"Is impossible," Avandar replied.
In perfect synchronicity.
"Is it true?" she asked, although she knew the answer.
"Is what true?" Each word as light as mountain air, but not as crisp, not as sharp.
"Did you feed her your wives and your children?"
He shrugged. Offered her silence by way of response.
The stones beneath her feet grew sharper and taller; she concentrated on walking in the shadows at his side as the silence widened the gap between them.
When she had given up on getting an answer—or rather, an answer that involved words, since the texture of his silence was often answer enough—he surprised her.
"Yes."
It wasn't the type of surprise she liked. And what was worse was this: She wasn't certain if she was surprised because she had hoped to believe that Calliastra was lying, or because she had never expected him to willingly surrender that much knowledge about his past and his personal life.
He's got nothing else to lose, she thought, silent in the face of the implications his words made. I've seen the place he called home. I might have been party to enough of a change that he loses it entirely. What is there to hide?
Another voice spoke, so much like her own she would have thought she was continuing her dialogue if her thoughts hadn't been headed in a different direction.
Everything.
She thought it would be impossible to sleep. She fought it for as long as she could. But in the end, stone or no stone, night or no night, goddess or no goddess, she was drawn to a place that Avandar and Calliastra could not—directly—touch. She slept.
"You keep interesting company," a voice said, stretching the word "interesting" so that it sounded feline and unpleasant.
She opened her eyes. Shrugged. "Goddess. Whatever Avandar is. I don't have much say in the company I'm keeping."
A stone paw came down gently on top of her foot. She felt the growing weight of stone. "I wasn't talking about them," the gargoyle said. "I was talking about me."
/ hate cats.
"The Winter King and the Firstborn are enemies," he continued conversationally.
"I listen better when I'm not in pain," she replied, staring pointedly at his very large, very stone paw.
"Everybody else's pain is always more important," the creature replied, rolling its eyes, its face a study in exaggerated disgust. "I was sent to tell you that Calliastra will not help you."
"How surprising."
The big cat hissed.
"She is the enemy of the Lady of the Hunt."
"Oh. And she is?"
A louder hiss. "The Lady," he said. "The Winter Queen. You are not at all the right sort of human. You have bad manners, and you are scrawny and stupid. But I'm not allowed to eat you or even play with you a little bit until the door is open. So pay attention."
She snorted.
Laughed.
"If you want me to help you, offering to make me a cat's toy isn't exactly incentive."
"But we're bored," the creature complained, lolling its massive head in a circle as if easing itself of some hidden tension. "And the Winter King is impatient. We can't have any fun until the Hunt begins."
She started to speak, and found herself flying through the air. The ground at her back was hard, and the flight winded her.
The cat took off, muscles carved in stone fluid beneath stone's surface. She couldn't imagine the enchantment that had created this creature; couldn't imagine the strength it took to move that much weight into that flight.
But she found that she could imagine the effect that much weight would have when it landed; she cried out and rolled as quickly as possible into the lee of a large stalagmite.
That rock snapped like a thin icicle as the cat clipped it and continued to circle. "We don't like being bored," it said, its voice as irritating as ever, its presence a danger now, not an annoyance.
"She will help the enemy," he continued. "Do not speak to her, do not speak of her, and do not give her any part of yourself. You are too valuable."
Right, Jewel thought, until I open that stupid door.
"Very good," her Oma said.
The cat snarled. Her Oma frowned. "Get away, you impudent creature. What she had in mind when she granted permission for your existence, I don't know."
The cat's hiss was different. It didn't land, and Jewel realized that the hesitation had something to do with the presence of her Oma.
"You do know," the cat miauled back.
Her Oma shook her head. "No, I don't. Oh, I know what the effect'll be, but I don't know what she was thinking. I can guarantee she won't be happy with the results." Her Oma's smile took on that spicy, Southern edge. "Of course, neither will you, little cat. She'll play with you the way young boys play with flies."
The cat's hiss was a full-throated sound that was so unnatural Jewel thought it would end in a hacking, awful cough—which was deserved. It didn't.
The cat left, and quickly.
"You just have to know what to say," her Oma explained, rubbing her hands on her apron the way she did after she'd finished any job worth doing. That apron, old and graying, worn and patched, was like a map to the woman's life; a bit of food here, sweat and dust there, dirt, creases from her lap, from the bend in her knees when she worked on her hands. It also wasn't what she had been wearing when she'd first appeared in the mountain pass.
Great. Ghosts need clothing? But she remembered both things clearly, and wondered how much of what she saw was fabricated, was fabric, of that memory.
"Let it go," her Oma said.
"I can't. History makes me what I am."
"Yes. But you know the price of making that history an excuse for what you can be."
"It's not just my own history I'm concerned with," Jewel said softly.
"Of course not. I didn't raise an idiot. But if you can't cleave to the Warlord's shadow, other shadows will devour you. There is no light on this road, and you've chosen to walk it."
