Jim Butcher - Captain's Fury

Tavi narrowed his eyes in thought.

There might be one who he would be slow to oppose.

In fact, this entire situation did not have to be a disaster. What was it old Killian had told the Cursors-in-training so often?

Every problem was an opportunity, from the proper point of view.

Arnos tilted his head and studied Tavi through narrowed eyes. "What was that thought that just went by your eyes, Scipio? I don't think I liked the look of it."

Tavi smiled at him. Then he said, "Senator. Men like you need never seek out their enemies. You create them left and right by virtue of drawing breath."

Arnos made a clucking sound in his throat. "You can't possibly think I am intimidated by your contacts. We all have powerful friends here."

"I don't think you can see far enough to realize what you should fear," Tavi replied. "Crowbegotten shame, really. You have gifts. You could do a lot of people a lot of good, if you so chose."

The Senator's eyes went flat. "If I so chose, Scipio ," he said quietly, "I could have Navaris spill out your entrails here and now."

Tavi shook his head and nodded at the coach's window. "If you'll look beneath you, Senator, I'm fairly sure that you'll see a picket line of riders below us-close enough to be within sight of one another, and relay signals back to the camp. I ordered them not to accompany me to my meeting, which means that they followed me just far enough back to stay out of sight. They saw your men take me, I'm quite sure. Individually, they aren't faster than a wind coach, but working together, in good light, on a clear day like this one, they can send word even faster. Odds are excellent that the camp already knows you've arrested me."

The Senator narrowed his eyes. Then he turned aside and muttered something to the archer. She, in turn, opened a window on the roar of the wind-stream outside. She flagged down one of the accompanying Knights Aeris. They had a brief exchange of hand signals. The Knight vanished from the window and appeared again a moment later, flickering an affirmative signal at the archer.

Amos pressed his lips together and waited for the archer to shut the window again.

"Kill me if you like, Senator," Tavi said, before Amos could speak. "But you might find yourself faced with quite a few awkward questions." He leaned forward. "And I am not some freeman whose death might be easily ignored."

Navaris's hand dropped to the hilt of Tavi's gladius , and her lips split in a snarl.

Amos seized Navaris's sword wrist in one hand, his eyes locked on Tavi's. "Now, now, good lady. Let us not lose our tempers. It has been a trying day for all of us." He smiled a little. "Granted, only one of us is to be tried for treason."

"We'll see," Tavi said.

"We will most certainly see you tried and hung, Scipio," Arnos said. This time, there was no posturing in his voice, no overt grandstanding in his manner-almost no inflection on his words. "Even if events conspire to clear you, in the long run, your role in history is ended. Your Legion will be led by another. You will play no role in this campaign. You will gain no power, no renown during the most vital series of battles for five hundred years while others rise to power instead. Your reputation will be tainted regardless of the outcome of the tribunal: After the shadow of treason has fallen upon you, you won't be trusted to command a squad in a civic legion, and we both know it."

Tavi sat quietly. It was worse, this calm delivery of fact, than any of Arnos's previous sneers and glowers. He bowed his head before it, the way a man might when faced with the inevitable cold of winter's first wind.

"You are already dead," Arnos said. "Dead enough to be of no more use to your patron. Dead enough to be no more threat to me." He glanced away from Tavi as if he was suddenly no longer significant enough to notice. "You're dead, Scipio. It is over."

The wind coach tilted as it began to descend, back to the Guard-occupied walls of Othos.

"From here," Arnos said, "we can proceed in an agreeable, civilized manner-or we can do it the hard way. May I take it that you will cooperate? It will make things much easier upon your men."

Tavi didn't look up. He simply said, "Very well."

"You see, Navaris?" Arnos murmured. "He can be reasoned with."

Tavi sat quietly and left his head bowed.

It made it easier to conceal the smile.

The coach landed in the Othos town square, now standing empty of anyone but legionares of the Guard. As Tavi watched, a full century of legionares rushed out to form up in ranks facing the coach-a personal retinue, like his own perennially proximate gang of Marat riders, if somewhat more numerous. The legionares snapped to attention as a valet hurried out to open the door of the wind coach.

Tavi and the two large singulares exited first. The two men stood on either side of him. At one point in his life, he mused, the presence of such large men so obviously skilled in the arts of violence would have intimidated him quite effectively. Given, however, that the taller of the pair still came half a hand short of Tavi's height, and given both his training and his more recent but mounting knowledge of furycraft, the most that they managed to do was elevate themselves in his thinking to the first targets he would need to deal with, should the situation devolve.

When Arnos emerged from the coach, flanked by his other singulares , Tavi fell into pace beside him. His escorts were taken off guard by the confident motion, and wound up trailing him by a step, more like attendants than anything else.

"Senator," Tavi murmured, nodding with a polite smile to the centurion of Arnos's personal guard. "It occurs to me that a certain amount of reciprocity might be called for."

Arnos glared up at him for a moment, and Tavi imagined the man torn between continuing the amicable facade and ordering his singulares to beat him senseless. "You're in no position to demand anything."

"Nor do I make any demands," Tavi replied. "I simply wish to point out that you are quite correct. I'm beaten and politically dead."

Arnos stared at him as they mounted the stairs to the house he'd claimed, and his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You have some point?"

"The people of Othos," Tavi replied, arching a brow at Arnos. "You have what you want. There's no need to carry through with the executions now."

"Oh, I don't know," Arnos said, his tone conversational. "Setting an early example might well smooth things down the road. I should think the fate of Othos would do a great deal to inspire the folk of other villages to be more active in their resistance of the enemy."

"Or inspire them to turn their hands against you."

Arnos shrugged. "Freemen out here have little in the way of capability to do our forces any harm. They are virtually without furycraft." Arnos gave Tavi a chill little smile. "Imagine what that would be like. Scipio."

Tavi regarded the man steadily for a long moment. Tavi's assignment to the First Aleran as a Cursor and spy for the Crown had never been intended to go on for so long. A lot of people had seen his face in the capital, and sooner or later someone must have twigged to the identical facial features of Rufus Scipio and Tavi of Calderon.

Arnos was Lady Aquitaine's creature. Offhand, he couldn't think of anyone else with both enough intelligence resources to obtain the information, and motivation to share that fact with Arnos. It was an educated guess, but Tavi felt fairly confident of it.

For the immediate future, though, it hardly mattered where Arnos had gotten the information-it only mattered that he did have it, and therefore knew that he could strike at Tavi's patron by visiting harm on Tavi. "You've gotten what you wanted. Those people have done you no harm, Senator."