by Jim Butcher
Araris turned and opened the door for her. "Captain," he announced quietly. "Steadholder Isana to see you."
A resonant, deep-chested voice answered in‹ a tone of distracted confidence. "Thank you, Araris. Send her in, please."
Araris gave Isana another small smile, then stood aside, and Isana walked into Tavi's office. Araris shut the door behind her.
The office was supremely utilitarian, even stark. There was an old wooden desk, scarred from use, several chairs, and several shelves filled with books and papers and writing materials. The cold stone floor was covered by a few simple rugs, and a box beside the lit fireplace was filled with a neat stack of cordwood. A door led off into another room, and a plain, medium-sized mirror hung upon the same wall.
He sat at the desk, a quill in hand, scrawling something hurriedly across the bottom of a page. There were several stacks of them spread across the desk, evidence of what appeared to be several hours' work. He finished writing, set the quill aside, and rose with a broad smile.
Isana stopped in her tracks. The man who stood up was enormous, even taller than her brother Bernard, though he had a more wiry build and the slen-derness of youth. His dark hair was cropped short, and he wore a suit of battered Legion armor and a sword on one hip. His features were angular, strong, attractive, though a fine white line across one cheek spoke of a wound too severe to heal without leaving a scar.
Tavi's eyes, though, had not changed. They were green and bright, lit from within by the intelligence of the mind behind them.
How like his father he looks, Isana thought.
"Aunt Isana," Tavi said, and wrapped his arms around her.
She was about to caution him to be careful, but he was gentle, making sure not to crush any armored steel ridges against her. She made up for it by hugging him back as hard as she could. He was real, and safe. She hadn't seen him face-to-face in years, but there was no mistaking that he was her son, no hiding the genuine burst of warmth and love and delight that radiated from him as she hugged him.
They stood like that for a time, before Isana broke the embrace. She lifted her hands to cup his face, her eyes swimming with tears, her cheeks already aching from smiling. "Hello, Tavi."
He kissed her on top of the head. "Hello, Auntie. It's been a long time."
She leaned back to arm's length, looking him up and down. "Longer for some than others," she teased. "Goodness, you've grown even more. What do they put in the water here?"
He grinned. "Yeah. It sort of snuck up on me. But I think I've stopped growing, finally. These trousers have fit me for almost a year."
"Thank goodness. If you got much taller, they'd have to raise all the ceilings in here."
Tavi shook his head gravely. "Nonsense. This is the Legion. The ceiling is at regulation height. It is the responsibility of every legionare to be sure that he is regulation height as well."
Isana laughed. "I'm glad to see you haven't lost your sense of humor."
"Never that," Tavi said. "My mind has been gone for a while now, but that's no reason not to laugh at things. How's Uncle His Excellency?"
"Bernard is well, as are the folk at home. Which reminds me." She untied the pouch from her belt and opened it, rustling through several papers, before she drew out a folded, sealed letter. "Frederic asked me to give this to you."
Tavi smiled and took the letter. He cracked the seal and his eyes flicked rapidly over it. "That girl he rescued, eh? Beritte must be miffed. How's that working out for them?"
"About the way most marriages do. They have a lot to learn about how to treat one another."
"I'm glad for him," Tavi said. "If I get time, I'll write something to send with you when you go back. But in case I don't, would you give him my congratulations?"
"Of course."
Tavi smiled at her and gestured to the fireplace, where a kettle hung from a hook close enough to the flames to keep the liquid inside warm. "Tea?"
"Please."
Tavi drew out a couple of the room's chairs, putting them close together, and held one of them for her. Then he took a pair of tin cups down from a shelf and poured steaming tea from the kettle into each. He added a spoonful of honey to Isana's, the way she liked it, then splashed three of them into his own, before returning to her.
They shared a cup of tea, chatting quietly about people and places back home in the Calderon Valley. They talked for a time of Tavi's duties at the Eli-narch, and of Isana's journey in assembling the relief column, until Tavi rose to get them both fresh cups of tea.
