Page 48 of Scorched Earth (Dark Shores #4)

MARCUS

He awoke to a splitting headache and Amarin banging loudly around his room as he set the table for breakfast.

“It’s past dawn,” his servant said at a volume that felt closer to a shout, and Marcus winced. “Your officers are already in the command room, possessed of the full faculties of those who did not consume half our wine stores.”

“You say that as though this were a regular occurrence.” His mouth tasted like death, the light seeming to pulse as his brain dragged itself out of its stupor. “I took a night off.”

“Well, I hope you enjoyed it, because now you have a mess to clean up.”

For a heartbeat, Marcus thought Amarin meant a literal mess, but then memory washed over him. Not his conversation with Austornic, although there’d be repercussions to that, but Teriana.

Teriana in a Cel dress.

Teriana in his lap.

Teriana’s lips on his.

And her face… eyes pooling to the deepest grey of hurt and grief and horror as he’d begged her to walk away. As he’d…

“ Fuck. ”

“Indeed. I am sympathetic to the challenges you have faced in recent months.” Amarin shoved a cup of water into Marcus’s hand.

“But you need to remember who you are, else you will soon find yourself supplanted. Titus was a boy , and yet look at the grief he caused you. If Cassius decides to send grown men, equally experienced, equally well trained, you will be in their sights because their minds will be wholly focused on achieving glory, not heartache over a girl.”

Marcus flinched.

“Austornic smells weakness and fears for his legion, much as you once did for the Thirty-Seventh beneath Hostus. Like you, he’ll conspire to better his situation, likely by appealing to the Senate to replace you.

Cassius will capitalize on that in a heartbeat and send someone of his choosing, and it’s unlikely to be someone you like.

Do you want to go back to being told what to do by another, as you were under Hostus?

To have the Thirty-Seventh used as fodder against the enemy because you don’t have the clout to protect them?

To participate in brutal strategy with no regard for human life simply because it’s the easiest path to victory?

To have another legatus applauded in triumphs through Celendrial’s streets despite it being your strategies that led them to victory? ”

“When have I ever cared about triumphs ?”

The blow came without warning. One moment Marcus was sitting on the bed, the next, his water cup was rolling across the floor and his jaw was screaming from the impact of Amarin’s fist.

“Pull your head out of your ass,” Amarin growled, the submissive man who’d served him gone, a harder, unfamiliar one standing in his place. “I’ve invested too much in you to watch you throw it away.”

Wiping the beads of blood from where he’d cut his lip on his front teeth, Marcus eyed the older man with a wariness he’d never felt before.

He knew Amarin’s history. Knew that he’d been a rebel warrior in Sibal, captured and forced into indenture, his defiance supposedly assimilated out of him, as he’d been the model servant for close to two decades.

Marcus now wondered how much of that was an act.

Rising to his feet, he kept his eyes on Amarin and ignored every instinct telling him to go for his weapons on the far side of the room. “Investment implies a goal, Amarin. Which makes me question just what you hope to achieve.”

A flicker of frustration moved through the older man’s eyes, regret over having spoken in haste. But then Amarin’s shoulders squared. “To keep the Senate from turning you into the most terrifying weapon it has ever possessed.”

Marcus didn’t answer, only held his ground, and waited.

“Ever and always, you’ve had two halves,” Amarin finally said.

“The capacity to do the greatest and worst of deeds, and while once you always reached up, the Senate wants you to sink down and down and down. They surrounded you with the darkest of men to destroy your every moral so you would do the Empire’s villainy without argument.

For my part, I tried to temper that. To keep the defiance alive in you, so that… ”

“So that what ?”

Amarin looked away. “So that you would have a choice of what sort of man you wished to be.” Amarin picked up the fallen cup and refilled it, then handed it to Marcus.

“What you told Teriana is true. You’ve done dark things.

What is false is your belief that your past deeds condemn you to a future of doing the same.

You believe you don’t deserve her because of the things you have done and think to prove it by becoming even worse.

Perhaps instead you might try to be worthy of the way that girl feels about you. ”

Without another word, Amarin left the room.

