by Jim Butcher
Tavi suppressed a surge of excitement and focused on his watercraft. The emotions of the mad cutter-and he had no doubt at all, now, that she was completely insane-washed over him in a fluttering tangle of sensation. It blended weirdly with his sense of the weapons in her hands.
"Phrygiar Navaris," Tavi said quietly, keeping his eyes on the center of her mass. Arm and hand motions could deceive, but real movement would always show in her center of balance.
She stared at him.
Any number of things could have caused the woman's madness and obsession, but some were still more likely than others: The deepest joys and most terrible wounds were both to be had from family.
The name Phrygiar, like every other metronym in the Realm, was an indicator of illegitimacy. Children who were not recognized by their fathers and admitted into their Houses legally became members of the "city-house" of whichever High Lord held authority over their birthplace.
That was why Max went by Antillar. His father, High Lord Antillus, had never legally recognized him. Never accepted him. It was fair to say that Max had been driven to a few extreme behaviors, largely in reaction to that fundamental insecurity, the old wound in his soul.
Tavi himself knew what it was like to grow up without a father. The absence had left an enormous hole in him, one that never seemed to completely fill again, and when something touched it, it was agony.
Oh, yes.
If he was right, he could hurt Navaris.
He could kill her with a breath.
"You can't win this fight," Tavi said quietly. "If you beat me, these walls will be overrun with Canim. Everyone will die."
"Probably," she replied, her voice entirely too calm. "But I'll take Araris first."
"Even if it kills you?"
"Yes."
"Why? What's the point?"
"To prove that I am the best," Navaris said. "The greatest blade Alera has ever known."
Tavi forced himself not to sound eager as he replied. "Prove to whom?" Tavi asked quietly.
Navaris did not answer. Pain mixed with the other emotions flooding from her.
"I grew up without a father, too," Tavi said.
Navaris stared. The miasma of her diseased spirit and mind thickened on the word father.
Tavi had been right.
He knew how much the slightest touch upon that old heartache could send him into a rage if he was not careful to contain it. Navaris bore a similar wound, but unlike Tavi, the cyclone of fury and hate that roared through her was barely under control on the best of days. True, her will was harder than diamonds- but Tavi was about to hit it at precisely the right angle.
The fight was over. She just didn't realize it yet.
"You aren't going to prove anything to your father, you know," Tavi said. "Even if you defeat Araris and me, you'll die here. The story of what happened will die here."
The tip of Navaris's long blade trembled.
"He didn't want you, Navaris. Do you think a mound of corpses will make him seek reconciliation? Do you think he'd run to wrap his loving arms around a bloodthirsty murderess?"
Navaris's eyes widened until Tavi could see the whites all the way around them, and she gnashed her teeth as an even greater wave of agony ran through her. The cutter's voice shook. "Stop it."
"He won't," Tavi said, pitiless and precise. "He never will. You've become a monster, and you'd bring nothing but shame to his House, just as you bring nothing but suffering to the world."
The cutter began to shake her head slowly, and her wide, mad eyes suddenly glistened.
The woman was in pain-old, old pain, the pain of a wounded child who couldn't understand why it was happening or how to recover from it. Tavi knew it. He'd known it all his life, and it suddenly became difficult to tell where Navaris's torment stopped and his own began.
The woman's pain fed upon itself, and Tavi felt his stomach turn with involuntary sympathy-but he forced himself to continue. "It doesn't matter how many you kill or whom you kill. You'll never be welcome."
She started taking heavy, labored breaths, though neither one of them had moved.
"Your entire life has been a lie. You are a lie, Navaris." He lowered his voice, and said, gently, "You're nothing to him. You are nothing, Navaris. Nothing but a mad, miserable animal who's got to be put down."
She let out a guttural moan through her open mouth, and the childlike grief suddenly fused with the berserk intensity of her hostility and rage, her self-control shattering into chips and shards.
Something strange happened.
