The Riven Shield

by Michelle West

  They were few. Thirty men and women, dressed in armor that was not nearly as fine as the Callestan Tyr’s. They did not stand in lines; they did not stand abreast; they did not master the watchful stillness that informed the Tyran.

  Instead, they spoke among themselves, the silence of their language a movement of fingers in air, against shoulder, against chest. Few of the Ospreys wore shields; Cook did, and Sanderton, a scattered number of the men. The shields were defaced; the bird of prey that plunged to earth at their center painted over in the sedate colors of House Kalakar—colors muted by night, even in the lamplight.

  They looked to their Captain.

  He alone was worthy to serve, and he stood with the grace and attention denied his impatient troop.

  Kiriel came last, and by her side, the stranger; the man she had called kinlord. He was tall, the line of his face long and patrician; his eyes were dark, and his hair dark as well. But it was long; unfettered by braid, uncut. Young men might take such a risk when they faced battle, and those men were often carried from the field in pieces.

  Not this one.

  She did not like him. Wondered if it were the truth of Lambertan blood, come to dull the edge of her perception.

  “Serra?”

  She turned. Decarus Alexis stood beside her. Not for her the vanity of long hair. It was drawn from her face, forced from her eyes; it exposed the slender line, the narrow nose, of a hawk’s face. She lifted a weapon; a long, slender knife too short, and too slight, to be sword. It was not a Northern weapon. It was not raised for use, but as an offering.

  In spite of herself, the Serra Alina smiled. She considered the obligation she accrued by accepting this unasked for gift; considered and dismissed it. She held out a hand, and the blade was turned, pommel first, toward her.

  “I am in your debt,” she said softly.

  Alexis was no Serra; she snorted and tossed her head, like the finest of Mareo’s stallions. “You’re not an Osprey,” Alexis said quietly, “but if the Ospreys are family, you’re our cousin, our distant kin. We watch out for our own.”

  A decade ago, in the protected confines of the ferocious grace of Lamberto, her brother’s Tyran would have struck the woman for the gravity of her offered offense.

  Ten years.

  How much could a life change, and how deeply, in such a span of time? “I have nothing to offer in return.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe not yet. Doesn’t matter. You’re an Annie, and you’re a Serra—but if you’re wearing that armor, you mean to come with us.”

  Serra Alina nodded. She tried to add definition to the motion; tried to rob it of the cultured grace, the regal simplicity, that was hers by birth and training. Her mother would have been shocked; Decarus Alexis didn’t notice. All subtlety was lost upon these people; they were like children, like savage, willful children.

  She had loved such creatures, in her time.

  And she was determined to expose herself to no such weakness now. “Valedan will travel with you,” she said softly.

  “Oh, yeah.” Her smile turned sly. “And ten gets you one he’s about to tell you to take a hike.”

  Valedan kai di’Leonne approached the two women. By his side, supple and wary, Ser Andaro di’Corsarro. Alina had taken his measure in the weeks of the Kings’ Challenge, and she had found much to recommend him. But in the weeks of travel to the South, and again in the South itself, she had found more: she admired him. She knew that Mareo would do likewise. Was tired of thinking of what her brother might—or might not—do.

  But she was surprised when a third man joined these two.

  Ser Anton di’Guivera. The swordmaster.

  She did not fall to her knees, but it was difficult. Valedan himself was informed by the North, and Ser Andaro was his oathsworn servant. But Ser Anton was of the South, and not even Valedan’s command could rob her of the certain knowledge that she did him insult by remaining upon her feet.

  She squared shoulders: such stance was Valedan’s wish, and he, Tyr’agar.

  “Serra Alina,” Valedan said gravely, “You honor me with your presence this eve. But I am loath to risk you.”

  “If the demons are within Callesta, there is no safer place for me to be.”

  That evoked the smile she had intended.

  But not from Ser Anton. “You are no doubt trained in the lesser weapons,” he said without preamble. “But it is not the lesser that will hold sway here.”

