by Jim Butcher
"You have grown," Varg growled. The Cane's voice was a snarling basso, and his words were mangled by his fangs on the way out of his throat, but his Aleran was perfectly intelligible. "This alarm is your doing, I take it."
"Yes," Tavi said. "I want you to come with me."
Varg tilted his head. "Why?"
"There is little time for talk," Tavi said.
Varg's eyes narrowed but his tail flicked in a gesture Tavi had come to understand as an implied agreement. "Do you act for your First Lord in this?"
"I act to protect his interests," Tavi said.
"But you do this at his bidding?" Varg pressed.
"Our people have a phrase, sir: It is easier to secure forgiveness than permission."
Varg's ears flicked in amusement. "Ah. What are your intentions for me?"
"I intend to get you out of this prison," Tavi said. "Then smuggle you out of the city. Then I will take you to the coast and return you to the commander of the Canim army who invaded two years ago. Hopefully, I'll be able to stop our people from tearing one another apart by doing so."
Varg's chest rumbled with a low growl. "Who leads my people in your land?"
"The warrior Nasaug," Tavi said.
Varg's ears suddenly swiveled toward Tavi, so alert that they quivered. "Nasaug is in Alera?"
Tavi nodded. "He offered to discuss a cessation of hostilities if you were returned to your people. I have come to do that."
Varg paced closer to the bars. "Tell me," he growled, "why I should trust you."
"You shouldn't," Tavi said. "I am your enemy, and you are mine. But by sending you back to your people, I help my own. Gadara or not, I need you returned to them, alive and healthy."
Varg's chest rumbled suddenly. "Gadara. You did not learn that word from me."
"No," Tavi said. "It is what Nasaug called me."
Steel suddenly rang on steel down the hallway, and flashes of colored light splashed onto the walls of the hallway, where the swords of metalcrafters clashed on the stairs.
Tavi gritted his teeth and turned back to Varg. "Do you want out of this hole or not?"
Varg bared his teeth in his imitation of an Aleran smile. "Open the door."
"First," Tavi said, "I will have your word."
Varg tilted his head.
"I'm the one who is getting you out of here, and I can't do it without your cooperation. If I let you out, you become part of my pack. If I tell you to do something, you do it, no questions or arguing-and I will have your word that you will do no harm to my people while you travel with me."
A scream echoed down the hall. There was a brief pause, then the flickering lights and steely chimes of swordplay resumed.
Varg stared at Tavi for what seemed like a week, though it could not have been more than a few seconds. "You lead," he growled. "I follow. Until you are unworthy of it."
Tavi bared his teeth. "That is insufficient."
"It is the oath my pack swears to me," Varg said. "I am Canim. I will stay in this hole and rot before I become something I am not."
Tavi closed his mouth again and nodded once. "But I will have your promise to do no harm to my people until you are returned to your own."
"Agreed," Varg said. "I will keep my word so long as you keep yours."
"Done," Tavi said.
This was the tricky part. Varg had never lied to Tavi, as far as the young man knew-but Tavi thought it more than a little possible that Varg might sacrifice his personal honor if he deemed it necessary to serve his people. Varg would never be able to escape Alera without help, and Tavi thought him smart enough to realize that-but Varg had shown him, more than once, that the Canim did not think the way Alerans did. Varg might have different thoughts than Tavi on the subject of his escape.
But there was no sense in backing out now.
Tavi thrust the key into the cell's door and unlocked it, opening it for Varg. He backed away as seven hundred pounds of fang, fur, and muscle squeezed sideways through the cell door.
Once free, Varg crouched, to put his eyes on level with Tavi's. Then, deliberately, he bowed his head to one side, more deeply than he had before. Tavi returned the gesture, instinctively making his own motion shallower, and Varg flicked his ears in satisfaction. "I follow, gadara."
Tavi nodded once. "This way," he said, and strode back down the hallway. The hairs on the back of his neck rose as he turned away from the Cane. If Varg intended to betray him, he would do it now.
