That left only Nicu.
Nicu stepped forward.
For just a moment, Kallandras heard Elena's soft breath at his back; heard, in the voice that carried that sigh, relief.
But he saw nothing at all in the face of Nicu of the Arkosa that didn't speak of anger or death; when the Arkosan sword swung out in a sudden thrust to the side, Kallandras was prepared for the movement.
Prepared for everything but the strength of it.
He parried, dancing forward, his blade the shield behind which the surprised Tyrian cerdan might momentarily find shelter.
The blade snapped. The guard did not.
But he felt it, as their blades met: a ringing dissonance. He brought his second weapon up, and for the first time in the city streets, began to fight in earnest.
So, too, did Nicu.
There were cries; there was anger; there was fear; words rushed around them, an audience of a type familiar to Kallandras and ignored by Nicu. But the fight contained them; the imminence of death spurred them on.
Kallandras had been trained to the kill. Nicu of the Arkosans had not. But Nicu wanted it; even—and this was an obvious truth— enjoyed it; he derived strength from it, where Kallandras had been trained to derive purpose.
Steel clashed, rang, sang in the open streets while the Lord looked on. Two men, reach extended by steel, sought an opening, a weakness, an exposure. They used the ground they were given to advantage; they moved, feet as precise as blades, eyes almost unblinking, backs exposed to friend and foe, friend and foe, in a twist that was not unlike a dance.
The Lord watched.
These were men, these two; they fought for his benediction, because like it or not, all fights between men who would claim power in the Dominion of Annagar were fights offered to the Lord, if they were given like this: beneath the open sky, the unfettered sun.
The Arkosans were Voyani; they knew the dangers the sun presaged; they sought shadow. And the Brotherhood served the Lady; they understood the demands of the Lord, but they preferred the subtleties and the intricacies of the Lady's dance; they, too, sought shadow.
But it was the Lord who watched.
The Lord who judged.
Nicu fought with heat, with ire, with an anger whose growth should have hindered him. Kallandras fought coolly, precisely; his senses came into a sharp, sharp focus as he found the five points of his personal style, and leaped lightly from one to the other.
There was, in this fight, nothing that should have reminded him of his youth—but he had not been tested like this since the days of his training. Nicu was good. And Nicu was not of the brotherhood; he was like a boy half formed but skilled.
Or so it seemed to Kallandras.
But there was a rhythm to the fight itself that was awkward, ungainly; it was almost as if Nicu's desire to place his feet in one position was overruled by the whim of the blade he carried; he would set a foot down, or almost, and then lurch to left or right, forward or back. Not capering, not quite; not visibly hesitating. Visibly overbalancing to Kallandras' sensitive eyes.
He did not know, could not be certain, that he was correct— but the Kovaschaü were trained to prize instinct.
Kallandras, born Kallatin, trained by the brotherhood and refined by Senniel College, changed his tactics. He moved in, moved quickly, and shifted the emphasis of his weapon hand randomly, seeking not his enemy but the weapon his enemy wielded.
A different fight. A fight that was taught to the older students, those skilled in seeking a death.
The Lord's gaze was hot; it did not waver.
Neither did Nicu's blade.
As if it were intelligent, as if it could somehow divine Kallandras' intent, it avoided a certain type of parry, a thrust that led too far.
Kallandras began to fight more conservatively; to draw the battle out; to force Nicu to dance, or perhaps to add steps to the dance that had already begun. Nicu was trained to the sun and the road—and the shadows. He had fought in the streets of the Tor Leonne's city, and he had run. To Kallandras' eye, he was tiring, and if the sword itself could aid him in a combat, there was a price to be paid for its weight, its heft, its frenzy.
A price that Kallandras of Senniel knew how to pay.
He heard Elena's voice. He heard Ilia's. He heard the man Elena had called Carmello. Around their cacophony of words, he heard Nicu's breath lose its smoothness; take on the ragged edge of effort.
Soon. Soon. He danced.
