by Jim Butcher
Amara gently squeezed her shoulders, smiling. "Well. Perhaps it will not come to that."
Serai gave Amara a shaky smile. "I should hope not. It would be most awkward." She shook her head and smoothed the anxiety from her expression. "Look at you, Amara. So tall and strong now. Nothing like the farm girl I saw flying over the sea."
"It seems so long ago," Amara said.
Serai nodded, and touched a stray hair back from her cheek. Her expression became businesslike. "Shall we?"
Amara lifted her hand and the pressure of Cirrus's warding vanished. "Isana should be ready to leave shortly. Be cautious and swift, Serai. We are running out of time."
Chapter 12
It took Tavi three hours to find Max, who was indeed at a young widow's house. He spent another hour finding a way into the house, and half an hour more to get his friend conscious, dressed, and staggering back up through the furylit streets of the capital to the Citadel. By the time the lights of the Academy loomed up above them, it was the most silent hour of the night, in the hollow, cold time just before dawn began to color the sky.
They entered through one of a sprinkling of unseen entrances provided for the use of the Cursors-in-Training at the Academy. Tavi dragged his friend down to the baths straightaway, and without ceremony shoved him into a large pool of cold water.
Max, of course, had the phenomenal recuperative abilities of anyone with his raw furycrafting power, but he had developed a correspondingly formidable array of carousing talents by way of compensation. It wasn't the first time Tavi had administered an emergency sobering after one of Max's nights on the town. The shock of the water had the large young man screaming and thrashing in a heartbeat, but when he lurched to the stairs up out of the water, Tavi met him, turned Max around, and pushed him back into the pool.
After a dozen more plunges into the freezing pool, Max pressed his hands against the sides of his head with a moan. "Great furies, Calderon, I'm awake. Would you let me out of the blighted, crows-begotten ice water?"
"Not until you open your eyes," Tavi said firmly.
"Fine, fine," Max growled. He turned a bloodshot glare upon Tavi. "Happy now?"
"Joyous," Tavi replied.
Max grunted, lumbered from the icy pool, and fumbled his clothes off, then shambled into the warm, sun gold furylit waters of one of the heated oaths. As always, Tavi's eyes were drawn to the crosshatched network of scars on his friend's back-the marks of a whip or a ninecat that could only nave been formed before Max came into his furycrafting power. Tavi winced in sympathy. No matter how many times he saw his friend's scars, they remained something startling and hideous.
He glanced around the baths. The room was enormous, with several different bathing pools trickling falls of water filling up a vast room with white marble walls, floor, pillars, and ceiling. Batches of plants, even trees, softened the severe, cold marble surroundings, and lounges were laid out in a dozen different areas, where bathers might idle in one another's company while awaiting their turn at a pool. Soft furylamps of blue, green, and gold painted each pool, giving an indication of its temperature. The sound of falling water bounded back and forth from the indifferent stone, filling the air with sound enough to mask voices more than a few steps away. It was one of the only places in the capital where one could be reasonably certain of a private conversation.
The baths were yet empty-the slaves who attended bathers would not arrive for more than an hour. Tavi and Max were alone.
Tavi stripped, though much more self-consciously than his friend. Back at the steadholt, bathing was a matter of privacy and practicality. It had been an adjustment to engage in the more metropolitan practice of bathing followed in most of the cities, and Tavi had never managed to lose entirely the twinge of discomfort he felt when disrobing.
"Oh for crying out loud, bumpkin," Max said, without opening his eyes. "It's the men's baths. There's no one else here, and my eyes aren't even open." He gave Tavi another glare, though it was less intense than the first. "If you'd left me where you found me, you could have had the baths to yourself."
Tavi slid into the pool beside Max and pitched his voice low, barely audible over the obscuring sounds of water. "There's trouble, Max."
Max's glower vanished, and his reddened eyes glittered with sudden interest. "What kind of trouble?"
Tavi told him.
"Bloody crows!" Max roared. "Are you trying to get me killed?"
"Yes. To tell you the truth, I never had much use for you, Max," Tavi watched his friend blink at him for a second, then scowl.
