The Riven Shield

by Michelle West

  “‘Then offer it upon your feet, boy. Offer it with sword in hand.’ He had no sword of his own; no named blade. I . . . gave him mine.”

  Marakas closed his eyes. This was, he thought, a song. Not the song of the Serra Diora, nor a song that might play well in the Courts in which the Lord ruled at his harshest. But there was a beauty in the simple meter of a man’s voice, a man’s memory, that hallowed the words. That made them. All of his judgment was undone; he repented of it, of his anger in the past, of his accusations. All. He took the gift of beauty offered him, and he treasured it; he would always treasure it.

  “He was no fool; he rose at once, clumsy now, the grace of acceptance forgotten. He looked younger than his years, where a moment before he had looked beyond them.

  “‘I will have no wife, but the Serra Celina,” I told him. ‘And, Na’jano, I will have no kai but you.’”

  “He was young, but he was cautious. He was afraid of hope, afraid to return from the state of death that he had managed to achieve, afraid to lose the peace and the determination of that acceptance. Twelve years,” he added, shaking his head. “I would not have been such a boy, at twelve. But . . . I would have had Roberto as my guide, and he would not have laid down his life if it meant the loss of mine.

  “His mother said nothing. Instead, she watched as her son accepted my sword. His eyes didn’t leave mine; I thought he might drop the sword, or at least cut his foot with its edge, for he lowered it too quickly. But he lowered it point first, and the heft of the blade drove it a half inch into the mats. He knelt, knees to either side of it, and he raised his face, and he lost years as the minutes went by.

  “‘Na’jano.’

  “Ser Alessandro.

  “‘I am not the man your father was. What I make of Clemente will not be what he made of it. You must be certain that you understand what this means, for when I die, the responsibilities of the Torrean will devolve to you. Will you serve me? Will you be the kai Clemente to a kai such as I have become?’”

  “He is your kai,” Marakas said quietly.

  “Yes. No fool, he; he agreed to all that I asked. And his mother agreed to all that I offered.”

  “If I am not a poor judge of character,” Marakas said, after a moment, “what you granted when he was twelve has marked him. You are his kin, certainly, but you are more than that: you have become his . . . hero.”

  Ser Alessandro laughed. “Such a quaint word, that.”

  “Yet it was not to the Tyr that he went when we returned from Damar; not by the Tyr’s side that he stood; not for the Tyr that he demanded much of his physicians.”

  “Aye, perhaps. And perhaps I value his foolishness. But I have wandered, par el’Sol. What I offered the Serra Celina, she understood, and she likewise understands that, risk displeasure of my Tyr or no, I will do what I must, will see the Serra Diora—and the sword she bears—to the last of the Leonnes.”

  Silence, then. Measured. Profound.

  “You did not speak of this—burden—to the kai Lamberto.”

  “No. It is not my burden to speak of.” He rose. “My men are severely depleted; I can take but a handful if I do not wish to strip my city of defenses it may need in future. Will you travel with us?”

  “Of course. I, too, have a debt to pay.”

  The heart of the harem had been moved to less elegant quarters, the privacy of the wives now enforced not by the presence of opaque walls and sliding doors, but by men, armed and armored, who bore the Tor’s crest.

  When the seraf came, she was ready.

  She had accepted the aid of Serra Celina’s wives, and they had bound her hair in gold and jade; they had offered her saris and silks, and had retrieved from her meager belongings the golden bracelets and chains that spoke of her former wealth. These, Ramdan and Ona Teresa had offered her when the Tor Leonne was miles at their back, and the road before them broken by the thousands of men and women who had chosen the prudence of flight beneath the moon’s fullest, brightest face.

  She wore them, missing the rings that had once adorned her hands. Missing, more, the woman upon whom she had impulsively bestowed them. Margret, she thought. What would you say? What would you do were you now within this harem, this domis?