Sweat graced them both; sweat, the Lady's blessing at the height of Lord's heat. Words fell away; silence reigned, broken by metal against metal, foot against ground, breath, heavy and light. Soon.
He watched the blade, not the man. The blade rose. The blade caught sunlight as if the light were a weapon it could use—and it was, but not against an assassin of Kallandras' calliber—and the blade fell, but it was met by either the resistance of weapon or the emptiness of air.
Now.
He moved, opening himself up to the weapon's thrust. It was a subtle motion, a misstep, a heartbeat's poor timing. A brother would not have been drawn in by the display of vulnerability, any more than he would willingly have been drawn by a weapon's feint. ,
But Nicu's blade was.
It extended itself for the same amount of time that Kallandras' chest was exposed; pulled itself slightly out of the sure grip of the man who wielded it.
The assassin did the rest, catching it, blade and guard, guard and guard, both pulling and throwing it free in a continuous arc of motion.
Nicu cried out in pain and surprise; Elena cried out in denial.
But Kallandras' weapons, so effortless in their motion, were also effortless in their lack; they stopped, blade casting a thin shadow against the bloodied, sweat-stained fabric of Nicu's shirt.
"Elena," Kallandras said quietly.
She walked, a bit too' quickly, to stand at Nicu's side. "He's my kin." Her voice held multiple things: disgust, relief, anger, shame. Affection. Worry. Protectiveness. It was the last that was strongest.
"He is," Kallandras replied. "And I return him to you. But in return I must ask you two things."
"They are?"
"First: remove the sheath that your—cousin?—" when she nodded, he continued, "is wearing."
"Done." She bent a moment; Nicu slammed into her, knocking her off her feet.
When she rose, her face was red with something other than careless exposure to sun. Her knuckles were white, as white as Lord's light on water; they balled into fists and then into open, stiff palms. Without another word, she slapped Nicu. Hard.
The sound carried. Ilia looked away; the men looked to Elena. When she bent to remove the girded, empty sheath, Nicu was still—but her anger had traveled the length and breadth of her palm to his face, and he seemed to have subsumed it; he was shaking.
She rose.
"Thank you. Now, retrieve the blade that Nicu used, but do not touch blade or guard. Use cloth, use silk."
"You want his weapon?"
"No, Elena of the Arkosa. It may well be his weapon. But this is the favor I ask of you: keep this weapon until the Matriarch returns. It is said that it is difficult to fool Voyani eyes."
"Yes." She paled. He knew, from her sudden sideways glance, that she knew the rest of the saying well. She lifted her hand, as if to ward off the words, but they had been heard.
Ilia said clearly, "But the Voyani heart, never."
"Yes." The bard's voice was almost gentle. "I am a stranger," he said. "I am not kin. But if you would allow it, I would be honored to walk some part of the road in the company of those who know it best."
Elena nodded. Then, unwrapping silken kerchief—blazing red, a thing that was a poor match for her hair, and an even match for her temper—she walked to where the sword had fallen. Bent. Wrapped her hand in the softness of fabric, and still hesitated a moment.
"It is not… stained," she said quietly. Softly.
He did not answer.
She rai
sed the blade, taking its weight as if it were twice what it had been in Nicu's hands. He heard her speak, softly, a benediction and a prayer. The blade made no reply, and as if that were enough, her shoulders took on a straight, even line. She sheathed the sword.
But he noticed that she did not, not even for the sake of convenience, choose to wear what she had recovered.
He turned, then, to the lone Tyrian cerdan who still stood in the city streets. "These men," he said, speaking in the most stilted, the most formal, of Torra's dialects, "will waken soon. They are the Lord's men."
The cerdan said nothing; his face had shuttered, just as a courtesan's does behind the perfection of smile and grace.
"Be aware," the bard continued quietly, "that to serve the Lord of Night—in any guise—is to forsake the Lord."
"You have never served the Lord," the man replied.
"No?" Kallandras looked up into the sun's height. "Perhaps not. But I serve Him now, in a fashion. Remember my words."
