The Uncrowned King

by Michelle West

  And there, in the darkness of moonlight and night sky, he found that there was no privacy.

  “Where are we going?” Auralis asked.

  “For a walk,” Jewel replied.

  “Damned long walk.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Where does it look like we’re going?”

  “To the High City.” His voice made plain what he thought of that.

  “I used to live in the twenty-fifth,” she replied, “but I don’t live there now. You’re a soldier. I’m a soldier. Different wars.”

  “And?”

  “I’m going back to the command post before I head out again.”

  “Avantari?”

  “No. Terafin.”

  He missed a step, and then smiled. “That should be interesting.”

  Something in his words pulled her up as short as he’d been pulled up; she froze, for just a moment, as if a dagger’s edge was at her throat, a man’s voice in her ear. And her throat was dry, dry, dry. Nightmare crowded her vision; waking version, just as real.

  “Jay?” Kiriel said, but Jewel shook her head and began to run.

  “Mother’s blood,” Jewel said, the words short and labored.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “I should’ve known—damn Evayne—I should have thought—”

  “What?”

  “She never does anything without a reason. If she’d just wanted to save my life, she could’ve dumped me outside the healerie doors in Avantari. She took me to you and to him. And you’re here. What do you think that means?”

  Kiriel fell silent.

  Auralis said, “A fight?”

  But she didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. Healerie.

  Andaro heard him first. He was listening, after all, to the rise and fall of Carlo’s chest, the quality of his breathing, the quality of his silence. Carlo was seldom quiet in this fashion, this thoughtful contemplative retreat to a place words wouldn’t quite reach. The idea that the Lady and Andaro were not his only audience had obviously not occurred to him; they were both disquieted.

  And both unwilling to face the crowds, although the rider’s test would demand everything Andaro had to give it come the dawn. And how much, he thought. How much was that?

  Footsteps grew louder, although they were not by nature loud footsteps, not the heavy, cloddish Northern tread. He felt comforted by it, although he did not recognize the sound of the gait. They’d been trained to that; to recognize a man by the approach of his step.

  And so it was that they stayed, silent and waiting, while Valedan kai di’Leonne approached the fountain in the otherwise empty courtyard. He came to its edge and stopped there.

  They rose to greet him. Should not have, perhaps, but they rose anyway.

  He surprised them both; he bowed, and the bow was low, completely Southern. “Ser Carlo,” he said.

  “We didn’t realize,” Andaro began, but the kai Leonne lifted a hand.

  “This is all the lake I have,” he said, gesturing to the fount and its thin stream of ever falling water. “And compared to the waters of the Tor, it is not so very great.” He turned to face the statue in the fountain’s center. “But it was fashioned by the hands of an Annagarian maker, and the name he gave it was Justice.

  “It seems fitting,” he added. “And the water is sweet water, if not so wholesome as the lake’s.”

  “This is yours?” Carlo said.

  “It belongs to the Kings,” was Valedan’s reply. “All things in Avantari do. This fountain, these halls, the footpaths. They don’t own people,” he remarked, “but everything else that can be owned is theirs.”

  “And have you survived, with no serafs? How can you be served by people who neither fear you nor grant you the respect of devotion?” The words left Andaro before he could stop them, and once uttered, they could not be called back. He stared at this man, this Valedan kai di’Leonne, and surprised himself by seeing past the youth. He was, to the best of their knowledge, some seventeen or eighteen years of age; he might be older. Certainly not younger.

  But the years that separated them—six at most, four at least—usually made themselves felt, made themselves known. Not tonight. Tonight, this boy was the kai Leonne.

  Is this what Ser Anton sees in you? Andaro thought. Small wonder he is disquieted.

  “How have I survived?” Valedan shrugged. “Well enough. Perhaps there is less to fear in the Northern Court than there was in the Southern Court. These people,” he added, lifting an arm as if to take in the entire Empire, “do not make their reputations by the behavior of the serafs they own.”

