Cursor's Fury (22 page)

Max glanced casually around, and Tavi could feel the air around him tightening as Max ensured privacy. “At least it’s given you a good excuse to go to the Pavilion every night. And I’ve noted that you aren’t whining about Kitai anymore.”

“I’m not?” Tavi asked. He frowned and thought about it. That hollow, unpleasant sensation in his stomach, the empty pang, had been absent for some time, and his frown deepened. “I’m not,” he mused.

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“Told you you’d get over her,” Max said. “I should have bought you a girl for the evening weeks ago. Glad you did it on your own.”

“Easy to argue that you have to maintain your cover,” Max pointed out. “A little wine. A girl or two. Or three, if you can afford it. What’s the harm?”

Tavi frowned and thought about it. Max was quite correct when he said that the girls at the Pavilion could be quite enticing, and Tavi had avoided watching them dance. It was a given that any dancer with earthcrafting would use it to hone the appetites of the men watching. Often, several danced at once, and such an environment was geared to fleece the pockets of the legionares who succumbed to their urges. Since the legionares by and large went there with exactly that purpose in mind, it tended to work out.

Tavi had been propositioned by several of the doxies there, but had declined to purchase anyone’s charms for a night or to sample the wine and other intoxicants available. He had no intention of clouding his judgment—his wits were what had kept him alive.

“You should enjoy yourself,” Max said. “No one would begrudge you that.”

“I would,” Tavi said. “I need to keep my wits about me.”

Max grunted. “True, I suppose. As long as you aren’t constantly mooning over Kitai, I guess it’s all right if you don’t tumble a doxy now and then.”

Tavi snorted. “Glad you approve.”

Three cohorts of recruits, nearly a thousand legionares, pounded by on the practice road, now moving in a solid block and in full armor. Their footsteps thundered in uniform rhythm, even through the muting effect of Max’s screen.
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After they passed, and the racket faded away, Max asked, “Turn up anything?”

Tavi shrugged a shoulder. “I crossed a few palms. I might get something tonight.” He gave Max an oblique look. “I heard about an unlicensed slaver operating nearby. Apparently grabbed a couple of camp followers. But someone beat him unconscious, tied him to a tree, sneaked past his guards, and released his slaves.”

Max lowered his windcrafted screen long enough to stand up and shout, “Crows take it, Karder, get that shield up or I’ll give you a few lumps on top of your fool head to remind you! If Valiar Marcus’s spear humiliates my best, you’ll all be running circles for a week!”

Max pursed his lips, then shrugged. “Wasn’t me. There are a lot of Phrygians hereabouts. They hate slavers. Crows, plenty of folk do. I hear that Ceres has a whole big gang of men in masks who roam around at night and hang any slaver they can get their hands on. They have to employ a whole army of personal guards to stay safe. Gotta love a town like Ceres.”

Tavi drank another ladle of water. “Sometimes it felt like they were strangling me. I knew it was because they cared, but it still drove me mad. They were worried about me because of my crafting problem. I liked knowing that they
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were there. I always knew that if I had a problem, they’d help me. Sometimes at night, I would have a bad dream or lie awake feeling sorry for myself. I’d go and look in their rooms and see they were there. Then I could go back to sleep.”

“Notable for their absence,” Max said, finally. “My mother died when I was five years old. She was a slave from Rhodes, you know.”

“I knew.”

Max nodded. “I don’t remember much about her. My lord father all but lives at the Shieldwall. He only comes back to Antillus during the summer, then he’s got a whole year’s worth of work to make up for. He’d sleep maybe three or four hours a night, and he hated being interrupted. I’d maybe have dinner with him once, and a furycrafting lesson or two. Sometimes I’d ride with him to review the new recruits. But neither of us talked much.” His voice grew very quiet. “I spent most of my time with Crassus and my stepmother.”

Tavi nodded. “Wasn’t fun.”

“Crassus wasn’t so bad. I was older and bigger than him, so there wasn’t much he could do. He followed me around a lot, and if he saw something of mine that he liked, he’d take it. She’d give it to him. If I said anything, she’d have me whipped.” He bared his teeth in a rictus of a smile. “Course, if I did
anything,
she’d have me whipped.”

Tavi thought of his friend’s scars and clenched his jaw.

“At least, until I came into my furies.” His eyes narrowed. “When I figured out how strong I was, I blew the door to her private chambers to cinders, walked in, and told her that if she tried to have me whipped again, I’d kill her.”

“First one was at flying lessons,” Max said. “I was hovering a couple of feet outside the city walls, maybe thirty feet up. Ajar of rock salt fell out of a window of a tower, hit the wall, and pieces flew through my windcrafting. Disrupted it. I fell.”

Tavi winced.

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“The next time was in the winter. Someone had spilled water at the top of a long staircase, and it froze. I slipped on it and fell.” He took a deep breath. “That’s when I ran off and joined the Legions in Placida.”

“Max,” Tavi began.

Max abruptly rose to his feet, and said, “Feeling kind of nauseous. Must be your stench.”