Tavi, his crafting senses, both water and metal, focused simultaneously and more intently than ever before, felt the next stroke coming before the center of Navaris's body ever moved, as if her physical intentions had somehow been transmitted to him through her emotions.
Tavi could not say what had changed, precisely, but he knew, he absolutely knew that she was about to fling the dagger at his face and follow up with her sword in the instant of distraction it afforded her.
Tavi called upon the wind, and watched as Navaris's arm slowly rose and flicked forward. The dagger flickered end over end-but Tavi had already raised his gladius and cut the dagger from the air. Navaris's throat erupted in a howl of feral rage as she came forward, a lightning slash aimed for his throat.
It was the opening Tavi had been waiting for.
He'd practiced it so many times that he had no need to think about it, his body moving with automatic precision. As Navaris surged forward, Tavi let his weight drop, falling under her blade, his body angled on a diagonal to Navaris's line of attack. As his left hand hit the ground, he extended his right arm back, along his side, then snapped it forward in a single, deadly thrust.
His sword sank through her armor and body with effortless ease.
Navaris gasped, her tearing eyes widening. Tavi felt the motion of the exhalation travel up the blade to his hand.
She turned her eyes to him and swept her sword at him, but Tavi released the hilt of his long blade, leaving it buried in her body, and rolled away from the attack. He came to his feet at once, shifted the gladius to his right hand, and stood ready.
Phrygiar Navaris took one step toward him. Then another. She bared her teeth in a grimace of madness and hate, lifted her sword-
– and sank down like an emptied flagon. She lay on her side for a moment, eyes staring, and her arms and legs made fitful, twitching motions, as though she believed that she was still fighting.
Then she went still. Tavi felt the rage and pain and grief and terror continue to pour from her. In a few seconds, it died down to a trickle.
Then it stopped.
Tavi stared down at the cutter's corpse. Then he knelt and gently closed her empty, staring eyes. He couldn't remember ever feeling so weary-but his work wasn't done.
Tavi heaved himself to his feet and closed his eyes. He lifted his head to the stars and let the breeze blow the perspiration from his skin.
The wind blew, and silence ruled the night.
Chapter 56
Marcus did not find it difficult to reach his shooting position unseen.
There were grass and brush and trees enough to provide him with a frail woodcrafted veil, and shadows enough to cover what his crafting did not. Over the past two weeks, he'd managed to slip out of camp at night to practice with the Canim balest, and found the weapon accurate enough for his purposes.
Once he'd reached his position, he took a pair of clay jars from a belt pouch. He opened each one, careful to keep his nose and mouth well away from them, and took a single heavy steel bolt from the pouch. He dipped the tip of the bolt into each jar, then waved a hand, calling upon his earth fury, and the two jars and their lids sank gently down into the ground.
He set the bolt aside. Then he summoned up strength enough to haul the balest into its prepared position. It was an enormous strain, even with his fury-born strength, and he had to be cautious, move slowly, so that he wouldn't slip or lose his grip on the weapon, b
etraying his position as the bow staves snapped straight again.
Once that was done, he slid the poisoned bolt into its groove in the balest and hefted the weapon.
Silence reigned, the air thick with anticipation.
The duel was over.
Marcus lifted the weapon silently, his arms steady, and waited for the winner to appear.
Chapter 57
Isana told herself that she would not go to the duel, when there were still so many wounded to tend to. She threw herself into the work, sending her senses with Rill through each wounded body. A man named Foss, the officer in charge of the healer's corps, watched her with the first man he brought over, nodded his head, and promptly started barking orders.
Isana shortly found herself tending to men with the most dire and delicate of injuries. One poor soul's eyes had been viciously slashed by some weapon. Another young man had suffered what looked like a spear thrust through the genitals. A third had been treated for a cracked sternum, but hadn't regained consciousness-his first healer hadn't felt the bruising on his heart that made it labor unsteadily and insufficiently. Isana poured herself into her efforts and, at a steady pace, restored each man to health and exhausted sleep.
