Tavi gently put Killian"s hand back down, frustration and pain a storm in his chest. Helpless. He had watched as the old man died, and there was not a b.l.o.o.d.y thing he could have done to help him.
He turned away and went to Kitai. She lay on her side, half-curled upon herself. Her eyes were closed now, her breath coming in swift rasps. He touched her back, and could feel the frenzied pounding of her heartbeat. Tavi bit his lip. She"d been bitten many more times than the Maestro. She was younger than Killian, and unwounded, but Tavi did not know if it would make any difference in the end.
He took Kitai"s hand, and now he did weep. His tears fell to the tiled mosaic floor. Pain stabbed at his heart with every beat. Rage followed close behind it. If only he could perform watercrafting like Aunt Isana. He might be able to help Kitai. Even if he wasn"t as powerful as his aunt, he might be able to help her remain alive until help came. If he had even a laughable talent with watercrafting, he could have at least given Killian some water.
But he had none of that.
Tavi had never felt more useless. He"d never felt more powerless. He held her hand and stayed with her. He had promised her that she would not be alone. He would stay with her to the end, regardless of how painful it would be to watch her die. He could, at least, do that.
And then the door to the meditation chamber exploded from its hinges and slammed flat to the stone floor.
Tavi jerked his head up. Had the Guard arrived at last?
The taken Cane stepped onto the fallen door and swept its bloodred gaze around the chamber. The Cane was wounded, blood wetting the fur of its chest and one thigh. It was missing one ear completely, and a slash to its face had opened one side of its muzzle to the bone and claimed one of its eyes.
For all of that, it moved as if it felt no pain at all. Its eye settled on Max. Then on Gaius. It looked back and forth between them for a moment, then turned and stalked forward, toward Max.
Tavi"s heart erupted with pure terror, and for a moment he thought he might swoon. The Canim had gotten by Fade and Miles. Which meant that they were probably dead. And it meant that the guard was not closing in to save them.
Tavi was on his own.
Chapter 54
Tavi looked down at Kitai. At Max. At Gaius.
The Cane stalked forward with a predator"s deadly beautiful grace. It was so much larger than he, stronger, faster. He had little chance of surviving a battle with the Cane, and he knew it.
But if it was not stopped, the Cane would kill the helpless souls behind him. Tavi"s imagination provided him a vivid image of the carnage. Max"s throat torn out, his corpse grey-skinned from blood loss. Gaius"s entrails spilling forth from his ravaged body. Kitai"s head lying a few feet away from her body, cut away by the Cane"s curved blade.
Tavi"s fear vanished utterly.
All that remained was the red-misted haze of rage.
He released Kitai"s hand. His fingers closed hard around the hilt of the First Lord"s blade as he rose, and he felt his mouth stretch into a fighting grin. He raised the sword to a high guard, both hands on the hilt. A healthy Canim warrior would have torn him limb from limb, literally. But this one was not healthy. It was injured. And while he could never hope to overpower the Cane, his sword was sharp, his limbs were quick, and his mind quicker. He could outthink the creature, fight it with not only strength but with guile. His eyes flicked around the room, and his grin became fiercer.
And then he gave his rage a voice, howling at the top of his lungs, and attacked.
The Cane bared its teeth and swept its curved blade at Tavi as he came in, its height giving it a deadly advantage in reach. Tavi met the slash with his sword, both hands gripping it as tightly as he could. The Cane"s scarlet blade rang against Aleran steel. Tavi felt the bone-deep shock of the impact all the way up to both shoulders, but he stopped the Cane"s heavy blade cold, beat it aside, and reversed the sword into a horizontal slash. The blow struck sparks from the Cane"s mail, severing a dozen links that sprang away from the armor and rang tinnily as they struck the stone floor.
Tavi dared not close to more exchanges of main force. His fingers were already tingling. Another blow or two like that from the Cane and he wouldn"t be able to hold a sword-but the first such attack had been necessary.
Tavi had proven himself a threat, and the Cane turned to engage him.
The Cane"s counterattack was quick, but Tavi continued his movement past the wolf-warrior, circling to the side of the Cane"s wounded leg to force it to turn on the injured limb. It slowed the Cane, and Tavi ducked under the scything blade and struck again, a heavy slash that landed hard on the foot of the Cane"s unwounded leg. Tavi rose from that strike in a two-handed upward slash that might have opened his foe from groin to chestubut the Cane blocked Tavi"s attack, flicked his sword to one side, and surged toward him in a primal a.s.sault, teeth snapping.
