Shattered Dance

by Caitlin Brennan

  Her skin was ivory—that was not paint alone creating an illusion. Her eyes were enormous, dark and liquid like a doe’s, but there was no timidity in them. They took in the stranger lounging like a cat in the sun. One corner of the delicately molded mouth curved upward.

  Kerrec rose with what dignity he could manage. “Madam,” he said. “You were not with the others.”

  The hint of a smile widened ever so slightly. “They were holding me in reserve,” she said. Her voice was soft and pure, a purity that bespoke careful training. Her accent…

  “Elladis,” he said.

  She inclined her head. “My father is the prince of that nation,” she said. “My name is Theodosia.”

  “The eldest daughter,” said Kerrec. “Yet I’ve never seen you before. Where has your father been keeping you?”

  “I manage his estates,” she said, “and serve as regent when he travels abroad.”

  “And yet you came here,” Kerrec said.

  “I came for the coronation and the Dance,” she said.

  “Will you stay to be princess consort?” he asked. “Can your father spare you for that?”

  “I have three sisters,” she said, “none of whom by tradition can marry until I do. They’ll all be very glad when our father comes home alone.”

  Kerrec found himself surprisingly close to a smile. There was none of the shock of deep recognition and utter rightness that had run through his body when he first saw Valeria. But this could be a friend.

  He held out his hand. Her fingers were slender and long. They were warm in his, with a tremor so faint that he could hardly feel it.

  This was not easy for her, either. Outside of the Mountain, people knew next to nothing about the riders—who they were, what they did, even what they were for. They were a legend and a confusion of travelers’ tales.

  Kerrec was worse than that. He was dead, with his name carved on a tomb and his rank and position officially forgotten. As reassuring as it must be to find that he was human under all the stories, she must still wonder what she had agreed to.

  He was not sure of that himself. He kissed her hand because that was what princes did and said, “Tell me who you are. What games you play, which dances you prefer. Do you ride? Are you sworn to an order of mages?”

  “I’m an Oneiromancer of the third rank,” she said, “and I can sit a horse, though not with what you would call art. My art is the coach and pair, and my family breeds mares for it. Stallions are not so well suited to such work, you see, and geldings lack fire.”

  Kerrec’s smile broke free. “Now I see why they chose you. Do you dance, then? Or do anything frivolous?”

  “I like to play the lute and sing,” she said, “and I’m a dangerous opponent at dice.”

  “Dice?” said Kerrec with a lift of the brow.

  She laughed. “Yes, the soldiers’ sport! It’s all the rage in Elladis.”

  “Because of you?”

  The lids lowered demurely over those wide and innocent eyes. “Ah well. What are princesses for but to set the fashion?”

  “What fashion will you set here,” he inquired, “besides raising the dead and making him your husband?”

  “I suspect that will be a legend rather than a fashion,” she said.

  “Better that than a scandal,” said Kerrec.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  On the day when Sophia Briana would have been crowned empress, all the pomp and ceremony turned itself instead to something unheard of. The late and occasionally lamented prince Ambrosius, who had become a First Rider of the Mountain, took to wife the princess Theodosia of Elladis.

  They stood in the Temple of Sun and Moon under the canopy of gold and silver, in a bank of white roses. She was dressed in white silk and cloth of gold. He wore the simple brown of a rider, without ornament or indulgence.

  He was trying to be as invisible as he still was before the law, but that simplicity made him strikingly noticeable amid the extravagance of the court. The riders ranked behind him only made him seem the more remarkable.

  They would ride a Dance after this, the Midsummer Dance. Kerrec would ride in it. He could have chosen not to, but it was important that no one forget what he was.

  In this hour he stood hand in hand with Theodosia, washed in the chanting of an army of priests. Her face was veiled and her magic unreadable. The warmth of her fingers was the only human thing about her.

  The tremor he had felt in their first meeting was there again, but as the rite went on, it steadied. Her courage held him in place. He had bound himself to this and did not intend to back away from it, but the tighter the chains wound around them both, the harder it was to breathe.

  He needed Petra. Gods, he needed Valeria. Petra waited outside, saddled for the Dance. Valeria was nowhere that Kerrec could find her.

  He breathed deep once, then twice, then a third time, holding each breath until he was dizzy. This part of the ordeal was almost over.

  There were words to say and vows to speak. When he spoke them, he could not make them have meaning. They were binding even so, with the whole of the empire for witness. Theodosia’s voice followed his, speaking the same words, doubling the bindings.

  They did not promise to love one another. They promised respect and obedience, duty and honor. They made their families one and promised to increase them to the best of their ability.

  After the words were spoken, the high priestess of the Moon wound Kerrec’s hands with silver cords, then the high priest of the sun wound Theodosia’s with cords of gold. “As sun to moon and moon to sun,” they sang, “may you be united unto death. The gods bless and keep you. The light of Sun and Moon shine upon you. May your hearts be ever joyful.”

  Kerrec looked for the shadow of a face beneath the veil. Its blankness defeated him, but her hands were as warm as ever and her grip was firm. He held to that against all the rest of it.

