Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King

by The Uncrowned King

  "Nothing?"

  Avandar's voice. Even deprived of the stern expression his face habitually fell into, she couldn't quite pretend his presence was welcome. He always made her feel slightly on edge, slightly uncomfortable, although she trusted him daily with her safety, with more than her safety. She shrugged. Seventeen years of history could do that, although she'd never have guessed it at the start.

  "Nothing. Allen's not going to be happy."

  She felt, rather than heard, Avandar's more crisp version of a shrug. "Then he'll be unhappy. If he seeks to use you as a reliable source of information, it's best that he learn your limits here, where the risks are few."

  Few. Her neck cracked as she turned her head in a slow, deliberate circle. "They don't want to lose the boy."

  "Then they should put their foot down and refuse him his place in the Challenge."

  "Avandar—"

  "At the least, he should be given no leave to run the gauntlet."

  "It's been suggested. You've even been there. Let's give up for an hour or two; we'll eat something, try again."

  "As you wish." The line of light beneath the hang of curtains was broken as Avandar stepped in front of them; it wavered further as he began to draw them apart, to let the day in. Here, up in Eagle's Remove—although why this room in particular was given that name, she didn't know—the windows were long and wide, with seats for the room's occupants to sit in, so that they might look down, and down again, and see clearly all they were missing by being stuck here.

  There were no shelves, no desk; but there was a grate for the burning of wood, a mantle around it, two comfortable chairs, and enough leaded glass to bankrupt a lesser House.

  She had grown to hate the room.

  Avandar preceded her to the door, placed his hand upon the old, iron handle, and froze in place. She had seen this only once before. He was not a man given to expressive gestures; all of his movements were economical, spare. It shouldn't have been so obvious when he stopped moving at all—but it was.

  Her dagger was out in an instant, her knees slightly bent. What he felt, she now felt; the edge of darkness, a shadow that held ice and death within its folds. He was the only man in existence who would have felt it before she did. And she didn't know, couldn't say, why. Later. "What is it?"

  He did not answer her; not with words. Didn't need to. She saw the ripple that surrounded his hands, taking shape and form as it crackled into bands of color: blue and gray.

  Blue and gray—

  "Avandar, no! "

  The light froze, just as he had, held in abeyance not by her words, but by the quality behind them, the force of something that was, and was not quite, Jewel. She sheathed her dagger at once and walked to the door, shunting him urgently to one side.

  And then, taking a deep breath, she opened it, half-prayer already dying on her lips. There were guards outside these doors; Chosen by Terafin, Chosen for trust and trust's sake. Please, she thought, don't let them be dead.

  They weren't.

  She took the time to notice that they hadn't even drawn their swords; it was a cursory observation, a short one.

  "Kiriel," she said, as her eyes met the darkness that waited outside of Eagle's Remove. "Come in."

  Kiriel di'Ashaf crossed the threshold as if it were the edge of a blade, and she barefoot. Her teeth showed briefly between dark lips, a flash of white not unlike a hound's. But she did not draw the sword she wore openly, and she did not—did not do whatever it was that Jewel felt certain she could do, even if the details weren't clear.

  The darkness that shrouded her golden eyes would never quite leave them; of that, Jewel was suddenly completely certain, and for a moment she felt a profound sense of loss, of compassion, and even of pity. They came in a rush, these things, unexpected and unlooked for. Jewel had learned to school her face well over the years.

  But not from this: vision, a thing not felt that would be felt—in an unnamed, distant future—about the almost sullen young woman who stood uneasily before her. Dark eyes narrowed to slits; Kiriel backed away.

  "Kiriel," she said again, holding out a hand, realizing the gesture meant nothing. She let it drop, and then spoke again. When she spoke, she abandoned Weston entirely in favor of Torra, the Tyrian tongue. "I'm sorry—I mean you no ill will, and no mockery. I'm—I have to admit that I didn't expect to see you here."

  The younger woman's eyes widened in such a way that it almost hurt to see them. Tyrian. di 'Ashaf was a Tyrian form. And what line, Jewel thought, was Ashaf? No clan name that she recalled, but that wasn't saying much; her knowledge of the clan hierarchies was abysmal.

