by sun sword
And in the height of the second day of Emperal, the Widan Sendari di'Marano knew that he would lose his daughter, his Na'dio.
Of course I'm going to lose her, he thought irritably. She marries into the clan Leonne. But he could not shake the shadow, and in the end, he held her more tightly for it. Thinking of Mora. Of childbirth. Of death.
Wondering what might have been, had his wife never borne such a child as this at all. Remembering that, on the dawn of the worst night of his adult life, he had hoped to hate the girl left in the wake of Alora's bloody death.
Even in that resolve, he had been weak.
And the Lord hated weakness.
It was customary, when the Tyr'agnati gathered, for the Tyr'agar to summon his Generals. Although there were four Tyr'agnati to his three Commanders, the message was not lost upon any of the men who chose to attend at the whim of the ruler of the Dominion: that these three men were loyal to the Tyr'agar, and that they, among them, commanded armies that could be turned at any time against a wayward Tyr or a rebellious Terrean.
It was a loosely followed rule that the Generals held no lands; that they were taken from the ranks of the par— close enough to the power in a clan to understand what power meant, but far enough away from it that their military demesnes could not be deemed a threat to the clan Leonne.
The Tyr'agar Markaso kai di'Leonne had chosen to break this rule once, at his own discretion. And he, as most of the Leonnes through history, had been given little cause for regret. His Generals served him, and they served well.
But today, the sun's face burning the sky a deep blue, one of those Generals turned his face to the Lord's chosen ruler and saw the shadow he cast upon it. The Tyr'agar was not a man in his dotage; the waters of the lake kept the Leonne clan as healthy as age allowed. But he was not a man in his prime; his face bore the wind's lines, and those lines had been etched farther into flesh by failure, by a string of failures, some larger than others.
He was not a warrior of any note, although his sword hand was competent enough; he was not a man who rode well, for he rarely had cause to leave the Tor Leonne, and upon the plateau where the seat of his power rested, there was little enough room to truly run a horse. He was not tall, not in any way prepossessing; indeed, the only thing that spoke for him at all was the blood which, by the Lord's law, granted him the right to preside over the lake as if it were his own.
The sun rose; the Tyr'agar spoke, quietly, with the Tyr'agnate of Averda. And with every word that left his mouth, with every nervous movement of hand, of limb, Alesso saw a man grown smaller and feebler in stature until he was just that: a man, a man whose brow was ornamented with the Sword's crown—a simple circle of sword's steel bent round by the hand of the Lord and placed upon the head of Leonne the Founder centuries past. A sign, or so the Radann said, that the warrior clans of the Dominion were to forgo the opulence and decadence, the baubled weakness, of the North.
Yet this Tyr wore Northern gems upon his fingers as if they were a part of his hand; called for Northern harps, suffered Northerners to live in the Tor Leonne at the whim and command of Northern Kings. This Tyr was weak enough that he had seen fit to cleanse his clan of brothers who might have contested his rule and his competence.
Surely, he thought, as he studied this suddenly foreign, slightly obtuse man, this cannot be the Lord's choice.
"General Alesso."
"Tyr'agnate."' The General bowed. "You seem ill-pleased."
"Do I?" The Tyr'agnate Eduardo kai di'Garrardi cast a sidelong glance at his unexpected companion.
"You have not joined your Tyran—or your peers—in the usual celebratory festivals that are opening up like wild plants across the breadth of the Tor."
Eduardo shrugged. Bending, he picked up a smooth, flat stone. He held it in his palms a moment, as if absorbing its heat, and then, before the General could interfere, skipped it across the surface of the waters of the Tor Leonne as if the lake was a mere lake, a thing of common mud and weed, like any other lake in the Northern heartlands of the Dominion.
Alesso di'Marente raised a dark brow, but said nothing. He stood with his hands behind his back, and if they curled in momentary anger, the gesture was unseen.
The Tyr'agnate of the Terrean of Oerta was a tall man. He could not be said, in a classical sense, to be a handsome one, but his face, sharp and narrow as an eagle's, nonetheless had the force of expression and the leanness of line that spoke of power, of a man of power. In all things, Eduado kai di'Garrari was either absent or first.
