Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court

by The Shining Court

  The light came down from the ceiling like rain and even the statues flinched at its coming.

  In a brightness that the height of day couldn't match—except for those rare moments when the sea was still enough that it reflected sun in white, rhythmic stretches—stood Avandar Gallais, shorn of crown, shorn of jeweled silk. But it was his voice that was the greatest of comforts: because it was his voice. There was no struggle with dialect, no speaking in tongues—as it were—no dull confusion; for the first time, he was completely himself.

  She had never thought to be so happy to see him.

  Aristos howled in fury; it was all he could do. He lunged for her and his body froze that way, as if a sculptor had taken a fancy to a man in a frenzy, and chiseled him perfectly to reflect that moment of his life and no other. Sanjos did not make the attempt; indeed, the statues that surrounded her became just that: statues. Immobile stone.

  "You are," he said softly, "such a foolish girl. What did you think you were doing?"

  She stood in their center, almost unwilling to move; they had come close enough to her that she'd have to squeeze between the columns their bodies formed, and she didn't want to touch them, to gift them with the intimacy of either her escape or her relief.

  "I was—exploring. This place—"

  "It is my home."

  "Well, that would explain a lot."

  "Jewel—"

  "Could you learn how to use gold in a less tasteful fashion? Could you learn how to cram so many paintings onto a wall they all look cheap and insignificant?"

  "Jewel—"

  "Could you choose a site farther underground? Could you live in a place that denies light more than this?"

  "Jewel—"

  "And these?" she added, waving her hand in a ragged circle, "could you keep anything less safe just wandering around like a rabid dog or ten?"

  He reached the farthest of these human columns, the first statue, a woman. His hands were pale in the falling light as he lifted them, as he stroked the underside of her chin. Illusion or no, the face seemed to rise a finger's breadth, the stone shifting in acknowledgment. His lips moved. Gray light flared around the woman's perfect form as he spoke a single word in a language Jewel didn't understand. She thought it was a name. The statue that had been so touched vanished.

  He made his way to her side by repeating that gesture and adding different syllables beside every statue he reached.

  "Did your grandmother tell you nothing of the dangers of exploring a wizard's home?" he asked, his expression perfectly balanced between annoyance and amusement.

  In reply, she slapped him.

  Later, she would understand that he allowed this, because she'd tried it a dozen times—two—in the years that she'd been forced to suffer his company and she'd never once come close to succeeding.

  But he only allowed it once; the second time she raised her hand, he caught her wrist. Fabric fell along the torn seam of sleeve; the backward S, the serpent mark, caught gold and silver light. His gaze glanced off it and rose to her face. "I will take the punishment I am due, but not more. Come. I have arranged for… suitable attire. The dress is worse than wasted on you; it is actually unattractive. As well as inappropriate."

  He started to move; she didn't. She might have been one of the statues that cursed these halls.

  "Jewel?"

  "Let them go," she said softly.

  "Pardon?"

  "These. Let them go."

  His brows, dark and perfect, did the scrunch and dip that spoke of annoyance. It looked mild, but any expression that actually reached his face wasn't. "Jewel, did you not hear a word Aristos actually said?"

  "You mean you did?"

  He nodded grimly.

  She hit him. Not a slap, not exactly, and not with anything that could be considered warning. A test of reflexes that; he caught her hand with the flat of palm and actually took a step back.

  "You bastard," she said.

  "This may come as a surprise to you, but I arrived as quickly as I could once I understood where you were and what was actually occurring."

  She struggled for control of her wrist, but this time he didn't choose to return it.

  "You haven't answered my question," he said coolly.

  "Yes."

  "Yes?"

  "I heard every word he said. I could probably repeat them, but they'd be so laced with my swearing, they'd lose some of their effect."

  "And you want me to, as you say, let him go?"

  She was silent for a long time. Surrounded by the statues that he hadn't sent wherever to get through to her, she looked up— she had to—and said, "Yes."

  His expression was not so much one of disbelief—although that was definitely there—but exasperation. "I will never understand the North," he said at last. "I will never understand how so insipid and so weak a culture can produce such strength that the Empire has managed to stand against its enemies every single time it has been under siege save perhaps one." He caught her by the arms and lifted her so that her toes were the only thing that anchored her to ground. "These men and women wronged me or failed me. And perhaps," he added, "caused me to fail mine. It was an illuminating discussion, and I thank you for your part in it. We were never so close again, Elyssandra and I, and perhaps that was just. Perhaps she resented my inability to protect her from what I had brought into her home. You did not know her— she was not a weak woman. She would never willingly have asked for anyone's help; it would have demeaned her or broken her. She was… very unlike you." His glance, lost a moment to the statue, made Jewel flinch. "He would have killed you, brutally and inefficiently. Why do you desire his freedom?" With every word, he shook her slightly.

  "It's not his freedom I desire," she said, speaking through clenched teeth to stop the words from wavering. "Just his death."

  "Do not play games with me, Jewel ATerafin. I know you well. You know that for this statue—for all of them—there is only one freedom. You do know that, don't you?"

  She started to lie, and gave up before the words reached her lips. "I suspected."

