Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera 3)

Max watched the recruits at their drill, but his expression turned a bit bleak. "What's it like?"

"What is what like?"

"Having a family."

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 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."

Max's expression never changed.

Tavi asked, "What was your family like?"

Max was quiet for a second, then said, "I don't think I'm drunk enough to answer that question."

But Max had been the one to bring up the subject. Maybe he wanted to talk and just needed some encouragement. "Try," Tavi said.

There was a longer silence.

"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."

"That's when the accidents started," Tavi guessed.

"Yeah."

"What happened?"

"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.

"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.

"Must be my stench," Tavi agreed quietly.

"Work to do," Max said. "My fish have a practice bout with Valiar Marcus's veteran spear in the morning."

"Think they'll win?"

"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.

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.