Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (19 page)

"And that," Devran said unexpectedly, "is a pity, because I believe by the end of her tenure in Terafin she will either learn to be one, or she will not survive."

Commander Allen turned sharply. "What do you mean?"

"The girl is not a killer. You are, Bruce. Ellora is, I am. The Terafin is."

"Why, thank you," Ellora said wryly.

"This is House business, not Crown business," the man called the Hawk added, his eyes sharp and clear as his namesake's. "But the rumors are stronger than they have been in fifteen years."

"What rumors?"

Ellora and Devran exchanged glances, and Commander Allen reminded himself that they, these two and he, were not yet upon the field of battle; they were
The
Kalakar and
The
Berriliya, and his concerns and theirs, in this so-called civilian life, did not meet or touch often.

It was Ellora who replied. "Even Kalakar has heard the rumors— and fielded requests."

"Requests?"

"For support."

"Ellora, Devran—time
has
passed if you've forgotten how little patience I have."

Devran answered. "The Terafin is being pressured to choose an heir. There are, that we know of, four candidates, and of those four—Rymark, Haerrad, Elonne, and Marrick—two have emerged as the true contenders: Rymark and Haerrad. Regardless, all four have quietly petitioned The Ten for aid and support should they be the chosen heir of Terafin."

"I see. And?"

The silence was uncomfortable.

At last, Ellora said, "You serve the Kings, Bruce. As do we when we wear these uniforms. But the requests came not to the uniforms, nor to the Crowns; they came to
us
. It is House business."

Which meant, Bruce Allen thought bleakly, House succession war. The Kings did not interfere, not directly, in a House War, unless it grew out of proportion. And proportion, to the Wisdom-born King, was a hundred deaths, not ten. It was within The Ten that those who sought power tested themselves, and weeded themselves out. The Twin Kings were proof against the succession wars that had devastated human empires for centuries, even millennia, before the birth of Veralaan. "Were there only four?" he asked.

Ellora and Devran glanced to and away from each other so quickly their expressions hardly had time to shift. It was Ellora— always Ellora—who finally said, "There was a fifth. Possibly a sixth."

But more than that, she would not say. And his intelligence, within the Houses, was not up to the task of Finding what she did not offer. He could ask Duvari, the Lord of the Compact, but that would draw attention of a type that neither the Hawk nor the Kestrel ever gracefully accepted.

He would say nothing.

But he wanted, in his own way, the simplicity of a war that could be fought in the open.

"We'd best speak with the girl, then," he said at last. Thinking of Duvari, he added, "we won't have her services until the last serving member of the Kings' Court has been officially cleared by the Lord of the Compact-—and I believe he intends, with The Terafin's permission, to use the girl's peculiar vision."

12th of Lattan, 427 AA

Avantari

Five days.

Valedan kai di'Leonne rested a moment beside the fountain that had never once ceased its quiet cry. Blindfolded, the carved statue that had been an affront to so many of his compatriots stood in the center of the water that came from his cupped hands.
Justice
, its maker had called it.
Tyrian Justice
. They translated
Tyrian
to be
Annagarian
, and perhaps it was; either way, it was clear to those who had come from the Dominion what its intent was. An insult. A slap in the face.

Usually the intent of such a slight was lost if you were not from the North, with the rain's water and the frozen winter for blood— after all, slavery was a fact of life, the Lord's will; the Lady's stricture. This statue had been carved by the branded hands of an escaped slave—one of the few who had probably stolen enough that he could bribe the Voyani to bring him across the borders.

No. Be honest. He knew, because Mirialyn ACormaris had chosen to tell him, that although the man's hands had been those of a slave, he had been revered in his fashion, for he could make, out of stone, an almost living, breathing boy, an accusation that could not be ignored.

Not even by the clansmen of the South.

North, Valedan thought bleakly, or South. Where did justice fit in at all?

