The Uncrowned King

by Michelle West

  But his word, unlike the moving hush of whispers, was loud. Distinct. It traveled the breadth of the coliseum and any who understood its significance held breath.

  Andaro di’Corsarro took his sword. Lifted it, beneath the open sun. Plunged it, point first, into the dead grass, the circle’s edge.

  He knelt—staggering as his wounded knee took his weight and held it—and bowed his head. “If you will have my service, it is yours. Your enemies are my enemies, and my death is yours to command.” Loud, that voice. Ringing. Almost too clear to be unaugmented.

  The Northerners were clever. Ser Anton had never accused them of anything less.

  “I . . . apologize. It is not the formal oath, and it is—it is not done well. I am offering—”

  “We have been blooded in the same kill, against an enemy no man should stand beside. I will take your sword over your pretty words—when you find them—any day.” And then he lowered his voice, the words falling into a wry smile that seemed just a bit too old for his face. “And besides, it means we don’t have to face each other on the field. I’ve now seen what you can do with that sword.”

  Andaro smiled in return; the moment stood until the sea breeze blew it away.

  “Tend your dead,” Valedan said quietly. “I—” and he turned to look across the field, “I have my dead to attend as well.” The young Tyr’agar walked back to the circle’s edge. Grasped the hilt that was damp with sweat and a trace of blood, and pulled. For an injured man, Andaro had planted the sword with a little too much strength.

  Andaro nodded. Rose, with difficulty, and retrieved the sword he’d planted so visibly, so forcefully, in the ground from the hands of the man he had pledged it to. He would have eyes for only a headless body for the next several minutes.

  All that Anton needed, really.

  He saw his moment, and he, too, accepted it.

  “Kai Leonne,” he said, in a voice that was deeper and fuller than Andaro di’Corsarro’s.

  Valedan turned at once. There was no friendship in the look that Ser Anton met; there was nothing but steel and distance.

  The swordmaster drew his weapon—and stepped into the circle.

  The boy had not sheathed his. But he lifted a hand, waving away the Callestan Tyran—and the Ospreys—who might otherwise attend him. Waving away the magi, the priests, the powers that could sweep across them both with ease.

  “Ser Anton.”

  And he, too, stepped into the circle.

  Brave, that. Anton thought he might—if he were wiser—refuse the fight; it was risky, but had he chosen to invoke the presence of demons and their historical association with the South—a South that had sent Anton and his students—his reputation might not have suffered.

  But he played no games, this boy; not here.

  “As acting judge, it is my duty—”

  “I have been offered combat,” Valedan said quietly. “I will accept it.”

  “You are not in the South, with all respect, Tyr’agar,” the nameless judge said. “You do not have the right—”

  “I have claimed the rulership of the South, and this man is one of my subjects, not yours. The rules of suspension dictate that there are customs and rituals observed within the South which, when they do not interfere with the liberties of Northern citizens, may be observed in Avantari. Or am I mistaken?”

  “No,” a voice he did recognize said. “You are not mistaken, as you well know.”

  He almost didn’t recognize the man who came with the voice, for it was Kallandras the bard, but dressed in darkness and bereft of the lute for which he was famed. He bowed, and the bow, as always, was perfect. “Tyr’agar,” he said softly.

  “Kallandras.”

  “The rules of suspension allow it, but your injuries—”

  “Are my own.”

  He heard it, of course; it took no bardic talent to recognize the rage and the anger that overruled common sense and pain.

  Turning, he met the eyes of the swordmaster of the South, the only Southerner to ever win the Northern crown—and at that, to win it twice, once each for the woman and the child that he had loved. And lost. To politics. To ambition, very little of it his own.

  Or perhaps not; perhaps the ambition had lain there, lain fallow, and he was aware that although it had cost his wife and child their lives he could not give it up. Such a guilt had driven men greater than Ser Anton in their time.

  Or so legends said.

  “Ser Anton di’Guivera,” he said softly, “will you do this thing?”

  “I have offered challenge,” the old man replied in a rock solid voice.

  Kallandras’ hand curled tight around a simple, inexpensive piece of jewelry. Closed there, unwilling to expose it to light. He heard the cracks and the fissures, so less evident in the old man’s voice than in the young one’s, exposed to him by talent, by blood, and not by any slip of the swordmaster’s.

  Evayne, he thought, I know why you gave me this ring and this message.

  But he heard the voices beneath the words—young and old, raw and concealed—and he understood then what Evayne did not, or could not, given the burden she had so unwillingly undertaken. Ser Anton di’Guivera was about to be tested; was about to discover his own measure, his own depths.

  So, too, was Valedan kai di’Leonne.

  As a bard, Kallandras made his decision. He bowed. “The circle, gentlemen.”

  The Ospreys were, as usual, beside themselves with rage. “What in the Hells is that supposed to mean? We’re supposed to let them fight?”

  Duarte’s lips were a thin line. “Good. I see, Fiara, that your comprehension is improved by a night’s heavy drinking.”

  “Valedan’s injured!”

  “Yes.”

  “But the old man—”

  “I don’t need to hear it, Fiara. Alexis.”

  Alexis had said very little.

