The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5

by Michelle West

  So much truth.

  “Do you want to?”

  “Can it be you do not know?” He turned from her then, releasing her chin, and his hand swept out in a grand gesture, encompassing the ghosts that she could hear, but could not see. “How else am I to escape the past, Lady? How else am I to know peace? Or can you grant me absolution from my sins?”

  “Are they?” she shouted back; the voices, as if sensing the weakness in the Warlord, grew louder, grew frenzied. Or maybe it was her; maybe the frenzy was entirely contained.

  “Are they?”

  “Sins!”

  He stopped then. His eyes were dark and clear.

  Afraid to lose him, she continued. “You’ve walked darker roads than this. You’ve seen the dead before. Why are they stopping you now?”

  “Should they not?” His voice was soft; deceptive. “If I am not mistaken, Lady, you met only one upon your road, and you could not continue. What might you do if faced with them?”

  The curtain fell away. The darkness parted.

  There was almost no distance between Jewel Markess ATerafin and the mob.

  Her heart stopped. For just a moment, it stopped; her mouth was frozen, and her eyelids refused to budge.

  What was the first comfort she offered her den? The past doesn’t matter. But against such a past as this the words were a thin, fragile shield. She couldn’t even lift it; couldn’t offer it to him.

  Even Haerrad, she thought, if he were forced to walk this road, wouldn’t face what Avandar now faced. And Haerrad, she would leave to the wolves with a fierce joy. Could she do any less here? Could she?

  No.

  But she could not let go of his hand.

  Was bitterly aware that had he injured any of hers, she wouldn’t have come here; wouldn’t have touched him; wouldn’t have taken the risk.

  And yet there were men, and women, and children, that he had hurt just as much; was she to forgive—and forget—those deaths, that pain, because he had never done anything to her?

  “You understand,” he said quietly. He started to pull his hand back, and she almost let him go.

  “Yes,” she told him. Because he had seen the truth and she didn’t much feel like lying. “I do. But what you do here won’t bring them back. And it won’t give them peace.”

  “And your own dead?”

  She shook her head. “He only . . . needed me . . . to acknowledge what I’d done. To understand it.”

  “You understood it already.”

  “Yes. And no. I . . . can ignore it. I have, for years. I’ve taken it out once or twice. I’ve used it against The Terafin, the only woman I’ve ever served, and ever want to. But I’m not ruled by it.”

  “But you are, Jewel.”

  Her name. She started to pull him away from the crowd, and he took a step as she pulled.

  “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me how.” Tell me how, she thought, as we get the hell out of here.

  She thought to make a pretense of listening, but she found the words compelling. Almost as if she actually cared what he thought, which was strange, given how much of her adult life had been spent convincing him that she didn’t give a damn.

  “You let his death define you.”

  “Gods, I hope not.”

  The corner of his lip turned up. It wasn’t quite a smile.

  “You let it rule what you will—and will not—do. Haerrad is a danger. Rymark is a danger. At the very least, those two would always be a threat. But while the others play their games of power, familiarize themselves with the assassins and the poisons that they will use in the war for the House, you hide. You caused the one death—and a death, in the end, that no one but you regrets—and having faced it, having paid no other price—”

  “I paid a price,” she said coldly. “And it’s as much of a price as I’m willing—ever—to pay.”

  “And was it not a just death?”

  “No.”

  “Did he not cost you at least one of the family that you so value?”

  “Enough, Avandar.”

  “No. Not enough.”

  “If he had lived, he would have made no difference.”

  “Not to you. But to those who took your place in the twenty-fifth holding? Did you not, by his death, ease their future suffering?”

  She was white now. “It wasn’t a clean death.”

  “No. But in the end, clean or no, death is death.” He turned away again.

  She hadn’t finished. “It makes a difference to me.”

  “Justice, in its rudimentary form, is a wergild. Justice, in the absence of a wergild, is an eye for an eye.”

  “Great. So we all walk around blind.”

  His brow rose as she spit.

  “An eye for an eye,” she continued, “makes me no better than Haerrad.”

  “Ah, but it does. You did not start the hostilities. It can be argued that you finished them.”

  “It’s too easy to argue that,” she snapped back. “It’s just too damn convenient.”

  “You don’t trust yourself.”

  Not a question. She shrugged. Shoved hair out of her eyes. “Yes. Yes I do. And I want to continue to be able to trust myself. I want to know who I am. I want limits. I want rules.”

  “Why?”

  “Because without them, I’m no better than—”

  “Me?”

  “Yes,” she said, softly now. “Yes.” She tugged at his hand.

  “Is superiority so important?”

  “Yes,” she said again. A third time. “Because without trying to achieve it, what’s the point? I know I’m not perfect. I’ll never be perfect. But if I don’t try to be as perfect as I can be, I might as well just be Haerrad.

  “I met Carmenta tonight. But really, he was just me. Some part of me. I don’t want to add to him. Not even for the House. I want . . .”

  “You want what a child wants.”

  “Maybe. But it’s my goal.”

  “And of me?”

  “What?”

  “What do you want of me? If Carmenta was simply some part of you, what of my dead?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want them.”

