Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown

by sun sword

  Teresa's frown was momentary; a ripple across a perfect face. Then, smoothly, and because it was the only truth that mattered, she said, "The Tor'agar Adano kai di'Marano's."

  "Did you?"

  "Did I?"

  "Meet your brother?"

  "That eve, yes. You never met Alora en'Marano. You could either dismiss her as unfeminine and ungraceful, or you could listen to her. In the end, there was only one choice for me. Sendari and I are… alike. It pains me to say this; I believe that he would die before such an admission left his lips."

  "And did you use the voice?"

  "Oh, yes, Kallandras of Senniel. I did."

  He was silent. She expected no less. She had, after all, been taught by Robart of Morniel College, and she knew that, to him, this overt use of voice was anathema. Worse. She would argue, at times, the sun settling into the Lady's dominion, that the subtle use was no less a violation of his odd code of justice—but influence, to Robart, was not the same as force.

  In the Dominion, Robart, the only men who have influence are men who wield force; the one is just a promise of the other. It had been meant as a warning, but Robart did not understand that; not then. By the time understanding came, it had been far too late; he had already been broken by her father's machinations.

  She waited for some sign of Kallandras' disapproval, some withdrawal. Instead, he said, "And did it fail?"

  "Fail?" Turning, she saw that he stood, and that his lute lay upon the Lady's altar, untouched. "I do not understand you, Kallandras of Senniel."

  "No. But it is not to understand me that you speak."

  "And tell me, oh, wise Northern bard, why do I speak?"

  He did not answer. Instead, he said, "Did you fail, Serra Teresa?"

  And she said softly. "Yes."

  She thought that Alora would be triumphant, but there was no triumph in Sendari's wife; instead, the first display of weakness; a sparkle in the eye, a glimmering blur that spoke of tears, no matter that they did not fall.

  "You will return to Adano," Sendari had said, his voice as abrasive as sand-laden wind, and for all that it was quiet.

  "Wait, Sendari." Not her voice. It was not in her to beg for any favor—be it even the ear—of her brother, of either of her brothers.

  They both turned, as one person, to Serra Alora en'Marano. "This thing, this task, your brother set it. The Serra Teresa is a Serra, and one of whom much good is said. She could not refuse Adano. You can; you have that privilege. Let her stay with us."

  "This is not what you said five days ago."

  "Five days ago I had not met your sister. It is not just her gift, husband, that sets her apart; without it, she would still have influence. She has about her the Lady's eyes, the Lady's expression. Have her stay in our house, with us; Adano does not need her influence—or the protection such a woman might offer."

  "My brother will not allow it."

  "Will he arm himself to retrieve her? Tell him only that she wishes to stay—or better, have her send such word— and he will think that she stays in order to better influence you."

  "And if she does not wish to stay?" Teresa heard the refusal in every word her brother spoke, and beneath it, his reluctance, yet she was certain, no matter what she heard, that he would not say no to this woman, to this strange, unlovely, fiercely beautiful, dark-eyed wife.

  Those dark eyes turned to Teresa, followed by face, by form; it was hard to say what Alora en'Marano did because her eyes were, for their depth of color, bright, almost shining; they seemed to be the whole of her face, some poet's window into a soul that Teresa was suddenly not so certain she wished to gaze into.

  "Would you?" The Serra Alora asked softly. "Would you stay with us, be part of my harem?"

  "Your harem?" her husband said, with just a hint of a wry smile, a hint of vulnerability.

  "She can't be part of yours," Alora said sweetly. "The laws of Lord and Lady forbid it."

  "But your harem is my harem, wife."

  "Yes." The sweetness fell away from her face in an instant; she was, Teresa thought, a thing of steel, a thing of terrible danger. "And I would do everything in my power to protect it. I love my harem, and you, and my wives, and their children." He did not see fit to correct her designation of ownership. "I would keep the Serra Teresa if only because I see you in her, Sendari, and I know that, if she learned to love them, too, she would protect them no less fiercely than I."

