Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (107 page)

"Are we almost there," the older healer said brusquely, "or are we going to stand and talk in the street while frightening the pedestrians?"

"Uh, almost there, sir."

Everything about the older healer was short-tempered and a hair's breadth from rude, even his look; he was covered in dark hair from brow to chin, and his jaw was squarer than the courtyard of the biggest merchant bank. If he'd come off a ship in the port, and was surrounded on all sides by angry magisterians, he'd've looked more at home.

But there was no arguing with the twin palms that hung round his neck like a beacon. Wasn't much approaching 'em either, but that was probably best—this man, this Levee, was going to have to heal Aidan's father. Somehow he couldn't quite see Dantallon knocking his father over and sitting on his chest.

But Levee had promised that he'd do just that if that's what it took. Promised it, not to Aidan, but to Dantallon.

Dantallon, of course, had been horrified. A healer couldn't force a man to accept a healing he didn't want. Aidan believed it. Of every healer but Levee.

The healer met Aidan's half-defiant, half-hopeful gaze. Rolled his eyes. "Well, we don't have all day. Or at least I don't. I've students to tend to, and people your age are
always
in need of discipline."

"Healer Levee," the younger man said.

"You can't let these people waste your time. How many times have I told you this, Daine? You'll be turned into a cushion for fat patricians before you're thirty if you don't develop some—"

"—ill humor. I know." The younger healer grimaced, sharing some of that expression with Aidan.

"I'm not blind," Healer Levee said gruffly. He turned on heel and stalked off, in the direction that Aidan had pointed.

"He's not as… bad as he seems," Daine said, wincing slightly. "And he's had a rough quarter."

"Why'd you come with him?"

"Because I wanted to see him actually heal," the young man declared. "He'd kill me if I told you this, but he's got a soft heart buried under that ugly exterior. I—he taught me. He saved my life at least once. He gave me a chance to make something more— much more—out of it. But he's always seemed uncomfortable as a healer, and when I heard he was going to do this—this healing, I asked permission to come."

"I'm surprised he said yes."

Daine's smile was pained. "He said no. But in harsher words, and more loudly." He looked up then, at the broad, retreating back. "I'd like to go to him." And he did.

Made Aidan glad he wasn't healer-born. It was probably the first time in his life, since his mother's death and his father's accident, that he'd any cause to be glad of it. He juggled his embarrassment at his home and his possibly drunk father and his fear of the Healer Levee; embarrassment dropped like a heavy stone.

He moved.

First surprise: The stairs were clean and cleared.

The hall was also clean; no empty baskets, no empty jugs, no garbage to be carted down to the streets. Aidan hesitated a moment as he reached the closed door.

This time, Valedan said nothing. Levee said nothing. They waited while he put his hand on the door's tarnished handle, drew a breath as deep as his still-tender lungs would hold, and pulled.

The room was
clean
. The chairs—both of them—were tucked neatly beneath a table that held two bowls, two spoons, two forks, and two mugs on either side of a basket full of fruit that was, to Aidan's jaundiced eye, no more than two days old. The windows were clean; the curtains—curtains?—pulled back.

He detected Widow Harris' firm hand in every corner of his home; he hardly recognized it. But it lacked one thing: his Da.

Valedan and Levee came in, and the younger healer—the self-professed unwanted company—followed; two of the Tyran and two of the Ospreys likewise forced themselves into the vanishing space near the door. The rest of the honor guard were forced to wait on the stairs; there simply wasn't room for them to move, let alone be effective should the need arise.

"Ummm, wait here," he said. Wasn't like there was all that far to go, after all; there was only one other room, and the door was closed. Aidan walked up to it and hesitated for a long time. Then he knocked.

"Da?" he called through the closed door. "Da, are you in there? I've brought a couple of friends I'd—I'd like you to meet 'em."

He wanted to say more, but he couldn't; his mouth had become completely dry between the first word and the last. What if— what if his father weren't here?

But Kalliaris was listening, and, frown or smile—he'd find out which soon—the door to the sleeping room swung open, creaking a bit on its hinges.

His father was dressed to visit the Mother's own temple. Not as finely as Valedan, but almost as finely as the Healer Levee— which probably said more about the healer than it did about his father—and his breath was mercifully free of the heavy, sour scent of too much ale.

Aidan stood there, his mouth half open, staring up at his father's face.

"I—I had word you'd be coming," his father said, both gruffly and lamely. "I'd've come to the Palace but I—but I had work."

He was lying. They both knew it. But they both knew he hadn't come because he didn't want to be embarrassment; a half-whole father to a hero son.

"She sent a letter, you know. Widow Harris—she recognized the seal."

"She?"

"The Princess. I kept it. She says you saved a King's life."

Aidan shrugged, uncomfortable with the truth now that it was actually in his home. "If it hadn't been me, it'd be someone." Before his father could continue, he added. "Da, I'd like you to meet someone." And he turned to see Healer Levee, arms folded across his chest, sitting on table top. He wished—he really wished— that it had been the
other
healer who'd agreed to his request. But that other healer was quiet as a mouse beside a large, angry cat.

His father's eyes narrowed and then, seeing the symbol around the man's neck, widened. Aidan had done the same—for different reasons, though. It was hard to think of Levee as a healer.

"This is Healer Levee."

