Captain's Fury (72 page)

Gaius idly flicked a hand at the door as the last of Tavi's staff left, and a breeze slammed it closed. He eyed Tavi for a long and silent moment.

Tavi lifted his chin—a gesture of attention, more than aggression, schooled his face to a mask of polite neutrality, and waited. The silence grew heavier, but Tavi didn't let it press in on him, and after a time, Gaius grunted.

"And I thought I had made a mess," he said, finally.

"Mess, sir?" Tavi asked. He deliberately avoided the honorific given to the First Lord by everyone in the Realm but his immediate family. Tavi was not, however, feeling quite so bold as to call the old man "grandfather."

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"Don't be obstreperous, Tavi," Gaius said. To Tavi's surprise, he sounded almost exactly like his Uncle Bernard sometimes had after one of Tavi's fits of ingenuity, back at Bernardholt.

"Magnus got through to you on his coin?" Tavi asked. "I assume he's taken on the role of watchdog on your behalf."

"Once he recovered from the shock," Gaius said. He walked past Tavi, looking around the room. "Who told you? Araris or your mother?"

"The way you learned. That she kept it from everyone. That Araris consented to it." He shook his head. "Though who knows. It may have been for the best. Concealment may have protected you more thoroughly than my power could have. Though that's over now."

"Sir?"

"Surely you must realize, Octavian," Gaius said quietly, "that a great many people will not be happy about the appearance of an heir. They'll remove you."

"They'll try," Tavi said.

Gaius studied him intently for a moment and glanced around them. "You've no attendant furies. But you overcame Navaris. And there's a touch of…" He peered closely at Tavi. "Your talents?"

"It's encouraging, I suppose, and your talents may well keep developing, but… it isn't going to be enough to let you protect yourself now."

"I've done fairly well so far," Tavi said, stung.

Gaius grimaced. "Don't be a fool. You were an annoyance before, and one difficult to reach, at that. Now you're an objective—and no one is untouchable, Tavi. Your father wasn't." Gaius paused and coughed several times. It had a wheezing sound to it.

Tavi frowned and tilted his head. "Sir? Are you feeling all right? You look a little…" He nearly said "frail," but hurriedly replaced it with, "… pale."

"Am I all
right?"
Gaius asked in a mild voice. "Boy, I told you to stay here and manage Arnos. Instead, you get outmaneuvered by the fool, arrested, then proceed to escape, take up with pirates, assault the bloody Grey Tower, and carry off the most important prisoner in Alera."

"Sir," Tavi said. "I know it looks bad—"

Gaius kept going, ignoring him. "
That
campaign of chaos not being enough, you then return here, declare your identity to the entire world, challenge a senior Senator to the crowbegotten
juris macto
, and as if that was not enough, you strike a truce with the largest invading force ever to attack the Realm, and at least a Legion of armed rebels—criminals, boy—to boot!" His voice rose, stentorian, echoing from the stone walls of the enormous chamber. "You've set policy with no regard whatever for the future! You've broken—no,
shattered
Crown Law! Have you any idea what you've
done?"

The suggestion of the First Lord's displeasure had sent men hurrying from the room—and his open wrath literally sent tremors through the stone floor and made the room's furylamps flare scarlet in reflection of his anger. Tavi knew that Citizens all around the Realm would have immediately bowed to one knee and averted their gazes in the face of Gaius's outrage. Prudence suggested that Tavi might want to follow the same course.

Instead, Tavi found himself squaring his shoulders, setting his jaw and, somewhat alarmingly, stepping forward to brace the First Lord directly, eye to eye.

"I know what I've done," Tavi said quietly. "I have followed your orders to the best of my ability. I protected innocent Alerans whom I would otherwise have been forced to murder. I made use of the best transport I had to retrieve a prisoner from the Tower—a prisoner to whom you and I both owe our lives, I might add, and who has been unjustly imprisoned for four years for the sake of appearances.

"Then I returned here, parlayed Varg into a summit with the Canim command, and used information they provided me to remove a murdering, treasonous slive from power and see something that almost looks like justice done. And after that, I negotiated to gain the Realm the single largest, best-trained, and most destructive allied force Alera has ever known." He paused a beat, then added, "Sir."

Gaius's expression of wrath darkened, then faltered. He opened his mouth for a moment, then closed it, eyes calculating, and asked, "Allied?"

"Yes, sir."

"Explain."

Tavi did, sharing his theory about the reason for Sarl leading the exodus from the Canim homeland, explaining that he, and the Canim themselves, believed that the Vord were destroying their home, and their people were fighting for the very life of their race.

"I'm not sure we shouldn't let them fight," Gaius said after a moment. "The enemy of my enemy, is my friend, eh?"

"If the Vord are truly the threat I believe they are, I think I'd rather keep the enemies we know than trade them in for new ones."

"A point," Gaius murmured. "But Alera as a whole is hardly going to approve of a truce with the Canim."

"It isn't a truce," Tavi said. "They surrendered. They're prisoners."

