The Riven Shield

by Michelle West

  She passed the papers to Morretz.

  “For the duration of the war, Meralonne APhaniel has also been seconded by the Kings; we have therefore sought the services of another member of the magi.”

  There was some whispering among the members of the House Council and the shadows who served as their advisers. The Terafin rose.

  “I am certain that that member requires little introduction, but for the sake of formality, such an introduction will take place.” She walked to the doors, and Finch failed to recognize the significance of this action until the doors themselves were opened.

  Standing, framed by their open width, was a diminutive woman who carried age as if it were wisdom’s mantle.

  “I am honored to present Sigurne Mellifas to the Terafin House Council.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  9th of Corvil, 427

  AA Callesta, Terrean of Averda

  “I DON’T like it.”

  Valedan raised a brow. The Captain of his guards—the man he had, with effort, ceased to identify as an Osprey—had forsaken the customary stiffness of the South in the enclosure of the large tent, and with it, the cautious use of words, the tone that clearly—and properly—conveyed disapproval. Ser Andaro di’Corsarro did not find this as amusing as the lord he had pledged his life to did, but he was determined to bring dignity to the proceedings in spite of the unsuitable behavior of his companions; he said nothing. Loudly.

  Ser Anton di’Guivera, whose roots were among the insignificant clans, although his fame far exceeded those of nobler birth, was under no such compulsion. “I must agree with the Captain.”

  He did not turn his head to the side, and his gaze did not condescend to travel the distance between himself and the newest member of the Northern retinue.

  “Your objections are noted. Serra Alina?”

  She wore the leather armor that the smaller women favored, and over it, a surcoat with a distinctly bland emblem across its heart center; at a distance, it would pass for the crest of the Kalakar House Guards. Valedan was aware that he would meet The Kalakar again, and soon; he had no desire to presume upon her authority, and she had not given leave to Duarte to recruit South of the border. The Serra’s hands were gloved; her feet, heavy in the leather boots the Northerners wore. Of all the things that she suffered, it was the boots that seemed most cumbersome, for they changed the fall of her step as she walked. Her hair was bound in a nondescript braid, shorn of ornamentation; her face would be exposed to the sun’s light.

  She stepped forward, toward the table across which maps lay like dead butterflies. It was clear that she was not comfortable in this room; she hesitated before the table’s height and gazed at it with a critical eye.

  Valedan thought, if she had been allowed, it would now bear some decorations; not flowers, for they would by their presence indicate a delicacy and a poetry that had no place in a war room, but perhaps by stone or wooden carving, or better, the two-tiered sword stand, evocative in its emptiness. A leader’s symbol.

  “I am not . . . familiar . . . with the language of cartographers.”

  Valedan shrugged. “It is not for your ability to read what is written here that I desire your presence.”

  Ser Anton’s jaw tightened.

  “Ser Valedan,” Duarte said, “none of the members of the—of your guard—are decorative. They serve a function. If another assassination is attempted—”

  He lifted a hand. “I am willing to see her here in the saris more suited to her station.”

  What Ser Anton had been about to say was lost.

  “The choice of attire is not mine,” he continued. “It is entirely her own. If you take issue with it, you must speak with the Serra Alina. And let me remind you, Captain, that long before the Ospreys were assigned to me, the Serra Alina saved my life with the use of a single dagger.”

  The Serra Alina’s brows rose a fraction; her eyes widened and then resumed their normal shape. A warning. A warning he understood. In the South, she was a Serra; he a ruling lord. In the South, should she choose to serve him, or he to suffer her service, he must not imply that her will had precedence over his.

  He felt a touch of Ser Anton’s frustration, although he was aware that it was for entirely different reasons. He placed both palms on the edge of the table and let them support his weight as he pretended to read the lines of a map that he had almost memorized, he saw it so often.

