Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (46 page)

He smiled. "I have heard the same said of my wife."

She did not pretend, as some wives might, to misunderstand his meaning; she bowed her head and quietly accepted the compliment he offered. But she was ill at ease in this room, with this sword; the smile barely touched her lips before it died—and unlike some ghosts, it did not linger.

"Ser Anton follows the kai Leonne."

Mareo di'Lamberto stared, hard, at the sword.

"I believe that will be one of only two surprises, my husband. There is confirmation of other rumors, however. Baredan kai di'Navarre is the kai Leonne's first General."

"His second? His third?"

"He has none. Or rather—he has no Annagarians."

He stiffened; she had expected that hardening of line, and allowed it to fill the quiet room. "There is more?"

"There is," she said apologetically, "almost always more. As you suspected, the Callestans have chosen to support the kai Leonne. Neither Callesta nor Lamberto were—and my cousin's source here is therefore already flawed—approached by the new Tyr, although the other Tyrs seem to be in his keeping."

"I would not necessarily call the source flawed," he said softly. "The… invitation… when it came, came much after the fact of the death of the former Tyr. What does a Tyr'agar need to establish his hold upon the other Tyrs? Power. Land. What would he be required to offer to men of their station? What would Alesso
di'Marente
need? It comes down to Mancorvo and Averda."

She was silent; she knew why. The harshest of the desert scarcity touched Mancorvo only at the edge of the ring that started on either side of the Sea of Sorrows, and encompassed the heartlands in a thinning band.

"There… is… more. It has finally been confirmed that the Serra Diora di'Marano—or en'Leonne, as she has so boldly named herself—is no longer upon the plateau in the Tor Leonne."

"She has not returned to her father's kai?"

"Not to my knowledge. The household of Adano kai di'Marano has fallen silent; the traffic between our serafs has become nonexistent."

He lifted a hand. "I need no more news this afternoon." And rose.

"Then I will displease you, I fear, my husband."

He frowned. "Na'donna?"

She bowed her head a moment, and then, from the folds of her perfect, pale sari, she brought forth a smooth parchment, stained by a dark, dark ink.

"A letter, from a woman who loved her husband very, very much, and who loves her son more. It is… a plea." Her hands were shaking slightly. "A plea for the life of her son."

He caught the letter before it fell, and then, placing it aside as if it were of no concern, he caught the face of his wife between his large hands. "Donna," he said softly. The sun and the sword had callused his palms, had hardened his skin—but he could still feel the softness of hers. Lady's mercy, not the Lord's.

"She wrote," his wife said, in a voice so soft even the strains of a samisen would have robbed him of the words, "from the North, and the letter… was delivered. I did not see the messenger. But I recognize the hand, and if the words were forced, they were forced by men of skill who have taken the time to understand the minutiae of a worried mother."

Her eyes were filmed. He lifted his head. Saw the shadow of his Serra's seraf, as perfect in form and stillness as a statue might have been.

He spoke a single word, and that outline rose, taking the momentary shape of a woman in a sari; all other details were lost as she obeyed that command—gracefully, quietly, and
quickly
.

"Forgive me, my husband. I—"

"Na'donna." He pulled her very gently into his arms, as he had done the still body of his kai over a decade ago. She had not wept then. He remembered, holding her now, that her eyes had been as still as the surface of a great lake; the fact of the death of her oldest child, her much loved son, had sunk beneath the surface of those eyes like a great, great weight.

He had found strength in her then. He saw it now; wondered if the memories had become so much worse with time, or if something within her had been broken in a way that he had not seen clearly.

But what she had not shared with anyone that day, he did not desire to force her to share now. He waited.

After a moment, she raised her face to his, her expression serene.

"The Serra Alina di'Lamberto…"

"What of her?"

"Is said to be traveling with the kai Leonne as we speak, if the dates given are accurate."

"Why the Serra Alina?"

"I cannot say, my husband. It has been… many years since the Serra Alina and I last spoke. But she was canny then, and wise."

