Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown

by sun sword

  Justice.

  The only sure justice was the rule of a man of power and honor—and it lasted as long, and traveled as far, as his reach. No more. No less. The Tyr'agar had not been a particularly just or honorable man.

  Where was Valedan?

  Ser Fillipo was on his feet before the peal of the gong had died into stillness. Ser Kyro and Ser Mauro joined him, as did Serra Alina. Serra Marlena was with Serra Helena, and his own wife, Serra Tara. In her quiet, sweet way, she was the same anchor for the women and children that he was for the men. Alina was too understandably dangerous, and she lacked, of all traits most endearing, that lovely sentimentality which made of a woman's arms and thoughts a man's haven.

  He cast a sidelong glance at the dark-haired, hawklike profile. I would arm you, he thought. If such a thing were possible. And in this Empire, it was. He smiled, and the smile was a grimmer one. And if I thought you would follow my lead. He wished, not for the first time, that he had been a braver man. But he was who he was, and he had not taken such a Serra to wife, and the wife that he did have, he valued. Another walk beneath the open sky; another life.

  And he might be meeting it sooner than he would like. The hangings were pushed aside, and Valedan di'Leonne entered the courtyard.

  These four hostages, Fillipo, Kyro, Mauro, and Alina, turned hard and cold as they took in his appearance. Where he had gone dressed finely, if not well, he returned in disheveled, rent clothing; blood from multiple scrapes and light cuts showed dark against his unusually fair complexion.

  To his surprise, Ser Fillipo was surprised. Too many years living in the deceptive tolerance of the Essalieyanese court. He realized that, had he been in the Tor Leonne in a similar position, he would also have felt surprise, but for a different reason; Valedan walked, he lived. If he had been roughly handled, it was clear that he had not—yet—been humiliated.

  Ser Fillipo fell at once to his knee; his companions did likewise, carrying the charade through to the end.

  And because they knelt, heads bowed, eyes to the warm stones beneath their feet, they did not see the men who entered the enclosure at his back.

  "Rise," Valedan said, in a completely smooth voice.

  Ser Fillipo lifted his head and froze in mid-motion. And then he smiled, although the smile was a very, very strange one. "Try'agnate," he said, meeting the eyes of his brother.

  "Tyran," Ramiro di'Callesta replied. "Did you think I would leave you to the Northern wolves?"

  Duvari had hardly aged in sixteen years; he had softened less. It was said, among the Astari, that time itself feared even the attempt to mark the Lord of the Compact, and if it was said with grim humor, it was at least humor. Devon ATerafin, who felt the years more keenly, wondered where the Kings had found such a defender, and just what they had had to sell to gain his loyalty; he hoped it wasn't going to be too costly in the Hall of Mandaros.

  The ATerafin was not a vain man; his hair was no longer the blue-black that had been the envy—and desire—of many a courtier. But his back was unbent, his shoulders straight, his arms strong. He had many years of service left in him yet—and he acknowledged, with the same grim humor, that the Astari were determined to have all of them.

  Acknowledged, with a wry smile, that he intended to offer them. Service to the Crowns had been the focal point of his adult life, and he wasn't certain that he knew what life would be without it. Very few of the Astari retired in so undramatic a fashion.

  Meralonne APhaniel stood by the side of Sigurne Mellifas. The former was tall and straight, with white hair that fell past his shoulders and down the emerald back of his cloak. He'd aged as well as Duvari, although perhaps less silently. Of all the men in this large room, he was the only one who insistently, persistently, clung to his pipe. The woman beside him did not seem to notice. Where Meralonne had aged well, she had aged into a seeming frailty of size and height. Where Meralonne was prone to fiery speech, she was prone to silence—and perhaps for that reason, when she spoke, her words were treated with gravity.

  The desire, Devon knew, to protect her was strong.

  And it was willfully blind. Sigurne Mellifas was no stranger to violence or darkness.' Or death. The platinum medallion that hung openly around her neck on a workmanlike, solid chain bore the three faces of the moon, and quartered within the full face, the elemental symbols. Mage-born. Mage-trained.