He clothed himself like a clansman when he went among the clans, and like the Tyr'agar himself when he came to the Tor Leonne, and he rode a horse that was finer than any horse the Northern plains had bred in living memory: Sword's blood. Alesso appreciated all of these things, but distantly, dimly; he saw in them a man whose love for finery was, in itself, that most dangerous of things: A manipulable weakness.
But it was dangerous to the Tyr, and not to the General, and the fact that the ruler of Oerta had deliberately arrived within a hair's breadth of open hostility made that foible an attractive one. The Tyr'agar was not a man well-loved.
"Your early absence was cause for some concern," Alesso said quietly.
"And you've been sent to enforce my good behavior?" Eduardo laughed. His hand found another stone; there were many of them upon this particular, narrow path, each flat and smooth—a temptation to the young. And the unwary.
The General caught the Tyr'agnate's hand before the stone flew. They regarded each other a moment in a tense silence.
It was Eduardo who spoke first. "You bear him no great love and no great loyalty. Were it not for you, our losses would have been greater, our capitulation far more complete." He spoke, of course, of the war. But that war was seldom openly discussed—and then, not within the Tor Leonne proper. Not if a man were wise.
Eduardo kai di'Garrardi was not a man said to be wise by any measure, but he was canny, and because of his recklessness, unpredictable, which made him dangerous.
Alesso took the compliment as if it had never been offered.
And Eduardo did not choose to take the implied criticism of his silence. "And the clansmen know it as well. He keeps you as General because he has not yet hired assassins capable of killing you. And he might, one day, choose to pay the price of the—"
"Enough." If the war was not spoken of in the Tor, there were things that were never spoken of, no matter where a man might stand. "Eduardo—Tyr'agnate—you do yourself a disservice by this reckless behavior."
"And you are now to fill the role of wife, to tell me how I must behave in the presence of clansmen?" He wrenched his wrist free and flung the stone with an easy, deadly grace. Thrice it skittered across the surface of the lake, but the fourth time it touched water, it sank.
"No, not that." Alesso looked at the lake, and then at the man who stood beside it in such foul humor. He had carefully studied the intricate complexities of the relations between the clan Leonne and the clan Garrardi, and he could see nothing—nothing at all—that would account for this hostility. Perhaps some internal argument, some disagreement over a major trade route. Certainly, the Tyr'agnate Jarrani kai di'Lorenza seemed content enough in the presence of the Tyr'agar for the moment, and it would be Jarrani who would benefit from Garrardi's loss, if it came to that.
Yet he was certain he would know of such a major breach between the two clans, and there had been no hint of it.
He wished, of course, some certainty that this was not a momentary anger, a fleeting hostility. "I would not attempt to hold the reins of the ruler of Garrardi. No sane man would."
That pleased the Tyr'agnate's vanity, and he subsided a moment.
"But I would agree, cautiously, with your assessment. He has cost us both much." Without speaking another word, the General turned his head toward the path that led, between trees and shrubs and carefully scrubbed rock, to the dwelling that housed the Imperial hostages.
Eduardo kai di'Garra
rdi spit.
A good sign. Or it would have been, had he not spit into the lake itself. Alesso di'Marente was not a superstitious man, not a man driven to cowardice by the edicts of the Radann and the edicts of the Lady. He lived by the law of the Lord, and the law of the Lord was the rule of the powerful over the weak—for in such a way, the Dominion was made strong.
But to spit into the waters of the Tor Leonne was worse than to spit upon the Sword's crown, for the waters and the ownership of the Tor that protected them were the measure by which the ruler of the Dominion was truly known.
Those and the Sun Sword.
"It may be, Tyr'agnate, that you and I will have words at our leisure in a more suitable clime."
The Tyr'agnate's eyes narrowed into edges as he met Alesso's neutral expression. And then, shrugging, he bent and picked up another rock. "As you say," he said softly, and Alesso thought he caught a glimmer of a smile across the face of the Tyr.