He was exhausted. His joints, even with no movement on his part, ached; he carried bruises that had only just turned yellow-gray. Purple, the more common color, decorated his shins, his forearms, but Commander Sivari was no longer able to touch his chest, his ribs, the side of his head. That much, he'd won for himself. He had hoped to hide his skill; had hoped to take them by surprise. A boy's hope. A fool's.

Five days. He could run the footpaths until he was exhausted, and then continue his run, the heat of the sun bearing down upon his clothed flesh, his dark head. This was Avantari, the palace of Kings, and in it, he was as safe as he could be. But the gauntlet was not to be run within Avantari; it was to be run within the hundred holdings—and beyond.

Five days.

Ah. He rose and turned, twisting his back slightly as he plunged his hands into the waters of the fountain, cupping them beneath the surface and drawing water toward his face. He felt guilty because he hid here, instead of returning to his rooms—but he could not bear the teary sight of his suffering mother for an instant longer than was completely correct.

It was hard enough to have made the choice, to have petitioned the Kings, and to have been accepted into the ranks of the many who would attempt to qualify themselves as worthy contenders for the wreath the Kings offered their Champion. Hard enough to know what the cost would be if he failed, worse to know that every step of the way he was exposing the entire fate of his clan—and he could say it now, with a perverse pride, a quiet and dogged determination,
his
clan—by the turn of his back beneath the open sky.

But worse was to have to justify it, again and again, to a woman whose worst fault was that she did not want anything to happen to her beloved, to her only, child.

Let Serra Alina take care of his mother.

Or Ser Kyro, if he was not fast enough to move out of her way.

The stones beneath him were cool; the shade, however, was moving as the sun rose in deliberate reminder of the time, of the lack of time. He swallowed a deep breath of air that was too warm to be refreshing, and then he picked up the unstrung bow that lay on the stones by his side, well away from the spray of water, from the glare of sun's heat. Fighting, and running, and swimming he had already forced himself to face in the course of the early day; it was time for the targets.

Peace, there. A moment's peace.

He thought he would like to see the Princess Mirialyn ACormaris, for it was her hand that had guided his to the bow that had become his strength, to the sword whose use so surprised his compatriots, the clansmen who were too busy to notice the activities of the son of a concubine. But he was no longer Valedan the boy hostage, to be permitted to run from room to room like an indulged child seeking the most indulgent of his gentle keepers.

He was kai Leonne.

But Mirialyn ACormaris would have recognized that boy in the way that this young man momentarily bit his lip before gaining his feet and throwing his shoulders back. Before leaving the courtyard that was, and had been, his sanctuary.

"'… and it's supposed to be the single best way to prove that you're better than anyone else without actually going off and killing someone."

"Why?"

"Why
what
?"

"Why do all of that just to avoid killing someone?"

Duarte saw Auralis lift both hands to his face in a gesture that was only partly theatrical. The leader of the Ospreys was still not quite comfortable with the newest of his recruits, and watched her often, sometimes openly, sometimes surreptitiously, and sometimes by chance and serendipity. This was, he hoped, an example of the latter.

Auralis had been put slightly off his stride by his encounter with the young man who would be Tyr; the fact that, dagger to dagger, an apparently inexperienced boy could not only hold his own, but best him, had done more than cosmetic damage, although that aspect of the damage, fading fast, was hardly in evidence.

No; that wasn't accurate. He wasn't
slightly
off his stride. He was restless, a little too wild; Alexis was certain—or at least she was convincing when she spoke with Duarte—that he'd taken to drinking in the hundred holdings without the benefit of his companions. Probably true.

And everyone knew that meant he was looking for a fight, preferably a deadly one.

"Auralis," Kiriel continued, her dark eyes completely unblinking as she stared at the cracks between the older man's sun-browned fingers, "these men—they will all be soldiers, yes?"

"Not all."

"But almost all."

It was when she was like this that Duarte found her most compelling, least difficult. She had about her a childlike insistence, a terrible, strange need to know, that made the desire for knowledge seem a thing of dark wonder. He froze; often, if there were too many witnesses, she ceased to ask questions at all. As if the mere asking of questions were a weakness.

It was, Duarte thought, if he were honest at all.

