“They were kin.”
“And he now seeks war with Lamberto over the death of his cousin?”
“Not war,” his wife said softly. “But his uncle, the kai di’Manelo—”
“The Tor’agnate?”
“Yes. He was outraged by the death of his kai. He has never recovered. He, as my husband did, ventured to the Tor Leonne for the Festival of the Sun. It was not to the Tyr’agnate’s liking.”
Adano, Teresa thought, had turned back.
“Understand, Serra Teresa, that I care for my husband. He has been like a brother to me; he is a kind man. He has made no demands of me, and he has been kind to my wives. There is little that I would not do for him, if he but asked. But I do not wish him to fall into the Lord of Night’s shadow, and I fear—” She dropped her head into her hands. Lifted her face. “You travel with the Havallan Matriarch. She will not be detained, no matter what he might decide to do with the others. You must tell her—” She hesitated now, on the brink of treachery, her pain writ clearly upon the large, grand lines of her open expression.
Black hair clung to the sides of high cheekbones, and trailed the edge of her chin, the long line of her neck; she was lovely in a fashion, and Teresa thought she must have been more than lovely in the full bloom of a distant youth.
“You must tell her that the Tor’agnate Amando kai di’Manelo has allowed the armies of the Tyr’agar free passage through his lands. They rest there now, waiting the orders of Alesso di’Marente.”
Again, her eyes were wide, round. “I would not tell you this. I am aware of what it might cost. But it is said that, in the lands of Manelo, the cattle sicken and die. The horses will not remain upon the plains. And the serafs in the village have been plagued by unexplained diseases and injuries that swords alone cannot explain.”
Teresa bowed her head. Lifted it. “You serve the Lady,” she said softly. “We are, neither of us, warrior-born; the Lady requires no warriors. But she requires bold heart and dedication, and you have that in great measure.
“I thank you, Serra Celina, for your warning, and I thank you for the grace of your hospitality.”
“My husband,” Celina said, “has not yet allowed the armies of Marente passage into Clemente. He is Tor’agar; Amando is Tor’agnate, and he serves another. But . . . he is kin. And there is pressure upon Clemente. In rank, there is no question of superiority; Alessandro is Tor’agar, and in theory the more powerful of the two. But Amando has planned these many years for personal war, and he is well provisioned and well armed. If he threatens war . . .”
“Please, Serra Celina, say no more.”
The past.
Amelia, his Serra, his only wife; their son, Jonas. Their deaths, at a distance, while his hands waged war in the name of a clansman of the High Court. Easy to remember them here, in this spare, harsh room. Easy to remember all of the dead.
Fredero.
The dead.
When the knock came, muffled by the thickness of wood, Marakas looked up. Remembering the past, the gift of the past, and the burden of the responsibility for it. The death of a single man—a single unimportant man—had given him back his life’s gift and his purpose; he had not thought, in truth, that he might be forced to pay for it. Or rather, had thought the debt paid by the life of service that had followed, year after year.
But he did not flinch.
Instead, he drew back, away from the door. “Enter,” he said, pitching his voice so that it might carry.
The door opened, but only slightly; no one obeyed the word that strayed the gray area between command and permission.
He moved toward the door, then, and saw that a seraf knelt inches from its frame. A man, and not one comfortable with these heavy, graceless doors. He looked up as Marakas approached, light in the halls gleaming along the streaked black of his hair.
“The Tor’agar,” he said quietly, “requests your company.”
The halls of the domis were of stone and wood; Marakas was aware that beyond them, in the heart of the complex, a more graceful dwelling resided, for as he followed the seraf, stone gave way to wood, and wood at last to the screens and the sliding walls of a rich man’s home. Flowers adorned wooden tables, wooden pedestals; water lay in gourds from which lily petals hung. And beyond these, in the longest of halls, shields, adorned with the symbol of rank and the colors of clan, rested above the last door. A shield. A shield of fire.
