Jim Butcher - First Lord's Fury

“Necessary,” Tavi said tiredly. “Leave it alone, Foss.”

“Yes, sir,” Foss responded, scowling. “Maybe you can answer me a question, then. Like why the crows the First Spear of the Legion is staying in a guarded tent, walking around in a civilian tunic, and not speaking to anyone.”

Tavi inhaled and exhaled slowly. “Why do you think, Foss?”

“Grapevine says he took sick. His heart gave out on him in that last fight. He’s near sixty, seems likely. Except that if that had been the case, I would know, because I would have been the man treating him.”

Tavi sat up on his elbows carefully, and met Foss’s eyes. “Listen to me very carefully, Tribune,” he said. “You were the man who treated him. It is his heart. He’s still recovering and won’t be himself for a few days. You took him off active duty. The guard is there to make sure the stubborn old goat gets enough rest and that he doesn’t relapse.”

The ire faded from Foss’s expression, replaced by incomprehension followed by deep concern. “But…”

“Did you hear me, Tribune?” Tavi asked.

Foss saluted at once. “Yes, sir.”

Tavi nodded and sank back down onto the bunk. “I can’t explain it to you, Tribune. Not yet. I need you to trust me. Please.”

Foss’s face sobered even more. He frowned, and said, “Yes, sir.”

“Thank you,” Tavi said quietly. “Are you finished with me?”

Foss nodded and seemed to gather himself, focusing on his job. His voice reclaimed its confidence and strength as he did. “I cleaned the wound and closed it. You’ll need to drink plenty of water and get plenty of food. Red meat is best. Get a good night’s rest. And I’d rather see you on a wagon than a horse tomorrow.”

“We’ll see,” Tavi said.

“Sir,” Foss said, “this time you need to trust me.”

Tavi eyed him and found himself smiling. He waved a hand. “All right, all right. If it will stop you from nagging. Done.”

Foss grunted in satisfaction, saluted, and departed the tent.

“Crassus,” Tavi said, “we’re near enemy territory. Make sure the earth furies have been positioned to spot any takers. And get those Canim pickets out as far as you can. Their night vision is invaluable right now.”

“I know,” Crassus said. “I know, Captain. Get some rest. We’ll make sure we survive until morning.”

Tavi started to give Crassus another string of warnings and instructions but forced himself to close his mouth. He was tired enough to make it remarkably easy. He and Max and the rest of the Legion would do their jobs properly even without Tavi telling them all how to do it. After all, what was the point in all that training and discipline if they didn’t get the chance to display their capability once in a while?

He sighed, and said, “Fine, fine. I can take the hint. Make sure I’m awake by first light.”

Max and Crassus both saluted and departed the tent.

Tavi sat up enough to drain the large mug of cold water from the stand beside the cot, but the thought of eating the meal beside it was revolting. He settled back down again and closed his eyes. A moment’s concentration, and he drew together a windcrafting to ensure private conversation. Steady rain drummed on the tent’s canvas roof. “How much of this is the loss of blood?” he asked the empty tent. “And how much of it is the result of holding that weathercrafting?”

One moment the tent was empty, and in the next Alera stood over the sand table at its center post. She chuckled warmly. “It took Sextus more than a year to be able to recognize my presence. How is it that you have learned the trick of it so quickly?”

“I’ve spent most of my life without any furycraft to help me,” Tavi said. “Perhaps that’s had something to do with it.”

“Almost certainly,” Alera said. “Very few of your people realize how much furycraft happens without their knowledge.”

“Really?” Tavi asked.

“Certainly. How would they? Watercrafters, for example, gain a sensitivity to others that becomes a part of their very being. They have few, if any, memories of what it was like to exist without that sense. Nearly everyone in Alera has their senses expanded in some way, to some degree. If they suddenly lost access to their furies, for whatever reason, I expect that they would feel quite disoriented. I should think it would be something like losing an eye.”

Tavi winced at the image. “I notice,” he said, “that you haven’t answered my question.”

Alera smiled. “Haven’t I?”

Tavi eyed her for a moment. Then he said, “You’re saying that I’m crafting without realizing it?”

“Without feeling it,” Alera corrected. “You make clear to me what it is you wish to accomplish, and I set about ordering it, within my limitations. But the effort for it still comes from you, as with any other furycrafting. It’s a steady and gradual process, one you don’t feel happening. You only become aware of it when physical symptoms begin to trouble you.” She sighed. “It killed Sextus; not as much because he pushed too hard—though he did—as because it made him dismiss the symptoms of his poisoning, incorrectly, as part of this process.”

Tavi sat up and studied Alera more closely. She held her hands in front of her, folded inside the opposite sleeve of her misty “gown.” More of the gown was gathered over her head in a hood. Her eyes looked sunken. For the first time since Tavi had seen the great fury manifest, she did not look like a young woman.

“The weathercrafting,” he said. “It was a strain on you as well. It’s hastening your… your dissolution, isn’t it?”

“It was a strain upon all of Alera, young Gaius,” she replied, her voice quiet. “You upset natural order on a scale that is rarely seen—in concert with the eruptions of two fire-mountains, to boot. You and your people will feel the aftereffects of these few days for centuries to come.”

“I sincerely hope so,” Tavi said.

The great fury glanced at him and smiled, briefly. “Ah, there it is. I sometimes think that if one cut open the scions of the House of Gaius, they would find well-chilled pragmatism flowing in their veins instead of blood.”

“I have provided abundant evidence to the contrary, today, I believe.”

“Have you?” she replied.

“And again,” he said, “you have avoided answering my question.”

Her smile widened, briefly. “Have I?”

“Infuriating habit,” he said. “My grandfather must have learned it from you.”

“He picked that one up very quickly,” she acknowledged. “Sextus was strongly devoted to the idea of being as mysterious as possible when it came to his capabilities of furycraft. He would have looked at his staff and shrugged when they wondered how such a thing as an unthinkably late freeze and a steady breeze for several thousand miles’ worth of travel would be possible.”

“When in fact, anyone with a High Lord’s talent could manage it,” Tavi murmured. “If he had, as his partner, someone such as you, who could direct his power to precisely when and where it needed to be to have the greatest effect, however widely dispersed those places might be.”

“I suspect the scions of Gaius did not wish the notion to become widespread,” she said, “for fear that all of those folk with a High Lord’s talent would immediately set about creating such partners of their own.”

“Could such a thing be done?” Tavi asked, curiously.

“Almost certainly—to one degree or another. It is also nearly certain that they would not be able to create a… shall we say, a balanced being.”

“Someone like you,” Tavi mused, “only mad?”

“I suspect the results of such an effort would make the current definitions of madness somewhat obsolete.”