The Cane was far too swift for its size; but with both legs injured, its balance was precarious, and Tavi managed to jerk his face back and away from the Cane"s jaws before they snapped shut. He felt a flash of heat over one eye, then fell into a backward roll, toward Killian"s body, tucking himself into a ball until he came back up to his feet. Tavi brought his sword up to guard almost before he was finished with the roll, and he managed to deflect the Cane"s sword as it swept straight down at his skull.
The Cane snapped at his face once more. Tavi ducked under the Cane"s foaming jaws to come up on the creature"s opposite side-its blind side. The Cane slashed wildly toward him, but the blow came nowhere close, and it whirled to snap at him with its teeth once more, swift and monstrously strong-and blind. Tavi shifted his grip on the First Lord"s blade and drove its pommel forward with another battle cry. The weighted metal hammered into the Cane"s snapping jaws, and fragments of broken teeth flew up from the blow.
The taken Cane whipped its head back and forth with a high-pitched snarl of pain, evidently more than even the vord taker could totally suppress. Tavi took the opportunity to drive a short, hard slash into the Cane"s muzzle. The blow was not a forceful one, but it sliced into the Cane"s blunt nose, and drew another howl of agony from the creature. It staggered back, as Tavi had intended, slipping on the blood beside Killian"s corpse. Its feet slipped and twisted treacherously as it snarled in maddened rage and raised the curved sword again.
In the time that took, Tavi danced once more to its blind side, out onto the tiles of the map-mosaic of Alera itself. He struck across the Cane"s throat, splitting its leather war collar with the First Lord"s blade. The flesh beneath opened it in a fountain of gore. The taken Cane swept its blade in a wide slash, but slowed by its injuries and its uncertain footing, Tavi ducked it easily enough-and then he screamed out his defiance as he drove the tip of the sword into the Cane"s chest.
Mail rings shattered and scattered over the tiles as the First Lord"s sword bit deep. The Cane hacked down at him, but Tavi pressed in close, inside the effective arc of the blade. He felt a fiery flash on the calf of one leg, and heard himself screaming and howling as he forced himself hard against the Cane, driving his sword deeper, shoving the much larger creature into a backward stumble.
The Cane, lamed in both legs, slipping on b.l.o.o.d.y tiles, went down with a crash of mail. Tavi, holding on to the hilt of the sword, came down on top of his opponent. The Cane tried once more to tear at Tavi with its teeth, but the vicious power of the thing was fading by the heartbeat, as blood spilled from its throat.
Still screaming, Tavi slammed himself against the sword, trying to drive it deeper, to pin the Cane down to the stone of the floor if need be. If he let it rise, the Cane could still murder Gaius or Max or Kitai, and he was determined that it would not happen.
He wasn"t sure how long he struggled to keep the thing down, but at some point he found himself lying still atop an unmoving foe, his breathing labored. The Cane"s lips were peeled back from its fangs in death, and its remaining eye was gla.s.sy. Tavi rose slowly, aching in every limb. The wild energy of the battle fever he"d felt was gone, and he was cut both on his forehead and on his leg. He wasn"t bleeding badly from either injury, but he felt himself shaking in sheer exhaustion.
He"d done it. Alone. Had the Cane not been already injured, or had he not exploited its injuries, he might not have survived the battle. But he, Tavi, alone, without furies of his own, without allies, had overcome one of the monstrous warriors in open battle.
He heard footsteps outside, coming down the stairway.
Tavi took a deep breath. He reached down to the sword, and with an enormous effort he hauled it from the Cane"s corpse. His wounded leg buckled, but he brought the sword upright into his hands, most of the weight on his back leg, the other planted on the fallen Cane"s chest as he waited for whatever else might come.
The footsteps grew louder, and Fade, his slave"s rough clothing covered in blood, leapt down the last several steps, blade in hand. He let out a cry and threw himself toward the doorway, but came to a sharp halt as he saw the room beyond. Behind him, several of the Royal Guard, one of them a.s.sisting Sir Miles, came running down the stairs as well. Miles hobbled over to the door at once, ordering guards out of his way-and then he, too, stopped, staring at Tavi with his mouth open.
Tavi faced them all for a second, sword in hand, and it registered slowly on him that it was over. The battle was over, and he had survived it. He let out a slow breath, and the sword fell from his suddenly nerveless hands. His balance wobbled, and he abruptly forgot how to stand upright.
