by Jim Butcher
So far, he thought, things could have been worse.
There was a knock at his chamber door, which opened a breath later. “Sire?” asked his valet’s quiet voice. “Are you ready?”
“As I can be, I suppose.” Tavi rose and checked his appearance in the mirror. His hair was short and newly trimmed, his beard likewise. The cloth-of-gold tunic was heavy, and all the gems didn’t make it feel any lighter. Still, it didn’t weigh as much as armor.
Fidelias, still wearing Valiar Marcus’s face, entered the chamber and shut the door behind him.
“Sire,” he said. “The guests have all arrived. No one has attempted to gut anyone. Today.”
Tavi glanced over at him and showed his teeth. “Well. We didn’t expect forging the Alliance to be simple.”
“Naturally not,” Fidelias said, setting down a tray that doubtless had a collection of light snacks on it. Tavi had been insisting on avoiding it for weeks, and it had become a kind of game for the sentenced man to provide Tavi with appetizing temptations. Tavi ignored them. Almost always. “What has most of the Citizens upset is how you handled the land grant for the Canim.”
Tavi shrugged. “They’re welcome to Parcia if they can take it for themselves. It’s the city deepest in vord-held territory. It’s our premier seaport, and the Canim have forgotten more about shipbuilding than our own shipwrights know.” He shrugged. “Besides, if we didn’t give them someplace to call their own, they’d take it anyway—and they wouldn’t be inclined to be terribly friendly afterward. They’ll be taking Free Alera with them, I’m certain—and any holders there who don’t want to operate under Canim rule are free to seek another steadholt under a different lord.”
“High Lord Varg.” Fidelias sighed. “You know why they’re truly upset about it, don’t you?”
“Because someone without furycraft has been made a High Lord,” Tavi replied. “My heart bleeds for the poor lambs.” He took the cover off the tray and found it stacked with small meat pastries. They smelled heavenly. He gave Fidelias a murderous look. “Mark my words. The day is coming when anyone who wishes Citizenship will be able to work for it and get it. When brains will get you further than any fury ever could. And when we overempowered engines of destruction will be a quaint reminder of the past, not masters of the future.” He put the lid back down with a sharp clang. “Someone should write that down. They can quote me later, the way they do all the other First Lords.”
“I believe they’ll save that for your words upon being dragged away to be locked in a tower as a raving madman,” Fidelias replied.
Tavi burst out into a quick belly laugh. “No, I’m not quite mad yet. How are the plans for the new program coming along?”
“Covert plans for the covert training of covert operatives? If I told you, I’d have to kill you, sire.”
Tavi grinned at him. “I’ll take that to mean ‘well enough.’ ”
Fidelias nodded. “Sha has been most helpful. I enjoy working with him. Though his ideas of teaching methods are rather different than mine.” He cleared his throat, and asked, “Sire? Do you really intend to wait before taking the battle to the vord in Canea? Senator Valerius—”
Tavi threw up his hands. “Augh. I am sick of hearing that man’s name. He wants me to lead an expedition to Canea to find the last queen, does he?”
“Exactly.”
“Thus getting rid of me, which should make his campaign to frustrate everything I’m trying to build somewhat simpler.” Tavi shook his head. “If we have taken all of Alera back in ten years, we’ll be doing well. And that’s vital. We absolutely cannot leave the vord supply caches lying all over the place. And I don’t like our chances in Canea anytime in the next thirty years or so. It’s huge over there. We don’t have enough bodies to get the job done.”
“But you do acknowledge that it must happen.”
“Probably,” Tavi said. “Eventually. But for now… the vord in Canea are just too bloody useful.”
Fidelias frowned. “Sire?”
“Right now we’ve got something the world has never seen before: a working alliance among the Canim, the Marat, the Icemen, and Alera. Over the past century or three, how many Alerans have been killed fighting them, hmm?”
“Using the vord to hold the Alliance together. Risky.”
