Princeps' fury (13 page)

“There’s . . . an awareness. When the mind and body know the time is near. I don’t think many would know it. Or see you at such an . . . unguarded moment.”

He set the cup of wine down and bowed his head.

Isana rose. She walked calmly around the desk and laid her hand on his shoulder. She felt the First Lord’s frame tremble once. Then his hand rose and covered hers briefly. He squeezed once before withdrawing it again.

“It’s rather important,” he said, after a moment, “that you not speak of it.”

“I understand,” she said quietly. “How long?”

“Months, perhaps,” he said. He coughed again, and she saw him fighting to suppress it, his hands clenching into fists. She reached for the cup of spicewine and passed it to him.

He swallowed a sparing measure and nodded his thanks to her.

“Lungs,” he said after a moment, recovering. “Went swimming in the late autumn when I was young. Took a fever. They always were weak. Then that business in Kalare . . .”

“Sire,” she said, “would you like me to take a look at them. Perhaps . . .”

He shook his head. “Furycrafting can only go so far, Isana. I’m old. The damage is long done.” He took a careful, steadying breath, and nodded. “I’ll hang on until Octavian returns. I can do that much.”

“Do you know when he’ll return?”

Gaius shook his head. “He’s beyond my sight,” he replied. “Crows, but I wish I hadn’t let him go. The First Aleran is probably the most seasoned Legion in Alera. I could use them in Ceres right now. To say nothing of him. Hate to say it, but growing up the way he did, no furies at all—it’s given him a crowbegotten tricky mind. He sees things I wouldn’t.”

“Yes,” Isana agreed in a neutral tone.

“How’d you do it?” Gaius asked. “Stifle his furycraft, I mean.”

“His bathwater. It was an accident, really. I was trying to slow his growth. So no one would think him old enough to be Septimus’s son.”

He looked up at her with weary, sunken eyes. “Get me those Legions. Or by the time he comes home, there might not be much of Alera left.”

CHAPTER 9

After the first six days of the storm, Tavi more or less gave up trying to keep track of time. In the brief periods when he was not too sick to think coherently, he practiced his Canim—mostly the curse words. He’d learned to manage himself well enough to keep from constantly retching, at least, but it was still a miserable way to live, and Tavi did not bother hiding his jealousy at those around him who did not seem subject to the brutal pitching of the
Slive
under storm.

The winter gale was violent and relentless. The
Slive
did not simply rock. It positively wallowed, rolling wildly as it pitched back and forth. At times, only the lines fastened across his bunk kept Tavi from being tumbled completely out of it. Between the clouds and the long winter nights, it was dark the vast majority of the time, and lights were only permitted where absolutely necessary and where they could be constantly monitored. A fire on the ship, during such a storm, while unlikely to destroy the vessel on its own, would almost certainly cripple it and leave it easy prey for wind and wave.

Meanwhile, out on the deck, in the howling wind and driving rain and sleet, the sailors of the
Slive
shouted and labored continuously, constantly lashed by the bellowing voices of Demos and the ship’s officers. Tavi would have joined them if he could, but Demos had flatly refused, on the grounds that serpents and worms had better sea legs, and that he wasn’t going to explain to Gaius Sextus how the heir to the Realm had managed to trip over something while trying to tie a knot he didn’t know very well and fallen to his death in the sea.

So Tavi was left to sit there in the dark, most of the time, feeling vaguely guilty that he stayed in his bunk while others labored to bring the ship through the storm, and bored out of his skull—in addition to being sicker than anyone really ought to be.

The entire business was enough to make him somewhat surly.

Kitai was there with him the whole while, her presence steady, calming, reassuring, always passing him bland food that he could keep down, or urging him to drink water or gentle broth—at least until the seventh day, at which point she said, “Aleran, even I have limits,” and left the cabin with her fists clenched, muttering under her breath in Canim.

That part, at least, he spoke better than she did. But then, he’d been practicing.

An interminable time later, Tavi awoke to an odd sensation. It took him several moments to realize that the ship was riding smoothly and that he did
not
feel horribly ill. He unfastened the line across his chest and sat up at once, hardly daring to believe it, but it was true—the
Slive
rode steady in the waves, no longer tossed and shaken by the storm. The insides of his nostrils were painfully dry, and when he sat up out of his bunk, he felt the cold at once. Grey sunlight trickled drearily through cabin windows rimed with frost.

He got up and dressed in his warmest clothes, and found Kitai sleeping hard in the bunk beside his. Maximus was in the bunk across the room, the first time Tavi had seen him in days, in a similar state of exhaustion. Tavi added his blanket atop Kitai’s. She murmured sleepily and curled a bit more closely beneath the additional warmth. Tavi kissed her hair, and went out onto the deck of the ship.

The seas were strange.

The waters, for one, were odd. Even at their smoothest, they had always rolled gently. These seas were as flat as a sheet of glass, hardly rippled by a mild, cold breeze from the north.

Ice was everywhere.

