The Uncrowned King

by Michelle West

  She turned, she was ready to leave, and saw the face of the woman, and she noticed that the face was smooth, but the lines around the eyes were somehow deeper, that the eyes themselves, dark enough to be mistaken for black by anyone but Kiriel, were rounded and reddened.

  Reddened, she thought, with weeping.

  Weakened, she knew, by fear.

  Because she did not want to remember it, it took her moments to acknowledge that she had seen this before. Or perhaps it wasn’t denial, perhaps it was due to the differences between the face of that woman, that older, that dead, woman and this one.

  “Kiriel,” this woman said, her voice nothing like the other woman’s voice. It pained her, to hear the difference, when the expression was so exactly the same.

  She wanted to be cruel; she could feel the ability to wound with words, and words alone, that would be far more painful than the dissolution she had inflicted upon the kin whose name the silence had taken. The shadow filled her eyes, touched her lips, moved her hair as if it were the charnel wind.

  She spoke.

  “Jewel.”

  “You’ve finished,” Jewel said. “You don’t have to do this anymore.”

  It wasn’t what she’d thought to hear. She didn’t know what she’d thought to hear. What had Ashaf said?

  “I didn’t come all this way to learn how to love—”

  Ashaf was frightened, but she struggled to hide her fear behind the mask of anger, as if Kiriel couldn’t sense fear better than she could sense life.

  “I won’t have you do this, Kiriel. I can’t stay to see this.” Her body was bent by the weight of the words, by the weight of the sight of the daughter, Kiriel knew, of the Lord of Night. Evil Incarnate, if Ashaf understood what evil meant at all.

  Kiriel stood by the window. She turned her back to Ashaf; turned it to the waning moon’s slight face, scant light. “What,” she said to this momentary stranger, “would you have of me?” She lifted her hand and shadows filled it, and she knew that if she learned a bit more, just a bit more, she could unlock them all, all the shadows that were her birthright, and she never need fear the Court, human or kin, again.

  It was the night after her investiture. The ceremony of Allasakar. The rites of passage. And Kiriel had survived them, and more. She was not the girl that she had been. Time, then, and time perhaps finally, for Ashaf to recognize this and have done.

  “I don’t—I’d have you give it up,” Ashaf said then, and the tears started. “You have what you had. You have Falloran—”

  “Falloran is the Hells’ version of an ignorant beast. Kept in check by compulsion, bloodhound to serve me, probably stupefied into thinking that that’s what he wants.”

  “But you—”

  “Ashaf, I’m not human. If you came here thinking you could make me human, you’re a fool, and you always were one.”

  Oh, she remembered the saying of those words, and they cut her and cut her and cut her because she remembered the dark joy the pain they caused brought. Because she hadn’t meant to say them, and then, having said them, she was stopped from taking them back because of the heightened sensation, the awareness of the fact that they did hurt, they could hurt.

  Regret and pleasure.

  Pleasure and anger.

  The shadows fled at once, done, drained by her need to scour herself clean of the taint that brought those memories back.

  But she was fooling herself; she was as much a fool as Ashaf had ever been, and ever would be, had she survived her stupidity. She was never free, never clean; they were with her, her father’s gifts.

  I came, Ashaf had said, with dignity, although the pain made her wrap her arms around herself and take a step back, because I knew how to love you.

  And then she was gone. The triumph of the night was gone with her, gone with the warmth that she alone carried. Had Kiriel forgotten that warmth? Yes. For just long enough. For long enough.

  She looked up, diminished, at the woman that she had led here. She spoke again, and again, she chose to express herself with a single word.

  “Jay.”

  Jewel Markess stretched out an open hand, and after a moment, hesitant and suddenly far too tired, Kiriel di’Ashaf took it.

  The sun was high, the shadows as short as they would be all day.

  A continent away, surrounded by the blight of rock and lifeless waste, the towers rose, and he rose with them, taken by wind’s whim to the heights.

  He had witnessed the fight; the fight itself stirred some ember of something akin to pride; pride, after all, was no stranger to the Kialli race that had once walked these lands. It was no stranger to them when they ruled in the Hells, and human pride, he thought, was infinitely lessened without the Kialli to set a fitting example.

  It was an idle thought; Lord Isladar of no demesne did not cherish idle thought. He had watched Kiriel fight; that pleased him.

  What had not, did not, please him was what occurred after the circle of names had been broken: The human woman.

  He had already suffered a setback—the only setback—because of the designs of a single, ignorant woman, and he ill-liked the notion that he might suffer as much again; for Ashaf kep’Valente had been confined to the rules and the laws of the Hells, her influence broken by the lessons and the strictures that survival placed upon their mutual charge.

  The wet tuft of cloud distracted him; the coldness of the high air.

  The demon that not even demons understood spun in wind, came, slowly but surely, to face the south and east, a single name upon his lips, two words.

  Jewel. Jay.

  CHAPTER NINE

  16th of Lattan, 427 AA

  Averalaan, Fifteenth Holding

  Ser Anton di’Guivera was wounded; he felt his age keenly as those wounds were washed and dressed by the hands of the physicians he had brought with him. It had been many, many years since he had taken a mark in a fight.

