(no subject)
Title: In Fideltiy
Fandom: Codex Alera
Characters: Fidelias, Invidia Aquitane, Gaius Sextus
Recipient:
minor_ramblings
Word Count: 2,760
Rating: PG-13, for nudity, violence, torture
Spoilers: Up Until Captains Fury
Prompt: Fidelias as a Young Cursor
Summary: Fidelias tells Invidia a bedtime story about his start in the Cursors
Disclaimer: Aside from one or two characters, I did not create the people, places or concepts therein. A far more creative man did it and this is me bowing to him.
In Fidelity
I am getting too old for this business.
That’s all I could think about. Not the Legions preparing for war, or the Canim breathing down our necks, or Captain Scipio and the rumors surrounding him. Nor was I worried about the naked High Lady lying in bed with me, glistening with sweat from an hours worth of treachery against her husband, both of whom could kill me without a second thought.
And that, was mostly the problem.
Aquitanus Invidia turned to face me. Her dark hair lightly tussled, her grey eyes smoldering like the still burning ashes of a fire.
"Great Furies," she sighed. "For an Earthcrafter, you have a most delicate touch." She made a purring sound that reminded me of a grass lion after a kill.
I turned away from her. I didn't want to look at her, give her any advantage into reading my emotions. Though that alone got her attention.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"I'm trying to figure out the prime position to use that Balest," I lied. "I don't have much time."
Invidia began chuckling, "Fidelias, I admire your zeal, but...I'm trying not to be offended."
I got out of the bed with a grunt, and took to pacing my modest camp tent. The only light was the crimson flickering of the small furylamp next to my cot.
Invidia looked at me, and I could almost feel her and her furies attempting to decipher me. After a minute or two, she spoke.
"How did you get here, Fidelias?"
It might have been the tremor in her voice, the vulnerable warble hid under layers of her normal cool tone, but I decided to look at her. She sat there in all her beauty. The flickering of the furylamp casting a warm glow on her, creating interesting shadows on her body.
I stopped pacing, and sighed. "When I was an academ -heh, you probably weren't even crawling yet- but when I was an academ, the Crown was under serious threat of an attack from an Assassin. My patriserus and I were assigned to find him."
"Who was your patriserus?" Invidia asked
"Fideliar Demetrius,"
Invidia blinked, "Demetrius the Firebrand?"
I nodded, not many of the upper echelons of Aleran Society didn't know about what happened to Demetrius. Last I heard, when Cursors want to scare one another, they tell Fideliar Demetrius stories. He was Gaius Quintus' best Cursor, an old warhorse of a man, and a bloody wonder with firecrafting. He was a heavy set man, his face a craggy mess of scars and knots made all the more visible by the bushel of black hair he had on his head and face. He was a loud man, a boisterous man. He was as subtle as a gargant and twice as loud.
"We tracked the assassin through most of Alera. We picked up his trail in Phrygia, across the Shieldwall all the way to Antillus. However, the Icemen attacked and we lost him in the resulting storm. It took me a solid week to track him back. Demetrius was seething, literally, at this point. He hated being in freezing Antillus, though I didn't mind it that much."
"Where did you find him?" Invidia asked
"Ceres. That city's civic legions have always had problems policing the underground. We found signs of him in the sewers.
"'Boy,' Demetrius said to me. His voice was like walking on gravel. 'We can't let him get any further than this. We need to take him, and take him now!'"
I stopped. A smile crept up on my face.
"Well," Invidia said "What happened?"
"A brick, I think" I said, scratching my head. "Or possibly a metal pan. The details are a little blurry. Next thing I remember though is waking up in a Ceresian sewer. I was in an iron cage being dangled in the air, effectively cutting me off from Vamma and Etan."
"Who?"
I rolled my eyes, "My earth and wood furies."
Invidia chuckled, "You paganus and your superstitions."
I ignored the High Lady's jab and continued, "Demetrius was also in the room. He was chained under a culvert, the water pouring over him in a constant stream, cutting him off from his fury as well. The Assassin came in. He was of average height, build and appearance. Given the right clothing and grooming, he could have passed for a legionare, or a member of the citizenry. He was followed by a boy roughly my age and my size, I remember he had a crow's nose and hair like un-bundled hay.
"Without saying a word, the Assassin went straight to Demetrius. He took out a metal rod the length of a willow wand and began striking him across the face. Demetrius began thrashing against his chains, his screams being muffled out by the running water above him.
'What do you want from us!?' I screamed
The Assassin stopped, and looked at me. 'Information,' he said. Even his voice was non-distinct.
