"No," the third voice said, stepping out of the shadows that light also made. Her face was the color of ivory, her hair was pale, and her eyes were like the winter sky. Her crossbow was armed; she held it firmly, with the casual familiarity of one who has used it often.
"I believe," she said softly, "that you have something of value to me."
He met her eyes for a moment.
"I believe," he replied, "that we have grounds for discussion. May we repair to a less public venue?"
"It would be hard to find a less public venue than the Lady's Hall." She lifted a hand, swept it in a wide semicircle. "The Lady's Hall—and the Lord's—are not as venerated as they once were within the Court."
"I… see. Nevertheless, I must ask."
"I thought you might." She put up the crossbow. "Come, then. We were expecting you."
She led them to the North wall. Paused before it. Bowed deeply, the movement so exact it had the feel of ritual. Kallandras was afraid that Mika might try something unwise, but his father's terse command seemed to keep him in check.
The stranger put her hand to the wall. Said three words. The words themselves were perfectly clear and completely meaningless to Kallandras' ear. Magic.
He nodded to himself as the door, unseen and indistinguish-able until that moment from the flat panorama of gold and blue that was sunset over the Menorans, slid open.
"Enter," the woman said quietly, "and accept the hospitality of the Lady."
"Thank you," he replied, releasing the merchant.
Tallos di'Jedera, bleeding from the bolt that he had not yet retrieved from his arm, straightened himself to his full height.
"I believe," Kallandras added, as he turned his back upon them all and walked into the small enclosure, "that you are the woman I've been searching for."
There were no benches here; no chairs; none of the furniture that one associated with a Northern room.
But there were also no mats, no pillows, no low tables and no fans. There were no torches, and no windows, no openings from above through which light might fall.
Yet the room was not dark, and it did not feel empty.
"You take your risk," he said softly to the woman.
"This Festival," she replied gravely, "I felt as if there were little choice. Tallos," she added, speaking to the merchant for the first time, a real note of anger in the calm of her voice.
"I had to be certain," he told her, shrugging. "You know what they've offered for you."
"They?"
"The Tyr'agar has expressed a desire to meet with the Voyani. Or we assume that's what incarceration in the Tor proper means." Tallos shrugged. "Unfortunately, given other disturbing rumors, Maria has elected to remain… remote."
"I see. A wise decision. So, too, have the other Matriarchs, although not one of the three is as well hidden as the Serra."
She raised a brow at the title.
He bowed in return. "Apologies, Matriarch, but were it not for the hand of the sun upon your skin, I would not guess by voice or gesture that you were a Matriarch. There is a roughness that seems to elude you, or a polish that eludes them, but having met the three, I would say the former is the more likely truth."
"I accept your apologies," she said, with the faintest hint of a smile, "but I do not believe they come from any accidental slip. You knew who I was."
"It is a failing of my profession."
"It is a failing of one of your professions." . He froze then.
"My thanks, however; I realize that Tallos could just as easily be dead as wounded at your hands. He required some proof that you were as I said you were."
"And that, Matriarch?"
"Does it matter? You have come to us, and you have passed any test we have set for you. You have a message."
"You do not know what that message is."
"Although it grieves me, no." Truth.
Yet she had known he would come to the market, to Tallos di'Jedera. So she had some of the Matriarch's gift, and the ability to use it.
He slid his hand deftly into his robe; extracted Yollana's message in the curve of his fingers, and withdrew it. "Just this," he said softly.
The poor light in the room flickered erratically as his fingers exposed palm, and the contents of hand.
She was as unlike Elsarre—as unlike a Matriarch—as any woman could be. He saw her skin pale beneath the surface; saw the sudden stillness of chest, heard the extra layer of silence that it provided. She offered him no more. Until she lifted her own hand to take the ring he held out.
The arm trembled. She could not stop it.
"I see," she said softly. "There were rumors that Yollana was taken. Exaggerated?"
"No."
The ring looked so fragile in her hands. She turned it over, and over again. "I have never had such a summons," she said at last, and although her words were as cool as any Serra's might be, beneath the surface her fear lay completely exposed.
"Bard," she said softly.
He raised a brow.
"I see you. I saw Yollana. I saw Elsarre. I saw the face of a young woman, and not the woman I would have… expected of this summons. Evallen of the Arkosa?"
"She perished in the Tor Leonne during the Festival of the Sun."
The Matriarch of Lyserra closed her eyes. "So. It was her."
"You attended the Festival of the Sun?"
"Yes," she said softly.
"Unusual."
"No, not so very unusual as all that."
"Maria—" Tallos began.
She lifted a delicate hand to his lips. Stalled the words that spilled from them with a smile. "Tallos is the kai Jedera."
Tallos looked slightly offended that she felt it necessary to make that clarification. Hard to tell how genuine the expression was.
"And I am his Serra."
The silence that followed the words—his, her husband's, the man he had called son—was the sudden hush of men who expected revelation to bring immediate danger. She, however, continued to speak, allowing them only that briefest of pauses. "You must forgive us our lack of hospitality."
