The merlon beside him slid to one side along the upward-sweeping line Fade had cut in it, the stone falling with a ponderous grace to the weakened floor of the battlement, It struck, and the two slashes Fade had made in the stone became a sudden myriad of crumbling cracks. Aldrick tried to step back, but the stone beneath his feet gave way like a rotten board, and with a howl Aldrick ex Gladius and a thousand pounds of stone went crashing down to the courtyard below.
Fade closed his eyes for a moment, panting, then looked up at Tavi.
The boy stared at him. “How?”
Fade moved one shoulder in a shrug. “Aldrick has always thought in lines. So I thought in curves.”
Tavi saw a movement behind Fade and shouted, “Fade! Look out!”
The slave whirled, but not before Fidelias, holding the rope they had used to climb to the wall, had tossed a loop of it over Fade’s head. Fidelias jerked on the rope, and it tightened. Then the man planted his feet and hauled.
Fade struggled, but he had no leverage. The rope hauled him off the battlement. Fidelias let go of the rope, and Fade fell out of sight. The end of the rope had been tied off to one of the crenellations, and the rope tightened with a sudden, snapping jerk.
“No,” Tavi breathed.
Fidelias turned toward Tavi.
“No!” The boy rose to his feet and threw himself at the man on the wall, brandishing the dagger. He leapt at Fidelias, knife extended.
Fidelias caught Tavi by his shirt, and without any effort spun him around and threw him to the stones of the battlement. Tavi felt the rock hit his back with an impact that stole his breath and turned the steady, hot sting of his wounded arm into a raging fire.
He let out a weak sound of pain and tried to struggle away from Fidelias, but within a few inches he felt the crumbling edge of the shattered battlement behind him. He looked back and down on a drop into the hard, jagged rubble of the fallen section of wall, where Marat and beasts fought in savage efficiency, killing.
He turned back to Fidelias, clutching the dagger.
“Give me the knife,” Fidelias said, his voice quiet, his eyes dead. “Give me the knife, or I’ll kill you.”
“No,” Tavi wheezed.
“You don’t have to die, boy.”
Tavi swallowed. He squirmed out as far as he could on the broken battlements and heard the stones begin to crackle and groan beneath him. “Stay away from me.”
Fidelias’s face twisted in anger, and he jerked his hand in a sudden gesture. The stone rippled, as if it had been a sheet snapped by a holdwife, and threw Tavi a few feet toward Fidelias, stunning the boy.
Fidelias reached for the knife. Tavi swept it at him in a desperate cut. Fidelias clutched the boy’s throat, and Tavi felt his breath cut off with a sudden jerk.
“Just as well,” Fidelias said. “No witnesses.”
Tavi’s vision began to dim. He felt his grip on the dagger begin to loosen.
Fidelias shook his head, and the pressure on Tavi’s throat began to increase. “You should have given me the knife.”
Tavi struggled uselessly, until his arms and legs seemed to forget how to move. He stared up into Fidelias’s hard eyes and felt his body going limp.
And so it was that he saw Amara weakly stir and lift her head. He saw her writhe, lifting one knee beneath her, and reaching back to draw a short, small knife from her boot. She clenched her jaw and shoved her broken arm beneath her, her forearm across the floor, lifting her body.
Then, in one motion, she drew back the knife and flicked it at Fidelias’s back. A sudden jet of wind propelled the knife toward him.
Tavi saw the man jerk suddenly, startled surprise on his features. He stiffened, fingers loosening from Tavi’s throat, and reached a hand up toward his back, his expression twisting with sudden agony.
“You wanted a knife, Fidelias,” Amara hissed. “There’s the one I took from you.”
Fidelias, his face blank, frightened, turned back to Tavi and clutched at his hand, at the dagger.
There was a frantic moment of scrambling, and Fidelias let out a gasping cry of pain. Tavi felt a hand around his wrist, a sudden pressure, heard the crack of breaking bones. Agony roared over him, and he saw his hand dangle uselessly.
Fidelias reached for the dagger and grabbed its hilt.
Tavi seized Fidelias’s belt and hauled with all of his strength and weight.
Fidelias overbalanced, let out a harsh croak and fell from the battlements, to the sharp-edged rubble of the gap in the wall. Tavi turned and looked down, saw the man land on the stones, with his feet under him. Tavi thought he heard bones break.
Fidelias fell to the ground, and a tide of Marat washed over him.
Tavi stared, panting, exhausted, in more pain than he thought could exist in the entire world. Uncle Bernard. Fade. The tears welled up, and he couldn’t stop them, couldn’t stop himself from sobbing, letting out ugly, harsh little sounds. He laid his cheek down on the stone and cried.
He felt Amara crawl to him a few moments later. The Cursor dragged a shield with her. She lay down beside Tavi and used the shield to cover them both.
He couldn’t stop sobbing. He felt her hand pat clumsily at his back. “It’s all right, Tavi. It’s all right.” She leaned her cheek against his hair. “Shhhh. You’re going to be all right. It’s over.”
Over.
Tavi cried quietly, until the darkness swallowed him.
CHAPTER 44
Isana watched the battle on the shattered battlements with her heart in her teeth, trapped on the second floor of a barracks building in the east courtyard, and helpless to do anything to influence its outcome.
She saw her brother fall from the walls and, through a haze of tears, saw the Cursor dropped to the battlements as well. She screamed when Tavi took up the fallen sword and faced the enormous swordsman, and again when Fade took up the old weapon and fought the man up and down the battlements. She watched, careless of the occasional buzz of a flying arrow, as Fade was hanged and thrown off the walls, as Tavi fought for the dagger, and as the traitor Cursor fell from sight.
She watched as Tavi collapsed and as the wounded Amara dragged her shield over both of them—then went still.
“Tavi,” she heard herself say. “Tavi, no. Oh, furies.” She turned and ran out of the room, down the stairs to the first level of the barracks, a common room for the soldiers living there. Heavy iron shutters had been closed over the window, but the iron bars that could be fastened shut over the door had been torn away from their hinges only moments before, along with the heavy wooden door, and now the doorway had been blocked with a pair of heavy tables, leaving the upper half of the doorway open.
Frederic stood in the doorway, a Legion shield strapped onto his left arm, his dented spade clutched in his right hand. One of the women of Garrison stood with him, a stout, stern-looking matron with bare feet and a bloodied spear gripped in her hands. The young gargant herder’s hair hung around his face, damp with sweat, and he bore a cut that would leave a long white scar leading from his jawline to his ear, but his eyes were determined, hard.