Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court

by The Shining Court

  Nicu followed his uncle.

  But Elena was there with the children. "We should—we should help her."

  Stavos actually frowned. A frown across his usually friendly face was very, very rare. "You want her because she can't take care of herself or her duties?" he asked, his voice thick with sarcasm. "Nicu, you have your duties. You choose between duty and desire."

  "I won't leave the women and children alone," Nicu replied stubbornly.

  "You sound like a clansman," Stavos said. He lifted an arm. "Do what you have to, Nicu, Donatella-son."

  Nicu stepped toward where Elena and the children had last been spotted. The conversation with Stavos, curse him, had done its work; they were nowhere to be found. He ground his teeth— something Elena disliked intensely, and turned to catch up with his uncle. Maybe, he thought, this is the Lady's sign. The twist of anger in the center of his chest began to unknot. Stavos was right; he was being foolish. Elena had been given children as last duty, and she would see them safely through the streets if anyone could. Lady knew, she was good at slipping between clenched fingers as if she didn't even notice the grip. He reached up, grabbed the outer hood of a wagon that he knew he wouldn't see again, and took a deep breath.

  "Nicu, Donatella's son. I have been waiting to speak with you."

  His sword was out at once, twisting in air so that its curved edge was ready for a solid swing. Nicu was one of the best Arkosan swordsmen; he was proud of the fact. It was one of the few things he was certain of.

  But the man who stood before him, in robes as rich as the Matriarch's ceremonial dress, did not flinch or move. He bore no clan markings, wore no armor, carried no sword. In the far, far North, merchants did that: wore no armor, carried no sword. But not here, not in the Tor.

  Nicu could take a glance to the side without moving his head; his eyes darted to the almost deserted compound grounds. He'd be one of the last to leave. Last, if the stranger didn't leave.

  "I apologize for my untimely intrusion," the man said, bowing gracefully. "But I believe that you will find it of benefit, and the result of our discussion here will be proved there." He lifted a hand, waved it to the street through which the first of the Tyrian cerdan were approaching.

  "I don't have time—"

  "You do. I shall speak quickly, and perhaps too freely. Some months ago, an associate of mine came forward to speak with your Matriarch." He shrugged, silk rippling in sunlight almost sinfully smoothly. "He offered her something that the Voyani have long sought: an end to the curse of the Voyanne."

  Nicu's eyes narrowed. "And you could promise that?" He spit to the side, tightening his grip on his sword and looking, nervous now but battle-ready, for the sign of the Sword of Knowledge across the overly-fine silk breast. Nothing.

  "I can," he said. "But I know better than to approach the Matriarch. Think: When the homeland was open, who ruled it?"

  "If it weren't for the Matriarch," Nicu shot back, "there wouldn't be Voyani clans. We would have perished with the cities."

  "This is the Dominion, Nicu of Arkosa."

  Hearing his name fall off this stranger's lips made him crackle with a type of suspended energy. He wasn't certain why, but he knew, right at that moment, that he shouldn't listen to the stranger.

  Knew, as well, that he would.

  "In the Dominion, where else do women rule? Do serafs rule their lords? Do clansmen rule the Tors, the Tors the Tyrs?" The stranger's smile was slight. "No. Only the Voyani are ruled by the weaker sex. Do you think that the women want to go back to their so-called home? Do you think that they want to give up power, any more than the Tyrs do?

  "Think: In the cities of Arkosa, of Havalla, of Lyserra and Corrona, did women rule? No. Men ruled. Women married, they were fierce in their marriages, and they were loyal."

  "We don't like our women weak," Nicu said, thinking of Elena, his Elena.

  "No," the stranger replied. "And in that, there is much to admire; a weak woman does not make a strong son. But leadership? Rulership in time of war? In a fight, you could best your cousin. I have seen that much, and I have been watching for some time, waiting for a worthy man to finally present himself from Arkosa.

