19 Violentia Nervus Potestas #2
Relief lit her golden eyes when she found his gaze, but there were shadows in her smile. She hobbled toward the iron stake where he burned people. Her trousers were shredded below the knee, and her legs had the telltale shine of new skin. They had been broken. His fists tightened.
Patiently bearing the onlookers’ queries, she gripped the stake for support. The blood returned to his head the longer he took her in. He wanted to go to her, but the trepidation in her eyes told him that she needed him on this dais.
He learned why upon Cassandane’s question. “Do you have answers for Edessa?”
“I do.” Grim resignation was a heavy weight on Sarai’s slight frame. Pain marred her features for a fraction of a second, and to his surprise, she turned to the crowd. “We do not have a plague.”
The Aequitas splintered into a kaleidoscope of disbelief and anger. Cassandane looked dumbstruck. The audience yelled out the growing numbers of dead and the madness-struck, then questioned her sanity, emboldened by the conspiracy a now-laughing Verentia had sown in their heads.
“How did you survive again?” some yelled. Many took up the refrain until the Aequitas rung with doubt.
How much do you know, Sarai? Despite her perusal of the crowd and Cassandane, she had yet to turn her eyes back to his. Cold fissured through him.
“Petitor Sarai.” He left his voice low, and her eyes flew to his with surprise that he was using the intimate tone that he took with her in private. “What did you find in Komis?” Do you know who I was?
Her features took on the same blankness that she used as a shield when she was struggling to hold herself together. And he had his answer. His hands fell from the arms of his seat. The water clock that ticked down the hours to his ruin ran dry. She knows.
The tense line of her spine sagged when the crowd didn’t quiet. She gave an almost incredulous shake of her head.
“I’m so tired of begging people to listen.
” Her lips formed the words, but they were lost to the diatribes battering her.
Then, in a breath, she squared her shoulders and spoke.
“We have no plague. We have a tormentor. One who knows that if Edessa and the Tetrarchy fall, then they and Komis will reign. One who gnawed at us from within, while we gave them all the internal strife they craved. One who can make people do anything with a word because he’s a godsdamned Coercer.
” She took a deep breath. “I know you’re here, Inquisitor Silvus.
But that’s also Clanlord Noceo bu Kader, isn’t it? ”
Kadra went stock-still as everything went to hell around him. Sarai found his eyes then, her blank mask crumbling. A silent plea lay behind it. Tell me that you don’t know him.
His reckoning was here. I can’t.
Hurt and anguish warred for dominance on her face before she sagged against the pole. He stood without thought, striding down the dais to her when light rippled on a section of the stage and solidified into Dalvia’s pale figure.
She slid a knife against Sarai’s throat in a flash of metal. “I wouldn’t.” Her hand shook.
He stilled on the steps. Voices rose around him in shock and terror.
Some wisely fled for the exits, having learned how dangerous it was to be caught in a battle in the Aequitas after the Unraveling.
Wind howled over their shrieks. The sun was a brand above.
But his only priority was his woman, ignoring the knife to her neck and watching Dalvia with resignation instead of shock.
She knows.
“Let her go.” He studied the Bridger with a languid menace and caught the tremble that ran through the arm holding the knife. Dalvia had never been one for blood. “Your quarrel is with me.”
“But it isn’t,” noted a coldly amused voice he hadn’t heard in eleven years. “It’s with me.”
A half-veiled man parted from the fleeing group of priests.
Verentia paused to stare at him, visibly torn between continued mutiny and self-preservation, before choosing the latter and running out.
Blue robes and a veil hit the Aequitas’s stage and his brother sauntered across clad in the Clan’s gray-green uniform, a specter of the past made flesh.
Silver eyes he had once known as well as his known. An ever-present grin. And a face that had driven a young woman to ruin. Older, harder, but the same.
Kadra’s rage morphed into something fractured. Not quite nostalgia and more bitter than grief.
“Don’t leave me! Gods, don’t leave me, Drenevan!” The words burned in his ears, jumbled flickers of memory of that last night arrowing through him. Some part of him had known even then that it wouldn’t be their final meeting.
“Noceo.” He inclined his head. “It’s been some time.”
“Over a decade.” Hatred burned, then vanished under the sweep of Noceo’s lashes as he took Sarai from Dalvia and repositioned the knife to her jugular. “What a reunion.”