  Beside Sigurne, in quiet conversation with her, was Bardmaster Marten. She was not, to the Astari's knowledge, born to the voice, but she held the college together as effectively as her predecessor—and the woman who had chosen her—the much missed Sioban Glassen.

  It will do her good, Sioban had said. She's got the head for it—and the heart; she 'll keep Senniel running in good order. She's not afraid of talent, especially not when it belongs to a young student who thinks too highly of his or her own abilities.

  In the five years since Sioban had retired—if traveling through the Empire with a harp, a lute, and a bedroll could be called retirement—Solran had lived up to her former master's choice. She was good. And she was not afraid to accept her limitations and make use of the men and women around her who did not possess them.

  At her side stood Kallandras of Senniel. The Astari knew him well, and for the most part, they trusted him. Devon did. Duvari did not. The Lord of the Compact disliked a man with an orphan boy's forgotten, mythical past; too many mysteries held danger. But he was, of all bards, the Queen Marieyan's favorite, and he had, by dint of a skill that he cared to offer no explanation for, saved her life six years past.

  Mirialyn ACormaris stood by the side of her father's vacant chair, in a silence better suited to the grave. She was pale. Her hair was pulled and bound; it gleamed in the light like a brass helm. She was girded with sword, although she wore no armor, carried no shield. Her silence was telling, even frightening. She offered no counsel, as if she realized that the events had moved beyond Avantari, and therefore beyond her certain jurisdiction.

  In front of the empty thrones stood Commander Sivari and the men who were, colloquially, called the Three-mars: Verrus Andromar, Verrus Lorimar and Verrus Kitimar. They spoke in deadly earnest, their words pitched to carry the few feet necessary to be heard by their comrades, no more. The Commander still had the bearing of Kings' Champion, although it had been many years since he'd had the time for the excess and the vanity of taking the Kings' Challenge.

  The Kings' Challenge.

  It was almost upon them; the summer was high, and the travelers, from the Western Kingdoms, the free towns, and, yes, the Southern Dominion, already crowded the inns, taverns, and homes that had been opened to such trade. The magisterial guards were almost beside themselves in their attempt to ensure the safety of foreign Southern men. The streets carried the anger of the Empire, and that anger, great mindless beast that it was, was turned toward all things Southern. Even the Terrean dialects so common in the hundred holdings had fallen into disuse as people afraid of the consequences of their heritage chose, wisely, to hide it. Most of the time, it worked. There had only been four deaths to date.

  He was certain there would be more. Echoes of the Southern wars. Did they ever really die, or did they return, like the tide, in their time?

  What will it be, Devon thought, into a room that bustled with more power than had been gathered for such a purpose in well over a decade.

  As if in answer to the unspoken question, Healer Dantallon crossed the chamber, carrying a basin full of clean, warm water, and several cool cloths. He looked up and his gaze chanced across Devon's inquisitive glance, his green eyes wide and unwavering in a pale face. Denying death, and even injury, with unshakable certainty.

  He approached the Exalted with more grace than he had ever approached the people who had been taken to the healeries. Devon knew it well, having been one of them. But he did not approach with much more grace, if Devon were honest. The Exalted did not seem to notice the lack of offered courtesy, which said much for their opinion of the Kings' he
aler. But the Exalted of Cormaris looked— almost—exasperated as he was forced to sit and bear said healer's ministrations.

  The Exalted of the Mother tended her own wounds with a bitter, bitter anger that was palpable in the room. It was a sight seldom seen; the anger of the Mother was a cold, dark thing, and it was rarely wakened. Devon had never seen it until now, perhaps because he had never been so close to her in the aftermath of tragedy.

  And it was tragedy, for the Churches; in one afternoon they had lost the most highly placed members of their heirarchies with the exception of the Exalted themselves. The creature that had risen from the pit made of the audience chamber floors had targeted the Exalted—and their attendants—as if they were his natural enemy.

  They were.

  Devon sighed as the Kings entered the room. It was time now to begin in earnest. What was decided here today, was decided; there would be no backward motion.

