The Riven Shield

by Michelle West

  Jewel, who is she?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  5th of Corvil, 427 AA

  City of Amar, Terrean of Mancorvo

  SER Mareo kai di’Lamberto was surrounded by his Tyran. When he walked within the confines of his domis, they attended him; it was both their honor and their right.

  He walked now, but did not linger; his steps were quick and forceful. He came from the walls; his cerdan were stationed both at the base and at their heights, and they gazed out upon the vast plains of the Terrean. The city was old; beyond the walls, serafs tilled and farmed the soil, and beyond them, horses ran; he treasured both, but he knew that they would find no protection within Amar unless he wished to forgo the late planting.

  War was in the air. The face of the Lord was bright and without mercy.

  The armies of the North were gathered East of the borders that separated Mancorvo from Averda. And the armies of the traitorous General, Alesso di’Marente, were gathered to the South. He knew that they must meet, these two armies; what he could not yet be certain of was where.

  Those men that could be spared, he had summoned, and they had begun to arrive in number. The granaries were full, but would not remain so.

  He had no intention of allowing Mancorvo to be turned into a battlefield.

  The Tyran parted when they reached the gates, and he strode between their perfect ranks, shorn of expression.

  Ser Adano kai di’Marano waited, Toran at a respectful distance. His horse was, to Mareo’s eye, nearly exhausted.

  And a man of Adano’s caliber did not push his horse to ground without cause.

  The Tor’agar bowed; the Tyr’agnate returned that bow. The Court was in the nuance of those gestures.

  “My pardon, Tyr’agnate,” Ser Adano said, speaking with the formal precision of a man raised to power. “I have come on a simple errand, and I did not mean to disturb you.”

  “The visit of a liege is never a disturbance, Ser Adano. I bid your men enter my city.”

  The Tor’agar bowed again, and when he rose, his men bowed. “We are grateful for the hospitality you offer,” Ser Adano said. He reached into his sash, and took from it the harbinger of war: a small tube, edged with the stylized runes of a war-message. They met perfectly; it was not clear to the Tyr’agnate’s eye where the break in the tube was.

  But it had not been breached.

  Possibly could not be, if it came from the General Alesso di’Marente.

  “You did not speak with the General,” Ser Mareo said, clutching the tube in his sword hand.

  “No.”

  “And his armies?”

  “I did not think it wise to cross the border,” Adano replied. “But I have received word that the kai Lorenza and the kai Garrardi have joined the General’s forces in Raverra.”

  “The kai Garrardi?”

  Ser Adano’s face was a careful composition, an artful one. Ser Mareo kai di’Lamberto did not envy him. But he did not distrust him either, although perhaps this was not entirely wise.

  “His forces were last to arrive, if our information was correct. But he arrived with numbers.”

  The Tyr’ agnate nodded quietly. “So. It is Raverra, Sorgassa, and Oerta.”

  And in the North, he thought, although he did not speak, Mancorvo and Averda. The two Terreans to suffer loss of land in the previous war. He was not a fool; he knew that the presence of Oerta and Sorgassa, upon that field implied much, for the gathering of an army was not a casual task.

  “Ser Adano,” he said quietly, “I will retire for the moment. My serafs will attend you; please remain in Amar for the next few days.”

  Adano bowed again, and then smiled. “Our horses thank you, Tyr’agnate.”

  He dismissed his Tyran when he approached the harem. They were accustomed to this; they left only two men at the closed door that led to the most sheltered quarters in the domis. On all sides, halls and rooms formed a boundary which could not be easily crossed; the Lord’s light came to the women of the harem through the open gardens and courtyards the harem boasted. If the domis itself were ever breached by enemy forces, the last place they would reach would be the harem—and if they did, it would signal the end of the clan Lamberto and its ancient rule.

  Not all domis were constructed in this fashion, and perhaps, at the dawn of the clan’s preeminence, the inner chambers and courtyards were used differently. No one living, however, remembered that day, and history had conveniently forgotten this single element; the present was all that existed.

  And the present contained the Serra Donna en’Lamberto and her wives. Ser Mareo kai di’Lamberto had sons and daughters who still dwelled within the harem walls, and he was quietly proud of them; they were a source of strength and amusement, a source of chaotic beauty and unparalleled noise. Two, Marianna and Karina, had been born to the same wife on the same day, the youngest of his kin. They were now four years of age.

  But as he walked the halls, he did not hear their voices, and he felt a pang of disappointment. He could not, of course, ask after them; not when a missive of war awaited his attention. It was not what men did, in the Dominion.

  Yet Donna, Na’donna, knew; she often had the children with her when he arrived, and let them play for some small time before dismissing them. Two days ago, Marianna had insisted that she was strong enough to carry his sword, and he had shamelessly indulged her by allowing her to make the attempt. He had not, however, unsheathed the blade—which was not to her liking, although in the end the scabbard had bruised both her feet when she dropped it.

  This is why women are not given swords, he told her, with mock severity. That truth was in the words as well would become evident with time; already Karina had begun to develop a keen interest in the saris and the jewelry that adorned his wives. But Marianna was stubborn and willful.

