Cursor's Fury (43 page)

“So,” Amara said, giving him a coy little glance, “your hidden motives are at last revealed.”

Bernard smiled. She loved the way his eyes looked when he smiled. “Perhaps you could consider it for your retirement.” He looked into her eyes, and said, “You’re wanted there, Amara. I want you there. With me.”

“I know,” she said quietly. She tried to smile, but it didn’t feel as if it had made it all the way to her face. “Perhaps one day.”

He moved his arm, brushing the back of his hand unobtrusively against the side of her stomach. “Perhaps one day soon.”

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“Bernard,” she said quietly. “Yes.”

She met his eyes. “Take me,” she said. “For a walk.”

His eyelids lowered a little, and his eyes smoldered, though he kept the rest of his face impassive and bowed his head politely. “As you wish, my lady.”

Chapter 25

Max blinked at Tavi and then said, incredulously,
‘You
took it?”

Tavi grinned at him and tossed a heavy grain sack up into the bed of the supply wagon.

“She’s been going insane about her purse. She hasn’t stopped complaining to Cyril since she lost it.” Max hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Of course. You took it and bribed Foss and Valiar Marcus to let you ride.”

“Just Foss. I think he handled Marcus’s cut on his own.”

“You’re a crowbegotten thief,” Max said, not without a certain amount of admiration.

Tavi threw another sack into the supply wagon. There was room for only a few more sacks, and the timbers of the wagon groaned and creaked under the weight of the load. “I prefer to think of myself as a man who turns liabilities into assets.”

Tavi grunted and heaved the last sack into the wagon. His leg twinged, but the pain was hardly noticeable. “I’m not loaning you money, Max.”

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Tavi grunted. “This is enough for the mounts of one
alae.
For a week.”

Tavi reached into a pocket and tossed the silk purse to Max. Max caught it and shook it soundlessly. “Not much,” Tavi said in a dry tone. “Not many Antillan-made crowns are floating around the Legion, so I’ve been getting rid of them a little at a time.”

He walked back through the dark to the steadholt’s large barn and traded grips with a gregarious Steadholder who had agreed to sell his surplus grain to the Legion—especially since Tavi was offering twenty percent over standard Legion rates, courtesy of Lady Antillus’s purse. He paid the man their agreed-upon price, and returned to the wagon. Max held up the silk purse and gave it a last, forlorn little shake before tossing it back to Tavi. Tavi caught the purse.

Max shrugged and tore a bit of cloth from a knotted-closed sack in the wagon. He rubbed the cloth between his fingers a few times, and a low flame licked its way to life. Seemingly impervious to the heat, he lowered the burning cloth and held it a few feet over the ground.

Tavi bent over, squinting, and saw a reflection of the improvised candle’s light shine off of a smooth surface. He picked up a small stone, about the size of a child’s smallest fingernail, and held it closer to the light. Though it was not faceted, the stone was translucent, like a gem, and was such a brilliant color of red that it almost seemed to be wet. It reminded Tavi of a large, fresh-shed droplet of blood.

Max blinked, then scowled at the fire, which had spread from the strip of sackcloth to his shirt. He flicked his wrist in irritation, and the flame abruptly died. Tavi could smell the curls of smoke coming up from the cloth in the sudden darkness.

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“Have you ever seen a gem like that, Max? Maybe your stepmother crafts them.”

Max clambered up onto the wagon, took the reins, and brought the team into motion. Tavi swung up beside him, and the slow-moving cart began its ten-mile trek back to the First Aleran’s camp at Elinarch.

The march had taken them seven long, strenuous days from the training camp to the bridge over the vast, slow-moving Tiber River. Foss, once honestly bribed, had kept Tavi “under observation” while his leg healed. Lady Antillus clearly hadn’t liked the idea, but since she’d dumped the responsibility into his hands, she could hardly take it away again without displaying her animosity for Tavi in an unacceptably flagrant lack of the impartiality expected in a Legion officer.

Even so, Foss had kept Tavi busy. Bardis, the wounded Knight who had been saved by Lady Antillus, required constant attention and care. Twice, during the march, Bardis had simply stopped breathing. Foss had saved the young Knight, but only because Tavi had noticed what was happening. The young Knight hadn’t regained more than vague consciousness during the march, and had to be fed, cleaned, and watered like a baby.

As he first sat beside the wounded Bardis, Tavi was struck by
how young
the Knight looked. Surely, an Aleran Knight should have been taller, thicker in the shoulders and chest and neck, with a heavier growth of beard and more muscle than the wounded Knight possessed. Bardis looked like . . . an injured, not yet fully grown child. And it inspired an immediate and unexpected surge of protectiveness in the young Cursor. To his own surprise, he set about the task of tending Bardis without complaint or regret.

Later, he realized that Bardis wasn’t too young to be a Knight. Tavi was simply five years older. He knew far more of the world than the boy, had seen a great deal more of life’s horrors, and had gained inches and pounds of physical size that he had, for most of his life, lacked. All of that made the wounded Knight seem much smaller and far younger. It was a matter of perspective.

Tavi realized, bemused, that he was no longer the child, unconsciously
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expecting those stronger and older than he to assist and protect him. Now he was the stronger, the elder, and so it fell to him to accept and discharge his responsibilities rather than to seek ways to avoid or circumvent them.

He did not know when this shift in perspective had happened, and though it might have seemed small in some ways, it was far deeper and more significant than he had at first realized. It meant that he could never again be that child, the one deserving of protection and comfort. It was time for him to provide it for others, as it had been provided for him.

So he cared for poor Bardis and spent much of that march in reflection.

“You’ve been moody,” Max said, breaking the silence as the wagon bumped steadily down the trail—a path worn by use, not furycraft. “This whole march, you’ve been quiet.”

“Thinking,” Tavi said, “and avoiding attention.”

“How’s the fish?”

“Bardis,” Tavi corrected him. “Foss says he’ll be all right, now that we’ve stopped and he can be cared for more properly.” He shook his head. “But he might not ever walk again. And I don’t know if he’ll be able to use his right arm. He’s given his body in service to the Realm, Max. Don’t call him a fish.”

Sullen red fire played within the bone-dry storm clouds overhead, and one of the horses danced nervously. Tavi saw Max nod. “True enough,” he agreed, a quiet gravity in his own voice. After a moment, Max said, “Magnus says Kalarus is making his move. That he came up with at least four extra Legions somewhere. That if they take Ceres, they’ll roll right over Alera Imperia. Which doesn’t make much sense to me. Placidus’s Legions are going to pin them against the city walls and cut them to pieces.”

“Placidus isn’t moving,” Tavi said.

“The crows he isn’t. I know the man. He doesn’t care much about getting involved with the rest of the Realm, but he doesn’t care for treason, either. He’ll fight.”

“He isn’t,” Tavi said. “At least, according to the last—the only—dispatch that got through from the First Lord, though it didn’t say why.”

“That was a week ago,” Max said.

Tavi nodded up at the sky. “Wherever this storm came from, it’s pretty well prevented the use of Knights Aeris as messengers. The First Lord and the High Lords can communicate through the rivers, but they know there’s nothing to stop others from listening to everything they send that way.”

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“Or worse,” Max said. “Altering the message en route.”