  “Belay that,” he said at last. “She serves in the capacity of a Northern adviser. There is no place in the South for the role she has been forced—at my command—to assume. Understand, Captain, that she graces your unit with her presence; that she serves a purpose that is only marginally less imperative than yours. There are many forms of conflict. Upon the field, or before it, there are no finer men than the men who now serve under me.

  “But I have been raised in the North; I have been deprived of the harem that is mine by right. The Tyr’agnati of Callesta and Lamberto are not likewise encumbered; they speak through their wives, their sisters, their serafs.

  “I will speak in such a fashion through the Serra Alina.”

  “They do not bring their wives to the battlefield,” Ser Anton said curtly.

  Valedan’s smile was brief. “They have no need; they have their years of history as a guide, as guidance, in matters in which a wife—or a Serra—might be consulted.”

  “You take a risk,” Ser Anton replied, cool now, his antagonism securing Ser Andaro’s grudging support.

  “Always.”

  The swordmaster nodded. “She must not be present when you are introduced to the kai Lamberto.”

  Valedan said nothing at all.

  He waited; after a moment, the tent’s flap lifted and the General Baredan di’Navarre entered. He paused a moment at the table, lifted his head, and stared at the Serra Alina di’Lamberto. Then he shifted his gaze, took in the expressions of the men who now stood around her, and chose to remain silent.

  Ramiro di’Callesta followed. He bowed as he entered into the presence of the Tyr’agar, and when he rose, he smiled. “I have had word,” he said. “The flight has arrived in Callesta.”

  He did not spare a glance for the Serra, and by this lack of reaction, Valedan knew that he was well-informed.

  “Your presence is requested, Tyr’agar.”

  Valedan nodded.

  The care with which the Northern Commanders were treated was not lost on them. From the moment they arrived at the city gates, they were escorted by no less a man than the captain of the Tyran: Ser Fillipo par di’Callesta. The men who accompanied him likewise wore the miniature crest of the sun rising, its rays a declaration of the oath they had collectively and individually sworn.

  He met them on horseback, and did them the honor of dismounting; did them the further grace of offering them a bow that would have been reserved for the Tyr’agnate himself had he been present.

  The Tyran were a heartbeat behind their leader, but when they dismounted, they offered bows that were no less perfect. As dress guards, they were exceptional.

  As warriors, there were none finer.

  Commander Allen, however, noted that they wore the blue of a dark midnight, the white of mourning, in a sash across their chests; their horses were likewise adorned. Someone had died; someone of import. He closed his eyes a moment. Opened them, reaching for a memory that was over a decade old.

  “The Tyr’agnate of Averda waits you in the citadel,” Ser Fillipo said quietly in flawless Weston.

  Commander Allen nodded. As they had done, he dismounted; it was as much a signal to the Northern guards as Ser Fillipo’s gesture had been to the Southern; they followed his lead in a taut silence, their movements far less graceful than their allies’.

  “A moment,” Commander Allen said.

  Ser Filli
po nodded, holding the reins of his pale horse.

  The man who had won the war for the Empire years ago now walked to his saddlebags; he drew from them a sash that was like, and unlike, the sash the Callestans wore. Devran and Ellora watched him without comment as he draped the sash across his left shoulder and hooked it once around his waist; it bore the crest of the crowns across a white background; the sword and the rod on either side emblazoned in gold. The sash was edged in a thick, weighted black.

  Ser Fillipo raised a brow; the two Commanders who were legend for their rivalry gazed a moment at each other and then found similar sashes in their saddlebags; they donned these.

  “Your pardon, Ser Fillipo,” Commander Allen said gravely.

  Ser Fillipo bowed. “No pardon is necessary,” he said softly. “I have spent time in the North, and I recognize the colors of Imperial mourning; you honor our fallen.”

  The Tyran whispered among themselves until they felt their captain’s gaze; they fell silent at once.