When he settled down again, Isana said, "Tavi, I hope you know how proud we are of you. Your uncle and I. You've grown into a remarkable young man."
He blinked at her a couple of times, then carefully studied the surface of his tea. Isana's sense of his emotions revealed pleasure in the compliment, and pride, along with large helpings of embarrassment. His cheeks colored slightly. "Well," he said. "I couldn't have done any of it without you and uncle. Teaching me. Preparing me."
Isana felt a little stab of guilt. Preparing him was probably the single greatest thing she hadn't done.
She sipped a little more tea, and then frowned down at its surface. "Tavi," she said. "Is it safe to talk here?"
He cocked his head slightly to one side, and she felt the spike of curiosity that flashed through his thoughts. "Yes," he said, with total confidence. "No one can overhear us in here. Why, Aunt Isana?"
Isana took a deep breath. "There's something we need to talk about," she said.
Tavi's face turned red again. "Look, a lot of that is just rumor. I mean, the men get to talking over drinks and every little story grows in the retelling."
Isana blinked at him.
"I mean, it's not like I'm hosting revels or anything. Everyone likes a good story like that, though, and the truth of it isn't as much fun."
"Tavi," Isana said in a firm tone. "What in the wide world are you talking about?"
Tavi froze with his mouth open for a second. Acute chagrin flooded out from him in a wave Isana could practically see. Then he swallowed, and said, "Urn. Nothing?"
Isana arched an eyebrow at him.
Tavi sighed, blushing again. "I was talking about Kitai. She and I…"
"Ah," Isana said. "You're together."
"Urn. Yes."
"In more than one sense of the word, I take it?"
"Well. Yes," he said miserably. "But it isn't like we're… I mean, some of the Marat are, um, sort of indiscriminate when it comes to that kind of thing, and a lot of their riders are around me every time I move around, so it's inevitable that some idiots are going to start spouting rumors about it, but it isn't really like that." Tavi paused to take a breath. "Kitai and I are just… together."
Isana sighed. "Stop. Neither one of us wants you to elaborate, Tavi." She turned her teacup idly in her hands. "Well. This could become… very complicated. I should have had this talk with you sooner."
"Um," Tavi said. He might have become a fully grown man now, but Isana was familiar with his uncomfortable squirming. He'd always done that when he'd been caught red-handed as a child. "You don't have to have that talk. I had that much figured out by the time I was about ten. I mean, caring for the sheep and all…"
Isana shook her head and surprised herself with a quiet laugh. "No, no, not that talk," Isana said. "You don't understand-"
She was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. She turned to find Araris standing in the door. "Captain," he said quietly, frowning. "We just got word from one of the men. Senator Arnos's singulares are on the way to see you."
Tavi's chin jerked up sharply. "Why?"
Araris shrugged. "No details yet. They're up at the front door now."
"This seems like a good time to speak to Maximus and Crassus about this week's training schedule. Send a runner to them."
Araris thumped his fist to his heart and departed. Tavi bit his lip, glancing around the little office. He opened the second door behind the desk, and said, "Aunti
e, could I convince you to wait in my chambers? I'd just as soon not explain to the Senator's flunkies what you're doing here."
"Of course," Isana said, rising. She paced quickly through the door. It was difficult to see much without any lamps, but the modest-sized chamber looked as functional and stark as his office, except for the rumpled, double-sized bed. If nothing else, she supposed, the Legions had done that much for him. Anyone who could convince Tavi to keep his room clean couldn't be entirely bad.
Tavi shut the door most of the way, put a finger against his lips in an entirely unnecessary gesture of caution, and then returned to the office. Isana heard him putting the chairs back into position, and heard a tinny clink as he presumably placed one of the tea cups back onto its shelf. His shadow moved across the narrow opening of the cracked door, and he settled down at his desk. Paper rustled. A few seconds later, the door opened again, and several sets of heavy footsteps entered the room.