A low coughing grunt, the Canim equivalent of laughter, came from behind Tavi.
"No, gadara" Varg growled. "The time to kill you has not yet come."
Tavi glanced over his shoulder and gave Varg an exasperated scowl. "How very reassuring."
Tavi drew his own sword as they reached the stairway and found Araris fighting to hold the landing. Two men in the armor of the Grey Guard were down, being hauled away by their companions, but the rest were dressed in little more than their breeches, their hair mussed from sleep. Most of the Guardsmen had been sound asleep when the alarm sounded and had simply seized their blades and come running.
Now, three men faced Araris, though they had to stand sideways on the stairs, pressed together in the tight space. They were fighting cautiously, and while they could not manage to break through Araris's defense without exposing their unarmored flesh to his blades, Araris could not get close enough to strike one without being faced with the two blades of his companions.
"We're ready!" Tavi shouted.
"Go, go!" Araris said. "Hurry, get clear!"
Tavi turned to face the steel portcullis and closed his eyes for a second or two, concentrating. He felt his awareness spread into the sword in his hand, and he could sense the air moving around it as if it had been his own hand. He focused on that awareness, reaching out to the blades timeless spirit, and poured his own effort and will into the steel, strengthening and sharpening it.
He let out a shout and struck at the portcullis, sure that the fury-enhanced blade would be able to cut them free within several strokes.
A virtual hurricane of sparks flew up where the blade contacted the portcullis, scarlet and blue and violet all mixed together, and Tavi felt the shock of impact lance up through the sword's blade and into his arm. It hurt, as if he'd slammed his unprotected fist into a brick wall, and he let out a snarl of pain.
The bars of the portcullis had not been severed. One of them evinced a slight gouge, but other than that, Tavi may as well have struck the furycrafted steel with a willow branch.
"They improved it," Tavi hissed, clutching at the wrist of his sword arm with his left hand. "They crafted the portcullis! I can't cut it!"
"I'm a little busy here," Araris snapped. "Do something!"
Tavi nodded once and sheathed his sword. The new gates, once dropped, had been fitted with a crafting that closed the stone behind them, so that there was no way to lift them again. They were simply locked into the stone around them and could not be moved until the building's furies were persuaded to open the stone above the gates once more. They could not be raised again-but that did not necessarily mean that they could not be moved.
Tavi seized the portcullis with both hands, planted his feet, and reached down into the stone beneath him. He drew upon that steady, constant strength, and felt it flooding up into him through his legs, hips, spreading over his chest and into his shoulders and arms. He gathered in as much of that power as he could, then gritted his teeth and heaved at the steel grate, attempting to wrench it free of the stone around it by sheer, brute force.
The gate's steel might have been crafted to resist the impact of fury-enhanced blades, but that didn't mean it could not be bent by power applied in a different way. The steel flexed slightly and quivered as Tavi pulled. It began to warp a little, no more than an inch or so, then Tavi found himself gasping, unable to sustain the effort. His breath exploded out of his lungs in a gasp, and the flexible steel of the grate flexed almost entirely back into its original shape. Its d
eformation was barely visible.
A huge, furred arm nudged Tavi gently aside, and Varg stepped up to the grate. The Cane narrowed his eyes, spreading his long arms out to grip the grate at one corner at its top, and the opposite corner at its bottom. Then he settled his feet, snarled, and wrenched at the grate.
For a second, nothing happened. Muscles corded and twisted beneath the Cane's thick fur, quivering with effort. Then Varg let out a roar of effort, and his hunched, powerful shoulders jerked.
There was a scream of tortured rock, and then the furycrafted stone wall of the hallway itself shattered. Pieces of stone went flying as the Cane ripped the steel grate clear of its stone frame.
Varg snarled, tilted the grate to get through the doorway to the stairs, and without preamble flung it over Araris's head and down upon the Guardsmen on the stairs.
Varg hadn't thrown it with any particular force, but the grate weighed several hundred pounds if it weighed an ounce, and it fell flat upon the unarmored guardsmen like some enormous flyswatter, pressing the struggling men down and pinning them.
