The Riven Shield

by Michelle West

  He bent his head above the head of the child, obscuring her.

  Jewel should have been afraid for the girl; in some way, she was. But she knew that he meant her no harm. As if he could hear what she felt, he lifted his head again.

  “Ariel.”

  The child shook hers in denial, pressing her face so far into him Jewel thought she would disappear. He winced, and she realized that the blood across his chest hadn’t fallen from shoulder or forehead; he was wounded.

  “Yes. I am . . . injured.”

  “And the girl?”

  “Her name is Ariel. She is . . . whole.”

  Jewel took another step.

  She knelt an arm’s length from the girl’s back, aware as she did that she was now within his grasp.

  Aware that she was not in danger, not yet.

  “You are predictable, ATerafin.”

  She lifted her chin. “So?”

  “And defiant.” His smile was gentle. His eyes were cold. “Never put yourself at the mercy of a Kialli lord. Do you understand?”

  She said, without thinking, “Kiriel did.” The moment the words left her lips she stilled; she knew they were true, and knew that in time she would know how. But that time was not now.

  In the silence, he put the warmth of his smile out. “She was put at the mercy of one; it is not the same. Do not be confident of Kiriel’s intentions. She will hold the world in her hand, and she will remember that her power comes not from the Isle, but from the Wastes.”

  The child in his arms whimpered, and he stilled. When he spoke, the edge of Kialli voice was once again hidden.

  “Viandaran is your guide, and he is your protector. I would advise you to choose another, if you have the choice.”

  “Oh?”

  “Everyone that the Warlord has ever cared for has died.”

  “Everyone does,” she said, flippant although his words disturbed her.

  “True. But they die unusually badly, and in my experience the process is profoundly more amusing than the result.

  “No,” he added, “the child cannot understand me. She does not speak Weston. It is by tone alone that she measures my intent. Or yours.”

  “Ariel,” he told her quietly, speaking in a language that sounded like Weston to Jewel, “the others are coming. They hunt me now, and I must elude them by taking a path that . . . you cannot travel.”

  The child tightened her grip. He reached up and pried her fingers—with ease—from their perch around his neck. “What did I tell you?” he said, but he spoke so gently Jewel felt herself listening almost as eagerly as the child did.

  She sniveled. “No fear.”

  “More.”

  “Show no fear.”

  He nodded.

  “She doesn’t need to show it,” Jewel snapped, angry at the compulsion that he must be employing. “You’re demons. You can smell it a mile away.”

  “And how do you know this?” Soft, soft question. He lifted a hand and touched the side of her cheek before she could react. Or withdraw.

  He smiled. “I will give you this information. It will mean nothing to you. But take it to Kiriel and she will understand its import. Tell her that Ishavriel and Etridian have left the North; tell her that Assarak will join them.

  “Tell her that when the battle is joined, Ishavriel intends to bring Anya to the field.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Ah, an intelligent question. I fear that I must leave you to puzzle over it. The Lord’s Fist has been . . . distracted . . . by events within the Court; they cannot afford to risk the wrath of their Lord by remaining distracted.

  “I will send you this child.”

  “What?”

  “I will send her to you.” His smile was thin.

  “Why?”

  “Another question I have no inclination to answer.” He rose; his legs seemed frail enough that they would not support his weight. But they did.

  He pulled the child from the protection of his chest, cradling her a moment in his arms. And then, after a pause that would—in any other man—have been a hesitation, he bent and pressed his lips gently against her brow.

  “Take what you will from this,” he said softly. “But . . .”

  “But?”

  He shook his head. “You are predictable,” he said again. “I could tell you that she hosted the body of a demon that could shed her form at any time, and because she is small and obviously weak, you would take that risk; you would suffer her to live where she might, at any time, have access to you.” He set the child down.

  “I would know her,” Jewel replied coldly. “I would trust myself to know when—and if—something changed.”

  “And if she were still there, beneath Kialli control, Jewel ATerafin, would you allow yourself her kill?” His smile was as cold as her voice had been, but his tone was soft, gentle. Jewel knew this was not for her benefit. “That is what is predictable about you. You have not yet grown bereft of hope. You are not a practical person.”

  “You . . . know nothing about me.”

  “No? I know that you sheltered Kiriel. And I know that you know what she is.”

  “She is one of mine.”

  “Ah.” His eyes, narrowed, were almost entirely black. Jewel did not step back. Would have, but the child was there, and Jewel knew that if she wasn’t speaking, she was listening. Not to words; the words wouldn’t mean much; they had been speaking in Weston. But tone told enough of a story.

  Lord Isladar was aware of this. “She is Jewel ATerafin,” he told the girl gently. “She is from the North. But she will know how to speak, and she will defend you.”

  The child turned to face her. Her skin was darker than most Northern skin, darker than Jewel’s; her hair was dark as well—and straight, or it would have been had it not carried the weight of so much debris. She was bird thin, the way young children are, and her chin was a little too pointed; wherever she’d been, food hadn’t been abundant.

