I raise my brows at Vel. “You didn’t introduce me to your centurion.”

It would help if I had a mental connection with him, but we can’t do the silent talking. Fortunately, he’s skilled at reading subtext. He makes a flourishing gesture toward the door.

“He didn’t deserve the honor. Let’s go where we can be more private.”

Hopefully, he means to a room that’s not bugged. He escorts me to his bedchamber, which is enormous. Like the rest of the house, it looks expensive but tasteful, but the red-and-gold color scheme doesn’t suit Vel. Not that it matters.

Once he shuts the door, I ask, “We’re clear?”

“Yes. We can speak freely in here. Flavius has a white-noise generator installed in the walls, running continuously.”

“Which interferes with any spyware?”

“Precisely.”

“I guess he wasn’t an exhibitionist.”

Vel smiles with Legate Flavius’s face; and that’s just so weird that I have no words. The man annoyed the shit out of me, then I saw his corpse on a rainy night in the provinces. “No, the legate had other perversions.”

“Do I want to know?”

“No.”

“It’s not important anyway. What I was driving at downstairs…have you told anyone about me yet? Come up with a backstory or a name?”

He shakes his head. “I thought it would be better to leave that in your hands.”

“Yeah, it will be easier for me to remember details I invent.”

“I suspected as much. Are you ready to begin, Sirantha?”

I nod. It’s time to start the next phase of the war.

CHAPTER 37

Moving into the town house proves painless.

The legate has many servants, but Vel promotes Tiana to the head of the household. Such a move would make everyone think he’d selected a new sex toy, except my presence scotches that gossip. Cato leads the surviving centurions, but they bunk in separate quarters behind the main residence. He passes me in the hall with dark looks that promise trouble.

While waiting for Vel to return, I use the wardrober to design exotic outfits. It’s hard to think about fashion when I know my squad is fighting without me, but I can serve best here, now. Plus, ex-Flavius’s accounts can stand the strain; it’s not like he needs credits anymore. The time I spend waiting I use to write my character background. Mishani was taken into service when she was a child, and her shinai-bond has passed three times. Legate Flavius took one look at her and fell into a deviant sort of love that permits no distance, requires total ownership.

Pretty clothes can only take me so far. Once I have enough dresses, I sprawl on Vel’s bed, pretending I’m not nervous. Mishani would be worried about his safety due to what it meant for her shinai-bond. The La’hengrin don’t enjoy riding the winds of fate, tossed wherever whimsy dictates. I’m anxious for different reasons. Hope the meeting goes well.

I couldn’t accompany him, of course. I’m eye candy and not privy to important political business. Nicuan nobility is patriarchal to the point of aggravation, especially for those of us who were born peen-free. So I wait in the legate’s bedroom, where I’m sure nobody’s spying on me. My room adjoins through the shared bath, but I don’t have white-noise generators in my walls.

I flick on the vid to see what local news has to say about the rebellion. A pretty, dark-haired Nicuan presenter is speaking when I tune in. “There has been trouble in the provinces, but the governor’s office reports there is no cause for concern. The so-called LLA, or La’heng Liberation Army, is ‘a passel of shepherds who lack both equipment and leadership. The centurions will put an end to this resistance, which is nothing more than a call to anarchy.’”

“That’s what you think,” I tell her.

I switch the feed to a film already in progress. Ironically, it’s the one I watched in the mountains with my squad. The images on screen bring with them a host of bittersweet memories. Timmon and Eller have already fallen; how many more brave men will we lose before this war ends?

The bedroom door bangs open, startling me. Cato looms in the doorway, his eyes threaded red. Even from here I smell the stench of whatever he’s been drinking. “Something’s not right,” he snarls. “The legate’s changed too much. He and I used to go out, taking the choicest La’hengrin whores, and now I’m supposed to believe you’re enough to sate him? I don’t. There’s something wrong.”

Shit. The mission could unravel here. I roll off the bed, putting it between us, and look surreptitiously for a weapon. He slams the door behind him. Good. That means privacy.

“Don’t run. I want to talk to you.”

Talk. Yeah. I’m sure that’s what he has in mind.

Cato lunges toward me, but I wheel around behind him. The minute I fight back, he’ll know I’m either not La’hengrin, despite my appearance, or that I’ve taken the cure. Either way, it means he can’t be allowed to leave this room alive. He’ll tell anyone who’ll listen about the spy in the legate’s household. I have to take care of this problem before it escalates.

The centurion throws a sloppy punch. If he weren’t drunk, it would have connected. As it is, I feel the breeze in the near miss. Nearby, there’s a slender crystal lamp. I smash it into shards so glass litters the ground between us.

“Wrecking the place won’t save you, love. Nobody will come to your aid. I’m in charge here, whatever the legate told you. He’s forgotten, but I’ll remind him.”

