The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5

by Michelle West

  Ramdan stood by her side. She felt the fall of pale silk before she saw it touch her shoulders; he had brought her veil. Of course.

  She lifted hands, exposing the pale scar left there by storm and ship.

  As a young woman, as the wife of the kai Leonne, she could never demean herself as she did now; she took the veil from him and began to wind it about her head and shoulders. Labor of her own hands.

  She had learned this, in the Tor Leonne, in the months of her isolation. Had learned it, in a different way, upon the road that led to the Tor Arkosa. This, this third time, was a blessing, for it was a choice. Her own.

  “Ramdan,” she said quietly. “Tend the Serra Teresa.”

  He bowed.

  “I will have the services of the Clemente serafs. Your services will not be required until we leave Clemente.”

  She did not look at him. Could not. And perhaps he understood why; he was silent in his acquiescence. He had always been silent; she had assumed this to be some part of the natural grace the best of serafs showed.

  But she wondered. She listened to the rustle of fabric as he bent; watched the play of shadow across stone and earth. How much did he know? How much had he always known, that he could offer the exquisite mercy of silence to one who could hear beneath the facade of perfect words?

  Kallandras.

  The master bard of Senniel College looked up. The physicians retained by Clemente were a sedate and quiet group compared to those retained by either Senniel or the Kings of Essalieyan; they chose words with care, and used them with a caution lost upon Northerners used to the caprice—some would say the idiocy—of Northern patients.

  Of all the things that reminded him of the home that Senniel had become, none were as strong as this. He smiled a moment, and lifted a hand as the physician peeled away strips of bloodied fabric. The wound beneath them was ugly, but it was not deep, and it had not yet become infected.

  “I am capable of cleaning and dressing simple wounds,” he said quietly, desiring privacy, “and the same cannot be said for the Clemente cerdan.”

  “The Tor’agar gave his orders, Ser Kallandras.”

  Kallandras nodded, smoothing all evidence of amusement from his face. “I heard them,” he said softly, weighting his words with a hint of compulsion. “But I, too, have my duties. Will you not tend to your fallen?”

  The man hesitated, running fingers just washed through the length of his beard. He desired it; that much was clear. The Clemente forces were not so large that the physicians could be assured of finding no friends among the fallen—and some of those might yet be saved.

  “I will speak with the Tor’agar,” he continued, admiring the man’s tenacity. Few fought such an unrecognized compulsion for as long as he had. “And in truth, I, too, have orders. When you have finished, I ask that you inspect my work.” He lifted the wet cloth in his hands.

  The doctor hesitated again, and then he made his decision. He offered a grim bow, shaded it with just a hint of gratitude and impatience, and was gone.

  Serra Diora. Forgive me my silence; I heard you upon the field, but I was occupied in a dance that could not be interrupted. What has happened?

  Ona Teresa. Two words. But he heard what lay beneath them. He rose as the doctor grew distant.

  A moment, Serra Diora. Where are you?

  I am in the harem.

  And will I be granted access to the wives of the Tor?

  She did not reply. By her silence, he knew she meant him to grant himself that access, were it to be denied him. Frowning, he began to walk.

  Celleriant stood in his way. “Kallandras,” he said quietly.

  “Lord Celleriant.”

  “Ah. Formality, then.”

  “The battle is over,” he replied gravely. “And we are in the South. Here, formality rules all.”

  “Here,” Lord Celleriant replied, not moving, “the word of the Tor—or the Tyr—rules all.”

  “We acknowledge our rulers,” Kallandras said quietly. “But we find elasticity in the rules themselves. I am called,” he added, grave now.

  “I know. I would accompany you.”

  He hesitated.

  The Arianni lord marked that hesitation. But he did not turn; did not leave.

  Kallandras smiled; Lord Celleriant returned the brief play of lips. Neither expression was genuine, and both knew it.

  “This is not a battlefield,” the Arianni lord said quietly.

