Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3)(110)

Isana folded her arms in close to her body. "Why did you come here?"

"The Crown had received intelligence that you had been personally targeted by Kalare."

"The Crown," she said, "and everyone else who was at that Wintersend party, and the servants and anyone they might have spoken to, or who might have heard rumors."

"More specific," Fade said. "He asked me to watch over you. I agreed."

She tilted her head, frowning. "He asked?"

Fade shrugged. "My loyalty is not Gaius Sextus's to command, and he knows it."

She felt herself smile at him a little. "I can't trust him. I can't trust any of them. Not with Tavi."

Fade's expression never changed, but Isana felt a flash of something in the scarred slave she never had before-an instant of anger. "I know you only seek to protect him. But you do Tavi a grave disservice. He is more formidable and capable than you know."

Isana blinked her eyes. "Fade-"

"I've seen it," Fade continued. That same sense of anger in him kept on rising. "Seen him act under pressure. He's more capable than most men, regardless of their skill with furies. And it's more than that..."

Isana wrenched her thoughts from her worries and really looked at the scarred man. His skin was too pale, blotchy with patches of red and glistening with a cold sweat. His eyes were dilated, and his pulse fluttered fast and hard in his throat and upon one temple.

"He makes those around him be more than they are," Fade snarled. "Makes them be better than they are. More than they thought they could be. Like his father. Bloody crows, like the father I left to die..

Fade suddenly lifted his wounded hand and stared at it. He was trembling violently and there were flecks of white on his lips. He blinked in utter bafflement at his quivering hand, opened his mouth as though to speak, then jerked in a convulsive spasm that threw him onto the floor in a violent seizure. Seconds went by as he kicked and thrashed, then he let out a soft groan and simply went limp.

"Fade!" Isana breathed and pushed herself from the bed. The world pitched about, then left her on the floor. She did not have strength enough to stand, but she crawled on all fours to the fallen man's side, reaching out to touch his throat, to feel his pulse.

She could not find it.

Isana thrust her hand down at Fade's chest, calling out to Rill to let her perceive the fallen man's body through a water-fury's senses. In the wake of her collapse, the effort was simply too much. Isana's head felt as if it would burst asunder in an explosion of pure agony, and her own heart labored in a sudden panic as she lost the strength to remain upright.

She let out a weak cry of purest frustration, then gritted her teeth and focused. Giving vent to her emotions would not help the stricken man beside her.

"Help! ' she called. It sounded pathetically quiet, and she was sure the sound would not carry past the closed wooden door. She struggled to draw a deep breath and tried again. "I need help in here! Healer!"

At the second cry, the door slammed open, and Giraldi took one look around the room and spat a vile curse, limping badly as he rushed to Isana's side. "Steadholder!"

"Not me," she told him, weak and frustrated. "Fade collapsed. Not breathing. Healer."

The old centurion nodded sharply and rose to rush from the room at a pace that was surely dangerous to his crippled leg. He called out down the hall, and footsteps came running. Guards appeared, first, and within a minute they had escorted a young woman in a simple white gown into the room.