by Jim Butcher
Ibrus scowled, then rolled his eyes. "Siggy."
The big man held out his hand, and Ehren tossed him the purse. Siggy dumped the coins out in his palm, looked at them, and then dumped them back into the purse, which he handed to Ibrus with a nod.
"There's not going to be much to choose from," Ibrus warned him. "The Free Alerans were grabbing anything they could get their hands on."
"What have you got?" Ehren asked. The two men got down to haggling over horses.
As they did, Isana became increasingly aware of the discrepancy between Ibrus's manner and his actual state of mind. That was nothing unusual, really. Most people could dissemble reasonably well, in that sense. After all, it was part of being polite and showing common courtesy to others. But ever since her venture into the leviathan-haunted sea, her watercrafting senses had become increasingly fine, able to distinguish details and nuance with greater and greater clarity. Ibrus's emotions were not simply a repressed reaction he preferred not to display. He was actively worried, impatient, and increasingly frightened.
"You're expecting someone," Isana said sharply.
The conversation stopped, and every pair of eyes in the room turned to her.
She hadn't meant to say it aloud, but the die was cast. She stepped forward, locking her gaze to Ibrus's and spoke clearly. "Who are you expecting, Ibrus? Why does a simple horse trade frighten you so?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Ibrus replied.
Tavi's eyes narrowed. He traded a quick glance with Isana, and said, "You're sweating, Ibrus. Even though it's a lovely, cool evening."
Araris, who had become motionless once Isana began speaking, abruptly moved. His sword cleared its sheath as he spun, and the blade struck through what looked like empty air.
A spray of blue sparks and a ribbon of blood spilled forth from nowhere, splattering the floor and Ibrus's fancy robes. There was a cry of pain and a man appeared, tall, slender, dressed in mail, and bearing a sword. Araris's blade had sheared through his armor like a knife through cheese, and a long, gaping wound in the metal links was matched by the far more gruesome wound in the flesh beneath. The man went down, screaming, dropping his sword to clutch at the innards spilling from his belly.
Isana recognized the man. He had been one of Senator Arnos's singidares.
Which meant…
There was an enormous roar of shattering stone, and the wall nearest the party suddenly fell inward, toward them, shattering along the way. Isana saw Araris leap back-directly into Tavi, pushing him away from the falling stone. Araris went down underneath the fall of white marble and screamed.
Isana found herself falling backward, and realized that Kitai had seized her by the back of her dress and hauled her away from the deadly rain of marble. Ehren flung himself into a neat forward roll, toward Ibrus, and when he came to his feet again, the young Cursor sank one of his knives to the hilt in Ibrus's throat.
Siggy whirled toward him and leapt on Ehren, flattening the smaller man to the floor. He seized Ehren's throat between two huge hands, and Isana saw the young man's face turn purple.
She rolled and came to her knees, then gestured at the fountain of stagnant water and called to Rill.
A jet of water leapt from the pool and flashed across the room. It slammed into Siggy's maimed face and simply clung to his head, filling his, eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. The big man released Ehren's throat in a panic, reaching up to claw uselessly at the water covering his face.
Ehren arched his body and threw Siggy off him. Before the big man could fully settle to the floor, Ehren had produced another knife and flicked its razor-sharp blade across Siggy's throat.
The man's terror flooded over Isana, layer after layer of it, like a landslide of some kind of hideous, stinking mud. It weighed her down relentlessly, magnified by her contact with the dying man, but she kept the tendril of water on his face until his movements went frantic, then suddenly slackened, his fear abruptly vanishing.
Isana released the crafting with a sob and began to struggle to her feet, calling for Tavi. Just as she did, someone smashed the furylamp, which rose up into a brief column of fire and vanished, leaving the ruined house in utter darkness.
Sparks leapt up across the room for a moment as blade met blade, showing Isana a flash image-Araris, his lower legs pinned beneath the rubble of the fallen wall, and another large, muscular man, also one of the Senator's bodyguards, standing over him with a great war hammer raised over his head.
