Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court

by The Shining Court

  "I assure you that Evallen would find it most—advantageous to speak with me; I do not seek to sell her anything—as you can see, I come with little. But I have word for her, of something she values, perhaps above all else."

  "And if she were here, I'm sure she'd be happy," the Voyani daughter replied, in a tone of aggravated boredom; whatever this stranger looked like, it was clear that he had done two things by that appearance: He had impressed Margret with his bearing and confidence, and he radiated a certain authority.

  Better to come as a man of earth instead, sweat-stained by labor, but built by it as well. Better to come as a sick man, or a father in fear of the loss of children, better to come as one fleeing from the unjust claims of the Dominion—for it was rumored, and the Serra was only barely able to remain uncertain about the truth of those rumors, that the serafs who fled sometimes found the Voyani before they found death—better, in fact, to come as anything other than a man of power.

  For a man of authority and power could only be one thing: of the clans, and important to them. As if to prove the point she had not made, he was silent a long time. But to the surprise of the Serra, his tone, when he spoke, held none of the anger that she felt certain she would hear there. It held, oddly, a dark amusement, a certainty that this was both inevitable and unimportant.

  "Tell her only this, then. We have the keys to Arkosa, and we are willing to grant them to its rightful owners."

  She rose then, swiftly, urgently—rose with the grace of a lifetime of graceful movement, but without care for it, thought for it—and reached the window in time to see the cloaked hue of a stranger's back.

  "Hey, Margret," one of the young men said, "should we stop him?"

  She saw the young woman shake her head.

  "But what's he mean? Is he threatening Evallen?"

  She shook her head again; her hair was a cascade of darkness that still caught and reflected light.

  "Why did he say—"

  "I don't know, Nicu, but if you don't shut up, the answer won't matter to you." To punctuate the sentence, Margret drew a dagger that was slender enough to disappear as she turned it on its edge.

  He shrugged, shoved his hands in the sash across his midriff, leaned back against the wagon. The Serra Teresa would never become accustomed to this; the man honestly did not take offense at the threat. None of the men would, with the exception of her brother, and indeed, had this Nicu—a fine young man with broad shoulders and sun-browned skin—drawn knife in return, the others would have made him regret it. Whether or not he survived that regret was entirely a matter of their affections—or hers—although in truth it was rare that the Voyani killed each other.

  Usually, when they did, it was in a fine and black temper, and the memory of it lingered. There was, however, no love lost whatever between the clans; of the four, two were currently involved in almost open warfare. As long as that war did not spread into the villages owned by the Tyrs and the Tors, it was overlooked with some malice.

  The young woman came back to her wagon, and as she turned, she shoved the dagger, with more force than such an obviously well-crafted weapon deserved, into its sheath.

  But it was her face that told much; the expression on it heightened by a lack of color, a forced neutrality that must be hard indeed for a woman of her temperament to achieve.

  The Serra was standing. "I will leave you, Margret. I am sorry to deliver so little news, and all of it bad."

  The younger woman's anger was a guttered flame; gone. She looked across at Teresa as if desperate for guidance, even if it was not, and never to be again, her mother's. "Do you know what he said?"

  "What who said?"

  "That man—"

  "Who was the man?"

  "I—" She stopped. Flushed. "I didn't ask."

  "Was he a clansman?"

  "I'm certain of it." Then she stopped again. "I was certain of it. Teresa—you—"

  "She cannot help you, Margret. But will you speak to an outsider of affairs of the Arkosa? If you will, speak to me, and only to me."

  They turned at once at an unfamiliar, a new, voice. The wagon's flap lay almost shut and no one—save Adam, whose home it also was, or Evallen herself—disturbed Margret when those flaps were shut. Not if they didn't want a sound beating.

  But Margret of the Arkosa Voyani—Margret, now protector of, and mother to, her clan—drew back as if she saw an apparition. "You," she said softly.

  "You remember me."