  "Tell me, Fillipo," the Tyr'agnate said. "I am here under sufferance; I am not a hostage, but even so, I am to travel among you without my Tyran." He paused. "And I am not given leave to remain. Nor is my companion." He nodded quietly at Baredan's broad back, thinking, as he did, that he had not chosen poorly. Ser Kyro di'Lorenza was speaking with the General, his large hands occasionally rising and falling as if to make a point more forcefully.

  The sun was low; the lamps, such as they were, were lit. It was hot here, and the slow ebb of day allowed the heat to linger, burning what it touched. Still, these two men found a place in the shade in which they might speak a moment in privacy.

  "If you are asking me," the younger man said, "to judge the value of the young Tyr'agar, I'm afraid I must disappoint."

  "Oh?"

  "He surprises me," Ser Fillipo replied, as if that were explanation enough. To Ramiro di'Callesta, it was. They were cut from the same cloth, these two; they understood each other well. Very little surprised them. "How do you think it will go?"

  The Callestan clanleader shrugged grimly. "For now? I think the Lord will smile. I am certain that clan Callesta and clan Lamberto will not lose their kin to the Kings' chosen executioners. Nor will the boy. But beyond that? The sun is in my eyes."

  "Why did you come?"

  "For the boy," Ramiro replied flatly, all pretense gone. "We did not know of the events that occurred in the Tor; we left before word arrived. But we came at a hard ride when news reached us." He turned then, seeking the sky a moment before he glanced away.

  Fillipo looked at his brother's profile; his brother watched the burble of fountain water at the feet of the stone child. "What do you intend, Ramiro? I will follow you," he added softly, as if it were a question of choice.

  "I intended to preserve the people of Averda—and the clan that rules the Terrean." He turned his hands over and stared at the new lines that scrapes and splintered marble had drawn there. "The General Alesso di'Marente will rule the Tor by the end of the Festival, if I am not mistaken. But he will rule it," the Tyr'agnate added, with a grim smile, "without benefit of the Sun Sword and the bloodlines."

  "You said, intended."

  "Yes."

  "Now?"

  "For now it is enough to preserve the life of a par who does not know when silence serves best."

  Ser Fillipo smiled; it was the first expression he had used, in his captivity, that made him look younger.

  "She wasn't a demon." Jewel ATerafin massaged her forehead; her eyes throbbed, her head ached, and her throat was still raw from the force of the few words that she shouted across the floor of the Great Assembly Chamber. Across the coming chasm that she, and only one other, had seen. "I've seen the kin before. I know what they look like." Pausing, she lifted her face and met The Terafin's open gaze. "I've seen," she said softly, "kin who were in all ways human—and I knew what they were."

  "Then what was she? You saw her as well as any of the rest of us. She certainly wasn't human."

  "I don't know."

  Alayra's brow was a single line, which happened seldom. Each of the times she'd witnessed the expression, Jewel had wished she were somewhere else. Today was not to be the exception. Turning, she met The Terafin's cool eyes and realized that there would be no rescue from that quarter. Or, she realized, as she took in Morretz's expression, Avandar's grim stare, and Torvan's quiet sympathy, from any quarter.

  There were days when being seer-born was a blessing.

  And there were days like these.

  "You were surprised by her." The Terafin.

  "Yes. But she wasn't a threat to you, or to me—or to anyone in that hall, I'd guess, except for the creature that rose out of the pit of the floor. I—" She closed her eyes; she couldn't help it. Her lids were almost aching with a tingle that sometimes presaged illness.

  And sometimes, vision.

  "You had time to shout a warning to The Kalakar." Captain Alayra. She could not see the old soldier's face, but her voice sounded mere inches away.

  "Yes."

  "ATerafin, wake up!"

  Alayra made commands, not requests; over the years, Jewel had grown accustomed to this fact. Her body obeyed, where her mind could not; her eyes—no, her lids, seemed to snap up. But she could not, could not, see them, although the voices were clear enough. She saw what she had seen during the day. In the hall. And she understood, then.