The seraf bowed at once to floor; Marakas glanced at his back, but did not choose to abase himself in a like fashion. He waited, his hands at his sides, his sword’s curve part of the fall of his robes.
The door slid open; the seraf’s hands moved it effortlessly in its recessed track.
Beyond it, seated upon a low dais, was the Tor’agar, Ser Alessandro kai di’Clemente. To either side, as much adornment as threat, stood men who wore the crest of his house: Toran. There were only two.
But there was no low table in this room; no hangings, none of the details which graced a hall that was intended for the hospitality of guests. There was a long, wide door upon the West wall, but it was closed; light came through the opaque cells of heavy paper.
“Radann par el’Sol,” the Tor’agar said, voice smooth and cool. “I bid you welcome to the stronghold of the clan Clemente.”
Marakas bowed, then. When he rose, he said, “Tor’agar, you honor me by your welcome.”
The seraf did not rise. The Toran did not move.
Ser Alessandro’s gaze was bright and dark in the silence.
“Enter,” he said softly. “We have much to discuss.”
There was no way to refuse the command. Nor was Marakas inclined to try. He stepped past the bent back of the unnamed seraf; the door slid shut behind him, punctuation to the decision and flow of movement. The room stretched out, from door to wall, as if it were a long and narrow passage between the heights of the mountain chain to the North of Mancorvo.
He approached the Tor’agar, not as supplicant, and not as ally, nor as penitent. But he was grateful for the absence of the rest of his companions. The Northerners might not understand the significance of this meeting, but the Southerners—the Serra Diora di’Marano—would. He wished to spare her the uncertainty, although he was not at all certain she was a woman who could be spared anything; had she not been among the Arkosans when the Tor Arkosa rose from the empty plains of desert death?
Had she not bent, hems drenched in the blessed waters of the Tor Leonne after the kai el’Sol’s sacrifice, to retrieve the fallen Sun Sword, her arms strong in spite of the terrible weight of grief and loss?
He approached Ser Alessandro, and when he stood ten feet from the dais, he bowed stiffly and allowed himself to kneel. But his back was straight; he placed his hands upon his knees as he lifted his chin. Readiness, not supplication. “Tor’agar. You requested my presence.”
“Indeed. We have matters to discuss; I am certain that you have questions you wish to ask, and I bid you speak freely here.”
Marakas nodded. “We have been grateful for the hospitality offered by the clan Clemente,” he said, neutral now. “The road traveled from Raverra was . . . a road that I would not willingly travel again, and my companions were much in need of rest.”
“I would hear, one day, of that road—although I fear that such a tale would be costly.” He frowned. “But the circumstances that drove you to take such a road are also of interest, for it is a road not suited to those in your care.”
“You refer to the Serra,” he said quietly.
“I do.” He rose; the Toran did not move at all. Marakas marveled at their composure, for the serafs of Clemente did not possess it. “She is of value, par el’Sol.”
He did not reach for Verragar, but he heard the sword’s voice, the whisper of its keening edge.
“I have sworn oath, upon one of the five, to protect her,” Marakas replied.
“From me?”
“From any man who would deter her from her final destination.”<
br />
“Ah. And that? That is the question, is it not, Radann par el’Sol? You have traveled the Terrean in the past,” he added darkly, “on your errands of honor, at the side of Fredero kai el’Sol. Will you travel upon such a path again? You will find the going more difficult with the passing of the kai el’Sol.”
He shrugged. “A man is bound by his oaths,” he said softly.
“Spoken as a clansman who has never seen the High Courts.”
“Or a clansmen who has never valued them highly.” Dangerous words; dangerous words to speak in the presence of a Tor.
But Alessandro smiled. Sharp smile, that, but it transformed his face. “Do you remember me, par el’Sol?”
“I remember you,” Marakas replied softly. “I remember the honor you offered your dead.”
“I bear the scar.”
“And I; not all scars take root in flesh.”
The Tor’agar lifted brow. “You have grown canny with words since last we met.”
“A duty of my position.”
