Academ's Fury ca-2

by Jim Butcher

  Tavi scratched at his chin. "But the Black Cat has been stealing for months," he said. "You've been here for months. If you'd only come to warn me, you could have done it and been gone. Which means there must be another reason you stayed."

  Something flickered in her deep green eyes. "I told you. I am here to watch." Something in her voice lent the word quiet emphasis. "To learn of you and your kind."

  "Why?" Tavi asked.

  "It is the way of our people," Kitai said. "After it is known that…" Her voice trailed off, and she looked away.

  Tavi frowned. Something told him that she would not take well to him pressing the question, and he did not want to say anything to make her move away. Just for a moment, he wanted nothing more than to sit there with her, close, talking.

  "What have you learned?" he asked her instead.

  Her eyes came back to his, and when they met, Tavi shivered. "Many things," she said quietly. "That this is a place of learning where very few learn anything of value. That you, who have courage and intelligence, are held in contempt by most of your kind here because you have no sorcery."

  "It isn't really sorcery," Tavi began.

  Kitai, never changing expression, put her fingertips lightly over Tavi's lips, and continued as if he hadn't spoken. "I have seen you protect others, though they consider you to be weaker than they. I have seen a very few decent people, like the boy we took from the tower." She paused for a moment in consideration. "I have seen women trade pleasure for coin to feed their children, and others do the same so that they could ignore their children while making themselves foolish with wines and powders. I have seen men who labor as long as the sun is up go home to wives who hold them in contempt for never being there. I have seen men beat and use those whom they should protect, even their own children. I have seen your kind place others of their own in slavery. I have seen them fighting to be free of the same. I have seen men of the law betray it, men who hate the law be kind. I have seen gentle defenders, sadistic healers, creators of beauty scorned while craftsmen of destruction are worshiped."

  Kitai shook her head slowly. "Your kind, Aleran, are the most vicious and gentle, most savage and noble, most treacherous and loyal, most terrifying and fascinating creatures I have ever seen." Her fingers brushed over his cheek again. "And you are unique among them."

  Tavi was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "No wonder you think us mad."

  "I think your kind could be great," she said quietly. "Something of true worth. Something The One would be proud to look down upon. It is within you to be so. But there is so much hunger for power. Treachery. False masks. And intentional mistakes."

  Tavi frowned faintly. "Intentional mistakes?"

  Kitai nodded. "When one says something, but it is not. The speaker is mistaken, but it is as though he intends to be incorrect."

  Tavi thought about it for a second and then understood. "You mean lies."

  Kitai blinked at him in faint confusion. "What lies? Where does it lie?"

  "No, no," Tavi said. "It is a word. Lies. When you say what is not true, intentionally, to make another think it is true."

  "Lies means to… recline. For sleep. Sometimes implies mating."

  "It also means to speak what is not so," Tavi said.

  Kitai blinked slowly. "Why would you use the same word for these things? That is ridiculous."

  "We have a lot of words like that," Tavi said. "They can mean more than one thing."

  "That is stupid," Kitai said. "It is difficult enough to communicate without making it more complicated with words that mean more than one thing."

  "That's true," Tavi said quietly. "Call it a falsehood instead. I think any Aleran would understand that."

  "You mean all Alerans do this?" Kitai asked. "Speak that which is not correct? Speak falsehood."

  "Most of us."

  Kitai let out a faintly disgusted little breath. "Tears of The One, why? Is the world not dangerous enough?"

  "Your people do not tell li-uh, falsehoods?" Tavi asked.

  "Why would we?"

  "Well," Tavi said, "sometimes Alerans tell a falsehood to protect someone else's feelings."

  Kitai shook her head. "Saying something is not so does not cause it to be not so," she said.

  Tavi smiled faintly. "True. I suppose we hope that it won't happen like that."

  Kitai's eyes narrowed. "So your people tell falsehoods even to themselves." She shook her head. "Madness." She traced light, warm fingers over the curve of his ear.