General Baredan kai di'Navarre might as well have been Tyran for all the use he would be to Alesso. In fact, Baredan kai di'Navarre was one of the few heads of a clan, even were that clan of little import in the political field, whose service the Tyr'agar had chosen to accept. He had come to the Tyr'agar, and the clan Leonne, as a young man in the time of the Tyr'agar Carlos kai di'Leonne; he had given his blood oath, and been taken into the ranks of the Leonne oathguards, the Tyran upon whom the clan Leonne depended. There were no oaths more sacred than these—not even the oaths that bound the Radann to their Lord, separating them, in the only honorable fashion, from the families whose blood gave them both life and a name. None, Alesso was certain, had been more fervently offered than those by a young Bare-dan di'Navarre, and if that youthful fervency had .been dimmed by the harsh reality of experience, his honor still bound him to the words that had begun his distinguished career. No longer Tyran, he was General, and of the three, second to Alesso in terms of the men he commanded, and second to none when it came to holding the Tyr's ear. Unlike General Cormano, Baredan had acquitted himself passingly well in the Imperio-Dominion war; he had the respect of the cerdan who served beneath him.
He had the respect of the Generals who served at his side. A pity, that. Something that one could genuinely regret, for Alesso was one of those Generals. He observed his friend's interaction with the Tyr'agnate Ramiro di'Callesta on the pavilion at the height of the gentle slope.
The two men met openly, of course, upon the Pavilion of the Sun; it was bowered and sheltered from the sun's full heat, and the water offered in silvered pitchers was water drawn from the lake of the Tor Leonne itself. Those waters were always cool, no matter what heat strove to warm them; they were always refreshing. And they were offered to dignitaries of import. The Tyr'agnate Ramiro di'Callesta was such a man. The richest, even with the loss of his lands by the humiliating Imperial treaty, of the four Tyr'agnati, he was by far the most cunning and the least predictable.
It was the task of the Generals—General Alesso di'Marente, General Baredan di'Navarre, and General Cormano par di'Valente—to protect the interests of the clan Leonne, and their duty often brought them into subtle conflict with the Tyr'agnati, the four men who, by birth and dint of maneuvering skill, ruled just beneath the Tyr'agar, beholden to him by vows that were, in Alesso's opinion, worth the blocks they were cut into.
And no oath seemed less tenuous than the oath given by Ramiro di'Callesta—the man who had been most hurt by Leonne's ill-considered and poorly planned war. Baredan understood this, but not with the precise intellectual gleaning of Alesso or Sendari; to him, it was instinctive. It came like breath and with just as much thought. Of the four, he favored the most dangerous with the pleasure and privilege of his company.
Callesta was the most dangerous clan in the Dominion, and only its position—at the border of the Empire itself— had stopped Callesta's complete political dominion over the clan Leonne for its catastrophic failure in its war effort. If Alesso had proved himself to be the most capable of the Generals, Callesta—this Callesta, not the father who died upon the field—had proved himself to be the most canny of the Tyrs, bound by no strict rules of honor, no outmoded warrior code, no rigid Radann's edicts.
Of the three Generals, Alesso knew it best. It was under the command of the young Ramiro di'Callesta that General Alesso di'Marente had made his mark. They were tied by that, and separated by it as well; men of power became wary of men of power. It was a fundamental truth of the Dominion, and neither sought to deny its effect.
As he approached the pavilion, the Tyr looked down and smiled. "General Alesso." The smile was genuine, as was the smile that Alesso di'Marente returned. They clasped arms, as men do, and then drew back, regarding each other with an almost open appraisal and a mutual satisfaction. Time had robbed them of little. Yet.
He could not use this man.
He could not trust this man.
Of the Tyrs, Ramiro di'Callesta gained most by the rule of a weak Tyr'agar, for he was subtle enough to manipulate a man who did not take the advice of what counsel he had well.
Beneath the sun of the open sky, upon the Pavilion of the Sun, of the Lord himself, he met the eyes of these two men without flinching. Baredan di'Navarre. Ramiro di'Callesta.
And he knew that he would have to have Baredan assassinated. Ramiro di'Callesta was a canny man; war would take him before the assassin's blade—but such a war would leave Averda open for division, and Averda was the most fertile and the most prized Terrean in Annagar. He considered, briefly, an alliance with the Callestan Tyr; the winds took the thought. Ramiro and Alesso were alike in too many ways, but Ramiro di'Callesta's bloodline had a history that predated the founding of the Dominion—and in the Dominion, blood counted for much. Too much.