  Thus accoutred, the three Commanders entered the city of Callesta. The streets were not empty; they were lined with the men and the women whose lives were defined by their service within the walls. There was curiosity upon the faces of these witnesses to the procession, but it was not their curiosity that drew the attention; it was the colors they wore: Blue and white. Not so fine as the colors that graced the Tyran, they were nonetheless a clear indication that the city itself was in mourning.

  Not an auspicious beginning, but a fitting one.

  He bowed his head a moment; by war’s end, there would be three colors on the field, and off it: black, white and blue.

  He had ridden through Imperial villages similar to this at the start of the border war thirteen years past, and although the deep and somber shades of blue had been absent, black was there in abundance; black of fabric, black of hanging, black of bowed head, of bruised face, of eyes made hollow by food’s lack, sleep’s lack, and worse, the loss of the things which defined a full life.

  He had chosen to parade the best of his troops—hand-picked among the divisions—through those towns for two reasons; the first to offer comfort to the bereaved, to offer the promise, in silence, of the Kings’ Justice, and second, to make certain, to make absolutely certain, that his men understood the human face of a war that would leave many more villages in smoldering ruins before an end was called to the hostilities which defined the shape of two nations.

  But more, he had done so to remind himself.

  “These people,” he had said, “had no choice in the battle; they cannot make decisions that affect the fate of nations, but they suffer the cost of the decisions undertaken—by us, by our Kings, by our enemies. You want justice. Good. Justice has defined the Empire of Essalieyan since the founding of Averalaan.

  “But Wisdom has tempered that Justice; call upon that Wisdom when we cross the border. Call upon it when we take the villages of the Averdan valleys; call upon it when you see the old and the weak, the women, the children, and the young men who, like ours, have lost all but their desire for vengeance. You are the Kings’ representatives here. You bear the burden of their name, and their honor, upon the field. The standards that you see are ours, but they embody more than the men at your side, than the fight for survival.

  “Very few of the men and the women who people the villages of the Dominion are free. Very few have a choice in how they live or how they die. Remember this for as long as you can. Hold on to it.

  “Understand why you are here.”

  He drew breath, and that breath drew him back across the decade, confronting him with his own words, his own resolve.

  We are killers, he thought, his right hand upon the pommel of his sword, his left upon the reins of his mount. But we are not monsters; we are not murderers. The name we make for ourselves will be defined by our actions here. Let us carry that name with pride.

  Devran stood to his left, gazing upon the whole of the city of Callesta, inscrutable and silent.

  Ellora walked to his right, her hand upon the reins of her mount; she did not seek the solace of a weapon. Not for her the prettified speeches; not for her the tame instruction. She paused, shortening the grip on her horse.

  A second later, a child appeared between the ranks of the gathered Callestans, his eyes too large for his face, his cheeks widened by a smile that had clearly been indulged. He slipped past the hands that reached for his chubby arms, his fat, round shoulders, and ran toward the legs and limbs of the passing soldiery.

  Ellora caught him, with the hand that every other man present now gripped their weapon, kneeling to bring her face closer to his. Her hair was pale, her skin pale, her eyes light; she wore armor and crest and the scars of previous battles with equal grace. There was no braid at her back, no adornments in her hair, no silks, no cotton saris; she wore white, black, and the colors of the House she ruled.

  But she laughed, and her voice was clearly no man’s voice; it was loud, it was foreign.

  The child’s brows rose.

  In accented Torra, she said, “Well, you’re a brave boy, aren’t you?”

  He hesitated for just a moment, and then, having made his decision, smiled. “Brave,” he said, nodding. “Brave boy.”

  “Kalakar.” Devran’s voice was as cold as any weather Averda ever saw.

  She ignored him.

  Yes, it started; it started now, in this place, this foreign city. The Callestan Tyran continued to walk for another ten yards before they realized that the gap between them and the Northerners had widened; they stopped, turning, their beasts turning with them in idle curiosity.