The night sky was just that: lit by star and a moon that was nearing its fullness. The Lady's time was coming, and with it the shadows, the length of her sojourn. Outside of the Tor Leonne, the Raverran night was cool, and the insects that occupied the fertile lands that conversely reminded Margret of the desert were louder than she thought she had ever heard them.
The children had come with Tamara and Donatella; they were safe, and for that, for that single thing, Margret was grateful. She said her prayers, and she said them politely; said them with heat and fire, with passion and belief. That much, that much, she owed the Lady.
But she said other things with more heat and more fire, for the children were not the only people to arrive. In ones and twos, in threes and fours, carrying sometimes a thing of value or history and sometimes less than a whole life, her people returned to the wagons that were always kept outside of a clansman's city in case of an emergency like this one.
And they carried word.
Cerdan had been engaged, and the clansmen had died. She'd somehow managed to avoid losing any of her own—how, she wasn't certain, but there was some old Voyani phrase about the Lady's partiality to fools that came fiercely to mind—but the toll taken by clansmen was high. Some of the men came back jubilant, and some of the women took up their high, high spirits.
But Margret knew, instantly knew, what it would mean to her: they would be hunted, now, and thoroughly—while the heart of the Arkosans lay hidden—at best—against the skin of a foreign clanswoman with no ties, no loyalty, and no damned power to protect it until it could find its way home.
Ah.
She said her prayers again, her thanks, her anger, mingling like fire and oil, fire and wood. She poured wine from the skin that she habitually wore at her waist, invoking the Maiden Moon, invoking the wise darkness, and invoking, steadily, the brightness, the Mother Moon, the Lady in Her Power.
Because she needed these things to calm her.
She was going to kill her cousin.
"Margret."
She knew her aunt's voice in any of its multiple guises; recognized this one immediately. It was soft, neutral in a way that Tamara only ever managed when there were strangers about.
She took a deep breath. Looked up at the veil that draped itself lazily across the clarity of the sky above. Lady's veil, lacy stars, open moon. She bowed stiffly; anger made her stiff and graceless, as it did so many of her women.
"Ona Tamara."
"Elena has returned."
She met her aunt's eyes; the tinge and cast of skin beneath precious oil lamp seemed pale. Hard to tell. "Not alone."
"No." Tamara drew a breath. "Nicu and his closest men are with her. Ilia as well. And the stranger I told you about."
"The one who cleared the streets of the eight cerdan—without killing a single one of them?"
She nodded quietly.
"Who is he, Tamara?"
"I think—" she started to answer. Stopped. "I think you'd best talk with Elena."
"I will speak with Elena," Margret replied evenly. "But deal with the stranger until we're finished. He knows where we are," she added.
"He is not a threat to us, Margret."
"Anyone who isn't kin is a threat to us right now."
Tamara's lips compressed into a sharp, thin line. "He saved our future," she pointed out, the words as sharp as the line of her mouth. "We owe him."
Margret shrugged.
Elena stepped out of the shadows at the back of the wagon.
"Were you followed?"
"Hard to say." Elena shrugged. "But Kallandras said no, and I'd trust him to notice."
"Kallandras? He's the kinless one?"
Elena nodded.
"Would you trust him with anything else?"
"Like, say, our location?" Elena's smile was as sharp as her mother's frown had been, but infinitely more attractive. She shrugged. "Yes, but I'm biased."
Which meant at the very least the stranger was pretty. "What's that?"
Elena's face lost its attractive smile; lost, in fact, most of the play around its edges. She glanced up to the Lady's face, down to the grass the wheels had compressed. "It's a sword," she said at last.
Margret snorted. Waited. Waited another minute. "I can see it's a sword. Why are you bringing it to me?"
"It's the sword Nicu was wielding when he—when he was fighting the cerdan in the streets of the Tor Leonne." She paused. "When he was killing them. You have to see his clothing, Margret."
" 'Lena—"
"You didn't see his face. I did. I've seen men burn with the Lord's light, but I've never seen the light look so much like darkness."