'You won't get it,' I replied.
'Hook or Crook, son. I will.' He then pulled Demetrius' head clear out of the water. His face was a ruddy collection of fresh gashes caused by the rod. His left eye was swollen shut
'Information', The Assassin said blandly. Demetrius looked at him with his right eye and spat at him, his blood spattering against his tunic. He looked at the hook nosed boy. The boy started unlocking Demetrius' bonds. They then dragged the old man by the arms past my cell and out of the door. Demetrius was too beaten, too drowned, too exhausted to resist.
'What are you doing with him!?' I cried.
'Don't be proud, boy.' My patriserus said blearily as they hauled him away.
I kept screaming, rattling my cage, in the hopes that someone, anyone, could come and save me and Demetrius.
During all the noise, I still heard it. If one were in a market, it would sound like someone had cut open a ripe melon.
I stopped screaming. He was dead, Demetrius the Firebrand was dead. He would never laugh at idiots, yell at me for taking up too much time. He would never get drunk again and dance with slave girls.
He was gone.
I was left.
The Assassin returned. His boy was no where to be seen.
'Now,' he said. 'We heard rumors that the academ of Fideliar Demetrius had received accommodations for bravery. And that the First Lord considers him to be a personal favorite amongst his spies. Is this you? And, before you try, I've enough watercraft to know when I'm being lied to, boy. So please, do not test me."
I stared at him. This was all a trap, a set up. To get me.
In the back of my mind, I weighed my assets. I had no furies, no weapons, no way of knowing if he was lying about his watercraft skills. I had very little.
And I was not going to give him any of it.
I raised my eyes to him and met him with a level stare, 'I am the academ of Fideliar Demetrius, the man you just murdered. I am the one whom the First Lord favors."
He smiled, he was feeling smug about himself. 'Good lad. Now, I need to know how many guards are in his private chambers.
'No,'
'No?' he asked, he seemed genuinely hurt. 'Do you know what I will do to you?'
I nodded, 'everything you've done says you'll kill me anyway. So get it done with, slive.'
The Assassin ground his teeth.
'I told you, he wouldn't crack.'
The voice that said that came from the door. At first, the hay-haired boy came in. But behind him was the voice I heard.
In walked Demetrius, very much alive and with no a scratch on him. He smiled at me smugly as he walked to the side of the Assassin.
And I wanted to gouge his eyes out
'Look at him,' he said, pointing to me. 'Even now, the boy isn't scared or shocked. He's mad. He's a firestorm waiting to happen.'
The Assassin nodded. And without a single word, Demetrius pulled out the small dagger he kept in his sleeves and drove it into the man's neck. The Assassin simply fell to the ground, making sick gurgling noises as he did. Demetrius kept smiling, and the boy said nothing.
'I'm going to make this short and sweet, boy,' he said as he approached my cell. 'Either you will give me the information I want, or I'm simply going to kill you and have this boy replace you. He has enough watercraft to mirror you down to the last hair on your rear.'
'Why?' I asked, not putting any effort to hide the bitter angst I had.
Demetrius let out a soft chuckle. 'Because I have spent my life serving the House of Gaius. I shed blood for both Quintus and Sextus. I have murdered friends, destroyed families, all in the name of Alera. It's now time for The House of Gaius to know the pain it's inflicted. I am going to rob it of its future. I am going to kill the Princeps.'
I blinked. Princeps Gaius Septimus was less than a year old. He posed no threat to anyone. Yes, the House of Gaius had done what they felt necessary to protect the realm, but Septimus didn't know that. He didn't know yet the sins he would acquire just by taking on the seat of the First Lord.
Demetrius continued, 'you are going to help me get into the First Lord's chambers and kill the Princeps. Or you will die and young Kronus here will help me.'
The young boy smiled, but there was no emotion behind him. Everything within me knew the boy had killed before, and for sport.
'So, will you tell me what I want to know?'
I looked at him, and without flinching spoke 'No'
'Last warning, boy.'
'I am not afraid of you,'
Demetrius came close to the swinging cage. He grabbed onto the bars, and in a short moment, the bars began to glow. At first they were red, then they began to grow white hot. The air in the cage began to vanish. I felt the heat roll over me, my mouth went dry, my skin soaked with sweat. Yet despite all that heat, the pit of my stomach grew colder.
He was trying a fearcrafting. Trying to get me so wild with terror, so desperate to escape that I'd lose my mind, tell him anything he needed to know.
I couldn't let him, though. Too much rode on me. The life of a child for once, the fate of the realm for the other.
'I am not afraid of you,' I repeated. And repeated again. Making it a mantra of power as I huddled myself together.