Araris blinked at the grate, then at the Cane, his mouth opening slightly.
"Come on," Tavi snapped. "Before they get loose. We're leaving."
The Grey Tower's enhanced defenses had been designed to prevent anyone from leaving-but the logic behind its layout assumed that an escaping prisoner would run for the only exit-the front door. Now that the windows were covered with heavy bars, the only way out was through the front door, and the building's security plans had been designed to make it impossible for a prisoner to descend the stairway and exit the building. The heavy portcullis gates isolated each level of the prison from the stairway, and more cut the stairway off from the rest of the building, while still more heavy grates sealed the building's only exit, several floors below.
Which was why Tavi flung himself onto the stairs and sprinted up them, toward the roof.
He fervently hoped that Kitai and Isana's portion of the plan hadn't gone as badly wrong as theirs had-or this evening was going to come to an early, painful, and spectacularly bloody conclusion.
Chapter 35
Kitai's head whipped around as the alarm bells in the Grey Tower began to ring. She paced over to the edge of the rooftop, peered at the tower, and snorted. "I told him so. You were there."
Isana hurried to Kitai's side. The younger woman stared intently at the Grey Tower and shook her head. "We must hurry."
"What's happening?" Isana asked.
Kitai seized her pack, shrugged into it, and jogged toward the other side of the building. "Someone is ringing bells."
Isana bit down on a sharp retort and instead hurried after Kitai. "More specific, please."
"They went inside only moments ago, and the alarm has been raised. The Tower's defenses and guards have been alerted. They can only get out from the roof, and they must escape quickly if they are to escape at all-which means we must hurry." She lifted a hand and pressed it gently against Isana's chest. "Wait here," the Marat woman said. Then she took a pair of steps, her legs blurring with sudden haste, and flung herself off the top of the building. She bounded gracefully through the air, a full twenty feet or more, and landed on the top of the aqueduct that coursed through this part of the city and passed near the Grey Tower.
Kitai turned as if she did such things every day and promptly produced one of the coiled ropes from the case at her belt. She flung one end, lariat style, across the gap between the rooftop and the aqueduct, and Isana caught it. She blinked up at Kitai. "What do I do with it?"
"Slip one foot through the loop, like a horse's stirrup," Kitai said. "Hold tight with both hands. Then step off the building."
Isana blinked. She glanced over the rooftop's edge. It was a seven-story building, and the fall to the street below would be quite sufficient to crush the life from a woman of far more youth and agility than she. "Um," she said. "And then what?"
Kitai put an impatient hand on her hip. "And then I pull you up and we go help my chala."
Isana felt her mouth open. Kitai was not a large person. Certainly, she looked athletic and strong, but it was a slender strength one expected in a dancer or runner. The Marat were a physically formidable people, she knew, but all the same Isana was several inches taller than Kitai and outweighed her. Could the girl support such a weight?
The alarm bells continued to ring.
"Isana," Kitai hissed.
"All right," Isana said, flustered. Then she stepped up to the edge of the roof and slipped her foot through the loop. She pulled the rope tight against her foot, clutching hard with both hands at the level of her stomach.
It was a very, very long way to the ground.
She closed her eyes and stepped off the roof.
She felt Kitai pulling the rope tight even as Isana stepped into empty air, so that she did not fall, so much as swing down in a great, broad arch. The speed of it was dizzying, and she felt a small scream pulled from her lungs in pure reaction. She reached the top of the forward arch and fell backward, clinging desperately to the rope, then forward again. She spun wildly a few times, and then Isana realized that the rope was moving upward in short, solid jerks.
She opened her eyes and looked up to see Kitai, a dark shape against the pale stone of the aqueduct, hauling Isana upward, hand over hand, her feet planted firmly on the stone of the aqueduct. She pulled Isana up over the lip of the stone structure, and Isana managed to sprawl onto it, trembling, her foot tightly pinched by the lariat.