"You—you are the Serra en'Jedera?"
"Even so."
"But you are—"
She smiled. "Yes. And sometime, sometime I will tell you the story. Suffice it to say that it was not my mother, but my mother's sister, who was Matriarch before me. My mother died during a clan raid, and I was… raised by hands other than Voyani for much of my young life. We have compromised much, Ser Jedera and I, in order to maintain what we have built."
The logistics of their life seemed far too complicated to succeed. In spite of himself, he was curious—but not so curious that he could not wait.
"You will see the fruit of that compromise. It is not a well known fact, but among the Matriarchs, it is known. I am not, and I will not be, respected or trusted. Even my own fear my absences.
"But my daughter bears no such taint; she is Voyani, start to finish."
He looked at the ring that she held in her hand. "I fear," he said softly, "that her taint, or her lack, will not be in question. The Festival of the Moon is almost upon us."
Something in his tone caught her by surprise—and that, judging by the chilling of her expression, an unpleasant surprise.
"What did Yollana tell you?"
"She need tell me very little," he replied softly, his gaze sliding off her face to a point beyond her shoulder—and beyond the walls that kept them all hidden. "I have long known that the Festival of the Moon and the High Winter night are the same, and I have been forced to walk the Winter road."
"You have walked the Lady's dark road?" She brought her hands up in a complicated gesture that ended with a single word of denial—a word in an ancient tongue.
"We do, in the end, what we must. That is the way of it. There has never been any other."
"You are not what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"A brother," she said, using the Voyani word for kin, "dark
and fair."
"And I?"
"You are fair and fair; like light upon cold water." Her hand curled into a fist, and then opened. "Take back what you have offered. My answer will be known." She turned to the man she called husband, although the Matriarchs never had husbands, and said, "You must leave."
"I will not leave without you."
"You will."
"Maria—"
"Tallos." Her hand caught his; his eyes narrowed.
"He has frightened you."
"Do not," she said, warning him. "He is messenger, no more."
"Men kill messengers who bear bad tidings."
"Then they are fools. Some tidings can only be carried by men who understand enough of their weight to persevere. You must take our sons and leave the Tor Leonne."
"But I—"
"Now."
"And our daughters?"
"They will take care of themselves."
"Mother!" the man called Mika said, for just that moment sounding like an aggrieved young son. He drew close, as close as Ser Tallos.
"They are not bound by the rules of the clans, my son," she said, lifting a hand to touch his face. "And your sister leads her people. She can no more find safety—even if it's the only intelligent thing to do—than the Tyr'agar; not without loss of face and power."
"But we—"
"Have no such power to lose. I… did not see the danger. But the message Yollana sent can only mean one thing."
"And that?"
"Tallos." There was warning, gentle but unmistakable, in the word.
"Maria—" He caught her face in his hands; she let him. They stood that way in a silence punctuated by the sullen worry of their son. At last, gruffly, he said, "I should never have freed you."
"I'll be careful. I always am."
"Because you are lying to me out of worry, I forgive you," he replied, brushing his fingers very gently across her brow. "We have seen so much together." He kissed her, quickly. "And I want to see more. Aya, Maria, I have never seen you so—"
"Take my sons and leave. Promise me this."
"But I—"
"Promise me, Tallos."
"Or you'll stay?" He chuckled. She did not.
"I have to do this. I cannot guarantee that I will return, and I will not attempt to lie to you again. But if I am to go, to do what must be done—"
"Maria, what must be done?"
Her fingers brushed, and closed, his lips. "I wish to know at least some part of my life and my heart is safe."
He was silent. At last he said, "You, dark brother." He had not turned; had not taken his eyes off the face of his unyielding wife.
But he had called Kallandras by his oldest title. No, not title; a title was a thing that could be walked away from, ignored, repudiated. He had called him by his oldest self, and that self, forsworn, nonetheless answered.
"Yes."
"I know what I must pay you to have a life taken, Lady willing. But what must I pay in order to have a life preserved?"
Kallandras chuckled. It was not a humorous sound. Dry as the summer heat, he said, "We are not preservers of life. If you wish a life spared, bespeak the Lady. Your Serra has told you—I am certain she has told you—that there is no safety."
"If you cannot preserve a life, and can only take it, what must I pay you to take the lives of those who would harm her?"
He started to say, More than you have, but the words fell short of his lips. This man probably had enough. "I am not," he said, "a protector."
He was surprised at how hollow the words sounded to his own ears. Does it come to this?
"Kallandras," she said, speaking a name he had not given her. He didn't ask where she had learned it; he could guess. The tone of her voice, the texture of the name she spoke, made her meaning plain. Lie to him.
Expedience, he understood. Lies, he understood as well. He had accepted the title the merchant used as his own, although he had no right—and had had no right for a majority of his life now—to claim it. And yet.
He bowed. "Inasmuch as I can, I will protect what you value. I do not guarantee success; I cannot make that protection my mission. Compensation is therefore not at issue."