"Hah-hah," said Max. "You're hilarious."
"You should know better than that," Tavi replied. "If there was anyone else I thought could do this, I wouldn't have gotten you involved."
"You wouldn't?" Max asked, his tone suddenly offended. "Why not?"
"Because you've known what's going on for ten seconds, and you're already complaining."
"I like complaining. It's every soldier's sacred right," Max growled.
Tavi felt a smile tug at his lips. "You're not a legionare anymore, Max. You're a Cursor. Or a Cursor-in-Training, anyway."
"I'm still offended," Max declared. After a moment, he added, "Tavi, you're my friend. If you need help, just expect me to be there whether you want me there or not."
Tavi chewed at his lip, regarding Max. "Really?"
"It'll be simpler that way," Max drawled. "So. I'm to double for Gaius, eh?"
"Can you?" Tavi asked.
Max stretched out in the hot water with a confident smile in answer. "No idea."
Tavi snorted, went to the waterfall, took up a scrubber, and began raking it over his skin, cleaning the sweat and toil of the day from him before taking up a soaped comb and raking it quickly through his hair. He rose to rinse in a cooler pool and emerged shivering to towel himself dry. Max emerged from the pools a few moments later, similarly scrubbed, and the pair of them changed into the clean clothes they'd last left with the bath attendants, leaving their soiled garments behind on their respective shelves.
"What do I do?" Max asked.
"Go to the Citadel, down the south gallery and to the west hall to the staircase down."
"Guard station there," Max noted.
"Yes. Stop at the first station, and ask for Sir Miles. He's expecting to hear from you. Kalian will probably be there, too."
Max raised his eyebrows. "Miles wanted to bring in the Cursors? I'd have thought he wouldn't hold with too much of that."
"I don't think Miles knows that Killian is still on active duty," Tavi said. "Much less that he's the current Legate."
Max slapped an annoyed hand at his head, sprinkling water out of his close-cropped hair. "I am going to lose my mind, trying to keep track of who is allowed to know what."
You're the one who agreed to Cursor training," Tavi said. Stop walking on my sacred right, Calderon."
Tavi grinned. "Just do what I do. Don't tell anyone anything."
Max nodded. "That's a solid plan."
"Let's move. I'm supposed to bring someone else down. I'll meet you there."
Max rose to leave, but paused. "Tavi," he said. "Just because I'm not complaining doesn't mean this won't be dangerous. Very dangerous."
"I know."
"Just wanted to make sure you did," Max said. "If you get in trouble… I mean, if you need my help. Don't let your pride keep you from asking for it. I mean, it's possible that some serious battlecrafting could start happening. If it does, I'll cover you."
"Thank you," Tavi said, without much emotion. "But if it comes to that, we've probably failed so badly that my own personal legion wouldn't help."
Max gave a rueful laugh of agreement, squared his shoulders, and stalked out of the baths without looking behind him. "Watch your back."
"You too."
Tavi waited a moment until Max had left the baths, then hurried out of them and toward the servants' quarters. By the time he'd arrived, a swath of light blue on the eastern horizon of t
he night sky had arrived to herald the coming dawn, and the staff of the Academy was beginning to stir. Tavi wound his way cautiously down service corridors and cramped staircases, careful to avoid being seen. He moved in silence through the darkened corridors, bearing no lamp of his own, relying upon infrequent, feeble hallway lights. Tavi stalked down a final cramped corridor, and to a half-sized door that opened into a crawl space in the walls-Fade's chamber.
Tavi listened intently for any approach, and once he was sure he was not being idly observed, he opened the door and slipped inside.
The slave's room was musty, cold, and dank. It was nothing more than an inefficiency of design, bounded on two walls with stone of the Academy and on the others with rough plaster. The ceiling was barely five feet high and contained nothing more than a battered old trunk with no lid and an occupied sleeping palette.
Tavi moved in silence to the palette, and reached down to shake its occupant.