  “They come with me,” he said quietly.

  Her arm ached. Her hand had gone from warm to something just shy of burning.

  Could she accept it? She closed her eyes.

  “Let’s just start with this,” she said, almost to herself.

  “With what?”

  “I don’t want you to add to them. Can you understand that?”

  “What difference will one or two make?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe none.” She shook her head. “No, that’s not true. It will make a difference to me. No. Don’t say it. You can say it when the village is safe. Just don’t add to them. Don’t—”

  His eyes widened slightly. His hand tightened around hers, and this was a shock: it was the first time he’d responded to her grip. He turned to look back at the dead. “If every single one of them were given permission to unburden themselves,” he said softly, “you would be dead before they finished.” And then he smiled; the smile was bitter. “I . . . begin to understand.”

  “Good. Tell me, because I don’t.”

  But he shook his head, reasserting himself; becoming, again, the man that she had known for a decade. “My apologies, ATerafin.”

  Celleriant was waiting when Jewel turned around. The look on his face was an odd one. “What?” she said, more sharply than she’d intended.

  He rewarded her with the lift of a brow and the faintest of smiles. “I will say no more than this, Lady. But I will say it. Were you to stand against my—against the Winter Queen upon the Winter Road, she would sweep you away without notice. But you forced her to stand a moment, and what she saw when she did, I only begin to see now.” He bowed.

  In the cold of night, she felt a sudden warmth in her cheeks. From just a smile and a few soft words. She was never going to take him
to Court.

  “Was I gone long?”

  “No. Do not fear; the village—and the rendezvous—are well within our means now.”

  “Good. Avandar, you ride.”

  His brow rose.

  “That wasn’t a request.”

  “The road will not hold me captive again; not this eve.”

  “No. It won’t. Because you’ll be on his back.” When he made no move, she snarled. “I already asked him, and he said it was all right. Get on.”

  The second brow rose to join the first.

  Lord Celleriant’s hand tightened slightly, but he made no other move.

  “ATerafin,” Avandar said at last, the word heavy with multiple meanings, “at your command.”

  To her surprise, he climbed upon the back of the Winter King, and the great stag rose. Funny, how tall he seemed when viewed from the perspective of the ground.

  “Okay,” she told them all. “Let’s move.”

  Ser Alessandro saw the lights of Damar before his men left the road. They were many, and he found their presence disturbing; the eastern half of Damar was seldom so well lit. Oil was expensive; tallow expensive; the gathering of wood a distant second to the tilling of fields, the gathering of food.

  Proof that the villagers did, indeed, fear the night, this new darkness. The villagers of Damar were not given to such overt displays of fear—for they lived in the lee of the forest.

  Had lived in it, for all of his life. In Damar, there were stories and legends that predated the Dominion. He had heard some of them, in his time—but not all; they were common stories, and he was not a common man.

  Still, he had stayed for some time in the village, hoping—in his youth—to glean some knowledge of the mysteries that lay beyond the Western bounds of Damar, the borders defined by forest.

  He looked upon it now, and as it approached, as he did, he felt the strength of shadow, the cold of night. In the Eastern half of the village, with its low huts, its wooden homes supported by hidden stone, its flat roofs, he saw only what he chose to see: light, evening light. The fields that lay across the bounds of Damar spilled past them into the plains; the village had no walls. But where the scarecrows stood, the lanterns were also burning; in the drier seasons, this presented risk.

  It was not dry yet.

  No movement in the rough streets of the town distracted him, and his eyes, accustomed to silver moonlight, passed beyond them, tracing their egress. There were stone-bolstered causeways—those that led to the wide bridge, and those that led from the main road; the roads to the West were of necessity small; they were almost never taken. They were certainly not maintained.

  The divide between the East and the West became clearer; the river seemed almost still in the flat of its bed, glittering like twisted blade. The roads, two, seemed all that Damar had in common.

  But they had not been built by the Easterners; they had been built for the use of the West, where the merchants, the craftsmen, and the elders lived.

  As if in defiance of the old forest, Damar’s heart lay upon the Western bank, in the form of a market. It was situated farthest from the shadows and bowers of ancient trees, hugging the banks of the Adane. But as the village had grown, the market had grown, its messy half circle widening in time. Old buildings still rose along the streets of the market center, and the tallest of these were reserved for those who had power or money—as such things were defined by a village. In the foreground of those buildings newer structures lay: stalls, small shops, the fount of contemplation in their center, its carvings almost too ornate for the village itself. He often wondered who had commissioned it, for along its surfaces, forest creatures ran, caught in the act of flight, and in its center, a woman stood, a bow in her pale hands. They called her the Lady.

  But they did not speak of her often, and never to outsiders. He wondered what the Northerners would make of her, should they notice her at all. They might not; it was true that the statue was unusual, but true also that familiarity robbed it of its grace and its unique power. The villagers went about their business in the hours of dawn, and all of the hours that led to dusk, passing before her arrow without noticing that it was near to flight. The merchants were not troubled by her shadow; the farmers cursed and shouted openly before her chiseled gaze as they battled their way to their stalls, their carts and wagons moving poorly in the clogged streets.