  But it was none of those things that were her weapons. Her eyes, much larger in a child’s face than they would have been in an adult’s, were wide with fear. With loss.

  Above her, Lord Isladar watched, daring Jewel to gainsay him. Daring her to be unpredictable.

  Jewel was already kneeling; the dream had shifted her and she had let it, absorbed by what she could—and could not—see.

  The child’s hair was a thicket; dust and blood and shards of stone were twisted in knotted strands. Her left cheek was swollen, her lip was bleeding, her arms—the forearms that were exposed to light—were scraped and raw. But the blood across the front of her small gown was clearly not her own.

  She was crying.

  Jewel looked up to meet the eyes of Lord Isladar.

  And then she looked beyond his shoulder.

  In the ruins, a fire had started to burn; a fire that needed no wood, no oil, no air. She could see it, contained in the eyes of two who now approached the Kialli lord’s turned back.

  Without thinking, she lunged forward, grabbed the girl; she was almost weightless.

  Blue light flew out in thin, sharp strands, the edge of a hundred blades; a thousand.

  Lord Isladar turned his back upon Jewel and the child. “Go.”

  It was her dream. Hers.

  But she ran.

  The first thing she felt was fingers on her shoulders in the darkness. She cried out, wordless, her hand already moving in the shallow depths of the tent.

  No one touched her when she slept. No one.

  She kicked off silk, rolling, her hands reaching for the dagger that lay by her side.

  Jewel.

  In two syllables, she gained fifteen years; she was able to force herself to be still. “Avandar.”

>   “I apologize for the intrusion. But—”

  Gathering the silks she had thrown off, she sat up, the curve of her knees beneath her chin. “What—what is it? Why are you here?”

  “I had to wake you.”

  “Why?”

  The tent’s flap opened; light from the clear desert sky filtered in, lending gray, dark and pale, to the interior.

  “Wait.” The air was cold. She saw her breath as it hung for a moment in the stillness.

  He stopped. Turned; she could not see his face, although the moonlight made his outline clear.

  “You were there.”

  He was silent.

  “In my dream. You were there.”

  His nod was minimal. It would have been easy to miss, but she watched him as if he were the only thing in the tent. “I owe you an . . . apology. What you saw was no artifact of dream.”

  “The armies?”

  “The shadows. The armies were simple vision.” His chin dropped, the movement slow and deliberate. “We needed that information.”

  “And you woke me because?”

  “Don’t play the fool.”

  “I’m not. I want the information.”

  “You have it. I was thrown out of the dreaming—and not by you.”

  Because I don’t have the skill. She didn’t say it; Avandar was forever lecturing her on her ability to belabor the obvious. “Fair enough.” She smiled thinly. “I’ve been terrified by dreams, but I’ve never been hurt by them.”

  “It’s not pain that concerns me.”

  “No, of course not.”

  She could almost hear Avandar grinding his teeth; it was strangely comforting. “You are vulnerable in the dreaming state,” he said quietly, “because you are not used to guarding against intrusion.”

  “People don’t usually invade my dreams.”

  “I will give you the benefit of the doubt although you haven’t earned it. I will assume that this ignorance is genuine.”

  Comforting.

  He stood. She saw, in the folded loose fist, the magestone that he carried; light, for nightmares. She was not home, but she missed it viscerally. “In the Empire,” he told her, “dreams are significant.”

  “Some dreams.”

  “Indeed. Some dreams.”

  “I . . .”

  “Yes?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you think those are accidental, Jewel?”

  “I haven’t really thought about them much.”

  “No. You wouldn’t. Think now.”

  It didn’t take much time. “No.”

  “Good. Where do you think they come from?”

  “Avandar—I have no idea. If you do, and you want me to know, tell me.”

  He laughed. It was an unexpected sound; deep and lingering. “In my youth, they were the gift—or the curse—of the gods, if there is any differentiating between the two; they were wyrds placed upon the unwary.”

  “And now?”

  “Now?” The laughter ceased. “I do not know. The gods are beyond us; they cannot easily interfere in our affairs.”

  Neither named the god who could; they were silent for a moment. It was cold in the tent; the silks, skewed, had been exposed to night air. Jewel envied Avandar his ability to rise above the weather as if it were an Imperial fashion trend.

  “With skill, and some knowledge of the dreamer, those who were powerful could visit the dreaming; could touch the edges of those who sleep unguarded.

  “What did you see, Jewel?”

  “An old . . . acquaintance. Of Kiriel’s.”

  She heard his brief curse, although it was as minimal as his nod had been, and far less deliberate.

  “Did you speak with this acquaintance?”

  “Some.”

  “Jewel.”

  “Yes, I spoke with him.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Lord Isladar. Of the Shining Court.”

  “The lord who tried to kill you in Averalaan.”

