Tavi shook his head. "Wait. Araris-what truth?"
"The truth about your father," Araris said quietly. "The truth about Gaius Septimus."
The bottom fell out of Tavi's stomach upon hearing the words.
He'd known-no, not known, but speculated, analyzing what he knew and putting it together in a theory, as the Cursors had trained him to do. It had been an idle exercise, or so he thought, though it might be more accurate to say that he had simply found a new way to daydream about what it would have been like actually to have parents in his life. He'd done that often as a child, spending hours picturing them, imagining what they might have looked like, sounded like, what they might have said.
What life would have been like. How much better it might have been.
Of course, the idea of the Princeps as Tavi's unknown father had a single major stumbling block-the utter lack of furycraft that had haunted Tavi until two years before.
But that wasn't an issue anymore.
In fact, as he thought on it, it should have been more obvious to him. Tavi's crafting was still sharply limited by his lack of ability to control a manifest fury, but had he been in the Academy, he would have earned two or three beads in every single branch of crafting by now. While it was not unheard of for a crafter-especially a scion of the Citizenry-to be gifted in several areas of craft, it was exceedingly rare for anyone but the upper tiers of talent to possess skills that ran the entire spectrum of furycraft.
It should have been more obvious, but he supposed it was possible he hadn't wanted it to be true. If Araris was correct, if the Princeps truly was wed to his mother, it meant that he was a legitimate heir of the House of Gaius. It meant…
Bloody crows. It meant that the First Lord had an heir.
And it was him. Tavi.
Bloody crows. It meant that the most dangerous and ruthless people on the face of Carna were going to want him dead.
Him. Tavi.
Other pieces fell into place. He could see why Gaius had brought him to the Academy-to give him a sound education. To expose him to the children of the Citizenry. He'd been trained with the Cursors, learning the arts of intrigue and deception. He'd been assigned to a room with Max-another outcast to Aleran high society, just as Tavi himself was. That a friendship of mutual alliance would grow between them had been all but inevitable, and Tavi abruptly felt certain that Gaius had planned deliberately to secure Tavi at least one ally with the crafting power of a High Lord.
And the First Lord's designs hadn't stopped there. Tavi had been sent out into a Legion to learn the arts of strategy, tactics, logistics, and leadership. Granted, Gaius hadn't expected Tavi to wind up in command of the bloody thing, but the First Lord-his grandfather-couldn't have been terribly displeased with the results.
Gaius.
His grandfather.
He had a grandfather.
Tavi knew he was breathing too quickly, and it was making him dizzy, but too many thoughts were spinning through his mind to pay any attention. He wasn't sure if he wanted to scream, or hit something, or run, or laugh, or burst out weeping. His mind was an enormous blur of ideas and memories and possible futures, and only one thing was certain.
Everything had changed.
Everything.
"I've… I've…" Tavi swallowed and forced himself to stop stammering. "I've known that there were things Aunt Isana wasn't telling me about my parents, but…"
Araris closed his eyes and sighed. Then he opened them and faced Tavi. "No, Tavi. There's a lot your mother hasn't told you about your father."
Tavi frowned and opened his mouth to ask another question-then stopped suddenly as he heard the very gentle emphasis Araris put on the word mother.
A lot his mother hadn't told him.
Not Aunt Isana.
His mother.
Isana. Isana was his mother.
Tavi's heart suddenly throbbed and clenched, and the searing flame of shock and pain seared through his vitals. It was as if every tiny wound his heart had received over the years, every little momentary pain of a lonely child, every jab of self-loathing he felt when other children had asked who his parents were, every moment of longing for anything to fill that emptiness where his parents should have been-all of it came back to him at the same instant, in the same place, the concentrated heartache of a lifetime.
Tavi turned his head and clutched a hand at his chest, fingers sliding over the plates of his armor. The pain wasn't physical, of course-but that made it no less real, and no less terrible.
"Her sister was killed in the Marat attack at First Calderon," Araris said. "Almost everyone was. You were born that same night, in fact.'' His face clouded with an old sadness. "Isana believed that Septimus was betrayed by another Aleran and that if his enemies learned that he might possibly have sired an heir, you would surely be killed. So she hid you. She lied about who your mother was. She watercrafted you during your baths, to slow down your growth. She wanted anyone who looked at you to think that you were too young to be Septimus's child, born too long after his death."
Araris stepped forward and put a hand on Tavi's shoulder. "I helped her," he said quietly. He gestured at his scarred, branded face. "I did this to myself, Tavi. Araris Valerian was thought to be dead, and if anyone recognized me, they would have been awfully curious to note that I was watching over a boy. So I became Fade. A simple slave. The scar was part of the disguise. No one ever looked past it."
Tavi could only stare at the older man. Then he heard himself say, "That's what she wanted to talk about the other day."
Araris grimaced and nodded. "She was trying. She was afraid of what it might mean if she told you."
Tavi's vision blurred over, and the tears seemed to magnify the pain bursting through his chest. "All those years and… and she was lying to me. She was lying." He jerked his head upright as another thought flashed through his mind like a thunderbolt. "That's why I was never able to… she crafted me. She slowed my growth. She stunted my talents-and I never knew…"
"Tavi," Araris said, his voice carefully calm. "Wait. You've got to understand that she did what she did because she loves you. She had very few resources to draw upon, and she did everything in her power to protect you."
"No," Tavi spat. She'd done it to him. The years of humiliation, the bewildered pain as he bore the stigma of a freak, unable to furycraft, scorned and held in contempt by people wherever he went. He hadn't been born a freak, born unlucky, a victim of terrible mischance as he always thought.
Someone had done it to him.
His mother had done it to him.
Part of Tavi was listening to Araris's words, and part of him knew that the singulare was probably right-but it was a very small, very distant part. The pain, the outrage, and the humiliation left very little room for anything else.
"Tavi," Araris said, "you've got to calm down. She did the best she could."
"No!" Tavi spat, the anger giving his voice a vicious edge. "She lied to me. She took my crafting." His voice gained volume, independently of his control. "Do you know how many nights I couldn't sleep, how many times I suffered because I was the furyless freak? Do you have any idea, all the humiliation I had to go through? How alone I was?"
"Tavi," Araris said, voice quiet, as one speaking to a spooked horse, "you've got to control yourself. Think, man. She's out there, right now, and she's ripped apart inside. You don't know what is going to happen when you leave on campaign. You don't know if you're ever going to see her again. You need to see her. You need to make this right while you still can."