Winds take you, Cortano, he thought, as he smiled. Winds take you. The Lord won't.
On the day before the wedding which had drawn these diverse men together, Alesso di'Marente took the first step upon the path that would lead him to greatness or obliteration. Took it without moving, without raising sword, without lifting voice. Oh, he knew there was more to the war than these two men; far more. The path that would lead to the lake was a shadowed path, one that would never clearly be discerned if approached with timidity.
He was not a young man, but he was not an old one; he could see the length and breadth of the future unfold before him as a series of obstacles, of challenges, each of which must be met.
And more clearly than that, he could see the Sword's crown, the Sun Sword, and the rippling perfection of the lake itself as it lay beneath his feet.
One did not pray to the Sun Lord.
One vowed.
Alesso di'Marente committed himself upon that day, at the sun's height.
"Some men will tell you what they like," Alana said quietly as Diora knelt on the mats before her feet. "Some won't."
"That's helpful." Illia's voice was thin with sarcasm and tension. She rubbed oils into the palms of her hands and then carefully, evenly, spread them down the length of Diora's exposed back, starting first with shoulders that were hard and tense. "And you won't have to worry about men; just man. One. He'll not give your services to a visiting dignitary; he'll not expect you to warm the arms of a man he wishes to reward or comfort."
Serra Diora di'Marano said nothing.
"Na'dio?"
She nodded, the dutiful daughter, and rose as Illia stepped aside. Her skin was white and flawless, but it was cold, and the pliancy of a feminine body had been replaced by steel. "Na'dio," Alana repeated, her voice almost a croon. "Please. You have nothing to fear."
Diora bit her lip—a habit that she'd thought lost to childhood.
Illana en'Marano turned her unusual honey-colored hair away, and Illia, bold and beautiful still, cast her gaze toward the cushions that lay, unused, against the far wall.
"It's not true," the girl who stood in twilight said. "Because if I had nothing to fear, none of you would be afraid. And you are. You all are."
"That'
s nonsense," Alana said, gruff now because she was old enough to speak gruffly. But she was the only one who spoke, and the two words were forced and heavy.
"You've been here for two weeks," Diora continued, her skin white as clouds or lilies. White as the dead. "You have your serafs, you have your days in the open sun. You've spoken with the wives of the Tors and even the Tyrs upon occasion, because each and every one of them has attempted to find out more about me." She lowered her head, tilting her chin toward her pronounced collarbone. "And I know you. I know you, Illia. I know you, Illana. If Fiona would tell me nothing at all about Ser Illara, it would not surprise me; there has always been distance between us.
"But not you. You are all my mothers. You've asked, in return for the information about me that you've given, whether that information is true or no."
"Na'dio, it is not nice to accuse your mothers of lying." Alana's voice was as dry as fallen leaves. As light, as empty of life.
"No, and I hate to be in such a position that I must do so," was Diora's grave reply. "But you've asked, and you've heard. Will you tell me nothing?"
"You've met Ser Illara," Illia said, her voice almost completely devoid of expression. "Yet you have never chosen to tell us what your impressions were, and of all of us, with one exception, you've always been the most perceptive; you are Teresa's kin."
Silence.
It was Diora who broke it, because only Diora could. "I have only seen him twice." Lifting her chin, she accepted Illia's hand and stepped upon the pedestal, light and lithe in movement because such movement had become natural to her. She waited for the dress to be brought, her eyes dark and distant, a window into a summer storm, a thing of heat and wind and death. "He is a man like his father."
"Ai." Alana bowed her head a moment, and then lifted it, wiping her brow with the palm of her hand. Wiping her sari, staining the silks dark with sweat. There were no serafs here; their husband had forbidden the intrusion, and in a perverse way they were grateful for the lack. Illana picked up the heavy fan and began to push the still air around the room in a gentle mockery of breeze. "He's not a gentle man," the oldest of Sendari's wives said. "But he's not a brutal one. He's a man. If you're lucky, he'll take to the fields of the lower plains with his father's Tyran, and he'll leave you to your harem."