Page 153 of Scorched Earth (Dark Shores #4)

Wife. So Agrippa was the consort Sly had mentioned, and as Marcus recalled the exchange, it struck him that Sly full-well knew Agrippa’s connection to the Thirty-Seventh and had withheld the information.

“I’m not that stupid, Agrippa. Rufina has already delivered enough of Rotahn’s gold to pay for this campaign twice over.

It’s back in Revat, and will very soon be on its way to Celendrial. Congratulations on your nuptials.”

“Thank you.” The corner of Agrippa’s mouth turned up. “So you’ve lowered yourself to a mercenary?”

The word turned Marcus’s mouth sour and he took a mouthful of wine. “None of that gold goes in my pocket. The gold was the Dictator’s goal, and I have achieved it. Now I move to achieve the rest.”

Agrippa made a noncommittal noise, then sat on the stool opposite Marcus, taking another mouthful of the wine. “What terms are you offering?”

“The usual,” Marcus said. “Mudamora and its allies, such as they are, must agree to surrender and lay down arms. All positions of authority are to be disbanded, and Mudamora’s queen, Kitaryia Falorn, also known as Lydia Valerius, is to be returned so that she might wed her betrothed, Dictator Lucius Cassius. ”

“And by returned, you mean you’ll kill her?” Agrippa gave him a grin that was all teeth. “Third time’s the charm?”

He’s defending her! the voice shrieked, fueled by mention of Lydia. He’s no brother of yours!

Marcus shook his head. “Her fate is in the hands of the Dictator, not mine.”

“Except Lucius Cassius was the man who ordered you to murder Lydia in the first place. It would be all sorts of inconvenient if the Senate learned the real story behind her disappearance. Even more inconvenient if Senator Valerius learned the truth.” Agrippa laughed.

“Oh wait, he already knows the truth because Teriana told him.”

“Is Teriana here?” The question slipped out, and Marcus silently cursed himself for allowing Agrippa to get to him.

“No, she had other business to attend to.” Agrippa grinned again and the gleam in his eyes told Marcus that whatever Teriana was up to, he would not like it.

Don’t think about her! She’s your enemy!

Marcus lifted one shoulder. “The life of one girl is of little consequence to the patricians of Celendrial in the face of all that they have to gain.”

“But it’s of a lot of consequence to Teriana.”

Not half an hour ago, Marcus had felt in perfect control of the situation, everything going according to plan, and now nothing was.

Get rid of him!

“Did you know that I defended you?” Agrippa jolted to his feet, taking another mouthful of wine while he paced.

“I called Lydia a liar. Said she was full of shit when she told me what you’d done to her.

Had to eat crow on that because every gods-damned word was true.

Then I said Teriana was safe with the Thirty-Seventh, that you’d treat her with courtesy, when it turned out that you were turning on the charm to get her to tell you everything that you wanted to know.

Not just the Empire’s favorite weapon, but its favorite whore . ”

Marcus’s fingers started to curl into fists, and he pressed them flat, biting the insides of his cheeks to keep from lashing out.

“Do you know how wrecked Teriana is?” Agrippa asked.

“I watched her fall on her knees before Lydia to beg her forgiveness. Watched her cry so hard she could barely breathe because she believed she’d betrayed her best friend by falling in love with you.

Watched her take the blame for your cruel manipulation when it should be you who is on trial.

It should be you who is begging forgiveness.

And instead you’re here, doubling down. Tell me, Marcus, is there anything that you won’t do? Is there any line you won’t cross?”

The vision of Teriana on her knees, the vision of her begging for forgiveness, exploded the towering black walls in Marcus’s mind, sending shards spinning off into nothingness as emotion surged. “Teriana has nothing to apologize for!”

“And yet she apologized on her knees.”

Marcus was on his feet, though he didn’t remember standing. “Everything she did was for the sake of saving her people! A more selfless woman you’ll never meet, and I’ll personally cut out the tongue of anyone who says otherwise!”

“And yet you used her. Manipulated her. Seduced her for information on your opponent.”

“That’s not… I didn’t…” Marcus pressed his fingers to his temples and squeezed his eyes shut, head throbbing and his breath starting to grow strained. “I loved her.”

I love her.

It was like being drowned. Like the walls had not been walls at all but a oppressive dam that held back every awful emotion, and they flooded over him now without mercy. As did pain. Awful relentless pain in his skull that nearly brought him to his knees.

Silence stretched, then Agrippa said, “Why are you here?”

