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Because it is the nature of love to be answered in kind.
“I find it remarkable how often amateurs confuse courage with idiocy.”
“Valiar Marcus has saved my life. And I, his. I can’t imagine that he would ever turn against the Legion. Or against me.” Magnus was silent for a moment. Then he said, quietly, “That’s what everyone always thinks about traitors, lad. It’s why we hate them so.”
“That’s why you have to do it. Otherwise, instead of controlling your fear, your fear is controlling you.”
“Everyone feels afraid. Especially when something bad happens. But you can’t let that scare you into quitting.”
“Not every man in the Senate is some kind of masterful schemer, exerting all his energies to acquire more power and influence at the expense of all others.” “No,” Isana agreed. “Some of them are incompetent schemers.”
“My father used to speak to me often of the nature of power,” Veradis said. “One of the things he often lamented was that the only folk truly worthy to hold it were those who did not seek it.” Isana frowned. “I don’t understand.” Veradis smiled, and for a moment there was nothing solemn or sad in her face. Isana was struck by the young woman’s delicate beauty. “I know you don’t,” she said. “Thus proving my father’s point.”
What one deserves and what one experiences are seldom congruent.”
“I have always found the particular madness of the House of Gaius singularly intriguing. It has fought the tides for more than a thousand years. It has often failed to attain victory. But it has never conceded the struggle.”
“Strength is the first virtue,” Alera said. “That is not a pleasant fact. Its distastefulness does not alter the truth that without strength to protect them, all other virtues are ephemeral, ultimately meaningless.”
“I will do what is necessary.” Then he looked up at the great fury, and his words sounded hard and cold to his own ears. “But there is more than one kind of strength.”
“Despair and fear are powerful foes. They can change you into something you are not.”
“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.”
“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.”
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.”
Isana smoothed her worn dress down carefully, considering her words and the thoughts behind them, and the burning fires of her own grief and loss that colored all of her mind the color of blood. Then she drew in a deep breath, and said, “For my husband’s memory, for my child’s future, for those whose blood is upon your hands, I defy you. I name you Nihilus Invidia, Invidia of Nusquam, traitor to the Crown, the Realm, and her people.” She drew herself up straight and spoke in a hard tone barely louder than a whisper. “And before I leave this place, I will kill you.”
“Can’t just tell a soul it is free, Tavar. Freedom must be done for oneself.
“That is because knowledge given freely to another is not really knowledge at all, Aleran,” Kitai replied. “It is rumor. One must learn for oneself.”
Life, Tavi reflected, seldom makes a gift of what one expects or plans for.
Lord Placida had approached as they spoke, and he smiled briefly as they both turned to him. “In point of fact, dear, all of us owe her our lives.” Aria arched an imperious eyebrow. “You are not going to hug the pretty little Parcian girl, you goat.” Placida nodded gravely. “Foiled again.”
“Well,” Antillus Raucus said. “There it is.” “Brilliant last words,” Phrygius said beside him. “We’ll put them on your memorium. Right next to, ‘He died stating the obvious.’ ”
“I know,” Tavi said solemnly. “But in this, you are less wise than an Aleran male. Still, one must tolerate occasional fits of irrational passion from one’s wife.
Even so, some part of Fidelias noted with amusement that he wasn’t simply following Gaius Octavian, unarmed and unarmored, into the leviathan’s mouth. He was sprinting.
“Give you all of that information?” Invidia asked. “It would not take her
Phrygius eyed Raucus, and said, “Maybe I’ll finally get to see you get knocked on your ass.” “When we get back, you and I are going to have a talk in which you lose your teeth,” Antillus replied. “Because I’m going to knock them out of your head. With my fists.”
Tavi looked blearily around him. A healer’s tent. One of the ones that hadn’t been destroyed, obviously. Furylamps lit it. So he’d been unconscious for hours, but not many of them. Unless it had been more than a day. He hated being unconscious. It always interrupted everything he had planned.
“A good man, almost by definition, would seriously question any decisions he made that led to such terrible consequences for others. Especially if those others trusted him.
“Things are never true because we want them to be, Invidia,” Isana said. “Or because we don’t want them to be. They simply are.”
Calderon stepped closer to Ehren. Then he said, very quietly, his voice hard, “You’re telling me, to my face, that you conspired to murder a Princeps of the Realm?” “No,” Ehren said, just as quietly, and with just as much stone in his voice, “I’m telling you that I made sure a man who absolutely would have killed your nephew could never hurt him.”
It was one thing for a man to say he was willing to lay down his life for his child—but quite another for him to actually do it.
Still, the basic principles applied—recruit reliable subordinates and delegate authority in accordance with their talents. Help them when they needed it and stay out of their way when they didn’t. Make absolutely clear what you expect from the people working for you and make sure rewards or discipline were consistent and fair.
