Within the Bone

XXVII. A Demonic Bargain

Inside the tent, Mara felt keenly aware of how alone she was with Saevia. With Isbrand gone, a chill settled into her stomach and the silence surrounded her like a funeral shroud. The stump the Imperial Legate sat on didn't even have the grace to creak when she shifted her weight, leaning back ever so slightly and regarding Mara with a stare that had seen centuries' worth of war in only decades. There was no unkindness to Saevia's face, only a sort of cold neutrality, dispassionate and detached.

Mara didn't understand how the most powerful lords in the Red Mountains—aside from her father—had already bent their knees to a woman who, like Gaius, wielded no magic. She had to wet her lips several times before the word could creak out. "How?"

Saevia's expression didn't so much as flicker, not even for the briefest of instants. "Elaborate." The word was clipped, said in Mara's tongue instead of the Imperial one.

"How is it that you hold five of the most powerful cities in the Red Mountains? Luukas Fire-Bringer shattered your black shields last time they dared encroach into our lands," Mara said. Her memory lingered on the screams of the man she'd seen destroyed by her father's power. How could these people be the same breed as him, so easily killed?

Saevia brushed her thumb absentmindedly across her bracelet, a simple strand of woven silk. It looked braided, like a bowstring cut to short length, and the movement was the only thing Mara had seen even approaching a tell. "When they understood the choice I represent, they bent the knee." The inflection in her voice was subtle, but Mara caught flecks of some emotion. Contempt, perhaps? It felt colder than anger, colder than even hate.

"Freedom fighting or peaceful slavery?"

Saevia's gaze seemed to bore into Mara, hollowing her like only Sammael's dark intensity had ever managed to. "No. I see you have failed to learn, as did those who attacked the last legion to move through this area." The Imperial legate tapped her stylus gently against the side of her inkwell.

"Then what choice is there?" Mara felt the urge to twitch building in her hands, but suppressed it. Even the slightest wrong movement would invite the sword sitting at Saevia's right hand directly through her heart.

The hawkish intensity remained in Saevia's gaze. "You tell me, Mara Snow-Weaver. I have heard the Lord of Sjaligr sent for an oracle when we began our advance on Valkaldr."

In their wake, nothing will remain except fire, death, and salt, Kalevi's words echoed in her mind.

"There is no choice," Mara said quietly. "Only annihilation. You are not here as conquerors. You only let them believe they can escape ruin through submission because it is useful." The reality of that hit Mara like a falling boulder. Inexorably, doom and death came for the people of the Red Mountains one way or another, not with the clashing of blades—though there would be that—but the grinding of a great war machine that would turn even those who surrendered to dust in its mill.

Saevia carefully set her stylus across the inkwell, balanced perfectly so as not to roll. Every movement she made was so precise, so calculated, that it was almost hypnotic. "Words from the lips of one who understands secrets mortals were not made to know." She traced a finger slowly around the text diagrammed in a circle, the same script from where Mara had entered Void's resting place. "Speak only truth. Tell no lies."

A shiver started at the base of Mara's skull and ran down her spine. "What do you want from me?"

Saevia didn't smile with the same cruel satisfaction Immortalis Aelius had. In fact, she didn't smile at all. "You are not like the others here. Your face is young, but your eyes have always been old. I want the truth, and I am not a woman who will be denied it."