“I hurt,” Crassus said, his voice slurring and weak. He closed his eyes again. “End of report.”

Tavi tried to get the young man to open his eyes again, but there was no rousing him. He sank back tiredly into the tub.

“He’s very tired,” said a quiet voice. “It’s better if you let him rest, Your Majesty. The attack on the headquarters tent was defeated and most of the attackers slain. We lost twenty-two, all of them from among the guards stationed around the command tent.”

Tavi looked up to see Dorotea sitting quietly on a camp stool near the tent’s entrance. She looked terrible, her eyes sunken, her cheeks bloodless. The collar on her throat threw back the subdued light of the lamp with a silent, malevolent gleam. She held a blanket wrapped around her though the night was not cold.

“Your Highness,” he corrected her gently. “I’m not the First Lord yet.”

The slave smiled tiredly. “You just stood against the nightmare of our time, young man. You put your life at hazard for the sake of a slave who once tried to murder you. Thank you. Your Majesty.”

“If you want to thank a hero, thank Foss,” Tavi said wearily. “He’s the one who saved you.”

“My thanks won’t matter to him now,” she said quietly. “I hope his rest is peaceful.”

Tavi sat up slowly. “Where’s Kitai?”

“Sleeping,” Dorotea said. “She was exhausted.”

“What happened after I went down?”

The slave smiled faintly. “Several of us were unconscious and dying. You. Me. Maximus. Crassus. She was not in good condition herself, and did not have the strength remaining to attempt a healing on more than one person. She had to choose whom to save.”

Tavi took a slow breath. “Ah. And she chose you. Someone to lead the less-experienced healers.”

Dorotea inclined her head slightly, as if she was afraid something might spill out if she tipped it too far. “Our senior folk were all conferring when…” She shivered. “When you saw us. Kitai’s was a remarkably rational decision, under the circumstances. Emotions tend to overrule reason when one is in pain and afraid for another. And her feelings for you are disturbingly intense. She could easily have let those feelings control her. And I, my son, and your friend Maximus would all be dead.”

“She made the right call,” Tavi said. He looked at Max and Crassus. “How are they?”

Dorotea tightened the blanket around her slightly. “I assume that you know that watercrafting does not simply make a subject whole again. It draws upon the body’s resources to restore what has been made unwhole.”

“Of course,” Tavi said.

“There are limits. And… and my Crassus had so many injuries. Broken bones. Shattered organs.” She bit her lip and closed her eyes. “I did all that I could, everything, but there are limits to what can be repaired. The body can only sustain so much of its own regeneration…”

She shuddered and shook for several seconds. Then suddenly Dorotea seemed to master herself and lifted her face, wiping tears briskly from her cheeks. Her voice was unsteady, but she attempted to use crisp, professional description. “Crassus’s injuries were extensive and serious. I repaired enough damage that they should not shorten his life. Assuming that there is no infection—which is an acute danger when a body is so badly strained—he may be able to walk again. Eventually. His days as a Tribune are finished.”

Tavi swallowed and nodded. “Maximus?”

“The vord Queen hit him on the head rather than anywhere vital,” Dorotea said with tired, almost fond irritation. “He’s fine. Or will be, when he wakes up. It could take a while.”

“How am I?” Tavi asked.

“The priority was to restore you to complete function,” she said. “The actual trauma wasn’t bad. The poisoning was acute, but not as difficult to overcome as others might have been. The only issue was keeping you breathing, for a while. You should be able to enter battle if you need to.”

Tavi nodded slowly. Then he sat up, and said, “You look terrible. Get some rest. Battle’s coming.”

Dorotea looked over at Crassus again. “I won’t leave him.”

“You’ve already said you’ve done all you can,” Tavi said, gently. “And other lives are going to depend on you. You’ll rest. That is an order.”

Dorotea’s eyes flickered back to him, hot for a half second, before her mouth turned up into a slow, tired smile. “You can’t give me an order, sir. You aren’t the captain of the Free Aleran. My orders come from him.”

“But I can order him,” Tavi said testily. “Bloody crows, what does a man have to do to get a little respect around here? Am I the First Lord or not?”

Dorotea’s smile widened, and she bowed her head. “Very well. Your Majesty. There are guards around and over and quite likely under the tent. But speak, and they will be here.”

“Thank you.”

Tavi waited until she had left to ease himself out of the tub. He felt shaky, but no worse than he had any of a number of other times he’d endured a healer’s attentions. He climbed out without help and found a clean set of clothes laid out for him.

Tavi got dressed, though it was painful to bend at the waist. The strange sword he had been stabbed with had left an equally strange scar, a stiff ridge of nearly purple tissue, and the area around it was exquisitely tender. He slid into his pants and belted his tunic on cautiously. A quick spike of pain went through him and made him clench his teeth over suddenly frozen breath.

The awareness of a gaze upon him made Tavi look back, and he found Crassus awake again, bleary eyes focused on him.

“M’ mother,” Crassus said. “She was alive. And you didn’t t-tell me.”

Tavi stared at his friend in pure shock. It was true. He hadn’t. Antillus Dorotea had been a traitor to the Realm, along with her brother, High Lord Kalarus. She had been snapped up for her talents in the slave rebellion that had followed the destruction of Kalarus and the chaos in Kalaran lands, and no one had known or cared who she was—only what she could do. Had he brought her true identity to light, it would have forced him to bring charges against her as well. More importantly, she had all but begged him not to tell her husband or her son that she had survived. Trapped in a slave collar that could not be removed without killing her, it was, in a sense, true. The woman who had plotted against the Realm would never return.

She had saved Crassus once before, when he was unconscious, but he had never wakened during the procedure, and she had been gone before he was awake again. She never left the Free Aleran camp or train and had hidden virtually in plain sight for the past years.

But this time Crassus had seen her.

Crassus’s eyes burned. “Didn’t tell me.”

“She asked me not to,” Tavi said quietly.

Crassus squeezed his eyes shut, as if in agony. Given his injuries, there was every chance that he was—even without other considerations. “Get away from me, Octavian.”

“Rest,” Tavi said. “We’ll talk, later, when this is all—”

“Get out!” Crassus snarled. “How could you? Get out.”

He dropped back down, wheezing, and was asleep again, or unconscious, within seconds.

Tavi sat down on the stool Dorotea had vacated, shaking. He lowered his head to his hands and just sat there for a moment. Crows take it. He had never wanted this. And yet, it had been such a small worry among so many others. Truth be told, he’d barely thought about it. And now, the lie he’d felt he had no other choice than to make might have cost him the love and respect of a friend.

“Such a small concern, for a man with your problems,” said Alera quietly.

Tavi looked up to see the great fury, appearing as she usually did, but this time also covered in a misty grey cloak and hood that hid all of her features but her face. Her gemstone eyes were calm and gently amused.