“Indeed. I admit that I am surprised you retain that position; Peder kai el’Sol is not the man that Fredero kai el’Sol was. I would have said that he would have had you replaced with a more political man—a more ambitious one.”
“I am not without ambition.”
“You could not be, and still be par el’Sol. Men serve the Lord.”
“Men,” Marakas replied, taking the first of his great risks, “define the Lord.”
Silence, then. One of the Toran turned to look at his lord, but Ser Alessandro’s gaze was now fixed upon the Radann.
“The Lord,” Alessandro replied, “values victory above all else.”
“Does he? Were that true, the servants of the Lord of Night might have been given his blessing to march across the face of the Dominion.”
“And you speak for the Lord, now?”
“I am Radann. I am par el’Sol. If not me, then who?” He touched the hilt of Verragar. “If victory were the only thing the Lord valued, he would not have intervened in the Leonne wars. He would not have chosen to bless the clan Leonne with the gift of the Sun Sword; he would not have granted, to the Radann who were not blinded by promises of power and Dominion, the use of the five.”
“You make a persuasive argument, par el’Sol. But the clan Leonne is dead; the Sun Sword takes no other master.”
“The clan Leonne,” Marakas replied, “is not yet dead; the line has not yet perished.”
Ser Alessandro’s smile deepened, and Marakas was instantly on his guard.
“And so we come at last to the heart of the matter. The clan Leonne.”
Marakas was silent.
“Where is this scion of Leonne to be found, par el’Sol?”
“I do not, in truth, have the answer to that question.”
“And yet it must be the kai Leonne that you seek.”
“And you, Tor’agar?”
“I seek what is best for the clan Clemente, of course.”
“And the people who are beholden to Clemente?”
“What is best for the clan is best for the people.”
Marakas said nothing, but memory intruded; memory was strong. He weighed his words carefully, understanding their weight and their cost. “When you traveled in the lands claimed by the clan Manelo, would you have made the same claim of the people there?”
Ser Alessandro’s silence was sharp and cold. He walked the distance that divided them—the obvious distance, the one most easily crossed—and came to stand before the par el’Sol. “Clan Manelo,” he said quietly, “was not my clan, and its people, not my people.”
“And it is thus that you abjure responsibility for your actions there?”
“My actions there? Speak plainly, par el’Sol. Speak quickly.”
“You would have seen a boy barely man murdered for a moment of self-indulgence.”
“I saw just that,” Ser Alessandro snapped, losing the perfect control that had defined his presence in this room.
“The kai di’Manelo was no boy,” Marakas snapped back. “He was granted the gift of power by the expedience of birth, and his use of that power—”
Ser Alessandro slapped the Radann par el’Sol.
The blow rang out in the silence.
Marakas rose.
The Toran who stood upon the dais started forward; Ser Alessandro lifted a hand, the silence—and the fury—of the command inherent in the gesture unmistakable.
“I was not born to the High Clans,” Marakas said, forcing a calm into the heat of his words. Fredero would have handled the discussion differently, but Fredero was gone, consumed by flame. “I was born to the low. I know what they suffer at the hands of men who claim power.”
“And it is your duty to save them all?”
“It was my duty to stand by the side of the kai el’Sol. My duty,” he said, “and my honor.”
“Costly honor, that.”
“It may well be. What do you intend, Tor’agar? We are within the bounds of Clemente. I have seen your Toran, and the cerdan that line the walls, and I have little illusion; the safety that we enjoy is entirely at your whim, and that whim has yet to make itself clear.”
“Tell me of duty, par el’Sol. The kai el’Sol himself travels at the side of the Tyr’agar.”
“He does.”
“Surely, then, your duty is clear? Or do you serve the memory of a dead man?”
“It was never his memory that I served,” Marakas replied, standing taller now, the weight that had bowed his shoulders falling away in a moment of clarity. “It was his vision. It was his goal.”
“He would never have served at the side of the General.”