  "Then why?"

  She took a deep breath and exhaled it, letting go the last of her strength. Aware, as she did, that she was giving herself over to Avandar; aware, as she did, that in some ways she had done no less in the last decade. "I understand the desire to kill someone. I've done it, once or twice, a long time ago. I've done it for vengeance. I've done it for safety. I was younger. I didn't under-stand, then, that the deaths didn't just reflect the dead, they reflected me. Pretty harsh reflection, years later.

  "The fact that they're still trapped here says nothing at all about them, to me; it says everything about you."

  "And what does it say?" he asked her, in a tone of voice that was unusually distant, even for Avandar.

  She looked past him. "I don't know," she said at last.

  "Come, Jewel. You disappoint me. I hear the judgment in your voice; it is, as usual, quite distinct. I assure you my ego is not delicate. I have survived much worse than your poor opinion."

  "Avandar," she said softly, "these people are dressed in a style I've never seen, and I'm willing to bet money that the language they're speaking and the words I'm hearing aren't connected by anything but magic. So I can't know who they are. I don't know what you think they did. But—"

  "Yes?"

  "But I think they've been here for long enough."

  He surprised her. He laughed. "They have been here for a fraction of the time I have been here," he said.

  "I know," she replied, turning away from him as much as she could considering the death grip on both of her arms.

  "Jewel—"

  "I don't want to know any more."

  He stiffened. "That is… unlike you."

  "Not really. I… don't particularly like you, Avandar. I never really have, you've always been such an arrogant bastard." As it was something she said once every two months, and usually with more vehemence, she didn't expect him to be terribly i
mpressed. "But this—this is worse."

  "How?" His voice was never this casual.

  She hesitated because of it.

  "Because I hate power," she said at last, "and I should have known, if I could actually dislike you for this long, that you've got way too much of it."

  "What," he said softly, "is power?"

  "I'm not up for philosophy right now. I'd like my old clothing, and I'd like my old life. I'll live with the lack of ignorance."

  "And you won't demand further answers?"

  Her face was shadowed a moment by his height. "No," she said at last, "not here. Because it would only be in jest, and I'm not—I can't—" she looked at the stone faces of the men and women who formed his bizarre and subservient court, and she shook her head; brown curls fell into her eyes as they always did, but this time—this time she couldn't easily push them away.

  "They should have been dead. That would have been cleanest. They linger here like old wounds, and you let them, you keep them. You don't understand that if you don't let go of them, they don't let go of you." Her eyes were unfocused a moment. "I've heard a lot of people say that hate and love are flip sides of the same coin. I've never believed it. But then again, I've never called love that stupid fanciful obsession that eats away at your insides like Bleaker's worst ale. They wronged you. Maybe that gave you the right to kill them—I don't know. It wouldn't have, back home."

  "No; back 'home,' as you call it, I would be the criminal by my just and justified actions here."

  "You would both be criminals. That's the point. In order to punish them for their crimes against you, you have to be at least as bad as they are—maybe worse." There was a sudden stab of an ugly fear that choked her words.

  "You were," she said, to her great surprise and to her regret. "You were worse then they were." She saw, reflected in the gold and diamonds that were scattered so deliberately—and so unaesthetically—across his chest, the face of a screaming woman, young, and in her features a hint of Aristos' features. A family resemblance. Daughter. She thought it. Knew it for truth.

  "His daughter never did anything to harm you. If you had to rape anyone in revenge, why didn't you just rape him?"

  He dropped her then, as if the words were so contemptible he could no longer bear to hold on to their speaker.

  "There's no point, if it's just about power," she continued. "If all power is is something to be gathered, hoarded and abused, you could be just anyone. Just any mindless, petty—"

  For the first time in all of their years together, Avandar Gallais, the domicis chosen by both The Terafin and Ellerson to serve and protect her, stopped the flow of her words by striking her.

  Her lip split; the single blow was harsh and effective. Without another word he walked away, if anything that fast could be called a walk. By the tingling that crept from elbow to finger, she realized how tight his grip had been.

  They watched her, made of stone and impervious to something as simple as movement. He had not released them; he would not. She knew it. He would not give them leave to speak or attempt to touch her again.

  But she thought she saw, mirrored in the faces that had been turned toward her, the same contempt that Avandar had shown.

  Evening of the 7th of Scaral, 427 AA

  Outskirts of the Tor Leonne

  Kallandras waited in silence.

  Margret had vanished the moment he had crossed the periphery that marked her personal space in this emergency encampment. She returned scant minutes later, her gaze dark and unblinking. It never fell on him; not from the moment that he had laid his burden down upon the night-damp grass.

  Yollana was not accustomed to being anyone's burden, and showed the poor grace that accompanied such a privilege; he had weathered worse in his time, and merely smiled while her complaints grew louder. And they did grow in volume with every mile that separated them from the plateau of the Tor Leonne.

  The woman who came in Margret's wake was a woman Kallandras vaguely recognized; it took him a moment, no more, to place name to face. Donatella, one of the elders—and one of the women who had accompanied the children who had been his first concern. He had grown sentimental with age and time.