He realized half a breath later that the form under the blankets was simply a bundle of bedding, piled into place as a distraction. Tavi turned, crouched, his hand moving to his dagger, but there was swift and silent motion in the darkness, and someone smoothly took the weapon from his belt, slammed Tavi hard with a shoulder, and sent him off-balance to the ground. His attacker followed closely, and in another breath, Tavi found himself pinned by a knee on his chest, and the cold edge of his own weapon was pressed to his throat.
"Light," said a quiet voice, and an ancient, dim furylamp on the wall shone scarlet.
The man crouched over Tavi was of unremarkable height and build. His hair fell in ragged strands to his shoulders and over most of his face, brown streaked through with much grey, and Tavi could barely see the gleam of dark eyes behind it. What Tavi could see of the man's visage was hideously marred with the brand the Legions used upon those judged guilty of cowardice. His forearms were as lean and sinewy as the ancient leather slave-braid on his throat, and they were covered in white scars. Some were the tiny, recognizable pockmarks of burns gained at a smith's forge, but others were straight and fine, like those Tavi had seen only upon the arms of old Giraldi back at Garrison and on Sir Miles.
"Fade," Tavi said, his chest tight with the panic caused by the swift attack. His heart pounded hard and fast. "Fade. It's me."
Fade lifted his chin for a moment, staring down at him, then his body eased, moving away from the young man. "Tavi," Fade said, his voice thick and heavy with recent sleep. "Hurt you?"
"I'm fine," Tavi assured him.
"Sneaking," Fade said, scowling. "Sneaking into my room."
Tavi sat up. "Yes. I'm sorry if I startled you."
Fade reversed his grip, taking the dagger by its blade, and offered the hilt across his wrist to Tavi. The young man reclaimed his knife and slipped it back into its sheath. "Sleeping," Fade said, and yawned, adding a soft, slurring hooting sound to the end of it.
"Fade," Tavi said. "I remember the battlements at Calderon. I know this is an act. I know you aren't a brain-addled idiot."
Fade gave Tavi a wide and witless smile. "Fade," he stated in a vacantly cheerful tone.
Tavi glared at him. "Don't," Tavi said. "Keep your secrets if you want. But don't insult me with the charade. I need your help."
Fade became completely still for a long moment. Then he tilted his head to one side and spoke, his voice now low and soft. "Why?"
Tavi shook his head. "Not here. Come with me. I'll explain."
Fade let out his breath in a long exhalation. "Gaius."
"Yes."
The slave closed his eyes for a moment. Then he went to the trunk, and removed a handful of objects and a spare blanket. He pushed hard on the bottom of the trunk and there was a hollow-sounding crack. He withdrew a scabbard from the trunk, and drew a short, straight blade, the gladius of a legionare. Fade examined the weapon in the dim light, then sheathed it again, donned a voluminous old robe of worn sackcloth, and slipped the weapon beneath it. "Ready."
Tavi led Fade out into the corridors of the Academy, made his way toward the nearest of the secluded routes that led down into the uppermost layers of the Deeps, and emerged near the Citadel. The entrance to the Deeps wasn't precisely a secret door, but it lay within the deep shadows of a particularly cramped and crooked hallway, and if one didn't know where to look, the low, narrow opening to the stairwell was all but invisible.
Tavi led Fade down a series of little-traveled hallways, thick with moisture and chill air. His route led them briefly into the shallowest levels of the Deeps, then crossed beneath the Citadel's walls. They came to the stairway leading down to the First Lord's meditation chamber, and descended, challenged by alert legionares at each station. Tavi's legs throbbed with a brutal ache on every beat of his heart, but he forced himself to ignore the complaints of his tired body and kept moving.
Fade, Tavi noticed, studied the ground without looking up. His hair fell around his face and blended with the rough fabric of his robe. His gait was that of an older man's-stiff with apparent arthritis, halting and cautious. Or at least it was passing through each guard station. Once out of sight on the curving stairs, he moved with feline silence.
At the bottom of the stairs, the door to the First Lord's chamber was firmly closed. Tavi drew his knife and struck the hilt against the dark steel door in a set, staccato rhythm. After a moment, it opened, and Miles stood glowering in the door. "Where the crows have you been, boy?" he demanded.
