“Is the Tyr’agar present?”
She nodded, abjuring speech. Ellora suspected this was due to the fact that she could speak no Weston at all; she could answer the question because she recognized the mangled pronunciation of Valedan’s title. It was a significant title in the Dominion.
Be honest, Ellora; it was a significant title in the North as well; for a lesser title, fifty thousand men would not have weathered sea and storm and the hazards of encampments in a land that was not designed around the movement of a large body of men.
Perhaps that was unfair.
The Commanders had gone to some lengths to hide the details of the logistics behind the movement of their armies; they had no reason to suspect that Ramiro di’Callesta was not equally canny, equally reluctant to expose information when it was not critical to do so.
The halls were not as tall as the halls of The Ten; they were poor indeed in comparison to the stone grandeur of Avantari. In the Tor Leonne, stone was in fashion; in the Northern Terrean, wood was the building material of choice. The floors, the walls, the multiple doors with their opaque screens, were all of perfectly oiled wood, and the ceilings, much lower than those to which Ellora had unconsciously become accustomed, were as dark, their beams unmarred and unknotted. There were no obvious hangings, no grand mirrors, no great glass windows; in their place, a flower, a vessel, a stand that contained water bowls or great brass bells, inverted upon cushions.
But here and there, doors had been rolled back upon their grooved resting places; the night, in its falling splendor, had been exposed for the eye to see. The lack of windows brought the sound of nature into the halls with a keen immediacy lacking in the Northern structures of Ellora’s home, and she paused a moment, reflectively, as she gazed out upon the spare vista of the Callestan gardens; their simple standing stones, the movement of slow fountains, the hidden pathways that led into the night.
The seraf waited every time she paused, as if attuned to her movement and her mood.
Not even Ellora’s servants were as skilled as this. She found her ability to accept and admire such a trait disturbing, and forced herself to concentrate on the simple task of walking without pause to their destination.
When they reached the last set of doors, she noted that words had been carved in the wood above them; they were Torra, but old Torra; the ability to glean meaning from their spare strokes was beyond her.
Korama, however, was not saddled by such ignorance. He stopped at the doors, and knelt, bowing before them.
The seraf smiled for the first time, and spoke softly to The Kalakar’s adjutant.
His reply, grave and sober, passed just beneath the range of Ellora’s hearing, a sign of her advancing years. She didn’t need to hear them to understand that he had offered a gesture of respect that was at home in the Dominion. She waited a moment, and then bent stiff knees, mimicking his stance, his sobriety.
It did not particularly suit her, but nothing about this country did.
She rose when he rose, and found that the doors had silently opened before them, revealing the subservience of their posture.
She looked up, gaining her feet with markedly less grace than her adjutant.
Seated about a low, flat Southern table, were men whom she recognized and a woman she did not.
It was the woman that held her attention, for her eyes were keen and sharp, and they seemed to be fixed upon Ellora with an intensity that belied simple curiosity.
Women had no power in their own right in the Dominion. Any schooling at all in the affairs of the South made that clear as the cathedral’s dolorous bells. But power was subtle, in any country—in any House—and she knew that in the case of this woman, power was present.
Having gained her feet, she let her gaze wander.
Ramiro di’Callesta was seated to the right of the Serra, which would make her his wife.
To the left, a young man with a grim expression that almost robbed his face of its likeness to the woman. Son, she thought, and about as interested in an awkward dinner engagement as any Northern patris would be. No, there was more to his expression than sullen boredom; there was a very real resentment there.
She filed it away, but she did not forget it.
To the left of this boy was Valedan, the kai Leonne, the man for whom the course of the war had been planned. He nodded gravely when their eyes met, but he did not speak.
And to Valedan’s left, knees obscured by the flat of an exquisitely spare table, Duarte AKalakar. She lifted her hand, ran three fingers through the pale strands of her hair.