"She was a sand viper," he said, with some rancor. "She was not a woman, not an example of the Serras of
this
family."

Serra Donna en'Lamberto bowed her head at once. He could not help but notice that in so doing, she had to put distance between them. "He is traveling without the Northern army. He will come in the company of the General, and the Callestan Tyr."

"And the Serra Marlena en'Leonne told you this?"

"Yes," she said faintly. "Because she knows that of all the Tyrs, my husband, the Tyr'agnate Mareo kai di'Lamberto, is a man of honor. And it is her belief that… no man of honor… could support the man who slaughtered her husband and his family."

"And of the Northern army?"

"She is a sentimental, self-indulgent woman," the Serra Donna said, with just a trace of the harshness of voice that often came with such a severe judgment. "But she is not a complete fool. She has said nothing of the Northern armies at all."

21st of Misteral, 427 AA

Terrean of Raverra

There was no precise moment at which Valedan knew that he was in a different country; no sudden change of terrain, no tug at the patriot's heart that whispered
you have returned
.

There was, of course, a border; it was drawn upon all the maps he had seen in a way that underlined its existence and separated two countries—Dominion and Empire—as effectively as markings could. But if he expected the landscape to conform to the map—and perhaps on some level he had—he was to be disappointed; the trees were the same on either side of the divide; the river, the same, the sounds of the sea in the distance the same.

He was assured that the people would be different, but his last glimpse of the Northerners and his first of the Southerners belied that common wisdom: border outposts, roadside fortifications, and men with armor and swords waited on either side of the undrawn line to speed him on his way, or to offer him what welcome border guards could.

The Northerners chose their weapons; crossbows and bows were readied as the group approached. There was hostility—some—but it was kept in check when Duarte AKalakar excused himself from Valedan's side and rode forward with a sealed scroll.

The scroll itself carried the word of the Kings' law, but had he not possessed it, the ring he wore would have been worth almost as much: Kalakar House ring. The Kalakar's gift.

Ellora was popular on the border for her actions here in the war a dozen years past.

The border gates—meant to stop wagons and horses, but not in the end meant to withstand a serious attack—were opened, and Valedan and his party allowed to pass. The passage took much less time than it would have had Valedan ridden at the head of armies—if indeed the armies were to travel by road.

From the moment he left the City, having excused his mother from attending him to spare both her dignity and his own, he felt that things were shifting beneath his feet; that everything familiar suddenly cast a shadow that implied an altered dimension familiarity had prevented him from seeing. The cobbled stones that he had always known now seemed to echo under the shod hooves of his mount, building to all sides as it was followed by other horses, until he felt that he was in the center of a large, gently sloped bowl, which was occupied on all sides by the unknown— by things, as the Callestan Tyr would say, he could not see for the sunlight in his eyes.

Everything you do now, from the moment you leave this city in the company of the Tyr and the General
—
your first General, Valedan
—
until the end of the war, will be a test. In some ways, it will be difficult, in some, simple. In the North there are many ways to fail a test. In the South, in the end, there is only one
.

Valedan glanced up as the horse paused, but the Serra Alina was nowhere to be found. Although she had chosen to travel with him, she had chosen to travel as a Serra; she was hidden from view—both the sun's and the men's—by the very traditional box and curtains that usually graced a palanquin. She had servants, of course; serafs were illegal. But free or no, they had been born in the South, and they had come with the Southern nobility to attend them during their tenure in the North. They were free—of course—by law; they could leave and seek their fortune in the streets of the City itself. But they had not seen fit to do so. Valedan understood it; the Ospreys did not. Although these men were returning to the lack of freedom that had been their home, to a place where there were no laws that protected the slave from the owner, they labored under her slight weight in a silence that spoke of anticipation, not fear. Home.

Too much
, Valedan had said, during his final audience with Mirialyn ACormaris.
There is too much that I do not understand
.