Tavi spread his hands. “The fact of the matter is that none of us can stand up to the vord on our own. The only way we have a chance is together. And the only way we’ll ever be able to take the battle to them in Canea is to live in peace with one another now and build something capable of defeating them.”
“Build something. Like this universal Academy you’ve been talking about.”
“That’s one element, yes,” Tavi said. “Our peoples have a lot to teach each other. The Academy is an excellent way to do that.”
“I don’t see what we can teach the Canim or the Marat, Captain. It’s not as though we can give them lessons in furycraft.”
Tavi suppressed his own grin. “Well. You never know when some furyless freak is going to develop talent. Do you.”
Fidelias eyed him for a moment, then sighed. “You aren’t going to explain, are you.”
“It’s a First Lord’s sacred right. I get to be cryptic whenever I want. So there.”
Fidelias huffed out a short laugh. “All right. That’s an argument I’m not going to win.” His face sobered. “But… sire. Given my sentence… I thought you’d have settled my account by now.”
“Haven’t I?” Tavi asked him. “Fidelias ex Cursori is dead. His name is black and ruined. He betrayed a dead First Lord for the sake of a High Lord and Lady who are also dead. All that he wrought for either patron has been destroyed. The labor of a lifetime, gone.”
The man who wore Valiar Marcus’s face looked down. There was bitterness in his eyes.
“I sentence Fidelias ex Cursori to death,” Tavi continued quietly. “You will die in service to me, laboring under another name, a name that will be heaped with well-deserved honor and praise. I sentence you to go to your grave knowing how things might have been had you never strayed from my grandfather’s service. I sentence you to die knowing that the First Lord who should have crucified you six months ago is instead granting you trust, a staff, and an expense account that a fictional man deserves far more than you do.” He leaned forward. “You have too much talent to throw away. I need you. You’re mine. And you’re going to help me build the Alliance.”
Fidelias grunted. Then he asked, very quietly, “How do you know I won’t betray you?”
“The question is,” Tavi replied, “how do you know I won’t betray you?”
Fidelias looked a bit taken aback by that logic.
“I’m arrogant sometimes, but I’m not a fool. Don’t think that I’m not watching you very carefully. I’m simply willing to invest in the paranoia it takes to make sure I get full use out of you. The Realm needs it.” He lowered his voice. “The Realm needs heroes. The Realm needs you, Marcus. And I have no intention of letting you go to waste.”
The other man blinked his eyes once, and nodded. “Crows,” he said quietly. “If only Sextus had your courage.”
“Courage? He was no coward,” Tavi said.
“Not physically, no,” Marcus answered. “But… the courage to look at the truth and admit to himself what it was. The courage to strive for something that was right even if it seemed impossible. He never walked out of the bounds set for him by his father’s fathers. Never even considered that our future might be different than our past.”
Tavi smiled slightly. “Well. He didn’t have the benefit of my fine education and upbringing.”
“True.”
Marcus squared his shoulders and faced him. “For what it’s worth, I’m yours, Captain. Until death takes me.”
“That’s been true since the Elinarch,” Tavi replied quietly. “Please return to the party below and tell them that I’ll be down in a moment.”
Marcus saluted Legion style, despite hi
s lack of uniform, and departed quietly.
Tavi sat down on a chair and closed his eyes for a moment. Now that the day was upon him, this entire notion of marriage seemed a great deal more… permanent than it had before. He took some slow breaths.
There was a ripple of water in the little pool in the room, and a ghostly voice whispered, “Young Gaius?”
Tavi rose and hurried to the pool. It was the only way Alera could still appear to him. Over the six months since Third Calderon, she had continued fading away, appearing less frequently and for less time. Tavi leaned over and smiled down at the water, where the ghostly reflection of Alera’s face had appeared.
“You are to be wed,” Alera said. “That is a significant moment. You have my warmest regards upon this day.”
“Thank you,” Tavi answered quietly.
She smiled at him, the expression kindly, and somehow satisfied. “We shall not speak like this again.”
