In only a moment more, Bernard appeared from around a curve in the road. The flagstones themselves rippled up into a wave beneath his feet, which he kept planted and still, his brow furrowed in concentration, so that the earth moved him forward in one slow undulation, like a leaf borne upon an ocean wave. He wore his winter hunting clothes, heavy and warm, his cloak one of thanadent-hide, layered with gleaming black feather-fur and proof against the coldest nights. He bore his heaviest bow in his hand, an arrow already strung to it, and his eyes, though sunken and surrounded by darker patches of skin, gleamed alertly.
The Steadholder came down the road as swiftly as a man could run, his pace only slowing as he neared the two travelers, the earth slowly subsiding beneath his feet until he stood upon the causeway, walking the final few paces to them.
“Uncle!” Tavi cried, and threw himself at the man, wrapping his arms as far around him as they could go. “Thank the furies. I was so afraid that you’d been hurt.”
Bernard laid a hand on Tavi’s shoulder, and the young man thought he felt his uncle relax, just a little. Then he gently, firmly pushed Tavi back and away from him.
Tavi blinked up at him, his stomach twisting in sudden uncertainty. “Uncle? Are you all right?”
“No,” Bernard rumbled, his voice quiet. He kept his eyes on Tavi, steadily. “I was hurt. So were others, because I was out chasing sheep with you.”
“But Uncle,” Tavi began.
Bernard waved a hand, his voice hard if not angry. “You didn’t mean it. I know. But because of your mischief some of my folk came to grief. Your aunt nearly died. We’re going home.”
“Yes, sir,” Tavi said quietly.
“I’m sorry to do it, but you can forget about those sheep, Tavi. It appears that there are some things you aren’t swift to learn after all.”
“But what about—” Tavi began.
“Peace,” the big man growled, a warning anger in the tone, and Tavi cringed, feeling the tears well in his eyes. “It’s done.” Bernard lifted his glower from Tavi and asked, “Who the crows are you?”
Tavi heard the rustle of cloth as the slave dipped into a curtsey. “My name is Amara, sir. I was carrying a message for my master, from Riva to Garrison. I became lost in the storm. The boy found me. He saved my life, sir.”
Tavi felt a brief flash of gratitude toward the slave and looked up at his uncle, hopefully.
“You were out in that? Fortune favors fools and children,”Bernard said. He grunted and asked, “You’re a runaway, are you?”
“No, sir.”
“We’ll see,” Bernard said. “Come with me, lass. Don’t run. If I have to track you down, I’ll get irritable.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bernard nodded and then frowned at Tavi again, his voice hardening. “When we get home, boy, you’re to go to your room and stay there until I decide what to do with you. Understand?”
Tavi blinked up at his uncle, shocked. He had never reacted like this before. Even when he’d given Tavi a whipping, there had never been the sense of raw, scantily controlled anger in his voice. Bernard was always in control of himself, always calm, always relaxed. Looking up at his uncle, Tavi felt acutely aware of the sheer size of the man, of the hard, angry glitter to his eyes, of the strength of his huge hands. He didn’t dare speak, but he tried to plead with his uncle, silently, letting his expression show how sorry he was, how much he wanted things to be right again. He knew, dimly, that he was crying but he didn’t care.
Bernard’s face remained hard as granite, and as unforgiving. “Do you understand, boy?”
Tavi’s hopes crumbled before that gaze, wilted away before the heat of his uncle’s anger.
“I understand, sir,” he whispered.
Bernard turned away and started walking down the causeway again, back toward home. “Hurry up,” he said, without looking back. “I’ve wasted enough time on this nonsense.”
Tavi stared after him, shocked, numb. His uncle hadn’t been this angry the day before, when he’d caught Tavi leaving. What had made this happen? What could drive his uncle to that kind of fury?
The answer came at once. Someone he cared about had been harmed — his sister Isana. Had she truly almost died? Oh, furies, how bad was it?
He had lost something, Tavi knew, something more than sheep or status as a skilled apprentice. He had lost his uncle’s respect — something that he had only just began to realize that he had possessed. Bernard had never treated him like the others, not really — never shown him pity for his lack of furycraft, never assumed Tavi’s incompetence. There had been, especially over the past few months, a kind of comradeship Tavi hadn’t known with anyone else, a quiet and unobtrusive bond between near-equals, rather than his uncle speaking down to a child. It was something that had been built slowly over the past several years, as he served as his uncle’s apprentice.
And it was gone. Tavi had never really realized it was there, and it was gone.
So were the sheep.
So was his chance at the future, of escaping this valley, escaping his own status as a furyless freak, an unwanted bastard child of the Legion camps.
Tears blinded him, though he fought to keep them silent. He couldn’t see his uncle, though Bernard’s impatient snarl came to him clearly. “Tavi.”
He didn’t hear Amara start walking until he had stumbled forward, after his uncle. He put one foot in front of the other, blindly, the ache inside him as sharp and more painful than any of the wounds he had received the day before.
Tavi walked without looking up. It didn’t matter where his feet were taking him.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
CHAPTER 15
For Amara, the walk back to Bernardholt proved to be a long and arduous exercise in ignoring pain. Despite her words to Tavi earlier that morning, her ankle, injured during the wild landing beneath last night’s storm, had stiffened and burned hideously, barely supporting her weight at all. Similarly, the cut Aldrick ex Gladius had dealt her back in the renegade camp throbbed and ached. She could barely ignore one injury without the other occupying her full attention, but even so, she had enough presence of mind to feel pain on behalf of the boy trudging along in front of her.
The reaction of his uncle had not been unkind, she thought at first. Many men would simply have commenced with beating the boy, and only after would they have had anything to say about why the beating had been delivered, if at all. But the longer she walked, the more clear it became just how deeply injured the boy had been by his uncle’s words—or perhaps the lack of them. He was used to being treated kindly, and with some measure of respect. The quiet, cool distance that the Steadholder had shown was new to Tavi, and it had hurt him badly—dashing his hopes for making a future for himself at the Academy and driving home the notion that without furycrafting of his own, he was nothing more than a helpless child, a danger to himself and others.
And here, on the wild frontiers of the realm of humanity, where life or death hinged on the daily struggle against hostile furies and beasts, perhaps it was true.