  “No. And away from the field, I have old ties, and old responsibilities.” He could have pushed his way past Celleriant, and knew it.

  “So, too, do I. But were I in the Summer Court—and perhaps even the Winter, I do not know—I would be honored by your presence.”

  “Until the Queen spoke.”

  “If she were present. I have been among your kind for a short time, but I have begun to learn that this elasticity of which you speak has its . . . charm.”

  “Yes,” he said quietly. And then again, “Yes.”

  Lord Celleriant stepped aside, and when Kallandras began to walk, he fell in beside him; their strides were of a length, and the fall of their steps, to an untrained ear, might have been that of a single man.

  The Tyr’agnate and the Tor’agar stood to one side of the screen that led to the garden; the early gray of dawn had given way to the muted colors—the green and the gray—of the stones; the pale clarity of water, its surface glimmering faintly; the black of hair not yet caught in combs; the pale white of harem faces.

  Kallandras bowed, first to the Tyr, and then to the Tor.

  Ser Alessandro kai di’Clemente shook his head. “Not here, Kallandras of Senniel.”

  Kallandras rose.

  But the kai Clemente felt the need to add words to what was obvious. “Were it not for the aid of the Old Forest, were it not for the presence of Jewel ATerafin and those that serve her, Clemente would now be ruled by an untested Tor in a time of war. You owe me no loyalty,” he continued, his voice perfect, his posture at odds with the dressing his wounds had been given, “and owing nothing, you have risked all.

  “This is the heart of Clemente,” he continued, raising an arm. “And I give you leave to traverse it. Walk with care, but walk freely.”

  Ah. Kallandras glanced at Ser Mareo kai di’Lamberto; his face was cast in stone, gray and cold as the edges of the rocks half hidden by tree and flower.

  In the South, no man hated the North so openly.

  “Were it not for the arrival of the Tyr’agnate, all that you feared might still have come to pass.”

  The Tyr’agnate did not condescend to speak. His hand rested upon the hilt of his sword, and his lips were set in a narrow line. But he did not gainsay what the kai Clemente openly offered.

  “The Matriarch?” Kallandras said quietly.

  “She is well, I believe. She speaks to no one.”

  The Tyr’agnate was silent.

  Would be, Kallandras thought, for some time. He bowed again, the North giving way to the South in the grace of the gesture.

  “My companion?” he asked.

  “He is welcome,” Ser Alessandro replied. But Kallandras heard the doubt the surface of words did not offer. He wondered what truths the legends of Clemente contained. He stepped away from the man who ruled and the man he served, and passed through the garden, following one of the narrow paths hidden among the fronds of plants not native to the Mancorvan plains.

  The women fell silent in ones and twos.

  He did not meet their eyes; did not look at their faces; did not otherwise acknowledge their presence—he understood what freedom within the harem entailed, and he took care, in the sight of the Tor, not to abuse the privilege.

  But he had other reasons.

  And one of them waited, knees pressed into unrolled mat, head bowed against the growing light of sun, the press of day. He approached her with care, and when he stood some ten feet from her, he spoke her name.

  She looked up.

  “Kallandras,” she
whispered.

  He could clearly see the exhaustion that lay against the fine features of her face; could see the circles beneath eyes that were almost always perfect. Her hair was bound, and her posture flawless, but those were the only things she maintained.

  “Serra Diora. I came in haste.”

  Her smile was perfect. Vacant.

  “Ona Teresa is . . . indisposed.”

  He drew closer, his steps light and deliberate. By his side, white shadow, came Lord Celleriant.

  Her expression shifted as she saw him; it was a subtle shift. Nothing as unpleasant as surprise marred her manner.

  “I trust him,” he told her quietly, exposing much of himself in the act. He did not hide what his voice contained, although he was not certain what she would hear of himself in the words.

  She exposed nothing of herself in reply; she nodded, the nod itself so regal it placed a distance between them.

  He accepted it.