  She did not speak. Instead, she met Valedan’s eyes, and held them for a beat longer than was either safe or polite.

  “I have faced these creatures,” Ser Anton continued, when it became clear that Valedan would not continue. “I know the danger they represent.”

  Again, she chose silence. But as a Serra, silence was often prod, often accusation. In grace, of course, and in a sweetness she had never quite mastered, it was a weapon.

  “The Serra Alina di’Lamberto,” the kai Leonne said quietly, “has experience of these creatures as well. What was said at the Serra Amara’s table was no lie.”

  Ser Anton’s expression shifted; it surprised her to see his shock so clearly upon his face, although she knew that to a Northerner the lift of brow would signify little.

  Valedan did not acknowledge this lapse. Instead, he continued to meet her gaze. But the words were not meant for her. “Before the Ospreys came to serve me,” he said softly. “Before the Kings’ Swords were arrayed around me like a Northern shield wall. When all of the other Serras—and many of the clansmen—had the wisdom to flee for their lives, she stayed her ground.”

  “She is still alive.”

  “Indeed; she stayed her ground long enough to plant a dagger in the creature’s eye. It did not kill the creature, but it slowed him until the Kings’ men arrived. Serra Alina, it is not my desire to put you in that position again.”

  She nodded. And then, in Weston, she said, “But it is my desire to accompany you.”

  Weston, the language of freedom, where anything might be said, and understood.

  In Weston, he replied. “Thank you.”

  It was not what she had expected to hear, and she knelt before the words, head bowed. Not for the first time did she regret her inability to accept the marriage he had offered. But this time, this time she vowed to allow him no lesser marriage.

  Kiriel di’Ashaf came upon them. “We are ready, Tyr’agar.”

  “Good.” He left them then. Joined the side of the Callestan Tyr, by gesture alone giving Kiriel the order to follow.

  Alina was surprised, for she recognized the slight dance of hand; it was not Southern, not Northern; it was a thing born of the fields of battle: the language of the Ospreys.

  Kiriel bowed.

  The Callestan Tyran had grown accustomed to women in the ranks of the Tyragar’s personal guard, but they did not welcome the intrusion of the gentle sex. Still, they were not Ospreys; it didn’t show.

  “Tyr’agnate,” Kiriel said without preamble—and without the complicated request for permission that Southern women were required to offer—“we are ready. But I do not believe you will be happy with our destination.”

  “Any destination within Callesta is unlikely to bring me joy,” he said, with just the faintest hint of humor.

  She nodded. Turning to Valedan, she said, “We go to the temple of the Radann.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A MOMENT of silence.

  Ramiro di’Callesta used it as a shield. Stood behind it, expression impenetrable as he examined the choices laid out before him. He was aware of the Tyran; aware that they looked not to the Tyr’agar, nor to the Tyr’s unfortunate choice of guard, but to the Tyr’agnate, the man who embodied Callesta. The decision was his.

  Must be his.

  “Kiriel.” The Serra Alina tur
ned her shoulder toward him. It was easy to see her as a Northern guard; easy until she spoke. The nuances of the Southern Court informed the Weston she chose to speak, marking her, in two ways, as foreign. Proud woman, he thought her; hawklike. She carried the grace of her lineage, but it was scarred, had always been scarred, by the ferocity of her temperament and her inability to disguise it.

  Yet she had found a place in the harem of his wife, the irreproachable Serra Amara; had made, of an implacable enemy, something that might—in times of peace—be called friend. His par, Ser Fillipo, had always admired this particular Lambertan. It was almost easy to understand why.

  Kiriel di’Ashaf, shadowed by the creature who had almost killed the Voyani woman, turned to the Serra Alina di’Lamberto.

  “The temple of the Radann is forbidden to the women of the Dominion,” Serra Alina told her. It was so much a Southern truth that Ramiro kai di’Callesta knew no one else would think to speak it aloud.

  A shrug was Kiriel di’Ashaf’s entire response.