He placed two fingers flat upon the table’s surface. But she noticed the hesitation, subtle and short, before he made that gesture. That stung, but she was old enough not to be surprised that it did.
Ser Anton di’Guivera was seated to the left of Duarte AKalakar; to his left, Fillipo par di’Callesta. Baredan di’Navarre was not present. Perhaps he had not yet arrived.
As she entered the room, she heard the sound of heavy feet at her back; they seemed unnaturally loud, even clumsy, in the stillness of this place, but she recognized them: Devran and Bruce had also arrived.
Devran had chosen to bring his adjutant. Bruce had, characteristically, come alone.
Ramiro waited until Commander Allen had entered the room, and then he unfolded, gaining his feet preternaturally quickly. Ellora saw the hilt of his sword against the mats upon which the fable rested. Wondered if he always dined with sword close to hand, or if he did so in honor of his guests.
The Northern Commanders had chosen to forgo the company of their obvious weapons; in the Kings’ Hall, when The Ten gathered to dine, weapons were by custom forbidden. Not so, it seemed, in the stretch of this spare room.
Ellora took the seat beside the par Callesta; she smiled as he nodded, finding her knees uncomfortable beneath the rest of her weight. She was not a small woman, but she took care not to slouch. Bruce took the seat to her left, placing himself—as he so often did—between herself and Devran. As if the Southerners were not the ones who threatened the meal’s peace.
“Please,” the Serra Amara said, speaking only after her husband had resumed his seat, “forgive me for the state you find our city in.”
“If you feel a need to apologize for the state of this city,” Ellora replied, “I live in terror of the day you choose to grace ours with your presence.” She smiled as she spoke, her Torra heavy with Northern accent, Northern liberty.
The Serra Amara inclined her head gracefully; Ellora suspected that she did little that was not graceful. But her eyes were sharp and clear, and her expression did nothing to dull the edge of intelligence that glinted there.
“You wear black and white,” the Serra said, after a pause filled by the movement of the silent serafs who would bring dinner, course by course, in pretty lacquered boxes, trays, dishes.
“We do.” It was Ellora, again, who replied. “They are the colors of mourning in the Empire.”
“You suffered a loss upon the road?”
This was a test. Ellora had always been a quick study, although she abhorred unannounced tests. “The roads in the Terrean have been well guarded,” she said, careful now, her attention split between the box before her and the woman across the table.
She hadn’t lied to Korama; she was hungry.
But she hadn’t risen to the rank of The Kalakar without learning a little patience.
“We suffered a loss.” She raised her face fully, then, and met the woman’s unblinking stare. “Yours.”
She saw, out of the corner of her eye, the movement of Duarte’s fingers against the tabletop. But she did not give his silent words her full attention; the Serra commanded that.
She had wanted to meet this wife of Callesta.
“Are we not allies?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FOR a moment, the Serra Amara regretted the lack of her veil; it was her shield, her wall, her defense. The moment passed. She met the pale eyes of this woman in men’s c
lothing, with her forward stare, her blunt way of speaking. Her features lacked any delicacy. In the South, she would have been a monstrosity—or a seraf whose only worth was measured in toil in the fields.
But she was more than that, much more.
Do you speak of my loss?
Yes. Clearly, yes. “It is not my place to choose the allies of my clan,” she said softly. But she did not look to her husband; she found herself fascinated by the scarred geography of this woman’s face, and she had no desire to miss the nuance of expression across it. Ramiro would forgive her this lapse; there were none to witness it save the most trusted of his kin and the Northerners themselves.
“I ask your pardon, Serra,” the barbarian woman said, bowing, if such an awkward slouch could be called a bow. “I am of the North; our customs differ.”
“They differ, yes. But in the North, warriors are still valued, are they not?”
“They are not so highly prized.”
“What is prized then, in your Northern City?”
“Food,” the foreign Commander replied, with a smile that was far too wide. “And wine. Song. Art, artistry, the molding of words into phrases that invoke images of beauty. Magery, healing, drama. The Makers. The Kings.”