  "Kitai," Tavi asked, very quietly. "Do you remember when we were coming up the rope in the Valley of Silence?"

  She shivered, her eyes steady on his, and nodded.

  "Something happened between us. Didn't it." Tavi didn't realize he had lifted a hand to Kitai's face until he felt the warm, smooth skin of her cheek under his fingertips. "Your eyes changed. That means something to you."

  She was silent for a long moment, and, to his astonishment, tears welled up in her eyes. Her mouth trembled, but she did not speak, settling instead for a slow, barely perceptible nod.

  "What happened?" he asked gently.

  She swallowed and shook her head.

  Tavi felt a sudden intuition and followed it. "That's what you mean when you say that you came to Watch," he said. "If it had been a gargant, you'd be Watching gargants. If it had been a horse, you'd be Watching horses."

  Tears fell from her green eyes, but her breathing stayed steady, and she did not look away.

  Tavi ran his fingers lightly over her pale hair. It was almost impossibly fine and soft. "Your people's clans. Herdbane, Wolf, Horse, Gargant. They… join with them somehow."

  "Yes, Aleran," she said quietly. "Our chala. Our totems."

  "Then… that means that I am your chala."

  She shuddered, hard, and a small sound escaped her throat. And then she sagged against him, her head falling against one side of his chest.

  Tavi put his arm around her shoulders without thinking about it, and held her. He felt faintly surprised by the sensation. He'd never had a girl pressed up against him like this. She was warm, and soft, and the scent of her hair and skin was dizzying. He felt his heart and breath speed, his body reacting to her nearness. But beneath that was another level of sensation entirely. It felt profoundly and inexplicably right, to feel her against him, beneath his arm. His arm tightened a little and at the same time Kitai moved a little closer, leaned against him a little harder. She shook with silent tears.

  Tavi began to speak, but something told him not to. So he waited instead, and held her.

  "I wanted a horse, Aleran," she whispered, in a broken little voice. "I had everything planned. I would ride with my mother's sister Hashat. Wander over the horizon for no reason but to see what is there. I would race the winds and challenge the thunder of the summer storms with the sound of my Clanmates running over the plains."

  Tavi waited. At some point, he had found her left hand with his, and their fingers clasped with another tiny shock of sensation that was simply and perfectly right.

  "And then you came," she said quietly. "Challenged Skagara before my people at the horto. Braved the Valley of Silence. Defeated me in the Trial. Came back for me at risk to your own life when you could have left me to die. And you had such beautiful eyes." She lifted her tear-stained face, her eyes seeking out Tavi's once more. "I did not mean this to happen. I did not choose it."

  Tavi met her gaze. The pulse in her throat beat in time with his own heart. They breathed in and out together. "And now," Tavi said quietly, "here you are. Trying to learn more about me. Everything is strange to you."

  She nodded slowly. "This has never happened to one of my people," she whispered. "Never."

  And then Tavi understood her pain, her heartache, her fear. "You have no Clanmates," he said softly. "No Clan among your people."

  More tears fell from her eyes, and her voice was low, quiet, steady. "I am alone."

  Tavi met her eyes steadily and could a
ll but taste the anguish far beneath the calm surface of her words. The girl still trembled, and his thoughts and emotions were flying so fast and thick that he could not possibly have arrested any one of them long enough for consideration. But he knew that Kitai was brave, and beautiful, and intelligent, and that her presence was something fundamentally good. He realized that he hated to see her hurting.

  Tavi leaned forward, cupping her face with one hand. Both of them trembled, and he hardly dared move for fear of shattering that shivering moment. For a little time, he did not know how long, there was nothing but the two of them, the drowning depths of her green eyes, the warmth of her skin pressed against his side, smooth under his fingertips, her own fever-hot fingers trailing over his face and throat, and through his hair.

  Time passed. He didn't care how much. Her eyes made time into something unimportant, something that fit itself to their needs and not the other way around. The moment lasted until it was finished, and only then was time allowed to resume its course.

  He looked into Kitai's eyes, their faces almost touching, and said, his voice low, steady, and certain, "You are not alone."

