Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown

by sun sword

But he knew from the General's reaction that this crest, and this House, had not been friendly in the wars that had been the cause of his exile.

  Exile? As the Primus—he knew the rank by the golden quarter-circle above the sword across the right shoulder— approached, the unspoken word echoed in the emptiness that the massacre had made of his life. He did not clearly remember the Dominion of Annagar; could not easily recall all the details of the Tor Leonne—the seat of power which, coveted, had caused the death of his distant father—even though there were some images that would never leave him. But he could recall, at will, the colors of The Ten; he knew their leaders on sight, and knew, further, many of their lesser nobles. Solran Marten and Kallandras of Sennial visited often, and if he was quiet enough, he was allowed to listen to them sing. He knew the ranking Patrises and the merchants who, holding no title, held the power of Royal Charter; he even knew, by sight, some of the Magi and the man who ruled the most important guild in the Empire: the guild of the maker-born.

  Exile?

  He knew the healer-born, and the men who served as healers although their skills were learned and not granted; he knew the priests, and their golden-eyed masters, and privately knew that the Annagrian view must be wrong, for these men and women could not be demons. He knew Morrel's Ride and Moorelas' Fall—knew, as well, the arguments that surrounded the "correct" use of this Northern hero's name—and he knew what the Six Days meant.

  This was his home.

  Or it had been.

  The Primus saluted, and the salute was a sharp one. "Primus Duarte AKalakar reporting for duty, Tyr Leonne."

  "And will you protect me from demons, Primus."

  Valedan said, as he looked at the restive rank of the men and women who followed, "or from them?"

  At that, the Primus froze, and then he lifted a brow. "Permission to speak freely?"

  "Granted."

  "You look like a boy. You stand like one. You even sound like one."

  The silence that followed the words was a thick one; no one moved.

  "You can ask a question like that; you've got an edge to you beneath that youth. If you intend to go South, sharpen it." The Primus smiled. "These are the Black Ospreys. They serve Kalakar, except in time of war."

  "Then?"

  "They serve the Kings."

  "And what do they owe to me?"

  The Primus smiled again, as if he was surprised at the question. Valedan was—and he was the one who asked it.

  "Inasmuch as your commands do not conflict with The Kalakar's or the Kings', we owe you service and protection."

  "And who decides when those orders are in conflict?"

  Silence a moment, and then the Primus smiled grimly. "Not the General," he said, acknowledging for the first time the man who stood so stiffly to Valedan's right.

  "No," Valedan said, remembering Alina's words, the sharpness behind their strength. "The General serves me, and he will abide by my orders, once given.

  "But perhaps we did not understand each other clearly. I accepted your service. You will tell me what that means."

  "It means—"

  "To you."

  Ser Fillipo par di'Callesta listened from a discreet distance, watching the boy with a measured calm. He recognized the banner as quickly as the General had; perhaps more so. Bloodied but unfelled, it cast a long shadow in the memory of a man who had served in the campaign that led to the Averdan valleys. He stepped back, thinking that this was not a decision that he could have made, or could have accepted. Wondering what Baredan felt. What Ramiro would feel, upon seeing them himself.

  Boy, he thought, for he had never thought of Valedan as anything else, your blood is stronger than we thought.

  For the entire first meeting, Duarte held his breath and prayed. A lot. I'm too old for this.

  But no one had said anything completely offensive, and after the right amount of time had passed—an eternity, more or less—the Ospreys had been dismissed to quarters, with commands to report back in the morning.

  They didn't make it.

  They got out of the Arannan Halls and halfway across the courtyard before the first outraged outburst; made it to the edge of the footpath before they'd stopped completely, demanding answers, reasons, explanations. From him.

  At least, praise Kalliaris, they'd waited. He could be thankful for that much.

  "I know it's asking a lot—"

  "It's asking more than a bloody lot," Cook said grimly. He'd done something he rare did: straightened out. He was a big man.

  "But we don't have a choice." Duarte had managed, against all odds, to get the Ospreys to the palace. But he'd done it not by dint of threat; he'd done it by the clear expedient of simple fact. It was a direct order. They could obey it, or they could be cashiered.