"Yes, Kiriel," Auralis said, pushing his hands up from his face and through hair that was only slightly darker than his skin at high summer. "Almost all of the men here will become soldiers."

"Then, they'll kill."

"Yes. Then." . "Why not just have the war, and judge by that?"

"You don't have a war just to choose a single man as Champion."

Careful, Auralis
, Duarte thought, seeing suddenly where she was leading.

"But that's exactly what you do do," she replied intently, no hint of the victory her words were about to gain her in her voice, or the lines of her peculiarly delicate face.

"It is not—"

"Yes, it is. We are going to war to choose a Tyr."

Duarte saw the whites of Auralis' eyes as he rolled them. "Kiriel, we
don't
ride to war every year. And if we had a choice—"

"You'd ride to war every year," she told him softly. Her voice changed, then, as it often did, turning suddenly cold and danger-ous, as she revealed her edge, that dark perception that came from the mouth of a child.

They were used to it, in part—but it was hard to stay used to it, the turn from clawing kitten to overland cat was so sudden. He thought Auralis might react badly, and he prepared to intervene.

But Auralis' face shuttered as if it were a window. "Yes," he said.

She seemed nonplussed by the surrender.

"'Every day. There are men I'd kill in a minute. Less. And not slowly either. There are women I'd take. There are enemies I'd give eternity to have in my power—in my complete power, for hours. Minutes. Is that what you need to hear, Kiriel? What you want to hear? I won't deny it." His voice was ice, as cold as the Northern winter.

For just a moment, the winds changed; Duarte felt that the intervention needed might after all be on Kiriel's behalf, and not Decarus Auralis'. "I joined the Ospreys because I
know
who I am.

"Can you say the same?"

Her hand came up, but it came up empty; she clutched the strands of silver that held a pendant she was never parted from— a heavy, crystal thing that was, as far as Duarte could tell, a gaudy, near valueless bauble. That and the single, unadorned band she wore on the third finger of her left hand were, as far as any Osprey had been able to ascertain, the entirety of her nonessential worldly goods. She had sword and armor, but they seemed so much a part of her, no one thought of them as possessions.

"Who are you, Kiriel?"

"I don't know," she said softly. "Choice waiting for consequence to occur." She shrugged; the chain slipped back into the folds of her loose, pale shirt. "But you're more like I am than anyone here, Auralis. Doesn't matter what you hide, if you hide it at all. I can
see
it."

He shrugged. "What of it? Do you think I care what you think?"

"No."

"Good. I don't." He met her gaze, unblinking. "And it wasn't me we were talking about. It was the Challenge."

"Yes." As if his lack of pain had taken the wind out of her sails, she shrugged and returned to the matter at hand. "Why can't we cheat?"

Interesting.

"Ask Duarte."

Said Primus exercised his imagination as he mentally cursed the man who was unofficially his third in command.

Auralis turned, with a sly smile, and Kiriel followed his lead. Duarte was half-certain that the girl had been aware of his presence all along; she rarely missed anything as obvious as a mage shielding himself from easy detection.

"The Primus will say no."

"The Primus," Duarte said, with what dignity an eavesdropper could muster, "would indeed say no. And not for the reasons you think."

Auralis bared teeth in a smile; the sun fell upon them all in the midafternoon heat as if it were the gaze of the Justice-born King in anger. "We'd get caught."

"We'd get caught. Kiriel, every possible trick in the world has been tried at least once. The magi themselves sit in attendance over the Challenge to ensure that no magic of any variety is used. They handle the weapons that the combatants will take into their combats; they manufacture the javelins for the throw, the poles for the vaulting, the reins and saddles for the riding. Do you understand? There is no way to cheat the Kings' Challenge magically.

"And to cheat it in other ways is likewise difficult; the mages watch everything."

"If we knew how to do it," Auralis said, "We would. We could make a
killing
."

She frowned. "Why," she began, and Auralis held out a hand, palm out, in frustrated, if theatric, surrender.

"I meant, of course, that we could make a lot of money."