Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3)(60)

Lady Antillus stared at him, with her smug smile frozen stiffly upon her lips.

Tavi smiled at her again and bowed. "I'll fetch water for the tea, Your Grace."

"No," she said, her voice a little too clear and sharp and polite. "That's all right. I've just remembered another obligation. And Crassus must return to his cohort. "

"But-" Crassus began.

"Now," Lady Antillus said. She dismissed Max with a glance and shot Tavi a spiteful glare.

Tavi dropped the false smile he'd been wearing. Suddenly, he found the memory of Max's pale face, the water pink with his blood, growing in his mind. In the space of a breath, it became painfully sharp and clear. A breath later, Tavi recalled with sickening clarity the cruel, vivid scars that crisscrossed his friend's back-the marks of a many-tongued lash barbed with bits of metal or glass. To leave such vicious scars, the injuries had to have been inflicted on him before Max had come into the power of his furies, when he was twelve years old. Or younger.

And Lady Antillus-and her son-had been responsible for it.

Tavi found himself planning quite calmly. The High Lady had enormous power of furycrafting, and so would have to be the first target. If she did not die all but instantly, she might be able to prevent an injury from killing her, or to strike out with power enough to slay Tavi as she died. Where she stood, the lunge would be a little long, but so long as she did not absolutely expect a physical attack, he should be able to drive his slender poniard up through the hollow of her throat and into her brain. A twist, a ragged extraction to tear the wound wider, and he would be left with only Crassus.

The young Knight had little experience, and it was the only thing that would have let him react in time to save his life. A sharp blow to the throat, a gouge to the eyes and the young lord would be in too much pain to defend himself effectively. Tavi could take a length of wood from the newly lit fire, a rather symbolic statement, he thought, and finish Crassus off with a sharp blow to his unarmored temple.

And suddenly Tavi froze.

The rage he felt fled, and instead he felt, sickened, as if the cold dinner he'd eaten last might come flying back out of his mouth. He realized that he was standing in the bright afternoon sun, staring at two people he hardly knew, planning to murder them as coolly and calmly as a grass lion would might stalk a doe and her fawn.

Tavi frowned down at his hands. They had started shaking a little, and he wrestled with the bloodthirsty thoughts that had risen up in him, pushing them away. He had actually done violence to other people, classmates at the Academy who had been bullying him at the worst possible time. Tavi had hurt them, and badly, because he'd had little choice in the matter. He had felt sick afterward. Though he had seen the ugly aftermath of that kind of violence, he was nonetheless capable of planning such a brutal attack. It was frightening.

More frightening still, he was all but certain he could actually do it.

But whether or not Max's injuries were their doing, regardless how burning hot the rage Tavi felt in his belly, murdering Lady Antillus and her son would not wipe Max's wounds away-to say nothing of the consequences that would fall on Tavi, and upon the First Lord, by reflection.

She was not the kind of foe one could simply assault and do away with. She would have to be overcome by other means-and if what Magnus said was true, Lady Antillus was a dangerous opponent.

Tavi smiled faintly to himself. He could be dangerous as well. There were more weapons in the world than furies and blades, and no foe was invincible. After all, he had just turned her trap back upon her rather neatly. And if he had outwitted her once, he could do it again.