Academ's Fury (13 page)

"Jealousy is common among lesser men," Tavi said, with a small smile. Max mimed a punch, and Tavi ducked his head a little. "How long have you been shadowing me?"

"A couple of hours. Lost you when you moved off the roof."

If Killian knew you'd shown yourself to me, he'd fail you on the spot."

Max rolled one shoulder in a shrug. "It's just a test. I've been dealing with tests of one kind or another since I could walk."

"High Lord Antillus wouldn't be pleased if you failed."

"I'm sure to lose sleep now," Max drawled.

Tavi half smiled. "Is there really a widow?"

Max grinned. "Even if there wasn't, I'm pretty sure I could find one. Or make one, if it came to that."

Tavi snorted. "What are your plans for the night, then?"

Max pursed his lips. "I could follow you around some more, but it doesn't seem fair." He drew an X over his belly. "Soothword. I'll leave you alone instead of making you spend an hour of your sleep shaking me."

Tavi nodded and gave his friend a grateful smile. Max had sworn himself to truth, an old northern custom. He would never so much as consider breaking a promise given under his soothword. "Thank you," Tavi said.

"But I
will
find out what you're up to," Max said. "Not so much for Killian, as it is because someone needs to show you that you aren't nearly as clever as you think you are."

"Better get to bed then, Max. That's only going to happen in your dreams."

Max's teeth flashed in the dimness as Tavi accepted the challenge. He struck his chest lightly with a fist, the salute of a
legionare
, then vanished into the misty night.

Once Max was gone, Tavi rubbed at his aching chest, where the hurled plate had struck him. From the feel of it, there was going to be a bruise. A big one. But at least he'd get a decent meal for his pains. He stepped up onto the threshold of Domus Malleus.

The enormous chimes upon the top of the Citadel began to toll out the hour, each stroke sending out a low, vibrating pressure that could shake water within a bowl, accompanied by a shower of high, shivering tones, beautiful and somehow sad.

The chimes sounded nine times, and Tavi spat an oath. There would be no time to stop for a meal. If he set out at his best pace, it would take him nearly another hour to wind his way up through Alera's streets to the First Lord's Citadel, and subsequently descend into the depths beneath the stronghold. He would arrive smudged and stained from his skulking, covered in sweat and most of an hour late to his duties to the First Lord.

And he had a history examination in the morning.

And he still hadn't caught Killian's thief.

Tavi shook his head and started jogging back up through the capital.

He'd only gone a couple of hundred yards when the skies rumbled, and drops of slow, heavy rain came down in sheets.

"Some hero of the Realm you are," Tavi muttered to himself, and set off to attend the First Lord.

Panting, dirty, and late, he paused at the door to the First Lord's chamber. He tried to straighten his cloak and tunic, then regarded them helplessly. Nothing short of a legion of cleaning experts could make him presentable. He chewed on his lip, shoved his dark mop of wet hair back from his face, and went inside.

Gaius stood upon the whirling colors of the mosaic tiles again. He stooped, as though with great weariness or pain. His face was ashen, and the stubble of his beard no longer seemed to contain any hairs but those gone white. But it was his eyes that were the worst. They were sunken, dark pits, the whites shot with blood around eyes whose colors had become faded and dull. Fell, sickly fires burned within them—not the determination, pride and strength to which Tavi had become accustomed, but something more brittle, more frightening.

Gaius scowled down at him, and snapped, "You're late."

Tavi bowed his head deeply and left it that way. "Yes, sire. I have no excuse, and offer my apologies."

Gaius was silent for a moment, before he began to cough again. He waved an irritated hand at the tiles, dispersing the shapes and colors rising from them, and sat down at the little bureau against one wall until the coughing had passed. The First Lord sat with his eyes closed, his breath too shallow and too fast. "Go to the cupboard, boy. My spicewine."

Tavi rose immediately and went to the cupboard near the bench in the antechamber. Tavi poured and offered him the glass, and Gaius drank it with a grimace. He studied Tavi with a sour expression. "Why were you late?"

"Finals," Tavi replied. "They've taken up more of my time."

"Ah," Gaius said. "I seem to remember several such incidents during my own education. But it's no excuse for failing in your duties, boy."

"No, sire."

Gaius coughed again, wincing, and held out his glass for Tavi to refill. "Sire? Are you well?" The bitter, brittle flare of anger returned to Gaius's eyes. "Quite."

Tavi licked his lips nervously. "Well, sire, you seem to be… somewhat peaked."

The First Lord's expression grew ugly. "What would you know of it? I think the First Lord knows better than a bastard apprentice shepherd whether he is or is not well."

