“Tell your neighbors. Tell your friends. Tell any who were not here to see that the vord offer you peace and protection.”

Silence reigned. No one moved.

Max said, very quietly, “Peace and protection. You think she’s serious?”

“No children,” Tavi murmured back. “A stranglehold takes longer to kill than does a clean thrust—but it makes you just as dead.”

“You don’t feel it when you go, either,” Max replied.

“At least now I know why,” Tavi said.

“Why what?”

“The vord Queen is keeping a steadholt of Alerans captive, near Alera Imperia. Like animals in a zoo. It was an experiment, to see if it could be made to work.”

Max blinked at him. “How did you know about that?”

“Crown secret.”

Max grimaced. “If everyone heard this, in all Alera... Tavi you know that there are going to be people scared enough to do anything.”

“I know.”

“If we lose even part of our people to desertion or surrender, it could kill us. We’re at the brink.”

“That’s why she’s doing it. I said it was an attack, Max.”

Varg looked over at Tavi with narrowed eyes, his ears pricked forward. The Cane was close enough to have heard even their lowered voices.

“What are we going to do about it?” Max sighed. “Crows, look at them.”

Everyone, Canim and Aleran alike, stared at the image of the vord Queen. Their fear and uncertainty filled the air like woodsmoke.

“Tavar,” Varg growled suddenly. “Your helmet.”

Tavi glanced at the Cane. Then he drew his helmet off and passed it over to Varg.

The Warmaster of the Canim leapt up onto the low stone wall on the edge of the pool, helmet in hand. He stalked through the shallow water until he stood before the image of the vord Queen.

Then he swept the helmet in a horizontal arc, catching the water that formed the hooded head of the vord Queen, decapitating the watery image.

Then he flung back his head and drank the helmet empty in a single draught.

Varg rose to his full nine feet in height before roaring, his basso voice a challenge to the volume of the watersending itself, “I AM STILL THIRSTY!” His sword rasped clear of his scabbard as he lifted it high and faced the Canim soldiers. “WHO WILL DRINK WITH ME?”

Thousands of eyes focused on the Warmaster. The silence became something brittle and crystalline, something that was on the brink of shattering, changing. Fear and rage and despair surged in the air, like the confused, shifting winds that preceded a storm or the currents that could rip swimmers in any direction when the tides began to change.