  But having got them here, he was under no illusions: Ospreys and orders they didn't like were oil and fire.

  We can fight the Dominion, he'd told The Kalakar, but don't ask us to serve the Southerners. Ask any other company. Please. Close as he'd come to begging since he'd turned fifteen. Hadn't got him anywhere.

  "We've always got a choice," Auralis said, in the smooth, warm drawl that made anyone who knew him well very nervous. "We've followed orders we didn't like before."

  Trust Auralis. The Ospreys could do everything short of outright mutiny under the guise of following orders. They'd done it under The Berriliya's very brief command.

  "We don't do it here."

  "Duarte—" Alexis began, but he cut her off.

  "No. Maybe you don't realize what's at stake."

  "Sure, we do," Auralis said, his voice even quieter. "We're supposed to put our lives on the line for a bunch of Annagarian nobles." He paused. "For a bunch of Annagarian nobles who serve, directly or indirectly, the interests of the Callesta clan."

  Callesta.

  He hated the name.

  Hated the use of it, hated what it brought back. The Black Ospreys had lost two thirds of their number on a single day, and a quarter of those who had made it off the field never made it across the border again.

  I told her, he thought, seeing the grim, white line of The Kalakar's lips. Knowing that she felt as he did, and that she wouldn't fight the Kings for the right to stand apart. To honor the dead, by refusing, years later, to serve their killers.

  "It was General Alesso di'Marente who ordered the slaughter," Duarte said, his voice weak although it was wrapped around fact. "And that General will rule the Dominion if we don't intervene."

  "And if we don't intervene," Cook said, his voice heated where Auralis' was smooth, "Marente and Callesta will fall in on each other. Marente served under Callesta, Duarte. We're not idiots. Not a man who served there could forget it."

  "Then state your position. State it clearly. Make your choice."

  "Let me make it for you," a new voice said.

  They turned, as one, to look upon the still features of the man that they had been ordered to protect: Valedan di'Leonne. The son of a man whose death not a single Osprey mourned.

  "I will not take your service where it is so reluctantly given. You," he said to Cook, "may continue as you like in the service of the Kalakar. I do not know how well she tolerates disobedience; it must be very well.

  "You," he said, turning to Duarte, "may also continue under her service. But you will not serve me. Keep your old wounds, and let them bleed as you like; I have need of whole men."

  "So," Alexis said slowly, "the pretty boy speaks."

  He turned, as if seeing her for the first time; she smiled with teeth. But she'd forgotten momentarily that this pretty boy had been raised in Essalieyan; he didn't even blink at the sword by her side. He did flush, though; his cheeks lost their pale, even neutrality.

  And then, for just a moment, he looked young.

  "You've come without guards," she said casually, as she noticed Auralis sidling round his side.

  "This is Avantari," the youth said with a shrug. "Here, I don't need them."

  "T
his is Avantari," Alexis said, with the slightest of nods, "but we're the Ospreys."

  Auralis laughed.

  She let him.

  She let it happen because it was something she understood; all of it. There was a point that had to be made, by either Valedan or the Ospreys. They knew it as well; they had thrown off the rules that Kiriel found so enraging and so inexplicable.

  She let Duarte stand, almost openmouthed with shock and a growing horror as he realized the implications of what might occur. A shout, some strangled command, pushed its way up his throat and out of his mouth.

  She let Cook stand back, let Fiara bend forward, let every member who fought under the Osprey banner take a collective breath.

  She heard Alexis tell Duarte that this young slip of a pretty boy with his court-soft hands and his delusions of grandeur needed to be taken down a notch. Or four. Nothing deadly. Just—a lesson.

  A real lesson.

  And she smiled as Valedan di'Leonne leaped out of the way and landed on both feet, his hands glinting with the length of two slender, Southern daggers. He was only the second person in her time with the Ospreys who had managed to outwit—or outmove—Auralis when he was stalking his prey.

  She was the first.