  “If, indeed, what you seek is within the walls of the temple, we cannot face it there.”

  The shrug became a frown. He heard the wind’s howl in the crease of her thin lips. But she did not speak.

  The Serra waited a moment, and when it became clear that Kiriel would not speak, continued. “You, Alexis, Fiara, and certainly myself, must wait upon the Tyrs. It is an offense in the eyes of the Lord for women to set foot within a place consecrated to his use.”

  “It is not the Lord’s time.”

  “No. But even in the darkest of nights, there are places which are the Lord’s; places which bear his light and his commandment. This is one.”

  “And are there such places for the Lady?”

  The Serra’s smile was thin. The bitterness that did not—quite—reach her face tainted her voice. “It is said that all of the recesses of a woman’s heart belong to her.”

  Kind’s silence had none of the quality of the Tyr’agnate’s. She bristled as she approached the Tyr’agar. But she did not demean him again; did not snap or snarl as the Ospreys were wont to do among their own.

  “Tyr’agar.”

  “Kiriel.”

  She hesitated. Ramiro had seen her hesitate in such a fashion many times, and each time was a surprise to him; there was something about her demeanor that such evidence of uncertainty ill-suited.

  “The Serra Alina is correct,” Ramiro said quietly. He had not meant to say as much, and smiled inwardly. Vulnerability in the young had its appeal, especially when it came un-looked for. His Amara would not have approved.

  She turned to him, seeing in his words some hint of the indulgence he should not have felt. But it was not simple indulgence that moved him. He understood this young woman’s value. He was canny; he had learned, over the reach of years, to blend his weaknesses and his strengths so that the former might be hidden and the latter valued openly.

  “Tyr’agnate,” she said, and she bowed. It was a man’s bow, and the free fall of hair across her face and shoulders deepened its incongruity.

  “Rise,” he said softly, realizing that she waited upon his permission to do just that. Canny child; a pity she was so out of place in the South.

  “The temple is built upon consecrated ground.”

  “Indeed.”

  “But . . . if it contains what we seek . . . has it not already been defiled? If the temple harbors one of the kin, can the presence of . . . mere . . . women be worse?”

  Behind her, the Serra Alina nodded in silent approval.

  It had been a difficult question to ask; he could see it in the lines of her youthful expression. But she asked it. He had seen her, once, upon the field of the Kings’ Challenge. Even at a distance, he had felt, for just a moment, the endless fall of night.

  You have a warrior’s heart, he thought. You will do what must be done.

  He understood it well, for it was a truth that they shared; was a truth that had come to define him, wearing away the edges of a wild, impatient youth. In the High Courts, or the low, words were weapons; grace and silence, the dance that hinted at the strength of a blade that was seldom drawn. He had learned these early; they would never leave him.

  But upon the field, he had learned other truths.

  He had seen his father fall. Had lost his uncle; his cousins; he had seen the messy, intemperate valleys, sodden with rain, dark with the hollows of fire’s majesty, and had come to understand that they could not be accurately represented by the flat, spare surfaces of the maps by which decisions were made. Upon such a field, sword, horse, rank—nothing was proof against death.

  And upon such a field, men were horsed, armored, armed; they carried swords, spears, and the bows that were so despised by the clans. It would never have occurred to him—to any born Callestan—to take the field with less than his enemy carried.

  The field had been defined by her sparse sentence.

  Would he deny himself a weapon? He studied her face, and only hers; the creature at her back, the woman by her side, the Osprey who had come, in silence, to stand in her wake, were insubstantial.

  The Lord of Day and the Lord of Night were implacable enemies. But the Lord of Day valued, above all, the prowess of warriors. If there had ever been a time in which he had derided the folly of those who had chosen the banner of Allasakar as their rallying point, he repented now; he understood the allure. The risk.

  “The sanctity of the temple is not within my jurisdiction,” he replied. “But your point is valid. Fillipo. Miko.”

  They came, his shadows. His power.

  “Tyr’agnate.”