  Because beyond her, he could see Ramdan, and beside Ramdan, he could at last see the Serra Teresa. It surprised him, and it should not have; for no other reason would the Serra Diora have summoned him.

  The desert had scoured her clean, he thought, as he surveyed the contours of her expressionless face. She had emerged from the Tor Arkosa a different woman; wiser in some ways. But much more vulnerable. He did not know if she was aware of the change; the young often saw clearly only when their vision was turned outward.

  But if she was aware of it, he wondered if she thought it worth the cost; with life came pain, and she had chosen to live.

  He stepped past her; came face-to-face with Ramdan.

  The seraf was not cerdan. Not Toran, not Tyran. He bore no sword, for serafs were granted no weapons in the Lord’s Dominion. Still, as he could, he stood watch.

  Kallandras offered him a shallow bow. More than this, and he would pass from genuine respect to hollow mockery. Ramdan seemed impervious to all compliment. As the Serra Diora before him, his gaze passed to, and lingered upon, Lord Celleriant.

  And as she had done, he said nothing. Old habits were his by nature, and not by the dint of effort. He stepped aside, and the bard knelt.

  And closed his eyes.

  A healer was summoned, Diora said. Her voice was flat, uninflected in even this intimate a form of communication. It surprised him, and little did. Her power, he thought, was greater than even he had guessed, so many years ago.

  The past held him. If he did not look upon her, he could see the child that she had been when he had first heard the clarity, the purity, of her singing.

  A healer? Here?

  Here.

  He did not ask who; he knew she would offer him nothing. Needed to offer him nothing.

  And the healer said?

  That he cannot help her, Kallandras. Ah, a crack in the armor.

  He nodded.

  Is it true?

  You must judge, Serra Diora. You heard the words he spoke.

  Silence. Then, Years ago, you made a man heal a woman against his will. She was dying. Could you not now call the winds? Could you not grant to Teresa what you granted Lissa en’Marano?

  All distance burned away in the heat of her words, as if it were the paper in the screens of the harem’s doors. He bent, and touched Serra Teresa’s forehead; it was slick with sweat. Her eyes were closed; he opened them with care, and saw that they were wide, unseeing. He knew, then, what she had done.

  The demon, he said quietly.

  The Serra Diora nodded.

  This is beyond the ability of a healer, he told her quietly.

  But why? She is not dead. She is not—yet—dying—

  It is not the body that is injured, Serra Diora. It is the gift. And the gift itself cannot be made whole.

  You know this.

  It is a truth often held by healers. If the fevers had destroyed her body, the healer might tend the injuries; it is done in Averalaan Aramarelas. But . . .

  It would not heal the other damage done.

  No, Na’dio. He paused, and then offered her the only kindness he could. She knew what she did; not by accident did she arrive at this pass. She chose, Serra Diora.

  Celleriant came to kneel beside him; their knees were an inch apart. The Arianni lord touched the Serra Teresa’s face.

  “She is important to you?” he asked quietly.

  He needn’t have asked; he knew the answer.

  But if they were brothers, they still answered the dictates of their nature. Kallandras nodded, exposing weakness with the grace of a man for whom weakness meant little.

  “I do not have your gift, Kallandras,” Celleriant said. “I cannot cloak my words in silence; I cannot make the silence mine. Would you have me speak?”

  He weighed his answer with care.

  But before he could offer it, the Serra Diora did.

  “I would have you speak,” she told him gravely. “And I will bear the responsibility for the words offered, if they return upon the wind.”

  “Among my kin, there is only one who might be of aid, and . . . her aid is costly. Always.”

  Diora’s gaze lingered upon his face, the lines of his cheekbones, the fine, slender point of his jaw; she glanced at the Northern white of his hair, at the silver-gray of his foreign eyes. She knew of whom he spoke. “No. She would accept no such aid, be burdened by no such debt.”

  “She is wise.”

  The Serra turned, but Kallandras reached out; fully extended, his arm brushed the rounded curve of her shoulders. She had drawn them in, as if to ward off a blow.