  “And failed. Yes.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing important.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing important. Avandar—”

  He caught her wrist. Silk curtained down the side of her leg. “ATerafin, this is not a game.”

  His hand was warm. She shed it. And rose. “Avandar.”

  “ATerafin?”

  “My clothing. The outer robe. I need it.”

  She could not see his face, but she felt a brief, and fierce, impatience. Light flared in the tent, trapped in the curve of palm that had curled into fist; his fingers, above the light, were a pale, pale red.

  She grabbed the clothing he held out, and donned it, freeing her feet from the bedding that was entwined round her ankles. She struggled with her boots.

  When she rose, she rose swiftly. He knelt at the sole exit, eyes dark, face illuminated in such a way that it seemed more shadow and hollow than flesh.

  Their eyes met.

  She looked away first. She grabbed the sleeping silks, winding them tightly around her shoulder, like a Northerner preparing for an early, deadly snow.

  Avandar’s brow rose a fraction; she could see this because he had moved out of the tent entrance.

  She crawled out as well, gaining her feet clumsily. The river’s voice, never silent, seemed unnaturally loud in the quiet chill of desert evening.

  Unerring, she headed toward the river, aware of his presence as shadow, a thing cast by light.

  The stag joined her, steps light and almost silent in the silvered landscape of night. The Lady’s light, she thought, and then wondered why. The South exerted its influence here, where the North was as distant as dream.

  In the North, there would have been snow.

  It didn’t happen often, but snow in Averalaan was death.

  Death informed her first memory of Teller, his loss an echo of all of her own. She saw him clearly as she walked, a continent between them, huddled in the snow, crouched like an animal that is incapable of hunting to sustain itself in a landscape of wolves and indifference. He’d been so small for his age, so skinny, so utterly terrified; she had approached him with a caution born entirely of her certainty that aggression would startle him, cause him to run. Had approached, hand extended, eyes unblinking, with the overwhelming desire to protect.

  That had defined her, in her early years.

  It defined her now.

  She admitted it as the night, in clarity, resolved itself.

  She walked with purpose; the stag fell in beside her, and Avandar walked slightly to the left. No one spoke; there wasn’t any need for words, and the squabbles that had plagued her den in the streets of the twenty-fifth holding were beneath the companions she had now.

  She missed it.

  At a bend in the river, she found what she had known she would find: a child, in the moonlight, shivering at the touch of desert cold, the absolute absence of warmth.

  The girl looked up when they were close enough to make noise. Her head bobbed from side to side, her eyes wide; she got to her feet, exposed her chest to the night air.

  Her clothing was pale, but in the moonlight, Jewel could see patches of black. Dreams.

  She lifted both of her hands, one to either side; a command. They stopped moving, stag and man, and Jewel thought she could sense, in their silence, a mild unease. This was territory that they had seldom traversed, these two, who could admit without regret all that they had done in the service of gathering their own power.

  She continued on foot, bridging the gap that divided her and the girl.

  She stopped ten feet away.

  She was predictable. Predictable enoug
h, it seemed, that Lord Isladar had chosen to leave the child here, bereft of the clothing that would allow her to survive undetected until morning. Jewel wondered if he had consciously made that decision; if he had decided that the child needed the pathos of utter helplessness in order to influence her decision. No answer came to the silent question; no hint of gift by which she could better understand the creature who was, without a doubt, her enemy.

  All that he had left was this child.

  Why?

  And did it matter?

  The girl’s arms had come up; she cradled them across her body as she stared at Jewel.

  Jewel dropped slowly to one knee, her hands before her, palms exposed to the bite of the cold and the child’s inspection.

  “Ariel,” she said, in Torra.

  The child nodded, as if the name were a question, as if it were something that she only barely had the right to use.

  “Lord Isladar sent you to me.”

  The child nodded again.

  There were so many questions Jewel wanted to ask. Instead, she said, “It’s cold out. I’m not—I’m not like he is. Come; our camp is a mile to the East, and we should return.”

  The child nodded again, but she did not move.

  Jewel rose slowly.

  The girl watched as she approached.

  Watched as she took the silks from around her shoulder and held them out. “Ariel, please. Come here.”

  Wordless, the girl obeyed.

  Jewel wrapped silk around her shoulder, around her slender frame. Then she lifted her right hand.

  The stag came in the silence.

  As Jewel had done, he knelt, his slender legs bearing the whole of his weight. Jewel lifted the child a little too high; she had overestimated her weight.

  She placed her upon the stag’s back, and then took her place behind her, wrapping arms around her to keep her steady.

  “Are you ready?” she whispered into the child’s ear.

  The girl nodded.

  “Me, too.”

  The stag rose, bearing their weight without effort.

  She heard the girl’s breath catch, and she smiled. “He won’t let you fall off,” she told her. “I won’t let you fall off.”

  The stag turned toward the camp.

  Only when he had turned toward the East did he speak.