  “Come. We wake the Radann.”

  The city of Callesta was no stranger to war, although it had been many, many years since the fact of its brutality had been seen within the heart of the Callestan grounds.

  There were therefore subtle ways to wake the Radann; to seek audience in the darkness of the Lady’s Night. It was seldom done; the men of the Lord were not completely comfortable in their power while the Lady’s veiled face rose in the skies, and, as any clansmen, they sought the advantage of home ground unless they were certain to see battle upon it.

  Ramiro chose to abjure subtlety.

  He waited, arms folded, while the Captain of his oath-guards lifted sword and used the flat of its blade to strike the great brass bells that formed the centerpiece of the temple’s hidden grounds. The bell tolled, echoing the strike of steel; tolled again as Miko’s sword joined his brother’s. No man hearing this could mistake it for anything other than what it was: call to war. Warning of combat to follow.

  He waited. The Radann Fiero el’Sol was not a young man, but his servitors were almost the equal of the Tyran. The wind carried the sound of their feet, the distant clatter of steel, the chime of chain link and shield.

  The tenor of the bell changed. Ser Fillipo, as the Captain of the Tyran before him, knew how to clap those bells in a way that identified the order behind their call; he did so now. No matter that he had been twelve years from this temple, and these ritual practices; he made no misstep. Miko was a beat behind; off in his practice. He did not see the Tyr’agnate’s frown.

  The temple doors rolled open; fire, unadorned by glass or the bob of lamp, lit the path as burning torches came into view. Orange light changed the grounds; the light of fire that was contained, but barely.

  Radann stepped into the night.

  When they saw the Tyr’agnate, they stopped.

  He stepped forward, by gesture stilling the Tyran.

  In the face of the Lady’s Moon, he bowed. “Radann Allanos,” he said quietly. “It is urgent that I speak with the Radann Fiero el’Sol.”

  The dark-haired man bowed. He was ten years Ramiro’s junior, and the distance of years put all power in this discourse upon Ramiro’s shoulders. As, he
thought, with fleeting amusement, it should be.

  The temple of the Radann was not, in theory, his, and he was conversant with the laws that governed its existence. But his or no, he was the Tyr’agnate; the symbol of sun rising, eight rays glittering gold in a reflection of hastily gathered light, was in all ways equal to the robes that the Radann Fiero el’Sol would wear when he at last chose to join them.

  Allanos bowed. When he rose, he was still for a moment: in the torchlight he could see the length of the Callestan blade. Bloodhame had been drawn.

  The Radann was pale. Ramiro chose to see this as an artifact of the light.

  An act of mercy.

  “The Radann Fiero el’Sol will join us,” Allanos said. “Are we under attack, Tyr’agnate?”

  “We are at war,” Ramiro replied smoothly.

  Allanos nodded grimly. “Radann Fiero el’Sol has prepared the blessing for the dawn.”

  “Such a blessing is a blessing, but we are not always fortunate enough to choose the hour of its necessity.”

  “Indeed, that is the Lord’s truth.” The Radann parted; Radann Allanos gave way with just a hint of relief to the man who controlled the Radann el’Sol in the Terrean of Averda.

  If Radann Fiero el’Sol was disturbed by the manner of the Tyr’agnate’s chosen summons, his bearing gave no evidence of it. He bowed, his hand upon the hilt of sheathed blade. Without hesitation he stepped across the threshold, giving himself over to the world of the clansmen and the will of the man who ruled them here.

  “Radann Fiero el’Sol,” the Tyr’agnate said quietly, “I have come with the Tyr’agar and his guards.” He bowed to Valedan, the gesture perfect.

  The Radann’s bow was minutely different as he extended it to the last of the Leonne bloodline.

  It was difficult to cede the rest of the negotiation to the untried youth, but Ramiro was capable of such surrender. He stepped aside, wordlessly demanding Valedan’s attendance.

  Saw the slight lift of dark brow in the otherwise smooth countenance of the Radann. “Tyr’agar.”