Isana cried out. In the renewed darkness, she could not see her target, so she did the only thing she could think of. With Rill's help, she seized the entire contents of the stagnant pool and flung them in a single, coherent mass toward the man about to kill Araris.
There was an enormous slap-splashing sound and a cry of surprise. Another flash of sparks showed her the man lying dazed on the ground several feet away, and a drenched Araris choking and coughing.
Then someone with an iron grip seized her by the hair. They jerked back on her head, snapping it back to a painful angle, and then a line of fine, deadly cold settled across her throat. Isana froze in place.
Her captor and she sat motionless in the dark for a time, until finally a cold, female voice said, "Get the light back on and report."
Someone produced a pair of small furylamps and set them on the floor nearby, and Isana could see what was left.
Araris lay on the floor, still trapped from the knees down. His hands were empty and spread, and a man stood over him with the tip of a long blade resting in the hollow of Araris's throat.
The man with the huge hammer looked up from lighting the furylamps. "Aresius is dead," he said, his tone neutral. "So are both locals. We've taken two prisoners."
The woman holding Isana said, "Scipio? The Cane?"
The man with the war hammer swallowed. "Gone."
Her captor suddenly pulled hard on Isana's hair, flinging her onto her back on the ground. The tip of a sword came to rest upon her cheekbone, and Isana found herself facing Phrygiar Navaris.
Navaris looked the worse for wear. The skin of her face was peeling, badly, and looked as if it had been blistered. Her short hair was burned to a lighter color, similarly, and her hands and arms told the same tale of too much sun and the exquisitely painful consequences.
"Steadholder," Navaris murmured. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill both of you. Right here. Right now."
Chapter 43
Tavi had been unable to sense anything of Ibrus's emotions as the man spoke with Ehren. That was hardly unusual. His own watercrafting senses were still somewhat clumsy, certainly in comparison to those of a real watercrafter, like his mother. But all the same, something about their situation had made him uneasy, and when his mother had confronted Ibrus, he was more than willing to back her.
Then Araris had moved, his sword screaming from its sheath and drawing blood from a man who had kept a windcrafted veil wrapped around himself even as he slipped up closer to their group-specifically, toward Tavi.
Tavi drew his sword, but even as he did, he felt a surge of power shiver through the ground beneath him, and then the head of an all-metal war maul smashed through the nearest wall as if it had been made of beeswax. The whole wall came down, all at once under a wave of earthcrafted power, spreading out from the opening created by the blow of the hammer.
Tavi hardly registered what was happening before Araris slammed into his chest, sending him reeling back from the falling stone. The singulare cried out as hundreds of pounds of rock fell on him.
Tavi got to his feet just as Ehren sprinted by him. He felt a thrum of tension in the air behind him, and turned just in time to meet a descending blade with his own. Steel rang on steel, and Tavi found himself facing Phrygiar Navaris.
The woman's face was peeling, the skin red, and healing from what must have been blisters-but her eyes were still just as cold, and her sword moved in a shining blur as she instantly recovered from the parried blow and sent another attack
snaking toward him.
Tavi had no time to think about defenses or lessons. Pure instinct guided his arm as he blocked a deadly combination, barely sliding out of the last attack, a cut that turned into a thrust that came slithering toward his belly. Seemingly of its own accord, his hand lashed out as Navaris leaned into the thrust, and his fist struck her in the mouth. She whipped her head aside at the last second, and the blow landed with little force-but her eyes burned with a sudden cold fury.
Tavi found himself forced back on his heels as blow after blow rained down on him. What counterattacks he could manage were weak, and Navaris slapped them aside almost contemptuously. Tavi's heart pounded in terror. He barely caught blow after blow, turning them aside by the barest of margins. Twice, Navariss sword actually struck his mail shirt, severing rings and sending them bouncing to the ground with sharp, tinkling sounds, and if he escaped with his flesh unbroken, it seemed little more than a stroke of inordinate fortune.
Navaris howled, and her blade blurred even faster. Tavi suddenly became aware that he had fallen out of the smooth rhythm that he had instinctively grasped and used to defend himself, that Navariss sword had begun to move more evasively, that he was losing track of its motion.
