Captain's Fury (Page 78)

Tavi grimaced. "I was sort of hoping you wouldn’t notice it in all the excitement."

"I debated doing that," Ehren said. "But… these days it seems I have to lie to almost everyone. I don’t really like it. And I don’t want that to include you."

Tavi smiled a little and nodded. "Thank you."

"Sure," Ehren said. "So. When you told Isana that she was the First Lady of Alera, what you meant was…"

"Exactly what I said," Tavi said.

Ehren frowned. Then he blinked and stared at Tavi. "You mean… she’s really Lady Caria? In disguise?"

Tavi blinked. "What? No! Oh, bloody crows, no."

Ehren frowned. "Then I don’t get it. The First Lady is the wife of the First Lord."

"Most First Lords would have retired years ago," Tavi said. "Passed their authority on to their heir. Remained as an advisor, maybe."

Ehren frowned. Then he lifted both eyebrows and dropped his voice to a whisper. "The Princeps? Gaius Septimus?"

Tavi nodded silently.

"But he never married!"

"He did," Tavi said. "Legally. And he left her the means to prove it."

Ehren whistled. "If he’d lived…" He shook his head. "Well. Everything would be different, wouldn’t it?" Ehren studied Tavi’s face for a moment, frowning. "But that’s not all."

Tavi took a deep breath. "He had an heir by her, Ehren. A son."

The Cursor arched a skeptical eyebrow. "An heir to the Crown? Tavi…" Then his expression froze in place. "Tavi," he said quietly, his eyes widening.

Tavi forced himself to smile a little. He shrugged his shoulders stiffly. "I’m not terribly comfortable with it, either."

Ehren glanced around covertly. "Urn. How many people know about this?"

"You. Cyril. Araris. My mother."

"And me," Kitai drawled from her perch, without opening her eyes.

Tavi frowned up at her. "I never explained it to you."

She yawned. "Aleran, please. It is not as if you are horribly complex. I have ears and a mind. If I waited for you to speak to me about everything important, it would probably drive me insane."

Tavi snorted and shook his head. He turned back to Ehren.

The young man chewed idly at a fingernail, a habit Tavi remembered well from their days at the Academy together. "Gaius doesn’t know?"

"He knows something," Tavi said. "I’m not sure how much."

Ehren sighed. "You realize that it’s my duty to inform him."

"That," Tavi said, "is the least of my worries."

The Cursor nodded. "If it’s true," he said. "Tavi, I don’t mean to insult you, but… an heir of the House of Gaius would be a powerful furycrafter. You… you aren’t."

"There are reasons," Tavi said quietly. "I don’t want to go into it right now."

The Cursor nodded and looked away. After a minute he asked, his voice carrying a slight edge, "How long have you known?"

"You’re my friend, Ehren. I don’t want to have to lie to you, either." Tavi turned to him and put a hand on Ehren’s shoulder, meeting his eyes. "I found out just before we marched out from the Elinarch. Until then, I had no idea."

Ehren searched his eyes for a moment, a line appearing between his eyebrows. Then he nodded slowly. "All right." He chewed on another fingernail. "So what do we do?"

"We continue with the mission," Tavi said. "We get Varg and use him to broker an armistice with the Canim. Then we march south and help Sir Miles put Kalarus down for good."

"Simultaneously stealing the thunder from both Aquitainus and his puppet Arnos." Ehren shook his head. "You can’t expose yourself to this kind of risk."

"What risk? I’m not anything yet," Tavi said. "And even if I was, it has to be me who takes the risk. Who else could?"

Ehren rolled his eyes and waved his hands in a vague gesture of frustration. "How can you possibly say something that is so backward while still making sense?"

Tavi laughed. "The point is," he said, "we’ve got to focus on what’s here and now. Have you gone over the list?"

Ehren nodded. "I can buy everything but the coldstones. Those aren’t easy to find at any time, much less in the spring. Everyone’s saving them up for summer. Even if I find some for sale, they’re going to cost more than we have."

"They aren’t optional equipment," Tavi said, frowning. "We’ve got to have them, period."

"I thought you’d say something like that," Ehren said. He glanced up at the rigging above and behind them. "As it happens, I seem to remember a rather successful burglar who terrorized the shopkeepers of the capital a few years back."

Kitai opened one eye. Her mouth spread into her lazy, feline grin. "Good," she said. "I was beginning to grow bored."

Chapter 30

At Tavi’s insistence-backed by more of Cyril’s coin-Captain Demos hired a particularly swift tugboat for the journey upriver, once they had reached Parcia. Tavi had never been to the southern city and seaport at the delta of the Gaul, but there was no time to take in the sights. Parcia was a city of shining white stone, rising on several tiered levels almost like stair-steps, up to an impressive fortified citadel. Though not as large as Alera Imperia, the city of Parcia seemed airier, cleaner, more open.

The crew of the tugboat Demos hired reminded Tavi of Countess Amara, with their dark golden skin and their hair that came in several shades of deep gold, amber, and copper. The crew seemed more cheerful than the rivermen Tavi had known in the capital, and after running lines to the Slive, the smaller ship proceeded up the river, propelled by a crew of Parcian men with long poles, walking down either side of the tugboat, singing a working song with surprising facility as they did, pushing the vessels upriver.

In the stern of the smaller ship was a pair of middle-aged women. They settled down on seats slung outside the back of the tugboat, down close to the wa-terline. They sat dragging their feet in the water, chatting with one another, and doing handwork, mostly sewing. When Tavi asked, Demos explained that they were the wives of the tugboat’s captain and first mate, and that they were watercrafters whose furies would convince the currents of the river to pretend that the tugboat and the Slive were not there.

The Gaul was busy with traffic, and would only become more so until the trading season slowed again at the end of autumn. Now that the sailors weren’t needed to manage the sails, they lounged on deck for hours at a stretch, whenever Demos couldn’t fill their time with make-work. As a result, Tavi found that he and Araris had an audience for their practice sessions, and to his intense discomfort they began regularly betting on the outcomes of the practices-not whether Tavi would beat Araris, which seemed a forgone conclusion. The wagers all centered on when and how Tavi would lose and how much of his blood would spill in the process.