  Valedan's back was to a wall, although he had started out in a convenient archway, and his lips were pressed and set in a thin line. Auralis, armed, stopped a moment, and then began to pace, as if circling, a large cat who had suddenly discovered that the mouse had teeth and claws of its own. She liked the ripple of shirt and muscle; it seemed fluid enough to be liquid. And it reminded her of other such confrontations, in another court, a world away.

  Do I miss it?

  Yes.

  She thought about intervening, and took a step between Fiara and Cook, her hand on the hilt of her blade. But a circle had been drawn, invisible, across the stone, and she stood at its edge just as Duarte himself did, waiting.

  It should have been an easy kill, or at least an easy wounding, if that's what Auralis had intended. It was hard to tell with Auralis; his good humor was often burned away in a flash of annoyance, and what lay beneath it was not so unfamiliar to Kiriel di'Ashaf: darkness, anger, a brooding desire to prove one's power.

  But Valedan was not unprepared either.

  She watched the glint of steel in his hands, and saw its reflection in his dark, Southern eyes. Saw Auralis there as well, bearing his single dagger, cutting the air in tight half circles.

  He moved, copper hair flying in a single, thick tail at his back. Steel twisted, flickering like silver flame; first blood fell in a trickle from the left side of Valedan's jaw. The hush was broken by a sharp exhalation; breath was drawn again.

  And then Kiriel smiled as she heard Alexis curse; for Valedan's jaw was not the only jaw so marked, and Auralis' blood trickled down the runnel of his dagger.

  "Well done," Auralis said, as he felt the dagger's sting.

  The boy shrugged, and in that gesture, he looked like an Osprey. "Not so," was his quiet reply. "If we were in the South, they'd be poisoned." The dagger moved, but Valedan's eyes did not leave his enemy's face.

  For just a minute, Auralis froze.

  Alexis snorted. "If you were in the Dominion, you would not be fighting with daggers."

  "You fight," Valedan replied, "with whatever weapon is at your disposal."

  Before he had finished the last word, Auralis was gone again. This time, his pride had been pricked, and if he could not be forced to foolish action by anger, he could be cruel in his attempts to salve what had been wounded.

  This, too, Kiriel understood.

  But Valedan knew, and Kiriel saw the light behind his eyes flicker; she felt the tensing of his shoulders and his legs an instant before he leaped. He exposed his back to Auralis, which was risky; Auralis was in motion but not so hurried that he could not avail himself of the opportunity. He pivoted; his blade struck.

  Valedan grunted, but he, too, was in motion, and instead of rolling away from Auralis, he rolled into him.

  They both fell; the dagger had not been so deeply planted that Auralis could not pull it as his arms flew wide in an attempt to cushion his landing. Instinct.

  Valedan kai di'Leonne, the last of his clan, rolled up, bleeding, before Auralis landed. His knee was against the older man's throat, and the points of his daggers—both daggers—hovered a hair's breadth above the Osprey's blue eyes.

  That broke the circle; ended the drill.

  The Ospreys moved; steel scraped against steel as they noisily drew longer blades.

  And Kiriel crossed the courtyard before those blades had cleared sheaths, her own trailing a hint of shadow, her eyes far darker than lack of light could conveniently excuse. She faced the Ospreys, her back to Valedan kai di'Leonne, her meaning clear.

  "Auralis chose," she told her comrades coldly. "Valedan kai di'Leonne accepted the challenge, and fought fairly." If there was criticism of Auralis in the words, no one spoke against it; they had all felt the sting of his blade, either in practice or in less friendly fights, of which there were very, very few.

  "Get out of the way, Kiriel," Alexis said, the only woman to stand against the newest, and the youngest, of the Black Ospreys. She nearly spit when Duarte's hand caught and held her shoulder.

  "He did choose," the Primus said coldly. "And he isn't dead, no matter how hard he tries to get that way."

  "Duarte—"

  "Alexis."

  She fell silent as she met an expression that Kiriel had never seen upon Duarte AKalakar's face. The Primus held her eyes for just that necessary second longer before turning to look at Kiriel; to look beyond her.

  "Valedan kai di'Leonne—Tyr'agar—you have something that belongs to us."

  The boy, pale and sweating, did not raise his eyes. The daggers did not waver. "Yes."

