Jim Butcher - Cursors's Fury

She stared at them with wide, frightened eyes, and gathered a number of small, piteously mewling forms to her breast.

She.

She.

Tavi stared at her, speechless. A female Cane, with young. Newly born from the look of it. She must have been giving birth while the Canim retreat began. No Aleran had ever actually seen a female Cane, and over the centuries it had given rise to a number of unsavory rumors about how the Canim perpetuated themselves. The truth was simpler, more obvious, and embodiment of it shivered in the rain before him, clutching her young to her, as desperate and as frightened as any Aleran mother would be in her place.

Tavi stepped forward, toward the female Cane. He lowered his chin toward his chest and bared his teeth.

The female’s eyes flashed with desperate anger, waging against even more desperate fear, and then her ears flattened, and she tilted her head far to one side, her body bending to bare her throat in abject surrender.

Tavi relaxed his own stance and nodded at the Canim female. Then he tilted his head slightly to one side, and moved a hand at her in a brushing-away gesture.

The female lifted her head and stared at him, ears twitching.

“Go,” Tavi told her. He struggled to remember the proper Canish word, and settled for the one Varg would occasionally use when he thought Tavi was taking too long to move a piece on the ludus board, while making the same gesture. “ Marrg .”

The female stared at him for a moment. Then she bared her throat again, rose, never taking her eyes from him, and vanished into the dark.

Tavi watched her go, thinking furiously.

The Canim had come to Alera-and brought their mates and offspring, their families with them, something that had never happened before.

Which meant…

“Great furies,” Tavi breathed. “I am not afraid of Nasaug anymore.”

Kitai stared after the female Cane and nodded grimly.

“I’m afraid,” Tavi whispered, “of what drove him from his home.”

Isana woke to the sound of distant trumpets and a clamor in the hallway outside her room. She sat up, disoriented. She was in her bed. Someone had bathed her, and she wore a soft, white nightgown that was not her own. On the table next to the bed were three bowls and a simple mug. Two of the bowls were empty. The third was about half-filled with some kind of broth.

She sat up, a shockingly difficult task, and pushed her hair back out of her face.

Then she remembered. The healing tub.

Fade.

The tub was gone, and the maimed slave was not in sight.

If she hadn’t been so tired, her heart would have been racing with fear for the man’s fate. As it was, her worries were merely galvanizing. Isana got out of bed, though it became an act of sheer will, so weak did she feel. One of her simple grey dresses hung over the back of a chair, and she pulled it on over the nightgown, and walked carefully to the door.

There was shouting in the hallway outside, and the thud of running footsteps. She opened the door, and found Giraldi standing in the hall outside, facing the half-open door of the chamber across the hall from hers.

“That’s as may be,” the old soldier growled, “but you aren’t the one who gets to decide whether you’re well again or not.” He paused as a trio of youths, probably pages, went sprinting by. “Lady Veradis says you’re lucky to be alive. You stay in bed until she says otherwise.”

“I don’t see Lady Veradis anywhere,” said a man in a legionares tunic and boots. He stood in the doorway, looking down the hallway so that Isana saw him in profile. He was handsome, if weathered, his brown hair flecked with grey, and shorn in a standard Legion cut. He was thin, but built of whipcord and sinew, and he carried himself with relaxed confidence, the heel of one hand resting in unconscious familiarity on the hilt of the gladius at his hip. He had a deep, soft voice. “So obviously, she can’t say otherwise. Why don’t we go and ask her?”

The man turned back to Giraldi, and Isana saw that the other side of his face was horribly maimed with burn scars, seared into the skin in the Legion mark of a coward.

Isana felt her mouth drop open.

“Araris,” she said quietly.

Giraldi grunted in surprise and turned to her. “Steadholder. I didn’t know you were awake…”

Isana met Araris’s steady gaze. She tried to say something, but the only thing that came out of her mouth was, “Araris.”

He smiled and gave her a small, formal bow. “I thank you for my life, my lady.”

And she felt it. She felt it in him now, felt it as she met his eyes. She had never sensed it in the past, never in all the years he’d served her brother and then her. It was his eyes, she thought. In all those years, with his hair grown long and ill kempt, she had never, never once seen his entire face, seen both of his eyes at once. He’d never been willing to let her see him. Never been willing to let her know what he felt for her.

Love.

Selfless, quiet, strong.

It was love that had sustained him through years of labor and isolation, love that had prompted him to surrender his identity, brand himself, disguise himself, even though it cost him his position, his pride, his career as a soldier-and his family. He had willingly murdered everything he was in the name of that love, and not only that which he felt for Isana. She could feel that in him as well, the bittersweet, bone-deep sorrow and love for his friend and lord, Septimus, and by extension to his friend’s wife and son.

For his love, he had fought to protect Septimus’s family, endured a life of difficult labor in a steadholt smithy. For his love, he had destroyed his life, and if he was called upon to do so, he would spend his last breath, shed his last drop of blood to protect them without an instant’s hesitation. Flis love would accept nothing less.

Isanas eyes blurred with sudden tears, as the warmth and power of that love washed over her, a silent ocean whose waves rippled in time with the beating of his heart. Isana was awed-and humbled-by it. And something stirred in her in answer. For twenty years, she had felt it only in dreams. Now, something broke inside her, shattering like a block of ice beneath a hammer, and her heart soared in exaltation, in the sheer, golden, bubbling laughter she thought was gone forever.

That was why she had never sensed it in him. She had never felt it growing in herself, over the long years of work and grief and regret. She’d never allowed herself to understand the seed had taken root and begun to grow. It had lain quietly, patiently, waiting for the end of the winter of mourning and grief and worry that had frozen her heart. Waiting for a new warmth. Waiting for spring.

His love had slain Araris Valerian.

Hers brought him back to life.

She didn’t trust her legs to walk, so she held out one hand to him.

Araris moved carefully, evidently still recuperating himself. She couldn’t see anything but a blur, but his hand touched hers, warm and gentle, and their fingers twined together. She began to laugh, through the tears, and she heard him join her. His arms wrapped around her, and they held one another, choking on laughter and tears.

They said nothing.

They didn’t need to.

Amara wearily looked up from her book as the knob to the door to their chambers in guest quarters of Lord Cereus twisted. The door opened and Bernard came in, carrying a tray laden with various foods. He smiled at her, and said, “How are you feeling?”

Amara sighed. “You’d think I’d be used to cramps by now. I’ve had them every month since I was a girl.” She shook her head. “I’m not curled up and whimpering anymore, at least.”