Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13)(31)

“Such horrors.” Sharine’s expression was open, her renowned kindness and heart at the forefront—yet there remained nothing fragile about her. “You’ll have to leave a dead animal in there with the reborn one, for your scientists need a live sample to study—if the infection melts the flesh of the reborn, you may otherwise end up with no sample at all.”

The reborn tended to be drawn to living flesh, but Titus wasn’t going to trap two maddened creatures together so one could eat the other. There were some lines he wouldn’t cross. “A living creature should survive if I create the hole under shade. I’ll send word back to my people as soon as I see a scout.”

Titus could speak mind-to-mind with his senior people from some distance away, but they’d flown beyond his maximum range. Mental speech had never been one of his stronger skills regardless, and was perhaps a reason he’d retained so much of his Cascade-born abilities. To even out the spread of power in the Cadre.

“Wait.” Sharine’s voice was breathy . . . flustered? “I’m foolish. We can use the phone—I have a number within it that connects to your court.”

“I don’t deal with such.” Titus examined the creatures below to see which he could most easily cut from the herd and corral.

“Careful, Titus,” she said, “lest you morph into a monument of yourself—one stuck in stone and in the past.”

As he watched her touch her fingers to the screen of the device, he chewed over her words, heat in his blood. He was who he was and he had no argument with himself.

Tito! Stop being so stubborn.

His eldest sister’s voice, an echo from childhood—or possibly from last year. Phenie still scolded him from time to time. She also went to great lengths to bring him his favorite fruit from the Refuge, and, when he’d been a child, had never begrudged the fledgling who tottered after her, eager to poke his nose into her business.

Come, Tito, we’ll go visit Master Carvari. It’s possible you have untapped musical abilities.

To Phenie’s great horror, Titus’s only interest in instruments was how to use them as weapons should he need to. Yet she’d never stopped him from being underfoot, not even when he spent an entire year with her while their mother led Alexander’s troops in battle.

Titus had long forgotten what that battle might’ve been or against whom, but he remembered sitting on the stone wall outside Phenie’s house, listening to her play the harp—and waiting in happy anticipation for when she’d inevitably call his name.

It’s time for a snack, Tito! Hurry home or I shall eat it all!

The memory made his lips curve. Perhaps, in Phenie’s honor, he’d concede that Sharine was right in her reproof. The device in her hand would ensure his scientists could get under way at speed.

Not that he’d tell Sharine he agreed with her—she struck him as the kind of woman who’d say “I told you so” and he’d heard quite enough of that in his childhood, thank you very much.

Especially from Charo. The youngest of his sisters was an inveterate gloater.

“Here.” Sharine handed over the device that felt flimsy and breakable in his hand. “I’ve touched the button that should connect you to your court.”

It was his steward who answered the call. “Yash,” Titus boomed. “I need you to fetch either Tzadiq, Tanae, Orios, or Ozias.” Yash was brilliant at running the household, but it’d be better to give this particular information to someone who’d ensure the scholars and scientists didn’t get themselves eaten by a deranged buffalo.

“Sire.” A stunned response, but the man recovered fast. “I’ll fetch Orios at once; I saw the weapons-master just now.”

Glancing down, Titus saw that three of the creatures had managed to take down a fourth, were now feasting on his yet-pink flesh. That meant the infection was recent. Unable to stand by and watch any being writhe in agony, Titus sent down a bolt of power that erased all four from existence. The rest of the herd screamed in a way that was eerily unnatural—buffalo didn’t make that sound—but they didn’t scatter.

Rather, they turned and looked up at him, trying to jump in a way that was impossible for their ungainly bodies.

Orios came on the line. “Sire, when Yash told me it was you on the line, I thought for certain he’d taken a blow to the head!” The weapons-master’s voice was as deep and resonant as Titus’s. “What calamity has befallen us now?”

Of all the people in his court, Orios was the one with whom Titus was the closest. Perhaps because Orios had been with him from the very beginning; the only reason he wasn’t Titus’s second was because he preferred the duties of a weapons-master.

I have no patience for the politics that come with being second, he’d said when Titus brought up the question soon after his ascension. You need a second with a bit more cunning and charm to him, one who’ll soften your blunt edges when it comes to dealing with the seconds of others in the Cadre. You should promote Tzadiq—he’s an excellent general, but he will be a brilliant second.

Orios had been right in his advice, and now Titus had an intelligent and urbane second he trusted to uphold Titus’s honor—while not insulting everyone in the vicinity. “It has reached the animals, my friend,” he told Orios, then laid out the details.