  With effort—and it was an effort—he could pretend that he saw no similarities to another young girl, another willful, indulged, and sharp-tongued woman.

  Certainly his daughter was lovelier than his serpent of a sister.

  He shook himself; neither daughter nor sister was present; only his Serra waited, seated before a low, flat table, the flowers in her hair still wet from the vessels that had, moments ago, contained them, the water cups empty and evenly placed upon the flat, wooden surface.

  She offered him a graceful bow as he entered the room, and he accepted the obeisance simply because he loved the shape of her back and the effortless way she exposed it.

  She rose without leave or permission. He met her eyes and noticed that lines were worn into the corners, and shadows into the hollows. Not age, not exactly, but care.

  But her smile was genuine, made warmer by the open affection and pride with which she now graced him. She lifted an arm, trailing silk, and caught the long, long stem of an artisan’s water vessel; it was too slender, too perfectly proportioned, to be called a jug.

  He nodded and she poured sweet water. Lifting his cup, she held it out in both hands, almost bowing again as she offered it to him.

  He took it quickly, and settled himself into the cushions which lay at the table’s base.

  She waited. There was no obvious anxiety in her silence; just peace. It was a blessed peace, and he was old enough now to desire little else. War should have to wait, he thought.

  But he set the cup upon the table and placed beside it the tube that Ser Adano kai di’Marano had traveled in such haste to deliver.

  She saw it.

  “My eyes,” she said quietly, “are not what they once were, my husband. Who sends word?”

  He allowed her both the lie and the curiosity.

  “The General Alesso di’Marente,” he replied. He did not grant Ser Alesso either the use of the title he claimed as his own, or the use of the clan name; they were not—yet—e
arned.

  And they would not be, until the disposition of both Mancorvo and Averda were decided.

  She was neutral now, carefully concealing all hope and all fear.

  He understood, as he watched her, why the children were absent; if he desired to show no weakness in front of this woman, she desired, in equal measure, to leave the world of their brief childhood undisturbed. He loved her, then.

  But he had always loved her, clansman’s daughter.

  “I have not read it,” he said, when the silence gradually grew loud.

  She started to rise, but he lifted a hand, and she sank back onto her knees.

  “No, Na’donna. This is your world, not mine; I am honored that you have welcomed me, time and again, across the boundaries that define it. I would not bring war into the harem, but war is coming, and you already know this. Have you had any other letters?”

  She shook her head, but there was a marked hesitation in the reply that made his eyes narrow. “Na’donna?”

  “A message,” she said at last, and with great reluctance. “But it was not confined to brush and parchment; it was delivered, instead, in person.”

  “Where?”

  “To your domis,” she said.

  “Na’donna—”

  She said, “It is not yet the Lady’s time, Mareo. And there are things I fear to speak of while the Lord reigns. Leave it, I beg you; in a few hours, you will have the whole of the answer I can give you—if indeed I can tender a reply at all.”

  He said, after a pause, “The Havallans.”

  And her brows rose a fraction. She could be startled, like any wild creature, and here in the harem’s heart, it showed. Her eyes widened before she could school her face, and when she offered him expression again, it was in the form of a rueful smile.

  She nodded.

  “Did you call for them, Na’donna?”

  “How could I? No one commands the Voyani.”

  “So it is said. No one but their Matriarch. Yet the Voyani come, and often, and they treat with the women of the clans in secrecy. I allow them in Amar, although it is not to the liking of the Radann.”

  “They are women,” she replied, “and in Mancorvo, they do little damage.”

  “They ask you for secrecy,” he replied gravely. “What worse damage can they do but separate a husband from his wife, even in this mean a fashion?” He caught her hands in his; he had not yet touched the water. Hers clutched his tightly, as if by so doing, she might keep him at last from the General’s letter, from the General’s war.

  He pulled his hands away, and she let them go, but she bowed her head as she did. Love and pain, pain and love; they were almost twinned in the Dominion. For the first time, he wondered what love meant in the North, where women led armies and ruled powerful clans.

  He lifted the tube, and placing his hands on either side of what he assumed to be the break, he cracked it open.

  The parchment was long, and the hand in which it was written was no woman’s hand. It was fine and court-trained; the bold brush strokes of a man. He knew, then, that Alesso di’Marente had chosen, at last, to leave the delicate negotiations of the writing of Serras.

  And she, seeing this, knew it as well.

  She whispered a name.

  He heard it, but it was not until he had read the first few lines that the syllables penetrated the writing and he recognized the name of his kai—his dead kai. Andreas.

  Pain. And love. And in the wake of these two, rising from cold slumber, anger.

  “It is—it is the General?”

  He laughed. The sound was short and harsh. “No other,” he said. “And he is bold indeed.”

  “How so, my husband?”

  “He acknowledges that he may have misplayed his hand in his dealings with Lamberto.”

  “He . . . says . . . that?”

  “‘Tyr’agnate, your presence was missed at the Festival of the Sun, and the grace and beauty of your wife, missed likewise at the Festival of the Moon. Of all men in the Dominion who might find offense in the manner of the kai Leonne’s death, none are more worthy than you. It was a calculated risk on my part, and the handling of it was less wise than it might have been.

