The two sentences came out one after the other, so close together that they might have been uttered by actors following a script or spoken by the same person. Fidelias peered at their identically colored eyes as if for the first time, feeling somewhat stupid. “The way Marat operate in tandem with their clan animals. It’s more than just their custom, isn’t it?”

“There’s a bond,” the Princeps said, nodding. “I scarcely understand it myself—and she honestly gives me no help whatsoever when I try.”

“That is because knowledge given freely to another is not really knowledge at all, Aleran,” Kitai replied. “It is rumor. One must learn for oneself.”

“And this bond... it allows her to furycraft as you do,” Fidelias said.

“Apparently,” the Princeps said.

Kitai rode for a moment, frowning. Then she said, “He’s stronger. Better focused. But I can manage more things simultaneously.”

The Princeps lifted his eyebrows. “You think so?”

Kitai shrugged her shoulders.

Fidelias frowned. “Ambassador... did you just ride up to the city gates under a veil and try to craft them down?”

Kitai shot Fidelias an annoyed scowl—and said nothing.

The Princeps looked back and forth between the pair of them, his expression unreadable. Then he said, “That was thoughtful of you, Kitai.”

“We want the gates down,” she said. “What matter who brings them down or when?”

Octavian nodded. “Most considerate,” the Princeps said.

Kitai’s scowl darkened. “Do not say it.”

“Say what? It’s the thought that counts?”

She slapped his leg lightly with the ends of her reins.

A Marat with furycraft in the same general vicinity as the Princeps of the Realm. A Princeps who had never demonstrated his skills beyond the most basic, rudimentary uses of the craft—except when he had apparently executed furycraftings so large that they could hardly be recognized as such. Fidelias himself, a proven and confessed traitor to the Crown, an assassin for the Princeps’ enemies, riding openly at the Princeps’ left hand, under an assumed face and a sentence of death, willingly staying where he was. Meanwhile, in the host behind them, following the Princeps’ banner were thousands of the finest troops of Alera’s oldest enemies—never mind another enemy, Ambassador Kitai, who quite clearly shared a great deal more than affection with Octavian. And all of them were about to assault an Aleran city overrun by a foe no one had even heard of ten years ago.

The world had become a very strange place.

Fidelias smiled to himself.

Strange, yes. But for some reason, he no longer felt like a man too old to face it.

It was not long before horns began to blow, and Aleran scouts appeared in the mists ahead, woodcrafted veils unraveling around them as they approached the column. The Princeps pointed at one of the men, and said, “Scout, report!”