by Jim Butcher
Kitai nodded, her eyes aglow with interest-even, Isana realized as the young woman passed her, with admiration-and took the pack from her back, stepping to the other side of the aqueduct to stare intently down at the Grey Tower, whose roof was very nearly of an even height with the aqueduct, which passed within thirty feet or so. The roof of the Tower resembled a fortified parapet, complete with crenellations, and statues, ugly, lumpy creatures whose features were largely hidden in shadow, faced outward at the midway point along each edge of the roof.
"There," Kitai said. "Can you see the doors?"
Isana stepped up beside her and could indeed see the doors from the inner stairway to the roof, twin, flat affairs that lay flush against the stone, like the doors to the root cellar at the steadholt. "I see them."
"They must pass from those doors to the edge of the roof without touching the stone," Kitai said. "Any touch upon the stone of the building will rouse the gargoyles."
Isana nodded and bit her lip, judging the distance. "It's farther away than I thought it would be," she said.
Kitai nodded once and flicked open the other case on her belt. She withdrew a small, heavy-looking cloth sack from it, and a small steel hammer. "Can you do it?"
"Let's find out," Isana murmured. Again, she gathered up her skirts and stepped into the water, reaching out for Rill. "Be sure you stay upstream of me until it's time," she cautioned, and then she focused her attention on the water.
Thirty feet was a long way to throw something as heavy as water, and she had to do it in a constant stream if they were to accomplish their goal. The current in the aqueduct could not sustain such an effort if simply redirected. She would need more pressure to move the water that far, and so the first thing she did was throw out her left hand behind her, palm upraised, and willed Rill to block the stream.
The water instantly stopped flowing past her, and instead began to build up in the trough and then started to overflow it, rising up to the level of the stone lip of the aqueduct. Some of the water spilled over the sides to fall to the ground below, but she caught most of it, allowing the water to rise to fill the aqueduct to the brim for twenty, then thirty, then sixty yards behind her. The weight of all that water was immense, and Isana could feel Rill begin to strain. She waited until the pressure of the dammed stream rose to Rill's breaking point, and then she lifted her right arm, palm up, and opened a way for the water to escape- not forward and down the stream, as before, but arching up to one side, toward the roof of the Grey Tower.
The water shot forth in a geyser, rising in a beautiful arch that reflected starlight and the gleam of the many-colored furylamps of Alera Imperia. For a second, a ghost of a breeze pressed against the stream, and it fell short of the roof-but the breeze died again, and a steady spray of cold water splattered down onto the stone roof of the Grey Tower.
Isana felt a fierce smile stretch her lips, and she remained locked in that position, joined with Rill, sending the waters of the aqueduct rushing over the stone of the Tower, rapidly spreading and filling the parapet with a shallow layer of water.
"There!" Isana gasped. "Kitai, do it now!"
Kitai stepped forward, crouching down at Isana's feet, and with one gloved hand she drew from the heavy little sack one of the coldstones they had stolen the night before. She placed it on the floor of the aqueduct, just upstream of the point where the waters arched up to leap to the roof of the Tower, held it there with her gloved hand, and with the other swung the steel hammer sharply down.
There was a deafening crack and a flash of cold blue light, as the fire fury bound within the coldstone greedily sucked the warmth from the world around it.
Coldstones were expensive works of crafting, containing fire furies far more powerful than those found in furylamps or those used to manage the heat of a kitchen's stove and oven. They were specially bound, and though created to draw in all the heat they possibly could, the bindings placed upon them prevented them from pulling more than a tiny trickle into themselves at any one time. The result was a stone that leeched the heat from everything around it over the course of three or four months-the limit of the stone's construction. Placed in an insulated storage box, a coldstone could keep food placed inside it well chilled, even preserve ice over the course of a hot summer.
But in shattering the stone to which the fire fury was bound, Kitai had loosed it to sate its hunger for warmth in a single, unbelievably frigid instant.
