19 Violentia Nervus Potestas #3
Rage howled in his brother’s eyes. “Keep your voice then. It won’t help you.
I have your priests. I pay your Praetors.
And I have your people.” He glanced at the onlookers.
“Thank you for making it so simple. I emphasized the right stories, and you danced without any Coercion. Murder in the most public of arenas. Blood being touted as justice. A poor decision by a grieving girl to Summon a god. And a man on the throne with no purpose unless he has someone to fight. And you people swallowed it all.” He took a step away from the stake, forcing Sarai to do the same or risk being cut.
“This, people of the south, is a coup, not the Death-Summoner’s tired attempts at transparency. Differentiate better next time.”
Noceo’s voice was a subtle knife, lulling his transfixed audience even as he mocked them.
Kadra took in their blank faces and still figures.
A magnetism so powerful that it halted all rational thought or they would have fled the Aequitas by now.
He had seen Noceo do this to small rooms, but not to tens of thousands. How had he grown so powerful?
Kadra mirrored Noceo’s motions when he took another step backward. “Did you come here to impart political theory to my constituents?”
“Partially. I’m here to give them a choice.”
Kadra saw the walls of a trap move toward him with slow finality.
The high tiers of the Aequitas twisted in the edges of his vision, different scenes playing out at each corner.
A flaming battleground scarred with corpses and rubble in one.
Screaming faces bleeding from every orifice choking to death on their fluids.
And a void so black and deep that it took all life with it. Possibilities and probabilities.
“Being?”
“Life. And death.” Noceo addressed his audience. “Kneel to me, Edessa. Disavow your Tetrarchs and accept my rule. Or I’ll raze you to the ground.”
Cassandane stumbled, eyes huge. Faces boiled red above them. Harion’s jaw hung open.
A humorless smile curved Kadra’s lips. No one would walk away unscathed today. Noceo wanted to raze the city, and its people would give him a reason to. There wasn’t an Urd alive who didn’t know that Edessa had always had too much damned pride.
The fear in Cassandane’s eyes said she understood the same. “If it’s power you want, we’ve an empty seat in the Tetrarchy. Will you not give us a chance to negotiate?”
Noceo laughed quietly. “That would defeat my goals. No, Head Tetrarch. Let your city vote.” He raised his voice. “Speak.”
The crowd’s forced silence evaporated into furious yells, screams, and northern slurs. Sarai winced at a “fuck off, mountain assholes!”
“Interesting,” Noceo said mildly. “I believe the people have spoken.”
Cassandane spread her hands. “There is no need for bloodshed. Let us speak and—”
“This won’t buy you time. Even my brother knows it. The people have spoken.” Black victory laced Noceo’s voice. “Now, I get to enact the family motto, don’t I, Drenevan?”
Harion pulled himself out of his stupor to scoff. “Come now, be realistic. No Coercer is that powerful. So, why don’t you walk yourselves to the mines, before we send you to the Elsar?”
Kadra decided that he would kill Harion next when Noceo’s eyes glinted.
“Send me to the Elsar?” Noceo repeated curiously. “How do you propose to do that when I can make you kneel.”
The Aequitas echoed with thousands falling to their knees, spitting their fury all the while. Kadra stood still, noting the way Sarai’s knees buckled, but didn’t sink. Partially immune.
A smile split Noceo’s face when Harion hit the ground and blanched. “Now, I ask again. Edessa, your pride or your city? Give me your final answer.”
That answer had been written at the city’s conception. Kadra watched every Edessan in the audience swell and unleash a torrent of hatred.
Noceo smiled at the hurled abuse and turned to Kadra. “Well, brother?” Downturned mouth. Pale skin. Sweat at his temples. Weariness. Noceo’s mask of amusement was near flawless, save for the threads of strain in his eyes. Whatever he’s imbibed, he’s nearing his limit.
Power bunched and ebbed around Kadra’s fingertips. “You know my answer.”
“That’s what makes this so amusing.” He tsked at the screaming crowd. “It was all so entirely predictable.”
In one breath, he flung out a hand, the knife at Sarai’s neck parting ways with his fingers and arrowing into Cassandane’s shoulder. In the next, he roared a single word.
“Begin.”
It all happened at once. Every magus in the audience froze and raised their hands.
Noceo let Sarai go as Dalvia tore open a portal; both ran into it and vanished.
Clouds rolled overhead with vicious swiftness.
Kadra blanketed Sarai, throwing up layers of latticed lightning shields above the crowd. A winded Cassandane lifted a hand.
And the Aequitas exploded.
Heat burst open the skin on his back. The force of the blast threw him and Sarai off the stage toward the wall. Cupping her head, he absorbed the impact. Something cracked in his spine. His old injuries flared sharp. Within his arms, she turned terrified eyes to him.
“I have you.” He gripped her tight. “Hold on.”
His shields had been decimated. Orange smog clouded the air and muffled the crowd’s screams. He rebuilt the shields around the tiers of the courthouse as those who had remained there now scrambled to freedom.
The crimson webs supporting his indicated that Cassandane was alive and doing the same, but Death was already here. The Aequitas had become a weapon.
Slivers of rubble flew through the air like knives and burst upon contacting his shields to drop to the stage.
Fiery boulders rained from the balconies, the marble melting to lime.
The wall behind them trembled. He hauled them both upright and had taken only a few steps when it ruptured.
Something slammed into him, toppling him to the ground. A second, softer impact followed.
“What was—” Sarai peered over his shoulder and paled. “Oh gods, no!”
Shrugging off the heavy weight on his back, he stilled at the quiet thud it made. He rose and turned. A vicious wedge of marble jutted from Gaius’s shoulders, half-severing his neck. Limp, he stared at the carnage. Light faded from his eyes.
I seem to have gotten myself a mother hen, he had wryly told Cato only weeks ago. Breath rushed from him and left his chest a hollow cavity. Ice threaded in.
Tears slid down Sarai’s face, as frozen in time as he was, before a furious scream tore from her. “Those fucking—” She spun to him. “Tell me who to Summon. Wrath? Death?”
“If you call again, they will not come.” The words were gravel.
He could call them himself. It would drain him of power and leave the Aequitas to burn.
Tens of thousands would die, and the boon he asked of the Elsar wouldn’t be to resurrect them but to destroy the Clan and avenge this most undeserving of deaths given to one of the few he called friend. It was an almost acceptable trade.
Wordless, he bent to the other man, staunching the bleeding at his neck for a hopeless second. A pulse jumped beneath his fingers. He stilled. It was a simple choice.
“Sarai, give me your hands.”