“No. Never. He chose instead to draw the Sun Sword, in the Lake of the Tor Leonne; chose instead to offer proof of the General’s illegitimacy.”
“And now?”
“I am in Mancorvo.”
“You have been in Mancorvo before.”
“I will not leave it until I am called to war.”
“You think that you have not been called to war?” Ser Alessandro laughed. And then, to Marakas’ surprise, he drew his sword.
“Will you challenge me, Tor’agar? Will you ask the Lord to settle what has long lain in the past?”
“Perhaps.” The sword did not glint in the sun’s light; the sun had egress through the opacity of paper, that was all. The lamps were not bright enough to bring the edge of steel to light.
“Then let me draw Verragar, and I will accept the challenge you offer.”
“Draw her, then,” Ser Alessandro said softly. A challenge.
Without hesitation, the Radann par el’Sol complied. Verragar came from the sheath.
But the light that was denied the Tor’agar’s sword shone bright and deep along the runnels and edges of the Radann’s blade, and in the runes etched in steel, words now glowed, painful to look upon.
Marakas’ eyes widened.
But the Tor’agar lowered his blade and lifted a hand to his brow, turning away, exposing his back.
“So,” he said softly. Just that.
Marakas said nothing; he stared instead at what was written upon the blade, and felt its ancient fire with a hunger, and a clarity, that he had forgotten. Had had to forget; a man could not be scoured by such fires and retain their perfect memory, and live in the world.
“There are . . . envoys . . . within my domis,” Ser Alessandro said. “They have come through Manelo from Alesso di’Marente.”
Their eyes met.
“I would not have my people suffer as the people of Manelo have suffered,” Ser Alessandro said. “Whatever else you choose to think of me, believe that.” He paused, and then stared at the unsheathed blade. “And believe that the people of Manelo would not suffer as they do now were it not for the decision of the kai el’Sol a decade past. What he saved, in that village, he saved for death—for it is death that walks those lands.”
“The kai el’Sol cannot be held responsible for the choices that
other men make.”
“But for his own? There were other ways to have resolved the difficulty. Any other man, save perhaps the kai Lamberto, would have in prudence chosen those instead. But the kai el’Sol sought to prove that justice prevails in these lands, and he has had his justice.” The words were bitter, the accusation unadorned. “And what justice will you now offer, par el’Sol?”
“Tell me, Ser Alessandro, that the actions of the kai Manelo were just. Tell me that they were justified.”
“I will not play those games with you.”
“You play them now, and at some risk.”
“Very well. The kai Manelo was young; he was unwise. He made poor choices—but not all of his choices were poor, and he was capable of largesse and compassion in his time. You judge him by the act of a single, ill-considered day.”
“I do not judge him at all. Whatever else I may be, I do not claim to speak with the wind’s voice; he is beyond my judgment. But I learned, that day, that rank alone is no protection against ill-considered action.”
Ser Alessandro said nothing.
“There is no protection for Clemente under the rule of the Lord of Night.”
“And under the rule of the Lord?” He laughed. “Where are your armies, par el’Sol? Where is the strength of the Lord now? In a handful of people who fled the dark forest?”
Marakas par el’Sol straightened. “Yes,” he said softly. “In a handful of men—and women—who dared the forest to arrive in Mancorvo.”
The Toran moved now, restive. Marakas spared them a glance because they had shown the strength of training, the strength of the kai’s purpose. They stood, hands on swords, bereft of direction, waiting.
“The forests,” Ser Alessandro said softly. “Do you know what they mean to Clemente?”
“No, Tor’agar.”
“Do you know what they mean to those who live in the lands they border?”
“No.”
Ser Alessandro’s expression was knife’s edge; sharp. Cold. But at last his shoulders shifted, his chin lowered. “The kai el’Sol would lend no credence to old stories, and older losses. He was the Lord’s man, and such stories were perhaps—to a man raised in the heartland of the Terrean—children’s stories. The tales of old women, the dark musings of Voyani seers.
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