by Jim Butcher
Tavi blinked up at her and then stuffed his arms into the sleeves. “To deliver mail?”
Amara sighed. “No. That’s just one of the things we do, Tavi. I am the agent of the First Lord. He thinks this valley may be in danger, and he sent me to do something about it.”
“But you’re a girl!”
She frowned at him and jerked the next shirt down over his ears roughly. “I’m a Cursor. And I think the First Lord is right.”
“But what does this have to do with me? With Bernardholt?”
“You’ve seen the danger, Tavi. I need to take you to Garrison. You have to tell the Count there what you saw.”
A cold feeling chilled Tavi, and he blinked up at her. “The Marat,” he breathed. “The Marat are coming. Aren’t they? Like when they killed the Princeps.”
“I think so,” Amara said.
“My uncle saw them, he’s the one that should go. The Count would never believe that—”
“He can’t,” Amara said. “Crafting trauma, when he was healed. He doesn’t remember any of it.”
“How do you know that?” Tavi demanded.
“Because I listened. I faked passing out, and I listened in on all the talk up here. Your uncle doesn’t remember, and your aunt is suspicious of me. There’s no time to explain it to them—we have to leave here, and right now.”
Tavi tugged the heavy tunic on over the shirts, his hands moving more slowly now. “Why?”
“Because downstairs are some men who are here to kill you, me, and anyone who has seen the Marat.”
“But why would another Aleran do that?”
“We really don’t have time for that. They’re the enemy. They want to unseat the First Lord, and they want the Marat to wipe out the steadholts in the Valley so that the Realm perceives the First Lord as weak and ineffective.”
Tavi stared at her. “Wipe out the Valley? But that would mean . . .”
She regarded him, her face drawn. “Unless we take warning to the Count, unless the forces at Garrison are ready to meet them, the Marat will kill everyone. This steadholt and all the rest as well.”
“Crows,” Tavi whispered. “Oh, crows and furies.”
“You’re the only one who has seen them. The only one who I can use to convince the Count to rouse Garrison.” Amara stalked back over to the window, opened it again, then turned to Tavi and extended her hand. “Are you with me?”
They used a sheet from Tavi’s bed, tied to its leg, to drop from his window to the courtyard below. The wind whistled from the north, bringing with it the stinging chill of true winter. Amara went down first, then beckoned to Tavi, who tossed down a bundle thrown hurriedly together into the blankets from his bed. Amara caught it, and then the boy swallowed, and slithered down the sheet to the stones of the courtyard.
Amara led them across the courtyard in silence. No one was in evidence, though the light and noise from the hall could be heard through its thick doors. The gate door was open, and they slid through it and out into the outbuildings. Full dark was getting close, and shadows lay dim and thick over the cold ground.
Tavi led them past the stables and over to the smokehouse. The building shared a wall with the smithy, where both could use the same chimney for a fire. The sharp smell of smoke and meat hung around the smokehouse in a permanent cloud.
“Get the salt,” Amara murmured to him. “Just take the sack, if there’s one at hand, or a bucket. I’ll keep watch here. And hurry.”
Tavi slipped inside, where the fading twilight held little sway, and fumbled through the dark, to the shelf at the back of the smoke room. He stopped to take down a pair of hams that had been hanging, and dropped them into his makeshift bag. The salt, all rough crystals, filled a large homespun sack. Tavi tried to lift it and grunted with effort. Then he put it back down, took one of his blankets, and tore off a couple of large sections. He piled heavy salt crystals into them, and twisted them shut, tying them with several lengths of leather cord kept on hand for hanging the meats.
He had just picked them up and was heading back for the door when he heard a squealing sound outside the smokehouse. There was a hiss of breath and a pair of heavy thumps. Tavi hurried outside, his eyes wide, his heart pounding in his chest.
There, Amara knelt with one knee on the chest of a fallen man, a knife gripped in her hand and pressed to his throat.
“Stop,” Tavi hissed. “Get off of him!”
“He snuck up on me,” Amara said. She didn’t move the knife.
“That’s Fade. He’s no danger to anyone.”