She didn't know how many men she worked on, but between efforts she dimly realized that she should have pushed herself to exhaustion after only a handful. She felt tired, of course, but the work seemed easier, swifter, as if her "touch" had become a dozen times more sensitive, allowing her to pinpoint precisely where the damage was, then to direct her fury's healing power with more precision and grace. Her talents had not grown, so much as she was taxing herself less to do the same amount of work.
"Last one," grunted an orderly, lowering another battered young body into the healing tub Isana was using. He was a young man, large and well muscled, and his legs, belly, and chest were covered in savage burns.
Isana winced, and was grateful that the poor legionare was unconscious. Burns like that would have left any conscious mind blind with agony, and if her ability to help the wounded had grown, their suffering had been that much more difficult to bear.
The legionare settled into the tub, and Isana supported his head, making sure he didn't slip under the water, and was startled to realize that she recognized the man.
It was Tavi's friend, Max.
She closed her eyes and went to work with steady, determined patience. Burns were some of the worst wounds to heal-she would have said the worst, until she had spent weeks in nearly constant crafting, dealing with an infection brought on by rancid garic oil introduced into a wound.
Though burns were not that festering nightmare, they were bad enough, and the drain upon the wounded Max would be tremendous, even dangerous. She turned her attention to the maimed flesh and, with Rill's help, got things sorted out. She reduced the damage as much as she could, to the point where she believed it would leave no hideous scarring, but felt the young man's strength waning and dared not press for more.
She leaned back from her efforts and nodded wearily to the orderly. She sat back as Max was taken to a bed, and dried her hands on a towel.
"My lady," said a voice behind her. "If you ever want a job, I can offer you the rank of senior subtribune and start you at the maximum pay grade."
Isana turned to find Foss watching them carry Max off and shaking his head. "Crows," the Legion healer said. "In a rational world, you'd get my job."
She smiled wearily at him. "Thank you, Tribune. I'm sure you could have done as much."
Foss snorted. "You gave a man back his eyes, my lady. That's fine work, and I've known maybe two or three healers in my life who could do that, and one of them was a High Lady. You did more work than any three of my healers, and in half the time. You have a remarkable gift." He bowed his head to her. "Thank you."
She blinked at him several times and felt somewhat flustered. "I… You're quite welcome."
Foss nodded and offered her his hand. "We'd better get moving. It's almost time."
"Time?" Isana asked.
"The trial, my lady."
Isana frowned and shivered. As she worked, she'd all but forgotten the duel. Perhaps she'd been hoping that it would be over by the time she'd emerged from all the crafting.
If so, she thought, then she had been wrong to think it. Her son was about to fight for his life-for all of their lives-and she should be there.
The duel was the most elated, ecstatic nightmare she had ever experienced.
The crowd's emotion was a violent sea, a seething cauldron. If she hadn't worked herself to near exhaustion, she would have run screaming for the nearest dark hole-which would have looked rather unladylike, all things considered. As it stood, a bodyguard of eight legionares waited outside the healer's tent, evidently assigned as her escort. Each of the men was rather young, though they all had the hardened look of men accustomed to war, and the breast of their armor was decorated not with the red-and-blue eagle of the Crown, but with a similarly depicted black crow.
The crowd parted for her as she approached, and she felt them all around her, people buzzing with excitement and hope, with despair and fear-and with interest.
For her, specifically.
Faces turned toward her, and voices were raised in excitement. Legionares and trapped camp followers alike pressed closer, trying to see her, and to her intense embarrassment, the crowd actually sent up a cheer.
The solid forms of her guards gently kept the onlookers from getting too close, but a slender figure slid between the two in front, and Ehren smiled at her. "My lady," he said, bowing his head as he went to her side.
"My goodness," Isana said, looking around her uncertainly. "Ehren…"
"They know," he said. "Everyone in the camp knows, my lady, since all the truthfinders took testimony. No story that juicy was going to stay secret for long."