  Ser Fillipo, at the head of these men, was not immediately visible, but the Tyran themselves hesitated. They wore helms, but their visors were raised, and their expressions were clear; they were surprised.

  Worried.

  So, too, was the child’s grandfather. The child’s grandmother. His mother and father, if they were there, did not break the stretch of the white-and-blue line that was both barrier and honor guard.

  The elderly woman fell at once to her knees in the open street; she was so close to the hooves of the horse that had it been moving briskly, she might have risked being trampled. Her forehead struck the dirt, remaining there as if fastened.

  Her husband—Commander Allen assumed it must be the husband—likewise abased himself, but he did so at the feet of The Kalakar, and his lined, dark hands, instead of residing in the hidden fold of his lap, now reached for the child she held.

  “Brave boy you have,” Ellora told the man, her voice a Decarus’ voice, loud and booming.

  The man’s face rose, his eyes wide; Commander Allen could almost see the reflection of this Northern aberration, this monstrous woman, in them. She lifted the child, releasing her horse to do so.

  “Horse,” the boy said.

  “My horse.”

  “My horse.”

  Without hesitation, she placed him high upon the saddle, speaking in Weston to the horse that bore her upon the field. To the horse, she spoke calmly and softly, her voice more feminine that it would be anywhere else. She was rewarded by the child’s hesitant smile, and after a moment, the pounding kick of his small, bare feet. The horse would not feel it; the child’s weight was too slight.

  She let him sit astride the stallion’s back for five minutes, and then she lifted him again. He reached for the pommel of the saddle, but Ellora was far faster; she disentangled his fingers, smiled, and whispered something that evaded Allen’s hearing.

  Then she set him down.

  His grandfather hesitated for a fraction of a second, watching this woman, the fear in his face almost wrenching.

  Ellora looked down upon him. “You have a brave boy,” she said again, and again her voice could be heard for a mile on this windless day; a mile in any direction.

>   “And he,” she added, “brave kin. This is not the last time he will sit upon horseback.”

  Bending, then, she caught the old man’s outstretched hands and lifted him. When he had gained his feet, she helped his wife to rise.

  “Your future,” she said, struggling for the words. “Your future, here.” All of the Torra she was familiar with was military in nature, but she had no fear of sounding the fool.

  Ser Fillipo par di’Callesta had come, horseless, through the ranks of his Tyran; he stood not twenty feet away, his hands behind his back, his expression completely unreadable.

  The old man bent down, grabbed his grandchild, waiting until his wife had extricated her hand from the pale, foreign hand of this Northern woman. And then he turned to look at the par Callesta, his face almost as pale as Ellora’s, and with a good deal more cause.

  But Ser Fillipo par di’Callesta merely nodded, his expression slowly easing into a smile that was, if slight, completely genuine.

  “Well met, Decasto,” he said. “Your grandson is brave indeed to risk being surrounded by three such men—and women—as these; they are the Northern birds of prey. Be grateful that they have not yet begun their ascent; be grateful that they have chosen prey that is wiser and more canny than he.”

  The old man swallowed. “Par di’Callesta,” he said, his voice breaking with both age and emotion. The child squirmed; the old man’s grip was tight.

  “Aye, I have returned; I have come from the Northern Empire, the Northern Isle. And I have discovered, in my sojourn there, that there is no truth behind the tales of Northern women who devour their children whole.”

  The Tyran at the par di’Callesta’s back now smiled as well, broadly, and with some affection.

  “But don’t give the boy a sword just yet; he is likely to use it where it is unwise.” He nodded genially, and turned to face The Kalakar.

  “Decasto wishes to apologize for the intrusion of his kin. If you take no offense, Commander, I will dismiss them without censure.”

  She laughed, speaking now in the comfortable confines of Weston. “The Kalakar wishes to beg your forgiveness for this indulgence. In armor and mounted, it is seldom that I see children; if the children themselves are not too timid to keep their distance, the parents are.”