  Riders’ Hall was empty. Even the servants and Quintus had gone to the wedding and then the Dance.

  Valeria was gone, too, but not with the others. None of them had expected her to. They understood, or tried to understand—though being riders they made no effort to pamper her. Their way of healing her heart was to give her more to do rather than less, and to expect more of her as both student and teacher.

  She supposed she was grateful. Most days she was too busy to think and too tired to lie awake brooding on her sorrows. But today was a holiday, and the riders were bound to stand at the wedding and then dance the Dance.

  She should be grooming stallions and polishing saddles and making harness buckles gleam. Instead she walked through the city, anonymous in her brown coat and leather breeches. No thief reckoned her worth robbing, and no one else noticed her. Everyone was abuzz with the news that had come down from the palace.

  “No coronation,” a burly man said in a tavern she happened to be passing. “A wedding instead, and a rider at that. What are we all coming to?”

  “The end of the world,” his companion said. Valeria could not see that one—he was inside the tavern. “I heard a seer say once, if the riders come down off the Mountain, that’s the end of everything we know.”

  “Did you really?” the burly man asked with a twist of mockery. “Or did you make it up this morning?”

  “I really heard it,” the other said with an air of injured honesty. “Just look. They move into Riders’ Hall—which everybody knows is only for festivals every dozen years or so—and something happens to the empress that nobody’s quite talking about and suddenly her brother is marrying a princess and the coronation’s not till autumn. Doesn’t that make you a little bit nervous?”

  “It makes me happy,” the other man said. “I’ve sold a year’s worth of crockery in a week. Even the load I bought from the east that time but never could unload because nobody would pay for it—I sold it yesterday. Got my price, too.”

  “Maybe all this uproar is good for business,” said the burly man, “and I’m not denying it’s been
good for us leatherworkers, too, but I still don’t like the smell of it. Doesn’t it worry you that so many things are changing all at once?”

  “If it’s change for the better, I’ll take it.”

  Valeria envied the unseen man his confidence. She passed on by, not looking for anywhere in particular, only wanting to be as far away as she could from anything that reminded her of Kerrec.

  Her wanderings brought her eventually to the harbor. Every dock and quay and slip was full and bustling, but she found a quiet corner at the end of a pier. A row of empty boats rocked at their tethers, attended by a flock of gulls.

  She hugged her knees and set her chin on them and stared blindly out to sea. Maybe she should get a berth on a ship and sail around the world. Kerrec would never follow her there. He was a complete landsman, a horseman and, in spite of his best efforts, a prince.

  She was no sailor, either, though she could learn. Months on shipboard without a horse to ride would be agony. But she could do it if she had to.

  It was shameful if she stopped to think about it. She had wanted to be a rider more than anything in the world. In her heart she still did.

  But Kerrec had wound himself into the Call. When she was on the journey from her mother’s house to the Mountain, he had saved her from rape and worse and dealt summary justice to the man who assaulted her. Ever since then, she had not been able to separate the magic from the man. He was her teacher, her lover, her friend. She had expected to live and die with him, riders together until death took both of them.

  It was not fair or right that the first rider ever to set aside the ancient law for family duty should be Kerrec. Had he not given enough? Was he to be punished forever for being born an emperor’s son?

  Was she to be punished for loving him?

  She was not even aware that the tears had begun to fall until a step and a breath behind her made her turn. Her sight was blurred and her cheeks were wet.

  She scrubbed the tears away and scowled at the man who disturbed her solitude. He was a very ordinary man dressed in brown—even more nondescript than a rider’s uniform.

  Something about him was familiar. She was too annoyed to wonder what it was. “Are you from the palace or the hall?” she demanded. “Have you come to fetch me back?”

  “Only if you want to go,” the brown man said. He sat on a coil of rope beside her. “The Dance will begin soon. Aren’t you going to watch?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Don’t you think you should?”

  “Why? Because it’s going to turn into war in heaven again? This time it won’t be my fault.”

  “You know,” said the brown man, “he doesn’t love her and he never will. You’re his heart. That won’t change.”

  “Everything has changed,” she said.

  “Not his love for you.”

  “I won’t share him,” said Valeria. “I can’t.”

  “Whereas he,” said the brown man, “has had to share you.”

  Valeria’s body went cold. “What do you know of that? How do you know?”

  “You don’t remember me?”

  Her eyes seared through him. Memory flooded back. She remembered a man in brown in the late emperor’s service, a mage of three magics and master of them all.

  “Master Pretorius,” she said.

  He bowed where he sat. “At your service, my lady.”

  “Are you?” she asked. “Who sent you? Briana?”

  “I sent myself,” he said. “Your pain rings like a gong in the deep levels of the aether. It’s been troubling my dreams.”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said stiffly. “I’ll strengthen my wards. You won’t have to—”

  “Stronger wards are seldom ill-advised,” he said, “but don’t do it on my account.”

  “You think I’m weak and foolish,” she said. “It’s justice, isn’t it? I betrayed him with another man. Now he takes a wife. How like him to take his revenge honorably and openly and for the good of the empire—whereas all I tried to do was save his life.”