  She could hear Avandar, cursing. Seizure. Get out of the way! She did not answer; wouldn't have, could she. She felt his fingers, his hands, the roughness of his skin against her cheeks. Then, something rigid pressed between her lips. It's not the seizures, you fool, it's the sight, but her lips took the rod, willing, as if her body was, for the moment, an empty vessel that—barely—managed to hold her. Learn how to control your power, someone had said—but the closer she got to it, the more it controlled her. As it did now.

  It was the vision.

  The same vision that had given her the impetus to cry out across the Chamber to The Kalakar.

  Kiriel was leaping from the heights, and Jewel watched her fall as if she were the edge of a blade. The ground beneath her feet shuddered as if her slight weight would sunder it. Shadow trailed from her eyes, her lips, the wildly dancing tips of her ebony hair. Her hands were gloved in darkness, and her chest; she was armed and armored and weaponed.

  And behind her or beside her, armored and armed and shedding blood, not shadow, stood the young princeling: Valedan kai di'Leonne. He cried out; she did not understand the words he spoke.

  No—wait— But the words would not escape the rod that Avandar had placed between her lips. She felt her eyes stop their tingling; the shadows left them, returning the normalcy of The Terafin's rooms. Spitting, and glaring at the domicis who served her, she lowered her face into her hands. What was that? she thought. Vision? Sight? Some disjointed memory of the morning?

  "Jewel?"

  "I… am well."

  The Terafin nodded coolly. "And your vision?"

  "I would have said—would almost have said—that I was seeing this morning's event."

  "Jewel," The Terafin's domicis said quietly, presuming to enter a conversation into which he had not, theoretically, been invited, "there is something about this young… woman that speaks to you. To your sense of the future."

  "Yes."

  Avandar was not pleased. She knew it at once because his jaw took on that muscular, clenched look. There was, between these two men, a competition that had never died. She had asked them both about it, and neither man chose to elaborate.

  "Is she a danger to us?" The Terafin again.

  "Yes."

  "Succinctly put," her own domicis, Avandar, said. "How?"

  But to that, Jewel ATerafin had no answer.

  Kiriel approached the throne room for the first time. She looked through the two-story open doors to the heights formed by an arched ceiling that had been built to catch, and hold, the sound of a King's judgment. The wisdom-born King. There were windows here that caught light just as surely as the ceiling caught sound, transforming and
coloring it before it descended to ground. There were benches carved out of the stone sill of each window; they were empty now, although she had no doubt that they were often filled. It was a grand hall, and although she had seen grander in her life, the sight of it filled her with the blackness of certain familiarity. Power.

  "Kiriel."

  The word, a nudge of sorts from Cook, brought her back to herself. She stood two feet from the frame of the door; there were armed men to either side of the entrance. She waited for them to move, knowing the game. She had seen a foolish man expose his back to her Lord's guards once before. It had only happened once; the lesson—her lesson—had been well-learned.

  "Kiriel," Cook said again, his whisper making of her name a high, quiet shriek. He meant for her to walk past these men. Was it a test? Another lesson?

  But she glanced back at Cook, who, of the Ospreys, she understood least, and saw at once the shifting and the shimmering about him that spoke of no such cruelty. Oh, there was a thread of it—a hint of darkness and shadow that lay about him like a fine mesh net—but it did not pull. Not now. He smiled, but the smile was weak; she did not understand it. There was no amusement in the gesture; he was not laughing at her discomfiture. No… she thought he smiled because he was nervous. Frustrated, she turned back to the men who barred her way; they were an easier task.

  The Lord's—no, the King's, and this she must not forget, lest she give herself away—guards were lightly armored and armed. They met her gaze impassively, but they met it, taking her measure as she took theirs. These men were dangerous. She could smell it. Her hand fell to her sword's black hilt and rested there, her stance changing subtly as she shifted her weight on her legs.

  "Kiriel, please," Cook said, for the third time. Then he did something remarkably foolish: He grabbed her arm.

  Kiriel di'Ashaf announced her presence by throwing him past the two guards who waited in the open doors. They had time to react before her arm had finished its carry through; the tips of two blades were beneath her chin and chest. They were narrow blades, not swords, but they did not shake at all, not even minutely, although human hands often trembled in time of danger.