Alex Lidell - The Cadet of Tildor

“You should care for your friend,” he answered for her ears alone.

The men left the room, leaving Renee and Alec to their soup of shame and confusion.

Alec sat cross-legged on his bed and stared at his feet.

She sat next to him, rested her elbows atop her knees, and watched her fingers interlace in meaningless patterns. Perhaps she had done something to trigger the episode. Did it matter if she had? Alec had to bear responsibility for his power if he did not wish the Crown to take up that burden.

He spoke first. “You like him, don’t you?” he said quietly. “Korish Savoy.”

Her heart paused.

“You know he’s twenty-three and you still like him, even when he was our instructor . . . In a way you don’t like me.”

Blood drained from her face. Seven Hells, curse her blindness. Alec’s protectiveness, his hatred of Savoy and Cory, his post by her side growing stronger each year. She touched his arm. “Alec, you’re my best, dearest friend.” Her mouth tripped over the words. He was more her family than her father had ever been. She loved him in a way no other attraction could diminish. “You are . . . my brother. Savoy cannot compete with that.”

“He doesn’t have to.” The words came under his breath. He shook himself and slid off the bed. “My apologies for earlier. I’ve not tried living veesi-free before. The energy currents get . . . overwhelming.”

“Alec . . .”

He shook his head to cut off her words and spoke quickly of Catar and its streets. They tortured the conversation for a quarter hour before declaring surrender and claiming their beds. Renee drifted to sleep pondering the unnerving nature of friendship, and what exactly she felt about Korish Savoy.

In Hunter’s Inn’s stable the next morning, Savoy poured a scoop of grain into Kye’s feed and reached for a currycomb. Care for animals, then gear, then self. The burn on his hand slowed his progress, but with a wild mage in their midst, Savoy was lucky to have gotten off as lightly as he did. Renee’s decision to keep her friend’s confidence and all but blackmail him and Connor into doing the same was an interesting one, displaying the kind of calculated recklessness Savoy was prone to himself. Which was not a compliment to either of them.

A stable hand shuffled his feet nearby, disturbing Savoy’s thoughts. “The stable boys can—”

“Get their ribs broken.”

A mare whinnied nearby and Kye kicked the wooden stall partition, shaking the housing. The hostler disappeared.

Savoy patted the stallion’s neck and went back to his work, letting the facts roll across his mind. Although the growing Viper presence in Atham led to many crime-of-opportunity kidnappings, Diam’s abduction was deliberate. A means to force Savoy to Catar. Why? Unknown. Regardless, the boy—or someone who knew his whereabouts—was somewhere in this city. At least that was the operating assumption. Alec had promised to take Khavi on a sweep of the terrain and Renee planned to mingle in what passed for Catar’s noble court. This left him free to walk into whatever ambush Diam’s captors had planned for him at the Yellow Rose Inn, wherever and whatever that was.

“Riding out?” Connor frowned from the stable’s entrance and made his way forward. The ease with which he had navigated to Hunter’s Inn the previous day belied more knowledge of Catar than books and documents could account for. “I thought to accompany you for fear you’d start three fights by sunset.”

“Afraid I’ll lose?”

“Afraid you’ll win.”

Savoy snorted, then remembered the original question. Connor would have made an exceptional swordsman, but a fighter could ill afford to fear horses. If the fear even stopped there. And whose fault lies at the root of that? Savoy busied himself with the task at hand. Kye’s slick black coat had grown to rich velvet in cold winter months. “I’ll walk.”

Seaborn leaned against the wall. After several minutes of silence, he crossed his arms and looked out toward the courtyard beyond the stable. “I disappointed you when I quit the fighter track.”

Savoy lifted Kye’s water bucket with his good hand and hung it on a hook inside the stall. There had to be a worse time for this conversation, but one did not come to mind. He fed the horse a stashed apple and stepped past his friend to replace the borrowed brushes.

Connor cleared his throat. “You think fear guided my choice.”

The brushes clacked against each other. “Yes. Did it not?”

There was a pause. “It did. But it was the right choice nonetheless.”

“A fear-forced choice is not a choice at all.” Savoy spun around. “Why do you speak of this now?”

Connor opened his mouth, then shut it. “No reason.” He shook his head. “My apologies.”

“Hand me a flake of hay.”

Connor did, but unsaid words charged the air like a knocked arrow in a ready bow. He may have laid the subject of their careers to rest, but he was not done speaking things Savoy did not wish to hear. Savoy rested his elbows on the gate of Kye’s stall. “Say it, Connor. Or don’t.”

Connor motioned to the bandage on Savoy’s hand. “If you need a mage Healer . . . it can be arranged.”

Savoy’s brow rose. Seeing a Crown’s mage posed too great a risk of exposure to chance, which meant the man Savoy accused of cowardliness a few breaths ago meddled in affairs that bordered treason. “For a magistrate, Connor, your relationship with the law leaves enough leeway for a herd of horses to pass abreast.”

Connor shook his head. “My personal opinions do not affect my work, and I’ve made no secret of disliking registration.”

“Mmm. I am certain you report contact with your . . . ” Savoy paused to find a fitting term for dangerous felons. “. . . acquaintances, to Atham.”

“Atham benefits from my contacts well enough.”

Savoy paused in mid-motion, then chuckled. So Connor, whom Savoy once accused of real-world ignorance, dabbled in whispers. It suited him. “You’ve always found no less trouble than I did, you know. You were just better at not getting caught.”

“You covered for me,” said Connor.

Savoy shrugged. “When you couldn’t sit comfortably, you did a poor job on my homework.” He straightened and glanced outside. It was time to go. “Diam first. Then we’ll visit your friends.” He clapped Connor’s shoulder. “Come. An ambush awaits.”

The storm’s passing left piles of snow on Catar’s already narrow streets. The houses huddled together as if seeking warmth, but succeeded only in blocking the sun. If the nobles’ estates at the city’s fringes touched woods, no hint of vegetation survived in the city center. Even Atham’s worst slums welcomed trees; Catar wasn’t Atham.

Savoy walked, keeping one hand on his sword and the other on his purse. Although he wore nothing to identify him as a Servant, he was still a stranger here, and that alone made him conspicuous. He nodded toward the sword hanging on Connor’s hip. It was Renee’s, but noble ladies seldom strolled about armed to the teeth. “Can you use it?”

“We will find out.”

Savoy stifled a sigh. “Try not to stab me.”

“I’ll—” Connor’s retort cut off as an adolescent girl, scantily clad for the chill, stepped out from a small alcove, gripped his sleeve, and trailed a finger down his forearm.

“Cold today,” she purred.

“Go for a run.” Savoy removed her hand from Connor’s sleeve and continued walking. He made it three steps before a large youth blocked his path. Frustration bubbled inside his stomach and crept upward. He looked the roadblock in the eye. “Move.”

“This here be a paid street. Extra for touchin’ the girl.” A malicious smile played across the youth’s lips.