Free Princeps' fury by Jim Butcher Page B

mostly sporting the scarlet and black of the House of Aquitaine, while the gold and black of Rhodes made for an only slightly smaller contingent in the seats behind that High Lord’s box.

    By contrast, the sections behind Lord Cereus’s box, and for that matter, behind the box of Lord and Lady Placidus, were rather sparsely populated. And the section behind the empty box where the High Lord of Kalarus would have been seated was entirely empty of any citizen bearing the green and grey of the House of Kalare. That wasn’t a surprise, given that the House was hardly in favor after Kalarus Brencis’s open rebellion against the Crown had failed so miserably and spectacularly.

    Even so, the Citizens seated in that section were at its fringes, and wearing the colors of one of the other greater Houses. Surely someone should have been wearing Kalarus’s colors, if for no other reason than out of tradition and force of habit. Some of those families had been wearing those colors for centuries. Regardless of the actions of the most recent Lord Kalarus, they would not have abandoned their own traditional garb—indeed, many of the poorer Citizens of that region simply could not have afforded a new court wardrobe, given the devastation the rebellion had wreaked upon their economy.

    Where were the Citizens from Kalare, from Ceres, and from Placida? What has Lady Placida not told us?

    She felt a similar sense of concerned curiosity from Araris, and turned to him, expecting him to have noticed the same absences she had—only to find him staring intently across the Senate floor.

    “Araris?” she murmured.

    “Look at Aquitaine’s box,” he murmured quietly. “Where is Lady Aquitaine?”

    Isana blinked and looked more closely. Sure enough, High Lord Aquitainus Attis sat in his box without the familiar, stately figure of his wife Invidia at his side.

    “Where could she be?” Isana murmured. “She would never miss something like this.”

    “Perhaps now that an heir has appeared, they finally decided to kill one another,” murmured a wry, familiar voice. “Though if so, I lost money in the pool the Cursors had going as to the victor.”

    Isana turned to find a short, slight man with sandy hair smiling at them from the row above the Placidan box, his elbows casually resting on the railing.

    “Ehren,” Isana said, smiling. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to Canea with my son.”

    The young man’s expression grew sober, and Isana felt him close down, concealing his emotions—but not before she felt his flash of weary frustration, anger, and fear. “Duty called,” he replied, mustering up the effort for another smile as Aria returned to the box. “Ah, Lady Placida. I wonder if I could impose upon you for a seat during the First Lord’s address?”

    Lady Placida glanced at Isana, lifting an eyebrow. “By all means, Sir Ehren. Please join us.”

    Ehren inclined his head in thanks and swung his legs calmly over the railing, slipping down into the box with a rather cavalier disregard for the solemnity of the Senatorium. Isana had to make an effort to keep from smiling.

    Ehren had barely been seated when a single trumpeter blew the fanfare of a Legion captain—and not the notes of the First Lord’s Processional. Murmurs rose through the Senatorium at once as those seated all rose to their feet together—the First Lord only employed that protocol in time of war.

    Gaius Sextus, First Lord of Alera, entered as the last notes of the fanfare rang out, flanked by half a dozen Knights Ferrous in the crimson cloaks of the Crown Guard. A tall, powerfully built man, Gaius looked more like a man in his late prime than an octogenarian—except for his silver-white hair, which was, if Isana was not imagining it, even thinner and wispier than it had been the last time she had seen him, several months before.

    The First Lord moved like a much younger man, descending the steps from the Senatorium’s