Fade"s sword clanged as it hit the floor, and he was underneath Tavi before the boy could fall.
"I"ve got you," Fade said quietly. He lowered Tavi gently to the floor. "You"re wounded."
"Kitai," Tavi panted. "Poisoned. She"ll need help. Max still wounded. Killian..." Tavi closed his eyes, to avoid looking at the Maestro"s still form. "The Maestro is dead, Fade. Poisoned. The spiders outside. Nothing got to Gaius."
"It"s all right," Fade said. He murmured something, then pressed the mouth of a flask to his lips. Tavi drank the lukewarm water thirstily. "Not too fast. Thank the great furies, Tavi," Fade said as he drank. "I"m sorry. One of the Canim threw himself on my sword to let another go past me. I got here as swiftly as I could."
"Don"t worry about it," Tavi told him. "I got him."
Tavi could hear the sudden, fierce smile on Fade"s mouth as he spoke. "Yes. You did. There are watercrafters and healers on the way, Tavi. You"ll be all right."
Tavi nodded wearily. "If it"s all the same to you, I"m just going to sit here for a minute. Rest my eyes until they get here." He leaned his head back against the wall, exhausted.
Tavi didn"t hear if Fade made any reply before he gave himself to sleep.
Chapter 55
"... absolute mystery to me how the girl survived it," Tavi heard a sonorous male voice saying. "Those creatures poisoned two dozen guardsmen, and even with watercrafters at hand, only nine of them survived."
"She is a barbarian," replied a voice Tavi recognized. "Perhaps her folk aren"t as susceptible."
"She seemed more like one who has endured it before," the first voice said. "Gained a resistance to it through exposure. She was already conscious again by the time we began to treat her, and she needed almost no a.s.sistance. I"m certain she would have been all right without our help."
The first voice grunted, and Tavi opened his eyes to see Sir Miles speaking quietly with a man in an expensive silk robe worn over rather plain, st.u.r.dy trousers and shirt. The man glanced at him and smiled. "Ah, there you are, lad. Good morning. And welcome to the palace infirmary."
Tavi blinked his eyes a few times and looked around him. He was in a long room lined with beds, curtains hung between each. Most of the beds were occupied. The windows were open, a pleasant wind stirring them gently, and the scent of recent rain and flowering plants, the scent of spring filled the room. "G-good morning. How long have I been asleep?"
"Nearly a full day," the healer replied. "Your particular injuries were not threatening, but you had so many of them that they amounted to quite a strain. You"d gotten some of that spider venom into some of your wounds as well, though I don"t think you"d been bitten. Sir Miles ordered me to let you sleep."
Tavi rubbed his face and sat up. "Sir Miles," he said, inclining his head. "Is Kitai... the First Lord... Sir, is everyone all right?"
Miles nodded to the healer, who took it as a hint to depart. The man nodded and clapped Tavi"s shoulder gently before making his way down the row of beds, attending to other patients.
"Tavi," Miles asked quietly, "did you slay that Cane we found you on top of?"
"Yes, sir," Tavi said. "I used the First Lord"s blade."
Miles nodded, and smiled at him. "That was boldly done, young man. I expected to find nothing but corpses at the bottom of the stairs. I underestimated you."
"It had already been wounded, Sir Miles. I don"t think that... well. It was half-dead when it got there. I just had to nudge it along a little."
Miles tilted his head back and laughed. "Yes. Yes, well. Regardless, you"ll be glad to know that your friends and the First Lord are all well."
Tavi"s back straightened. "Gaius... He"s... ?"
"Awake, irritable, and his tongue could flay the hide from a gargant," Miles said, his expression pleased. "He wants to speak with you as soon as you"re strong enough."
Tavi promptly swung his legs off the side of the bed and began to rise. Then froze, looking down at himself. "Perhaps I should put some clothes on, if I"m to see the First Lord."
"Why don"t you," Miles said, and nodded to a trunk beside the bed. Tavi found his own clothes there, freshly cleaned, and started slipping into them. He glanced up at Sir Miles as he did, and said, "Sir Miles. If... if I may ask. Your brother-"
Miles interrupted him with an upraised hand. "My brother," he said, with gentle emphasis, "died nearly twenty years ago." He shook his head. "On an unrelated note, Tavi, your friend Fade, the slave, is well. He distinguished himself for his valor on the stairway, a.s.sisting me."
"a.s.sisting you?"