"Not much of a choice," another voice—a voice she had never heard before—contributed. She looked up to see a woman sitting in the v made of twin rock formations. There were flowers in her hair; leaves that trailed like willow swatches down the side of her face. "Not much of a choice at all if she wasn't told the nature of the road before the walking."
"Busybodies everywhere," her Oma said, turning just as Jewel had done. "You're not wanted here."
"No?" She stepped onto the path, and where she walked, stone gave way to earth and earth to flowering plant. "You must be Jewel," she said.
"You know me?"
"I didn't. But Calliastra has been calling you, loud and long, and we all have ears to hear with. There hasn't been this much activity on these paths since the gods walked." She smiled, and her smile was beautiful in a way that Calliastra's wasn't. There was nothing to compel in it; nothing to attract; nothing to make a person uncomfortable with the unsaid, unacknowledged sensuality of a first meeting. "I'm Corallonne."
"And Corallonne is?"
"I'm Calliastra's… cousin," the woman said with a smile. "And not all roads lead to where you are going."
"Her road does," Jewel's Oma said emphatically.
"Well, then, I guess that's that," the woman replied lightly. "I never argue with an old woman. I hope to see you again, Jewel, or your kin; the road shouldn't be traveled, but since it will be, let it be traveled well. Take from my garden, or rather, from the garden that will grow where I have ventured, and be comforted."
"I'm not in need of comfort."
"But you are, child." Her smile was reminiscent of Finch's. "Let me tell you something you would know if you were willing to think about it: The Warlord gave his wife and his children— some of them—to Calliastra."
"I already know that, but thanks for the thought."
"It was a death they earned when they attempted to bring about his death, and it was a kinder death than he would have suffered.
"But," she ben
t down, reached out with her hands, and came up carrying round fruits that looked a lot like apples, "all things grow, if they know life and if they are mortal. All things change."
"He's not, strictly speaking, mortal," Jewel's Oma said.
"He is," Corallonne replied. "Mortal through and through, with no ability to acknowledge it anymore, not in a way that counts. You know it, and I know it."
"Mortality, by definition, involves death," her Oma snapped, sharp as vinegar.
Corallonne frowned slightly. "He is not the man he was."
"He has been many men."
"Indeed."
"And he's failed at being all of them."
Corallonne's frown deepened. "And we can judge? What is failure? What is success? There is birth and death, and the Halls of Mandaros, where we—you and I—will never go." She turned to Jewel, who was bound by their words as if her life depended on them, although indeed both women were calm and peaceful. "Judge him if you will, but judge with hope."
"Hope?"
"Where there is damnation," Corallonne said quietly, "there is also redemption."
"Na'dio."
She sat, composed, in a darkness alleviated by nothing but the memory of the moon.
Sleep had proved elusive, but this was common. Uncommon, and more painful, was the reason. She had saved her father's life. Of all deaths, his had been the one she had least desired. But she had desired it. The dead, her dead, spoke with the voice of a wind that scours rock to smooth facelessness.
The screens that slid by day to admit food and the rare, rare visitor would remain closed this night, as they had all nights since the death of the kai el'Sol. But there were some things such doors could not keep out.
"Ona Teresa," she replied, matching words of power with words of power, smoothing the guilt and the anger out of the voice that spoke them. "I had not heard that you had arrived."
"Nor, I fear, will you."
Silence. "You are not staying in the Tor?"
"No."
"But I—"
"I will be here for the Festival of the Moon, child," Serra Teresa replied. "But I will not help to plan it; I will not wear the silken sari or bear the silken fan; I will not wear gold or jade or… emerald. I will have no retainers save one, be protected by no Tyran."
"I… I do not understand."
"It is time, Na'dio, that we leave the Tor Leonne."
Ona Teresa.
She had trusted her aunt as she had trusted no one but her wives. She considered the words, hearing the command inherent in them. Hearing the fear, the wildness beneath their surface.
Her aunt, she thought dispassionately, was worried. Afraid.
"When?"
"When?"
"When do you desire my departure from the Tor?"
"This eve."
"The night of the Festival Moon is one week away, Ona Teresa."
"The night of the Festival Moon will be, I fear, far too late. I am coming for you, Na'dio."
There was only one thing she desired more than she desired the feel of the moon's breath across her upturned face. She had planned, after all. There had been so little else to do.
"Ona Teresa."
"Yes."
"Not tonight."
The silence was long. Full. At last it was broken, and Diora felt her breath return to her in a rush although, until that moment, she hadn't realized she was holding it. "Na'dio, the games played here are—"
"Men's games. Yes, I know. And you have cautioned me against their play."
"Indeed. I will caution you again, but your victory at the Festival of the Sun speaks for itself. If you are not ready to leave, I will accept that. But I must warn you: I am not nearly so certain of my ability as you are of yours. The night of the Festival Moon will be a__difficult night."
"It will be the night," Diora said coolly, "before my wedding."
"Yes. And preparations for that wedding will necessitate the presence of far too many people. Will you not reconsider?"
