Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3)(15)

Tavi arched an eyebrow.

Max chuckled and bound the cloth around Tavi's finger. "Just to keep the dirt out and stop the bleeding. Once that's done, get me a bucket of water and I can close it up."

"Not yet." Tavi pushed himself to his feet and turned in the direction of the pair of archers. "Come on. Maybe they were carrying something that can give us a clue about them."

"Don't bother," Max said, squinting at a point in the distance. His voice became very quiet. "It'll take a week to find all the pieces."

Tavi swallowed and nodded at his friend. Then he went and stared down at the man he'd killed.

His bullet had hit the man almost exactly between the eyes, with so much force that it had broken something in his head. The whites of his sightless eyes were filled with blood. A thin trickle of it ran from one of the man's nostrils.

He looked younger than Tavi had expected, somehow. He couldn't have been much older than Tavi himself.

Tavi had killed him.

Killed a man.

He tasted bile in his mouth and had to look away, fighting away a sudden attack of nausea that threatened to empty his stomach right onto his boots. The struggle was a vain one, and he had to stagger several paces away to throw up. He calmed himself afterward, spitting the taste out of his mouth. Then he shut his sense of revulsion and guilt away into a quiet closet in his mind, turned back to the corpse, and systematically went through the man's belongings. He focused on the task to the exclusion of everything else.

He didn't dare start thinking about what he had just done. There was nothing left in his belly to come up.

He finished and went back to the Maestro and Max, fighting not to break into a run. "Nothing," he said quietly.

Max exhaled, a trace of frustration in it. "Crows. I wish we at least knew who they were after. Me, I guess. If they'd been here before me, they'd have killed you already."

"Not necessarily," Magnus said quietly. "Perhaps someone sent them to track you back to one of us."

Max grimaced at Magnus, then glanced away and sighed. "Crows."

"Either way," Tavi said, "we may still be in danger. We shouldn't remain here."

Max nodded. "Kinda works out then," he said. "The Crown sent me to bring your orders, Tavi."

"What are they?"

"We're taking a trip to the Blackballs at the southern tip of Placida's lands. There's a new Legion forming there, and Gaius wants you in it."

"When?"

"Yesterday."

Tavi grunted. "That won't please my aunt and uncle."

"Hah," Max snorted. "It won't please Kitai, you mean."

"Her, too. She-"

Magnus sighed. "Crows, Antillar. Don't start him talking about his girl again. He won't shut his mouth about her."

Tavi scowled at Magnus. "I was just going to say that she was supposed to come with my family to our get-together in Ceres next month. I'm going to miss it."

"And missing it is a bad thing?" Max frowned, then said, "Oh, right, I forgot. Your family likes having you around."

"It's mutual. I haven't seen them in more than two years, Max." He shook his head. "Don't get me wrong. I know this is important but... two years. And it isn't as though I'll make a good legionare."

"No problem," Max said. "You're going in as an officer."

"But I haven't even served my compulsory term. No one makes officer their first tour."