At last, he was slow to recover from a particularly strong parry, and Navariss eyes blazed as she struck his blade aside, leaving him wide open as her sword descended for a killing stroke.
"Aleran!" Kitai cried. He saw her sword tumble by, spinning, thrown with the inordinate strength of an earthcrafter. It missed Navaris by three feet-
– and smashed into the room's sole furylamp.
The room plunged into darkness.
Tavi dropped straight down, and felt Navariss sword pass through the air where he'd just been standing.
Navaris cursed, and he felt her slow down, trying to locate him, to feel where his sword was. Struggling went on in the darkness. Someone was thrashing around. A man shouted, and he heard the heavy thud of exchanged blows, flesh on flesh. Then Navaris hissed, and Tavi felt her sword coming at him, a disc of cold, deadly steel inscribed on his mind by the course of her blade.
The force behind the blow was terrible, both physically and in the weight of furycraft behind it, infusing the steel with all the strength of her mad will. Tavi would have to meet that strength with his own, or Navariss sword would shatter Tavi's-and Tavi would find himself shattered shortly after.
He spun, putting his strength and weight behind his blade, swinging in a stroke that would meet Navaris's squarely, furiously focused on his own sword.
The blades met. Steel chimed on steel, a note that was high and pure and piercing. A blinding shower of sparks erupted from the meeting blades, and Tavi saw a frozen image of the room: Navaris, her teeth clenched in hate. Kitai, bleeding from a split lip, struggling with an armored man for possession of a sword. Isana, kneeling, her expression colder and more terrible than he would have believed possible, a hand extended toward a man who thrashed on the ground, his face completely covered by a blob of dirty water.
Then the darkness returned, and Tavi moved a few steps to one side before freezing again. He clenched his teeth in frustration. The others needed his help, but he didn't dare move toward them. The sound would have told Navaris precisely where he stood, and if he didn't have every bit of his attention focused on her, he'd never be able to defeat her attack.
Again, Navaris's sword came at him, and again, he met it with his own. In the flash of contact, he saw the other armored man flying back through the air and Varg standing over Kitai, his arms extended. Ehren lay unmoving on the floor. Araris's body was arched up in effort, or in pain, as he struggled to free his legs from the rubble.
Tavi took two steps back and froze again, mentally cursing, as he desperately sought Navaris's next attack.
He was utterly unprepared when an enormous hand landed on his shoulder, and only the sudden rusty-musty scent of the Cane's fur prevented him from turning and thrusting in sheer panic.
"Aleran," Varg growled. "It is over. Come with me."
"Go," Tavi whispered.
Varg kept his paw-hand on Tavi's shoulder, roughly directing him. Tavi had to put his trust in the Cane's guidance. If he felt his way along with tentative steps, Navaris could close the distance and kill him-but without someone to guide her own feet, she wouldn't dare rush after him blind. So Tavi broke into a run and trusted Varg to guide his steps.
They emerged into the comparative brightness of the outdoors, and Kitai was coming hard behind them, weaponless, carrying Ehren slung over one of her shoulders.
Tavi took the lead, taking them around the corner of the house, where they would be out of sight of the house's entrance.
"Ehren," Tavi breathed.
Kitai put him down carefully, supporting his mostly limp weight. The little Cursor sucked in his breath as if through a tiny reed, a strangled rattle accompanying it. There were bruises on his throat that were already darkening, and it was entirely possible his windpipe had been crushed. His eyes were glazed and unfocused, while his chest labored to bring in enough air.
"What do we do?" Kitai asked.
"He needs a watercrafter," Tavi said.
Yarg knelt down in front of Ehren and peered at his throat. Then he growled, "Give me a quill."
"What?"Tavi asked.
Kitai slung her pack off and reached into it. She opened the pack and produced a writing quill.
Yarg took it, and with a quick motion of his claws snipped the quill about two inches from its end. He held it up to the light and squinted at it.
Then he reached down with a single claw and ripped open Ehren's throat.
Tavi cried out, reaching for Varg's wrist. The Cane growled, and said, "There is no time for this."
Tavi stared at Varg for a moment, then leaned back on his heels, and nodded once.