  “‘I regret your absence. I will not excuse my choices; they have been laid bare. But the kai Leonne was not—could not be—a man worthy of your service. If I have not been so, I endeavor now to correct that error in judgment.’” He looked up to study the lines of his wife’s face, clear as writing to one who knew her well.

  She waited, however, denying him expression. She was capable of it, although her vulnerability was also genuine. A mystery.

  You are the Lord’s man. And you are a man of honor. Honor, perhaps, has been absent upon this field, and I would do much to return to it; I am not so foolish as to think that the Dominion will stand, ruled by men of lesser ability and lesser worth.

  I have acted in haste; that is the way of the sword. But the High Courts are not ruled by sword alone, as I have come to understand at leisure.

  As you are no doubt aware, the Northern armies have again chosen to cross the borders of the Dominion. Where once they were repulsed with what force we could muster, the Terreans no longer stand together. The Tyr’agnate, Ser Ramiro kai di’Callesta, has invited our ancient enemies in.

  You may have surmised that the armies of Lorenza and Garrardi did not come to me blindly; they serve their Tyrs, and their Tyrs serve their own interests. Some of that interest lies in the lands of Mancorvo.

  The Serra Donna en’Lamberto did the first clumsy thing that she had done in many months; she spilled the water that she had, in the silence, attempted to pour. It pooled upon the surface of the table like a stain or an accusation, but he barely noticed it himself.

  Ser Mareo kai di’Lamberto was a man of the High Courts; the contents of this letter, shorn of the nuance and the subtlety of that Court, were as unexpected as an assassin’s blade; they cut deeply, robbing him of like words.

  It is an interest that I cultivated.

  And cut again. The geography of the known world was shifting beneath his feet, and Ser Mareo kai di’Lamberto, as all Lambertans, was a man whose feet were firmly planted upon the ground.

  You will no doubt have surmised this.

  Lesser men may equate honor with stupidity, but I have seen you upon the field, Tyr’agnate, and if in my youth I might have made the same mistake, I have learned—at cost—the error of that assumption.

  The lands to the North of Raverra have always been the most fertile of our lands; they are also the lands which have been most vulnerable to Northern attack. You, better than any, know the cost of that vulnerability.

  I have considered all options with care, and I have come to this conclusion: Ser Ramiro kai di’Callesta, and his clan, must pay the price of their treachery. Were I not the Tyr’agar, they would still pay: they have given to the North what men have died to prevent, and for less reason.

  Averda itself cannot be governed by a man who would turn against the clans, and the lands of Averda are therefore forfeit.

  It matters little that Ser Ramiro hides behind the Leonne name. He brings a Northerner with a Southern face and a tenuous claim to a dead clan at the head of Northern armies; how will a pawn of the Demon Kings serve the Dominion ? Could you pledge allegiance to a boy who bears such a strong Northern taint?

  I gamble, now; I assume that your answer is no.

  And therefore I offer this: The lands to the West of Mancorvo are yours, if you can take and hold them against the Callestans. I have reason to believe that you can; past history supports this.

  The lands that were to be claimed by the Tyrs will be offered solely from Averdan soil. In this fashion, all may benefit from the defense of Annagar.

  I do not ask for your answer imm
ediately. I understand that my own haste has brought me to this position, and if I am a man who is prone to error, I am seldom accused of making the same mistake twice.

  Consider what I ask. If you cannot, at this time, bring yourself to join your forces with mine, I ask simply that you hold the borders against the Northern foe. They will be hemmed in on all sides, with no clear advantage.

  Ser Mareo kai di’Lamberto did not look up until he had read the letter three times. The sun had not set, but he felt the nighttime wind through the distant screens. “My apologies, Serra Donna,” he said, “for bringing this war to your harem.” He made to rise; she caught his elbow.

  They stood, thus bound by her delicate touch.

  “Mareo,” she said quietly.

  Something in her tone was not right—but the whole of the letter was a shock to the conservative Tyr; he said nothing for a time, meeting her eyes.

  “So,” he said at last. “He has admitted all.”

  “No,” she said, surprising him. “Not all.” She rose, and walked past him, past the table, to the closed screen that opened, at last, upon the room they shared.

  There, stark upon a simple stand, stood the sheathed and silent Balagar.

  “Your brother’s sword,” she said softly.

  He nodded.

  “You want to trust Ser Alesso.”

  He did not answer her; she knew him well. “Na’donna, speak. Tell me what you think.”

  “I think that this is war,” she replied, an evasion. “And war is not the province of Serras.”

  He bowed his head. He did not touch Balagar.

  “But I think, as well, that Ser Fredero died because he wished to strike out at Ser Alesso.”

  “Yes.”

  “I spent little time with your par,” she continued, failing to meet his gaze. “But enough to know that he was not a foolish man. Speak to Jevri, Mareo.”

  “Can you not—”

  “No. He is Radann, not seraf. I am Serra.” She walked past him, evading his grasp. “It is day, Tyr’agnate.”

  “Tyr’ agnate, Na’donna? Why so formal? Have I angered you?”