Gaius's eyebrows lifted. "They had the city surrounded. They outnumber your local troops by more than five to one. And they surrendered. And while still in possession of a heavily fortified city and retaining their arms, they are your prisoners."

"Mine," Tavi said, "personally, in my capacity as the Princeps of Alera. They have given their parole, and I have accepted it." He offered Gaius a faint smile. "The Realm has known more elaborate fictions, sir."

Gaius's mouth twitched. "Mmmm. What did you offer them?" Gaius asked.

"To allow them to leave," Tavi said. "To provide them with watercrafters enough to get past the leviathans. And to give them support troops for the defense of their homeland."

Gaius frowned and began to speak, but then paused. "Support troops. The 'Free Aleran' Legions?"

"I've taken the liberty of drawing up a proclamation of general amnesty to those in this region who have broken laws in acting to protect their lives and those of their families due to the Canim invasion and Kalarus's rebellion," Tavi said, turning to the table where he'd set the documents aside, "contingent upon their service to the Crown. I've also had a proclamation drawn up declaring the general liberation of all slaves in Kalaran lands."

Gaius accepted the two parchments and scanned them. "Well. At least you didn't attempt to sign them and enact them."

"Naturally not," Tavi said wryly. "That would be overstepping the bounds of my authority."

"Overstepping the—" Gaius shook his head. "As if assaulting the Grey Tower wasn't transgression enough to earn you a death sentence." He spread his hands. "Proving your heritage won't be an issue. Septimus saw to that. But your actions have created a problem, Octavian. You are, by all rights, a criminal."

"And if you use your authority to pardon me," Tavi said, "it will erode what support you have left and undermine my own position in the eyes of the Citizenry."

"Precisely," Gaius said. "Your actions have created an untenable position for us."

Tavi nodded. "If only there was some way my actions might be pardoned as part of a mass amnesty—one in which many Alerans great and small were excused for extraordinary actions taken in good faith."

Gaius stared at Tavi for a long and silent second. Then he stared at the paper in his hand.

"I came to the same conclusions you did," Tavi said quietly. "Once word spreads through the Realm that there's a Princeps again, every cutter in Alera will be able to find work—or the same people who killed my father will come together again to remove me."

"One won't," Gaius said quietly.

"Kalarus?"

"I believe so," he said. "There was never any proof, of course. But I knew." He tilted his head, studying Tavi's face. "So. You depart the Realm, placing yourself beyond the reach of assassins and High Lords alike." Gaius frowned. "To what gain?"

"First," Tavi said, "I get to make sure that the Canim aren't going to use their fleet just as Arnos feared they would—to shift their attack to a weaker part of the Realm."

"Second," Tavi said, "I'll be able to gather intelligence on the Canim and the Vord, both of which are going to be valuable in the future."

"True enough," Gaius said.

"And, once I've taken the Canim home and gotten them settled back again, I'll be able to return, claim the amnesty you're about to declare, along with all the rest of the Free Aleran Legion and, perhaps, a few of my own men—"

Gaius smiled faintly.

"—at which point I should be able to return to the Realm without anyone feeling the need to put me behind bars."

"And meanwhile," Gaius murmured, "you gain time to develop your furycraft more deeply. And I am given time to build up greater support for the Realm's Princeps. Which should be quite possible, given all you've done, as well as everything your mother has managed to accomplish." He shook his head. "I must point out that should you be killed while on this sojourn, the entire plan rather falls apart."

"If I stay, they'll kill me," Tavi said. "If I go, at least everything that wants me dead won't be taking it personally."

"Question," Gaius said. "What makes you so sure I'm not planning on sending you south to finish Kalarus's forces?"

"You'd have told me already," Tavi said. "I'd have been given marching orders before we had this talk. Given that you didn't, I assume that the rebellion is over."

He expected the First Lord to brush the question off. Instead, Gaius shook his head, and said quietly, "I don't believe so. But I have neither the time nor right to indulge in self-pity. How long will you be gone?"

"I expect we'll leave before summer is out," Tavi said. "We'll winter in the Canim homeland. I'll return next spring."

"A year, give or take," Gaius mused. "I can work with that." He walked to one of the tables, took up ink and a quill, and dashed his signature across the bottom of both documents he was holding. "The copies?"

Tavi found the small stack of duplicates Ehren had written out. Gaius read each before signing them. Tavi helped sand and blot the fresh signatures, and for a moment, the rather mundane task occupied their attention.

Gaius left a single copy of the documents with Tavi and took the rest himself, rolling them into a leather carrying case. "Well. There is a great deal of work ahead of us both. Good day."

"You look like him, you know," Gaius said. "A great deal." He gave Tavi a faint smile. "I expect he would have been proud of you."

"I don't expect you to shower her with affection," Tavi said. "But she could be a great help to you. And she deserves your respect."

"I will bear that in mind," Gaius said.

"Do," Tavi said, without threat or malice in his voice. "Or you and I won't get along very well, either, sir."