Varg leaned down and thrust a claw into the open wound. Then, his motions delicate in one so large, he thrust the quill into the cut.
Ehren shuddered and drew in a sudden, deep breath. It hissed through the hollow quill, and then hissed again as he exhaled. His breathing slowed and steadied. He blinked his eyes several times, focusing slowly.
"It is dirty," Varg rumbled. "But there was no time to clean it before he would have died. Perhaps your sorceries can cleanse the wound, later." He took Ehren's hand and lifted his fingers to the protruding end of the quill. "Hold this in. If it comes out, you die."
Ehren, pain in his expression, stared up at the Cane and nodded.
"We must go back for them," Kitai whispered.
Tavi held up his hand and whispered back. "We've only got one sword among us, and they have hostages. If we go in again, they'll use Araris and Isana against us. Assuming they don't kill them out of hand."
Kitai bared her teeth in a silent snarl of frustration.
Tavi chewed on his lip, thinking furiously. Then he nodded and looked at Varg. "Ibrus said he had horses. They must be close. Take these two and find them."
"You can't go back alone," Kitai hissed.
Tavi met her eyes, and said, "We aren't going to be able to take them back by force. And whatever happens, we'll need the horses-who won't let Varg handle them. Ehren can't do it either. So go. Now."
Kitai scowled furiously at him, but then she rose and offered Ehren a hand up. Varg lifted his head, sniffed the air for a few seconds, and started off at a shambling lope. Kitai, staying close to Ehren, followed the Cane.
Tavi took off his belt, bent over at the waist, and wriggled out of his mail shirt, letting it fall to the ground. Though it would have provided him some protection in the event of a fight, it also would make noise when he moved. For the moment, stealth was at a premium.
He buckled his sword belt on again and stalked through the darkness back to Ibrus's house, creeping forward until he crouched beneath one of the broken windows outside of the entry hall. There were two small furylamps inside, casting a dim red-orange glow.
"Steadholder," Navaris murmured
, as Tavi approached. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill both of you. Right here. Right now."
Tavi's stomach got a sick, sinking feeling. He put his hand on his sword. If it came to that, he would attack them before he stood by and let them kill his mother and his friend.
"Did you hear me, Steadholder?" Navaris said. "This isn't a rhetorical question. If there is some reason I should leave you alive, you should tell me."
Tavi drew the blade perhaps two inches from its sheath.
"I suppose that depends," Isana responded. Her voice was steady, confident.
Tavi froze again.
"Upon what?" Navaris asked.
"How loyal you are to the Senator."
Silence.
"I know who he serves," Isana continued. "Invidia Aquitaine is, in fact, my patron, too. I doubt she'll thank Arnos for interfering in my work. I shudder to think of her reaction should he actually eliminate me."
More silence.
"I spent nearly a year campaigning for the abolition of slavery for Lady Aquitaine and the Dianic League," Isana replied. "And the last six months I've been visiting members of the League raising funds and supplies for the refugee camps. The wives of every Count, Lord, and High Lord from here to Riva have met with me, given me money-and know I was coming to the Elinarch. Are you sure he's willing to be implicated in my death?"
"You're lying," the cutter said.
"Can you afford to assume that?" Isana's tone turned frank. "Do you want to make that decision for him, Navaris?"
Tavi felt his mouth stretch into a grin.
"And the singulare?" Navaris asked. "Why should I spare him?"
"Scipio is his friend," Isana replied. "Dead, he's of no further use to you. Alive, he's a hostage."
"Dead, he's of no further threat to me, either," Navaris murmured.
"I can't argue with that," Isana said. "I'd be afraid of him, too. Particularly if I was you."
Navaris's voice turned very quiet. "Particularly?"
"Yes. It must be difficult for you in some ways. After all, you've won more duels than Araris Valerian ever fought. You've certainly killed many more armed foes than he ever did. Yet I should think that you've lived your whole life in his shadow. He has such a name, after all. No matter how many times you prove it, he'll still be the best in everyone's mind." She let that sink in for a moment before she said, "If you fight him and lose, well. That would prove it for certain."