"Because you've known what's going on for ten seconds, and you're already complaining."
"I like complaining. It's every soldier's sacred right," Max growled.
Tavi felt a smile tug at his lips. "You're not a legionare anymore, Max. You're a Cursor. Or a Cursor-in-Training, anyway."
"I'm still offended," Max declared. After a moment, he added, "Tavi, you're my friend. If you need help, just expect me to be there whether you want me there or not."
Tavi chewed at his lip, regarding Max. "Really?"
"It'll be simpler that way," Max drawled. "So. I'm to double for Gaius, eh?"
"Can you?" Tavi asked.
Max stretched out in the hot water with a confident smile in answer. "No idea."
Tavi snorted, went to the waterfall, took up a scrubber, and began raking it over his skin, cleaning the sweat and toil of the day from him before taking up a soaped comb and raking it quickly through his hair. He rose to rinse in a cooler pool and emerged shivering to towel himself dry. Max emerged from the pools a few moments later, similarly scrubbed, and the pair of them changed into the clean clothes they'd last left with the bath attendants, leaving their soiled garments behind on their respective shelves.
"What do I do?" Max asked.
"Go to the Citadel, down the south gallery and to the west hall to the staircase down."
"Guard station there," Max noted.
"Yes. Stop at the first station, and ask for Sir Miles. He's expecting to hear from you. Kalian will probably be there, too."
Max raised his eyebrows. "Miles wanted to bring in the Cursors? I'd have thought he wouldn't hold with too much of that."
"I don't think Miles knows that Killian is still on active duty," Tavi said. "Much less that he's the current Legate."
Max slapped an annoyed hand at his head, sprinkling water out of his close-cropped hair. "I am going to lose my mind, trying to keep track of who is allowed to know what."
You're the one who agreed to Cursor training," Tavi said. Stop walking on my sacred right, Calderon."
Tavi grinned. "Just do what I do. Don't tell anyone anything."
Max nodded. "That's a solid plan."
"Let's move. I'm supposed to bring someone else down. I'll meet you there."
Max rose to leave, but paused. "Tavi," he said. "Just because I'm not complaining doesn't mean this won't be dangerous. Very dangerous."
"I know."
"Just wanted to make sure you did," Max said. "If you get in trouble... I mean, if you need my help. Don't let your pride keep you from asking for it. I mean, it's possible that some serious battlecrafting could start happening. If it does, I'll cover you."
"Thank you," Tavi said, without much emotion. "But if it comes to that, we've probably failed so badly that my own personal legion wouldn't help."
Max gave a rueful laugh of agreement, squared his shoulders, and stalked out of the baths without looking behind him. "Watch your back."
"You too."
Tavi waited a moment until Max had left the baths, then hurried out of them and toward the servants' quarters. By the time he'd arrived, a swath of light blue on the eastern horizon of the night sky had arrived to herald the coming dawn, and the staff of the Academy was beginning to stir. Tavi wound his way cautiously down service corridors and cramped staircases, careful to avoid being seen. He moved in silence through the darkened corridors, bearing no lamp of his own, relying upon infrequent, feeble hallway lights. Tavi stalked down a final cramped corridor, and to a half-sized door that opened into a crawl space in the walls-Fade's chamber.
Tavi listened intently for any approach, and once he was sure he was not being idly observed, he opened the door and slipped inside.
The slave's room was musty, cold, and dank. It was nothing more than an inefficiency of design, bounded on two walls with stone of the Academy and on the others with rough plaster. The ceiling was barely five feet high and contained nothing more than a battered old trunk with no lid and an occupied sleeping palette.
Tavi moved in silence to the palette, and reached down to shake its occupant.
He realized half a breath later that the form under the blankets was simply a bundle of bedding, piled into place as a distraction. Tavi turned, crouched, his hand moving to his dagger, but there was swift and silent motion in the darkness, and someone smoothly took the weapon from his belt, slammed Tavi hard with a shoulder, and sent him