  Carlo shrugged, impatient; he was a clansman, but only just, and he owned no serafs. “Not all of the men of the South do, either.”

  “No,” Valedan said. “I know.” They were silent. At last he said, “You were sent here to kill me, as my father was killed.” Not a question.

  Andaro was impassive, silent. He would not be forced to a lie by this man.

  But Carlo was . . . Carlo.

  “Yes,” he said, before Andaro could catch his glance. Intimacy, in honesty. Something to avoid.

  “And now?”

  Half-bitter, half-proud, Carlo looked down at his leg. “Now what?” he said. “I am as you see me; I’ve done what I’ve done. You judge.”

  “Because you can’t?”

  That raised hackles; Carlo’s eyes narrowed and he drew himself up to his full height—a height that had not been seen since he’d stepped down from the only podium he would stand on in this Challenge.

  Andaro felt comforted.

  Until Carlo di’Jevre spoke. “How am I to judge?” he asked, his voice the low burning of fire’s ember. “Your father was weak. His weakness weakened us. He led us not to victory in the war against these,” his arm swung wide, as Valedan’s had done, but the movement was faster, harsher, “but to defeat. The only man who had a measure of success in that war now rules us.”

  “By what means?” Valedan asked fiercely, eyes narrowed, expression half-hidden in the shadows cast by magelight and moonlight.

  Carlo lost the height he’d gained. “I don’t know,” he admitted, turning his face to the Lady Moon. “I knew—I thought I knew—until I came to this sun-scorched land. And now—I just don’t know.”

  “I owe you my life,” Valedan said again.

  “You owe the Lady your life,” Carlo countered. “I wouldn’t have raised sword to save you.”

  “Yet you did.”

  “For her honor,” the swordsman shot back, his voice sharp as blade’s edge, eyes as narrow. “For her honor, and for the Lord’s.”

  Valedan bowed. “And whose honor did Leonne serve in the time of Darkness? Whose were Leonne’s enemies? The Lord’s. And the Lady’s.” He rose. “Carlo di’Jevre, I would be honored—”

  “Be damned first,” Carlo said.

  But Andaro heard it: the waver in the voice, the division, the guilt and the desire. Carlo hid nothing when a weapon was not in his hands, an armed man before him. Even when he tried, as he tried now.

  Valedan said smoothly, “I may well be. But not for lack of trying. I’m honored to have you here, in this courtyard, by this fountain.” He bowed. “The Lady’s Moon,” he said, “is shining brightly this eve.”

  And darkly, Andaro thought, although he did not speak. And darkly as well.

  Damn you, kai Leonne.

  Night.

  Moon in courtyard, impaled by wrought-iron fence. Often seen, from Terafin, but just as often accompanied by silence. Silence—in the streets of the High City, so close to the Challenge itself—was the one thing that money apparently could not buy, nor power ensure; even here, at the heart of the Empire’s power, men and women flowed through the streets, the night itself their destination.
r />   Jewel was used to running through crowds; she’d done it a hundred times before; a thousand. But it had been half a lifetime away, and if old habits didn’t die—and they didn’t die completely—they didn’t cling as strongly as they could. Perhaps it was the night, the lack of easy vision, that made the run so difficult. Or perhaps it was the destination: Terafin. Running to Terafin always seemed fraught with this terrible lack of speed, this certainty of the terrible consequence of failure.

  Kiriel and her friend followed. She was grateful; grateful enough that she paused, in the holdings and directly before the bridge, to wave them on. Best not to lose them, not here. Kiriel knew the way in broad daylight, but night?

  She would smack herself later; magic or no, night was Kiriel’s element.

  The guards at the gate were ATerafin, of course. She flew between them, lifting a hand; torchlight glinted off worked gold, worked platinum.

  “Hey, Jay!” a voice called, and she skidded—literally—to a halt across damp grass.

  She turned to face Arann.