  "I didn't expect to come," Kiriel said, in such a way that it was clear she begrudged every word. She drew breath.

  "Then why," Avandar said, uninvited and as unexpected in his interruption as Kiriel had been in her arrival, "did you?"

  She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time—which, Jewel thought, she might well be doing; it was hard to remember when Avandar did trail her and when he did not, so much of a shadow had he become. "Does he speak for you?" she said at length, coolly.

  "No." Jewel's reply was less friendly than Kiriel's question.

  Avandar did not seem to react at all to the less than subtle hint. She stopped hinting. "Avandar, leave."

  "I don't think it wise."

  "I don't care what you think. Leave."

  "Jewel, I'm not certain if you understand what it is, exactly, you face—but it is not what it appears to be. You—"

  "Avandar."

  "I-will-wait-outside-the-door."

  "Good."

  He opens his mouth again, Jewel thought, and I'll kill him. She folded her arms, her lips pressed into a tight line.

  He walked out the door, slamming it shut behind his back.

  Kiriel looked from one to the other—the door that seemed to reverberate with the force of its closing, and Jewel, as if what had just occurred was the only thing, so far, that made any sense. As if the desire for sense and stability was so strong she could suck the scene out of the air and hoard it.

  Her hair was dark, her eyes dark; when she lifted an ungaunt-leted hand to brush the one from the other, Jewel expected the hand to be dark as well, wreathed in cloud and black shadow. It wasn't. Of all things, it was the only part of her body that seemed human, free from shadow and shadow's claim, from the darkness that had devoured the Allasakari, in their time, one by one.

  Shining there, faintly luminescent, a star in the depth of night sky and not the radiant, warm sun, sat a simple, unadorned ring. Jewel felt the ground beneath her feet shift; she took a step back.

  Kiriel immediately began to lower her hand, aborting the gesture. "I mean you no harm," she said, moving slowly and steadily, bringing the hand, palm up, to the level of her waist, where Jewel might better see it.

  "I—know. It's—I'm sorry. I wasn't expecting you."

  There were two chairs in the room; Jewel hesitated before one, but did not choose to take it; she knew that Kiriel would stand, and did not want to lose the advantage of equal height.

  "Where did you learn to speak?"

  "Torra?"

  "Is that what you call it?"

  "That's what it's called in the Empire, yes." Jewel turned away from her visitor, although every instinct in her screamed as she exposed her back. Deliberately ignoring instinct was difficult for the seer-born; she steadied herself by letting the visual panorama provided by the open window distract her. A little. "I learned it from my mother."

  "You were born there?"

  "No. Here. There are Southerners—and those, like me, descended from them—across the hundred holdings. But mostly," she grimaced, "in the poorer ones."

  "Was she a seraf?"

  "No!" And then, realizing not what she'd said, but how, Jewel added, "No. There are escaped slaves in the city; enough of them. But my mother was an insignificant member of one of the Voyani lines. She was free."

  "Free." Kiriel came slowly t
o join her; they stood side by side, appreciating the view, as if they were two visitors to the House with nothing better to do. The sea breeze was laden with salt, heavy with moisture. The open windows let it in, where it curled the ends of Jewel's hair. Kind's hair seemed heavy enough to be impervious to weather.

  "Where did you learn the Tyrian tongue?"

  "In the Court," Kiriel replied. "And Weston as well, but later."

  "Kiriel—why did you come?"

  "Because if I speak to anyone else, I—" She stopped, bent her chin almost into the length of her neck. "Because of what you said," she replied, quietly.

  "What I said?"

  "That I'm a killer, but—"

  "Yes?"

  "It's not all I am." She toyed with a slender chain that encircled her neck as she spoke; the gesture was a nervous one. "I've never had to hide what I am; only what I'm capable of. Knowledge is power."

  " 'Knowledge is power.' You sound like Meralonne." Jewel touched the younger woman's shoulder. "I told you, Kiriel: Tell me that I can trust you, and I will trust you."