  “He would not have spoken,” Kallandras told her, “if that was all he had to offer. Be patient, Serra Diora. Understand that he speaks as he can, and as he must; his language and ours are not, and will never be, the same, no matter how similar the words first appear to be.”

  The Arianni lord raised a silver brow: But he nodded gravely. “In all things,” he said, “even this, there is a price. Be it small, be it paid in momentary pain, it must be asked.”

  She did not understand this; he saw it, although her expression did not shift. Perhaps because it did not.

  “Among my kin,” he continued, as if there had been no interruption, and no graceless explanation offered, “there is only one. But we are not healers. That was never our gift. And many are our gifts, Serra. We speak with the wind. We speak with the water. We move—when we can be heard—the very earth. Even fire will dance when those who have the power summon it.

  “But the lesser arts, the mortal arts, are not ours.”

  “And you know of them?”

  “What is left us, in eternity, but study? Yes. Yes, we know of them.”

  She did not ask him how. Nor did Kallandras. They waited, audience, and captive.

  “Why?” she asked at last, daring much.

  “It is part of our oldest histories,” he replied. “You are aware—perhaps?—that mortals have souls. You are not aware of what those souls are. They are some part of the divinity of the gods, captured fragments made flesh. In some mortals, those fragments have power. In the North, they know the names of these powers: bard-born,” he said first, gazing at the Serra and then to Kallandras. “Healer-born. Mage-born. Seer-born. Maker-born.” He paused, and then said quietly, “There were others. Perhaps there still are; the powers granted mortals were often subtle, and they eluded the naming. At the height of the Cities of Man, such power existed in mortals that might challenge the mastery of gods.

  “And among the mortals, in the time of the Cities of Man, there were those who might heal the injury she has sustained.”

  “A healer has come—”

  “A human healer?”

  She nodded.

  “And he could not aid you.”

  Nodded again.

  “Understand that, as with all gifts, some are greater and some lesser. I did not say that all healers were capable of this task; only that some existed—in a world that the ghosts of the Cities remember—who might.” He brought his hands ba
ck to his sides. “But the fevers burn,” he said softly.

  “She will survive the fevers.”

  He raised a delicate brow. “You are not a seer,” he told her gravely.

  “No. But I will not let her go; not that way.”

  His smile was slender. Cold. Nothing about his face suggested kindness. “You are without mercy,” he said softly. “There are those who, blinded, lose all desire for life—and in her fashion, she has become one such. But . . . If you can carry her, and if the fever does not devour her, there may be one who can answer her need. He is not here,” he added softly, “but you have seen him; when you see him again—if ever—you will know.”

  “Who?”

  But the Arianni lord fell silent, and as the silence lengthened, it became clear that he would not speak again.

  Kallandras wondered if she would attempt to force an answer from him; she was weak, spent—and desperate.

  The bard lifted hand and voice both. You carried the Sun Sword, Serra Diora. You carried the Heart of Arkosa. Believe you will carry the Serra Teresa for as long as she must be carried.

  He bowed.

  It was easier, to carry the Sword.

  Yes. This is the price you pay, when you walk among the living and think of things other than death.

  She waited while Kallandras gained his feet; the Arianni lord joined him, moving with so little effort he might have been a seraf. In another world, another Court. She heard the ice in his voice; he did not trouble himself to hide it. He was cruel; there was nothing about his presence that suggested kindness.

  But there was little about Kallandras that did either. She bowed to them both as Ramdan once again knelt by the Serra Teresa’s side.

  “The kai Lamberto is waiting,” Kallandras said softly.

  “I know.” She rose, taking the hand he offered. “Has he spoken with you?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Ah. You are . . . from the North.”

  “Yes. And I see the truth of his disposition without the need of words; he will not be a willing ally, Serra Diora.”

  “No. Nor will he ally himself with the Servants of the Lord of Night.”

  Kallandras’ smile was slender. “Nor that.”

  “Has he come for the Sword?”