Jim Butcher - First Lord's Fury

“Redemption,” Tavi said thoughtfully. “He wanted to confess. He knew he would not be forgiven for his crimes, but by choosing to act as he did…”

“He gained a sense of order,” Kitai said. “Of peace. He creates a solid Realm in his thoughts and pays a just penalty for the things he has done.” Kitai reached into a pocket and tossed him something underhand.

Tavi caught it. It was a triangle of chitin as long as his smallest finger—the tip of a vordknight’s scythe.

“Things have changed, my Aleran. The vord are here, and they will kill us all. It is madness to labor on their behalf.” She moved forward and put a hand on his arm. “And he has saved your life, chala . For that, I am in his debt.”

“Crows.” Tavi sighed and sagged back down, staring at the deck.

Kitai moved quietly to sit down on the bunk beside him. She put her wrist to his forehead. Her skin felt pleasantly cool.

“You have a fever, chala ,” she said quietly. “You’ve been holding the weathercrafting too long.”

Tavi gritted his teeth. “Have to. Won’t be much longer. We should reach Phrygia by morning.”

“You told me that Sextus did this,” she said. “Pushed himself to do what he saw as his duty—even though it cost him his health, even though it put the Realm at risk of losing its First Lord.” She slid her hand down his arm to twine her fingers with his. “You said it was shortsighted of him. You said it was foolish.”

“He did it for weeks on end,” Tavi said.

“But not continually,” she countered. “Only at night, during his meditations.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tavi said. “If the ice melts, there’s no getting it back with spring coming on. I just have to hold it for a few more hours.”

She frowned, clearly unhappy, but did not gainsay him.

“You think I’m wasting Fidelias’s life.”

“No,” Kitai said. “He is there because he wanted to be there. You are wasting his death.”

He frowned at her for a moment, then her meaning sunk in. “Ah,” he said.

“He should be given the choice,” Kitai said. “If nothing else, you owe him that.”

Tavi leaned over and kissed her hair gently. “I think,” he said, “you may be right.”

Tavi walked carefully over the ice to the execution party. They were gathering up their tools and preparing to return to the ship. As he approached, they saluted.

“Leave us,” Tavi said. The men saluted again and hurried to return to the ship.

There were a number of allowable variants for crucifixion, ranging from the practical to the downright sadistic. Which one was used was mostly determined by how much anguish the authorities felt the offender had earned. Many were designed to contain and circumvent specific furycrafting talents.

For Fidelias, they had used steel wire.

He hung upon the crossed spars, his feet dangling two feet above the ground. His arms had been bound to the outthrust arms of the cross with dozens of circles of steel wire. More wire bound his waist to the trunk of the cross. That much steel would virtually neutralize his woodcrafting. Being suspended from the earth would prevent him from employing earthcrafting. He was dressed only in his tunic. His armor, weapons, and helmet had been taken from him.

Fidelias was obviously in pain, his face pale. His eyes and cheeks looked sunken, and the grey in his hair and stubbled face was more prominent than at any other time Tavi had seen him.

He looked old.

And weary.

Tavi stopped in front of the cross and stared up at him for a moment.

Fidelias met his eyes. After a time, he said, “You should go. You should catch up to the fleet before the next stop.”

“I will,” Tavi said quietly. “After you answer one question.”

The old Cursor sighed. “What question?”

“How do you want to be remembered?”

Fidelias let out a dry, croaking laugh. “What the crows does it matter what I want? I know what I will be remembered for.”

“Answer the question, Cursor.”

Fidelias was silent for a moment, his eyes closed. The wind gusted around them, cold and uncaring.

“I never wanted a civil war. I never wanted anyone to die.”

“I believe you,” Tavi said quietly. “Answer the question.”

Fidelias’s head remained bowed. “I would like to be remembered as a man who tried to serve the Realm to the best of his ability. Who dedicated his life to Alera, even if not to her lord.”

Tavi nodded slowly. Then he drew his sword.

Fidelias did not look up.

Tavi stepped around to the back of the crossed poles and struck three times.

Fidelias abruptly dropped to the ground, cut free from the coils of wire by Tavi’s blade. Tavi took a step and stood over Fidelias, staring down at him.

“Get up,” he said quietly. “You are condemned to die, Fidelias ex Cursori. But we are at war. Therefore, when you die, you will do so usefully. If you truly are a servant of the Realm, I have a better death for you than this one.”

Fidelias stared up at him for a moment, and his features twisted into something like pain. Then he nodded in a single jerky spasm.

Tavi extended his hand, and Fidelias took it.

The fleet reached Phrygia in the false light of predawn, when the eastern sky had just begun to turn from black to blue. Starlight and moonlight on the snow made it easy to see, and Antillus Crassus and a handful of Knights Pisces had flown ahead to bring official word of the fleet to Phrygius Cyricus, Lord Phrygius’s second son and seneschal of the city while his father was in the field.

“Times are changing,” Fidelias said. “I don’t think anyone’s ever outrun the wall’s grapevine without flying.”

“What makes you say that?” Tavi asked him.

The Cursor gestured up at the wall, where a surprisingly sparse number of faces looked out from the battlements. “If they’d gotten wind of something like this, the whole city would have turned out.”

Tavi glanced back behind him, at the seemingly endless river of masts and sails gliding over the ice. It had been an impressive sight when he’d first taken it in, even to someone who had sailed with a veritable armada over the deeps. To the folk and legionares of Phrygia, most of whom had never seen a tall ship, much less the open sea, it must be awe-inspiring, scarcely believable.

He glanced aside at Fidelias, who stood beside him in the tunic, breeches, and cloak of a civilian. He was unarmed. Two Knights Ferrous stood within sword reach of him, their weapons sheathed, their hands hovering near the hilts. Maximus stood on Tavi’s other side and kept track of Fidelias’s movements with an oblique eye.

Tavi studied him for another reason. Fidelias looked different than Valiar Marcus. Oh, his features hadn’t changed, though Tavi supposed they might do so gradually, should Fidelias wish to reassume his former appearance. It was something subtler than that, and much deeper. The way he spoke was part of it. Marcus had always sounded like an intelligent man, but one who had been given little education, a hard-nosed and capable soldier. Fidelias’s voice was smoother and more mellifluous, his inflections elegant and precise. Marcus had always held himself with parade-ground rigidity, and moved like a man carrying the extra weight of Legion armor, even when he wasn’t wearing any. Fidelias looked like a man coming near to the end of an exceptionally vigorous middle age, his movements both energetic and contained.

Then Tavi hit on it, the real thing that separated Valiar Marcus from Fidelias ex Cursori.

Fidelias was smiling.

Oh, it wasn’t a grin. In fact, one could hardly tell it was a smile at all. But Tavi could definitely see it in some subtle shift of the muscles in his face, in the scarcely noticeable deepening of the lines at the corners of his eyes. He looked… content. He looked like a man who had made his peace.