Chapter 12
It took Tavi three hours to find Max, who was indeed at a young widow's house. He spent another hour finding a way into the house, and half an hour more to get his friend conscious, dressed, and staggering back up through the furylit streets of the capital to the Citadel. By the time the lights of the Academy loomed up above them, it was the most silent hour of the night, in the hollow, cold time just before dawn began to color the sky.
They entered through one of a sprinkling of unseen entrances provided for the use of the Cursors-in-Training at the Academy. Tavi dragged his friend down to the baths straightaway, and without ceremony shoved him into a large pool of cold water.
Max, of course, had the phenomenal recuperative abilities of anyone with his raw furycrafting power, but he had developed a correspondingly formidable array of carousing talents by way of compensation. It wasn't the first time Tavi had administered an emergency sobering after one of Max's nights on the town. The shock of the water had the large young man screaming and thrashing in a heartbeat, but when he lurched to the stairs up out of the water, Tavi met him, turned Max around, and pushed him back into the pool.
After a dozen more plunges into the freezing pool, Max pressed his hands against the sides of his head with a moan. "Great furies, Calderon, I'm awake. Would you let me out of the blighted, crows-begotten ice water?"
"Not until you open your eyes," Tavi said firmly.
"Fine, fine," Max growled. He turned a bloodshot glare upon Tavi. "Happy now?"
"Joyous," Tavi replied.
Max grunted, lumbered from the icy pool, and fumbled his clothes off, then shambled into the warm, sun gold furylit waters of one of the heated oaths. As always, Tavi's eyes were drawn to the crosshatched network of scars on his friend's back-the marks of a whip or a ninecat that could only nave been formed before Max came into his furycrafting power. Tavi winced in sympathy. No matter how many times he saw his friend's scars, they remained something startling and hideous.
He glanced around the baths. The room was enormous, with several different bathing pools trickling falls of water filling up a vast room with white marble walls, floor, pillars, and ceiling. Batches of plants, even trees, softened the severe, cold marble surroundings, and lounges were laid out in a dozen different areas, where bathers might idle in one another's company while awaiting their turn at a pool. Soft furylamps of blue, green, and gold painted each pool, giving an indication of its temperature. The sound of falling water bounded back and forth from the indifferent stone, filling the air with sound enough to mask voices more than a few steps away. It was one of the only places in the capital where one could be reasonably certain of a private conversation.
The baths were yet empty-the slaves who attended bathers would not arrive for more than an hour. Tavi and Max were alone.
Tavi stripped, though much more self-consciously than his friend. Back at the steadholt, bathing was a matter of privacy and practicality. It had been an adjustment to engage in the more metropolitan practice of bathing followed in most of the cities, and Tavi had never managed to lose entirely the twinge of discomfort he felt when disrobing.
"Oh for crying out loud, bumpkin," Max said, without opening his eyes. "It's the men's baths. There's no one else here, and my eyes aren't even open." He gave Tavi another glare, though it was less intense than the first. "If you'd left me where you found me, you could have had the baths to yourself."
Tavi slid into the pool beside Max and pitched his voice low, barely audible over the obscuring sounds of water. "There's trouble, Max."
Max's glower vanished, and his reddened eyes glittered with sudden interest. "What kind of trouble?"
Tavi told him.
"Bloody crows!" Max roared. "Are you trying to get me killed?"
"Yes. To tell you the truth, I never had much use for you, Max," Tavi watched his friend blink at him for a second, then scowl.
"Hah-hah," said Max. "You're hilarious."
"You should know better than that," Tavi replied. "If there was anyone else I thought could do this, I wouldn't have gotten you involved."
"You wouldn't?" Max asked, his tone suddenly offended. "Why not?"
"Because you've known what's going on for ten seconds, and you're already complaining."
"I like complaining. It's every soldier's sacred right," Max growled.
Tavi felt a smile tug at his lips. "You're not a legionare anymore, Max. You're a Cursor. Or a Cursor-in-Training, anyway."
"I'm still offended," Max declared. After a moment, he added, "Tavi, you're my friend. If you need help, just expect me to be there whether you want me there or not."
Tavi chewed at his lip, regarding Max. "Really?"
"It'll be simpler that way," Max drawled. "So. I'm to double for Gaius, eh?"
"Can you?" Tavi asked.
Max stretched out in the hot water with a confident smile in answer. "No idea."
Tavi snorted, went to the waterfall, took up a scrubber, and began raking it over his skin, cleaning the sweat and toil of the day from him before taking up a soaped comb and raking it quickly through his hair. He rose to rinse in a cooler pool and emerged shivering to towel himself dry. Max emerged from the pools a few moments later, similarly scrubbed, and the pair of them changed into the clean clothes they'd last left with the bath attendants, leaving their soiled garments behind on their respective shelves.
"What do I do?" Max asked.
"Go to the Citadel, down the south gallery and to the west hall to the staircase down."
"Guard station there," Max noted.
"Yes. Stop at the first station, and ask for Sir Miles. He's expecting to hear from you. Kalian will probably be there, too."
Max raised his eyebrows. "Miles wanted to bring in the Cursors? I'd have thought he wouldn't hold with too much of that."
"I don't think Miles knows that Killian is still on active duty," Tavi said. "Much less that he's the current Legate."
Max slapped an annoyed hand at his head, sprinkling water out of his close-cropped hair. "I am going to lose my mind, trying to keep track of who is allowed to know what."
You're the one who agreed to Cursor training," Tavi said. Stop walking on my sacred right, Calderon."
Tavi grinned. "Just do what I do. Don't tell anyone anything."
Max nodded. "That's a solid plan."
"Let's move. I'm supposed to bring someone else down. I'll meet you there."
Max rose to leave, but paused. "Tavi," he said. "Just because I'm not complaining doesn't mean this won't be dangerous. Very dangerous."
"I know."
"Just wanted to make sure you did," Max said. "If you get in trouble… I mean, if you need my help. Don't let your pride keep you from asking for it. I mean, it's possible that some serious battlecrafting could start happening. If it does, I'll cover you."
"Thank you," Tavi said, without much emotion. "But if it comes to that, we've probably failed so badly that my own personal legion wouldn't help."
Max gave a rueful laugh of agreement, squared his shoulders, and stalked out of the baths without looking behind him. "Watch your back."
"You too."
Tavi waited a moment until Max had left the baths, then hurried out of them and toward the servants' quarters. By the time he'd arrived, a swath of light blue on the eastern horizon of the night sky had arrived to herald the coming dawn, and the staff of the Academy was beginning to stir. Tavi wound his way cautiously down service corridors and cramped staircases, careful to avoid being seen. He moved in silence through the darkened corridors, bearing no lamp of his own, relying upon infrequent, feeble hallway lights. Tavi stalked down a final cramped corridor, and to a half-sized door that opened into a crawl space in the walls-Fade's chamber.