Chapter 57
Isana told herself that she would not go to the duel, when there were still so many wounded to tend to. She threw herself into the work, sending her senses with Rill through each wounded body. A man named Foss, the officer in charge of the healer's corps, watched her with the first man he brought over, nodded his head, and promptly started barking orders.
Isana shortly found herself tending to men with the most dire and delicate of injuries. One poor soul's eyes had been viciously slashed by some weapon. Another young man had suffered what looked like a spear thrust through the genitals. A third had been treated for a cracked sternum, but hadn't regained consciousness-his first healer hadn't felt the bruising on his heart that made it labor unsteadily and insufficiently. Isana poured herself into her efforts and, at a steady pace, restored each man to health and exhausted sleep.
She didn't know how many men she worked on, but between efforts she dimly realized that she should have pushed herself to exhaustion after only a handful. She felt tired, of course, but the work seemed easier, swifter, as if her "touch" had become a dozen times more sensitive, allowing her to pinpoint precisely where the damage was, then to direct her fury's healing power with more precision and grace. Her talents had not grown, so much as she was taxing herself less to do the same amount of work.
"Last one," grunted an orderly, lowering another battered young body into the healing tub Isana was using. He was a young man, large and well muscled, and his legs, belly, and chest were covered in savage burns.
Isana winced, and was grateful that the poor legionare was unconscious. Burns like that would have left any conscious mind blind with agony, and if her ability to help the wounded had grown, their suffering had been that much more difficult to bear.
The legionare settled into the tub, and Isana supported his head, making sure he didn't slip under the water, and was startled to realize that she recognized the man.
It was Tavi's friend, Max.
She closed her eyes and went to work with steady, determined patience. Burns were some of the worst wounds to heal-she would have said the worst, until she had spent weeks in nearly constant crafting, dealing with an infection brought on by rancid garic oil introduced into a wound.
Though burns were not that festering nightmare, they were bad enough, and the drain upon the wounded Max would be tremendous, even dangerous. She turned her attention to the maimed flesh and, with Rill's help, got things sorted out. She reduced the damage as much as she could, to the point where she believed it would leave no hideous scarring, but felt the young man's strength waning and dared not press for more.
She leaned back from her efforts and nodded wearily to the orderly. She sat back as Max was taken to a bed, and dried her hands on a towel.
"My lady," said a voice behind her. "If you ever want a job, I can offer you the rank of senior subtribune and start you at the maximum pay grade."
Isana turned to find Foss watching them carry Max off and shaking his head. "Crows," the Legion healer said. "In a rational world, you'd get my job."
She smiled wearily at him. "Thank you, Tribune. I'm sure you could have done as much."
Foss snorted. "You gave a man back his eyes, my lady. That's fine work, and I've known maybe two or three healers in my life who could do that, and one of them was a High Lady. You did more work than any three of my healers, and in half the time. You have a remarkable gift." He bowed his head to her. "Thank you."
She blinked at him several times and felt somewhat flustered. "I... You're quite welcome."
Foss nodded and offered her his hand. "We'd better get moving. It's almost time."
"Time?" Isana asked.
"The trial, my lady."
Isana frowned and shivered. As she worked, she'd all but forgotten the duel. Perhaps she'd been hoping that it would be over by the time she'd emerged from all the crafting.
If so, she thought, then she had been wrong to think it. Her son was about to fight for his life-for all of their lives-and she should be there.
The duel was the most elated, ecstatic nightmare she had ever experienced.
The crowd's emotion was a violent sea, a seething cauldron. If she hadn't worked herself to near exhaustion, she would have run screaming for the nearest dark hole-which would have looked rather unladylike, all things considered. As it stood, a bodyguard of eight legionares waited outside the healer's tent, evidently assigned as her escort. Each of the men was rather young, though they all had the hardened look of men accustomed to war, and the breast of their armor was decorated not with the red-and-blue eagle of the Crown, but with a similarly depicted black crow.
The crowd parted for her as she approached, and she felt them all around her, people buzzing with excitement and hope, with despair and fear-and with interest.
For her, specifically.
Faces turned toward her, and voices were raised in excitement. Legionares and trapped camp followers alike pressed closer, trying to see her, and to her intense embarrassment, the crowd actually sent up a cheer.
The solid forms of her guards gently kept the onlookers from getting too close, but a slender figure slid between the two in front, and Ehren smiled at her. "My lady," he said, bowing his head as he went to her side.
"My goodness," Isana said, looking around her uncertainly. "Ehren..."
"They know," he said. "Everyone in the camp knows, my lady, since all the truthfinders took testimony. No story that juicy was going to stay secret for long."
