Furies of Calderon (58 page)

“Aleran,” she whispered, opening her eyes. Her expression was pained, weary. “Aleran. Too late. Venom. My father. Tell him I was sorry.”

Tavi stared down at her. “No,” he whispered. “Kitai, no. We’re almost out.”

“It was a good plan,” she said. Her head lolled to one side, eyes rolling back.

“No,” Tavi hissed, suddenly furious. “No, crows take you! You can’t!” He reached into his pouch, fumbling through it as tears started to blur his vision. There must be something. She couldn’t just die. She couldn’t. They were so close. Something stuck sharply into his finger, and pain flashed through him again. The crows-eaten mushroom had jabbed him with its spines. The Blessing of Night.

Fever. Poison. Injury. Pain. Even age. It has power over them all. To our people, there is nothing of greater value.

Weeping, Tavi seized the mushroom and started tearing off the spines with his fingers, heedless of the pain. Shrieks rose all around him, came closer, though the still-blazing branch seemed to have confused some of the Keepers, to have temporarily slowed their advance.

Tavi reached down and slipped an arm beneath Kitai’s head, half-hauling her up. He reached down to the wound over her thigh and crushed the mushroom in his hand.

Musty-scented, clear fluid leaked out from between his fingers and dribbled over the wound, mixing with blood and yellowish venom. Kitai’s leg twitched as the fluid touched it, and the girl drew in a sudden breath.

Tavi lifted the rest of the mushroom to her lips and pressed it into her mouth. “Eat it,” he urged her. “Eat it, you have to eat it.”

Kitai’s mouth twitched once, and then began to chew, automatically. She swallowed the mushroom and blinked her eyes slowly open, focusing them on Tavi.

Time stopped.

Tavi found himself staring down at the girl, suddenly aware of her, entirely aware of her in a way he never had been aware of anyone before. He could feel the texture of her skin beneath his hand and felt the abrupt compulsion to lay his fingers over her chest, to feel the beat of her heart beneath it, slowly gaining in strength. He could feel the surge of blood in her veins, the fear and regret and confusion that filled her thoughts. Those cleared as her eyes focused on him, widened, and Tavi realized that
she
had felt his own presence in the same way.

Not moving her eyes from his, Kitai reached out a hand and touched his chest in response, fingers pressed close to feel the beating of his heart.

It took Tavi a frozen, endless moment to separate the beating of his own heart, the rush of blood in his own ears, from hers. They beat together, perfectly in time. Even as he realized it, his own heartbeat began to speed, and so did hers, bringing a flush of heat to his face, one answered in her own expression. He stared at the wonder in her eyes and saw that it could only be a reflection of that in his own.

The scent of her, fresh and wild, curled up around him, through him like something alive. The shape of her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth. In that single moment, he saw in her the promise of the beauty that would come in time, the strength that had still to grow, the courage and reckless resourcefulness that matched his own and flamed wild and true in her.

The intensity of it made his eyes blur, and he blinked them, tried to clear the tears from them, only to realize that Kitai was blinking as well, her eyes filling with tears, going liquid and blurry.

When Tavi had blinked the tears away, his eyes returned to hers—only to find not opalescent swirls of subtle, shifting color, but wide pools of deep, emerald green.

Eyes as green as his own.

“Oh
no,”
Kitai whispered, her voice stunned, weak. “Oh
no!”
She opened her mouth, started to sit up—then shuddered once and slumped in his arms, abruptly overwhelmed with exhaustion.

The frozen moment ended.

Tavi lifted his dazed head to see the first of the Keepers edging past the blazing blanket and branch. Tavi hauled himself to his feet, lifting Kitai, and stumbled toward the ropes. He stepped into the loop at the base of one, then reached over to the other, and wrapped it around his waist, around her legs, tying her to him. Even before he was finished, Doroga had started hauling the rope up the face of the cliff. The other rope came in as well, where Hashat must have been pulling it along to keep it tight.

Tavi held on to the rope, and to Kitai, not really sure which one he held tighter. He closed his eyes, overwhelmed, and did not open them again until he and Kitai sat at the top of the cliff, in the cold, fresh, clean snow. When he opened his eyes again, he sat with his back against a stone and idly noted the fresh earth beside him, where Doroga had uprooted the boulder and hurled it down.

A moment later, he realized that Kitai lay against his side, beneath one of his arms, warm and limp, half-conscious. He tightened his arm on her, gently, confused—but certain that he wanted her to sleep, to rest, and to be right where she was.

Tavi looked up and found Hashat staring down at them, wide-eyed, her expression bewildered and then, by slow degrees, becoming indignant. She turned to Doroga and demanded, “What are you going to do about this?”