Gaius's words hit Tavi harder than a fist. He dropped back a step, looking away. "Your pardon, sire. I did not intend to offend you."

"Of course you didn't mean to," Gaius said. He sat his wineglass down so hard that the stem snapped. "No one ever means to offend someone with power. But your words make your lack of respect for my judgment, my office, my
self
abundantly clear."

"No, sire, I don't mean that—"

Gaius's voice crackled with anger, and the ground itself quivered in reaction. "Be
silent
, boy. I will
not
tolerate further interruptions with good grace. You know
nothing
of what I have had to do. How
much
I have had to sacrifice to protect this Realm. This Realm whose High Lords now circle me like a pack of jackals. Like crows. Without gratitude. Without mercy. Without respect."

Tavi said nothing, but the First Lord's words rambled in pitch and tone so badly that he began to have trouble understanding Gaius's speech. He had never heard the First Lord speak with such a lack of composure.

"Here," Gaius said. He seized Tavi's collar with a sudden and terrifying strength and dragged the boy after him into the seeing chamber, out onto the whirling mosaic of tiles whose lights and colors pulsed and danced, creating a cloud of light and shadow that formed into a depiction of the lands of the Realm. At the center of the mosaic, Gaius slashed his other hand at the air, and the colors of the map blurred, resolving abruptly into the image of a terrible storm lashing some luckless coastal village.

"You see?" Gaius growled.

Tavi's fear faded a bit in the face of his fascination. The image of the town grew clearer, as though they were moving closer to it. He saw holders running inland, but the seas reached out for them with arms of black water. The waters rushed over the village, the holders, and all of them vanished.

"Crows," Tavi whispered. Tavi's belly quivered and twisted, and he was glad he hadn't eaten. He could barely whisper. "Can't you help them?"

Gaius screamed. His voice rolled out like the furious roar of some beast. The furylamps blazed to brilliant light, and the air in the chamber rolled and twisted in a small cyclone. The stone heart of the mountain shook and trembled before the First Lord's rage, bucking so hard that Tavi was thrown to the floor.

"What do you
think
I've been
doing
, boy!" Gaius howled. "Day! Night! AND IT ISN'T ENOUGH!" He whirled and snarled something in a savage tone, and the chair and table on one side of the room did more than burst into flame—there was a howling sound, a flash of light and heat, and the charred embers of the wooden furnishing flew throughout the room, rattling from the walls, leaving a fine haze of ash in the air. "ALL GONE! ALL! I HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO SACRIFICE, AND IT ISN'T ENOUGH!"

The First Lord's voice broke then, and he staggered to one knee. Wind, flame, and stone subsided again, and he was suddenly just an old man once more—his appearance that of someone aged too fast and too hard in a harsh world. His eyes were even more deeply sunken, and he trembled, and Gaius clutched at his chest with both hands, coughing.

"My lord," Tavi breathed, and went to the old man. "Sire, please. Let me find someone to help you."

The coughing wound down, though Tavi thought it was more a result of a weakening of Gaius's lungs than an improvement in his condition. The old man stared at the image of the coastal village with hazy eyes, and said, "I can't. I've tried to protect them. To help them. Tried so hard. Lost so much. And failed."

Tavi found tears in his eyes. "Sire."

"Failed," Gaius whispered. "Failed."

His eyes rolled back. His breaths came quick and shallow, rasping. His lips looked rough, chapped, dry.

"Sire?" Tavi breathed. "Sire?"

There was a long silence in which Tavi tried to rouse the First Lord, calling him by both title and name.

But Gaius did not respond.

Chapter 9

In that moment, Tavi understood a single, terrifying fact; the fate of the First Lord, and therefore of all Alera, was utterly in his hands.

What he did in the next moments, he knew, would have repercussions that would echo throughout the Realm. His immediate impulse was to run screaming for help, but he stopped himself and as Maestro Killian had taught them, he forced himself to slow down and set his emotion aside to work through the problem with cold logic.

He could not simply call for the guards. They would come, of course, and physicians would care for the First Lord, but then it would all be out in the open. If it became widely known that the First Lord's health had failed, it could prove disastrous in dozens of ways.

Tavi was not privy to the private counsels of the First Lord, but neither was he dull of ear or mind. He knew, from bits of conversation overheard while on his duties, more or less what was going on in the Realm. Gaius was in a tenuous position before several of the more ambitious High Lords. He was an old man without an heir, and should they begin regarding him as a
failing
old man with no heir, it could trigger uprisings, anything from the official processes of the Senate and Council of Lords to a full-fledged military struggle. That was precisely why Gaius had re-formed the Crown Legion, after all, to increase the security of his reign and reduce the chances of a civil war.