"I see," she said.
"Tavi-" Ehren caught himself and shook his head. "Octavian asked me to stand with you."
"I'd be glad of your company," Isana said quietly. She kept walking, as more people gathered around, staring at her in the dim light of both torches and small, household furylamps. "This is a very strange experience."
"I can imagine," Ehren said. "But if things go well, this is nothing compared to what you'll see in the streets of Alera Imperia someday."
"Oh dear," Isana said.
They took her to a small, open area directly before the wall where the duel was to take place. There was quiet talk all around her, but she paid little attention to it. She focused only upon the two men who began climbing a ladder.
The next few moments passed in eerie silence, as the taller of the two men began to limber up, stretching. The tension of the crowd rose steadily, until Isana felt sure that if she suddenly dropped unconscious, it would hold her upright where she stood.
Then her son followed Nalus out onto the wall, and faced the slender woman who had nearly killed them only hours before. There was brief talk. There was counting.
Kitai's voice rang out in sudden scorn and defiance, and the gathered crowd roared its fear and tension and expectation into the cool night air.
The two combatants came together, and Isana had never seen anything so bright and beautiful and terrifying. Tavi's weapons erupted in scarlet and azure sparks, while flashes of brilliant, bilious green showered from Navaris's blades. The light was blindingly bright, and every flash left a spot of color burned onto Isana's vision.
She had never seen anyone move so swiftly as Phrygiar Navaris, and she could hardly believe that her son could withstand such speed and fury. They fought in constant, graceful motion, dancelike and deadly, four blades spinning and whirling and thrusting, and the ring of steel on steel, with its accompanying flash of light, grew swifter and swifter.
She could only stare, terrified and fascinated, and if the steadily thickening silence from the crowd was any indication, they felt the same way.
Navaris nearly drove Tavi from the wall, and her heart caught in her throat. Then she saw him turn, somehow impossibly slipping aside from Navaris's blade, and bound through the air like a hunting cat, leaping several yards to land on the roof of another building.
Navaris followed him over, and then the pair of them were out of sight of the crowd below. Steel chimed on steel as swiftly as a drumroll, echoing strangely through the ruins. Spectral light flashed through the air, casting stillborn shadows, gone as quickly as they appeared. Stones clattered to the ground, all dull cracking sounds and heavy thumps of impact.
Isana couldn't breathe. She became vaguely aware of a sharp pain in her hands, and idly thought that her nails had begun biting into her own flesh. The crowd's growing tension and excitement felt as though it could have drawn blood as well. She stared at the roof, hoping, willing it to be over.
The swords stopped ringing. The lights stopped flashing.
Isana heard herself moan in her throat.
Silence stretched on and on.
Then there was an enraged scream, a sound so raw, so full of madness and rage that she could hardly believe it had come from a human throat.
Light flashed but once more.
Silence fell.
"Tavi," Isana heard herself whisper. "Oh, my Tavi."
The crowd remained perfectly still, as motionless as the stones of the ruins around them, and even more silent. It was unbearable to Isana, that tension, and she found herself rocking forward and back where she stood, fighting against the tears that blurred her vision.
"Tavi," she whispered.
And then Marat war cries filled the air.
The barbarians sent up a joyous howling upon their rooftop. The wild, fierce cries of their people danced among the stones. Isana stared, stunned, her mind only sluggishly processing the meaning behind the sounds.
Tavi.
They were cheering for Tavi.
Her son appeared at the edge of the rooftop, and the ruined city went wild.
Alerans cried out in a great roar. Legionares began slamming their fists to their chests in rhythmic thunder. Somewhere in the ruins, horses screamed out shrill cries of challenge. Dogs kept by the camp followers set up a howling chorus of their own. Legion drummers pounded on their instruments in glee, and Legion trumpeters sounded their horns. The noise was so loud that a section of ruined wall not far from Isana trembled and collapsed.
A burning cyclone of elation enveloped Isana and threatened to rip the consciousness from her mind. She closed her eyes against it, and only Ehren's support kept her from falling to her knees. The fire was too hot. It had to be turned aside, channeled away from her, before she went mad. She opened her eyes and forced herself to stand straight.
"Hail!" she cried. "Hail Gaius Octavian!"
Ehren gave her a glance, then took up the cry as well.
"Hail Gaius Octavian!"
The legionares formed up around her were next.
"Hail Gaius Octavian!"
It spread rapidly from there, from ruin to ruin, century to century, street to debris-choked street.
"Hail Gaius Octavian!"
"Hail Gaius Octavian!"
"Hail Gaius Octavian!"
Chapter 58