Ilia cursed quietly. It was hot; the leather and cotton grips that kept a sword safely in hand weren't proof against a profusion of nervous sweat. Elena looked across the road, willing the men to stop where they were. A handful of minutes, and it wouldn't matter.
But when the men did stop, she cursed.
The foremost among them drew his sword. It was clear that he had been marching in armor; it was the first time that day that she'd wished it were summer's height and not the Lady's season.
"Surrender," he said, his voice a boom across streets that were emptying quickly at the sight of the unsheathed sword. "We have no wish to harm you; we only wish to enforce the Tyr'agar's lawful edict!"
Ilia met her gaze; held it a moment. Shook her head.
"By what law," Elena said, "does the Tyr'agar hold the Voyani at the Lady's Festival?"
"The Lord's law!" A second man replied. She couldn't tell, although the distance was not a great one, whether or not the first man was irritated at the interruption. She would have been, but she wasn't cerdan.
"You waste our time," the first man said; the second was silent again. "And your lives. So be it." He nodded; the three men who obviously followed his orders came toward them bearing naked blades.
"This," Elena said, through gritted teeth, "is not going to be fun."
Ilia laughed. Unfortunately, she laughed the way she always did when Elena stooped to understatement: nervously. It was only in the most dire of circumstances—sarcasm aside—that Elena ever bothered to understate anything.
She took a breath; held it. Expelled it. Took another breath, a deeper one. Brought her sword forward; grabbed it in both hands. She'd never learned the art of fighting sword and dagger, although she could fight with two daggers at close quarters better than anyone but Margret and Evallen.
Evallen, who was dead. Dead at the hands of men like these.
That gave her some fire; it burned briefly where she needed it to burn. Elena of the Arkosan Voyani said, loudly enough for Ilia to hear it. "For Evallen."
And then, before she could move, the three men approaching her staggered like a row of tall grass being trampled, slowly, by a sauntering horse.
Kallandras came out of the shadows.
The men who fell were not, he thought, dead—although he was slower than he had been at the peak of his agility, and there was some possibility that he had mistimed his throws. He meant what he'd said: the Voyani did best when they sought the shadows and left the fighting to the clansmen. They were used to Voyani who ran in the face of greater numbers, and in the history of the Tor Leonne, there had been no open fighting between the Voyani and the ruling clansmen. The lay of the wild land was different; there, the Voyani ruled in their wheeled strongholds.
The man who had ordered the cerdan forward froze; he looked around from side to side, and then, in a moment of foolish bravery, dashed forward through the street. He had not seemed young to Kallandras until that moment. Watching from shadows that were better chosen by far than either of the two Voyani women's had been, he saw the man kneel into the cobbled stones. Touch the bodies of his fallen comrades, looking for some sign of weaponry: bolt, quarrel, arrow. Something.
He would find it eventually, but by that time they would be gone.
Or so Kallandras had hoped.
But the woman with a blaze of fire in her otherwise dark hair chose that moment to step forward. Her face, sun-bitten and wind-carved, was both lovely and hard. These odds, he thought, these odds she favored, and she meant to take advantage of them.
The stories about Voyani savagery were based, as most stories were, in fact, and if the clansmen distorted that fact for their own purposes, that fact remained.
He almost stepped aside. Here, in the Tor Leonne, there was no crime in such a decision. In the lands to the far North, the laws of the Empire and his own position there—master bard, unofficial servant to the Kings and the Queens of the land—would have forced his hand. But here power ruled, and the women, these two Voyani women, now held its balance on the edge of their short, curved swords. It was not Kallandras' duty to intervene should he choose to turn a blind eye.
We are all changed by the facades we have chosen.
Hearing them, the lone Tyrian cerdan looked up. His eyes widened; his sword, slack by his side, came up at once. He found his feet, and he moved—but he did not move away from them; rather he moved to stand before the bodies of his fallen comrades. They were alive, then.