  But there was more than that. At least, Teresa thought there was; she had never felt so uncertain, in her adult life, about the difference between what she heard in a woman's voice and what she desired.

  "She offered you what you could not have," the bard said quietly, his voice an instrument. "A position in her harem as one of her wives."

  "Was it so wrong?" she asked Kallandras, her fingers folded around the emerald.

  "For her to ask it? Or for you to desire it?"

  "Either."

  "No, Serra. Neither. But were I your brother, I think in the end I would have found the courage to face my wife's disappointment. She said it: You were, and are, alike in many ways. Thwarted by birth, and either of you a match for—a master for—the brother who rules you.

  "She understood you both too well."

  "She understood us both," the Serra replied woodenly, "and we both needed that from her. I… stayed. I used my influence with Adano, and I stayed.

  "She didn't fear me. She didn't fear my gift. Not even Sendari could say that."

  "No. She couldn't fear you if she could love you."

  "I know," was the bitter reply. She spread her hands. "In the North, you have such odd, such unnatural ideas about marriage. And love. About acts of love." Folding her hands as if they were the wings of a momentarily unsettled bird, she continued. "Here, in the South, we are different. There is husband, and Serra, and harem. A husband belongs to the Lord and the clans; a Serra belongs to the husband. And the harem she builds belongs to the husband as well, in theory—but it is her place. There, she might find the love of a woman's heart, a refuge among her equals.

  "To be unmarried, among the clans, is to be denied that love. Do you understand this?"

  "Serra Teresa, you don't have to justify your actions; not to me."

  "And to who if not you? Alora is dead."

  "I am not Alora en'Marano." Kallandras' face was pale in the moonlight. He fell silent as merriment, discordant in its cheer and ebullience, wafted up on the breeze. "But I would guess, if I were forced to make one, that Sendari di'Marano shared the Northern, the unnatural view."

  "He came upon us," she said, her face as pale as his, as perfect. "She knew, better than I, the look on his face; he said nothing. Offered no word. Left us, let the curtains fall.

  "But she left me to run after him, down the long hall. I can still hear the echo of her steps, the heavy rhythm of her breath, the sound of his name as it rebounded, unanswered, against the walls. I do not know what she said to him. I do not know how he replied.

  "But I know that she hurt, and hurt him; I wept for her sake, Bard—but for his pain, I think I was glad. And it was wrong. And I have paid." Again, her hands fluttered. "Alana and Illana thought Sendari had taken leave of his senses, if he'd had them at all; he grew up in the harem of our father; he understood what it meant to be a wife. They made it clear, as they could, because they loved Alora in their fashion, as they loved each other.

  "He loved her. It burned him. Until I came, until I stayed, he had never realized how much of a trap it could be."

  "Her death brought no peace."

  "No. She died birthing her child, her daughter. My daughter, the only child I will ever be allowed. Had she been a son, I could hold her, and keep her."

  "Tell that," Kallandras said softly, "to any clanswoman whose son fought in the Imperial war. Averda's lands are rich with the gift of the fallen."

  "Then if I could not hold her, I could hold the hope."

  "Serra Teresa, you are of Annagar. What is hope to you but
the breeze that presages the wind?"

  "She died," Teresa said, as if she had not heard a word, "and she called me, because she knew that I would not hate the babe who was killing her. Who did kill her. She called me because she needed comfort, do you understand? Because she needed comfort from someone who would not be so shattered by her dying that he could not give it.

  "Do you think me harsh in my judgment? She called him, Kallandras. I saw." She would not weep, but she did not need to; he could hear the storm in her voice, the rawness, the momentary wildness. "Perhaps she meant more to him than I; perhaps not. I do not know. I cannot say. But he loved her as a man loves, and I loved her as a woman—and in the end, he took the comfort he needed, and I gave the comfort she needed. In the end, she chose."

  "And it was a hollow victory, for you."

  "Yes," the Serra said, acknowledging the rivalry for what it was. "But do not judge me harshly. It was all I had. He turned from us slowly, inexorably; turned from the harem that she gave him, from the daughter that he loved.

  "We were alike, he and I, both gifted in our fashion. His gift called him, and he went gladly."