  “Where’s Torvan?”

  “Hells if I know—Avantari.”

  “But—you—”

  “The healerie, Arann—we need to reach it. Now.”

  He left his post. She’d remember it later; he left his post. And followed.

  They were four people: Jewel, Kiriel, her friend Auralis, and Arann of the House Guard. They could not move quietly, but they could, having cleared the checkpoint, move quickly. No tangle of weed here, no dip in road, no web of crowd to either side or, thanks to alcohol, underfoot. Here, the halls were wide and well-lit, and they went on in relative peace and quiet.

  Relative peace.

  Relative quiet.

  The healerie.

  Kiriel heard it first, or at least, Kiriel said it first: Swords. Jewel couldn’t hear it at first, and she cursed her talent-born blood, cursed the fact that she couldn’t summon vision. It was master and she was not—like a horse, she waited to be ridden.

  Was this Evayne’s lesson?

  Hard to hear anyway; Auralis and Kiriel in half-armor, and Arann in the full armor of the House Guards, thundering at her side with each heavy footfall. She had no time to summon other guards. Took no time. Kiriel heard swords.

  And swords were forbidden in the healerie.

  They took a corner, took another one; the halls in Terafin were wide, and they could run four abreast. Jewel should have been the fastest; she should have gotten there first. But Kiriel, wearing armor, carrying a sword—when had she unsheathed it?—was somehow lighter on her feet. Devoid of shadows, robbed of the menace of the supernatural, she retained something. And something, tonight, was a blessing.

  Jewel was next; she drew no weapon. First, she still didn’t know how to wield a sword. She’d taken a lesson or two—could hear, now, Angel saying, you fight like a girl! just before she decked him—but both she and the swordmaster concurred; she wasn’t large enough or young enough to become a master.

  And at sixteen, newly ATerafin, it was master or nothing.

  At thirty-three, at thirty-three she hated the hubris of her younger self. Breath began to scorch the sides of her throat. Too much soft living. Too little real labor.

  She heard Arann’s intake of breath. They were close enough now that he could hear it: Steel against steel; the short cry of a man’s voice. Neither he nor she recognized whose. They put on a last burst of speed.

  There: the healerie’s solid, simple door. Closed.

  But no question, no question at all. Beyond it, the sounds of fighting, distinct. Swords in the healerie. And one didn’t take swords into the healerie without Alowan’s permission. The consequences were simple: Cross the threshold with the weapon, and never cross it again as a patient.

  Jewel knew what it meant: Whoever had opened the door didn’t give a rat’s ass for the consequences. That meant one thing. Alowan.

  Or two.

  She hadn’t said it. Hadn’t spoken it aloud, because in the Empire, and in the mind of a superstitious girl in the twenty-fifth holding with a Voyani mother and grandmother, words had power—what was said could resonate through the years, scarring the speaker. Could catch the attention of the winds—or in the Empire, of a capricious, an irritable godling.

  She said it now, a prayer, a promise, her shaking hand on the healerie door.

  “Teller. Angel.”

  The door was locked. Arann kicked it in.

  The first thing she saw made no sense—but fear did that to her; heightened immediate images into a sharp clarity of here-and-now that sometimes robbed them of context. Men were at a door. Men in armor, with heavy swords. Chips of wood were flying—they were using their swords as axes.

  Context tumbled in.

  Alowan’s door.

  She thought—would remember thinking—why don’t they just kick it down? before Kiriel jogged her elbow.

  “Jay?”

  The metal against metal wasn’t coming from the men at the door, obviously; it came from inside the healerie itself. “Them,” she said thickly. Kiriel bobbed, head rising and falling; she cut a path through the greenery as if she were a demon and the word a dismissal.

  But Arann and Auralis were armored, Arann for duty and Auralis for gambling houses full of drunkards who had lost too much money, and the opening of the healerie door had finally caught the attention of the men who labored, notching and dulling their swords. They looked up. They were four.

