing.
"Countess!" Aria cried, her face a mask of blood - but no longer bleeding, at least, no longer blinding her. She took a step forward, and her wounded leg buckled beneath her, nearly throwing her down.
The vord Queen looked over her shoulder and made the exact same gesture. Aria lifted her sword in a vain defensive motion, but there was the hiss-hum of more wasps flashing from some gaping orifice within the croach, high up on one wall. Where they struck steel, they hit with a heavy thump - it sounded like a hailstorm as literally hundreds of wasps lashed at Lady Placida. She shielded her eyes, but several of the creatures struck her cheeks, her neck, including one spectacular impact where the wasp's stinger pierced her left earlobe and all but tore it off her head.