Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera 3)

"Someone came to the camp," Kitai told him. "He claimed to have a message for your Captain Cyril, but the guards on watch sent him away, to return in the morning. He told them it was important, to wake the captain, but they did not believe him and-"

"So?" Max interrupted. He looked at Tavi. "Happens all the time. Practically every messenger anyone sends thinks the world will end if he isn't seen at once. A Legion captain needs to sleep, too. No one wants to be the one that gets him out of bed."

Tavi frowned. "In peacetime," he said quietly. "There's a war on, Max. Captains need all the information they can get, and we're practically blind out here. Cyril's left standing orders for any messengers to be taken to him immediately." Tavi frowned at Max. "So the question is, why wouldn't they obey those orders?"

"There is more," Kitai said. "When the messenger left, the guards set out after him, and-"

"What?" Tavi demanded, thoughts racing. "Max. Who is on duty at the gate tonight?"

"Erasmus's century. Eighth spear, I think."

"Bloody crows," Tavi said, his voice grim. "They're Kalarans. They're going to kill him and intercept the message."

Kitai snarled in frustration and clamped a pale, slender, strong hand over Tavi's mouth and another over Max's. "By the One, Aleran, will you shut your mouth for a single instant and let me finish?" She leaned forward, eyes almost glowing with intensity. "The messenger. It was Ehren."

Chapter 26

"Wait," Max said. "Ehren? Our Ehren?"

Before he had finished the sentence, Tavi had already leapt down from the wagon and unhooked one of the horses from its harness a heartbeat later. As he did, Kitai freed the other horse in the team. Tavi grasped the mane of the first horse and leapt up to its bare back, pulling hard against the weight of his armor with his arms as he did. Kitai flicked the long reins of the second horse at Max, then took Tavi's outstretched hand and mounted behind him.

"Our Ehren," Max said, heavily. "Right." The big Antillan shook his head as he clambered down from the wagon, then hauled himself up onto the draft horse, who snorted and shook his head. "Stop complaining," Max told him, and nodded at Tavi.

Tavi grinned and kicked his mount into a heavy-footed run. He could feel one of Kitai's slender, fever-hot arms wrap around his waist. Tavi held on to the horse's mane carefully. He had learned a good deal of riding in the capital, but very little of it had been done bareback, and he knew his limits. "Which gate was he at?" he asked Kitai.

"North side of the river, west side of the city," Kitai called back.

Beside them, Max rode with the casual skill with which he did almost everything. Max, Tavi knew, had been riding since he could walk. "Did he know he was followed?"

"Ehren knew," Tavi said firmly.

"So I'm Ehren," Max said, "with an unknown number of unknowns following me. Where do I go?" Max frowned. "Wait. What the crows am I doing all the way out here in the first place? I thought Ehren got sent to Phrygia."

"Did you notice that he packed those peppermints he kept around?" Tavi asked.

"Yes. I thought he liked peppermints."

"No. He gets seasick."

Max frowned. "But Phrygia's thousands of miles from the sea and-oh."

Tavi nodded. "I assume he was under orders to keep it secret, but I suspect he was sent out to the islands."

Max grunted. "So, I'm Ehren, who is a sneaky little git like Tavi, in from the islands, followed by bad men who want to do bad things. Where do I go?"

"Somewhere that presents you more options," Tavi called back. "Where you can deal with them appropriately and as discreetly as possible." He paused for a moment, then he and Max said together, "The docks."

They pressed on, Tavi in the lead. Dry red lightning lit their way in flickers of dim fire that only made the shadows deeper and more treacherous. Tavi could navigate by the furylights in the town and upon the Elinarch, but he could barely see what was five feet in front of him. Haste was necessary, but they would do Ehren no good if they all brained themselves on low branches or broke the legs of their mounts in potholes in the trail, and Tavi began to slow the pace.

"No," Kitai said in his ear. The arm around his waist shifted, and she clasped the hand in which Tavi held the reins. She pulled his hand to the right, and the horse altered course, Max's mount following suit. Lightning flashed, and Tavi saw the black maw of a sharp-edged pothole flash by, narrowly avoided.

Kitai leaned forward, and he felt her cheek against his as she smiled. "I will be your eyes, blind Aleran."

Tavi felt his own mouth stretch into a grin to match hers, and he shouted to his mount, coaxing all the speed he could from the draft horse.

They entered the town through the eastern gate, shouting passwords to the legionares on duty there, thundering over the stone streets, the heavy steel-shod hooves of their horses striking sparks from the stone. The western gate of the town had been left unguarded and slightly ajar. As they approached, Max crafted a miniature cyclone that hammered it the rest of the way open, and they swept through, altering course to follow the city's wall down to the riverside.

The town of Elinarch had been founded as little more than a standard Legion camp anchoring either end of the bridge. In the century since, its rising population had spread beyond the original walls, building homes and business around the wall's outskirts and, especially, constructing extensive docking facilities for the river traffic that supported the town. The wooden wharves and piers had spread hundreds of yards upon either side of the original town's boundaries on both banks of the river.

Piers brought ships and boats, which brought a steady and large number of sailing men, which gave birth to an inevitable, if modest, industry of graft and vice. Wine clubs, gambling halls, and pleasure houses were built upon both the wharves and permanently anchored barges. There was a paucity of furylamps throughout the docks-partly because no one wanted even a tiny fire fury that close to so much aged wood, and partly because the darkness suited the clandestine nature of the businesses there.

Tavi swung down from the horse and flicked the reins around the nearest wooden post. "Knowing Ehren, where do we look?"

"Little guy liked to plan ahead," Max said. "Be early for lecture. Set aside time to study."

Tavi nodded. "He'd have prepared a spot in case he had to run or fight. A distraction, to keep people from noticing while he slipped away." Tavi nodded toward a number of large, roomy buildings built directly beneath the soaring stone Elinarch. "Warehouses."