  Many years, indeed, since he had fought in earnest. A man could forget, over the years, that a fight was something less—and more—than art; it was, in the end, about living and dying. Winning or losing were only pale echoes of the twisted braid of survival, after all.

  But it truly galled him to be here, beneath the Lord’s gaze, solely because Northern Swords had chosen that moment to interfere. There was no question whatever in the mind of Anton di’Guivera—or those that had survived the attack of the mob of angry peasants—that they had lost the fight; what remained to them was only the chance to make their enemy’s victory as costly as possible.

  “Enough, Mikal. Enough. Go away and leave me alone.”

  The doctor sputtered like an angry cat, but he had argued enough for one day; he pinned the bandages perhaps a bit less carefully than he might otherwise have done, and left. Anton di’Guivera was not known in the Dominion for his forgiving temper, and for good reason, although it was true that his demands were far less exacting than those of the members of the court proper. Mikal sputtered and argued with Anton; he would not have dared that with other men. The Tyr’agar. The Tyr’agnati. The Tors. He, Anton, had never had those pretensions, and because he did not, he felt free to see through the pretensions of others. They were men of power, after all, and men of power made poor allies to the unwary.

  He rose and retrieved his sword.

  Girded himself stiffly, feeling the ache in his side that would not leave him from this day until he returned to the drier air of the South. Wounds did that in this unnatural clime.

  He could taste the salt in the air; it parched him, and he hated it. He hated much.

  Including the duty—the only duty, other than the art that he lived for, the shaping of warriors—that he had chosen for himself on this, the last day before the start of the Challenge itself. It was with great distaste that he called for pen, fo
r paper, for ink. His penmanship was not good; he was considered of the court, but the prettier skills of the men therein had eluded both his interest and his time. He knew how to speak well, and speech was the medium of communication in the Dominion. But here he had no serafs to send with a message—and there, in the rooms of a palace not meant to house the Lord’s men, Ramiro di’Callesta had no serafs to receive it. They were both bound by the stupidities of this kingdom.

  Instead, he sent a man out into the streets to find one of the Northerners. It took half an hour—the Northerners were angry indeed at the deaths that were occurring in this quarter, and they chose to blame it upon his students. Himself.

  Had he expected justice from them? Had he believed that North was any more fair a place to live than South? It was myth, as all else about the city was. The Lord was not worshiped here, but he saw all.

  The Lord.

  Anton di’Guivera had made a life in the Lord’s service. A name. A legend, of a type. The Lord’s service.

  The anger was still too new to him to be easily shunted aside once he had stepped upon its path; he shied, turned, fell back into what was left him: his role. He was master here, and he knew, better than any, what the cost and the benefit of a life wed to the sword was.

  Duty. The writing of a message.

  The message was eventually taken up, eventually delivered; he was certain it would be. If not by an urchin of ill-repute, then something better: his enemy’s spies. They were, after all, watching his every move.

  “What does this mean?” Fillipo par di’Callesta passed the letter back to his brother. “Are you certain it’s genuine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? I don’t recall that either of us have ever seen Anton di’Guivera’s writing, and it seems with good reason.”

  Ramiro nodded absently; the writing itself, blocky and ink-heavy, was graceless at best. “I am certain it is genuine,” he said, as his brother started to ask the question again, “because it was delivered by members of the Crowns’ personal guards from the hands of Anton himself.”

  “What?”

  “No one in the quarter was willing to carry the message for any price they were willing to pay; it was eventually taken by one of the boys who’ve been set to watch the building.”

  “Was it sealed?”

  “Yes, although not well.”

  “Broken?”

  “No. Which means we can expect a visit, although from which of the Kings’ servants, I’m not certain.”

  Fillipo was silent as he studied the curt sentences; there were two. One was what might pass for a civil greeting in a Terrean court, and the other, a stiff request, made of Ramiro di’Callesta. He desired, he said, a meeting. “Will you attend him?”

  “Yes. If he wishes to speak with me in person, I will go.”

  “Why did he not summon the General?”

  “An interesting question. I don’t know the answer.” Ramiro disliked, on principle, any profession of ignorance. But he was a practical man, when among kin whom he trusted—and he trusted none as well as this par.

  “Ah,” Fillipo said, looking over Ramiro di’Callesta’s shoulder. “Your answer.”

  The Tyr’agnate turned as the sound of booted feet against flat stone grew louder. He was curious.

  From the far end of the courtyard, shadowed by the wall in this early morning sun, came Commander Sivari, accompanied by Princess Mirialyn ACormaris.

  “I would say,” he said quietly to his brother as they approached, “that they already know the reason for the summons, and that we are about to hear the first of it now.”

  Commander Sivari bowed stiffly, the Princess who was also ACormaris, fluidly. They wore armor and bore arms as casually as did any Tyran, and they carried themselves as men of import might. Even the Princess, especially the Princess. She was not self-conscious, and Ramiro was certain that she had never been, in her life, victim of that foible of uncertain youth. She was so close to her grandfather in temperament that he wondered that any blood separated them at all.