“It’s been all of a day for me,” Sarai bit out in granite tones. “I thought you said that you didn’t need to dangle me over Kadra’s head.”
Noceo laughed. “Hush, Death-Summoner. I’ve already made you crawl.”
The hatred that seethed in Sarai’s eyes told Kadra everything about what she must have endured. Sparks danced at his fingertips, bloodlust made flame, as he envisioned tearing Noceo’s tongue from his throat. “Release her.”
“I think I’ve missed that vicious glint in your eyes.” Noceo’s lip curled. “But I’m afraid I can’t. I made you a promise once.” Embers of memory glowed in his eyes. “This is fulfilling it.”
“If the gods exist and are fucking fair, you won’t know an ounce of peace for this! You will never thrive! You will never succeed!” The words hung between them in the press of his knife at Sarai’s neck.
“I made a promise too,” Kadra said darkly. We let the Clan burn.
He tensed in preparation to lunge when his brother drew the knife tip lightly along Sarai’s skin. Rage welled in him along with the drop of blood that ran along the blade.
“Today, we talk.” An icy smile formed on Noceo’s face. “I have no intention of harming her, not when she’s been stubborn enough to survive again. It would be a shame if you force me to, though. Spilling blood isn’t my strength. It’ll be messy.”
A fine lie. Though he seemed to believe it. “Speak.”
Descending from the dais, Cassandane prowled to the other end of the stage along with Harion, fencing Noceo in. His brother eyed them with amusement.
“The lovely Cassandane.” Noceo bowed. “I should warn you that there isn’t much point in this posturing. People are rather pliable in my hands. Petitor Sarai is quite right. They do anything I want.”
“You aren’t the slightest bit subtle about it either,” Sarai noted as though she didn’t have a blade to her neck.
Kadra’s eyes narrowed at the genuine amusement that broke past his brother’s icy mask.
“I’ve no use for subtlety. It keeps no one in line.
A hammer does. Edessa has fought you for months, and now there they are, united.
” He directed a hand toward the remaining stupefied spectators.
“It’s why Aelius held the land together without major conflict, and you couldn’t.
People prefer fear.” At the immediate insulted yells from the crowd, he sighed. “Quiet.”
The order slammed into Kadra’s eardrums, sealed his lips, and stuck his tongue to the roof of his mouth in the same breath. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cassandane clutch her throat. Others echoed the motion across the Aequitas, eyes huge.
Twelfth-Tier. Noceo’s power had been nowhere close to this eleven years ago, at the peak of magical maturity. This command had been effortless, lacking the strained compulsion that he’d seen his brother apply during adolescence.
“Forgive me.” Noceo’s smile was unrepentant. “I’m a proponent of free will, of course. But you’re rather loud. And you’ll want to hear me for the next few moments.”
Bulging eyes glared at Noceo from every corner of the Aequitas in silent disagreement.
Kadra quietly funneled power into the air.
Slender currents of differing temperatures twisted together and sparked.
His hands fisted, waiting. Because this was too simple.
A hostage. Two opponents. He could take them easily, and Noceo knew it.
There was something here that he had missed that would turn the tides.
The answer crystalized when he spotted the lightning magi arrayed throughout the courthouse. Noceo didn’t have one hostage. He had thousands. One wrong move and he’d obliterate the Aequitas.
Grim resignation settled over Kadra, a mantle of stillness.
Noceo’s silver eyes gleamed. “I’m sure you’ve all noticed the family resemblance.
” He pointed between them. “I’ll admit, I’m Noceo bu Kader of Clan Kader.
That’s no secret. But that there, is Drenevan bu Kader, Clanson, killer, and now, Magus Supreme.
” The barest hint of bitterness laced his voice.
“You’ve done well for yourself, brother. ”
Eyes bulged wider around them. Kadra glanced at Sarai. His heart twisted at her shuttered features. He angled his head toward some of the magi seated on the tiers in silent warning. She paled but tilted her wrist to show him that she had beshaz active on her armilla.
A corner of his mouth tugged upward. He poured power into his clenched larynx until the weight on it vanished. “Is this envy?”
Noceo’s smile slipped before he slid geniality back on. “I asked you for silence.”
Kadra braced himself as the command struck, drawing from the deep reserve of magic Wrath had given him, and pulled his tongue away from the roof of his mouth when it tried to stick there. “You did.”