The red-haired woman reached him first; she swung easily, swung low, feinting. He was off-balance; a man who, in Kallandras' opinion, had never been properly trained to fight the fight he was handed; he was cerdan of the city, and the high clans, and the high clans did not fight women. Her second swing drove him back a step; her third swing did not. Behind him, unconscious, his men hovered, and if they were intemperate, if they interrupted him, if they did not—quite—follow the orders that he had set them, they were his men. That much was obvious from his actions alone.
Loyalty. Ah.
Over time, loyalty had become a trait that Kallandras could not quite ignore. This was not his fight, but he had already intervened, albeit for his own purposes.
He stepped into the roadway now, his hands empty.
"Elena," he said.
She heard him; she stepped back a moment, sword still at play. Her companion chose to join her, changing the odds. Two to one.
The man looked toward Kallandras as well, his sword, as theirs, unbloodied.
"Elena, this man, his life is not worth your anger. You have won the victory you desire. The children are safe; you will be expected to join them."
Her eyes were brown-green, flashing with sunlight, anger, the last vestiges of fear as she faced him, her gaze flickering between him and the cerdan who stood so close to death. The sun was high, harsh; it cast her shadow down in a squat mockery of natural grace.
"Who are you to tell me what to do?"
"I? I am a friend," Kallandras replied, "and I have walked the Voyanne in my own way these many years. Slaughter him, and what will you achieve? His concern was for his fallen—as yours would be. Look at him."
"And if I want his death?" she replied, her knuckles ivory beneath the sun's bronze, her cheeks flushed.
Beside her, the other Voyani woman waited.
"If you want it, Elena of Arkosa, you will have it. But in the end, if the Dominion is to stand against the Lord of Night, the Tyrians and the Voyani who are, at heart, loyal or honorable men will be needed." He shrugged. "The three who lie felled are not dead. There are other ways."
"And you, so-called friend of the Voyani, what will you do if I choose to take his life? We are owed a life, at least that!"
"Make your decision," he replied, folding his arms almost casually beneath the fullness of the sun. "And I, too, will make mine. We live by our judgments, Elena, and we live, at times, to regret them."
The sword shook. Oh, the sword shook.
Had this… man… been Annagarian, had he been clan, she would have ignored him; he carried no sword. But his hair was golden, and his eyes were pale, and his skin was like nothing she had seen in her life. Tall, too slender to be a warrior, he seemed a thing of night at the height of day. A whisper of conscience, a messenger of the Lady.
Night pooled in her heart.
She met the eyes of the cerdan. "You were hunting our children," she said softly, her voice as sharp as her sword.
"We were hunting only the women," he replied.
"You take our children as serafs where you can find them."
"You take our children as serafs where you can find them."
Stung, she started to reply; her sword shifted.
"Truth," the stranger said to them both. "But this battle is over. You have defended your children, and you," he said, turning slightly so that he might fully face the cerdan, "have defended your men. The Lord has judged you. It is not the province of a warrior to seek the helpless to prove his strength against."
He bridled like a high-spirited horse.
But his sword came down.
"Elena," the soft-spoken stranger said quietly.
She did not sheathe her sword. Did not take her eyes off the clansmen, and that was wise. The clans were steeped in treachery and deceit from birth.
"Elena?" Ilia's voice.
She badly wanted Ilia's advice; the women often turned to each other for consensus. But not here, not now; such indecision was just another weakness she couldn't afford. Aiee, Margret—how have you lived like this for all of your life? It was possibly the first time she hadn't envied her cousin her position as heir to the Matriarch.
"Leave him," she said curtly. Her face hardened. "And you?" she said to the stranger.
"I will follow, with your permission; without it, I will return to my work."
She snorted; tossed her hair back because she'd forgotten it was pulled so tightly off her face. "I'd give Voyani song to know just what that work is."
His smile was light, mysterious, dark. "I'd listen," he said softly.
She turned, and then she heard it: the shout.
"OVER THERE!"
