gritted his teeth, took a step to one side, and kicked straight down and into the side of the larger boy's knee. With its crackling pop, Renzo let out a bellow and fell, roaring and cursing and clutching both hands at his wounded knee.
Tavi rose to his feet and stared down at the boys who had tormented him as they writhed and screamed in pain. Their yelling had already begun to attract attention from the nearby manor and from passersby on the street. Someone had already raised a cry for the civic legionares, and Tavi knew that they would arrive momentarily.
Varien's screams had subsided to wracking, moaning sobs of pain. Renzo wasn't in much better shape, but he managed to clench his teeth over the sounds of agony, so that they came out like the cries of a wounded beast.
Tavi stared down at them.
He had seen horrible things during the Second Rattle of Calderon. He had looked down as Doroga rode his enormous bull through a sea of burned and bleeding Marat corpses, while the wounded screamed their agony to the uncaring sky. He had seen the battle-wise crows of Alera descending in clouds to feast upon the eyes and tongue of the dead and the dying, Marat and Aleran alike, with a gruesome lack of preference between corpse and casualty. Tavi had seen the walls of Garrison almost literally painted in blood. He had seen men and women die crushed, slashed, pierced, and strangled while they fought for their lives, and he had splashed through puddles of still-hot blood as he ran through the carnage.
For a time, nightmares had haunted him. They had become less frequent, but the details had not faded from his memory. Too often, he found himself looking back at them, staring in a kind of fascinated revulsion.
He had seen terrible things. He had faced them. He hated them, and they terrified him still, but he had faced the simple existence of such hideous destruction without letting it control his life.
Rut this was different.
Tavi had harmed no one during Second Calderon-but the pain Renzo and Varien now suffered had been dealt to them by his own hands, his own will, his own choice.
There was no dignity in what he had done to them. There was nothing in which to take pride. The abrupt joy that had sung through his body during the swift, brutal fighting faded and vanished. He had looked forward to this moment, in some ways-to a time when he could put his skills to use against those who had always made him feel so helpless and small. He had expected to feel satisfaction, triumph. But in its place, he felt only an emptiness that filled with a sudden and sickening nausea. He had never hurt anyone so badly before. He felt stained, somehow, as if he had lost something valuable that he hadn't known he had possessed.
He had hurt the other boys, and hurt them terribly. It was the only way he could have beaten them. Anything less than a disabling injury would have left them able to employ their furies against him, and there would have been nothing he could have done but suffered whatever they intended for him. So he had hurt them. Badly. In the space of a few seconds, he had visited back all the misery and pain they had inflicted on him over two years twice over.
It had been necessary.
But that did not mean that it was right.
"I'm sorry," Tavi said quietly, though the ice in his voice yet filled the words. "I'm sorry I had to do that." He began to say more, but then shook his head, turned away, to resume running toward Sir Nedus's manor. He could sort out charges and legal problems with the civic legion once he was sure his aunt was safe.
But before he had gone more than a few steps, the stones beneath his feet heaved and flung him hard into the nearest stone wall. He had no warning of it at all, and his head smacked solidly against the rock, a flash of phantom light blinding him. He felt himself fall, and tried to rise, but a rough hand gripped him and threw him with a terrible, casual ease. He sailed through the air and landed on stones, and by the time he finished tumbling the stars had begun to clear from his eyes.
He looked up in time to see that he was in a darkened, blind alleyway between an