“In the South, these things are of value, but they are not separate from the way of the warrior.”
“In the North, I fear, the soldier’s life is less poetic, more mundane. Only a few, a very few, make an art of such a task.”
The Serra Amara could see that the eyes of the Commander who sat between the woman and the silent man were unblinking, intent, as he watched the side of this stranger’s face.
Commander Ellora AKalakar spoke slowly, her accent poor, her words deliberate; she chose them with care. With more care the Serra suddenly realized, than she would have swung sword in the middle of a combat that would end in death. There was only one way to measure failure in such a combat.
But this, this life and this death, were subtle, slow, strange. I have misjudged you, Amara thought, watching. Listening. You are not so bold or foolish as you would like to appear.
“Is not your Kings’ Challenge the pinnacle of achievement among your young men?”
The woman who was called The Kalakar almost answered. But although the words hovered on the edge of her lips, they did not emerge. She looked across the table, to the kai Leonne. Instinct.
“The Tyr’agar has participated in the Kings’ Challenge; I confess that I have not. I could not answer your question as truthfully as he.”
Again, Serra Amara knew a moment of surprise. Deft, she thought; deftly done. She had extended herself too far, and the Commander had taken advantage of the question, parrying it, turning it in a direction that could prove awkward.
“Ser Anton di’Guivera, honored guest, has done so twice,” she countered. “And perhaps it is to he that the question should have been posed. Forgive me, Commander.”
“Ser Anton is entirely of the South,” the Commander replied. “And his view on the Challenge is entirely Southern. It would have to be; he is the only man to have won the crown two years in a row.
“No, it is the Tyr’agar whose view on the matter might prove the most enlightening.”
Amara allowed herself a glance at her husband. His expression was serene; composed. He had gone to the North, had witnessed the Challenge. Whatever reply was to be tendered, he did not fear it; did not fear that the question, so artfully deflected, so artfully returned to, would offer offense.
Valedan was quiet for a moment. “To the young,” he said at last, “and to those who feel they have something to prove, winning the crown in the Kings’ Challenge is, as you suggest, the pinnacle of success.” His smile was disarming, and far too young for his title; it suited his face. Amara knew a moment of fear then. “I speak from experience. I would not have entered the Challenge had I not felt I had something to prove.”
She glanced again at her husband’s face, and this time his reaction was—to her—telling. But his expression did not falter. His hands remained in the fold of his lap. She almost told the kai Leonne that such a display of vulnerability was foolish, dangerous. Almost.
And she felt a terrible blur of emotion. This man was not her son, but by his gesture—no matter what motivated it, he shared blood with her husband.
Unaware of this turmoil, Valedan kai di’Leonne continued. “But the men who gain the crown are not revered. They are . . . celebrated. They are feted, for a year. They pass into obscurity unless they make their mark in some other fashion.” He glanced a moment at the perfectly still face of Ser Anton di’Guivera.
Amara’s curiosity was intense. She said nothing.
“Perhaps,” the boy added, with just a hint of self-deprecation, “I speak thus because I . . . did not win that crown. But I will say that it is, in the end, a game. This,” he added quietly, “is real.”
“The kai Leonne suffers from unnatural modesty,” Ser Anton said quietly. “He did not take the crown because he chose to accept a Southern Challenge. The rules of the Kings’ Challenge are Northern; the blood that is shed is not shed in pursuit of death. To accept a . . . different challenge . . . is to disqualify yourself from the tournament.
“Even when I participated, in my . . . younger years . . . it was thus. It is not a game of death, although in odd circumstances, death may occur. It is my belief that, had he chosen to withhold his sword, to deny the challenge offered him, he might have taken the crown.”
“Whose Challenge did he accept?”
Ser Anton smiled quietly. “Mine.”
