First Lord's Fury (Page 87)

Isana ate the largest bite she thought she could stand. It was not large. She chased it down to her stomach with several swallows of water. There was no point in starting an attack too soon. Even in her diminished state, Invidia would surely notice anything truly overt. "I suppose food does not absolutely need to taste good in order to keep one alive."

"But to keep one from committing suicide, it does need to taste better than this," Invidia said. She fixed her eyes on Isana and smiled. It was a grotesque expression. "Why, First Lady. What do you see that disturbs you so?"

Isana cut another bite from the rectangular brick of roasted croach. She ate it very slowly. "I’m sorry to see you so harmed, Invidia."

"Of course you are," she said, her voice dripping acid. "After all we’ve done for one another, of course you feel sympathy for me."

"I think you should hang from the neck until dead for what you’ve done, Invidia," Isana replied gently. "But that isn’t the same thing as seeing you in such pain. I don’t like to see anyone suffer. That includes you."

"Everyone wants someone to suffer, Isana," the former High Lady replied. "It’s simply a matter of finding a target and an excuse."

"Do you really believe that?" she asked quietly.

"That is the truth of the world," Invidia said harshly. "We are selfless when it suits our purposes, or when it is easy, or when the alternative would be worse. But no one truly wishes to be selfless. They simply desire the acclaim and goodwill that comes from being thought so."

"No, Invidia," she said quietly, firmly. "Not everyone is like that."

"They are," Invidia said, her voice shaking with unsteady intensity. "You are. Under the lies you tell yourself, part of you hates me. Part of you would love to pluck out my eyes while I screamed."

"I don’t hate a serpent for being a serpent," Isana said. "But neither will I permit it to harm me or those I care about. I will kill it if I must, as quickly and painlessly as possible."

"And that’s what I am to you?" Invidia asked. "A serpent?"

"That’s what you were," Isana said quietly.

Invidia’s eyes shone with a feverish intensity. "And now?"

"Now, I think you might be a mad dog," Isana said quietly. "I pity such a poor creature’s suffering. But it changes nothing about what I must do."

Invidia dropped her head back and laughed. "What you must do?" she asked. She put her fingertip on the table, still smiling, and smoke began rising in a thin, curling thread. "Exactly what do you think you could possibly do to me?"

"Destroy you," Isana said quietly. "I don’t want to do it. But I can. And I will."

"If you go shopping for a hat, darling, be sure to get one several sizes larger than the one it’s replacing." She glared at Isana. "So you were the choice of the flawless Princeps Septimus, over every woman in the Realm actually qualified to be his wife. So your child by him was recognized by Gaius. It means nothing, Isana. Don’t think for an instant that your strength can compare to mine."

"Oh," Isana said, "I’m quite sure it doesn’t. It doesn’t need to." She stared at Invidia for a quiet moment, her expression calm, then she picked up her knife and fork again. "When have you gone too far, Invidia? At what point do the lives your new allies take begin to outweigh your own?"

The expression drained out of the former High Lady’s scarred face.

"When does your own life become something you don’t want to live anymore?" Isana said in that same quiet, gentle voice. "Can you imagine another year of living this way? Five years? Thirty years? Do you want to live that life, Invidia?"

She folded her hands in her lap and stared at Isana, her scarred face bleak and expressionless.

"You could change things," Isana said quietly. "You could choose another path. Even now, you could choose another path."

Invidia stared at her, not moving – but the creature on her chest pulsed horribly, its legs stirring. She closed her eyes, stiffening in pain, which Isana could all but feel lance through her own body. She remained that way for a long moment, then opened her eyes again.

"All I can choose is death." She gestured bleakly to the creature that still grasped her. "Without this, I would die within hours. And if I do not obey her, she will take it from me."

"It isn’t a very good choice," Isana said. "But it is a choice, Invidia."

That rictus of a smile returned. "I will not willingly end my own life."

"Even if it costs others theirs?"

"Have you never killed to protect your life, Isana?"

"That isn’t the same."

Invidia arched an eyebrow. "Isn’t it?"

"Not at all."

"I am what the Realm and my father and my husband have made me, Isana. And I will not simply lie down and die."

"Ah," Isana said quietly. "Quite."

"Meaning what, precisely?"

"Meaning," Isana said, "that whether you realize it or not, you’ve already made your choice. Probably quite some time ago."

Invidia stared at her. Her lips quivered once, as if she would speak, but she withdrew into a shell of silence again. Then she took up her fork with a deliberate movement, cut another bite of the hideous croach concoction, and ate it with measured, steady motions.

Now, while she was retreating from the conversation. It was time to push. "For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, Invidia. I’m sorry that it came to this for you. You have so much power, so much talent, so much ability. You could have done great things for Alera. I’m sorry that it went to waste."

Invidia’s gaze turned cold. "Who are you?" she asked quietly. "Who are you to say such things to me? You’re no one. You’re nothing. You’re a camp whore who happened to be favored by a man. The fool. He could have had his choice of any woman of Alera."

"As I understand it," Isana said, "he did." She let the simple statement hang silent in the air for a moment. Then she took a breath, and said, "If you will excuse me." Isana rose from the table and turned as though to walk as far away from Invidia as the chamber would allow. But she listened as she walked. There was no chance whatsoever that Invidia would allow her to have the last word on the matter of Septimus.

"Yes. He chose you." Invidia bared her teeth. "And see what it earned him."

Isana stopped in her tracks. She felt as if someone had struck her a hard blow in the belly.