  The smile that he cast in upon himself was bitter and merciless. He had grown no such thing, although the temptation to believe it had become more fierce with time. He had rescued the children because in rescuing Voyani children, one incurred the greatest debt, and he would have need of their indebtedness before his sojourn here was done.

  No matter. Donatella brought cloth and water—or something that looked like water at a distance. Upon closer inspection it was slightly thicker, its clarity marred by some sort of leaves, some ground powders, which had sunk to the bottom of the stoppered bottle.

  They were, theoretically, two outsiders, Yollana and he, but Kallandras left theory to the dominion of the magi; he knew there was only one outsider within the inner circle of this encampment, and he, Kallandras of Senniel College. Kallandras of the Lady's brotherhood. He glanced away from where Yollana sat huddled with the other women. Reached down, unsheathed his weapons. They were not the blades he had trained with; nor indeed the blades that he had broken in the streets of the city scant hours ago.

  But they were the blades he had killed with upon the plateau.

  These had been a gift, one of the few he had ever deigned to accept for his services, and they were special to him for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the giver: Meralonne APhaniel, member of the Order of Knowledge, magi, one of the wise.

  Where wise, of course, meant something more rarefied and distant than it did in most other venues.

  "You mean to go South," the mage had said.

  Kallandras had said very little in reply, but that was his way; words were his power, and he used that power sparingly when there was little point. He had no need to be politic in the company of Meralonne, no need to impress; he had no need to influence— and, more to the point, little ability; the member of the Order was strong-willed.

  "Who sends you, Kallandras? Solran? Sioban?"

  Sioban, as Meralonne well knew, was no longer the bardmaster of Senniel. But Kallandras' lips curved up in a smile, a slight one; the moonlight shadowed and illuminated the curves of his face. "Both," he said quietly. "Although it was, quite properly, Solran's dictate."

  "The face of the South is not what it was."

  "That is what I am being sent to determine."

  Silence. Then, "Has… she… come to visit you?"

  She. Evayne a'Nolan. Meralonne's former student, Kallandras' former master in a fashion. She was a wall between them, a mystery; they each guarded their knowledge of her, although neither man loved her well.

  He weighed his words. Shrugged. "Yes."

  "You will find the Kialli there." Not a question.

  "Yes."

  "And you will not take me."

  At that, for the first time, the bard's voice broke in a small swell of laughter; it was light and quick, a thing to ease the ear and heart. "I would take you in an instant, and you know it. But will you leave? Will you leave a half-god on the verge of collapse, a seer with no knowledge of the South and no defense against the Kialli but the strength of her instinct and her inability to ignore it? Will you trust your enemies not to take advantage of the weaknesses that we both see, continually, when we look upon the massing armies?"

  The mage's response was typical of him: He snorted and lit his pipe. Embers curled, orange warmth in the darkness that was already a bit too hot. Smoke wafted up in a breeze that neither man thought to control—but that both men could, should they so choose.

  They had that in common.

  "No," the mage said at last, ringing the air with smoke, with rings that hovered in the serenity of stillness. "You are too clever by half, Kallandras, that's your problem."

  "I thought," the bard replied, with exaggerated politeness, "my problem was that I was far too talkative?"

  "Well, that, too. In fact
, at the wrong times you are far too quiet." The pipe's glow lit the underside of a perfectly smooth chin; Meralonne was one of the few male members of the magi who chose to go beardless, although his hair was long and fine, the envy of young women who rarely had a chance to meet the mage face-to-face, and probably with good reason.

  "You did not call me here to tell me what was wrong with me? I assure you, Sioban would be somewhat annoyed to see you poaching in her preserve." Wry grin there.

  "No," the mage said, his smile lost to the stem of pipe, and then to the night itself. "I did not call you for that."

  There was something in his voice that caught Kallandras' attention. It was meant to; Meralonne was among the most careful of men, and he could hide behind the mask of words more easily than most could hide behind impenetrable fortress walls.

  "You think you have something that presents a danger."

  "Very good, bard. Master bard. Yes, I do."

  "And you wish me to defuse it?"

  "In a manner of speaking." He rose, cast a stray glance to the full moon, the high moon, and then Said simply, "Follow."

  It was a request, of sorts, but one did not lightly ignore the request of the magi, and besides, Kallandras was stirred with a rare curiosity.

  Beneath skies so Southern even the breeze felt foreign, free a moment from the memory of the mage's familiar tower, he stared at the blades, wondering about them, about their use, about their manufacture. Wondering just how much Meralonne knew, and how much of that knowledge he had chosen to disclose.

  "You will never be fool enough or young enough again to enter the Kings' Challenge," the mage said, "and I will not warn you not to carry these weapons there because I see no need to insult your intelligence."

  "That," Kallandras had replied gravely, "has never stopped a member of the magi in the history of the Order that I'm aware of."

  Meralonne lifted his lamp. It was odd; a man of his power could light a room without thinking and keep it lit without noticing the strain. But in this tower, in these rooms—or perhaps only for this particular visitor—Meralonne APhaniel chose older, quieter ways. The oil lamp, glassed in and darkened with use. The shadows it cast shifted slightly as the mage said, "Take the daggers."