“He wouldn’t answer me.”
“You scared him,” Tavi said and shoved at her shoulder. Amara shot him a look, but didn’t fall. She took the knife from Fade’s throat and rose back and away from the fallen slave.
Tavi leaned down and took Fade’s hand, hauling the man to his feet. He wore heavy clothes against the gathering cold, including a woolen cap with flaps that hung down to his shoulders and dangled like the ears of a gangly puppy and secondhand gloves missing several fingers. The whole side of the slave’s face was slack with fear, and he stared at Amara with wide eyes, backing up from her until his shoulders touched Tavi’s chest. “Tavi,” Fade said. “Tavi. Inside. Storm coming.”
“I know, Fade,” Tavi said. “But we have to go.”
“There’s no time for this,” Amara said, shooting a glance behind her. “If one of them sees us—”
“Tavi stay,” Fade insisted.
“I can’t. Me and Amara have to get to Count Gram and warn him that the Marat are coming. She’s a Cursor, and we have to go before some bad men try to stop us.”
Fade turned to blink his head slowly at Tavi. His face twisted in confusion, and he asked, “Tavi going? Tonight?”
“Yes. I have salt.”
Amara hissed, “Let’s go then. No time.”
Fade frowned, almost scowled. “Fade, too.”
“No, Fade,” Tavi said. “You have to stay here.”
“Going.”
“We have to travel light,” Amara said. “The slave stays.”
Fade threw back his head and let out a howl like a wounded dog.
Tavi choked and lurched toward the man, covering his mouth with one hand. “Quiet! Fade, they’ll hear us!”
Fade ceased howling but looked at Tavi, his expression steady.
Tavi looked from Fade to Amara. The Cursor rolled her eyes and gestured at him to hurry. Tavi grimaced. “All right. You can go. But we have to leave right now.”
Fade’s mouth broke into a witless smile behind Tavi’s hand, and he started chortling. He held up a hand to them, dashed inside the smithy, and emerged a few heartbeats later bearing a battered old rucksack on his back and muttering excited, nonsense phrases to himself.
Amara shook her head and asked Tavi, “He’s an idiot?”
“He’s a good man,” Tavi said, defensively. “He’s strong and he works hard. He won’t get in the way.”
“He’d better not,” Amara said. She slipped the knife away into her belt and threw her bundle at Fade. “I’m hurt, he’s not. He carries mine.”
Fade dropped it and scraped a bow to Amara as he picked up the bundle of blankets and appropriated gear. He lifted that one to his other shoulder.
Amara turned to lead them away from Bernardholt, but Tavi put his hand on her shoulder. “These men. Won’t they catch us if we’re on foot?”
“I’m not good with horses. You’re no earthcrafter. Is the slave?”
Tavi glanced at Fade and grimaced. “No. I mean, he knows a little metal. And he makes shoes for the horses, but I don’t think that he’s an earthcrafter.”
“Better we walk then,” she said. “One of the men after us is, and he can make the horses do what he wants to.”
“On horseback, they’ll be faster.”
“That’s why we’d better get going. Hopefully they’ll be here until morning.”
“Meet me at the stable,” Tavi said, and hurried off toward it in t
he growing dark. Amara hissed at him, but Tavi ignored her, moving to the stable doors and inside.
He was familiar with the animals of Bemardholt. The sheep milled sleepily in their pen, and the cattle took up the rest of the room on the same side. On the other, the hulking gargants lay blowing lustily in their sleep in their burrow— and behind them, Tavi heard the noise of restless, nervous horses.
He slipped silently down through the stable, before he heard a sound in the loft, above him, the storage space between the rafters and the peak of the roof. He froze in place, listening.
A tinny voice said, from the loft, “Between all the excitement yesterday and then last night, it’s been one thing after another. Though I suppose it isn’t anything compared to the life of a gem merchant, sir.”
Tavi blinked. The voice was Beritte’s, but it came as though through a long pipe, distant and blurred. It took him a moment to realize that it sounded the same as when his aunt spoke to him through Rill.