  Chapter 33

  Amara stared down at the outlaw's cave through the magnifying field of denser air Cirrus created between her outstretched hands. "You were right," she murmured to Bernard. She beckoned him with her head, and held her hands out so that he could lean down and peer over her shoulder. "There, you see, spreading out from the cave mouth. Is that the croach?"

  The ground for two hundred yards in every direction from the cave mouth was coated with some kind of thick, viscous-looking substance that glistened wetly in the light from the setting sun. It had engulfed the heavy brush in front of the cave entrance, turning it into a semitranslucent blob the size of a small house. The trees near the cave, evergreens mostly, had been similarly engulfed, with only their topmost branches free of the gummy coating. All in all, it gave the hillside around the cave a pustuled, diseased look, especially with the ancient mass of the mountain called Garados looming over it in the background.

  "That's the stuff from the Wax Forest, all right," Bernard said quietly. "This cave has always been trouble. Outlaws would lay up there, because it was close enough to Garados that none of the locals would be willing to go near it."

  "The mountain is dangerous?" Amara asked.

  "Doesn't like people," Bernard said. "I've got Brutus softening our steps so that the old rock won't notice us. As long as we don't get any closer, the mountain shouldn't give us any trouble."

  Amara nodded, and exclaimed, "There, do you see that? Movement."

  Bernard peered through her upheld hands. "Wax spiders," he reported.

  He swallowed. "A lot of them. They're crawling all over the edges of the croach."

  Doroga's heavy steps approached and paused close beside them. "Hngh," he grunted. "They are spreading the croach. Like butter. Grows out by itself but I figure they are trying to make it grow faster."

  "Why would they do that?" Amara murmured.

  Doroga shrugged. "It is what they do. If they get their way, it will be everywhere."

  Amara felt a cold little chill run down her spine.

  "They won't," Bernard said. "There's no sign of any of our people, taken or otherwise. I don't see any of their warriors, either."

  "They are there," Doroga said, his rumbling voice confident. "They get in there in the croach, you can't see them. Blend right in."

  Bernard put his hand on Amara's shoulder and stood, inhaling slowly. "I'm of a mind to go ahead with our plan," he told her. "We'll wait for dark and hit them hard. Get close enough to make sure the vord are in there, and finish them. Countess?"

  Amara released Cirrus and lowered her hands. "We can hardly stand about and wait for them to come after us," she said. She glanced back at Bernard. "But these are your lands, Count. I'll support your decision."

  "What is there to decide?" Doroga asked. "This is simple. Kill them. Or die."

  Bernard's teeth showed. "I prefer hunting to being hunted," he said. "Doroga, I'm going to go circle that cave a good ways out. See if I can find out if they've got any other surprises hidden in there waiting for us. Want to come along?"

  "Why not," Doroga said. "Walker is foraging. Better than standing around watching him root things up."

  "Countess," Bernard said, "if you're willing, I'd like to see what you can spot from the air before we lose the light."

  "Of course," she said.

  "Three hours," Bernard said after a moment. "I'm telling Giraldi to be ready to hit them in three hours, just after full dark. If we don't find any surprises waiting, that's when we'll take the fight to them."

  Amara inhaled and exhaled deeply, then rose with a forced calm and poise she did not feel, and called Cirrus to carry her up and into the air. She was still weary from an excess of windcrafting, but she had enough endurance for a short flight over the proposed battlefield. It would take her only a few moments.

  And once it was done, the remaining hours before they moved would feel like an eternity.

  Once Amara returned from her uneventful (and unenlightening) flight over the vord nest, she had settled down with her back to a tree to rest. When she woke, she was lying on her side, half-curled, her head pillowed on Bernard's cloak. She recognized the scent without needing to open her eyes, and she lay there for a moment, breathing slowly in and out. But around her, Giraldi's veterans were stirring, and weapons and armor made quiet sounds of metal clicking on metal and rasping against leather as they secured their arms and gear and prepared to fight. No one spoke, except for short, hushed phrases of affirmation as they checked one another's gear and tightened buckles.