As if it were that simple. He’d tried to do the right thing by enticing Kaira into a scheme that would have freed Teriana’s people at a cost to no one but him and been told to kiss her ass for his troubles. What other solution was left to him but force?

Anger simmering in his veins, Marcus went to the table on which sat a map of the coast, glowering as he stared down at it. Trying and failing to force the older man’s words out of his head.

Was Amarin right? Could good deeds outweigh the horror of his past? It seemed lunacy to think that it could be so, greater lunacy still to think that there was a path forward for him that was good .

Except if there was a lesser evil…

Resting his elbows on the table, Marcus reconsidered what he aimed to achieve. Secure Emrant, yes, but that was only half the battle.

Atrio was not his only spy in Gamdesh. Retrieving the reams of reports that had come in during his absence, Marcus read through the updates, speculation, and details his men had noted.

In one that had arrived a week ago, his eyes snagged on a few sentences about some construction that had taken place in the middle of Emrant.

It had been worth noting because the military had cordoned it off and no civilians were allowed near.

What made it more interesting was that the spy subsequently discovered that an old stone structure of seemingly no purpose had been rebuilt, but larger. It was now kept under guard.

Marcus’s mouth turned up in a smile.

Kaira had already cracked open the xenthier encasement, and she wouldn’t have bothered refortifying so excessively if she hadn’t found compelling evidence it posed a risk to the city.

Bodies of path-hunters, no doubt, which meant she’d known it was a viable path from the Empire long before he’d sent his letter. And yet…

Atrio’s voice filled his head. Kaira doesn’t reside in Emrant but in a fortress about two hours north.

Must be worried about assassination attempts, because the garrison in her fortress has twice the number of men they need.

Marcus flipped through the reports, searching for anything that suggested that hadn’t changed, but all indicated that Kaira remained in her fortress, and every spy believed it was out of fear of Cel assassination.

Fear.

Marcus frowned, instantly rejecting his spies’ suppositions.

Kaira was marked by a god to fight, and Marcus did not think that created a woman who hid behind soldiers and walls.

He picked up the bowl of porridge that Amarin had brought, and his smile grew as he formed his own theories about Kaira’s behavior. The problem would be in proving them.

Marcus mechanically spooned the cold food into his mouth, losing himself in the problem, adrenaline having driven away the fog of both hangover and his ever-present headache. A conversation he’d had with Agrippa what felt like a lifetime ago rose in his mind.

“Do you think that if someone on guard duty at the genesis farts that we’d smell it here?”

The question had been so unexpected that Marcus had struggled for a response . “I… I… I suppose it would stand to reason, though I’ve never seen it documented. Certainly, there have been complaints of other foul odors emanating from other terminus stems.”

Agrippa had pursed his lips, giving a slow nod. “Would have to be sustained, I imagine. No one is going to report a passing whiff.”

It had been hard not to laugh . “Agreed. Sustained and concentrated enough to note, else the fortress’s commander would be inundated with endless reports on smells.”

“Would make an interesting experiment. The collegium is always interested in our discoveries, after all.”

As the memory faded, Marcus considered the theory and how to execute it.

As always, solutions rose, his mind picking apart the flaws and rebuilding them, the strategy growing and evolving into the combination of certainty and luck that he liked best. Pulling blank paper in front of him, he wrote two copies of the same letter to be delivered to the spies in Emrant, with specific instructions.

Then another in code to Wex with more instructions.

He included a recommendation that the collegium take note of the strategy, giving credit to Agrippa because Wex had endlessly bumped heads with him at Lescendor and had questioned Marcus’s choice to make Agrippa primus.

Rising to his feet, Marcus flung open the door to his room and said to his guards, “This letter needs to be sent through to the Atlia terminus. And I need both Felix and Rastag.”

Going back into his room, Marcus examined the map as he ran through his plan, intending only to reveal it in parts to those who needed information to play their role.

“It smells like a bottom-of-the-barrel wine house in here,” Felix said, and Marcus turned to find his friend coming through the door, Rastag on his heels.

The Thirty-Seventh’s engineer stumbled, his spectacles slipping down his nose, and Felix caught his arm by reflex before fixing Marcus with a glare. “How much did you drink?”