It coated the ship in a thin layer, glistening over the spars and masts. The deck, too, was covered in a thicker film of ice, though it had been pitted and scarred by some means, making it less treacherous than it might have been. Nonetheless, Tavi walked cautiously. Lines had been strung up in several places on the ship, obviously there to provide the crew with handholds where they could not reach a railing or other portion of the ship’s superstructure to support themselves.

He went to the railing and looked out over the sea.

The fleet was spread out around them, raggedly, out into the distance. The nearest ship was too far away to make out any details, but even so, Tavi could see that its profile was wrong. It took him a moment of staring to realize that its mainmast was simply missing, snapped off in the storm. At least two more ships were close enough for him to identify similar damage, including one of the oversized Canim warships. Tavi could see no one moving on any of the ships, including his own, and it gave him the odd, uncomfortable sensation that he was the only person alive.

A gull let out a lonely-sounding cry. Ice crackled, and an icicle fell from a line to shatter on the deck.

“It’s always like this after a long blow,” came Demos’s quiet voice from behind him.

Tavi turned to find the ship’s captain emerging from belowdecks, moving calmly over the icy planks to stand beside Tavi. He looked the same as he always did—neat, calm, and dressed in black. His eyes were undershadowed with weariness, and he had several days’ growth of beard. But otherwise he showed no signs of his days-long battle with the elements.

“The men have been working as hard as a man can, without proper food or sleep for days, sometimes,” Demos continued. “Once the danger is passed, they just drop down and sleep. I practically had to beat them to get them to go to their racks first, this time. Some of them would have slept right on the ice.”

“Why aren’t you sleeping, too?” Tavi asked.

“I’m not as tired. I spent the time watching them work,” Demos drawled. Tavi didn’t believe him for a moment. “Someone has to keep his eyes open. I’ll sleep when the bosun wakes up.”

“Is everyone all right?”

“I lost three,” Demos said, his voice never wavering. Tavi didn’t mistake it for a lack of feeling. The man was simply too tired to become energetic about anything at all, be it joy or agony. “Sea took them.”

“Aye. Storms can take masts like a waterbuck cropping reeds.” Demos shook his head. “The larger ships had it bad in this one. The fleet’s witchmen were able to keep us from getting completely separated. Seas are calm enough, we might be able to send some flyers around, gather everyone in—once folks start waking up. Give it a couple of hours.”

Tavi ground his teeth. “There must be something I can do. If you like, get some rest, and I’ll keep an eye on—”

Demos shook his head. “Not on your life, my lord. Maybe you’re a mad genius at war, but you sail like cows fly. You aren’t commanding my ship. Not even in this pond.”

Tavi grimaced at Demos but knew better than to argue with the man. Demos had certain views about the order of the universe—simply put, that upon the deck of his ship
he
should be the foremost policy-making entity. Given that the
Slive
had survived the storm in fine condition when many of the other ships seemed to have been horribly mauled, Tavi supposed Demos’s opinion was not entirely without foundation.

“I’ve been lying around like a lazy dog for days,” Tavi said.

“Like a sick dog,” Demos said. He gave Tavi a direct look. “You don’t look good, my lord. The Marat woman was worried about you. Worked herself harder than any of us, trying not to.”

“She just got sick of my bellyaching,” Tavi said.

Demos smiled faintly. “I’ll wager your work will begin shortly, my lord. Then none of us will want to be you.”

“That’s shortly. I want to do something
now
,” Tavi said. He squinted around the ship. “The men are going to wake up hungry.”

Demos folded his arms on the ship’s railing. “If you don’t mind me saying, Octavian—you really don’t have any idea at all how to be a Princeps, do you?”

Men began stirring sooner than Tavi would have thought. Partly, that was due to the day’s growing swiftly colder, making sleep in still-damp shipboard clothing difficult. Partly, it was due to the minor injuries and strains associated with hard, dangerous labor. But it was due in large measure to their raw hunger, driving them from rest to fill their growling bellies.

The ship’s galley included a frost cabinet large enough to require a pair of coldstones, and he was surprised to see how much meat it stored. By the time the men began to rouse themselves, he’d managed to prepare a large amount of mash and sliced and fried four entire hams, in addition to the stacks of ship’s biscuit and gallons of hot, bitter tea. The mash wasn’t much clumpier than the ship’s cook normally made it, and the ham, while perhaps not of gourmet quality, was certainly in no danger of being undercooked. As Demos predicted, the crew dug in with abandon, while Tavi, just as the cook normally did, slapped food onto waiting plates as the men lined up.

He spent the time talking with each of the sailors, asking them about the storm, and thanking them for a job well done. The sailors, all of whom had become familiar with Tavi on their journey the previous year, spoke with him in familiar, friendly terms that never quite edged all the way into open disrespect.

The last people in line for food were Maximus, Kitai, and Magnus. The latter had a decidedly disapproving glare on his face.

“Not a word,” Tavi said quietly as Magnus approached. “Not a crowbegotten word, Magnus. I had to lay there like a bloody infant for more than a week. I’m in no mood to be scolded.”

“Your Highness,” Magnus said, rather stiffly and just as quietly. “I would not dream of doing so in public. For fear that it would lessen the respect due your office.”