  "What do you require of us for his safe return?"

  "Nothing," the kai di'Leonne said coldly. He leaped back, a motion that was quick and a little too fast, releasing Auralis to the Ospreys. They noted that he kept his daggers drawn and his injured back to the wall. As Auralis rose, the air crackled; light flared, turning into a burning ribbon that encircled the Osprey.

  "Unnecessary, Duarte," Auralis said, running a hand across his chin.

  But Kiriel could see the darkness in him; he was shrouded in shadow, in the anger and humiliation of total and unexpected defeat. He lied. She did not know if Duarte realized it.

  Auralis bowed grimly to the young man. There was no friendship in the gesture, but if there was resentment, it was buried beneath an uncharacteristically subdued expression.

  "Nothing?" Duarte asked.

  "Nothing." He sheathed his daggers in a single motion, taking only the time necessary to wipe clean the edge of the single dagger that had drawn Auralis' blood. Later, Kiriel thought, he'd have to clean them properly, or he'd pay for the theatrical gesture.

  "This isn't our best," Duarte said.

  "And what is?"

  Silence.

  Valedan drew breath, exhaled, and drew another, sharper one. "I am not my father," he told them, his eyes leaving Duarte's face to rest, briefly, upon each of the Ospreys gathered here. "I am not Callestan. But I am Annagarian, and when I rule, Annagar will be mine. I came here, without guard and without adviser, because I wished to speak with you on your own terms. I trusted you because I felt secure in the honor of the Empire.

  "I don't know what you suffered at the hands of the Annagarian armies. I don't care. I did not ask, or press, for your unit. You requested permission to serve me, and I accepted that service." His glance flickered off Auralis with some justified contempt. "Service such as this is better left in the hands of my enemies.

  "Had you complaint with me, there were better ways to raise it—more honorable ways, if you even understand the difference.

  "You said," he turned, unexpectedly, to Alexis, "that I needed to be taught a lesson. Thank you."

  She had the grace to blush.

 
; "For people who claim to loathe the Annagarians, you are the closest I've seen to their match. If you think that I will plead with you; if you think that I could hold such a one hostage against your good behavior, than you do not understand Leonne, no matter how well you think you understand Annagar." He turned, then.

  The wound in his back, darkening the folds of his cloth, was an accusation.

  "Wait!"

  It was Cook who spoke; Kiriel would remember it later, for she, too, was willing to let him pass, and to let his judgment stand. It was Cook, and Kiriel thought that had it been Duarte, Valedan kai di'Leonne would not have stopped. But he did, and he turned, and the wound disappeared.

  "Yes?"

  "I can't speak for the Ospreys. Hell, the Primus can't speak for the Ospreys. But swear that we won't take Callestan orders—not from them, and not from you—and I'll serve you."

  The silence of the offer stretched out; Valedan's face was cold and hard.

  Take it, Kiriel thought, her hand on the sword white. You've got what you came for: they respect your personal power now.

  "So sworn," Valedan said grimly. He drew his sword, and then grimaced. "There is no circle."

  "Not in Essalieyan."

  "Then how will you take my oath?"

  "Same as we took his," Cook said, pointing over his shoulder in Duarte's general direction. "On faith."

  There was laughter, and if it was sharp, it was genuine. Another man stood forward. Sanderton. He drew his sword. "You fight pretty well," he said.

  "Better with daggers than a sword," was Valedan's reply. He bowed and Sanderton sheathed the weapon.

  Fiara stepped forward. "We buried two thirds of our own," she told him, "in the Averdan valleys."

  "And how many of ours did you bury?"

  "None; we left 'em for carrion."

  "Then the winds took them; the Lord passed them over. That was then; what will you do now?"

  "I'll follow the Ospreys," she told him, and she drew her sword. "Besides, I always root for the underdog, and you don't stand a chance in the South."

  "Oh?"

  "He stabbed you. He's still standing."

  "Perhaps I didn't think I'd survive his death."

  She laughed. "See what I mean?" she said, although it was to the Ospreys, and not to the Tyr, that she spoke.