The blue fire of the loosed fury's hunger lashed out through the water in a wave of chilly light. Rill and Isana prevented the cold from rushing back up the stream, and instead it followed the course of least resistance, leaping through the arch of water, freezing it to solid in an instant. The wave of frozen blue fire crashed down onto the surface of the Tower and spread out through it in a glittering haze, freezing the water there into a rough-surfaced sheet of ice.
Kitai let out a whoop of excitement and raised a triumphant fist. Isana, shaking with weariness, released the aqueduct's current, which immediately resumed its course in a surge that gradually began to sink back to its original levels. Her foot slipped, and she almost fell, but Rill swirled around her before she could, supporting Isana and helping her regain her balance. For a moment, the fury appeared in the only physical form Isana had seen it take, the shape of a face-a mirror of Isana's own features, when she'd first bonded with Rill as a gawky, thirteen-year-old girl-that appeared on the surface of the stream, smiled, then vanished once more.
Isana stepped wearily out of the water, her skirts soaked from her near fall, and stood beside Kitai. "Now what?" she asked. Her voice sounded rough, even to her own ears.
Kitai gave her a pensive glance, returned her attention to the building, then down to the grounds below, her gaze roaming warily. She reached into her case of coiled lines again and began taking them out. "We wait here. Once they come out on the roof, I'll throw them the lines, and they'll swing over, just as I did with you. Then we meet Ehren."
"What if…" Isana shook her head. "What if they're caught?"
Kitai frowned, her hands moving swiftly and steadily, preparing the lines, her eyes everywhere. "They are not caught yet."
"How can you know that?"
She touched one hand briefly to her chest. "I feel him. Excitement. Fear. Determination. Had he been captured, he would immediately begin blaming himself for failure."
Isana blinked at Kitai. "You know him well, don't you?" she murmured. Then Isana gave the younger woman a thoughtful and rather whimsical smile. "This must be what it feels like when I tell others without watercraft what it is like to sense other people's emotions."
"It doesn't feel the same at all," Kitai said absently. "With him, it is more nebulous, but… deeper, somehow. The emotions of others are flat, like a painting, perhaps. His are more rounded, like a sculpture."
Isana frowned over her words for a moment, then caught a sudden flash of emotion from Kitai-realization and chagrin. She turned to stare at the Marat woman. "Kitai," she said. "How could you possibly know that?"
Kitai stared at her, frozen for a heartbeat, her green eyes wide. Then she turned back to her tasks, biting her lower lip.
Isana stared at her in dawning comprehension. "How could you know the difference unless you'd felt it yourself," she murmured. "Watercraft. Kitai…"
"Quiet," Kitai said, her voice flat with worry, and nodded to the arched column of ice stretching to the Tower. "Someone will see that soon. Don't make it easy for them to find us and shoot us."
Isana would have been choked silent by the implications in any case. No Marat had ever used furycraft. No Marat could. And yet if Kitai truly had knowledge of watercrafting, it meant that she, alone of her people, could wield power through Aleran furies.
Kitai was the only Marat ever to form a bond with an Aleran, and that bonding, Isana knew, somehow shared portions of each being in it with the other. Walker, the gargant bonded to Doroga, Kitai's father, was uncommonly intelligent for a simple beast, and seemed
to understand Doroga implicitly. Doroga himself was taller and more heavily laden with muscle than the Marat from the other clans, and Isana knew him to be almost unbelievably strong.
If his daughter had bonded with Tavi in a similar way, then her furycraft could only be the result of that bond.
Had Tavi found the strength inherent in his father's blood at last?
Isana's heart leapt, at once terrified and exultant. In her fear, she had attempted to hide his identity, and in so doing she had stunted the development of his furycraft. She had believed the damage permanent.
Had it been healed? Had her son been given a second chance, despite her errors? Might he have gained the strength that could protect him from the forces that would almost certainly attempt to destroy him once his identity was known?
For years she had despaired of Tavi's fate should his identity ever be learned, and her helplessness to protect him in the face of the vast powers of those such as Lady Aquitaine had been a constant, bitter taste in her mouth.
Now something strange and almost forgotten blossomed to life in her heart, flickering and small but bright against the darkness of her fear.
Hope.