  "That man is you; you are now old enough, now skilled enough, now wise enough, to know what it is that you want. I cannot immediately prove to you the value of my claim, but think carefully, and while you think, I will gift you with some portion of my power if you will receive it."

  Instant suspicion, there. Nicu's sword, which had been slowly falling groundward, came up at once. "What gift? I will not have you touch me."

  "No, indeed. The gift I grant you is a sword, no more, no less. It is almost exactly like the one you wield; you need explain it, and its existence, to no one should you choose to carry it."

  "And what will it do?" Nicu said, his eyes almost as narrow as the edge of his blade.

  "It will aid you in a fight. You are faster than most of the men here, but not all; with this sword, you will be undisputed." He lifted the folds of his cloak. "I ask only that you consider what I have said, and what I have offered. I cannot give you the city itself, of course; the city is not here, and we are not before its hidden gates. I do not know where the city lies: only the Matriarch and her heir do.

  "But if the sword is what I have promised, and if you are willing to serve your people as ruler and leader—as the man who will bring them home, we will speak again, you and I."

  His robes billowed in a clean, fresh wind. Nicu, spellbound, waited a moment. The wind took the stranger, the man who bore no sign of the Sword of Knowledge, no sign of the arms and armor that mark a man in the Lord's eyes. But at his feet, where his robes had brushed the compacted dirt, was a scabbard.

  In truth, it was not fine; it was as he had promised: much like the sword Nicu had owned for all of his adult life. As if that sword—the namesword, the sword by which he had taken his adult vows—now burned him, he removed it, touching it carefully, removing it from its easy and familiar place at his left hip.

  It was something he did every night; no reason to feel so naked in the doing. But he felt it: naked. He hovered a moment, between desire and desire.

  And then Nicu of the Arkosa Voyani straightened out his shoulders. He was a man, not a boy. He was not afraid of a sword. Bending at the knees, so as not to look subservient in the Lord's eyes, Nicu retrieved the sword the stranger had left, like a harbinger of either war or glory, where his feet had been.

  He girded himself with it slowly, half-expected a trap of some sort: fire, wind, something that would burn or scour. Nothing happened. He gripped the hilt; felt the leather, cool and new, in the palm of his sweating hands. He murmured a prayer, indistinct and inaudible, for the Lady's Mercy.

  Then, taking care to be as silent as possible—as if noise itself would draw attention he did not desire—Nicu of the Arkosa Voyani, Nicu, the Matriarch's cousin, drew the crescent sword.

  It was… a sword.

  Perhaps more, certainly not less. It gleamed in the sunlight, and its blade was a bit too pristine, untested, unnotched. His kinsmen would know, if they saw it. They would know it had been unblooded.

  Nicu did not carry an unblooded blade.

  He smiled for perhaps the first time that day. Opportunity was here, in plenty; if he carried the stigma of an unblooded blade, he would carry it in private, and he would not carry it long: there were enemies about, and none of them were his kin, however distant.

  7th of Scaral, 427 AA

  Evereve

  She was reminded of old children's tales as she wandered the cavernous halls of the great, empty manse. But it wasn't the splendor of those halls that filled her with that unnamed childhood awe, although they were indeed splendid in their gaudy, gilded way. The heights the ceilings reached rivaled—or exceeded—those permitted the Mother, Cormaris, and Reymaris upon the Holy Isle, and contained by the larger surface of such walls, the gold that had seemed almost ugly and tawdry in the confines of an admittedly large b
edchamber almost looked tasteful.

  Well, perhaps tasteful was going too far. But the silvered glass the hall boasted, end to end, was larger than any she had ever seen and it distorted no part of her image; the crystals suspended from the ceilings above on chains of gold or brass and silver were of different colors that caught light and held it at their hearts, transparent magelights. There were paintings, tucked into frames of gold as if to give the wall continuity and color, that were so perfect they caught her attention and held it for long enough that she could forget where she was, what she was wearing, who she was with. A sure sign of a maker's hand.

  And there were the statues.

