Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (2 page)

THE VOYANI

Arkosa

Evallen of the Arkosa Voyani
: the woman who ruled the Voyani clan

Margret of the Arkosa Voyani
: her chosen "heir"

Havalla

Yollana of the Havalla Voyani
: ruler of the clan

8th of Lattan, 427 AA

Averalaan, Hundred Holdings

Men were fighting in the distance.

It made the people who trudged their way to and from the Common, laden with baskets and awkward panniers, stop a moment beneath the cover of the trees for which the holdings were famous. Those trees towered at a height great enough to give little relief from sun's light this early in the day, and they were as thick around the base as a small knot of men, which meant they were easy enough to hide behind. That no one did said more about the demands of the festival season than anyone's bravery.

Swordplay was something to stay clear of, no question.

An older woman shouted into the thick of the crowd. Aidan recognized her, although he didn't know her name; he bought the odd curiosity from her in the Common when he had money. These days, though, that was never.

A tall man made his way through the crowd at the sound of her hawkish voice, and this man, Aidan
did
know; he was Primus Tela-rus of the magisterial guards, a regular man with slightly broader shoulders and a squarer jaw than most, but with gray hair that grew in a fringe around what was otherwise almost black. Like his dad, except for the hair.

"Over there," the woman said. "Can't you hear it? There's swords being used!"

Primus Telarus bent down, said something to the woman. Made her angrier, from the look of it, but a lot less frightened.

"Damned foreigners, who do they think they are? There are
rules
in this city!"

Whoever they were, they kept on fighting.

Magisterial guards, in the streets in somewhat larger numbers than usual because of the approaching Festival season, didn't even blink an eye. Whatever the swordplay was, they knew about it, and they didn't much care. The Common's regular merchants were made skittish by the influx of cartwheeling hawkers and peddlers, keen to stake claim to good ground as the travelers—and they were legion—made their way to Averalaan for the Kings' Challenge. The magisterians were here to prevent the skittishness from developing into something uglier and more permanent. People were decent when it was easy to be decent, and when it was hard— well, that's what guards were for.

That they didn't blink twice at the sound of swordplay probably meant that someone had gotten a permit for it. You had to have a lot of money for that, but at this time of year, there was money in plenty to be found—in everyone's pockets but Aidan's. It was the Challenge season. Merchants from as far away as the Dominion's deserts on one side, the winter principalities on the other, came in droves, almost like the cattle that was sold and traded for in the Common.

You could see people tossing sharp daggers in a circle that started and ended with their hands; you could see them sword-dancing; you could see them throwing torches, lit with orange fire; hells, you could see them
eating
fire, here. Off the thoroughfare, which was as wide as any in the hundred holdings, there were tents and wagons— old wagons, fine as the best carpenters and wainwrights together could make—and in them, the future waited, if you had the coin. 'Course, if you didn't, men with bigger muscles than brains waited instead, and usually in a bad temper; Aidan strayed close enough to admire the wagons, but not close enough to be noticed—and in this crowd, that was actually fairly easy.

The Challenge festival was in the air, in the smell of food and ale and sweat. But the air carried other things as well: voices as perfect as those of the bards of Senniel College, and often Morniel College as well—the Morniel bards were known to be fond of ale over fine wine, good company over the gatherings of the pretentious patriciate.

You could hear almost anything if you listened hard enough. Even swords. Especially swords.

Aidan knew it was high summer, and he knew that the champions would soon be here, to try their luck, and then their skill, in a test the Kings set. He glanced at the shadows on the ground, then slapped himself on the forehead; there weren't any that he could easily see. No one could, there were too many feet in the way. Still, sun was low across the eastern sky. Morning, mid-morning at the latest. Tomorrow was when they'd start. The tents were up in the Common—he could see the poles and the flags, but he wasn't allowed anywhere near the tents themselves. No one was.

Kings' guards were all over the place, securing this and that and barking out orders as if they were selling them. The magisterians didn't much like it, and Aidan couldn't say he blamed them; having a bunch of people whose only real claim to power seemed to be an extra sword up either side of a magisterial crest suddenly become top dog in your holding—well, he couldn't see liking it all that much either.