  “Put the daggers down.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Duarte—”

  “No.”

  “But if he dies, it’s for nothing. All of it.”

  “Thank you for pointing that out.”

  Silence.

  “All right,” she said, and her arms slowly dropped. “But we kill the old man if he wins.”

  “You can kill the old man the minute he steps into the city streets. You touch a hair on his head while he’s in Avantari and you won’t have one. A head, that is.”

  “Got it without the explanation.”

  They were left to witness, to watch. The Ospreys were not good at games of patience.

  Baredan di’Navarre brought the healer.

  He dragged him through the crowded aisles and past the Kings’ Swords, taking him by the hand minutes before Ser Anton di’Guivera’s voice had been raised in challenge. Or Valedan’s raised in acceptance.

  He was not the man that Alesso di’Marente was—in any way. That General, first among the three who had served Markaso kai di’Leonne, was gifted with an intuition that no amount of experience or skill could equal; he was blessed by the sun, able to bask in its glory without being burned by the ferocity of its light.

  Not so Baredan—but Baredan’s skill was of a different type. He was canny, not so much in the field, although in the field he was able to hold his own, but on a more personal level. He understood not men en masse, but men, and watching Ser Anton’s slight stiffening of the shoulders, even over the long stretch of grass that separated them, he knew what the swordmaster intended.

  He had been afraid for a moment that the swordmaster would disgrace himself entirely—but only for a moment. Anton di’Guivera might consort with assassins—they all did, who played games along the political edge of the Lord’s sword—but he could never reduce himself to being one. And that left
only the challenge itself.

  Had Valedan been an older man, had he been Ramiro or Fillipo, or even Mauro, who was not so much older in years as wiser in his acceptance of experience, Baredan would have stayed his ground, and left the healer alone; left him unexposed, unrevealed.

  But he was Valedan, the too-young kai Leonne, and his first, his only, General was beginning to understand his measure well.

  The sun was high, the sky was clear, two swords had been raised from the earth.

  “I am sorry,” he told his friend, as they approached the kai Leonne and began to slow their frenetic pace.

  “He is not dying,” his friend replied. “I will not call the dying.”

  “And this?”

  “For you, Baredan, because the debt between us is no small matter.” The man paused, his Southern throat unadorned by the Imperial symbol, the two famous palms that spoke of the healer’s presence across the breadth of the Empire. “And because I am not . . . unimpressed . . . with the boy you came North to save.” His teeth flashed in a white, white smile. “My foolish wife,” he said, in a voice so heavy with indulgent affection it pulled an answering smile from Baredan, even given the grimness of the situation. “Watches from the stands, and she would never forgive me if I denied you what you have not yet asked. She thinks I am fearless, although she should know better; she thinks of me—” he laughed, “as a hero.

  “And you know the cost of disillusioning such a wifely fantasy.”

  That wife had cost him his family in the end; his country. If there were regrets, they were not evident.

  Baredan nodded. He straightened his shoulders and approached the kai Leonne. “Tyr’agar,” he said, choosing the formal address because it would be witnessed.

  Valedan turned. “If you have come to dissuade me—”

  “I have not. But I have come, as your first General, to ask you to consider the use of a healer before you enter the circle. It is not undone, in a circumstance of this gravity.”

  Silence. The refusal gathered around the young man’s lips, and stayed there, held in abeyance by something that might, in time, become wisdom. “Do you know what you’re asking?”

  “Yes.”

  “The use of a healer is strictly forbidden in the Kings’ Challenge. I will have come all this way, and cost—” he fell silent again, struggling not with words, but with the enormity of what they meant. But he did not blanch, and after a moment, he continued. “I will have come this far for nothing.”

  “Yes.”

  Silence again.

  I don’t know you, Baredan thought, for he had steeled himself for argument. I wonder if any of us really does.

  The Tyr’agar, Valedan kai di’Leonne, looked across the field; what he saw there, what he sought, was not Baredan’s concern.

  “I owe my life,” he said very quietly, “to a boy. To a boy who has probably never raised a sword in his life, but loves them anyway. But this was a game, a way of catching the attention of the clansmen who were allowed to come this distance.

  “And this,” he said, quietly, in just such a way that Baredan knew he referred to Anton di’Guivera, “is the war. The start of it. Yes, General. I will accept the services of any healer that you trust enough to offer me.” His smile was bitter. “I hope Aidan is still watching from some window in the halls of Mandaros. And if he is, I hope he forgives me.”

  Baredan frowned. “Mandaros?”

  “Northern god, Baredan.”

  “Ah, yes. Death god.”

  “Lord of Judgment.”

  Baredan bowed. Nodded a man forward. “Valedan kai di’Leonne,” he said softy, “I would like you to meet Ser Laonis di’Caveras.” He watched closely, but the name seemed to mean nothing to the boy. Just as well.

  “Can you be of aid,” Valedan asked, stepping forward, “to another as well?”

  It was not the question that either expected. They were silent.

  “Ser Andaro di’Corsarro was much injured, and I believe that he, too, will forsake the crown.”

  “You show a great deal of concern for the fate of an enemy,” Ser Laonis said quietly.