  "I do not judge you at all, Serra. I have not lived your life, nor will I. I have lost, you have lost, but my gift sustains me in some small way, while yours has been used to bind and cripple you." He came to stand beside her, touching her with words, only words, as he gazed down upon the lake.

  "Will she have what I did not have?"

  "Who can say? You gave the Serra Alora your word. You've kept it. Take peace from that."

  The wind rustled the leaves of the trees that gave the shrine its privacy. Kallandras stiffened, and his eyes went wide, as if he were seeing something in a distance that Serra Teresa knew, instinctively, her eyes would never breach.

  "Serra," he said, his voice touching her ears, and hers alone, with just a tendril of fear, "I have been followed carefully since I arrived in the Tor. I have been listened to, tracked, and I believe, tonight, I will be hunted. If I can come again to the Tor for the Festival Moon, I will certainly travel, but I believe it might be a while longer before we meet again."

  "And will we?"

  He was gone, a blur of shadow and movement so fast that she thought there should have been crashing, the breaking of branches, the disturbing of plant and standing stone. There was silence and the silence was one of wind.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TEN

  The first night, the Lady was kind to Diora en'Leonne, in her fashion. In the two Southern Terreans, it was common to sheet the bride to prove to the clansmen that she had come unsullied to the marriage—but in the Northern Terreans, and in the heartlands, such custom did not prevail. For one, there were too many clans who had been embarrassed by it in the past—almost always for political reasons, because there were ways to blood a sheet when the bride had proved somewhat flawed, and it was further considered coarse; an invasion of a man's harem, and a man's privacy. In the three Northern Terreans, the only blood a clansman's Serra was expected to shed was the blood of the afterbirth, and that was not the affair of a single night—or rather, not the affair of this single night.

  Therefore, Diora en'Leonne had little to prove to the clansmen who grew mellow or wild with the free flow of rich wine and thick ale. Her husband had less to prove, and when Diora was at last given leave to retire, he remained with the Tyran, drinking as the night waned.

  It was the Serra Amanita who, responding to the unspoken and nearly unseen directive of her eldest, rose to lead the newest member of clan Leonne away, and if she was not gentle—and Diora suspected that years and the wind had long since driven all trace of softness from the Serra who ruled the most important harem in the Dominion, neither was she cruel or unkind. Her eyes had the redness of tears held back, her breath the scent of plum wine, the gentlest of the wines, and the thinnest.

  "Follow," she said, and Diora en'Leonne obeyed. Strictly speaking, of course, there was no edict that commanded obedience from the wife of a clansman to his mother—but laws of the heart were as strong as the codes that controlled the clans, perhaps stronger, and Diora knew better than to offend the Serra Amanita.

  Serafs came to gather her train as she walked away from the lily-strewn waters of the Tor Leonne; they trailed her steps like perfect, silent shadows, remarkable for the absence of noise their movements made. In spite of herself, Diora was impressed, even pleased; these serafs, Teresa herself would be proud to have trained.

  They accompanied her to the palace that stood taller than any other edifice upon the plateau, and as they approached, Diora saw that the palace, fine and grand, was built in such a way that the apartments faced the lake; the seraf quarters and the cerdan quarters looked away.

  She entered into a courtyard, passing beneath a gabled roof, and between two standing statues who bore, across their hearts, the emblem of the Tyr'agar's personal guards: the oathguards. The Tyran. They were forbidding, she thought; fierce of feature, larger than life. A warning, that those who intended harm to the clan made themselves formidable enemies when they crossed this threshold.

  She, who should have found it comforting, found it oddly unsettling. A girl's fears. Unworthy of a Serra of her husband's rank.

  Ser Illara kai di'Leonne had been granted quarters near the heart of power; his rooms were only slightly smaller than the rooms his father occupied and no less grandly appointed. The screens here were traced with ebony and jade, and gold was everywhere to be found in the detailing on the wooden beams, metallic imitations of the rays of the light that the Lord cast.