  "Does it matter? Does it matter, if I've already decided to go with you, to fight this war?"

  "You tell me."

  Kiriel turned to face Jewel, her eyes golden, like light, like sunlight. "Yes. It matters," she said simply. She lifted the chain, and from its end fell a large crystal; it was surrounded by a lattice of light that moved so quickly Jewel couldn't quite see the color of it, the colors that made it solid. "I'll fight this war, but I have to fight it my way. My father—"

  Silence.

  "I don't love him," Kiriel said, as if forced.

  "I don't care if you love him," Jewel replied, as if she were unaware of how singular a statement Kiriel had made. "I don't care if you hate him. I'm not Mandaros, Kiriel; what he decides, he decides. I don't judge you."

  "Neither did she."

  This time, Jewel did not ask. She wanted nothing to interrupt the words, the shaky trickle of them, that Kiriel so haltingly, clumsily offered.

  "I spoke to Valedan," Kiriel said. "About you. He says, if you want to travel with us, you can."

  "Thank you."

  "Do you?"

  "Yes."

  Silence again, Kiriel's, not Jewel's. The moment was broken for Jewel when she realized that no birds had come by this window at all since Kiriel had approached it.

  "I don't want to go to Duarte yet, because he'll have to tell The Kalakar."

  "Tell her what?"

  Hesitation, fine and edged. For a moment she poised at the window as if she was bunching and gathering her muscles for sudden flight. And then it left her, that tension, in a little sigh of breath, of uncertain commitment. She reminded Jewel of the dead, the much loved, the much remembered dead. "There are kin in the streets of the city."

  "Kin? You mean—" She stopped, knowing exactly what Kiriel meant. "You've seen them?"

  "No."

  "Then how do you—" Jewel stopped at once, as elusive understanding finally stood still long enough to be caught. "You won't say how."

  Kiriel shook her head. "Can't," she whispered, as if it were true. "But you don't have to. They've come to kill Valedan." Absolute conviction in those words. "You tell them where the kin are, and they'll believe you without question because that's your gift." .he turned her eyes groundward through the wide, stone sill to greenery and life. "I'll go with you, when you hunt them. If you do. I'll be your whatever it is—adjutant, assistant, Verrus. I'll take you to where they are. No one has to, know who leads who."

  "Kiriel, no one understands the abilities of the kin well enough.

  Tell them that you can magically sense each other and they'll believe you."

  But Kiriel looked at her and said a single word. A name. "Sigurne."

  Jewel couldn't argue with that. "All right. I'll do what I can." She paused. "We've got four days to hunt them down."

  "If you wait until the Challenge, they'll be easy to find."

  "If we wait until the Challenge, we probably won't be able to reach them without carving our way through spectators, most of whom will be utterly helpless in the face of kin magic. I'll do what you ask, Kiriel; I won't ask questions. IT you need me to lie, like this, for you—I'll do it. It seems harmless enough." A lie, all right. "But I won't risk those deaths. Not the innocents. Not the children. I've seen enough of 'em. I won't risk more, ever."

  Kiriel met her eyes and stared at her for a long time, and then, of all things, she smiled. A real smile, almost devoid of her natural intensity.

  "You can," she said softly.

  "Can?"

  "Trust me."

  You couldn't lie to a seer.

  Teller told himself that, as his hand dipped quill slightly shakily into inkstand.

  It wasn't one of the many truths about seers that was widely spread, like children's stories and overblown fables, across the wealth of bardic songs or ancient texts, but it was true.

  Or sort of true. You couldn't lie about much that was important to the seer herself. Little things—what you thought of her clothing, for instance, or what you thought of the meal she'd prepared with her own painstaking labor on one of those days when she and Avandar had had enough of a disagreement that he'd been banished from most of the wing—those you could get away with. But not big things. Not truth.

  Kiriel spoke the truth. Jay'd heard and accepted it.

  Hearing, and accepting, she invited Kiriel to leave Eagle's Remove, and together, they adjourned to the kitchen.

  She'd told them all as much when she'd asked them to gather there; that this young woman had asked for help and offered her own in return; that she was to be considered, in any way they could, as a member of her den. A new member.