A woman’s voice, strange to Tavi and near to hand, murmured with a sort of languid laziness, “There you see, love? He has a drink now, and we’re able to pay attention. Sometimes it’s nice to hurry.”
A strange man’s voice answered with a low growl. “All this hurrying. When we kill them and finish the mission, I’m going to lock you in a room in irons for a week.”
The woman purred, “You’re so romantic, my love.”
“Quiet. I want to hear what he’s saying.”
They fell into silence while tinny voices came down to Tavi on the floor. He swallowed and moved very quietly, forward, past the spot in the loft the voices came from, and down to the stalls where the strangers’ horses had been put.
Though their gear had been removed, the horses still wore their bridles, and the saddles had been stood on end on the floor beside them, ready to be thrown on and cinched, rather than resting on the pegs on the other side of the stables and their blankets drying on the ground.
Tavi crept into the first stall and let the horse smell him, keeping a hand on the animal’s shoulder as he moved to its saddle and knelt beside it. He drew the knife from his belt and, quietly as he could, started cutting through the leather of the saddle’s girth. Though the leather was thick, his knife was sharp, and he cut through it completely in only a moment.
Tavi repeated the gesture twice more, leaving the stall doors open and cutting the other two saddles to uselessness. Then he went back, gathering up the horses’ reins, keeping his motions as slow as possible, and led them out of their stalls and back down the stables toward the doors out.
As he passed the spot in the loft where the strangers lay, Tavi’s throat tightened and his heart hammered in his chest. People, people he had never seen and did not know were there to kill him for reasons he could not fully understand. It was all too strange, almost unreal — and yet the fear in him, something instinctive and all too certain, was very real indeed, like a trickle of cold water gliding slowly down his spine.
He had led the horses past the loft when one of the beasts snorted and tossed its head. Tavi froze in place, panic nearly sending him running.
“Fear,” hissed the woman’s voice, suddenly. “Below us, the horses.”
Tavi jerked on the reins and let out a loud whistle. The horses snorted, breaking into an uncertain trot.
Tavi let go of the reins to dash ahead to the stable doors and throw them open. As the horses went through, Tavi let out a scream that warbled into a high-pitched shriek, and the horses burst out into a run.
There was a roar from behind him, and Tavi glanced over his shoulder in time to see a man, even bigger than his uncle, come crashing down from the loft, a naked sword held in his fist. He looked around him, wildly, and Tavi turned and fled into the darkness.
Someone seized his arm and he almost screamed. Amara clapped cold fingers over his mouth and dragged him into a run, north and east, toward the causeway. Tavi glanced around behind him and saw Fade shuffling along under the weight of his burdens, but no one else seemed to be following them.
“Good,” Amara hissed. He saw the flash of her teeth in the growing dark. “Well done, Tavi.”
Tavi shot her a grin and one to Fade as well.
And that was when the scream came to them, from behind the walls of the steadholt proper, clear and desperate and terrified.
“Tavi,” Isana screamed. “Tavi, run! Run!”
CHAPTER 19
Tavi ran.
His muscles were sore and the myriad scratches felt horrible, sending curling ribbons of pain through his skin, but he was able to run. For a while, Amara ran beside him in silence, hardly limping at all—but after a quarter mile, her motion became uneven, and on her exhales she started letting out whimpers of sound. Tavi dropped his pace a bit to run beside her.
“No,” she gasped. “You have to keep going. Even if I don’t get to the Count, you have to.”
“But your leg—”
“I’m not important, Tavi,” Amara said. “Run.”
“We need to head east,” Tavi said, staying beside her. “We’ll have to find a place to cross the Rillwater, but there’s thick and twisty woods on the other side. In the dark, we could lose them there.”
“One of the men behind us,” she panted. “Woodcrafter. Strong one.”
“Not there,” Tavi said. “The only one who has ever gotten along with those furies is my uncle, and it took him years. He showed me how to get through them.”