"I… cannot. I cannot leave the Tor without taking an old friend with me, and she—she will not be ready to leave until that night."
"Na'dio—"
"Will you tell me the price of failure?" Diora said, soft as the moon's light and just as cool.
The pause was as long as the question had been. "No."
"I cannot leave here alone, and my friend is not yet ready to travel. I can make no plans until the Festival itself—and perhaps not even then. It is a moon night, but the traditions and the freedoms of those nights have not been offered to me this year."
"I will wait," the Serra said.
"Thank you, Ona Teresa. I—" She fell into silence. Silence had always been her only protection.
"Yes?"
"I—I should tell you something you may not be aware of." Her aunt waited with the patience of a Marano. "Kallandras of Senniel, Kallandras of the North."
"The North, as the South, prepares for war—and that war, I think, will be the war. If you have not heard, Ser Anton di'Guivera now serves the last of the Leonnes. He will travel South in the boy's company."
"I have heard_little. But I remember the first time I saw Kallandras: It was during the Festival of the Moon, in the year that the Tyr'agar declared war against the Empire." She did not add, because she did not need to, that that declaration, and the loss that had followed in battle, had probably cost the Tyr his life and his line.
"Yes. He is here?"
"I do not know where he is, but he is in the Tor Leonne, or very near it. His voice is strong."
"Thank you, Na'dio. I will bespeak you later. You have planned, and I have planned, and as all plans must, they will require revision."
The silence was long, had been far too long.
"Ona Teresa?"
"Yes, Na'dio?"
"I… must sleep."
"Sleep, then." Pause. "I am here, and I will not leave you behind."
The silence was terrible.
"Ona Teresa?"
"Yes, Na'dio." Not a question.
She could not ask. She could not see the moon, had been forbidden the harem's heart and the comfort of the women who had been her mothers in the absence of the one who had died birthing her, had been given to sunlight only when those responsible for the deaths—the deaths that drove her like the sand-laden storm— decreed it. And she could not ask for what she desired, not quite. Was she not the Serra Diora di'Marano? Was she not her aunt's perfect daughter?
So she chose to ask a different question, and in its fashion, it was just as terrible.
"Did you know?"
The silence, as always, was marked. The Serra Teresa di'Marano understood her meaning at once. "You have never asked me that question."
"No."
"Were you afraid of the answer?"
"Can't you hear it?" Diora asked. "Can't you hear it in my voice?"
"I hear much, Na'dio. Much. But you are distant; perhaps that protects us both. Let me answer. Listen well. Understand that we two cannot lie to each other; our gifts are too strong and our training too poor.
"No. I did not know. I believe your uncle, Ser Adano kai di'Marano, did." Her voice was smooth, cool, distant; perfect in every way. "But I am also certain that he did not understand the whole of the game; it will hurt him much when he finally does."
"And will he?"
"He, of the three of us, comes closest to being a fool. But not, sadly for him, that close. Yes. He will."
Diora's fingers ached. She had always played the harp or the samisen when they spoke in such a fashion, and the absence of music—as comfort and retreat—had created a hunger that was almost as great as the one that had driven her to ask the question of her aunt.
She did not acknowledge it.
She had been taught well, and taught most by the woman to who she spoke.
"Na'dio," that woman said, voice soft as the river silks, and strong as the desert wind. "You must sleep."
"Yes."
Silence. And then,
perhaps because captivity and silence changed all rules, perhaps because her knowledge of voice and word was so much greater than Diora's own, she offered her almost-daughter what the younger woman could never have asked for: she sang.
The sun has gone down, has gone down, my love, Na'dio, Na 'dio child.
And in the cradle of that voice and those words, time unwound in the dim and cramped room. The Serra Diora di'Marano offered her aunt no greater acknowledgment than this: she slept.
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY
When she woke from her sleep, there was fruit in her hands. Round and unblemished, like the ideal of an apple and not the fact. She had not been hungry until she felt the firm curve of fruit against her palms. After which she was, of course, starving. She expected no less. It was what would have happened in a dream, and often did, things turning on an event or a sensation, branching in a way that felt totally natural while you were trapped in it, but made no sense when seen at a safe remove.
That was what had been bothering her, dimly, since she had first seen her Oma. She had not, in fact, felt as if she had truly been awake since she had left the streets of Averalaan.
She felt, more than saw, the grin of a big, gray cat. Not as stuuuupid as you look. But that would be imposssible.
She hated cats.
So: she could doubt reality while hunger gnawed away at all other sensation. She could doubt that she'd seen Duster; that she'd seen her Oma, that she'd seen someone who claimed to be the daughter of darkness and love—liar—but there was one thing she could not, did not, doubt: That Avandar had killed wives. Children. Friends.
He is master here.
Aristos' stone voice, grating and rough, which was fitting given his fate.
He's not my master.
What is he, then ?
He had saved her life more times than she cared to count; enough that she had long since stopped questioning The Terafin's wisdom in choosing Avandar as her domicis.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court Page 47