  Margret's face had lost the last of the color that was not granted her by the grace of the sun's harsh touch. "It was you," she whispered, the three words raw. "You. My mother—"

  "I am not responsible for Evallen's choice," the woman in midnight blue replied. And Serra Teresa di'Marano heard the alloyed uneasiness in her voice that spoke of both truth and lie. "Nor am I responsible for her death. She accepted the responsibility of Arkosa."

  "You took her away."

  "She asked it, Margret. She asked me for vision."

  "It's not your right—it wasn't your right—"

  "She had the Sight, but not the clear ability to See."

  "And you showed her her death, didn't you?"

  "I? No. But I will not lie to you because we will speak again, often, you and I: she saw it."

  The Serra wished to leave, because she had never heard a person speak who so clearly spoke with the wind's voice as this stranger did. This woman, this intruder—her voice was the voice of one who has seen enough horror to go completely mad—but who, somehow, barely has the strength to remain true in the face of the incomprehensible.

  But the woman who wore a length of midnight blue that went from head to toe, turned at that moment and bowed to her in the Northern fashion. "Serra Teresa," she said.

  "You speak," Teresa replied, "with the voice of the winds."

  "Yes." Ferocity, in that single word; bitterness. Triumph perhaps, but one so tired there was no joy in it. She returned her attention to the younger woman. "You know what that… man meant to offer."

  Margret said, "You will not speak of this in front of the Serra, or I will be forced to kill her."

  "Kill her, and your mother will never return to you. Accept it, Margret. You are not a fool. Your mother knew what she was doing, and knows it still. She has given you the guiding hand."

  "I never took her charity." Margret dragged the back of her hand across her eyes. "I never asked to be guided."

  "No. Perhaps not. But this is not a matter of charity. This is a matter of the Arkosans, of Arkosa, and if your own jealousy prevents you from seeing it, if your own pride prevents you from acting, you will have doomed your mother to a pointless death. It is, of course, your choice; only the living can give a death purpose."

  It was a Voyani saying.

  Margret was sullen, and she was fearful, and she was hesitant, and all of these things were in her voice when she turned stiffly and spoke—to Teresa. "What must I do to bring my mother home?"

  "I do not know."

  "You know where this—this Serra is."

  "I do know where she is kept, yes. Under guard, by the Tyran of the newly anointed Tyr'agar, in the Tor Leonne."

  "And how are we to send word to her?"

  "I will carry word, if I am able."

  "You could have carried the—" She stopped; brought hand to eyes again, rubbing hard against the skin there.

  "I am not granted free passage; I am only a Serra." She was silent, carefully weighing the words that she meant to speak. "I am certain," she said at last, "that your mother's death was indirectly ordered by the Tyr'agar, in ignorance of her identity. I am watched, Margret, but I am—barely—trusted. She is not. If I were to take anything from her, especially now, it might doom us all. It would certainly draw attention to—to things that are best left in the harem of an unmarried girl's father."

  "Teresa—"

  "I believe that war is coming. It was not announced after the Lord's Festival; it is likely, therefore, that it will be an
nounced after the Lady's." She knelt into the faded cushions at her feet. "That will be our last night, I think, of freedom."

  "We're not waiting until the Festival of the Moon!"

  "I would prefer that you did not," Teresa replied. "For that is nearly six months away, and the armies that will gather in that time should never have been called to gather."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Night is falling, Margret, protector of Arkosa. I do not pretend to understand what links you to your mother, and Evallen to her mother before her. But Evallen came because she understood this, and this alone: That the Lord of Night has been awakened."

  Margret was as silent as stone, and of the same shade, although her hair was still dark, and her eyes even darker. The eyes she closed; she drew breath as if breathing caused her pain, and then spit, once, to the side. When she opened her eyes, Teresa thought she had aged years; whether or not they were enough, the Serra could not be certain; only action would decide that, and action lay in the future.

  "You are… brave, Serra," the stranger said.