Amara slowed and nodded, as they neared the top of a hill. “All right. You, come here.” She beckoned to Fade, who shuffled to her obediently. She took the bundle from him and took out his uncle’s bow and the arrows with it. She braced the bow against her leg and leaned hard on it, bending it enough to string it, then took it in hand and picked up the arrows. “I want you two to get into the woods. Keep going through them.”
Tavi swallowed. “What are you going to do?”
Amara took the sword from the bundle and slipped it through her makeshift belt. “I’m going to try to slow them here. I’ll be able to see them coming here as well as anywhere.”
“But you’re standing out here in the open. They’ll just shoot you.”
She smiled, grimly. “I think there will be a bad wind for it. Leave me some of the salt. Once that storm hits, we should be free to start evading them a little more securely.”
“We’ll stay here and help,” Tavi said.
The Cursor shook her head. “No. You two get moving. Just in case things don’t go well. I’ll find you by morning.”
“But—”
“Tavi,” Amara said. She turned to him, frowning gently. “I can’t protect you and still fight here. These men are powerful crafters. You can’t do anything to help me.”
The words hit him like a physical blow, and he felt a surge of frustration, helpless anger, that raced through him and for a moment washed away the aches of his body. “I can’t do anything.”
“Wrong,” Amara said. “They’ll be using earth and woodcrafting to track you—not me. I’ll be able to ambush them, and if I get lucky I might stop them altogether. Get moving and keep their attention on you.”
“Won’t their earthcrafter feel you?” Tavi asked. “And if they’re using wood, too, you can’t climb a tree to get off the ground.”
Amara glanced to the north. “When that storm gets here, the furies in it . . .” She shook her head. “But I can take advantage of things now. Cirrus.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, and the wind began to rise around her. It made the loose clothing on her billow and flap, though Tavi, standing only a few feet away, felt nothing. Amara spread her arms slightly, and the wind gusted her completely off the ground for a moment — and then settled into a whirlwind that threw up dust and debris and specks of ice in a cloud around her legs to the knee. She hovered there, momentarily, then opened her eyes and drifted left and right, experimentally.
Tavi stared at her, stunned. He had never seen such a display of windcraf
ting. “You can fly.”
Amara smiled at him, and even in the dimness her face seemed bright. “This? This is nothing. Maybe after all this is over, I can show you what real flying is.” She nodded. “Those storm furies you have here are bad ones, and there’s not much time before they get here. But this will keep Fidel—the enemy from sensing me.”
“All right,” Tavi said, uncertainly. “You’ll be sure to find us?”
Amara’s smile faded. “I’ll try. But if I haven’t in a few hours, then keep going yourself. Can you get to Garrison?”
“Sure,” Tavi said. “I mean. I think I will. And Uncle will be coming. He can find us anywhere in the Valley.”
“I hope you’re right,” Amara said. “He seems a good man.” She turned her back on Tavi and Fade, frowning, facing back the way that they had come. She set an arrow to the bow. “Get to Garrison. Warn the Count.”
Tavi nodded, then dug into his bag and got out one of the bags of salt. He threw it down, not far from Amara, but not too close to the fury holding her in the air, either. She glanced back and down at the salt and then at Tavi. “Thank you.”
“Good luck.”
Fade tugged at Tavi’s sleeve. “Tavi,” he said. “Go.”
“Yeah. Come on.” Tavi turned and started down the hill, picking up to a jog again. Fade kept pace with him, the slave seemingly tireless and uncomplaining. They left Amara behind on the hilltop, and the darkness of settling evening swallowed her from sight. Tavi took his bearings from the slope of the hill, a pair of boulders he and Frederic had once teased, and before another quarter hour had passed, they had found the edges of the wood and slipped into shadows of the pines and aspen and beneath the long fingers of the barren oak.
Tavi slowed his pace to a walk then, breathing in swift pants. He held a hand to his side, where a slow, throbbing pain was starting to rise. “I haven’t ever done this much running all together,” he told Fade. “Getting cramps.”
“Legions, run. March. Train.” Fade said. The slave looked behind them, and the shadows fell over the coward’s brand on his marred face. His eyes glittered. “Tavi in the Legions, run lots.”