"Um. Getting the man I told you about, Sir Miles. This is Fade."
"Took you long enough," Miles growled. He swept a cool gaze over the slave. "In four hours, Gaius must appear in his box at the preliminaries for the Wind Trials. Antillar isn't having much luck with his mimicry, but Killian can't stop to help him learn until he is sure the First Lord is attended. You should have brought the slave first."
"Yes, sir," Tavi said. "Next time this happens I'll be sure to remember."
Miles's expression turned sour. "Get in then," he said. "Fade, is it? I've had some bedding and a cot brought down. You'll need to assemble it and help me get Gaius into it."
Fade froze, and Tavi saw his eyes bright with shock behind his hair. "Gaius?"
"It looks as though he was trying to do too much furycrafting," Tavi said. "He may have broken his health on it. He collapsed several hours ago."
"Alive?" Fade asked.
"So far," Tavi said.
"But not if we don't get him into a proper bed and have him taken care of," Miles growled. "Tavi, you've got some messages to carry. Business as usual. Make everyone believe it. All right?"
There went the possibility of actually getting any sleep, Tavi thought. And at the rate things were going, he might well end up missing the test altogether. He sighed.
Fade shuffled into the chamber and went over to the bedding Miles had mentioned. The cot was a simple framework, standard Legion issue, and it didn't take Fade long to assemble it.
Miles went to Gaius's bureau against one wall and picked up a small stack of envelopes. He returned and gave them to Tavi without comment. Tavi was about to ask him which should be delivered first when Miles's eyes narrowed, and a frown wrinkled his brow.
"You," he said. "Fade. Turn around here."
Tavi saw Fade lick his lips and rise, turning to face Miles with his head down.
The Captain strode over to Fade. "Show me your face."
Fade made a quiet sound of distress, bowing in a panicked fashion.
Miles reached out a hand and flicked the hair from one side of Fade's race. It revealed the hideous scars of the coward's brand, and Miles frowned severely at it.
"Sir Miles?" Tavi asked. "Are you all right?"
Miles raked his fingers through his short-cropped hair. "Tired," he said. "Maybe I'm seeing things. He looks familiar, somehow."
"Perhaps you've seen him working, Captain," Tavi said, careful to keep his tone neutral.
That's probably it," Miles said. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "There's
still a new Legion to run. I'm off for morning drills." Business as usual," Tavi said.
"Precisely. Killian will handle things until I can return. Obey him without question. Do you understand?"
Miles turned and left without waiting for an answer.
Tavi sighed and crossed the tiles to help Fade finish assembling the cot and bedding. On the other side of the room, Gaius lay on his back, his skin grey and pale. Killian knelt over him, his tea brazier alight, and some noxious-smelling steam drifted up from the coals.
"Tavi," Fade said, his voice low. "I can't do this, I can't be near Miles. He'll recognize me."
"That would be bad?" Tavi whispered back.
"I'd have to fight him." The words were simple, gentle, unadorned with anything but a faint tone of sadness or regret. "I must leave."
"We need your help, Fade," Tavi said. "Gaius needs your help. You can't abandon him."
Fade shook his head, then asked, "What does Miles know about me?"
"Your name. That I trust you. That Gaius sent you here to the Academy with me."
"Blighted furies." Fade sighed. "Tavi, I want you to do something for me. Please."
"Name it," Tavi said at once.
"Tell Miles nothing more about me. Even if he asks. Lie, make excuses, whatever you need to do. We can't afford for him to fly into a rage now."
"What?" Tavi asked. "Why would he do that?"
"Because," Fade said, "he's my brother."
Chapter 13
Though she had been unconscious for much of the day, by the time Isana had packed and settled into the covered litter, she was exhausted.
She had never flown in a litter before, either open to the elements or closed, and the experience felt far too familiar to be so terrifying. It looked little different than any covered coach, at least from the inside, which made it ail the more disconcerting to see, out the coach's windows, the occasional soaring bird of prey or feathery tendril of cloud tinted dark gold by the deepening evening. She stared out at the gathering night and the land far below for a time, her heart beating too quickly in her chest.