A little pang went through Tavi’s chest at the words—but he had known that the day was coming. “I will miss speaking with you.”
“I cannot say the same,” Alera responded. “For which I find myself… somewhat grateful. It would be awkward.” She inhaled slowly, then nodded. “Are you sure you wish to continue on the path you have begun?”
“Well. You say I introduced you to Kitai, without realizing it, because of our bond. That’s why you can speak to her.”
“Indeed.”
“Then you should trust me. Interaction with the other Marat will be just as rewarding, on some level. As it will with the Canim. And the Icemen are already watercrafting, whether they realize it or not. It’s hardly any change at all.”
“I somehow do not think that the lords of your ancestral line would agree. Nor would they agree with the concept of… how did you phrase it?”
“Merit-based furycraft,” Tavi said. “Those who want more of it should be able to work to get it. It’s only fair. We’re losing the contribution of talented minds in every generation simply because they were not born with enough furycraft for their ideas to be respected. If that doesn’t change, we won’t survive.”
“I quite agree,” Alera replied. “And I’m willing to implement your plan before the end. I’m just… surprised to find the attitude in a mortal.”
“I’ve had everything,” Tavi said, gesturing at the room. “And I’ve had nothing. And I’ve made my peace with being in either place. That’s not something many of my ancestors can say.”
“Your people will look at this year, in the future, and they will call it a great marvel. They will call it the day your kind stepped from darkness into light.”
“Provided such ridiculously arrogant know-it-alls actually survive to do so, I will be content,” Tavi replied.
“You have a century and a half, by my estimation. Perhaps two. And then the Canean vord queen will come for you.”
Tavi nodded. “Then I’ll make us ready. Or get us part of the way there, at least.”
“Strange,” Alera said. “I feel a certain empathy for you, knowing that great events are to come, but that I will not be there to see them. I feel more like a mortal now than at any time I have existed in this form.”
“That’s to be expected. You are, after all, dying.”
Alera smiled, the expression warm. “True,” she whispered. “And not true. Some part of me, young Gaius, will always be with you, and your children after you.”
“What do you mean?” Tavi asked.
But the reflection in the water was his own.
He stared down at the pool for a few moments more, just to be sure. Then he rose and firmly watercrafted the tears from his eyes and marched off toward his fate.
Tavi met Kitai outside the Rivan amphitheater, where the Senate, the Citizenry, and anyone else who could squeeze into the building were waiting. The young Marat woman was wearing a white gown that left one shoulder bare and draped across her rather fetchingly. Trimmed in gold and studded with pearls and gems, her gown was easily a match for his own tunic. Granted, the Horse Clan hair-style she wore would have scandalized the Realm, even if she hadn’t dyed her pale hair in brilliant colors. He’d pointed it out gently to her a few days back, and she’d responded that her mane was dyed in the royal colors of vibrant red and blue, and so what did anyone have to be scandalized about?
Isana and Araris were there as well, both dressed in the green and browns of Lord Calderon’s House, standing next to Bernard himself. Isana embraced Tavi when he appeared, and said, “What happened to your collar? It looks… stretched.”
“I stretched it, in the interests of breathing,” Tavi replied.
His mother smiled at him, her eyes wrinkling at the corners. “Well. It will do, I suppose. You’ve always looked too thin, the past few years.”
Tavi turned to Araris and offered his hand. The swordsman took it, his sun-browned skin rough and warm, then embraced him in a brief, tight hug. “Your father would be proud of you, Tavi.”
Tavi grinned at him. “Thank you, Count and Countess Rillwater.”
“For goodness’ sake, Tavi,” Isana said. “You didn’t have to appoint us to the Citizenry.”
“I’m the First Lord,” Tavi told her, smiling. “That’s what you get for having a quiet, private ceremony when I’m busy fighting vord. Suffer.”
Bernard let out a rumbling laugh and embraced Tavi hard enough to make his ribs creak. “Watch it, boy. There are enough folk around who remember how to let the air out of your head if it swells too much.”