  Amara sat up slowly, then rose to her feet. She stretched, wincing. The mail hadn't been made to fit her, though it was tolerably close to functional, but her muscles weren't used to the weight of the armor, and they twitched and clenched painfully at odd moments and places as she put the strain on them again. She looked for the man closest to the vord nest and walked toward him.

  "Countess," rumbled Bernard. There was a weak half-moon in the sky, occasionally veiled by clouds, and there was barely enough light for her to recognize his profile as he stared at the vord nest. His eyes glittered in the shadows over his face, steady and unblinking.

  The vord nest, by night, looked eerie and beautiful. Green light flowed up from the croach, a faint, spectral color that created shapes and swirls of color while not managing to give much in the way of illumination. The green werelight pulsed slowly, as though in time to some vast heartbeat, making shadows shift and roil in slow waves around it.

  "It's beautiful," Amara said quietly.

  "Yes," he said. "Until you think about what it means. I want it gone."

  "Absolutely," she said quietly. She stepped up beside him and stared at the nest for a while, until she shivered and turned to Bernard. "Thank you," she said, and held out his rolled cloak.

  Bernard turned to her to accept it, and she heard the smile in his voice. "Anytime." He slung the cloak around his shoulders and clasped it again, leaving his left arm clear for shooting. "Or maybe not anytime," he said then. His voice was thoughtful. "You've changed your mind. About us."

  Amara suddenly went very still and was glad that the darkness hid her expression. She could keep her voice steady. She could tell that much of a lie. She couldn't have looked him in the face as she did it. "We both have duties to the Realm," she said quietly. "I was blighted when I was a child."

  Bernard was silent for a very long time. Then he said, "I didn't know."

  "Do you see why it must be?" she asked him.

  More silence.

  "I could never give you children, Bernard," she said. "That alone would be enough to force you to seek another wife, under the law. Or lose your Citizenship."

  "I never sought it to begin with," Bernard said. "For you, I could do without it."

  "Bernard," she said, frustration on the edges of her voice, "we have few enough de
cent men among the Citizenry. Especially among the nobles. The Realm needs you where you are."

  "To the crows with the Realm," Bernard said. "I have lived as a freeman before. I can do it again."

  Amara inhaled, and said, very gently, "I have oaths, too, Bernard. Ones that I still believe in. That I will not disavow. My loyalty is to the Crown, and I cannot and will not set aside my duties. Or take upon myself others that could conflict with them."

  "You think I am in conflict with the Crown?" Bernard asked quietly.

  "I think that you deserve someone who can be your wife," Amara said. "Who can be the mother of your children. Who will stand at your side no matter what happens." She swallowed. "I can't be those things to you. Not while my oaths are to Gaius."

  They both stood there for a time. Then Bernard shook his head. "Countess, I intend to fight you about this. Tooth and nail. In fact, I intend to wed you before the year is out. But for the time being, both of us have more pressing business, and it's time we focused on it."

  "But-"

  "I want you to get with Giraldi and make sure every man has his lamps," Bernard said. "And after that, get into position with Doroga."

  "Bernard," Amara said.

  "Countess," he interrupted, "these are my lands. These men are in my command. If you will not serve with them, then you have my leave to go. But if you stay, I expect to be obeyed. Clear?"

  "Perfectly, Your Excellency," Amara replied. She wasn't sure if she was more annoyed or amused at his tone, but her emotions were far too turbulent to allow herself to react other than professionally. She inclined her head to Bernard and turned to walk back toward the legionares and to find Giraldi. She confirmed that each legionare carried two furylamps with him, and after that she found her way to the rear of the column, where the pungent scent of Walker, Doroga's gargant, provided almost as good a guide as the feeble light.

  "Amara," Doroga said. He stood in the dark, leaning against Walker's flank.

  "Are you ready?" Amara asked him.

  "Mmm. Got him loaded up easy enough. You sure about this?"

  "No," she said. "But then, what is sure in this life?"