"And you think it's this sword?"
"I don't know, I don't know," Elena replied. "But he—the stranger—he told me, he asked me, to bring it to the Matriarch. He said—he said 'it is said that it is difficult to fool Voyani eyes.' "
"But the Voyani heart, never." She was quiet a long, long time. "You haven't drawn the sword."
"No. Not after that."
"Nicu?"
"Angry, but—but he's grown more subdued. He—" She bit her lip. "He disobeyed my order; he tried to kill another clansman in the open street. The stranger stopped him." She took a deep breath.
"You might as well tell me the rest, Elena. How much worse could things be?"
"The stranger was fighting with the Lady's weapons." She paused. "And I think—although only the heart would expose him for certain—that he bears the Lady's marks. The night marks," she added, although it wasn't necessary. She walked over to Margret and placed the sword at her feet. "I'm sorry, Margret."
"You realize," Margret said softly, "what he's done?"
"Nicu? Yes," her cousin replied grimly. "If the heart is in the city, the chance that we will ever find it now has all but vanished.
"But think, Cousin, think: someone placed that weapon in Nicu's hands. Did they know? Did they know that the heart has no body?"
Margret looked up the gentle slopes of a city that led, on all sides, to the plateau and the Lake. "I don't know. I don't know that they care. They have Yollana," she added. "And although I would never have said this to my mother—to any of the Voyani Matriarchs—Yollana, of the four, was the most powerful, the most dangerous."
Elena came to stand beside her cousin; she looped an arm over her shoulder and drew her close. "That," she whispered for her cousin's ears alone, "is why you are Matriarch, Margret, and why I am 'Lena. Because when you say it, just so, I know it for truth, but I would never have placed her above any of my kin."
"Ai, well," her cousin replied, staring into the night sky above the cityscape, wondering if the smell of burning wood and incense, the hushed prayers, the mix of boiling potions and thick unguents that would be used, eventually, to treat the wounded, would be carried by wind to an unseen enemy. "Truth hurts, or it isn't truth."
7th of Scaral, 427 AA
Evereve
She came to the dining hall by following the trail of the lights that w
ere, as Avandar had said, encased in gold. Not encircled by it, but truly encased; the light and the gold had somehow been blended together, and each gave luster and luminosity to the other. In shape, they were simple enough: quartered, flat circles. Along the lines that quartered them, light welled alone.
As Jewel approached, the few nearest her would blaze like a natural fire, passing on the intensity of their brilliance just ahead of where she walked.
She tried, twice, to get lost; the effect was a gradual darkness. The lights simply faded the farther she walked from the path that he had commanded her to take, until she was surrounded by something that felt like night. Like night in the gardens of Terafin.
She wondered how much darker it would get, and wondered, too, if it would make much of a difference. Remembered the talking, moving statues and the old stories her grandmother had told her about wizards who lived in—well, wherever it was this was—and their penchant for preying on the young and the helpless.
Neither of which she was.
Gods, she hated this clothing.
She hated these halls. She hated these lights.
She hated the lack of light.
Following halls lit by light and gold, she realized that she hadn't once seen a window, and she knew, then, exactly how dark it could get. She'd been underground before when the lights were nonexistent. The memory drove her to the light, and the light drove her forward.
The food was not simple.
She was used to simplicity when she dined in her own wing; fancy food, with its complicated courses and the etiquette that governed which men and women of which rank ate which of the dinners—early or late—and how, was a political statement. Eating fancy food was therefore a political act.
Facing Avandar across the length of a table so fine she was almost afraid to pick up the strange utensils that framed her plate for fear of scratching its perfect surface, she didn't wish to descend to politics. Not yet.
She waited.
He waited.
After a moment she realized that this was the act of a host; he couldn't—if he had manners—begin to eat until she had. So much for the crown and the jewel-studded silks; so much for the gold leaf and the gold lights and the platinum inlay across doors so gaudy with artwork and filigree they seemed to be made of something other than wood. She sat back in her chair.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court Page 18