  Thinking about it brought the first smile of the long day to her face. Margret was a Matriarch, and if Arkosa chose to spend its peaceful months wandering the length and breadth of Averda, a clansman of note dared to offer her no threat when war had already begun its slow march across his Torrean. Would she sit? No. Would she allow the serafs to demean themselves by tending her? Would she accept the touch of their hands, the bowls of water, the application of powders, kohls, perfume?

  Each question anchored the smile, made of it a rueful map by which the canny might find their way to her hidden heart.

  No, and no and no.

  Margret had most reminded her of Ruatha, of the dead and the lost, but in the end, Margret was none of these things: she lived, breathed Voyani fire, spoke like the most impatient and graceless of men.

  But she no longer dismissed all clansmen, all clanswomen, as people beneath note or desire.

  The Serra Celina herself gave Diora her fans, as fine as any that she had possessed as the Serra Diora en’Leonne; she brought sweet water and the fruit of the trees that lay hidden behind the cultivated wilderness of Sarel, as if she were seraf. Or as if Diora were a visiting clansman of great power and significance.

  All this was offered in silence, but the gift that she most prized was the samisen that was placed in her lap.

  For when she played, Ona Teresa’s shuddering convulsions seemed to abate for a time, and Ramdan, never less watchful, could withdraw into the perfection of a seraf’s subservience.

  She therefore followed her own inclination, her own desire; she played.

  The music brought her many things.

  It enforced all silence save her own; it created a distance between her and the rest of the women who gathered here, drifting in ones and twos beyond the periphery of her awareness; it gave her an audience, even if that audience wisely sought shadow, abjuring the harsh sunlight that filtered through the exposed gap of broken screen.

  The audience grounded her; she accepted its presence with perfect grace, drawing strength from the fact of it. Hours, days, even months, had been spent in such repose, and when she retreated into music, all war was held in abeyance.

  But the harbingers of war did come, finally.

  She stood in their shadow, and lifted her head when the notes of the mournful song at last ceased its plaintive echo.

  Kallandras of Senniel College bowed. “Serra Diora,” he said gravely, kneeling before her as if he did not understand how this gesture unmanned him in the presence of the Clemente wives, “I have brought what you commanded.”

  He laid the awkward runed box at her feet.

  She would have thanked him, but the momentary anxiety of its presence robbed her of some little grace; she set the samisen to one side, to better carry the Sun Sword, hidden in the last of its havens. A man’s sword.

  The strange, tall lord stood like white shadow at Kallandras’ side, but he did not demean himself by kneeling.

  “I . . . thank you, Kallandras,” she said quietly, speaking not in the private voice, but in her own, shorn of power.

  “Thank Yollana,” he replied, with the hint of a smile. “If you dare. She is . . . in a poor mood.”

  “She is the Matriarch of Havalla,” Diora replied, smile bleeding into the edges of her face as she thought of the other Matriarch she now loved. “And she has had some word from her daughters, if I am not mistaken.”

  “I believe,” he replied, equally grave, “that if you are mistaken, so too are any of those who serve Clemente who still know how to listen.”

  “And a lot of those who don’t s
erve Clemente,” another voice said. Her Torra was rough, accented by the fields, by labor, by the spurious freedom that was Voyani wandering.

  Diora looked past the kneeling form of the Northern bard and met the open gaze of Jewel ATerafin, woman of the North.

  By her side, Ariel stood. Her smile was shy, and it was hesitant, but it transformed her waif’s face.

  “Ariel,” Jewel said quietly, and the girl slid to ground, her legs forming lap before the Serra Diora, her posture exposing the sharp lines of shoulder blades, the slender nub of uncounted ribs.

  “She thinks you have a beautiful voice,” the Northerner continued, blithely unaware of the embarrassment her words caused the child.

  Serra Diora smiled gracefully, although she lifted her fan and let it hover just beneath the curve of her lips. “She is gracious,” she said.

  Jewel ATerafin turned a look upon the child’s back, an I Told You So that the child herself failed to witness. She was no court seraf, this child; all of her grace lay in her youth, and the obeisance that came so naturally to her was tinged by the simplicity of awe.