Miles nodded, his expression carefully neutral. "Yes. Some idiot has already composed a song about it. Sir Miles and his famous stand on the Spiral Stair. They"re singing it in all the wine clubs and alehouses. It"s humiliating."
Tavi frowned.
"It makes a much better song than one about a maimed slave," he said quietly.
Tavi lowered his voice to almost a whisper. "But he"s your brother."
Miles pursed his lips, looked at Tavi for a moment, then said, "He knows what he"s doing. And he can"t do it as well if every loose tongue in the Realm can wag on about how he has returned from the grave." He nudged Tavi"s boots over to him from where they sat near the foot of the bed, and added, so quietly that Tavi could barely hear him, "Or why."
"He cares for you," Tavi said quietly. "He was terrified that... that you would think ill of him, when you saw him."
"He was right," Miles said. "If it had happened any other way..." He shook his head. "I don"t know what I might have done." His eyes went a bit distant. "I spent a very long time hating him, boy. For dying beside Septimus, off in the middle of nowhere, when my leg was too badly injured to allow me to be there beside him. All of them. I couldn"t forgive him for dying and leaving me behind. When I should have been with them."
"And now?" Tavi asked.
"Now..." Miles said. He sighed. "I don"t know, lad. But I have a place of my own. I have my duty. There seems to be little sense in hating him now." His eyes glittered. "But by the great furies. Did you see him? The greatest swordsman I"ve ever known, save perhaps Septimus himself. And even then, I always suspected that Rari held back so as not to embarra.s.s the Princeps." Miles"s eyes focused elsewhere, then he blinked them and smiled at Tavi.
"Duty?" Tavi suggested.
"Precisely. As I was saying. Duty. Such as yours to the First Lord. On your feet, Acad-" Then Miles paused, head tilted to one side as he regarded Tavi. "On your feet, man."
Tavi pulled his boots on and rose, smiling a little. "Sir Miles," he asked, "do you know if there"s been any word of my aunt?"
Miles"s expression became remote as he started walking, his limp now more p.r.o.nounced. "I"ve been told that she is safe and well. She is not in the palace. I don"t know more than that."
Tavi frowned. "What? Nothing?"
Miles shrugged.
"What about Max? Kitai?"
"I"m sure Gaius will answer any questions you have, Tavi." Miles gave him a faint smile. "Sorry to be that way with you. Orders."
Tavi nodded and frowned even more deeply. He walked with Miles to the First Lord"s personal chambers, pa.s.sing, Tavi noted, three times as many guardsmen as normal. They reached the doors to Gaius"s sitting room, where he received guests, and a guard let them in, then vanished behind curtains at the end of the room to speak quietly to someone there.
The guard reemerged, and left the room. Tavi looked around at the furniture, really rather spartan for the First Lord, he thought, everything made of the fine, dark hardwoods of the Forcian forests on the west coast. Paintings hung on one wall-one of them only half-finished. Tavi frowned at them. They were of simple, idyllic scenes. A family eating a meal on a blanket in a field on a sunny day. A boat raising sails to meet the first ocean swells, a dim city somewhere in the fog behind it. And the last, the unfinished one, was a portrait of a young man. His features had been painted, but only about a third of his upper body and shoulders were finished. The portrait"s colors stood out starkly against the blank canvas beneath.
Tavi looked closer. The young man in the portrait looked familiar. Gaius, perhaps? Take away the weathering of time in his features, and the young man could perhaps be the First Lord.
"Septimus," murmured Gaius"s deep voice from somewhere behind Tavi. Tavi looked back to see the First Lord step out from behind the curtain. He was dressed in a loose white shirt and close-fitting black breeks. His color was right again, his blue-grey eyes bright and clear.
But his hair had turned stark white.
Tavi bowed his head at once. "Beg pardon, sire?"
"The portrait," Gaius said. "It"s my son."
"I see," Tavi said, carefully. He had no idea what the proper thing to say in this sort of situation might be. "It"s... it"s not finished."
Gaius shook his head. "No. Do you see that mark on the neck of the man in the portrait? Where the black has cut over onto his skin?"
"Yes. I thought perhaps it represented a mole."
"It represents where his mother was working when we got word of his death," Gaius said. He gestured at the room. "She painted all of these. But when she heard of Septimus, she dropped her brushes. She never picked them up again." He regarded the painting steadily. "She took sick not long after. Had me hang it in the room near her, where she could see it. She made me promise, on that last night, not to get rid of it."