Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3)(68)

Tavi frowned. "It wasn't you? "

Max frowned back. "It wasn't you?"

"No," Tavi said.

Max pursed his lips, then shrugged. "Wasn't me. There are a lot of Phrygians hereabouts. They hate slavers. Crows, plenty of folk do. I hear that Ceres has a whole big gang of men in masks who roam around at night and hang any slaver they can get their hands on. They have to employ a whole army of personal guards to stay safe. Gotta love a town like Ceres."

Tavi frowned and glanced eastward.

"Oh, right, " Max muttered. "Sorry. Your family reunion."

Tavi shrugged a shoulder. "We were only planning on being there for a month or so. They've probably left already."

Max watched the recruits at their drill, but his expression turned a bit bleak. "What's it like?"

"What is what like?"

"Having a family."

Tavi drank another ladle of water. "Sometimes it felt like they were strangling me. I knew it was because they cared, but it still drove me mad. They were worried about me because of my crafting problem. I liked knowing that they were there. I always knew that if I had a problem, they'd help me. Sometimes at night, I would have a bad dream or lie awake feeling sorry for myself. I'd go and look in their rooms and see they were there. Then I could go back to sleep."

Max's expression never changed.

Tavi asked, "What was your family like?"

Max was quiet for a second, then said, "I don't think I'm drunk enough to answer that question."

But Max had been the one to bring up the subject. Maybe he wanted to talk and just needed some encouragement. "Try," Tavi said.

There was a longer silence.

"Notable for their absence," Max said, finally. "My mother died when I was five years old. She was a slave from Rhodes, you know."

"I knew. "

Max nodded. "I don't remember much about her. My lord father all but lives at the Shieldwall. He only comes back to Antillus during the summer, then he's got a whole year's worth of work to make up for. He'd sleep maybe three or four hours a night, and he hated being interrupted. I'd maybe have dinner with him once, and a furycrafting lesson or two. Sometimes I'd ride with him to review the new recruits. But neither of us talked much." His voice grew very quiet. "I spent most of my time with Crassus and my stepmother."

Tavi nodded. "Wasn't fun."

"Crassus wasn't so bad. I was older and bigger than him, so there wasn't much he could do. He followed me around a lot, and if he saw something of mine that he liked, he'd take it. She'd give it to him. If I said anything, she'd have me whipped." He bared his teeth in a rictus of a smile. "Course, if I did anything, she'd have me whipped."

Tavi thought of his friend's scars and clenched his jaw.

"At least, until I came into my furies." His eyes narrowed. "When I figured out how strong I was, I blew the door to her private chambers to cinders, walked in, and told her that if she tried to have me whipped again, I'd kill her."

"That's when the accidents started," Tavi guessed.

"Yeah."

"What happened?"

"First one was at flying lessons," Max said. "I was hovering a couple of feet outside the city walls, maybe thirty feet up. Ajar of rock salt fell out of a window of a tower, hit the wall, and pieces flew through my windcrafting. Disrupted it. I fell."

Tavi winced.

"The next time was in the winter. Someone had spilled water at the top of a long staircase, and it froze. I slipped on it and fell." He took a deep breath. "That's when I ran off and joined the Legions in Placida."