  "It is one of the many things one might forge out of desperation and fear," the Serra replied gravely, in the face of this stranger's boldness.

  "We will meet again, I think." The stranger bowed. "I am Evayne a'Nolan, and in this, I serve the Lady's cause." Again, there was a strong thread of truth, of lie, woven into a single fabric: her voice.

  "If you serve the Lady's cause," the Serra replied, "I have no doubt of that at all."

  "Margret," Evayne a'Nolan said. "I will return as I am able."

  "Don't bother," Margret replied tonelessly. Forcelessly. She didn't look as Evayne walked out of the wagon, to disappear before the window framed her back in open sunlight.

  They were silent, Teresa and Margret. Silent, bereft a moment of the buffer the stranger had provided. It was, of course, the Serra Teresa who spoke first; she was trained to be, in all things, graceful.

  "Margret, I do not know for certain if I will be able to return to you, or if you will be able to return to me; I am sent on the road as messenger for my brothers. Therefore, I bid you accept this, and accept it as a token."

  "Of what?"

  The Serra's smile was thin. "Of your will, and the truth of the offer you make, if you choose to make it at all." Her right hand covered her left for a moment, and when it withdrew, it held a single ring. Gold encircled emerald, and the emerald was a very fine one. Of such things had oaths been made.

  She held it out to the young Voyani woman. "Have this delivered to my niece, and she will know that your summons is genuine."

  "And if I sell it?"

  "Then she will not know, and will make her decision based upon her need and her instinct."

  "Just like that, eh? Are you made of stone, Teresa? Have you a heart of steel and harsh light, like all of your men do? Do you love nothing living that doesn't tread on four legs?"

  "Would it matter to you," the Serra asked softly, her voice as calm and placid as it usually was, "if I had a heart as true as your own, but better hidden? Would anything suffice to prove its existence to you but gaudy display?"

  "Maybe," Margret said grudgingly. "Maybe not. Did you plan it? Did you know I'd say yes?"

  "Yes," Teresa replied. "When you knew who your enemy was— who our enemy was—I knew it. What other answer could you offer?"

  Margret held out an open palm, and Teresa laid in it the only object that she valued, the only tie that bound her, personally, to the past, and to past deaths. Oh, there was the daughter, her niece—-but she had not been a gift of oath and binding, not a gift to Teresa of love, although she had grown to love her.

  Alora. She bowed, both as a gesture of respect and a way of hiding her face for a moment. The path ring was gone. It was done.

  Margret held herself in until the flaps swung open; until they swung shut; until they ceased to swing at all at the passing of perhaps the finest Serra in all the Dominion of Annagar. And then she turned in a rage to the low, flat table.

  It had been her way, since the days of her childhood, to vent her anger on things that did not vent back—and it had been beaten into her early that those things best served her that also could not fight back. Because other children could hit and bite and scratch as they liked—they would not be the protector of the Voyani. Only she, if she was responsible enough to survive it.

  Evallen had never been particularly kind to her daughter. Her son, Adam, she adored, and openly. Margret had thought to hate him forever when he first came into her life. She succeeded in hating him until he was two, and at two the fact that he adored her had thawed the ice of her anger in a way that her mother's remonstrations had—and would always—fail to do.

  Still, if he came upon her now, she'd probably slap him, and he hated it when she was angry; he was always so proud of her. Aie, but his pride was already a heavy chain around her neck; it prickled her. She hated the responsibility of living up to it, but she loved the glow of it. Brothers. Kin.

  In her hand, the ring was warm. She started to slide it on to her finger, and then noted ruefully that it would at best slide over the knuckle of her extra fingers—the small ones on the end. If that. She was tempted not to try because Teresa already made her feel old and ugly, and she was half the Serra's age or less. Spitting, she pulled out one of the several strands of gold that hung round her neck. She unclasped it and added the ring to its weight before letting it fall beneath the folds of her shirt.

  This was her personal treasure; if the wagons met flood or fire or worse, she could flee and still be certain of survival in the Dominion. She knew its byways well enough. They all knew how to survive on nothing.