"Just leave my breakfast tray on the shelf," Tavi said in an absentminded tone. "And none of your nagging. I'll get to it when I get to it."
There was a short, hard silence, broken only by the sound of Tavi's quill scratching on paper.
"Excuse me?" said a woman's voice. It was a quiet voice, one used to speaking in soft tones and whispers, but to Isana's ears, it carried such malice and barely contained rage that she actually flinched away from it.
"Oh," Tavi said. "I beg your pardon. You aren't the valet."
"No," said the woman's voice. "I am-"
"Did the valet send my breakfast with you by any chance?" Tavi asked, his tone innocent and friendly. "I'm starving."
"He did not," said the cold voice.
"I'm sure he meant to," Tavi said. "Do you think you could yell up the stairs and see if it's on the w-"
There was a loud, sharp sound of impact-a hand being slammed down onto the surface of Tavi's desk, Isana judged. There was a rustling, sliding sound of a neat stack of pages slithering off the edge of the desk and onto the floor.
"You are not funny," said the cold voice. "And I will cut your throat before I tolerate any more of it. Do you understand me?"
Isana shifted position slightly. She couldn't see the woman Tavi was talking to, but she could see his face in profile. He sat in his chair, hands on his desk, and regarded the speaker with a calm, remote expression. There was no mockery to it. There wasn't anything to it, despite the fact that his life had just been threatened, and it chilled Isana a little to see that expression on his face. He appeared to be relaxed and confident, and she couldn't catch even a hint of his true emotions.
"I understand," Tavi said quietly, "that if you continue to show disrespect unbecoming a soldier, ignoring even basic military courtesy-such as knocking on a commanding officer's door before entering-and speaking to me in that tone, I'll have you bound to a flogging post until the ants can crawl up your hair to get at your eyes."
There was another pause. Then the woman's voice said, "You don't know who I am, do you?"
"Or care, particularly," Tavi said.
"My name," she said, "is Navaris."
Tavi's expression never flickered, but this time Isana sensed a pulse of surprised recognition, and then a low current of tightly controlled fear.
Tavi leaned forward, and said in a congenial murmur, "It's possible that playing singulare for the Senator has not brought you the fame you had hoped it would. Never heard of you." His eyes stayed steady for another strained, silent moment. "Well, Navaris. When you first walked in, I assumed you were here for the decor and the charming company. Now, though, I'm thinking that you might have had something else in mind."
"Yes," came the answer.
"How exciting. Maybe you even had a specific reason to visit."
"Yes," Navaris growled.
He glanced past Navaris, eyes scanning the room. "And these four. I take it they're here to help."
"Yes."
Tavi sighed and sat back in his chair. "Navaris, this will go a lot faster if I don't have to play guessing games." His voice went flat. "Tell me what you want."
There was another long silence, and Isana realized with a sudden flash of panic that as Tavi had sat back in his chair, his hand had slipped around behind it, and his fingers were on the hilt of a dagger that had been secured to the chair's back.
There was something thick, even drunken, about Navaris's voice when she finally answered. "Senator Arnos sent me to gather up your intelligence reports on recent activity in the occupied territory. You are to turn over to me every record, every copy, and every list of information sources for the Senator's personal review."
Tavi shrugged his shoulders. "I'm afraid I can't help you."
"These are orders," Navaris replied. "If you refuse to obey them, it's treason."
"Which is punishable by death," Tavi said. "I vaguely recall reading as much, somewhere."
"Give us the papers," she said. "Or you are under arrest."
Isana's heart pounded hard in her chest.
"I don't think so," Tavi said. "You see, Navaris, I'm afraid you don't have a leg to stand on, legally speaking. You're a singulare. You aren't an officer. You sure as the crows aren't my commanding officer. In fact, you aren't in my chain of command at all."
Navaris's voice came out as if through clenched teeth. "These are the Senator's orders."
"Oh," Tavi said, nodding as though at a sudden revelation. "Then they're in writing. Let me see them, and the papers are all yours." He lifted both eyebrows. "You do have legal orders, do you not?"