  “Please accept our apologies,” Jewel continued quietly. “But Yollana thought it best that we avoid all presence of the Tyr’agnate. He is rumored to . . . hate . . . things Northern.”

  “It is no mere rumor,” Diora said softly. “But perhaps the legend of his hatred is much exaggerated.”

  Jewel raised a dark brow, and then shunted unruly curls from the sides of her face. Hair such as that, Diora thought, would never be given free reign within any domis of note; it would be attacked with irons and heat, brought into a semblance of straightness; no Serra allowed herself to be so publicly unkempt.

  But it suited the woman. She wore vest, shirt, pants; she dressed as if she were already claimed by the Voyanne that her ancestors must have deserted.

  “There is no wiser woman than Yollana of the Havalla Voyani,” Diora said gravely, “and her advice—when offered—is to be treasured.”

  “Or feared,” Jewel ATerafin said, the gravity of her words displacing the oddity of her appearance. “And heeded.”

  Diora smiled again, this time bringing the fan up to the periphery of vision. “And heeded,” she said, agreeable as only a Serra might be.

  “But we’re here.”

  Again she smiled. Jewel ATerafin was not like Margret of the Arkosa Voyani; not for her the barely hidden depth of anger, the sudden well of fear. The shadow she cast in the harsh light was not one thing, but three: It spoke of herself, the beast she could command in silence, and the man who served her.

  Only the man was present, and he had been attired in the finery of Court serafs.

  “We’re here,” Jewel said again. “The kai Lamberto will come, soon, and when he does, we will either fight or depart.”

  No question, now, of which was preferable. The Northern hand, lined and darkened by too much exposure to sunlight, rested lightly against the pommel of an obvious dagger.

  “Are you ready?” Jewel said, surprising in her frankness.

  Diora nodded. With care, she lifted the only burden of import. “I am ready.”

  “Good. Because he has just entered the room.”

  The warning was unnecessary; the women of Clemente chose to abase themselves as he passed, and she could see the fact of that passage in the supine bend of exposed back, exposed neck, the fall of black hair.

  He came with Tyran; two men that Diora had not yet seen. They strode an arm’s length from his back, their step in time with his, their hands by their sides.

  Kallandras did not rise; Celleriant did not kneel.

  And Jewel ATerafin hesitated a moment before she chose to join the bard, and not the lord who served her.

  “Serra Diora,” he said, his eyes passing above the Northerners as if they were beneath notice—or contempt.

  “Tyr’agnate.” Her own bow served to protect what she now carried.

  “If you can be ready, we leave upon the morrow.”

  She was to be accorded the trappings of the rank assassination had taken from her: a palanquin was brought, and it was carried by Lambertan Tyran. She saw it clearly, and with surprise; it seemed a foreign thing, an enclosure, much like a gilded cage.

  If Ser Mareo kai di’Lamberto noticed her hesitation, he did not show it; he waited, his hand the hand that drew beaded curtain to one side. An honor.

  He waited thus, and she kept him waiting for as long as it took to offer her thanks to the Serra Celina. But the Serra Celina was unnerved by the presence of the Tyr, aware of the shortcomings of her court and her serafs. She bowed to the Serra Diora, as she had not done in the harem, and then, rising slowly, retrieved something from the serafs who waited in her shadow.

  This she pressed into Diora’s open hands.

  A samisen.

  A good one, wood well oiled, top covered in fine wooden inlay and a hint of gold. Diora was seldom speechless, but words deserted her as her fingers clutched the underside of the instrument. She lifted her face, exposing it to the Serra Celina.

  The Serra blushed. “It isn’t much,” she said softly, so softly her words might not carry to the men who waited. “But it—”

  “It is a very fine instrument,” Diora said, willing herself to return it. But her will was weak; her hands tight. “Too fine an instrument for traveling. I am honored, Serra Celina, but I—”

  “You play it far better than I,” the clanswoman said, with warmth. “And having heard it in your hands, I don’t think I could bear to listen to myself—or my wives—coax awkward tunes from its strings again.”