"Maria—"
"Go," she said quietly. "Go to your daughters."
The Widan Cortano di'Alexes was immersed in the ancient studies by which he had made himself a power to be reckoned with. At his side, two of the lesser Widan toiled, poor substitutes for the men whose loyalty and expertise he had lost to demon hands. He was not a man of many words when the subject was anything other than the heart of his studies; he had said his economical farewells by the sides of dead men whose bodies had then become evidence, things to study and dissect in search for proof and truth.
But he had said other things as well; oaths of a sort, and they had been graven in air—as so few things were—by the force of his anger. That anger drove him now, and very, very few of the < Widan were reckless enough to step in its path.
But every congregation has its fools.
What surprised him, as he broke the flow of his concentration with a brief look that should have killed, and in fact might have, had the protective magics surrounding the bearer not been so strong, was the identity of that fool.
Sendari di'Sendari.
Surprise pulled him back from the edge. He returned to the powder he was grinding in a large pestle.
"We have a problem," Sendari said.
"You have a penchant for understatement. How rare, in these times."
Sendari did not answer the irony with any irony of his own. In fact, he did not answer at all.
Cortano continued his work. "Mikalis," he said. "Willem. Leave. Now. Return in no more than an hour, and no less than a quarter of that."
They bowed at once, hands steeped in blood and dust, and obeyed.
"As you have deprived me of necessary labor, you might consider joining me while you speak."
"There have been reports."
Cortano glanced up. "All reports come through me."
"Reports to do with Kialli activity or reports that have filtered back from our spies within the Shining Court, yes."
"And these?"
"They have come to us from the common cerdan in the city below."
Cortano frowned. "Sendari—"
"There is trouble. Fire—and worse—in the streets."
"And worse?"
"I believe the man spoke of the earth cracking, and the ground taking form and shape and swallowing a man whole. His screams, apparently, could still be felt in the vibration of the earth that enveloped him for some time."
"Rogue."
"Indeed."
"Sendari, I warn you—"
"But worse. The Blasphemy is spreading, and I am not certain we have the resources necessary to contain it."
"What blasphemy—speak plainly, Lord scorch you!" He was exhausted. They were all exhausted. That was the only excuse he could give for so plainly misunderstanding what would otherwise have been obvious in Sendari's words.
"It has long been said, and long been believed, that the power of the Sword is the province and the privilege of men, although there is ample proof to the North that the truth is otherwise. We have our own reasons for maintaining these beliefs. They have served us well.
"But the evidence—dramatic and sudden as it is—works against us here. The power of fire and earth, of wind and water, is being wielded by a woman."
"By a—Lady's blood."
"Yes. Anya is in the Tor Leonne."
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
She had told him to leave her alone. More than once. She told him and told him and told him. But he followed her, speaking Southern gibberish, and when she got annoyed and told him to go away, he shouted at her. In the Court, that would have meant his death right there, and no one would have spoken two words for him, except maybe ones that meant he was stupid.
But Anya wasn't stupid; she knew that the rules of the Court— the S
hining, secret Court—were different from the rules of the rest of the world, at least until Allasakar revealed Himself. She had to be careful. She had to be nice.
But when he touched her, when his words, which smelled a pale, ugly green, accompanied the taste of black, she couldn't , remember what nice meant. It was only for a minute or two. It was such a short time. But the ground here was so soft and the people were all so frail it reminded her of—
Of things she hated to be reminded of.
Just a glimpse of her mother's face, her father's stern expression weakened by affection, and both of them useless, helpless— she couldn't think of them here. They might find her. And what would they do if they found her? What would they say?
She remembered to be nice now, but it was too late; the earth was broken and the ground was all black and the rock of the fountain— there had been a fountain, she'd been sitting on the edge of a fountain—had melted beneath her feet, but not before the heat on the inside cracked it and sent splinters flying everywhere.
Blood.
Dead people.
Screaming people.
She didn't like the screaming. It reminded her of other things she didn't want to remember, so she had to make the screaming stop—and when it stopped, when it finally stopped, everything was just too quiet.
Anya a'Cooper stood in the center of a large crater. The sides of the homes that had cramped the old streets had been either splintered or melted depending on how close they'd been to her fire. She could see whole living areas, barren of life; could see blood being absorbed by dirt that never got quite enough moisture.
She knew Lord Ishavriel was going to be angry with her, and she was—just for a moment—afraid.
Which made her angry.
She hadn't come here to kill all these people. But that man shouldn't have touched her. He shouldn't have touched anyone. He shouldn't have shouted.
She didn't like the open sun and the heat and the cloudless sky. But she'd come here looking for something and she didn't want to go home before she found it.
She didn't remember what it was.
As she walked away from the mess, a little child reached up and grabbed the edge of her robe with his three-fingered hand. She started to yank herself free, but stopped as she looked more closely at the face. It was a little girl's face, her dark, long hair sheared by fire's touch, her skin bruised and reddened, her eyes terribly wide. She opened her mouth, but no words came out.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court Page 58