After a brief pause, Navaris said, "You saw him. He resisted arrest."
There were several harsh, masculine mutters.
"Get your fingers off that sword, singulare," Tavi said, his voice an abrupt whip crack of authority. "Draw that weapon against me, and I'll gut you with it."
There was the sound of several blades slithering from their sheaths, and Isana leapt to her feet in sudden terror.
A new voice broke into the conversation. "If I were you," Araris said in a level tone, "I would do as he says."
"Or not," said a bluff, cheerful voice that was laced with a desire for violence-Antillar Maximus. "If you all want to dance, I'm game."
"None of them got to draw steel before we did," said a third voice, that of a young man Isana didn't recognize. "If things start up now, they won't even get their weapons clear of their sheaths. That doesn't seem fair."
"Right you are, Crassus," Max said. "Right you are."
Isana felt a surge of murderous fury from the room-Navaris, she felt certain. It was a white-hot anger, something that seethed with malice and hate so intense that it almost seemed a separate entity. It was an irrational, bloodthirsty thing, a kind of madness that Isana had only encountered twice in her entire life.
For a moment, Isana felt sure that Navaris would attack in any case. But then that raging fire suddenly died into stillness, snuffed out as quickly as a candle dropped into a pond.
"You think you've accomplished something here," Navaris said quietly. "You haven't. You'll see that in time."
Tavi looked at her as if she hadn't spoken at all. "Please convey my apologies to the Senator that I could not act without confirming his orders. Regulations can be inconvenient at times, but they are, after all, what holds a Legion together. Thank you for your visit."
"Fool," Navaris said.
"Captain Fool," Tavi responded. "Good day, singulare. Araris, Crassus, please escort the good singulare and her helpers to the door."
For a second, nothing happened. Then there was a shuffling of feet, and then the shutting of a door, then silence.
Isana leaned against a wall and closed her eyes, her heart racing, slightly dizzy at the sudden relief, both of her own fears and of the intense emotions that had crowded the little office.
"Crows," Maximus breathed. "Was that who I think it was?"
"Phrygiar Navaris," Tavi said, nodding.
"What was she doing here?" Max asked.
"Get
ting humiliated, mostly. Especially there at the end."
Max barked out a short, coughing laugh. "You don't do things by halves, do you Calderon?"
"It saves me the time of going back to finish later." Tavi rose from the chair and came to the door. "And speaking of Calderon."
Isana opened it, aware that her hands were trembling in reaction to the tension of the past several moments. The room was now empty, but for Tavi and Maximus.
Max lifted his eyebrows at Isana, and his surprise was palpable. "Oh. Good morning, Steadholder."
"Good morning, Maximus," she replied. At least her voice was steady, she thought. She looked at Tavi. "That woman is dangerous?"
Tavi nodded. "One of the top ten or twelve swords in Alera."
"More like one of the top six or seven," Maximus said, his tone serious. "And she's done more actual killing than any two blades on the list."
Isana shook her head. "What were you thinking, insulting her like that?"
"I was thinking that I needed to buy time for Max and his brother to get here," Tavi said. He gave her a boyish grin. "Relax, Auntie. I had it under control."
Max snorted.
"Is she acting on the Senator's behalf?" Isana asked.
"Probably," Tavi said.
"Then why didn't you give her the papers?"
Tavi sighed and began gathering up the fallen pages. "The papers are going to tell Arnos something he doesn't want to hear. I think he was planning on making them vanish." He straightened them and turned to Maximus. "Get these to Ehren. I want copies for Sir Cyril, the Senator, and the Tribunes Strategica of all three Legions, as well as to the militia command in town."
Max grunted. "The staff meeting?"
"Yes. Once the information is out, Arnos won't be able to lock it up again."
Isana blinked at him. "What could be so important about them?"
Tavi raked his fingers through his short-cut hair. "From what we've been able to put together, I think I have a good idea of what the Canim are doing. I think if we handle it right, we might be able to call a halt to this war."