The sun was so damned hot and bright she could hope, for just a minute, that she was befuddled enough to mistake the voice. Teeth that she thought couldn't be clamped any tighter almost drove themselves through the opposite jaw as she gripped her sword and turned.
Beyond her, beyond the sole standing cerdan and the three men over whom he kept watch, she saw something that made her jaw slacken.
A man red with blood, slick with it, face and hands and chest splattered with things that were far too solid. Behind him, behind him others, five, six, seven—all cut and bleeding in the same way. Her face paled.
And the stranger said quietly—so quietly that for the first time she wondered how it was his voice actually carried—"It is not his blood."
Nicu of the Arkosa Voyani came down the street at a wild run, bucking like a mad stallion, his sword the only thing about him more obviously bloody than he.
"We've come to rescue you, Elena!" he shouted. "Stand aside!" His sword came up in a terrible arc.
"Nicu, no!" she cried back, lifting both empty hand and sword hand in denial. For it seemed to her, suddenly, that a cloud had caught the sun, banishing its harsh glare; seemed to her that she could see—just for a second—clearly. And she knew, she knew that what he was about to do was not only wrong, but dangerous. To him. To them all.
"NICU, NO!"
* * *
CHAPTER SEVEN
He stopped in the street; the men at his heels ran into him. Were it not for the fact they were sticky with blood—and their blood at least had been shed in the shedding of their enemy's blood—it would have seemed a comic thing, an act to make small children laugh. They were gleeful in the manner that small children sometimes are, and such a glee, in such guise, was hideous and wrong.
But it was fact; the bard did not argue with fact.
Nor did he argue with what he heard at the heart of Elena of Arkosa's voice. He knew who she was, of course, although the knowledge was recent. He knew what her position in the line Arkosa must be. And he knew that the Arkosans, the Havallans, the Lyserrans, and the Corronans all boasted their share of the seer's taint.
He carried no sword; it was true.
But he carried his weapons.
Left hand, then right, he touched their hilts, waiting.
The man called Nicu frowned.
"By what right do you tell me to stop? These men are hunting my kin during the Lady's Festival. They hunt my women, my children."
"Your women? Your children?" Her sword was a flash, much like her eyes. She was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
And she was correcting him again, in front of the men he had led to victory through the streets of the Tor Leonne. The anger warred with desire, but it was not such an even battle as all that; with Elena, desire was a part of his growing anger.
"I am the leader of the protectors; I was appointed by the Matriarch. The decision is mine, Elena!"
He heard the decision in Nicu's raw voice. Heard more, besides. But he was not ready to be the Wind's Voice; not yet. He made a noisy display of pulling his weapons out of their hidden sheaths. There were two. Glinting in the sunlight, they caught all eyes, even Nicu's. Even Elena's.
In the North, they were considered extremely unusual weapons. Very, very few were trained in their use. They had, of course, short blades, and the Northerners preferred the straight reach of the long double edge. But it was not the blades that made them unique. It was the guard; for each side of the guard came up almost two thirds of the length of the blade itself, and each tip was pointed. Honed.
In the North, brows would have been raised. And magisterial guards called, in loud and echoing voices, as they were often called when weapons were drawn.
In the South, brows were raised, but voices stilled.
These weapons were the Lady's weapons. The weapons of her dark face.
If he could have ordered the cerdan to flee, he would have, but he knew that the man would run no more than half the length of road before the duty to his companions drew him, shuddering, back.
"This fight," he said, his voice as reasonable, as soft as it had been when it reached Elena through her anger, "is unnecessary. It is not an act of the Lord—your numbers are too great to make it anything but a slaughter—and it is not an act of the Lady's, who seeks no open battle."
"These men," Nicu said, his voice shaking with anger and righteousness, "will serve the Lord of Night! Who are you to tell us how to—"
"Mete out death in the Lady's service?"