Tavi wanted to say something to his friend. To help him. But he knew Max, and he was too proud to accept Tavi’s sympathy. Max had ripped open old wounds in speaking of his family and didn’t want anyone to see the pain. Tavi cared about his friend, but Max wasn’t ready to let anyone help him. It was enough for one day.

“Not unless Marcus and all his men have heart attacks and drop dead during the bout.” Max glanced over his shoulder and met Tavi’s eyes for a moment. “The fish can’t win. But that isn’t the point. They just need to put up a decent fight.”

Max meant more than the words were saying. Tavi nodded at his friend. “Don’t count the fish out yet, Max,” he said quietly. “You never know how things are going to turn out.”

“Maybe,” Max said. “Maybe.” He gave Tavi a token salute as he lowered the screen, nodded, and walked back out onto the practice field. “Crows, Scipio!” he said when he was thirty paces away. “I can still smell you all the way from
here.
You may need a bath, sir!”

Tavi debated finding Max’s tent and rolling around in his cot for a while. He rejected the idea as unprofessional, however tempting. Tavi glanced at the lowering sun and simply headed from the practice field over to the domestics’ camp.

Camp followers were as much a part of a Legion as armor and helmets. Six thousand or so professional soldiers required a considerable amount of support, and the domestics and camp followers provided it.

Domestics were by and large childless, unmarried young women serving a legally required term of service with a Legion. They saw to the daily needs of the legionares, typically consisting mostly of food preparation and laundry. Other domestics helped repair damaged uniforms, maintain spare weaponry and armor, handled the delivery of packages and letters, and otherwise assisted in the duties required by the camp.

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While the law required nothing more than labor, placing that many young women in close proximity to that many young men inevitably resulted in the growth of relationships and the conception of children—which was the point of the law, Tavi suspected. The world was a dangerous place filled with deadly enemies, and the people of Alera had need of all the hands they could get. Tavi’s mother and his aunt Isana had been serving a three-year term of service with the Legions when he had been born, the illegitimate son of a soldier and a Legion domestic.

Other followers of the Legion included domestics who had decided to remain in a more permanent capacity—often as the wife to a legionare in every sense but the legal one. While legionares were not permitted to marry legally, many career soldiers had a common-law wife in the camp following or a nearby town or village.

The last group was those folk who sensed an opportunity near the Legion. Merchants and peddlers, entertainers, craftsmen, doxies, and dozens of others followed the Legion selling their goods and services to the regularly paid and relatively wealthy legionares. Still others simply lurked nearby, intending to follow the Legion and wait nearby until the conclusion of a battle, hoping to loot whatever could be had in the fighting’s aftermath.

The camp followers formed in a loose ring around the wooden fortifications of the Legion, their tents ranging from surplus Legion gear to garishly colored contraptions to simple lean-tos and shelters made of a sheet of canvas and rough-cut wooden poles. Lawless folk abounded, and there were parts of the camp where it would be very foolish for a young legionare to wander after dark—or a young officer, for that matter.

Tavi knew the safest routes through the camp, where legionares’ families tended to gather for mutual protection and support. His destination was not far past the invisible boundary of the “decent” side of the camp.

Tavi walked up to Mistress Cymnea’s Pavilion, a ring of large, garishly colored tents, pitched together to form a large circle around a central area like a courtyard, leaving only a narrow walkway between tents to allow entry. He could hear the sound of music, mostly pipes and drums, inside, as well as the sound of laughter and raucous voices. He slipped into the open ring of well-trampled grass around a central fire.

A man the size of a small bull rose from his seat as Tavi entered. He had weather-reddened skin and no hair, not even eyebrows or eyelashes, and his neck was as thick as Tavi’s waist. He wore only tooled-leather breeches and
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boots, and his hairless upper body was heavy with muscle and old scars. A weighty chain around his neck marked him as a slave, but there was nothing like mildness or submission in his expression. He sniffed, made a face, and gave Tavi a steady glower.

“Bors,” Tavi said politely. “Is Mistress Cymnea available?”

“Money,” Bors rumbled.

Tavi already had his money pouch off his belt. He dumped several copper rams and a few silver bulls into his palm and showed them to the huge man.

Bors peered at the coins, then nodded politely at Tavi. “Wait.” He lumbered off toward the smallest tent in the circle.

Tavi waited quietly. In the shade beside one of the tents sat Gerta, a vagabond Mistress Cymnea had taken in and something of a fixture outside her tents. The woman wore a dress that looked more like a shapeless sack than clothing, and smelled none too clean. Her hair was a dark, brittle bush that clung together in mats and stuck out at improbable angles, showing only a part of her face. She wore a binding across her eyes and nose, and beneath the grime on her skin, Tavi could see the angry red pockmarks of a recent survivor of the Blight or one of the other dangerous fevers that could strike down the folk of Alera. Tavi had never heard the simple woman speak, but she sat in place playing a small reed flute in a slow, sad, and haunting melody. A beggar’s bowl sat on the ground before her, and as he always did, Tavi dropped a small coin into it. Gerta did not react to his presence.