'Tell me what I want to know,' he said calmly. 'And I'll let you go. You can go anywhere you want to, change your name. You always said you hated the name--'
'I am not afraid of you,' I said harder, with more resolve.
I could see it in his face, the patience was wearing thin. Demetrius the Firebrand's legendary short temper was winning through. When he did, he'd make a mistake, or kill me. Either was preferable
I kept repeating myself over and over again. Demetrius kept getting redder and redder, until finally he burst
'DAMMIT BOY, TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW!!'
'I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU,' with that last scream I charged at him. I ran straight into the gates, knocking the wind out of myself. But it also gave the hanging cage enough push to move me forward, right into Demetrius. My patriserus (former, at this point) pushed back on reflex. He pushed hard enough and straight enough that the back of the cage tapped again the stone wall.
I wasted no time, I stretched my hand out to the wall, letting the strength and stillness of the earthworks flow into me.
'VAMMA!'
The stone of the culvert cracked, and with it came a deluge of sewer water straight towards me. The blast pushed me clear aside, allowing me to grab a hold of crack in the masonry. I channeled my fury into bending the bars. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough. I slipped out of the cage and into the waist-high water.
The water around Kronus, the young boy, began to churn, and move on it's own. With nothing but raw anger and my fury, I sent an earthwave through the floor. It caught that poor boy by the feet, flinging him headfirst into the wall. Just from the angle and the force of his body, I knew he was dead.
Demetrius had fled before the boy's body even hit the floor. I followed him, persued him. Now we were playing my game. While Demetrius was a tremendous fighter and good interrogator, I excelled in tracking, hunting. Demetrius was out of his level, and drenched as he was, he was cut off from his fury.
I was the Hunter, he was the Prey.
I found him, slinking in some alcove. He was stripped of his power, his pride, his arrogance. He thought he could easily over power me and make me give him what he wanted, and now he had nothing left.
'Ah, boy,' he stammered. 'You did it, you pulled through. You passed your test.'
I raised an eyebrow, 'did I, sir?'
'F-full marks,'
I leaned in towards him, and I could smell it on him. 'Then why are you afraid?'"
I stopped, and turned towards Invidia. She was sitting up by now, holding her knees like a young girl being told a bedtime story at the hearth.
"What happened then?" she asked, enraptured by the story.
"Well, with Demetrius dead. I headed back to the capital. When I told Gaius that one of his most trusted cursors had attempted to kill his son, he flew into a rage. You've never seen the man that angry, that vindictive. He went through his whole administration looking for conspirators, starting first with the Cursors. And he had me, his trusted and faithful servant, leading the investigation.
"When it was over, he brought me to his chambers. His son, now two years old, sitting on his lap.
'You have proven yourself to be a constant and faithful man within the realm,' he said. 'A rare thing in these times. You were threatened with fire, with bribes, with illusions, some of whom were your friends and cohorts. For this, your name will be added amongst those in the House of the Faithful, and you shall henceforth be known as Fideliar...'
'Fidelias," I said.
Gaius blinked.
'I renounce my birth name, and give my self over to the Realm,'
The First Lord said nothing, and then smiled. 'Very well. Arise, Fidelias, and go forth with your Faith.'"
I sat back down on the bed. Invidia next to me. We didn't say much, but I could tell she was still searching.
After a few minutes, she apparently didn't find what she was looking for.
"There's something that's bothering me," she said. "What you told me, the ambush, the interrogation, the turning of your patriserus. It all sounds similar to the report Aldrick gave me about you and Amara. Almost word for word."
"I didn't torture her," I replied, hiding back the bitter memory.
"History repeats itself?" She asked dryly.
"If ever me and Amara meet again, she's more than welcome to try and repeat it."
She looked to me, eyes piercing. "You are a confusing man, Fidelias."
I looked back and allowed myself a smile, "Would you be here otherwise?"
Her smile faded. I had gotten familiar with her, and she was getting frustrated. "I'd best be going." she said.
Without much of a word, she got dressed, and furycrafted herself back to her washer woman disguise.
She left, and looked back to me. "Peculiar man,"
I didn't relax after she had gone, not until I knew she was well away. After a few minutes, I let it all go. The Canim, Scipio, Demetrius, Amara, Sextus, Invidia. All of them flooded my mind.
But, even in the rush, an interesting fact sprang to attention: Whenever I mentioned Gaius Septimus, Invidia blinked. And when I mentioned killing him, her throat clenched. Now, I wonder why she'd react like that.
That made me smile, maybe I wasn't getting that old for this business