"And if we pass?"
The old woman did not reply.
"Yollana, Matriarch, if you have seen—"
"Matriarch," Kallandras said, lifting a hand and turning his head slightly to the side.
"What?" Her impatience was almost lovely; it brought an odd fire to her eyes, a vibrancy to her voice, that the high clansmen never showed.
"I believe you have visitors."
"Do I want them?"
"I don't believe," he replied, "that you have much choice." Then the door burst open and a large, bearish man with a burning torch filled its small frame.
The fear left Margret's face as the light from the torch graced it. Her shoulders became a stiff line, her lips an even stiffer one. She paused only to snuff the stout candle that stood on the flat, narrow table.
"Stavos," she said.
"Matriarch."
"He did it." Flat, flat voice. The fear was gone; the uncertainty, the dread. Replacing every hint of emotion in her voice: anger. And the pain that caused it.
The old man bowed his head until it was almost level with the impressive line of his shoulders. After a moment it became clear that that gesture was to be his answer.
"Where is he?"
"We have him."
"Here?"
"Outside the wagon."
"Take me to him."
The old man lifted his head just enough to nod. He turned and walked into the night; she followed, covering the distance between his back and the crowded wagon in two lean strides. She stopped just long enough to say a single word.
"Elena."
Her cousin sheathed the daggers in her hands—but they were there now in the fire of her eyes. She became the Matriarch's shadow as they left the wagon together.
Yollana watched her go. "I pity her," she said to the Northern bard. "For this night's work."
"For a dream, Yollana? You have had darker."
"I have had darker dreams than even her dream of the desert," the Havallan Matriarch replied, staring at the door that the passage of two women had left ajar, "but there is no dream as harsh as what she faces now."
"And that?"
Yollana turned back to him. "If we do not have family, if we cannot trust family, we are nothing. You cannot understand this."
He smiled. And he smiled without allowing the bitterness that took him by surprise to show.
His face was bloody. Nose bent at an odd angle—and bleeding— left eye beginning to swell in a way that would end with black and purple before it faded. His hair was sticky; she saw that as she approached him. He would have bent his head—he struggled to do so, to avoid her glare—but the man at his back held him up by the hair.
Two men held his arms.
"Matriarch," Stavos said.
She did not listen. Instead, she approached Nicu. Her cousin. Her favorite cousin.
Her hand moved before she could stop it; she struck him hard enough that he would have flown back a full body's length had he not been held by either arm.
"How dare you?"
Silence.
No one spoke. No one spoke to stop her, and she knew that no one would. Not even Carmello, Nicu's best friend. But her aunt, Donatella, appeared in night's shadow, carrying a torch she held slightly higher than anyone else's.
Light ran in trails down the older woman's face, flowing from her eyes over the sun-worn lines of her cheeks. She looked ancient, at that moment, and so weathered by wind and sun that she shouldn't have had any water left to cry with. Had she spoken at all, had she given voice to the mute plea her presence made, Margret's anger would have known no bounds; it was sharp with new pain, and new pain was a wild and restless creature.
But she didn't speak. She understood that what Margret did, this night, was not only her right but her duty. A weak Matriarch meant a weak clan.
And Margret now knew that at no time in Voyani history— save at the very foot of the Voyanne itself—could a weak Matriarch be less afforded.
"I forbade you the sword, Nicu. I let you keep your own counsel—against my better judgment—about its origin, but I ordered you to stay away from it."
He lifted his face, and beneath the damage done to it, she could see the willful, and wild, and the petulantly handsome youth that had urged her on in most of her childhood escapades. She wanted to turn away.
"And you've become so good at following orders, you expect the rest of us to fall in line?" he said under his breath.
This time, Stavos struck him before she could.
It was probably a good thing. Her hands were frozen at her sides. He was right, of course; Margret, Nicu, and Elena had spent a lifetime thinking of ways to thwart her mother and survive. When he lifted his head again—or more accurately, when it was lifted for him—new blood ran down the length of his face. He wore undyed cloth, a shirt his mother had made; its laces, undone, were sticky with blood and made a string painting across the canvas of his clothing.
"None of the games we played caused deaths." She knew better than to speak. She didn't have to justify herself to Nicu; in fact, it was entirely the wrong thing to do. She knew it would be costly. But she had never just walked away from an argument with Nicu before, no matter how stupid. No matter who had started it.
"And mine have? It's just a sword, Cousin."
"You will be silent until the Matriarch gives you permission to speak. She is not to be questioned here—you are."
Oh, Stavos, she thought, as she saw the stone that had, just this afternoon, been his warm and expressive face.
"Is it?" She spoke as if Stavos had not, her eyes narrowing. Her arms were across her chest before she realized she'd crossed them. "Where did you get the sword, Nicu?"
He was silent.
"Nicu, you know how this will play out. In the end, if I want the answers, I'll get them. Save me the time."
He said nothing.
"Nicu, am I your enemy?"
At that, his eyes met hers; they were dark, and although at least one would be purpled with bruise for weeks by the look of it, they were still his eyes. It cut her.
"Nicu, answer me. Am I your enemy?"