  Nothing, they had a lot of.

  More of, now that her mother was gone.

  She sank to the floor, her hands in curled fists upon the scored flat of the table. She couldn't cry; not yet. She couldn't link the death to the Serra, the Serra to the death. Oh, Adam might suspect—he was so sweet, it was easy to think him stupid as well, and he wasn't—but no one else should; she'd have trouble enough when the word got out.

  But she'd also have people to mourn with, to grieve with.

  The clans—they were cold and hard and alone. They paid fealty to blood ties without understanding the strength of them, the fire that forged. She wondered—for the first time, for the only time— if this was how Teresa felt, for this was the first time that she had had to hide word so large from her kin. She wanted to speak it now; she wanted to dissolve the lump of it from her throat with word and song and the comfort of the arms of her kin; her uncle, her aunt, her cousins. She wanted her mother to be respected, to be mourned, to be avenged. And more. Much more.

  The Lord of Night.

  Ah, Lady, Lady—not now. Not on her head. Not on hers. What did she know? She was not Evallen; she did not have the pendant, and until she did, she was not truly Matriarch.

  But to get that pendant, she must risk more than her mother risked: the Arkosa Voyani in the Tor Leonne itself. She must make the decisions that a Matriarch would make without the power that had sustained the Matriarchs before her: the legacy of the line that went, unbroken, from mother to daughter, mother to daughter.

  Oh, she'd have to marry, too. Marry one or another of her cousins or second cousins; she needed daughters now; at least one, although most Voyani women had at least two for security's sake. The thought made her grind her teeth, but it was easier than thinking of death, of her mother's death, of the terrible need to hide it versus the terrible need to speak it and have done.

  They must move; they must plan. A month, she thought, and her mother's death could be somehow discovered. No, two, to be certain that the Serra passed above it.

  Because Margret was not the only one to hate the clansmen, and she could not add her mother's death to their list of crimes; not now, not when they were necessary.

  She wept, and she found that lonely tears satisfied none of the ache.

  Do you cry? she wondered, as she rose hea
vily. Do you cry, Serra ? Do you only cry alone ?

  Yes. Yet it had been to the Serra that her mother had spoken the truth. And it was the daughter who needed it who would have to do without. Anger was an important weapon in Margret's life; she used it now.

  Wished she could use it against someone beside herself.

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE

  14th of Maran, 427 AA

  Terafin Manse, Averalaan

  She woke screaming.

  It was nothing new. They'd been half expecting it, her bleary-eyed compatriots; she'd woken them, screaming, every night for the past eight days, and she'd remembered so little of the dreams that had sent her back to the waking world in such terror that she'd probably had no choice but to do it all over again.

  Teller, Finch, Carver, and Angel—they were used to this. They'd lived with it for many years, first in the twenty-fifth holding and then as part of House Terafin, although it had seldom been this bad as she'd grown into her talent. Daine—given leave by a testy Alowan to sleep outside of the healerie—found it more trying.

  "It's not the screaming," he said, as he joined the weary procession in the hall that led to Jewel's room. "It's the frenzy. It sounds as if she's going mad with helplessness."

  "Unlike the rest of us, who are just going mad with lack of sleep." Light glinted off the surface of an expensive dagger. Shadows hugged the undersides of Carver's eyes.

  "Hey, you know what they say," Finch told him, shoving a very stubborn swathe of hair out of her eyes for the fifth time.

  "No. At this hour of night I barely know what I say, never mind anyone else. What do they say?"

  "No one has a right to sleep. It's a privilege."

  Daine snorted. "Sounds like you've been talking to midwives."

  "Yeah, well. The cook's wife just gave birth to her first child, and the midwife gave a long lecture the entire time she was birthing." Finch snorted. Angel stepped around her with practiced ease, and pushed the door to Jewel's room open. "I'd've decked her, myself. Hold that thing steady. She'll want the light."