  Everywhere, they numbered ten. And ten, of course, meant only one thing: Radann, kai or par el'Sol, or Tyr'agar. The men favored of, and by, the Lord.

  She held her breath as the last screen slid open, although until she saw it, she didn't know that it was the last one. It opened into a hallway, not a room, and the hall was long and wide. Paper lanterns hung from beams in the ceiling, and to either side of the hall were small doors, each closed to create the illusion of privacy.

  "The harem," Serra Amanita said quietly. "Cross this threshold, Diora en'Leonne, and you have entered the heart of your responsibility. You are young, but you have handled these past three days with grace and diligence, and you are, as promised, comely.

  "The clan Leonne will rest, in time, upon the shoulders of your husband. If he falls, you will fall; if he rises, you will rise.

  "I apologize," she continued, without any trace of regret, "for choosing some of the Ser Illara's wives for you. You were not in residence at that time, and Mara is a man, not a boy; he has a man's needs, and better those needs be tended by wives than used against him by outsiders. Do you understand?"

  Diora nodded. She knew that, married to the Tyr's son, she would come to a harem half-built, and not by her choosing. But her throat was dry.

  "I, too, stood upon this threshold. I, too, faced a harem that was not mine." She turned then, catching Diora's glance with the unblinking darkness of her gaze. "It is mine now. Understand, Diora en'Leonne, that you serve your husband, and after him, my husband—but the women within these walls serve your husband, and after him, you. If they do not please you, and it pleases your husband, have them replaced. You will be given the necessary resources." She paused. "I chose them," she said, her gaze distant, "but they are not mine. I will take no offense at any decision you make. You are the Serra here." She bowed her head then, and Diora returned the gesture with a full kneel, dropping her forehead to the mats.

  "These serafs are my gift to you, child. Use them as you will."

  When Diora rose, the Serra Amanita was gone.

  She knew that the Tyr'agar's wife was not her friend, but in some things, she had just declared herself an ally. In the Dominion, one did not confuse the two, if one truly found friends at all. She looked at the three serafs; they were women, not girls, but they were perfect.

  "Come," she said, taking a deep breath. Serafs at her back, catching the train that she would never wear again,
she entered her new home.

  To traverse the hall took time, and before she had reached the great room at the end of the hall, she could hear the muted sounds of hurried movement; feet that fell a little too heavily, words that were loud enough—just-to be considered shouts.

  And then the screens were beneath the hands of her serafs, and with a nod, they rolled noiselessly open. In the dress that was a gift from the second most powerful man in the Dominion, the Serra Diora en'Leonne first looked upon the women who would be her sister-wives, should she choose to keep them. There were five, a small number for a man of Ser Illara's rank, and a large number for a man of her father's.

  The first, and the loveliest, was tall and slender; she wore almost as much gold as Diora herself did, and her eyes were as cool as the desert night. She held, in her left hand, the shoulder of a small child; in the harem, it was difficult to tell when young children were boys or girls if one did not know them; they were dressed in a similar fashion. The child was no exception; although the child's hair had been cut to just above the shoulder, the face was pretty enough that Diora did not choose to hazard a guess. She thought the child perhaps four years of age and was surprised; no one had warned her that the Ser Illara already had one child.

  "I am Samanta en'Leonne," the woman said. Diora listened to her voice, to what lay beneath the words, as closely as she had ever listened. And she was born to listen; she could hear all the nuance that even Samanta was unaware of. Fear. Anger. The loss of fleeting hope. Envy. "This child is my seraf; he was purchased for me by my husband at my request."

  Diora smiled, but the smile had none of the natural grace or warmth it should have. The child, she thought, was definitely Samanta's; his look was too much akin to hers for there to be no blood between them. Not Illara's? How unusual. A man did not often like to be reminded of the past, or pasts, of his wives.

  "Samanta finds favor in the eyes of Ser Illara," another woman said softly as if in warning. Turning, Diora met the gray eyes of the oldest woman in the harem. There was truth in her eyes and her voice, and clarity. This woman, Diora was certain, would make a fine singer; one whose voice would be strong enough to carry almost any legend's full dramatic weight.