  “Males are prone to the grand gesture,” Master Pretorius said.

  “You’re laughing at me.” Valeria pushed herself to her feet. “Please go. Tell her majesty I’ll be back before dark.”

  “I will if you like,” he said, “but I’m not her messenger. I’ve come with a message of my own. And,” he added, “a proposal.”

  That made her pause before she turned to stride back down the pier. “For what? Marriage?”

  His lips twitched. “Not likely, my lady. Have you given thought to what you’ll do after the uproar has died down? He’ll be taking his place in Riders’ Hall as he had planned. I doubt he’ll bring his wife there—there’s no room for a princess’s retinue—but he’ll be in the hall every day. Can you bear that?”

  That had been Valeria’s exact thought. She hated him for voicing it. “It’s none of your affair what I can stand or not stand. I’ll ask my Master to take me back to the Mountain.”

  “He’s not going until after the coronation,” said Pretorius. “None of them is. They’re staying in the city to guard it and its empress.”

  “Then I’ll go alone,” she said. “It won’t be the first time.”

  “What if I present an alternative? Will you consider it?”

  “I can’t stay,” she said.

  “I’m not asking you to. Listen a moment and be patient. You know the empress was attacked by a priest of the One—an imperial lordling, it seems, but he gave it up to attach himself to the dark priesthood. No one has been able to find him. His allies know nothing but that he was in the city and is no longer. We suspect he’s gone back over the border.”

  “He could be hiding in Aurelia,” she said. “It wouldn’t be the first time the cult of the One has escaped imperial notice. If he’s not done yet—if he has more harm to do—he’ll stay close to his targets.”

  “Indeed,” said Master Pretorius. “Nonetheless, we have reason to believe he has gone back among the tribes. It also happens that imperial forces have been establishing themselves beyond the river since last autumn, building forts and securing last summer’s victory. We’ve had word from them that there is a new high king in the royal dun. He’ll need watching in case he thinks he can wage war as his predecessor did.”

  “That’s not likely,” said Valeria, “considering how thoroughly the tribes were defeated. If he has any intelligence at all, he’ll know that.”

  “That’s what our new envoys will go to determine,” Master Pretorius said. “I’ve come to ask if you would be one of them.”

  Valeria scowled at him. “What in the world can I do? I’m no diplomat.”

  “Now that is true,” Pretorius said dryly. “Nonetheless, you are a great rarity, not only the first woman to practice the horse magic but also a wisewoman of unusual power. And,” he said, “you have one more gift that makes you rarer still.”

  He paused. Valeria refused to take the bait. He went on unperturbed. “Here we have a number of words for it, but none quite manages to contain it. In Elladis they call it charisma. People want to follow you. More than that, they want to love you. Even the gods aren’t immune to your power.”

  Valeria’s cheeks flushed. “What are you saying? That I should be a courtesan?”

  “Hardly,” said Master Pretorius, “though the great ones have a glimmering of your gift. There are rough edges that might be smoothed, but both your skills and your talents are considerable. We should like to make use of them.”

  “I am a rider,” Valeria said, though temptation tugged at her. “I’ve left my training often enough as it is. I won’t run away again.”

  “Not even if your Master gives permission?”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “If you were in danger here,” Pretorius said, “and if he were persuaded that your peculiar abilities were best put to use on this mission, he might surprise you.”

  “I’m not in danger here,” Valeria said.

>   “Are you a seer or an oneiromancer? Have you studied the patterns closely? Have you looked into your heart?”

  Valeria walked stiff-legged to the end of the pier and poised on the edge. Green-brown water lapped the pilings below. A pair of gulls bobbed in it, side by side.

  Even the birds had one another. Her chest felt tight. Away in the city, bells began to ring, a chorus of jubilation.

  The wedding must be over. It was nearly noon, nearly time for the Dance.

  She knew she was being absurd. Everything Pretorius had said about Kerrec was true. He still loved Valeria, and she had no doubt he always would.

  She could see the patterns easily enough. He would do his duty with the woman who had been chosen for him, give Briana heirs then come back to Valeria. He would not be able to help himself, nor would he want to.

  Valeria had had her own choice to make, too, and she had chosen Kerrec. And yet this was different.

  The formality of it, the bindings that went all the way to the empire’s heart, constricted her own heart until she could hardly breathe. It was not rational and it certainly was not reasonable. Even if she came to her senses—and she did expect to—she needed to go away for a while. She had to learn to live in this altered world.

  She turned and fixed her stare on Pretorius. He looked like a plain and honest man, a tradesman maybe or a prosperous farmer. He would not have looked out of place in the market of Imbria, selling a cartload of radishes or downing a mug of the local ale.

  Horse magic came to all ranks and stations, too, and sometimes to nations that knew little or nothing of horses—as her yearmate Batu had discovered for himself. She wondered which village Pretorius had come from, and what his people had thought of him. Had they tried to stop him from following the call of his magic, as Valeria’s mother had tried to stop her?

  If she went on this embassy, she might have the opportunity to ask.

  If.