Understand this, then
, the Princess Royale had said, when he had asked her.
Freedom is not like addition or subtraction; it is not like learning to write the letter forms of Weston, or old Weston. It is not like learning to read, or learning to nock bow and aim true
.

It is not a thing that you learn and keep forever; it is not a thing that you learn and can teach. What meaning it has
—
and it has many, some strong and some pale and weak
—
is defined, whole and new, by the person who utters the word; who believes in it, who dreams of it
.

But who doesn't want to be free?

Do you?

/
am free
.

You are the son of a slave, Valedan. And your mother? Does she value the freedom?

That's different. She's a hostage.

No, Valedan
. You
are the hostage. She came with you. Think
. And then, relenting because he was young—and he had been young, then—she handed him her bow to pull, and said,
But do not think too hard. It is a thought to while away the afternoon hours, when one has those hours; it is not meant to be a lesson
.

But it had been a lesson of sorts, and he expected that were she to test him, he would fail. Still, she had taught him one other thing: persistence.

As they passed the Northern outpost, the Callestans seemed to relax; they became more lively, although they were not obviously more noisy. Perhaps it was simply that their hands left their sword hilts a little more often; that they viewed the trees, the rivers, the sky, and the earth beneath it as something they owned.

Ramiro di'Callesta did.

General Baredan di'Navarre fell back; the Callestan Tyran rode forward; the Ospreys marched in a tighter knot around Valedan. They had become quieter and quieter, and where the Callestan hands strayed to sword hilt less, the Ospreys strayed more; some balance was preserved, but it wasn't a balance Valedan was certain he cared for.

"AKalakar?"

Duarte glanced toward him; glanced back at the road. But he nodded. He was the only member of the Ospreys who did not constantly touch sword hilt.

"Tyr'agar."

Although the Ospreys had made the attempt—several times—to use the appropriate title, they had often failed within the halls of
Avantari
. Valedan wasn't certain whether to be offended or not, because they showed themselves up to the challenge of remembering what his title was the moment they had cleared the last checkpoint. They were not obsequious—they would never be that—but they had become far more proper in the space of a few miles than they had been in his entire previous acquaintance with them. "Do you expect trouble here?"

The Captain of the Ospreys gave a brief smile that was clipped at the edges. "We're in Annagar. Of course I expect trouble."

"More so than in Essalieyan?"

He nodded.

"Why? In either case, a demon is a demon, and although I am not familiar with the demonic tendency, I would guess that borders decided by mortals are not of particular interest, either as encouragement or discouragement."

"It's not the demons that concern us."

"What is it, then? I ride at the side of the Tyr'agnate; he is clearly marked and his Tyran carry his flag. Whoever attacks us here, attacks him first. And I think there are very few who would attack the clan of Callesta within Averda unless they intended to war. We are therefore unlikely—" Valedan stopped; his brows drew in, although his expression was otherwise untouched.

Duarte raised a hand a half a minute later; the Ospreys drew blades.

There were horses on the road ahead, and they were moving at speed.

Baredan di'Navarre rode ahead, vanishing almost instantly behind the inconvenient bend in the road. Valedan waited a moment. The sound of horses grew louder; the sound of men speaking stopped completely. But the only men who drew swords were his own; the Ospreys. Ser Andaro di'Corsarro and Ser Anton di'Guivera held their hands, waiting for the silence to break.

And when it broke, it broke first from the approaching riders.

Valedan edged his horse forward; the Ospreys—on foot—followed. Auralis AKalakar came back to his captain, and Valedan realized, with some chagrin, that he had not seen Auralis leave the group. And a man the size of Auralis was not easy to miss.

Duarte gestured, his left hand dancing in the air and across his lips, chin, chest. Auralis nodded, lifting his left hand as well, although the dance was slightly different.

Valedan had never seen a series of gestures so complicated, but he knew it for what it was: silent language. The Ospreys possessed a lexicon of movements that, in much, much shorter form, they used, to communicate when words were not an acceptable medium. It was not, therefore, a surprise that they had developed a style of speech that did not deprive them of their swords.