First Lord's Fury (Codex Alera 6)

Bernard watched her with calm green eyes for several seconds before he said, "What were you holding back?"

"What makes you think I was holding anything back, love?" Amara asked.

He shrugged. "Know you too well, I suppose." He tilted his head, frowning, then nodded slowly. "You talked a lot about the vord's next attack. Kept their focus on it. So it's going to happen later." He furrowed his brow in thought. "Invidia's going to betray us at the hive."

"Yes," Amara said quietly. "She is."

Bernard inhaled slowly. "What are we going to do about it?"

The room, Amara thought, felt positively cavernous without the presence of the High Lords there. She bowed her head and closed her eyes and tried not to think too hard about what she had to do. "We," she whispered, "are going to let her."

Chapter 44

Tavi awakened smoothly, naturally, and free of pain. He was floating in a tub of warm water, his head and shoulders supported on an inclined board. He was naked. His toes poked out of the water at the far end of the tub. He lifted his head, which was an effort. There was an angry red puckering of his skin over his belly, to the left of his navel, where the vord Queen's weapon had stabbed him. Little, angry veins of red spread out from the injury.

Tavi looked blearily around him. A healer's tent. One of the ones that hadn't been destroyed, obviously. Furylamps lit it. So he'd been unconscious for hours, but not many of them. Unless it had been more than a day.

He hated being unconscious. It always interrupted everything he had planned.

He turned his head to the left, and found the tub beside him occupied. Maximus lay in it. He looked awful, though that was mostly bruises beneath the skin of his shoulders, neck, face, head... There seemed very little of his friend that was not bruised, in fact. And his nose had been broken - again. His eyes were closed, but he was breathing.

Tavi leaned up a little and eyed the next tub over. Crassus occupied it, in the same condition he and Maximus enjoyed. The young Tribune stirred, though he looked like he felt even worse than Tavi did.

"Crassus," Tavi rasped.

Though he blinked his eyes open, the young man was still clearly in pain. He looked at Tavi and lifted his chin very slightly in acknowledgment.

"Crassus," Tavi croaked. His throat felt dry. It hurt to talk. "Report."

"I hurt," Crassus said, his voice slurring and weak. He closed his eyes again. "End of report."

Tavi tried to get the young man to open his eyes again, but there was no rousing him. He sank back tiredly into the tub.

"He's very tired," said a quiet voice. "It's better if you let him rest, Your Majesty. The attack on the headquarters tent was defeated and most of the attackers slain. We lost twenty-two, all of them from among the guards stationed around the command tent."

Tavi looked up to see Dorotea sitting quietly on a camp stool near the tent's entrance. She looked terrible, her eyes sunken, her cheeks bloodless. The collar on her throat threw back the subdued light of the lamp with a silent, malevolent gleam. She held a blanket wrapped around her though the night was not cold.

"Your Highness," he corrected her gently. "I'm not the First Lord yet."

The slave smiled tiredly. "You just stood against the nightmare of our time, young man. You put your life at hazard for the sake of a slave who once tried to murder you. Thank you. Your Majesty."

"If you want to thank a hero, thank Foss," Tavi said wearily. "He's the one who saved you."

"My thanks won't matter to him now," she said quietly. "I hope his rest is peaceful."

Tavi sat up slowly. "Where's Kitai?"

"Sleeping," Dorotea said. "She was exhausted."

"What happened after I went down?"

The slave smiled faintly. "Several of us were unconscious and dying. You. Me. Maximus. Crassus. She was not in good condition herself, and did not have the strength remaining to attempt a healing on more than one person. She had to choose whom to save."

Tavi took a slow breath. "Ah. And she chose you. Someone to lead the less-experienced healers."

Dorotea inclined her head slightly, as if she was afraid something might spill out if she tipped it too far. "Our senior folk were all conferring when..." She shivered. "When you saw us. Kitai's was a remarkably rational decision, under the circumstances. Emotions tend to overrule reason when one is in pain and afraid for another. And her feelings for you are disturbingly intense. She could easily have let those feelings control her. And I, my son, and your friend Maximus would all be dead."

"She made the right call," Tavi said. He looked at Max and Crassus. "How are they?"

Dorotea tightened the blanket around her slightly. "I assume that you know that watercrafting does not simply make a subject whole again. It draws upon the body's resources to restore what has been made unwhole."

"Of course," Tavi said.

"There are limits. And... and my Crassus had so many injuries. Broken bones. Shattered organs." She bit her lip and closed her eyes. "I did all that I could, everything, but there are limits to what can be repaired. The body can only sustain so much of its own regeneration..."

She shuddered and shook for several seconds. Then suddenly Dorotea seemed to master herself and lifted her face, wiping tears briskly from her cheeks. Her voice was unsteady, but she attempted to use crisp, professional description. "Crassus's injuries were extensive and serious. I repaired enough damage that they should not shorten his life. Assuming that there is no infection - which is an acute danger when a body is so badly strained - he may be able to walk again. Eventually. His days as a Tribune are finished."

Tavi swallowed and nodded. "Maximus?"

"The vord Queen hit him on the head rather than anywhere vital," Dorotea said with tired, almost fond irritation. "He's fine. Or will be, when he wakes up. It could take a while."

"How am I?" Tavi asked.

"The priority was to restore you to complete function," she said. "The actual trauma wasn't bad. The poisoning was acute, but not as difficult to overcome as others might have been. The only issue was keeping you breathing, for a while. You should be able to enter battle if you need to."

Tavi nodded slowly. Then he sat up, and said, "You look terrible. Get some rest. Battle's coming."

Dorotea looked over at Crassus again. "I won't leave him."

"You've already said you've done all you can," Tavi said, gently. "And other lives are going to depend on you. You'll rest. That is an order."