Tavi faced them all for a second, sword in hand, and it registered slowly on him that it was over. The battle was over, and he had survived it. He let out a slow breath, and the sword fell from his suddenly nerveless hands. His balance wobbled, and he abruptly forgot how to stand upright.
Fade's sword clanged as it hit the floor, and he was underneath Tavi before the boy could fall.
"I've got you," Fade said quietly. He lowered Tavi gently to the floor. "You're wounded."
"Kitai," Tavi panted. "Poisoned. She'll need help. Max still wounded. Killian…" Tavi closed his eyes, to avoid looking at the Maestro's still form. "The Maestro is dead, Fade. Poisoned. The spiders outside. Nothing got to Gaius."
"It's all right," Fade said. He murmured something, then pressed the mouth of a flask to his lips. Tavi drank the lukewarm water thirstily. "Not too fast. Thank the great furies, Tavi," Fade said as he drank. "I'm sorry. One of the Canim threw himself on my sword to let another go past me. I got here as swiftly as I could."
"Don't worry about it," Tavi told him. "I got him."
Tavi could hear the sudden, fierce smile on Fade's mouth as he spoke. "Yes. You did. There are watercrafters and healers on the way, Tavi. You'll be all right."
Tavi nodded wearily. "If it's all the same to you, I'm just going to sit here for a minute. Rest my eyes until they get here." He leaned his head back against the wall, exhausted.
Tavi didn't hear if Fade made any reply before he gave himself to sleep.
Chapter 55
"… absolute mystery to me how the girl survived it," Tavi heard a sonorous male voice saying. "Those creatures poisoned two dozen guardsmen, and even with watercrafters at hand, only nine of them survived."
"She is a barbarian," replied a voice Tavi recognized. "Perhaps her folk aren't as susceptible."
"She seemed more like one who has endured it before," the first voice said. "Gained a resistance to it through exposure. She was already conscious again by the time we began to treat her, and she needed almost no assistance. I'm certain she would have been all right without our help."
The first voice grunted, and Tavi opened his eyes to see Sir Miles speaking quietly with a man in an expensive silk robe worn over rather plain, sturdy trousers and shirt. The man glanced at him and smiled. "Ah, there you are, lad. Good morning. And welcome to the palace infirmary."
Tavi blinked his eyes a few times and looked around him. He was in a long room lined with beds, curtains hung between each. Most of the beds were occupied. The windows were open, a pleasant wind stirring them gently, and the scent of recent rain and flowering plants, the scent of spring filled the room. "G-good morning. How long have I been asleep?"
"Nearly a full day," the healer replied. "Your particular injuries were not threatening, but you had so many of them that they amounted to quite a strain. You'd gotten some of that spider venom into some of your wounds as well, though I don't think you'd been bitten. Sir Miles ordered me to let you sleep."
Tavi rubbed his face and sat up. "Sir Miles," he said, inclining his head. "Is Kitai… the First Lord… Sir, is everyone all right?"
Miles nodded to the healer, who took it as a hint to depart. The man nodded and clapped Tavi's shoulder gently before making his way down the row of beds, attending to other patients.
"Tavi," Miles asked quietly, "did you slay that Cane we found you on top of?"
"Yes, sir," Tavi said. "I used the First Lord's blade."
Miles nodded, and smiled at him. "That was boldly done, young man. I expected to find nothing but corpses at the bottom of the stairs. I underestimated you."
"It had already been wounded, Sir Miles. I don't think that… well. It was half-dead when it got there. I just had to nudge it along a little."
Miles tilted his head back and laughed. "Yes. Yes, well. Regardless, you'll be glad to know that your friends and the First Lord are all well."
Tavi's back straightened. "Gaius… He's…?"
"Awake, irritable, and his tongue could flay the hide from a gargant," Miles said, his expression pleased. "He wants to speak with you as soon as you're strong enough."
Tavi promptly swung his legs off the side of the bed and began to rise. Then froze, looking down at himself. "Perhaps I should put some clothes on, if I'm to see the First Lord."
"Why don't you," Miles said, and nodded to a trunk beside the bed. Tavi found his own clothes there, freshly cleaned, and started slipping into them. He glanced up at Sir Miles as he did, and said, "Sir Miles. If… if I may ask. Your brother-"
Miles interrupted him with an upraised hand. "My brother," he said, with gentle emphasis, "died nearly twenty years ago." He shook his head. "On an unrelated note, Tavi, your friend Fade, the slave, is well. He distinguished himself for his valor on the stairway, assisting me."
"Assisting you?"
Miles nodded, his expression carefully neutral. "Yes. Some idiot has already composed a song about it. Sir Miles and his famous stand on the Spiral Stair. They're singing it in all the wine clubs and alehouses. It's humiliating."
Tavi frowned.
"It makes a much better song than one about a maimed slave," he said quietly.
Tavi lowered his voice to almost a whisper. "But he's your brother."
Miles pursed his lips, looked at Tavi for a moment, then said, "He knows what he's doing. And he can't do it as well if every loose tongue in the Realm can wag on about how he has returned from the grave." He nudged Tavi's boots over to him from where they sat near the foot of the bed, and added, so quietly that Tavi could barely hear him, "Or why."
"He cares for you," Tavi said quietly. "He was terrified that… that you would think ill of him, when you saw him."
"He was right," Miles said. "If it had happened any other way…" He shook his head. "I don't know what I might have done." His eyes went a bit distant. "I spent a very long time hating him, boy. For dying beside Septimus, off in the middle of nowhere, when my leg was too badly injured to allow me to be there beside him. All of them. I couldn't forgive him for dying and leaving me behind. When I should have been with them."
"And now?" Tavi asked.
"Now…" Miles said. He sighed. "I don't know, lad. But I have a place of my own. I have my duty. There seems to be little sense in hating him now." His eyes glittered. "But by the great furies. Did you see him? The greatest swordsman I've ever known, save perhaps Septimus himself. And even then, I always suspected that Rari held back so as not to embarrass the Princeps." Miles's eyes focused elsewhere, then he blinked them and smiled at Tavi.
"Duty?" Tavi suggested.
"Precisely. As I was saying. Duty. Such as yours to the First Lord. On your feet, Acad-" Then Miles paused, head tilted to one side as he regarded Tavi. "On your feet, man."
Tavi pulled his boots on and rose, smiling a little. "Sir Miles," he asked, "do you know if there's been any word of my aunt?"
Miles's expression became remote as he started walking, his limp now more pronounced. "I've been told that she is safe and well. She is not in the palace. I don't know more than that."
Tavi frowned. "What? Nothing?"
Miles shrugged.
"What about Max? Kitai?"
"I'm sure Gaius will answer any questions you have, Tavi." Miles gave him a faint smile. "Sorry to be that way with you. Orders."