"Kitai," Isana hissed. "Has my son come into his furies?"
Kitai turned to stare hard at Isana.
Before she could say anything, ice snapped and cracked with a sharp detonation, and the doors on the roof of the tower slammed open.
Araris came through them first, looking sharply around him, and even in the dimness, Isana could see the sudden gleam of his teeth as he smiled at the ice coating the roof. His gaze tracked the graceful arch of the column of ice back to the aqueduct, and he flashed his hand in a quick wave at them before turning back to the stairs behind him, beckoning.
Tavi emerged from the Tower, and hard on his heels was a monstrous figure straight out of a nightmare. The Cane, Ambassador Varg, she assumed, towered over even Tavi by at least a full yard, and its black-furred form was both lean and powerful-looking. The Cane emerged into the open air and paused for a moment, then threw his head back, lifted his muzzle to the sky, and spread wide his clawed arms. Then he shook himself, looking for all the world like a dog throwing water from his coat, and dropped into a relaxed crouch, following Tavi as the young man moved with wobbling haste over the ice to the edge of the roof.
Without a word, Kitai whirled the first of her lines and sent it zipping across the empty air to Araris. He caught the rope, and as Kitai played out slack, he sheathed his sword and set his foot in the loop of rope, just as Isana had done. Then he swung out into the open air, swung back and forth once, and began to spin gently as Kitai hauled him upward.
Isana glanced sharply at the young woman. Kitai had no more difficulty hauling up Araris, complete with his armor and weapon, than she had with Isana, and a second later, Isana recognized the slightly absent focus of Kitai's gaze. She had seen her brother's face holding the same expression, often enough, when he labored on the steadholt.
Kitai was using earthcraft to strengthen her.
Once Araris was up, Kitai flung the next line to Tavi. He, too, secured himself and swung out from the roof of the Tower. Araris, Isana noted, anchored the line behind Kitai, his intent face tracking the young mans progress while the anxiety and frustration he felt over being unable to get his charge to safety any faster pressed against Isana like a sheet of scratchy, sweat-soured burlap.
Then Tavi was clambering up onto the aqueduct, his face flushed with excitement. He gained his feet, glanced at Kitai, and said, "I don't want to hear it."
Kitai smirked but said nothing.
Isana turned to stare at Varg, who crouched at the edge of the room, red eyes gleaming in the dim light. "My word," she whispered. "It's… rather large."
"He is," Tavi agreed, putting a gentle emphasis on the first word. He glanced at Kitai, who was readying the last line, one braided out of several of her more slender ropes. "Even if we belay it, are you sure it will hold him?"
She paused to give him a brief and very direct look.
Tavi scowled but raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
Kitai flung one end of the rope, which had been weighted with a heavy knot, out toward the far side of the aqueduct. The rope whiplashed down and around, completing a circuit of the aqueduct, and Tavi reached down to catch its weighted end as it came around, completing the circle. He passed it to Kitai, who knotted it off against the rest of its length, then flung the other end to Varg.
The Cane caught the rope, glanced at it briefly, and stepped forward to put one paw-foot into the loop on its end.
Then he whipped his head around toward the stairs.
Isana saw a half-dressed man rush up the stairway to the roof, bearing a spear in his hand. He looked around wildly for a moment, shocked at what he saw on the roof, but his eyes locked on to Varg, and he lifted the spear and cast it in one smooth, viciously powerful motion.
Varg twisted as though to leap aside, but his paw-feet slipped on the ice, tangled in the rope, and brought him down. Isana heard an ugly sound of impact, and a furious, inhuman snarl ripped through the night air.
"Varg!" Tavi cried.
The Cane regained his balance in an instant, and Isana could hear the claws of one paw-hand bite into the ice as he reached up and jerked the spear from his leg. It looked like a child's toy in the Cane's hands. Varg raised the spear to throw, but then seemed to hesitate for a second, and instead of casting it point first, he flung it in a sidearm throw, its heavy wooden shaft whirling.
The Guardsman tried to dodge, but it was the Aleran's turn to realize that the ice-glazed roof was treacherous. The man wobbled rather than springing aside, and the wooden haft of the spear hit him with enough force to physically throw him back down the stairway.