Tavi returned the embrace, grinning. “Look how much good it did me when I was young, eh?”
Bernard snorted and put a hand on Tavi’s shoulder. He looked him up and down and nodded. “You’ve done well, boy.”
“Thank you,” Tavi said quietly, “Uncle.”
“Lord Uncle,” corrected Amara, her gold-brown eyes sparkling as she appeared from behind her husband. She held a bundled infant over her swelling belly. “You both look wonderful,” she said to Tavi and Kitai. “Congratulations.”
“Hah,” Kitai said, staring at Amara. “You are as big as a house. How did you hide behind him?”
Amara flushed and laughed, clearly both embarrassed and pleased. “Endless practice.”
“When are you due?” Kitai asked.
“Another three months or so,” Amara said. She glanced over her shoulder, evidently an instinctive movement, and said, a bit plaintively, “Bernard.”
Tavi’s uncle glanced over to a nearby fountain, where a young girl was apparently leading two even younger boys on an expedition walking around its narrow rim. “Masha,” Bernard called, and started walking toward them. “Masha, stop trying to get your brothers to fall in.”
“Brothers?” Kitai asked.
“Adopted,” Amara said. She looked down again, her expression both pleased and demure. “There were so many children in need of a home, after Third Calderon. We weren’t expecting me to… to be expecting. Isana says it was the Blessing of Night that repaired the damage the Blight did to me.”
“Oh, aye,” Kitai said, nodding. “It was used for that among my people once, back before my Aleran woke up its sleeping guardian and nearly destroyed the world.”
“Will you never let that rest?” Tavi asked, grinning.
“One day. When you are old and toothless. I promise.”
“We’d best go on in,” Isana said. “Tavi, do you want someone to hold him?”
“No, thank you, Mother,” Tavi replied. “We decided that he’s coming with us.”
Kitai nodded firmly and accepted the infant from Amara. She settled him against her, fussed with his blankets, and told the child, “It is foolish, but we must endure this Aleran nonsense. It will make your father happy.”
“It’s a necessary formality,” Tavi said, nodding to the other four as they went on into the amphitheater. “That’s all.”
Kitai ignored him to continue speaking to the baby. “Like many Alerans, he places undue value upon acts performed i
n front of witnesses in which all manner of ridiculous things are done that would be much more simply done at a desk or table than here. But we love him, so we will do these things.”
“You love him, do you?” Tavi asked.
Kitai smiled up at him, then stood on tiptoe to kiss him. “Very much.”
Tavi put his hand on the warm head of the little person who had entered the world scarcely a week before. His other arm slid around Kitai’s shoulders. They stood like that for a moment, not moving, both of them looking down at the sleepy face of Gaius Desiderius Tavarus, their son.
Desiderius. The desired one. Let there never be a doubt in his mind that he was welcome in their family and in their world.
Tavi felt…
Complete.
“I love you, too,” he said quietly. “Ready?”
“Remind me of the ceremony?” Kitai asked as they started walking.
“We go down the aisle to the podium and table. We’ll stop in front of Varg, who will do the reading. Maximus will vouch for my identity and your father for yours. Then we’ll each sign the marriage contract.”
Kitai nodded. “And then what?”
“What do you mean? And then we’re married.”
She stopped in her tracks and looked up at him. “You… are quite serious, aren’t you?”
Tavi blinked and tried not to sound as baffled as he felt. “That’s… the wedding ceremony. I mean… granted there’s no swordplay or arson or rock climbing, but what were you expecting?”
Kitai exhaled patiently, composed herself, and began walking again.
They entered the amphitheater, and as they did they came into view of forty thousand Citizens and freemen, Canim and Marat, and even one of the Icemen, who wore a coldstone around his shaggy neck like an amulet. To the “First Lord’s March,” that clanking and lurching piece of attempted music, they walked slowly down the aisle toward the center of the amphitheater. By the time they’d gone a third of the way, the amphitheater was already erupting into cheers.