It wasn’t what Marcus had anticipated Agrippa would ask, and he dropped his hands and met the other man’s gaze. “Because… because those were the Dictator’s orders.”

“Yes, but why ?”

The question provoked a frantic sort of tension in him, and Marcus swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly dry as sand.

“Gamdesh is prime territory,” Agrippa said.

“Rich and fertile. The center of trade. Yet you’ve all but abandoned it to come attack a nation that is quite literally rotting, the land left for the living being eaten away by the day.

And if you win, it will only be to face down an army of the dead.

Why are you here? What does Cassius want? ”

A tremor ran through him. “The gold mines.”

“Gold mines you can’t even reach.” Agrippa’s gaze was steady. Relentless. “Gold isn’t the reason you’re here. Nor is the reason to take the surrender of a crumbling nation.”

No, it wasn’t.

“Is it because he needs you to silence Lydia?” Agrippa asked. “Even that makes little sense given that Teriana told Senator Valerius everything. The truth is out, and it is unlikely to cause Cassius any particular grief given the power he already holds. So why?”

Because she needs to pay for ruining your life! the voice screamed, pressure building inside Marcus’s skull. Because she needs to die! “He wants her dead.”

“Who?”

His lips parted to say Cassius , because it was Cassius who had threatened him if he didn’t get rid of her. Threatened his family. Yet it was not Cassius who drove his desire to put Lydia in the grave.

“You?”

Marcus didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.

“You say you loved Teriana, yet you have come to murder the woman she loves as a sister. That doesn’t seem like love, it seems like hate.”

The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Teriana. But for all the walls had crumbled, the voice still lurked in his mind, clawing at him. “Lydia ruined everything.”

“No. You did that. Just as you sent three hundred of the Thirty-Seventh to their deaths by believing that we’d give her up without a fight.” Agrippa set the bottle down on the table. “Mudamora declines your terms of surrender. We’re through here.”

“You can’t win this, Agrippa. Do not make me kill everyone in that army for the sake of one girl. Give her to me, and we’ll turn around and return to Revat. You have my word.”

No sooner had he spoken did Servius entered the tent, his brown skin strangely blanched. “I need to talk to you, sir. We’ve had a report from Revat.”

“Can’t it wait?” Marcus gestured at Agrippa, irritated that Servius would interrupt this conversation.

“No.” Servius’s eyes locked on Agrippa, then he shook his head. “In truth, I don’t think this is going to be news to him.”

An equally rattled Felix entered the tent, and a sad smile formed on Agrippa’s face. Marcus stomach dropped. “Well, spit it out then.”

“Our supply lines have been cut.”

Marcus’s hands turned to ice. “Which ones?”

“All of them.”

His whole body went rigid. “That’s not possible. There are ones hidden in—”

“We’ve been cut off from Celendor. Cut off from the East entirely.”

But he’d done what Cassius had wanted. He was here, had secured the gold, was about to secure everything else. “Cassius cut—”

“I don’t think it was Cassius,” Servius said.

“The xenthier terminus stem in Emrant blew up, which, as far as I know, is only possible if you set off explosives at the genesis. Like when the Nineteenth accidentally did it and got themselves buried in a landslide caused by the earthquake they set off. At any rate, the Emrant stem blew a mile in the air and set off an earthquake that turned half the city to rubble. Zimo managed to send a message off to Revat, but then Imresh came under attack. With the damages to the fortress from the earthquake, he couldn’t defend it.

Gamdeshians, united with the Maarin, forced Zimo into retreat through the xenthier.

As soon as the Gamdeshians and their allies had control of Imresh, they set charges on the genesis and blew it up as well.

They then pursued the messenger through the stem between Emrant and Revat.

Our forces in Revat have fallen under siege, and they plan to abandon the city and move to join us. Might already be here.”

“They can’t!” Marcus snapped into focus. “We need that water supply, or else—”

The ground suddenly shook, the tremor causing everyone in the tent to stagger. No one spoke for a long moment, the only sounds the shouts and curses of alarm from outside the tent as the men worked to calm the horses.

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that we no longer have the use of that xenthier,” Servius said in a shaky voice. “Which also means we no longer have a clean water source.”

Agrippa slowly pushed his bottle of wine in front of Marcus.

“Might take a bit to receive the reports, all things considered, but I suspect that the stem between Bardeen and Arinoquia is no more. The men you left in Aracam will either be dead or fled through to Sibern, which amounts to the same thing.”

Marcus’s ears were ringing, the world around him too bright.