The silence was the silence of the sun's height. Kallandras stepped forward, moving silently, slowly, a single man in the sun. He was slender, not overly tall; were it not for the weapons he carried, his demeanor would have robbed him of all threat.
But threat or no, his intent was fulfilled; he came to stand between Nicu of the Arkosans and the lone Tyrian cerdan. Thinking it strange, after all these years, to interfere in such a basic way. To save the children had been easy; to save the women, simple. But to save the man was fraught with difficulty. Kallandras was of the brotherhood of the Lady, and there were no shadows here.
"Nicu," Elena said, her voice softening. "Please. They will send others—"
"Not a single one of these," Nicu said, pitching his words so they traveled beyond the stranger who stood in his way, "has been capable of stopping us. Not today!"
Elena's voice was not a voice which took to softness well. "And because of your slaughter, they've started to hunt us in earnest. Because you have tried to play Tyrian games, they enmesh us in Tyrian tactics!"
"Then let them! Are we to spend our lives running like beaten dogs? We are Voyani! We are Arkosans!"
The men behind him took up the last word like a cheer.
"You, stranger, get out of the way. This isn't your fight."
"Nicu, he saved the children while you were out killing!"
"Then I'll do my best not to kill him if he gets out of the way."
Kallandras heard the death in the words. Softly, much more gently than Elena was capable of speaking, he said, "This man will face you to protect his fallen. It is an act of honor. I ask you to treat it with honor; this is the Lady's Festival, and mercy is often granted when the Lady holds sway."
"We will treat him with as much mercy," Nicu replied, his voice as bright as his sword, "as they have ever shown us." He lifted his sword. "This is your last warning."
Kallandras shrugged.
The man named Nicu charged.
And behind him, slower to follow, came the rest of the Arkosans. It would be a difficult fight, if he did not wish to kill them—and he did not.
But he did not count on aid, and aid came; Elena of the Arkosans and Ilia of the Arkosans came to stand, blades drawn, on either side of him.
The cerdan stood behind them all, almost forgotten, but he, too, wielded naked swor
d—and well enough, by the look of him.
Nicu stopped ten feet from Kallandras, his jaw unhinged in angry shock. "You cannot mean to do this, Elena!"
She said nothing, which in Kallandras' opinion was wise.
"Ilia, you cannot mean to stand by the side of a known enemy!"
"I stand," Ilia said, from between clenched teeth, "by the side of the Matriarch's heir. She has chosen, Nicu. She would have died saving our future; if she feels this fight is as important as that one, I'll fight it."
Nicu took a step forward. But his men—his men did not. They were suddenly completely ill at ease. He knew it. He started to bark an order; stopped. In this mood, Elena was not one to offer mercy—and there was no way to fight her without some quarter offered. She was deadly. They'd all seen her in action.
And she was as close to the Matriarch and the Matriarch's will as any of them got.
"Nicu," Elena said. "The children are safe. The Arkosans wait. Let us forget this and go back."
"So they can continue to hunt us?"
Ilia spit. "They'll hunt us now," she said, her sharp gaze grazing their bloodied armor. "They'll hunt us all for sure."
"Andreas!" Elena said, her voice a heavy bark.
Almost shamefacedly, all battle lust misplaced, Andreas of the Arkosans stepped forward. "Elena," he said.
"Put up your sword. Come. We've yet to find our shadows and make our way back to our own. Carmello?"
"Nicu led us to victory," he said.
"And I will lead you only back to the Voyanne," Elena replied. "Are you coming?"
He glanced at Nicu's back. Nicu had not moved.
"Nicu?" Carmello stared at his leader's back, trying to get something like an answer from its rigid line.
She called them one by one. With the exception of Carmello, they put up their swords, or sheathed them, the exultancy of their mood broken by hers. In the bright, bright street, only Nicu and Carmello stood apart; the Arkosans came together behind Elena's back—and well away from the Tyrian cerdan. She'd seen to that without being too obvious about it; Kallandras was impressed. Women of her temperament were often devoid of subtlety.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court Page 17