  “A former enemy. But it doesn’t matter. In the end,” Valedan replied evenly, “they will all be my subjects, enemy now or no.”

  “A good answer,” the healer said quietly. “But I believe that you have been in the North a long time, kai Leonne.” Before Valedan could speak, the healer added, “It pleases me to fulfill your request; I will see to Ser Andaro if he will, indeed, permit it. I, too, have been in the North a long time—longer, I think, than even you.”

  The match was not a part of the event; Ser Anton was not a contestant, and by accepting the aid of a healer, Valedan was no longer one either. But although the challenge—offered and accepted—was no part of the Kings’ Challenge, the adjudicatory body fell silent when King Cormalyn gave his Royal assent to the application of the young Tyr’agar.

  Fell silent and repaired to the stands as any spectator might, even the Royal ones. There was to be no judgment here, save the Lord’s judgment. No rules of fairness, save the honor that the two men, older and younger, brought with them. The circle itself, a thing of dead grass and dry dirt, served no true containment; it was symbolic, and no one watching felt that it would be anything but that: symbolic. Symbols, however, in time of war were often of value.

  There was no surrender here, except a surrender unconditional.

  Valedan kai di’Leonne took his sword back when the healer finished. He was pale; however the Lord had touched his skin during this competition, it was nothing compared to the healer’s touch. He did not speak; not to offer thanks, nor to offer the court pleasantries in which so little can be said with so much.

  Baredan had never subjected himself to a healer’s touch before, and seeing the kai Leonne withdraw from Ser Laonis so quietly, seeing Ser Laonis lurch forward, almost as if to prevent the separation before realizing where he was and what he was doing, he reconfirmed his silent commitment. There were some things a man risked; death was one.

  But there were some things that were too great a risk.

  Valedan took a breath, steadied himself, and lifted the sword. The sword seemed to give him strength. He met the healer’s eyes only once, and when he did, he offered a wordless nod.

  Ser Laonis, not the most silent of men, returned that nod. Returned it with the fullest bow, the most proper Southern respect, that a clansmen of power can offer. Baredan was almost shocked. Not that the bow had been offered—although it was a shock to see it, so correct, from a man who had forsaken the Dominion—but that it had been offered with such sincerity.

  A moment later, it didn’t matter.

  Nothing but training did. Training, experience, and the will of the Lord whose merciless gaze covered every sky, Northern or Southern, in its judgment.

  Two men stood alone in the coliseum. Their attendants stood far enough to either side that they vanished from the view of intent spectators. Not everyone understood what had transpired; not everyone understood who the old man was, although they knew that the young man had recently fought—and beheaded—some type of mage or magebound man.

  But the Southerners understood two things: that the rules of this fight were not the rules of the combats that had preceded it in the circles across the coliseum, all of which had been emptied during the fight with the Lord of Night’s servants, and that this fight, unlike the others, was no pretty test of superficial skill; it was bloodsport.

  It was honor, and there would be a death to seal it.

  Two men stood, waiting, taking each other’s measure in the silence of stillness and tension. The older man was obviously a man of experience and worth; those who recognized him as Ser Anton di’Guivera—and they were many—knew just how much that experience and worth counted for.

  But th
e younger man was the man who would be first among Tyrs. The man behind whose banners armies would fall in, or in front of whose banners armies must fall. He was the scion of a weak clan, but he had proved himself, in the fight with the servant of the Lord of Night, and in the Challenge itself, to be worthy of regard.

  But not necessarily worthy of the title.

  This fight, this fight would decide that for many, many of the observers.

  For Fillipo par di’Callesta. For the Tyran who served his kai, Ramiro, the Tyr’agnate of Averda. For Ser Kyro di’Lorenza, for Ser Mauro di’Garrardi. For the men who followed these men.

  But more: for the students of Ser Anton di’Guivera. For the merchants who traveled under the banner of the clans of the South, all the way from Oerta and Raverra.

  Significant, then, that it was the younger man who made the first move.

  Two swords were raised in the circle below.

  One fell; the other rose; the clash of steel was the defender’s reply.

  The next move was slow; testing. It, too, ended in that metallic conversation; attack, parry. Subtlety was introduced into the interplay of blades—feints, high and low, and evidence that both Valedan and Anton were capable of fighting with the hand that they did not favor.

  Ser Anton landed the first blow, but it was glancing; the tip of the blade escaped the near impossible parry to land, to touch. Experience.

  Valedan changed styles unexpectedly, he moved from the intensely ritual deliberation of the Dominion to the frenetic—the deliberately frenetic—attack of the Imperial North. Eneric’s strength. Mirialyn’s gift. Sivari’s edge.

  Ser Anton reacted as if he expected no less. But here, his age and experience were blunted by Valedan’s youth, and a loud intake of breath escaped the crowd as Valedan replied.

  Two swords were raised in the circle.

  Two shadows cast, by sun, against the dead grass. Those shadows, just as the swords, met and parted, met and parted, stood and staggered with the force of attack and defense, a play within a play.

  No one spoke; not even the Ospreys.

  They watched the swordmaster. They watched the pretender. And more than one wondered what they would have been like, these two, as master and student, as liege and lord.