CLAUDIA

For long days, the poison lingered inside her. For long days, as the catapults boomed and the arrows whistled outside, the poison sought its way out, sweating, vomiting, shitting, oozing, laughing, twisting its way from her body like worms burrowing out from a corpse. Finally, thinned, weary, but laughing, Claudia emerged from her tent, her fever gone, and beheld the siege of Beth Eloh.

Tens of thousands of legionaries still surrounded the city. Catapults hurled boulders onto the walls, chipping bricks, shattering merlons, cracking turrets. Rams still hammered at gates. Flaming arrows flew over the battlements. Siege towers rolled toward the walls. Yet still the Zoharites held back the attack. Smoke rose from beyond the walls, and Zoharite corpses lay in the field, yet still the rats fought—firing arrows at every battering ram crew, burning every siege tower, withstanding every stone. Claudia laughed.

"Fucking rats." She gulped down wine and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "You were always stubborn bastards. You could always fuck me for hours, Epher. You never seemed to tire. Same old Epher, same old game."

She drank some more. Good. Wine drowned the pain of the poison. Wine drowned the memory of waking up, finding herself lying on Leean's corpse, which had already begun to stink. Wine made her forget seeing her mother die, stabbing the boy, taking life for the first time. And wine made her forget how Claudia loved him, how they had been two youths on the beach, sneaking out of her father's home. Epher. The first man she had ever loved. The only man she loved.

Claudia donned her armor and mounted her horse. She rode along the dirt path toward the city. Carnage spread across the hill—burning wreckage, corpses, fresh graves. She rode between the cohorts, rows of sweaty, filthy men, armor sandy, swords thirsty for blood. Soon they would drink.

"You don't want to ride any closer, domina," said Legatus Constantius, the Iron Eagle, commander of these forces. "The rats' arrows are nasty business. The scum coat their arrowheads with poison, and they're good shots." He pointed toward a turret where two walls met. "The one there, in that arrow slit. He slew two of my men who wheeled a siege tower too close. Shot one right in the eye even from all the way up there."

Claudia stared at the tall general. His eagle-head helmet stared back, beak thrusting toward her. Through the eyeholes, she could see the scars. The old fire, they said, had claimed his entire face. She had never seen that ravaged face; the general never removed his helm. His iron prosthetic hand, shaped as a talon, shone in the sun. He seemed inhuman to Claudia, more machine than man, a demonic bird of dark iron. Claudia suppressed a shudder, remembering the stories of Constantius flaying the family of the Phedian who had taken his hand.

She turned and squinted at the turret, struggling to see through its arrowslit. She thought she glimpsed a distant figure move.

"I grew up among Zoharites," Claudia said. "They're indeed stubborn bastards, bred for war. I don't think any nation in this world has fought more wars than Zoharites." She smiled. "Makes this all rather fun, doesn't it? I do enjoy a challenge." She drank again from her wine goblet. "I'll ride closer. Let's see if the bastard's luck lasts three times."

She kneed her horse, riding closer to the wall. She had survived a lumer's poison. She had survived her lover spurning her love and choosing war instead. She could survive a wall.

She rode along that wall, just on the edge of the arrows' range. So many men and women topped it. Not soldiers. Most of Zohar's soldiers had died in their long, endless wars. Here were farmers, masons, butchers, tanners—the dregs of humanity given armor and arrows. Perhaps Zohar had always been a nation where everyone was a soldier.

"Are you having fun, Zohar?" Claudia called out. "I see smoke rising from behind your walls! How many of you have died?" She laughed. "You cannot resist us forever, people of Zohar. You cannot resist the might of Aelar! I call to you—open your gates! Reject the war of your king. Spit upon Epheriah Elior, who would lead you to ruin. Allow me into your city, and I will welcome you into the embrace of the Empire, of this family of nations. Join us—or fucking die!"

They stared down at her, and there—there from that arrowslit in that turret the arrow flew. Claudia tugged her horse aside, and the arrow sliced the air a finger's length from her face. She snorted. If this was Zohar's dreaded archer, good riddance to those fools he'd slain.

"Epher!" she called. "Epher, do you hear me?"

She saw him on the wall in the distance. She recognized him even from here. Tall. Gaunt now, thinner than he'd been. She saw that even past his armor. He stared at her, surrounded by his men. At his side stood a woman with fiery red hair—hair like an Elanian's, rare here in the desert.

"Did you already find another woman to fuck?" Claudia shouted up at him. She drank more wine. "I'm coming for you, Epher! Open your gates now, or I'll fucking crucify your whore!" She turned toward the legionaries behind her. "Build more catapults. Build more ladders. I want this fucking city razed to the ground, and I want Epher brought to me alive!"

She rode back to her tent. The corpse of Leean still hung outside on a cross. Flies had laid their eggs in the rotting flesh, and the maggots had claimed the eyes. It stank. By the gods, it fucking stank. But Claudia kept the lumer's corpse here—here by her tent, by her new home, in the heart of her camp. It was a reminder to all, mostly to herself, of what she would do to Epher. Of what she would do to all Zoharites.

You killed my mother. Claudia's fists trembled. You spurned me, Epher. All my life, I lived among you—born in Gefen, raised in Gefen, learning your language, eating your food, fucking your men, hearing the chants of your pathetic religion ringing through my town. And you always saw me as a foreigner, a tyrant's daughter—just Claudia Valerius, an Aelarian for you to drive off, to hunt.

She stared up at the corpse, lips peeled back.

"And so you will suffer," Claudia vowed. "All of you. Every last fucking one of you rats. You will pay for what you did to me. I became Zoharite for you. Now you will become Aelarian, or I will crucify you all and give your flesh to the maggots."

She leaned across her saddle, reached out, and caressed the corpse. She closed her eyes and pretended it was Epher, that she could still touch him, love him.

I loved you so much. I loved you more than wine, more than death, and you betrayed me.

The corpse's belly swelled, gravid with the gases of decomposition. Soon it would burst, spilling its contents across the field. Soon this city would crack open too, spilling its wretchedness. Claudia reentered her tent. She lay down in bed. She hugged her pillow, and she closed her eyes, and she reached down between her legs, feeling the wetness there. As she brought herself to climax, she imagined Epher lying atop her, and she imagined his corpse on a cross, rotting outside her tent, maggots in his eyes.