25 #2
“Her word is good,” he said by automation. Even as he spoke, though, something tensed in his gut. That news from Myria, that card from the surgeon . . . they’d dropped a worm of suspicion into his mind, and it’d been eating away ever since.
“I know you believe that,” she murmured, then pressed her lips together, as though locking back what else she wished to say.
“Little as she might like you, Myria, she’s sworn on my life,” he said.
She took a sharp breath, made to speak, then stopped. A moment later, she shook her head and turned to face him squarely.
“No. No good. It sounds dashed self-serving, but that’s because it is,” she said in a hard voice. “Cards on the table. As soon as Lysander told me what’d happened to your powers, I knew. You won the battle of Draevund Heath, and you sold her the credit.”
Alarm silenced him. In the first shock of the news that the surgeons could fix him, he’d never wondered what else Myria might have deduced from the thericist’s discovery.
“I couldn’t understand it, though. For a woman who was already so powerful to take such a risk, just for a little more glory . . . it wasn’t rational. I had a theory, so Leo took a ferret around. The blue file on the table, underneath the scraps. Read it.”
A part of him wanted to refuse, afraid of what he’d find. Still, some perverse instinct pressed him forward. He took the file and leafed it open.
His heart jumped when he saw the crest that marked the first page. Dr. Tyras’s letterhead. His gaze skipped wildly down the text.
Profession: Arcani Corps . . . Injury: shattered faculties by reason of overexertion—patient conjured shields under heavy artillery attack while commander operated freezing curse . . . Recommendation: excision.
It took him another moment to realize that the name on the sheet wasn’t his. The date was some eight years ago.
Livia Marina. Arcanic injury . . . battle of Seawyck Cove. Her again. She’d conjured shields while her commander froze the Celadon Sea, had she? His mouth went bitter.
He flicked to the next page. It was a different surgeon’s record for one Tulius Iscarius, of the Fifth Company.
From what he could discern of the scribe’s handwriting, the man’s powers had shattered in Isra nine years past, the day Mount Ansifar had erupted.
He knew that tale. The centurion had saved the city below, channeling the volcanic blast straight up into the heavens until it was spent.
Myria stepped slowly past him and sat down before her mirror. There, she took up her brushes and began to dim her complexion with ashen yellow. He forced himself to turn the page and read on.
Another arcani—Linus Amelius, injured in Vienti ten years ago at the battle of Taliano Canyon.
A lesser-known story, that one. He’d heard it told around the campfire as a joke.
With the company backed into a ravine with no escape, Gloriana had made the entire enemy battalion forget why they were there and march off home.
Felix set down the papers. There were half a dozen more leaves in the file, but he already knew what he’d find. Something dull and leaden flooded his spirit. He raised his eyes to Myria, and she met his gaze in the mirror.
“All those great deeds, and none of them hers,” she said softly. “As for the soldiers . . . you’re liabilities. You, most of all.”
She didn’t need to say why. The reasons were already crashing through his head. The fractures crept wider.
All the same, suspicion was a blade that cut both ways. Felix put down the papers and settled himself on the edge of the dining table, watching her in the glass.
“Kind of you to warn me, Miss Cadessa,” he said levelly. The tone clearly didn’t escape her.
“I did say it was self-serving,” she replied. “If she breaks that vow, it’s not just your life on the line.”
She set down her powder brush and turned on her chair to face him. Shrewdness and compassion battled in her countenance.
“Though I hope you won’t think me insincere when I say that self-interest wasn’t my only motive,” she added, almost gently. “I know betrayal. I’d rather you didn’t. You’re a good soul, Felix Aurelias.”
There it was again, that beguiling softness, like a glimmer of opal in rock.
Still, he’d seen that woman wear a score of false faces in the little time he’d known her.
No matter that his heart felt this one might be true.
He was still the centurion’s man, a soldier of Carintheum, and she was still the enemy.
He crushed down the anger and uncertainty, the confusion and fear, and spoke calmly.
“Does it occur to you that you’re mistaken in thinking her a wicked one? She didn’t force my hand. She didn’t even ask. I offered. Who’s to say the others didn’t do the same?”
He braced himself for whatever subtle tool she’d turn upon him next. Instead, she gave a shallow nod and turned back to the mirror.
“You’re the best judge of your own interests,” she said, “and I won’t be the first of us to risk your life. But if she turns on us, know this. My crew comes first. If that means I have to run and forfeit you, I will.”
It was common sense, and he knew it. Foolish, really, that it hurt to hear it spoken aloud. No matter, though. He was well-schooled in concealing pain.
“I couldn’t expect otherwise,” he said at last, “and now’s not the hour to have it out. You’re striking Vixius today. Tell me what you need me to do.”