  It was the statues that reminded her of the stories she had heard while she sat in her grandmother's lap, probably from before the time she could speak, the safety of the old woman's arms not yet compromised in her young mind with the encroaching age that would take her away so completely, so devastatingly.

  They were here; men, a youth or two. They stood upon pedestals around which were carved runes she didn't recognize. Age, august and profound, was implied everywhere and visible nowhere in the unblemished stone faces; the hand—or hands—that had birthed them from their encasement in quarried blocks had chosen to be both truthful and kind. She wondered, briefly, what Meralonne could tell her of what was written beneath their feet.

  Might have wondered longer, but she recognized one of those statues, and she stopped in front of it.

  Marbled alabaster, white eyes, full lips, clothed in smoothly chiseled stone, he stood two feet above her looking not down but up, as if he could see beyond the confines of the vaulted ceiling. Or as if he hoped to one day be able to.

  He looked no more lively than the rest of the procession he stood in the middle of; no more lovely, in truth, but no less perfect. The expression that had accompanied his parting words was nowhere to be seen. She reached out; her hand hovered above his chest as she hesitated, searching still features for some sign of life.

  At last she touched him; the folds of his shirt—embroidered by a thin set of grooves that made a pattern—were as hard as Arann's armor.

  But hard or no, they rippled beneath her fingers as his arms bent at the elbow and his hand trapped hers. "You are not Elyssandra," he said, and she understood then why the statues felt old to her.

  She had heard one speak, had found his voice strange, had not immediately understood why. She understood now, standing this close; they had the weight of earth in their voice; the weight of earth's bones.

  She pulled her hand back; the surface of smooth rock abraded the skin, although he made no move to tighten his grip. "No. Not usually."

  "I have slept long indeed," he replied, his eyes unblinking, his irises alabaster and disconcertingly large, "if there has been such a changing of the guard."

  He fell silent; it became clear to her that he was waiting for her, either to speak or to leave. His expression was completely devoid of so animated a thing as emotion.

  "Who are you?"

  A brow went up, changing the lines of his face but leaving them, somehow, a statue's. "An odd question."

  "I was going to tell you who I am," she replied, cocking her head to one side and then pushing the resultant locks of unruly hair out of her eyes, "but you're the host; you can go first."

  "You were going to tell me who you are? Or simply what you are called?" But his lips curved oddly as he said it.

  Great. A philosopher. "What I'm called. I'm not sure my version of who I am would mean anything to you, although come to think of it, the name pretty much says it all."

  "Oh?"

  "I'm Jewel ATerafin. And I'm stupid. I wanted your name first." Against her will, or rather, against her intent, she smiled. There was something about this statue that she liked.

  "My name, I fear, will tell you less than your name tells me."

  "Try me."

  "I… am Aristos Concaella. I was… Regent in my time."

  "Here?"

  He laughed. It wasn't a pleasant sound; too much like the fall of one stone against another. "Not here. There are no Regents here. There is nothing to preside over in the absence of my master."

  "Were you—were you ever—mortal?"

  "Was I a man?" He laughed again, and this time she understood why the sound was unpleasant—a rock slide started that way before it buried whole caravans. "I was a fool. Does that count? It was many years ago."

  She knew the answer to the question she asked next, but she had to ask it; she had to hear the truth cast in words, because otherwise it would be too easy to slip out from under it. "How did you become a… statue?"

  "The Warlord," he replied quietly.

  "And the Warlord is Avandar?"

  His frown was lovely. "I do not know the name; he had none by the time I was chosen to serve him."

  "He was—he wears the crown here."

  "Yes. The Warlord is your master."

  She snorted. "My master?" As his expression shifted, the contours of his face gradually taking on a line that she couldn't quite name and didn't at all like, the laughter that almost escaped her subsided.

  "I don't mean to offend," she said softly, "but I've known Avandar Gallais for half my life, and it is most decidedly not as his servant. He serves me."

  "Oh?"

  "Trust me. He may not serve me well; he may serve within the letter of the law and not at all within its spirit, but he does serve me."