  No need for wells, either to the West or the East; the Adane provided all of the water Damar needed.

  And when the banks were swollen in spring, the market stood yards away from its currents. Once, perhaps twice, those stalls had been flooded—but they had never been swept away; they endured much.

  It was in the market that he would find his cousin; he felt certain of it. It was the only place in Damar in which people habitually gathered in great numbers; the only place in which the whole of the village lay visible. Even at night. Perhaps especially at night.

  And on this one? Lights glimmering everywhere? Yes, he thought. There.

  Ser Adelos frowned.

  “Too much light,” Ser Reymos said. Alessandro nodded. “The column?”

  “They’ll clear the forest in ten minutes, Tor’agar.”

  “The archers?”

  “They’ll like the light.”

  “Good. When we arrive at the bridge, call a halt. If there are men in the streets, clear them; make sure they return to the shelter of their homes.”

  And let those homes, he added silently, be shelter, for the eve.

  Quickheart nickered; his forehooves skittered against the ground in a nervous dance. Alessandro leaned over and thumped the horse soundly, hands wide against the curve of dark neck. The words he spoke reached the horse’s ears; they were gentle, even, simple.

  Quickheart was slow to take comfort; a bad sign. Ser Alessandro wondered how the others would fare; few were the horses that were so steady in time of crisis, so inured to the sound and the dangers of battle, as Quickheart.

  “You sense them,” he said quietly. “You sense them, don’t you? Well and good. Be alert, Quickheart. Be alert, and if necessary, be fleet of foot.”

  The village lay before him.

  He followed the road, watching the lights. Something was wrong, but it took him a moment to realize what it was. All of the noise that slowly filled the village came from his men; there were no insect sounds, no night birds. Even the river seemed sluggish and meek as it traveled the course of its bed.

  He saw a lone dog at the village edge.

  Quickheart was so skittish that he reared at the sight of the animal. Alessandro rode the movement, tightening his knees. The dog retreated. Wise, that.

  “Reymos,” Alessandro said, when all four of Quick-heart’s hooves were again upon the ground, “I will travel to the Lady’s shrine.”

  Reymos nodded.

  The Lady’s shrine was in the Eastern half of Damar. It was a small shrine, but even in the glow of moonlight, it looked well-tended. The stones that circled ground hallowed by moonlight were swept and cleaned; the plants that adorned the base of those stones, weeded and arranged with care. He wondered what their colors were; the night made them midnight blue, white, and dark shades of gray. Against the backdrop of night, they formed the perfect colors of mourning.

  They would have need of them, before dawn. Ah.

  He shook his head; raised his hand and swept his eyes clear of the road’s dust. With it went resignation.

  He would not easily surrender to death the men in his care.

  Radann par el’Sol, he thought, with a trace of bitterness, we are all infected by the blood of Lamberto. It might have eased the Radann’s mind, had he spoken so openly—but he had no desire to offer that man any peace.

  The stone bowls were not empty; in fact were so full, Ser Alessandro was reduced to making the offerings in the ground beyond them. He took water and wine from the flasks tied to Quickheart’s saddle. Unstoppering the skins, he offered the whole of their contents to the Lady, pausin
g only a moment to taste what lay within. The water must be sweet, and the wine unsoured; the Lady’s favor, this eve, was important. As he did before no other woman, be she fair and terrible, be she wise and powerful, he now offered his full obeisance to the moon’s bright face. Then, kneeling, he drew dagger and offered the last of the supplications, and the most powerful: his blood. The blood of Tors.

  I am the Lord’s man, Lady, but even the men of the Lord surrender to you the things that are yours. I have followed the old ways. I have honored my mother and your daughter, my kai’s wife: I have offered shelter to the Matriarch of Havalla. I have shed no blood of yours within Sarel: I have caused no blood to be shed that would dishonor your name.

  Guard your people. If you desire blood, accept the offer of my blood in their stead.

  He raised hand to forehead, bent low; his hair grazed ground before his skin touched it. The earth was cold.

  He stayed there for three full breaths, and then he rose. He spoke her name once, aloud. Brought his right arm to his chest in salute before gaining his feet.

  Then he turned and made his way back to Quickheart. Reymos stood to one side of the horse, his face turned toward the village’s many homes.

  He looked back only when Ser Alessandro was almost beside him.

  “I have made the offerings,” Alessandro said quietly. “Gather the Toran; we will ride across the bridge when the men are assembled.”

  “Tor’agar.” Reymos bowed.

  The leaves were thick and the branches, low-lying, seemed to reflect not moonlight, but night; they were dark and cool as they brushed Jewel’s face. She took care not to break or damage them as she pushed them aside. They seemed, to her, living things in a way that not even the great trees in the Common were: rooted in place, they seemed a cold audience, a severe crowd.

  She hated crowds, but she did what she could not to invoke their anger, for the mob lay at the heart of every gathered crowd she’d witnessed.

  As a child—and she would have hated to be so described—she had learned to skirt the edges of such gatherings, slipping hands into pockets, sliding dagger’s edge along leather thongs in order to retrieve the purses that held silver and copper crowns. But she had taken only what the den needed, no more; she had learned to cause no other harm.