"I see," she said.
"Tavi-" Ehren caught himself and shook his head. "Octavian asked me to stand with you."
"I'd be glad of your company," Isana said quietly. She kept walking, as more people gathered around, staring at her in the dim light of both torches and small, household furylamps. "This is a very strange experience."
"I can imagine," Ehren said. "But if things go well, this is nothing compared to what you'll see in the streets of Alera Imperia someday."
"Oh dear," Isana said.
They took her to a small, open area directly before the wall where the duel was to take place. There was quiet talk all around her, but she paid little attention to it. She focused only upon the two men who began climbing a ladder.
The next few moments passed in eerie silence, as the taller of the two men began to limber up, stretching. The tension of the crowd rose steadily, until Isana felt sure that if she suddenly dropped unconscious, it would hold her upright where she stood.
Then her son followed Nalus out onto the wall, and faced the slender woman who had nearly killed them only hours before. There was brief talk. There was counting.
Kitai's voice rang out in sudden scorn and defiance, and the gathered crowd roared its fear and tension and expectation into the cool night air.
The two combatants came together, and Isana had never seen anything so bright and beautiful and terrifying. Tavi's weapons erupted in scarlet and azure sparks, while flashes of brilliant, bilious green showered from Navaris's blades. The light was blindingly bright, and every flash left a spot of color burned onto Isana's vision.
She had never seen anyone move so swiftly as Phrygiar Navaris, and she could hardly believe that her son could withstand such speed and fury. They fought in constant, graceful motion, dancelike and deadly, four blades spinning and whirling and thrusting, and the ring of steel on steel, with its accompanying flash of light, grew swifter and swifter.
She could only stare, terrified and fascinated, and if the steadily thickening silence from the crowd was any indication, they felt the same way.
Navaris nearly drove Tavi from the wall, and her heart caught in her
throat. Then she saw him turn, somehow impossibly slipping aside from Navaris's blade, and bound through the air like a hunting cat, leaping several yards to land on the roof of another building.
Navaris followed him over, and then the pair of them were out of sight of the crowd below. Steel chimed on steel as swiftly as a drumroll, echoing strangely through the ruins. Spectral light flashed through the air, casting stillborn shadows, gone as quickly as they appeared. Stones clattered to the ground, all dull cracking sounds and heavy thumps of impact.
Isana couldn't breathe. She became vaguely aware of a sharp pain in her hands, and idly thought that her nails had begun biting into her own flesh. The crowd's growing tension and excitement felt as though it could have drawn blood as well. She stared at the roof, hoping, willing it to be over.
The swords stopped ringing. The lights stopped flashing.
Isana heard herself moan in her throat.
Silence stretched on and on.
Then there was an enraged scream, a sound so raw, so full of madness and rage that she could hardly believe it had come from a human throat.
Light flashed but once more.
Silence fell.
"Tavi," Isana heard herself whisper. "Oh, my Tavi."
The crowd remained perfectly still, as motionless as the stones of the ruins around them, and even more silent. It was unbearable to Isana, that tension, and she found herself rocking forward and back where she stood, fighting against the tears that blurred her vision.
"Tavi," she whispered.
And then Marat war cries filled the air.
The barbarians sent up a joyous howling upon their rooftop. The wild, fierce cries of their people danced among the stones. Isana stared, stunned, her mind only sluggishly processing the meaning behind the sounds.
Tavi.
They were cheering for Tavi.
Her son appeared at the edge of the rooftop, and the ruined city went wild.
Alerans cried out in a great roar. Legionares began slamming their fists to their chests in rhythmic thunder. Somewhere in the ruins, horses screamed out shrill cries of challenge. Dogs kept by the camp followers set up a howling chorus of their own. Legion drummers pounded on their instruments in glee, and Legion trumpeters sounded their horns. The noise was so loud that a section of ruined wall not far from Isana trembled and collapsed.