  He reached out for her hand.

  She was not normally a person who liked to be touched—not by her own, and definitely not by strangers—but he moved so quickly, her right wrist was in his palm before she had even realized he intended to grab it.

  He caught the edge of one of the fine, gaudy sleeves she wore between his forefinger and thumb and, scattering the edging of pearl and diamond to the floor below where they tinkled and rolled into silence, he yanked the sleeve up to her elbow.

  There, two inches above her wrist on the inner part of her arm was a stylized backward S, bisected in two places with small v's. The S was red, the first v gold, the second silver. She ran her fingers over the mark as if expecting the paint to come off.

  It didn't.

  She rubbed harder.

  The mark was as fresh and as unperturbed as the face of a great lady just after she leaves her morning rooms.

  "What—what is this?"

  The hall was quiet enough that the grinding of teeth could be heard.

  "You do not recognize it?" He was silent a moment.

  "If I recognized it, I wouldn't be asking."

  "Can it be that you don't read?"

  The accusation—of stupidity or the poverty that enforced it— had always riled, perhaps because it had come so close to being true.

  "I. Read. Quite. Well."

  "Ah. My apologies. My master… made me… to be the best of all possible servants. I hear all language as if it were my own. This," he said quietly, gesturing to the wrist she now cradled, "is the oldest word in our written vocabulary.

  "It is the master's name," Aristos added softly.

  "You—you have this?"

  "I? No. Not that mark." He glanced down to the flow of stone over his forearms. "And the mark that I was given before I was given the responsibility of this domain is, I fear, long since made inaccessible."

  "But you've seen this mark before."

  "Oh, yes," he said, and there was suddenly something in his voice, like a second presence; something that struck her as lightning struck the storm-heavy sky: there, blinding, gone in an instant.

  She didn't ask him. She reached up for the sleeve of her dress— her ridiculous, much despised dress—and yanked it firmly down over the offending arm, the offending sigil.

  But perhaps the discussion had gone far enough.

  Or perhaps it had not gone as far as he desired.

  He said, "I have seen it once before, on the arm of the Warlord's wife."

  * * *

  CHAPTER SIX

 
It should have been easy to talk to him.

  Or rather, it should have been easy to turn on her heel and walk down the great hall, each step alleviating some of her anger. She started, but the voice of a man trapped in stone—of it now, in this hidden place—stopped her.

  As did the weight of his hand on her shoulder.

  She wondered how little effort it would take for him to crush that shoulder—not a pleasant thought.

  But he offered her words instead of violence. "Jewel ATerafin." The whole tone of his voice, the demeanor of his carriage, had changed subtly—if stone could be subtle.

  She turned; he lifted his fingers, breaking all physical contact. "What?"

  "I do not… understand… your reaction. It is clear you are angry."

  "That would be an understatement, but, yes, I'm angry."

  "Why?"

  "He is not my master, for one. He has no right to turn you into stone and keep you locked up on a pedestal until he decides you should be serving someone, for two—I'll have him serve me himself first. And three? We've got a very important mission and stopping off in this… in this whatever it is…" She felt as if she had been absorbing the silence of the rest of the hall, as if she could no longer speak in the face of it.

  "Do not," he said, "risk yourself for the sake of your pity. I am not worth it, and it is I who will suffer for it should you choose to speak."

  Luckily, silence, no matter how heavy, never lasted in the face of her curiosity. She tried not to remember curiosity's natural reward in her grandmother's stories. "And he could do something worse than he's already done?"

  "I have seen far, far worse," was his soft reply.

  She didn't ask. Change the subject, Jewel. "Where are we?"

  "You are in Evereve, his home."

  "Yes, well. What I meant was where is Evereve?"

  "None of us are completely certain."

  "None of us?"

  "Yes."

  "Forgive me, Aristos, but I must leave. I'll return."

  "Jewel," he said, his voice the low rumble of distant, moving stone, "if you are not careful, you will return in a fashion you will not like."