She was absolutely still. Her grief had robbed her of the presence, the intelligence, of the Tyr’agnate of Callesta; had it not, she might have been apprised of this strange turn of events before the meal.
She glanced again at her husband.
Saw the barest flicker of a smile cross his lips and fade.
“It was,” Ramiro di’Callesta told his wife, “truly enlightening.”
Had they been in private, she might have shown him her displeasure; she might even have raised voice, certainly brow, at the lack of information his words contained.
Had it been so long?
Had she truly been so far from him?
As if he knew what she was feeling—and he was Ramiro; he must—he continued to speak. “There was another presence upon the field; an ancient presence.” Gravity informed his expression, lent weight to his words. “In sun’s light, the shadow of the Lord’s enemy.
“The kai Leonne, in full sight of the delegation from the South, defeated that presence; injured, he then accepted the challenge offered by Ser Anton di’Guivera.”
But they both stand, she wanted to say. They both live.
“He won, Serra. He won the challenge that he accepted. And he chose . . . to accept Ser Anton’s pledge of allegiance in return for the grace of sparing his life.”
There was more. She heard it in the spaces between his spare words. But she accepted ignorance as the cost of her terrible anger, her terrible grief, and she bowed her head.
“Then truly we are honored by his presence.”
“We are,” Ser Anton said. “I have served other men, in my time; I have never served another that I considered to be so worthy.” His words were devoid of the falsity of flattery; he spoke them surely, quietly, as if their truth was self-evident.
Ser Valedan kai di’Leonne looked . . . uncomfortable.
She liked him, then, in a way that she had not when he had taken up her dead son’s sword.
Ser Anton di’Guivera was, in truth, his man. She had heard the rumors, of course. But it had been almost impossible to lend them credence until this moment. She gazed at the impassive face of the Dominion’s living legend; saw the lines sun and wind had carved there deepen for a moment. Understood that he was not a political creature, although he understood politics well enough; he had offered to serve.
He served.
She felt a fierce envy. “Commander Kalakar?”
/>
“Serra.”
“Did you witness this battle?”
“I did.”
A terrible envy. “I envy you,” she said, choosing the starkness of truth as a means of disavowing the weakness.
“Do not envy me, Serra Amara. It is not the only battle I have seen; indeed, it is one of the few that has not scarred me. I am not, I realize, a pretty woman—even by Imperial standards; I live a soldier’s life. It is my duty, and my responsibility, to lead to their deaths men whose wives, mothers, and children lie waiting in the illusion of safety.
“My duty to deliver to them the first word of their loss. Do not envy me.”
She should not have spoken. She knew it. As a Serra of the High Courts, the choice was entirely hers; she could not impulsively speak her mind whenever a stray thought entered it. She was Serra to the Tyr’agnate of Averda. His wife.
His first wife.
“Should I not? For you will be at the side of the fallen; you will hear their last words, offer them their last comfort, ease them in their passage. And I? I will sit. And wait. And know that nothing I am capable of doing will prevent a single death.”
She felt her husband’s hand take hers beneath the thin protection of the table’s flat top. She did not meet the gaze that she knew was waiting. She had no desire to look away.
The barbarian met her eyes, held them across her untouched, cooling meal. After a moment, she nodded her head. “It is always hard to be helpless,” she said gravely. “I envy you your composure and your peace, and perhaps I do so unfairly.”
She did not laugh. She did not cry. She was the Serra Amara. But she desired both composure and peace, for she had none. They had died with her son.
What she had was the empty shell of either; the appearance, the seeming. And it was wasted, upon these foreigners. Her own people would have understood the cost of such perfect control; they would have seen beneath it, acknowledging the mask in respect and admiration for precisely what it was, no more.
She lifted her hands, freeing herself from her husband’s gentle warning. That he had had to offer warning at all must have been a severe disappointment to him. With a smile—a perfect smile, a Serra’s smile—she clapped her hands twice.
The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 Page 31