Varg spun and lurched toward the edge of the parapet, but as he tried to climb it and swing away, his wounded leg seemed to buckle beneath him. He flailed with one arm, trying to recover his balance…
… and grasped the naked stone of a merlon.
There was thundering detonation, like a miniature thunderclap, and the gargoyles on the roof leapt into instant, eerily graceful life.
The nearest wasn't five feet from Varg, and it leapt at the Cane. Varg fell back beneath it as it pounced, caught the vast weight of the gargoyle on his arms and his good leg, and flexed, still rolling. Such was the power in the Cane's enormous frame that the gargoyle was flung clear of the parapet and went sailing over the edge, thrashing wildly-until one of its misshapen limbs caught on the braided line that still dangled between Varg's foot and the stone of the aqueduct.
The weight of the gargoyle came down on the line, snapping it taut.
Varg snarled, scrambling desperately, but the ice shrieked as his claws were dragged through it, toward the edge.
The other three gargoyles flung themselves at the Cane.
Varg saw them coming and released his grip on the ice.
The rope hauled the Cane roughly over the parapet, just as the gargoyles slammed against the area he'd previously occupied. All of that weight hammered into the crenellation at the parapet's edge, and the stones, the gargoyles, and the Canim Ambassador plunged down.
The heavy rope, unable to hold so much weight, applied so suddenly, hummed in protest for a split second, then snapped, sending strands whipping through the air. There was a flash of fire on Isana's shoulder and she staggered backward and fell into the chilly water of the aqueduct's trough.
She was paralyzed for an instant, stunned by the pain. She looked down and saw that her dress had been sliced open as if with a knife. Blood flowed freely, soaking the arm of her dress. Hands seized her, someone called her name, then Araris was there, binding something around her arm.
Light rose up from below, sullen and red.
"Oh bloody crows," Tavi breathed. He whirled his head to stare at Araris, his eyes wide with panic. "Araris, he landed on the lawn."
Araris suddenly tensed. "What?" He rose, half-carrying Isan
a toward Tavi, and over the edge of the aqueduct she could see the lawn around the Grey Tower.
Fires burned there. No, not fires, because no true fire was ever so solid, so still.
Furies of fire had come to life. They had taken the form of some kind of enormous hound, almost the size of her brother's earth fury, Brutus. But, Isana noted dizzily, there were differences. Their rear legs seemed too short, their front legs too long, and their shoulders rose to misshapen lumps. Though they looked solid, they were made from raw, red flame, glowing a hostile, angry red. Flickering fires rose up around their shoulders and neck, like some sort of mane, and a pall of black smoke gathered around their paws and trailed behind them.
They moved suddenly and as one. Their heads turned, wolflike muzzles orienting. Isana followed the direction of their gazes, across the lawn to…
To the fallen form of Ambassador Varg. Two of the gargoyles lay shattered around him and unmoving, but the others had begun to twist and thrash their limbs, awkwardly attempting to regain their balance and renew their attack.
The firehounds opened their mouths, and the crackle and roar of hungry flames rose through the night air.
The bells continued to ring, and men began to emerge onto the roof of the Grey Tower.
Tavi's expression hardened and he traded a look with Kitai. Without a word, he leaned over and dunked his long grey cloak into the cold water.
Araris spun toward him, crying, "No!"
Tavi seized one end of the broken line that still trailed from the aqueduct and leapt over the side.
Isana took in a sharp breath as her son flung himself into the maelstrom of angry furies and steel below, but was still too dazed to do anything about it.
"Oh," she breathed, wondering briefly if he'd gone mad. "Oh, dear."
Chapter 36
Tavi slid down the slender single strand of the snapped braid of rope and wondered briefly if he'd gone mad.
He'd been fortunate, in that the rope had broken fairly near to its end, and he was able to slide down it until his feet were no more than ten or twelve feet off the ground. He slid on off the end into a fall and tried to absorb the shock of his fall with his legs, letting his body fall backward, arms spread to slap the ground.