  Four men, and she recognized the armor at once. Recognized the surcoat. House Guards. Terafin guards.

  One of them swore.

  “Kill them,” he said. “Kill all of them except her.”

  Auralis and Arann exchanged a brief glance, and then their faces set in expressions characteristic to them, a hardening not unlike the taking up of a shield. Auralis smiled; that was all, the smile a broad splash of warmth across a face a bit too self-satisfied to otherwise be handsome to someone like Jewel.

  Arann’s face became a mask; a slight narrowing of eye, a stilling of lip, a setting of jaw.

  Both men lifted their swords. She fell through the crack between them, although neither man spoke a word, and when she did, that gap seemed to close on its own as four men rushed in.

  No taking of time, here; they had numbers—two to one were never good odds—and probably little time. The healerie door was open, after all. Someone would hear them. Someone would have to hear them.

  She pulled her dagger and spun on heel, teetering a moment between this fight and the one that she could hear. And then she ran. It almost killed her, to run—because she didn’t run toward the beds either.

  She ran for the door, the exposed stretch of empty hallway. She ran for Captain Alayra of the Chosen. Alayra was always in.

  There were four men in the healerie proper. They carried swords, wore full armor, and circled two men, both armed, neither dressed for combat, who stood back to back. One was small, too small for a fight like this; a slash crossed his chest from shoulder to waist, staining shirt and skin. His face was bruised and yellowed—old bruises, to her practiced eye. He was barely standing. Would not, she thought, stand long.

  Teller.

  The other, wilder beneath his tight control, was unwounded, had caused pain. He was taller—as tall as Auralis although not as broadly built—and although he bled, it wasn’t completely clear why. His sword was stained.

  Angel.

  The other beds were empty. No—not completely; three beds were bumpy; the sheets had been slashed end to end, much as Teller’s chest had been. She’d have to ask. Later.

  Two to one. Poor odds.

  Four to one were poorer.

  She stood in the room like a small storm, and then, of all things, Kiriel di’Ashaf laughed.

  Arann was the
largest of the den. Heaviest. Strongest. He’d been in fights before that had almost killed him—and they were fights like this, not contests of honor, but simple attempts to end his life. The fact that these men wore armor and carried swords didn’t change those rules. What changed them slightly was this: Arann himself had been trained, by Alayra, by Torvan, by the sword-master of Terafin. He wasn’t the best—but he wasn’t far off.

  Two of the men were younger than he was; two older. He’d recognized all of them. Knew how they fought, as he’d drilled with the two younger men in the ring. Never for keeps.

  This was for keeps.

  They hadn’t the time to build momentum, nor the time to build speed; but they were used to taking advantage of superior numbers. Alayra’s gift. He was used to defending against superior numbers. Torvan’s gift.

  He took the first blow with the flat of his sword, side-stepping the man who delivered it; twisting him; using the slight lack of control momentum built against him. Almost worked.

  The second blow—unparried—was glancing; it slid down armor and caught a moment in surcoat. That was all. He responded in kind.

  Alayra was sleeping.

  Figures. Middle of the Challenge, all of the men on tenterhooks, the streets full, The Terafin engaged in whatever it was The Terafin did during a season that saw the influx of every merchant and politico you’d want to see—and a whole lot more you didn’t—and Alayra was sleeping.

  Or at least that’s what it looked like to Jewel.

  But the minute she touched the bed—not Alayra herself, just the bed—she knew that the Captain of the Chosen was gone.

  It hit her like an assassin’s blade, shoved suddenly and deftly between her ribs in a single strike. She stepped back.

  No time left. No time to honor the dead; no time to even speak of it clearly. She ran back from the room, retreating as if at the discovery of fire.

  Ran to the door where two members of the Chosen—not too young, but you didn’t get Chosen by being young—were standing. She didn’t recognize the woman. But the man, the man was an old friend. Arrendas. Captain.

  “What are you—”