Captain's Fury (Codex Alera 4)

Even as he felt the contact, he drew power up through the heavy stone of the wall, pivoted, and flung himself into empty air.

The fury-borne strength of his legs sent him sailing across a twenty-foot volume of open space to land on the rooftop of the nearest building. He landed heavily-there was generally no other way to land when one wore heavy armor-and rolled as the overstrained stonework of the roof gave way in his wake, falling straight down into the dilapidated building beneath him. He gained his feet as the watching crowd erupted into cheers.

Navaris stared coldly at Tavi for a moment, and then down at the wall. With a quick, practical motion, she reversed her grip on her gladius, knelt, and with a single thrust drove it several inches into the stone of the vertical surface of the wall's interior.

Then she backed away, long blade in her right hand, took two bounding steps forward, and leapt. Her heels came down upon the quillions of the blade embedded in the wall. The gladius bent, then flexed back with unnatural strength, flinging the cutter into the air. She turned a complete flip as she sailed toward Tavi, and landed in a roll on the building's roof, exactly as he had.

Except, he realized with a sinking feeling, that the roof hadn't collapsed under the slender, lightly armored woman's weight. His situation had not improved. At least on the wall he had known where the drop was. If he spent much time shuffling around up here, he was sure to find a weak spot and fall right through the roof, and almost certainly through the rotted wooden floors of the building's interior.

Navaris drew a dagger from her belt and stalked forward. She smirked, and Tavi felt certain that she had come to the same conclusions he had about the roof.

They engaged again, and storms of blazing motes shattered from every touch of blade on blade. Though Navaris's offensive potential had been reduced by the loss of her gladius, Tavi, forced to keep track of his footing, could not take advantage of it. Bits of rubble threatened to turn beneath his feet, and the furylamps on the wall were just far enough away to offer deep shadows that concealed the sections of rooftop that had already fallen.

Tavi's instincts screamed at him to take the offensive and drive the fight off the rooftop, but he knew it would be a deadly mistake. Patience, Araris had said. Wait for the opening.

But Navaris hadn't given him one.

Tavi barely avoided a neatly executed maneuver that would have disarmed him, and whipped his shorter blade at Navaris's dagger arm.

The blade struck.

Navaris's attack stopped at once, and the two stood poised, barely out of one another's reach, weapons raised. The stillness was eerie, broken only by Tavi's steady, heavy breaths and those of his opponent.

A tiny trickle of blood wound its way down Navaris's hand.

"You pinked me," she said, her head tilted, her eyes narrowed with what felt to Tavi like a sudden and somewhat alarming interest. "That hasn't happened in years."

Tavi didn't move, holding his gladius at arm's length in his left hand, in a low guard, his long blade in his right, slightly forward, pommel close to his body, tip aimed at Navaris's throat. Any shifting of his weight or stance would give her an opening for a blow he might not be able to repel. But by the same token, she couldn't move without facing a similar risk.

The hit had been the result of luck as much as skill, but it had certainly caught Navaris's attention. She would be more wary now, harder to strike, and there would be no repetition of his riposte's success. Tavi gritted his teeth. He had to push her, somehow, get her to take more chances, come at him even harder. Otherwise, he would wind up one more name on the list of people killed by Phrygiar Navaris.

But how? There was nothing for him to work with. The woman was apparently driven solely by a desire to inflict pain on others, coupled with an obsessive need to prove her skill. If he used his earthcraft to increase his strength, he was likely to leave her an opening while he demonstrated the danger to her. If he windcrafted greater alacrity into his attacks, it was entirely possible that she'd skewer him before he had the chance to frighten her. Speed alone was no guarantor of success.

But how else to force her into a more aggressive attack without getting himself killed in the process?

Outthink her. Create the opening. Blades and furies aren't dangerous. Minds and wills are dangerous.

There was another way to overcome her skill and metalcraft-by overturning the mind and will that sustained the cautious discipline that could prove lethal to Tavi. In the face of that discipline and skill, he would never be able to take her down blade to blade. Not all weapons were made of steel.

His mother had shown him that.

Tavi suppressed a surge of excitement and focused on his watercraft. The emotions of the mad cutter-and he had no doubt at all, now, that she was completely insane-washed over him in a fluttering tangle of sensation. It blended weirdly with his sense of the weapons in her hands.

"Phrygiar Navaris," Tavi said quietly, keeping his eyes on the center of her mass. Arm and hand motions could deceive, but real movement would always show in her center of balance.

She stared at him.

Any number of things could have caused the woman's madness and obsession, but some were still more likely than others: The deepest joys and most terrible wounds were both to be had from family.

The name Phrygiar, like every other metronym in the Realm, was an indicator of illegitimacy. Children who were not recognized by their fathers and admitted into their Houses legally became members of the "city-house" of whichever High Lord held authority over their birthplace.

That was why Max went by Antillar. His father, High Lord Antillus, had never legally recognized him. Never accepted him. It was fair to say that Max had been driven to a few extreme behaviors, largely in reaction to that fundamental insecurity, the old wound in his soul.

Tavi himself knew what it was like to grow up without a father. The absence had left an enormous hole in him, one that never seemed to completely fill again, and when something touched it, it was agony.

Oh, yes.

If he was right, he could hurt Navaris.

He could kill her with a breath.

"You can't win this fight," Tavi said quietly. "If you beat me, these walls will be overrun with Canim. Everyone will die."

"Probably," she replied, her voice entirely too calm. "But I'll take Araris first."

"Even if it kills you?"

"Yes."

"Why? What's the point?"

"To prove that I am the best," Navaris said. "The greatest blade Alera has ever known."

Tavi forced himself not to sound eager as he replied. "Prove to whom?" Tavi asked quietly.