Jim Butcher - Academ's Fury

The baths were yet empty-the slaves who attended bathers would not arrive for more than an hour. Tavi and Max were alone.

Tavi stripped, though much more self-consciously than his friend. Back at the steadholt, bathing was a matter of privacy and practicality. It had been an adjustment to engage in the more metropolitan practice of bathing followed in most of the cities, and Tavi had never managed to lose entirely the twinge of discomfort he felt when disrobing.

"Oh for crying out loud, bumpkin," Max said, without opening his eyes. "It's the men's baths. There's no one else here, and my eyes aren't even open." He gave Tavi another glare, though it was less intense than the first. "If you'd left me where you found me, you could have had the baths to yourself."

Tavi slid into the pool beside Max and pitched his voice low, barely audible over the obscuring sounds of water. "There's trouble, Max."

Max's glower vanished, and his reddened eyes glittered with sudden interest. "What kind of trouble?"

Tavi told him.

"Bloody crows!" Max roared. "Are you trying to get me killed ?"

"Yes. To tell you the truth, I never had much use for you, Max," Tavi watched his friend blink at him for a second, then scowl.

"Hah-hah," said Max. "You're hilarious."

"You should know better than that," Tavi replied. "If there was anyone else I thought could do this, I wouldn't have gotten you involved."

"You wouldn't?" Max asked, his tone suddenly offended. "Why not?"

"Because you've known what's going on for ten seconds, and you're already complaining."

"I like complaining. It's every soldier's sacred right ," Max growled.

Tavi felt a smile tug at his lips. "You're not a legionare anymore, Max. You're a Cursor. Or a Cursor-in-Training, anyway."

"I'm still offended," Max declared. After a moment, he added, "Tavi, you're my friend. If you need help, just expect me to be there whether you want me there or not."

Tavi chewed at his lip, regarding Max. "Really?"

"It'll be simpler that way," Max drawled. "So. I'm to double for Gaius, eh?"

"Can you?" Tavi asked.

Max stretched out in the hot water with a confident smile in answer. "No idea."

Tavi snorted, went to the waterfall, took up a scrubber, and began raking it over his skin, cleaning the sweat and toil of the day from him before taking up a soaped comb and raking it quickly through his hair. He rose to rinse in a cooler pool and emerged shivering to towel himself dry. Max emerged from the pools a few moments later, similarly scrubbed, and the pair of them changed into the clean clothes they'd last left with the bath attendants, leaving their soiled garments behind on their respective shelves.

"What do I do?" Max asked.

"Go to the Citadel, down the south gallery and to the west hall to the staircase down."

"Guard station there," Max noted.

"Yes. Stop at the first station, and ask for Sir Miles. He's expecting to hear from you. Kalian will probably be there, too."

Max raised his eyebrows. "Miles wanted to bring in the Cursors? I'd have thought he wouldn't hold with too much of that."

"I don't think Miles knows that Killian is still on active duty," Tavi said. "Much less that he's the current Legate."

Max slapped an annoyed hand at his head, sprinkling water out of his close-cropped hair. "I am going to lose my mind, trying to keep track of who is allowed to know what."

You're the one who agreed to Cursor training," Tavi said. Stop walking on my sacred right, Calderon."

Tavi grinned. "Just do what I do. Don't tell anyone anything."

Max nodded. "That's a solid plan."

"Let's move. I'm supposed to bring someone else down. I'll meet you there."

Max rose to leave, but paused. "Tavi," he said. "Just because I'm not complaining doesn't mean this won't be dangerous. Very dangerous."

"I know."

"Just wanted to make sure you did," Max said. "If you get in trouble… I mean, if you need my help. Don't let your pride keep you from asking for it. I mean, it's possible that some serious battlecrafting could start happening. If it does, I'll cover you."

"Thank you," Tavi said, without much emotion. "But if it comes to that, we've probably failed so badly that my own personal legion wouldn't help."

Max gave a rueful laugh of agreement, squared his shoulders, and stalked out of the baths without looking behind him. "Watch your back."

"You too."

Tavi waited a moment until Max had left the baths, then hurried out of them and toward the servants' quarters. By the time he'd arrived, a swath of light blue on the eastern horizon of the night sky had arrived to herald the coming dawn, and the staff of the Academy was beginning to stir. Tavi wound his way cautiously down service corridors and cramped staircases, careful to avoid being seen. He moved in silence through the darkened corridors, bearing no lamp of his own, relying upon infrequent, feeble hallway lights. Tavi stalked down a final cramped corridor, and to a half-sized door that opened into a crawl space in the walls-Fade's chamber.

Tavi listened intently for any approach, and once he was sure he was not being idly observed, he opened the door and slipped inside.

The slave's room was musty, cold, and dank. It was nothing more than an inefficiency of design, bounded on two walls with stone of the Academy and on the others with rough plaster. The ceiling was barely five feet high and contained nothing more than a battered old trunk with no lid and an occupied sleeping palette.

Tavi moved in silence to the palette, and reached down to shake its occupant.

He realized half a breath later that the form under the blankets was simply a bundle of bedding, piled into place as a distraction. Tavi turned, crouched, his hand moving to his dagger, but there was swift and silent motion in the darkness, and someone smoothly took the weapon from his belt, slammed Tavi hard with a shoulder, and sent him off-balance to the ground. His attacker followed closely, and in another breath, Tavi found himself pinned by a knee on his chest, and the cold edge of his own weapon was pressed to his throat.

"Light," said a quiet voice, and an ancient, dim furylamp on the wall shone scarlet.

The man crouched over Tavi was of unremarkable height and build. His hair fell in ragged strands to his shoulders and over most of his face, brown streaked through with much grey, and Tavi could barely see the gleam of dark eyes behind it. What Tavi could see of the man's visage was hideously marred with the brand the Legions used upon those judged guilty of cowardice. His forearms were as lean and sinewy as the ancient leather slave-braid on his throat, and they were covered in white scars. Some were the tiny, recognizable pockmarks of burns gained at a smith's forge, but others were straight and fine, like those Tavi had seen only upon the arms of old Giraldi back at Garrison and on Sir Miles.

"Fade," Tavi said, his chest tight with the panic caused by the swift attack. His heart pounded hard and fast. "Fade. It's me."

Fade lifted his chin for a moment, staring down at him, then his body eased, moving away from the young man. "Tavi," Fade said, his voice thick and heavy with recent sleep. "Hurt you?"

"I'm fine," Tavi assured him.

"Sneaking," Fade said, scowling. "Sneaking into my room."

Tavi sat up. "Yes. I'm sorry if I startled you."

Fade reversed his grip, taking the dagger by its blade, and offered the hilt across his wrist to Tavi. The young man reclaimed his knife and slipped it back into its sheath. "Sleeping," Fade said, and yawned, adding a soft, slurring hooting sound to the end of it.

"Fade," Tavi said. "I remember the battlements at Calderon. I know this is an act. I know you aren't a brain-addled idiot."