“It’s perfectly reasonable,” Magnus acknowledged. “But not many old soldiers are named to the House of the Valiant. There are—were, when we left—five such men in the entire Realm. Each of them is currently a Citizen. Three Steadholders and a Count. None of them went back to life as a freeman.”

“I did,” the First Spear said easily. “Wasn’t hard.”

“There were many veterans who helped found the First Aleran,” the Cursor continued in a calm voice. “Many of them from Antillan Legions. Every one of them recalls you, at least by reputation. None of them had heard anything about what happened to you after you retired.” He shrugged. “It’s unusual.”

Marcus barked out a laugh. “You been sucking down too much leviathan liver oil.” He let his voice grow more serious. “And we’ve got plenty enemies enough without you looking for more where there ain’t none.”

The old Cursor regarded Marcus with mild, watery eyes. “Yes,” he said politely. “Where there ain’t none.”

Marcus felt his throat constrict. He knew. Knew something. Or thought he did.

Marcus doubted that the old Cursor had worked out that he was, in fact, Fidelias ex Cursori, accomplice to Attis and Invidia Aquitaine, traitor to the Crown. Certainly, he wasn’t aware that Marcus had, at the end, turned on High Lady Aquitaine, assassinating her with a poisoned balest bolt—or coming damned close to it, at any rate. And he had no way of knowing how much more the name of Valiar Marcus, First Spear of the First Aleran Legion, had come to mean to a weary, jaded old killer named Fidelias.

But the knowledge was in Magnus’s eyes. He might not have all of his facts lined up—yet—but it was plain in his manner, his actions, his words.

He knew enough.

For an instant, Fidelias felt a mad impulse to try something he’d rarely found useful in his lifetime: He thought about telling the old Cursor the truth. Whatever happened, afterward, at least the uncertainty would be gone.

His mouth opened. Fidelias noted, with a bemused sort of detachment, that he hadn’t actually decided to speak. But some part of him—the Marcus in him, likely—had proceeded without his approval.

He said, “Magnus, we should talk,” then the vord exploded out of the gathering shadows.

There were three of them, low to the ground and moving fast. They were long beasts, six legs on lean, sinuous bodies, with slender, lashing tails stretched out behind them. They were covered in fine scales of black chitin, shining and glossy, reflecting the bloody light of the failing sun. Fidelias had an instant to observe that they moved like garim, the great lizards of the southern swamps, then he was in motion.