His father limped forward, struggling with crutch that he rarely, if ever, used in the confines of his own home. "Stev Brookson. Pleased to meet you," he added, sounding anything but. Still, he held out a hand, and Levee gripped it easily.

"You probably won't be after we're finished," Levee replied.

His father's head whipped around.

Aidan didn't say anything; Valedan, waiting in silence, did. "I owe your son a great debt. I offered him money, of course, because money is the way most debts are paid, in either Empire or Dominion."

"You—you're that Southern King!"

Valedan's easy smile was years older than this face. "Aidan didn't want money. He figured you could make that on your own. But he did ask for the services of a healer."

Aidan's father frowned, and then his entire face froze. Aidan knew exactly what that meant, but this time he didn't cringe. The healer's grip on his father's hand whitened as he attempted to pull away. "Aidan—"

"Da, he says—he says it'll hurt 'cause it's old. The break, I mean. But he says that, swear to Mandaros himself, he can fix your leg."

"You asked for
that
? Without asking me?"

"Da, I—"

"You just went out on your own, just asked for charity for
me
?"

"It's
not
charity. I
earned
it!"

His father was that shade of red-purple that was ugly for so many different reasons. Aidan stopped a minute, caught between a cringe and the silence that he so often hid behind when his father was angry. Stopped a minute longer, angry himself, angry in front of the healer and the Ospreys and the Tyran and Valedan.

It had been easier to stop the demon. Easier to make that damned decision than this one. Easier to act. And
that
was just stupid.

"That's what
I
want, and I'm the bloody hero," Aidan replied fiercely, aware that all eyes were on him. "I want my father
back
."

"And what if that's not what I want?"

"Then," Levee said, speaking for the first time, "I will knock you over and sit on your chest and heal you without your permission." He was among the largest men in the room, even unar-mored. Had his father been whole, it would have been a good fight. But he wasn't, so it wouldn't be.

"Levee—" the younger healer said.

"Aidan—" his father said, at the same time.

Aidan said nothing at all. He stood, mute, the triumph of his homecoming exactly what he'd been afraid it would be. In time, maybe in time, his father would forgive him.

But this time, his father's face slowly lost its red, ugly color, lost its frozen, growing anger, lost almost everything.

He said, "You come then, boy. You come here, and you give me your hand. You're my son, you're my only son. You stand by your Da while he does this."

6th of Seril, 427 AA

Averalaan Armarelas, Avantari

Kallandras came upon him in the full light of the Seril moon. Moon at full, a time of mystery and promise, a hint of wildness and hunger.

Yet although he knelt beneath the moon—the Lady's Moon—Ser Anton di'Guivera showed no wildness, no hunger. No movement.

The Arannan Halls were quiet; the Hall of Wise Counsel in
Avantari
proper was not. Valedan kai di'Leonne, Ramiro di'Callesta, Baredan di'Navarre, and the Kings and Queens were sequestered with the Flight—Eagle, Hawk, and Kestrel. Voices had been raised, voices had fallen; there was a rhythm to the heated anger that was carried by breeze and night air when the words themselves had been carefully obliterated by the magi who served the Kings directly. Only a bard would catch it.

There would be no drawn swords; no direct challenges. Not yet, not here. But Kallandras knew that the blood between the Callestans and the Kestrel was bad; sooner or later that rift would open, and that blood spill. Sometimes it was considered wise to bleed a patient. He would see.

But it was not of Valedan's council that he had come to speak, and not of war, although war was the order of the hour, the day, the month.

He waited, the shadows his cover and his counsel.

But Ser Anton di'Guivera did not move. The moon cast a soft shadow, hard to see at this distance, of the blindfolded boy who graced this courtyard in the Arannan Halls. That shadow touched the swordmaster like a benediction, it fell so gently.

The water from his cupped hands did not.

We were both trained
. Kallandras thought,
to bring death. Not pain, not torment, not freedom
—
but death, the simple fact of it
.

He stepped into the moonlight. Before he had moved five feet, the Southern swordmaster had risen, turned, drawn his blade in near-perfect silence, and frozen, becoming as much a thing of stone as the boy carved by maker-born hands at his back.

And around the stone, beneath it. within it, the waters of life. They were alike, the fountain and the swordsman; it was no wonder that he was drawn here to find peace.

Peace.

Kallandras held it in his hand, roughly made and still flecked with baked clay. He bowed.

"Ser Anton."

"Master Kallandras of Senniel," the swordmaster replied, returning the fiction of the bow politely but maintaining his grip on the sword.

Silence, then. A meeting of equals.

"You are… astute, Ser Anton."

"You are a bard of the North. In the South, I do not believe we would suffer you to live."

"Ah?"

"A man cannot tell men what to do by voice alone. Or so it is said."

"It is said. It is not true even in the South where no bard is suffered to live, of course, but it is said."

"Not true?"

"The Tyr'agnate of Callesta orders a death, and his Tyran obey, regardless of what they deem correct."

Anton's smile was dim with night colors. "You are right, and you are wrong. Of the Tyrs, Callesta is the most dangerous. He sees too sharply, and he understands his people too well. The binding he places upon them works both ways. He would kill to a man any man who did not follow the orders that he gave—but he would die before he gave orders that would destroy that binding, and he knows their measure well." But the swordmaster seemed to relax. He did not, however, sheathe the sword. "If you have come to find the kai Leonne, he is not present at the moment."