The headman, veins still standing out on his arms and thighs, tipped his head back and poured out a rich and rolling laugh. “You know as well as I, Hashat. It’s done.”

The Horse headman scowled and folded her arms over her chest. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” she said. “This is unacceptable.”

“This
is
,” Doroga rumbled. “Other matters are before us now.”

Hashat flipped her mane out of her eyes with a toss of her head. “I don’t like it,” she said, her tone resigned. “This was a trick. You tricked me.”

Doroga’s eyes glittered, and a smile lurked at his lips, but he said in a stern tone, “Keep your mind on why we are here, Hashat.”

“The trial,” the Marat woman said and turned back to Tavi. “Well, Aleran? Did you recover the Blessing?”

Tavi shivered and felt abruptly stupid. He had forgotten. In all the excitement and confusion, he had forgotten the trial. He had forgotten that he had used the mushroom he’d needed to win on Kitai. And though he may have saved the girl’s life, he had lost the trial. His own life was forfeit. And the Marat, united, would ride against the people of his home.

“I…” Tavi said. He reached toward his pouch—and felt warm fingers inside.

Tavi looked down and saw Kitai drawing her hand back out of his pouch. Her eyes blinked open once, toward his, and he felt more than saw the silent gratitude in them, the respect for his courage.

“But it was so stupid,” she whispered. Then she closed her eyes again.

Wordlessly, Tavi reached inside his pouch and found the second Blessing of Night where Kitai had left it. He drew it out on fingers already pricked and bleeding and offered it to Doroga.

Doroga knelt down on both knees in front of Tavi and accepted the Blessing, his expression grave. He looked down at the mushroom, then at Kitai’s thigh, the yellowish venom drying there. His eyes widened with sudden realization, then went back to Tavi. Doroga’s head tilted to one side, staring at him, and the boy felt certain that Gargant headman knew exactly what had happened in the alien valley below.

Doroga reached out and laid one huge hand on Kitai’s pale hair for a moment, eyes gentle. Then he looked back at Tavi and said, “I loved her mother very much. Kitai is all I have left of her. You have courage, Aleran. You risked your life to save hers. And in doing so, you have saved not one, but two whom I love. Who are my family.”

The Marat rose to his full height and reached down his hand to Tavi. “You have protected my family, my home. The One demands that I repay you for that debt, Aleran.”

Tavi drew in a sharp breath and looked from Doroga to Hashat. The Horse warrior’s eyes gleamed with a sudden excitement, and she drew in a breath, laying one of her hands on the hilt of her saber.

“Come, young man,” Doroga said quietly. “My daughter needs to rest. And if I am to repay you, I have work to do. Will you come with me?”

Tavi took a breath, and when he spoke, his voice sounded, to him, to be deeper, more steady than he’d heard it before. For once, it didn’t waver or crack. “I will come with you.”

He took Doroga’s hand. The huge Marat headman showed his teeth in a sudden, fierce smile and hauled Tavi to his feet.

Chapter 35

Amara took off her belt in pure frustration and used the buckle to rap hard against the bars in the tiny window of the cell she’d been thrown into. “Guard!” she shouted, trying to force authority into her tone. “Guard, come down here at once!”

“Won’t do any good,” Bernard said, stretched out on the pallet against the far wall of the room. “They can’t hear anything down here.”

Bernard shrugged. “If he’s ambitious, he’s going to send out his own people to find out what’s going on. He’ll try to exploit the situation to his advantage.”

“You don’t think he is?”

“Not like that, no. Odds are, he’s got Gram put in a bed somewhere, and he’s dispatched a courier to carry word to Riva, informing them of the situation and asking for instructions.”

Amara spat out an oath. “There isn’t time for that. He’ll have thought of it. He’s got Knights Aeris around the perimeter of the Valley to intercept any airborne couriers.”

“He? The man at the ford. The one who shot at Tavi.” Though his tone didn’t change much, Bernard’s words held a note of bleak determination.

Amara folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the door, exhausted, frustrated. If it would have helped, she’d have started crying. “Yes. Fidelias.” The bitter venom in her own voice surprised even her, and she repeated the name more quietly. “Fidelias.”

Amara swallowed. “He is… he was my teacher. My
patriserus
.”

Bernard sat up, frowning. “He’s a Cursor?”

“Was,” Amara said. “He’s thrown in with someone. A rebel.” She flushed, her face heating. “I probably shouldn’t say any more, Stead-holder.”

“You don’t have to,” he assured her. “And call me Bernard. As long as we’re stuck in a storage closet together, I think we can skip the titles. There won’t be room for all of us.”

Amara flushed. “If he’d have let it happen. I was about thirteen when I started training with him, and he was everything. He didn’t though. He didn’t…” She let her voice trail off.