  But it did; she was the blood child of one of the two men who now ruled this Empire, and she would never live to take his place. Instead, they would turn over the thrones upon which they sat to the children of the wives they had chosen—the children of their fathers.

  Ramiro was not a suspicious man; he could not afford to be so ignorant and yet deal with the North. He knew what they professed the golden-eyed to be, and as he had a man whom he trusted in steady contact with the periphery of that profession, he had come to understand that in some wise, the gods of the Empire were gods.

  And it was not that the kings were golden-eyed that disturbed the Tyr’agnate. It was that they could, with equanimity, surrender their wives—not their concubines, or mistresses as they were called here, but the women through whom the legitimacy of rule must pass—to their fathers. The thought made him grimace with distaste.

  The women they chose would raise their half brothers to prominence. And to this, this very rare, this legitimate child, what would fall?

  Nothing.

  Nor in the South had she been born there, if he was honest; there was something so clean, so sharp and straight about her, that he could forget that she was in fact a woman, and not just in seeming. But in the South, she would be bartered for marriage, and the line would pass to an uncle, or perhaps an illegitimate son. Was that truly so very much more difficult than this, the bloodline passed over?

  They rose, and he left his musing; he did not grant the Princess any show of his momentary discomfort. For she was, if not to rule, then to guide, and her father listened to her above almost any other adviser when she chose to give her advice—or so it was said.

  But it was said by the Serra Alina, and that meant something.

  “A long bow, ACormaris,” he said softly. “The news you bring, or perhaps the inquiry, is prefaced by little good, I fear.”

  Her smile was brief and genuine, a flash of white in the open sun. “By no good whatsoever, depending on how you feel about the man who penned that message.”

  “Do you know its contents?”

  “No.”

  He believed her, although he knew it would be possible to ascertain the gist of the message without breaking the seal; there were mages here, and in number, that served when the Kings commanded. In all, he thought, a larger organization than the Sword of Knowledge—but somewhat less cumbersome; they had been brought to bear, and they obeyed. No one controlled the Sword’s Edge.

  “It is short,” he said, “and to the point, not unlike the man himself. He wishes my attendance at the hall during the Lord’s hour.”

  “No sane Southerner travels during the Lord’s hour.”

  “He knows,” the Tyr’agnate said with a smile, “that the ruler of Averda is a man from the Northern clime.” The smile that he returned was briefer than hers but not less felt. When it vanished, however, it was gone. Smiles rarely found a lasting purchase in the lines of his face. “Why does he wish to see me?”

  Sivari looked toward her, but she was steel; she did not meet his quick glance. “Yesterday afternoon there was an incident in the fifteenth holding.”

  “That would be the holding where Anton currently resides.”

  “Where most of the Southerners reside,” Sivari added.

  “Indeed. What incident?”

  Before she could respond—and indeed, she made no attempt to reply—another man entered the courtyard. And it was to his surprise that Ramiro found himself mistaking the untried Valedan kai di’Leonne for a man. His stride, perhaps, his bearing? He was not certain, for when he recognized the face, his impression was once again that of youth that has taken no scars and made no history.

  And that youth was his future. He knelt at once to the ground; his brother knelt also, to the right and
behind, as befit the captain of his Tyran. Fillipo had not filled that role for years, but there were habits that were etched in a man so deeply they were not lost.

  Ramiro was pleased.

  “Rise,” Valedan said and they obeyed with ease; Ramiro was not used to the rigors of the inferior position, and his knees were not so young as they had once been.

  “Tyr’agar,” Mirialyn said, and she bowed, offering him the respect that she granted her father, but not more. “Thank you for granting my request.” Turning, she said, “we can begin now.”

  “I see.”

  “In the fifteenth holding, for the last week, bodies have been discovered. They are always bodies of citizens who are not Southern in either descent or birth, and they are always hideously disfigured, horribly killed.”

  “A body can be disfigured after death.”

  “Yes. And these were not.”

  “I see.” And he did. His expression was grim. “These murders are being blamed, no doubt, upon the Annagarians in that quarter.”

  “I wish I could say they were not. It is an internal matter, Tyr’agnate, and I would not have brought it to your attention for that reason. The officials have taken the situation into hand.”

  “I see. What has this to do with the Tyr’agar and myself?”

  “Yesterday, a mob attacked six men.”

  “Six—” He raised a hand to his forehead. “Continue, please.”

  “One was killed, one crippled unless his family can afford the price a healer will charge. And yes, they were men who had come to the North for the Crowns’ Challenge. Anton di’Guivera was one of the six.”

  “I see.”

  “It is . . . slightly more complicated than that.”

  “That is not in and of itself complicated,” Ramiro said quietly. “Had Anton di’Guivera died, it might have served our purpose, or the purpose of the Tyr’agar, whether or not he would desire such a death.” The last he added for Valedan’s sake; Valedan had about him the Northern taint, and perhaps for that reason, that combined with his youth, he was not a practical, nor a political, boy.