Jim Butcher - Academ's Fury

"Or his mouth," Amara blurted. "I mean, his eyes are a lovely color, but his mouth is… I mean, he can…"

"He knows how to kiss," Serai said.

Amara stammered to a silence and simply nodded.

"Well," Serai said, "at this point, I think it's safe to say that you know what love feels like."

Amara bit her lip. "You really think that?"

The courtesan smiled, something wistful in it. "Of course, darling."

Amara watched the courtyard as a pair of boys, no more than six or seven years of age, leapt from hiding places in the wagon to Bernard's back. The big man roared in feigned outrage, and went spinning around for a few moments as though trying to reach them, until the boys lost their grips and fell to the ground, lurching dizzily and laughing. Bernard grinned at them, ruffled their hair, and sent them on the way with a wave of his hand. Amara found herself smiling.

Serai's voice became lower and very gentle. "You must leave him, of course."

Amara felt her spine stiffen. She stared past the other woman, out the window.

"You are a Cursor," Serai said. "One with the trust of the First Lord himself. And you have sworn your life to his service."

"I know that," Amara said. "But-"

Serai shook her head. "Amara, you can't do that to him if you truly love him. Bernard is a peer of the Realm, now. He has duties, responsibilities. One of them will be to take a wife. A wife whose first loyalty will be to him."

Amara stared at Bernard and the two children. Her vision suddenly blurred with hot tears.

"He has duties," Serai said, her voice compassionate, but resolute. "And among them is the duty to sire children so that the furycraft in his blood will strengthen the Realm."

"And I was blighted," Amara whispered. She pressed her hand against her lower belly, and could almost feel the nearly invisible scars from the pockmarks the disease had left. She tasted bitter bile on her tongue. "I can't give him children."

Serai shook her head and turned to stare out the window down at the courtyard. Frederic herded a second pair of enormous gargants into the yard and began hitching up their cargo harnesses with Bernard, while other holders came and went in a constant stream, placing sacks and boxes on the ground to be loaded on the beasts once they were ready. Then Serai stood on tiptoe, and gently drew down the shade.

"I'm sorry, darling."

"I never thought it through," Amara said. More tears fell. "I mean. I was just so happy, and I never…"

"Love is a fire, Amara. Draw it too close and be burned." Serai stepped over to Amara and touched her cheek with the back of her hand. "You know what you must do."

"Yes."

"Then best to make it quick. Clean." Serai sighed. "I know what I'm talking about. I'm so sorry, darling."

Amara closed her eyes and leaned her head miserably against Serai's touch. She couldn't stop the tears. She didn't try.

"So much is happening, and all at once," Serai said after a moment. "It can't be a coincidence. Can it?"

Amara shook her head. "I don't think it can."

"Furies," Serai breathed. Her expressive eyes looked haunted.

"Serai," Amara said quietly, "I believe there is a real threat to the Realm here. I'm going to stay."

Serai blinked up at her. "Darling, of course you're going to stay. I don't need a bodyguard who is pining over a man like this-you're useless to me."

Amara choked on a small roll of laughter that came up through her at Serai's words, and she folded her arms around the courtesan in a tight hug. "Will you be all right?"

"Of course, darling," Serai said. But though her voice was warm, amused, Amara felt the little courtesan trembling. Serai probably felt Amara's shivering in return.

Amara drew back, her hands on Serai's shoulders, and met her gaze. "Duty. The vord may be inside the capital. More killers are probably looking for the Steadholder even now. Cursors are being murdered. And if the Crown doesn't send reinforcements to the local garrison, more holders and legionares are going to die. Likely me with them."

Serai's eyes closed for a moment, and she bobbed her head in a brief nod. "I know. But… Amara, I'm afraid… afraid I am not suited for this kind of situation. I work in grand halls and bedchambers with wine and perfume. Not in dark alleyways with cloaks and knives. I don't like knives. I don't even own a knife. And my cloaks are far too expensive to risk bloodying."

Amara gently squeezed her shoulders, smiling. "Well. Perhaps it will not come to that."

Serai gave Amara a shaky smile. "I should hope not. It would be most awkward." She shook her head and smoothed the anxiety from her expression. "Look at you, Amara. So tall and strong now. Nothing like the farm girl I saw flying over the sea."

"It seems so long ago," Amara said.

Serai nodded, and touched a stray hair back from her cheek. Her expression became businesslike. "Shall we?"

Amara lifted her hand and the pressure of Cirrus's warding vanished. "Isana should be ready to leave shortly. Be cautious and swift, Serai. We are running out of time."

It took Tavi three hours to find Max, who was indeed at a young widow's house. He spent another hour finding a way into the house, and half an hour more to get his friend conscious, dressed, and staggering back up through the furylit streets of the capital to the Citadel. By the time the lights of the Academy loomed up above them, it was the most silent hour of the night, in the hollow, cold time just before dawn began to color the sky.

They entered through one of a sprinkling of unseen entrances provided for the use of the Cursors-in-Training at the Academy. Tavi dragged his friend down to the baths straightaway, and without ceremony shoved him into a large pool of cold water.

Max, of course, had the phenomenal recuperative abilities of anyone with his raw furycrafting power, but he had developed a correspondingly formidable array of carousing talents by way of compensation. It wasn't the first time Tavi had administered an emergency sobering after one of Max's nights on the town. The shock of the water had the large young man screaming and thrashing in a heartbeat, but when he lurched to the stairs up out of the water, Tavi met him, turned Max around, and pushed him back into the pool.

After a dozen more plunges into the freezing pool, Max pressed his hands against the sides of his head with a moan. "Great furies, Calderon, I'm awake. Would you let me out of the blighted, crows-begotten ice water?"

"Not until you open your eyes," Tavi said firmly.

"Fine, fine," Max growled. He turned a bloodshot glare upon Tavi. "Happy now?"

"Joyous," Tavi replied.

Max grunted, lumbered from the icy pool, and fumbled his clothes off, then shambled into the warm, sun gold furylit waters of one of the heated oaths. As always, Tavi's eyes were drawn to the crosshatched network of scars on his friend's back-the marks of a whip or a ninecat that could only nave been formed before Max came into his furycrafting power. Tavi winced in sympathy. No matter how many times he saw his friend's scars, they remained something startling and hideous.

He glanced around the baths. The room was enormous, with several different bathing pools trickling falls of water filling up a vast room with white marble walls, floor, pillars, and ceiling. Batches of plants, even trees, softened the severe, cold marble surroundings, and lounges were laid out in a dozen different areas, where bathers might idle in one another's company while awaiting their turn at a pool. Soft furylamps of blue, green, and gold painted each pool, giving an indication of its temperature. The sound of falling water bounded back and forth from the indifferent stone, filling the air with sound enough to mask voices more than a few steps away. It was one of the only places in the capital where one could be reasonably certain of a private conversation.