His gaze dropped. But she saw that the question burned him. She wasn't surprised when he answered it.
"No."
"Then why all of this?"
He glanced to either side.
"Nicu, I gave these men direct orders. I gave you the same." She unlocked her folded arms and forced them to her sides, hooking her thumbs into the perfectly tied folds of her sash. Elena's gift. "Tell me. I let it go, tonight. I shouldn't have. I see that now. Tell me about the sword."
"It was—it was a gift."
"From whom?"
He hung his head again. When he didn't lift it after the passage of a half inch of candle, she nodded at Stavos; grabbing a handful of hair, he lifted Nicu's head for him.
"Nicu, from whom?"
She saw the shame in his face, although it was hard to separate it from the anger. His gaze slid off her, past her, to her left.
To, she knew, Elena.
Pity stabbed her more strongly than anger.
"From someone who knows our history and cares about us more than—" He fell silent. Chose silence. It was the first smart thing he'd done all evening. "He offered me the sword. He said it would make me—make us—strong."
"And you took it."
"Yes."
"And what did you give him in return?"
"Nothing."
She felt it, then. He was telling the truth, yes, but it was the type of truth you told when you were lying. He knew what she wanted him to answer; he chose how to best use the words to thwart her. He wasn't stupid enough to lie to a Matriarch. At least he had that.
"So you accepted a sword from a stranger."
"Yes."
"A sword that didn't see you into adulthood, a sword that hadn't been offered your blood, and your family's name."
He flinched. "Yes."
"You used a boy's sword."
"I used a boy's sword? Maybe, Margret, 1 finally used a man's sword. Maybe that's what this is all about. I used a man's sword. I fought like a man."
"Like a clansman," she countered, cold as desert night. "Is that what you want? The life of a clansman? Sorry, I can't offer you that. I can offer you the death, though.
"Who was the stranger, Nicu?"
"I don't know."
"Who?"
"Damn it, Margret, if you're going to have me killed, kill me, but I'm telling you the truth. I don't know."
She cursed; she had wished for the Arkosan heart, but never so strongly as now. She hadn't her mother's gift or her mother's talent; she hadn't Yollana's famed sight. All she had was herself, her instinct, her experience. Wasn't what she wanted for a situation like this.
It would have to do. She was certain he spoke the truth. "What did he offer you, Nicu?"
"Nothing."
And that, that was not.
"Did you trust him?"
"I didn't think about it."
Truth.
"The sword is off-limits. I won't have my men—any of my men—use a sword that confuses which of the two, sword or man, is the wielder, and which the weapon.
"But I told you that. You didn't listen.
Now, the only drawn breath in the clearing was her own, and she wouldn't have bothered if she hadn't needed the air to speak with. The night was cold, the stars clearer than they had been in years, or so it felt. Her hands were numb and shaking, they'd been balled into fists for so long.
Stavos was watching her. Stavos, uncle, adviser, trusted ally. She saw his face, saw how hard the lines of it were, saw how dark the eyes. She was no expert. She didn't understand people all that well—Hells, she'd grown up with Nicu and spent more than half her life in his company, and she couldn't understand him at all.
But she knew what Stavos expected of her. She knew, then, what the only thing she could do was. It was a test.
And it was an easy test. No trick questions. No stupid games. This was as black and white as it came. She had given Nicu an order, a direct order. A serious one. He had disobeyed it.
He had disobeyed it, risking them all. He had chosen the Lord's ways over the Lady's at a time when the children—their future, their only true future—had not yet made their way out of the Tor Leonne.
What other choice could there be?
"Take him," she said, more to the two men who held Nicu than to Stavos himself. "Leave him in the wagon circle. Wait until after the Lord's height tomorrow." She looked at Nicu, and then away, her gaze like a glancing blow. Hard, that. Harder, though, to look at Donatella. Donatella, whose gaze, tear-marred and wide-eyed though it was, was measure for measure the same as Stavos'.
She could not turn to look at Elena; all she heard was Elena's drawn breath. Long, slow, steady—a sign that she was controlling either her tongue or her temper. Rare enough it might have been worth seeing—on any other night.
A test. Yes. A test of the new Matriarch.
What do you do when your kin won't follow your orders?
Yollana's answer hung in the air between Margret and the cousin she had grown up fighting with. But she was Evallen's daughter; not even at four years old would she have been stupid enough to ask for another Matriarch's help with her family.
She knew what must be done. Knew what her mother would have done, although she wondered bitterly if her mother's orders would ever have been treated so casually.
So stupidly.
She drew a breath as deep, as slow, as Elena's had sounded. And she faced her cousin's bruised face. It wasn't the first time it had looked like this. She couldn't actually remember the first time he'd gotten into a fight; the first time bruises and swelling had taken the edge off his wild, pretty face.
But she remembered fighting him for a place on Uncle Stavos' knee. Remembered fighting him for a doll that had been his mother's birth gift to her. Remembered how fearless he'd been— how stupid—when he'd saved her life from clansmen raiding what they thought was a small Arkosan caravan. They'd taken heads that day.
Nicu had been fourteen.
He'd also been incensed that he wasn't allowed to keep the head he'd taken.