"Come," Kitai said quietly. "Hurry."
Isana freed her foot while Kitai recoiled her rope, then set off at a lope down the length of the aqueduct, which proved to be nothing more than an elevated stone trough carrying a steady volume of water as great as the mill stream back on her steadholt. There was a stone lip a foot wide on either side of the trough in the center, and Isana stepped up onto it and followed Kitai as quickly as she could manage. She kept her eyes focused ahead, on the Marat woman's back. If she looked over the edge of the aqueduct and saw how easy it would be to plunge to her death, she might not be able to make her feet keep moving.
Great furies grant that the wind didn't come up.
Or that her feet didn't strike a patch of slippery moss.
Or that her hammering heart didn't make her head go light for a moment, her balance wavery.
Or-
Isana ground her teeth and focused on Kitai's back and on keeping her own feet in motion.
Kitai came to a halt several dozen steps later, spreading her hands as a warning to Isana. Isana stopped as well, and Kitai said, "It's ahead of us."
"Very well," Isana said. She slipped off her shoes, closed her eyes in brief concentration, and reached out for her connection to Rill. Then she rucked up the skirts of her dress to her knees and stepped down into the stream of water in the aqueduct's trough.
The current was a strong, steady pressure along her calves, though not nearly enough to take Isana from her feet, provided she kept them braced strongly. The water had flowed down to the capital from the mountains many miles to the north, and it was bitingly cold. As Rill manifested around her, Isana gained the insight of her fury's senses, and she was surprised at how clean and fresh the water remained, despite its long trip through the aqueduct's channel.
The guardian fury in the water ahead appeared to her as a sudden, ugly sensation of pressure. An invisible presence in the water, she could sense its malice and its desire to do violence to any intruders. The water ahead suddenly thrashed, then a bow spray of freezing droplets rushed toward her in a line, as if she was being rushed by an unseen shark.
"You'd best get behind me just to be safe," Isana murmured, and Kitai hurried to comply.
Isana had no idea where the designers of the Tower's defenses had found such a vicious fury-or worse, what kind of mind it would take to reshape a natural fury into a dangerous beast-but she had dealt with stronger furies in the wilds of the Calderon Valley. She stood calmly before the oncomi
ng monster, and waited until the last possible moment to flick her wrist and send Rill against it.
Isana felt her senses join with her fury's, as Rill, her presence somehow warmer and denser than the cold animosity of the guardian, slammed against her foe. The water five feet in front of Isana erupted in a cascade of spray as the two furies wound around and through one another, currents of living water twining and intertwining like two impossibly elastic serpents.
Behind Isana, Kitai took in a sharp breath, but Isana was too involved in her connection to Rill to look back at the younger woman. Instead, she focused her senses and her will upon Rill, lending her own determination and confidence to the fury, fusing her thoughts and will with Rill's ever-mutable essence. One did not overcome a water fury by simple force of will, the way other furies might be mastered. Water furies could not be beaten down-only changed, redirected, absorbed. Together, Isana and Rill entangled the guardian fury, blended with it, and separated its cohesive essence, bleeding it away into the steady stream of the aqueduct, diluting it, while Rill's presence remained anchored to Isana's mind and will, holding its shape.
The waters thrashed for several seconds more, then they slowly began to subside as the guardian fury was dispersed into the current. Depending on how strong the guardian fury was, it could take anywhere from days to weeks for it to draw itself back into a cohesive being again-if it did so at all-but Isana felt no compunction about disabling such a dangerous being.
For goodness' sake, what if some foolish youths had gone running along the aqueduct purely out of the exuberance of their years, and not for any sinister purpose focused upon the Grey Tower? A fury like that could drown someone without enough power to fight it off, or strike out at an unsuspecting victim and send him tumbling from the aqueduct to the ground far below.
Isana sent Rill out ahead of them, questing around for any other hostile presence, but found nothing more than the faint traces that remained of the guardian. Then she turned to Kitai and nodded. "It's done."