  Hadn't been a new member for almost twenty years.

  Twenty years? He didn't feel twenty years older. Didn't feel twenty years smarter. He was thirty—near as anyone could figure— and it only showed on the outside.

  Kiriel, he could tell, was uncomfortable with the idea of the gathering but Jay insisted: These were her den; she trusted them all with her life, just as they trusted her, as they could trust her— and they'd accept Kiriel if she did because she was—

  She was Jay Markess, their leader.

  Oh, her hair was longer and maybe even a little bit straighter most of the time—not during the humid season, mind—and her back was a bit more bent; she had a couple of new lines and a woman's body, not a girl's—but something burned at the center of her eyes when she spoke—a window into a past that you could only share if you'd been part of it.

  They were hers. She was theirs. It worked.

  Teller ATerafin watched them almost silently as they spoke. He found that he did not much like Kiriel di'Ashaf, although he couldn't say why; there was something about her that made him feel more naked than he'd felt since—since his life had been a lot harder and a lot more desperate.

  Not a feeling he wanted to relive.

  Angel and Carver had the same half-neutral expression on their faces; they sat back from the table, chairs on a tilt, soles of worn boots facing inward from the edge of the tabletop. Teller knew them both well enough to know they'd crossed arms over their chests to prevent their hands from straying weaponside and staying there. Arann couldn't be summoned on short notice, and Finch and Jester were out in the Common, doing gods only knew what. It was a tough time to go out to the holding's markets and back; the streets were lined with merchants big and small who'd come to the capital for the Challenge itself, following the trail cut by hopeful, too young men who wanted a life outside of farming a small stead in the middle of nowhere. Movement in Averalaan was at a premium; horses were forbidden during the Challenge season unless one could prove Royal Exception, and there were few enough of those to go round. Certainly none for either Finch or Jester, who hated riding anyway.

  But Finch was going to be angry.

  He looked up from the notes that he was taking to study the side of Kiriel's face—as if the only time he c
ould examine her face at all was when it was turned away from him. Her eyes were so dark a brown they were black—to his vision, anyway—and she had about her the wary air of a trapped predator. Hungry predator, at that.

  I'd better not be food.

  As if she could hear the thought, she snapped 'round, meeting his eyes even as he sought to attach his gaze to anything else in the room. He swallowed air, steadied his hand, and thought, clearly, that he hadn't felt this uncomfortable since the day that Old Rath had smashed through the boards over the windows of their old haunt, and gazed down at them as they fled through the city's Streets at Jay's unfathomable command.

  Jester, Finch, and he had run; Arann had dogged their steps like an overgrown shadow, until he'd heard the scream.

  He could still hear the screaming; could feel himself freeze at the sound of it, the terror it contained, the certain death. He could hear Arann's breath, see his shadow suddenly recede from theirs as he twisted the club in his hands and started to head back. To Duster.

  Duster.

  We don't say good-bye to the dead, he thought, as he stopped trying to evade Kiriel's gaze. Dark-haired young woman, blem-ishless face, hair that fell heavily enough across her shoulders it looked entirely out of place given her weapon, her armor, the ease with which she wore both.

  He knew who this woman was supposed to be, even as she turned away from him, back to the conversation that she could only barely share with the rest of Jay's den.

  Oh, Jay, he thought. It had been easier, when he'd been younger. He could look at Duster, bruised and bloody, shaking with anger— or the need to outfight whatever it was that put fear into her— and accept that this killer was their killer, that she would do for the den what some of the den couldn't do for itself. Be the heavy. Be someone who could face down—permanently, if necessary— other people's enforcers.

  The idea of right or wrong hadn't come into it.

  Just survival. Survival was everything.

  Jay, we're not the same den. We're not boys and girls, anymore— we're adults now; we don't live in the shadow of fear.

  Even as he thought it, he set aside the thought. They didn't live in that shadow, but who they were had been tempered by it. And if they were all fifteen years older—more—they all remembered, more clearly than the vows they'd made to Terafin—the vows they'd made to Jay.