"Margret—" Nicu began.
"Shut up. Just shut up." To her uncle she said, "Bring the whips tomorrow. I'll flog him myself." She turned away.
Because this had been a test, yes, and she knew she had just failed it.
But she couldn't kill Nicu.
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
427 AA
Stone Deepings
"Na'jay," a voice said. Her grandmother's voice. She opened her eyes, or tried to; everything was dark. "Na'jay," the voice said again. The first of the familiar things returned to her: the smell of her grandmother's hair when it hung, long and pale, the soap not quite gone with the jugs of water she'd helped to heat and pour. The second followed quickly: the feel of the rounded swell of legs widened with age beneath her cheek. Her Oma's lap. She opened her eyes.
"I can't see."
"I know, dear," that comforting voice said. "I thought it best. It will pass."
"Duster?"
"She's gone."
"She's not."
"Yes, she is. You have far too much power and far too little knowledge to be traveling this path. Lucky you aren't travelling it alone."
"Avandar—"
"I wasn't talking about him. He was right to be afraid to bring you here. Do you know where you are, Jewel?"
"The Stone Deepings."
"Yes. But do you know what the Deepings are?"
Darkness. Beneath her hands, the chill of hard rock, broken into jagged rubble. Beneath that, smoothed by time or water, the path.
"Would she?"
"Would she what, Jewel?"
"Would she kill me?"
"It's not for me to answer. I never knew her." The old woman heaved the sort of sigh that could be heard across a crowded dining hall. "You didn't kill her, you know."
"I sent her—"
"You sent her because she was the only person you thought could succeed. She failed you." Jewel's face scraped stone as it was unceremoniously dumped off the old woman's lap. "Get up. Start seeing. You've got a long way to walk in this darkness, and you'd better get good at it. I can only take you so far."
Jewel stood in the slow awkward way a person does who's afraid of what she might stumble into while denied sight. "Where's Avandar?"
"Him? Oh, he's frantic. He's shaking you by your shoulders until your teeth chatter, and you're about to wake up."
"I'm sleeping."
"You're dreaming the dreams of Stone Deepings," the old woman said, and her voice was suddenly cool. "You are the key; find the lock before the path kills you."
She was glad she didn't have a mirror. It was one of the vanities that she'd refused herself over time, that leaning toward femininity that seemed either above or beneath her, depending on the time of day, the phase of moon.
"Next time," she said, through teeth that felt as if they'd been chipped, her jaw was so sore, "wait."
"Jewel, I've walked this path. Waiting is tantamount to—"
"Is that my hair? Is that my hair I smell?"
"I… attempted to get your attention by slightly more drastic measures than I generally use."
"You burned my hair?" She got up. Her knees hurt; dampness had settled beneath skin and muscle into the heart of bone. "Oma?"
"She is… gone."
Gone. Just like that. Jewel felt an old twinge: failure. Consequence. Fear. She put it aside. "How long have I been lying here?"
"Long enough." He pronounced each syllable with painful exactness.
"Can't be that long. I'm not hungry."
He offered no reply. Certainly not the reply Carver or Angel would have: exaggerated shock. She was always hungry.
T
he stars were now an aurora of light, shifting in place in a curtain of pale silver. They aren't real, she told herself, but she stopped as if spellbound by their beauty. She probably was.
"Jewel." She shied away from his outstretched hand; he dropped it at once. Old habits, his and hers. "Do you now understand the nature of this path?"
"No. You're telling me you do?"
He didn't answer. Answer enough. Her eyes narrowed until they seemed closed; until the only thing she could see was Avandar.
"Tell me."
His gaze was remote and cool. "I am your domicis, Jewel Markess ATerafin. I owe you nothing more personal than that."
"It isn't what you owe her, Viandaran, but what you will give her, that fascinates the objective observer." Jewel had often heard voices described as velvet before; she had never actually credited the description as anything but lazy poetry. She apologized now to those of bardic bent; the words had a richness and a depth, a soft smoothness of cadence and tone, that made a listener want them to be physical.
Orange light flared like the most beautiful of magework, framing Avandar as if he were a gem and it the setting that would bring out his true worth. Burning and incandescent, he stood in its ethereal heart, fire's gift. Fire.
"Hello, Calliastra." His voice was like ice.
For no reason she could think of, Jewel was afraid. Of the stranger with a voice like one of those exotic drugs that were forbidden for good reason. Of Avandar. Of what she could see in the fires that he wore like the raiment of kings.
That's because you're not a fool; no one of my blood could be a fool. Oma's voice.
Jewel hated to be afraid.
"And the objective observer is?"
"Jewel, stay exactly where you are."
She started to think of something clever to say and lost the words as the objective observer in question stepped into full view. Avandar had been cloaked in fire, the element of the magical protections he chose to summon. But the woman who spoke in a voice that weaker women would have spent fortunes to keep listening to was cloaked in something entirely different. Shadow and darkness, the absence of light.
She had seen something very like it in Kiriel. Very and nothing.
Jewel swallowed. Or half-swallowed; the walls of her throat had dried out entirely and clung together, which had the side effect of making her breath thin and short.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court Page 42