What the hell. Something in his tone suggests Cato has some hold over Flavius, blackmail material maybe. He’s ready to beat the shit out of me; I see the glint of anticipation in his gaze. I’m to pay for the humiliation he’s suffered.

I don’t think so.

Under the pretext of self-abasement, I drop to my knees and palm a pointed shard. He makes a fist and draws back his arm just as I slice his hamstring. His scream of pain is lost in the white-noise generator. He was right when he said nobody will come, no matter what goes on in the legate’s chamber. He lands a glancing blow on my cheek, and even injured he’s strong enough that my head snaps back. I roll into the fall and grab his ankle, then tug with all my might. His injured leg buckles; the centurion drops hard on his side, and I press my advantage, diving across his thrashing body with all my strength. With a slash of the razor-sharp shard, I finish him quickly though there’s a bloody mess by the time I’m done. Mary, what am I supposed to do with the body? Shaken, I cover the corpse with a sheet and wait for Vel. He’ll help me dispose of it.

I shower, desperate to get the red off myself. The next two hours are incredibly unnerving; by the time Vel returns, I’m mad with impatience. He approaches with a spring in his step, which makes me think the meeting went well. Rising, I greet him at the door as Mishani would. He brushes my cheek with his lips, and they feel real enough, if cool and dry. I imagine how it was for him, living a lie for so many turns on Gehenna. I don’t think I could do it.

Before we can talk about how it went with the prince, we have a crisis to resolve.

“Buried any bodies lately?” I ask.

He tenses, noticing the disarray in the room beyond. “What happened?”

I summarize, and he mutters a curse. “I’m sorry. I thought he was sufficiently cowed.”

“Apparently they had subtext in their relationship. Nothing we could’ve known.”

“Let’s get him out of here. Tiana can serve as the lookout.” Without delay, he calls for the housekeeper, who smiles when she realizes who’s dead.

Tiana beams at Vel. “You can plant him in the garden out back. He’ll do more good fertilizing the flowers than he ever did in life.”

It takes another hour to do as she suggests, then clean up the evidence.

Back in his room, I ask, “What will you tell the other centurions?”

“That he got a better offer.”

“Good enough. How did it go?” I feel odd being so calm about what we’ve just done.

“See for yourself.” Vel fiddles with the comm suite, and then queues up a vid, taken from his ocular cam.

Fantastic. Though I knew he planned to try, I wasn’t sure if it would work through the camouflage; the picture looks relatively clear, just a thin veil that blurs the image. The sound is a bit muffled, as the mic is implanted in his skull, but with a few taps on the control panel, he renders it audible. I settle in to watch the log.

There are a few wasted moments, where Vel’s forced to cool his heels in the antechamber while somebody, probably a secretary or personal assistant, stares at him with a superior smirk. Then, at last, he’s escorted to the great one’s presence. Prince Marcus is a small man with a receding hairline and a weak chin. He’s a little overfed, smug, and he wears too much brown, along with an impatient expression. From his reaction, he’s not thrilled to see Legate Flavius. Vel is correct in his manners; he’s been studying protocol while I got a new face.

“What do you want, Flavius?” The noble’s tone says, This better be important.

“As you may know, my country estate was attacked some days ago.”

“Rebels?” the prince asks without real interest.

“I wish it were that cut-and-dried. It was Legate Arterius.”

The other man’s attention sharpens; he steeples his hands. “Those are serious allegations. I hope this isn’t some posthumous power play.”

“I have evidence of a plot to discredit both of us and commence Arterius’s ascent to your title. May I forward them to your handheld?”

Marcus nods, but I can see he doesn’t believe this story…until he starts reading. Wisely, Vel edited out all the damning information that shows how the ex-Flavius colluded with his boy Arterius to see Marcus executed for treason against the empire. On La’heng, that takes some pretty serious disloyalty, as the current emperor, happily wallowing in his own importance on Nicu Tertius, doesn’t give a rat’s ass what goes on here.

“This is…unconscionable.” When the prince glances up from the documents, he’s shaking with rage. “What transpired at your estate? I want every detail.”

Vel outlines the situation with judicious excision. The firefight rages between his house guards and the enemy centurions, no resistance involvement. In the end, only Flavius and his faithful servant Tiana make it out of the inferno alive. The way he tells the story, it’s riveting, and by the halfway mark, Marcus is leaning forward for the next revelation.

“So many brave centurions must be commemorated,” he declares after the finale. “In light of their sacrifice, it would be my privilege to host a party in their memory. You will be my honored guest, of course.”

“You do me too much courtesy, Your Highness.”

Marcus shakes his head. “You have not sought to profit by this in any measurable way. I erred in my judgment of you, Flavius. Any other man would have been on my doorstep, the moment this occurred, demanding restitution. Not you.”