  Diara opened her lips to speak, attempting to choose the right words.

  But the Serra shook her head. “I want you to have it,” she said, firmly now. “It is my gift. To you. To the Serra—to the woman who walks at the side of the Matriarch of Havalla. We are in your debt, Serra Diora, even if it is a debt that we cannot acknowledge and can never repay. This is a token, and only that. But if—” She shook her head.

  “If?” Although she had been impatient, at times, with the volume of the words Celina chose to speak, she surprised herself; she desired to hear what the Serra had not yet said.

  “If the Lady blesses you, if the war you must fight is won, it would honor us all to hear you play it upon the plateau.”

  “I am not a warrior, Serra Celina, to be called upon to fight.”

  “No more was the Serra—was your aunt.” She caught the strands of hair wind had pulled from combs, her fingers shaking as the words left her in a rush. “I have taken the liberty of sending my own palanquin with my husband’s men. It will carry two, for I travel at times with a seraf for company.”

  “Then that is all the payment any debt requires. I cannot take this.”

  “She listens for your voice, Serra Diora.”

  Diora frowned, but the expression was lost to the pleated fold of fan.

  “If you will not take it for your own sake, take it for hers, and if you will not incur debt on her behalf, please, take it for mine. I ask it, who have no right to ask anything further of you. I know what you bear.”

  She had no strength left to argue, and no desire at all. But the bow she offered the Serra Celina was far too deep, and far too obeisant, and when she rose, she clutched the samisen to her in a way that she had never once held the Sun Sword.

  “Please, keep him safe,” the Serra Celina whispered.

  Diora nodded. She did not offer politeness; she did not deny the ability to do what men could not do. And the Serra Celina understood that the silence was her vow.

  “The Serra Teresa is already within my palanquin,” the Serra Celina said quietly. “She cannot walk; nor can she be called upon to ride. If you accept what Lamberto offers,” and she nodded to the palanquin, her eyes shunning the sight of the man who stil
l waited, beaded curtains in his mailed fist, “I would be honored if you would allow the Matriarch passage at the side of the Serra.”

  “It is my honor,” the Serra Diora replied, thinking that Ramdan would have been the kinder companion. “And my debt.”

  Diora rose, and turned toward the Lambertan palanquin. But as she made her way toward it, someone brushed past her in haste, his feet heavy against stone.

  Ser Janos kai di’Clemente.

  He came to stand before the Tyr’agnate, and he bowed, his hand upon the hilt of his sword. “Tyr’agnate,” he said, youth in the earnest folds of his expression, “I beg leave to travel with your men.”

  “It is not of me that you must ask permission,” Ser Mareo kai di’Lamberto replied, but not unkindly.

  The boy who was not yet man, but no longer child, frowned. Serra Diora could see his expression clearly as she approached it, and she smiled in spite of herself. Ah, she had lost caution in the desert, and perhaps it had died there; things moved her now in a way that they had not done since the night of fires and the death of her wives.

  “I have asked my uncle,” he said quietly.

  “He is your lord,” the Tyr’agnate replied gravely. “Are you so eager to see battle?”

  “My Tor is injured.” Ser Janos straightened the line of his shoulders; they were gaunt, but time would fill them. If he survived.

  “He is not unmanned; he is capable of riding, and of wielding sword.”

  “And most of his Toran perished in Damar.”

  The Tyr’s expression became grave, but his words held the faintest hint of amusement if one knew how to listen. The boy did not; the Serra did.

  “You are not, and will never be, Toran, Ser Janos.”

  “But I am kai Clemente.”

  “You are.”

  “And he will not give me permission to join you.”

  “Ser Janos, have you noticed my kai among the cerdan?”

  The boy’s frown was swift, and it lingered. “No, Tyr’agnate.”

  “Good. He is not present because I refused his request.”

  Shoulders fell.