But he wasn't a magisterian; he was just Aidan, and this was the best time of the year, even with the heat. Because—there, there in the distance—there was fighting. Clearer than bard's song.

Of course, he couldn't actually
see
the fight, not yet; he approached it, breath held, feet light against stone and packed dirt. He didn't need vision to know it was something tremendous—a clash of long steel swords, slide of metal against metal that daggers were too short for, a silence that was free from the sounds of anger, of ugliness. You couldn't drink and fight like that. You couldn't just swing a large fist, pick up a ladle or a tureen, lash out with a heavy foot. Swords like
that
meant you had to be special. He knew it. He'd seen it before.

Seen it when he was younger, before his father's foot had gotten trapped by a turning wheel in one of the wainwright's wagons and gotten all twisted up. Had twisted him all up.

It hadn't been so long that he couldn't remember when his father had been a whole man, when his strength had gone into moving things, lifting things, learning to make them.

But it had been long enough that the memory of the one man, strong and certain and silent, made the reality seem so much worse. If you started out at the bottom, the bottom was all you knew. But if you fell, it was different. Hurt more, for one. And things had been good. They had.

I won't be like that. Something bad happens to
me,
and I won't be like that. I'll just die. I'll die first
. Aidan couldn't understand why people were so afraid of dying. You went to Mandaros, is all. Everyone who ever listened to one of the Mother's priestesses knew it. His mother had known it, too. She hadn't been afraid of death.

Probably why she'd died.

He shook his head to clear it; the sun was hot, and there wasn't enough wind to carry away the smell of sweat and food and horse manure—someone was going to get it for that—and fire. He held his breath past the worst of it; breathed through his mouth until he'd gotten past the thick of the crowd. The tents, with their limp red-and-blue flags, were at his back. But the swords were closer, he was closer to them; he only wanted to catch a glimpse of them, of them and the men who wielded them.

They never shouted. They never swore. They never spoke when they held their swords. And they didn't swing wild when they swung. They seemed to know where to strike, and where the other would strike. Magic, he thought. He'd never seen magic.

And he wanted to.

This year, he wanted to.

He hadn't eaten today. Wasn't worth it, to try to come up with something to eat. His father had woken earlier than usual because of the heat, and he was in a foul mood. Heat made some people slower. Not his dad.

Try to understand him, Aidan
, his aunt had said.
He lost his livelihood and he lost your mother in the same year
.

What about me
? Aidan had shouted back.
I lost them both
.

She'd nothing to say to that; that's what she did when he'd said something true enough that she couldn't speak over it or past it. In the silence, she'd run her hands through his hair—his white, white hair, that had nothing of either his mother or father in it. And that's the way he wanted it. Here, in the street, drawing closer and closer to the sound of swordplay, of a magic that neither his mother nor his father had had time to dream of.

The King's Challenge was a little over a week away.

In six years, his aunt told him; in six years, he might be big enough to try; he'd be old enough. To find a sword, and maybe learn how to use it. To impress the men who chose among the hundreds of supplicants, and to
be
one of the challengers.

Six years ago, he'd believed her. Six years, one at a time, had taken that belief away in bits and pieces, until the only time he had any of it left at all was now, during the challenge season itself. And he kept it tucked away, behind a still face, the words to express it lost with his mother's and father's lives.

He knew that these men had trainers, teachers, weapons that cost more than his father made—when he'd done real work—in three years. Knew that six years from now the only way he was going to even have a sword was if he was lucky, there was a war, and the army was stupid enough to have him.

That's what he wanted. At twelve, it wasn't going to do him any good. But at eighteen—at eighteen, it could change his whole life. So he waited, and he prayed.

And during the challenge season, he loitered around the fighters, when he could find them.

It would have been easy enough to catch a glimpse of them in the streets, but Kalliaris had never made anything in Aidan's life easy. He was used to having to work around her. Barely noticed it, in fact. Now if something went
right
, he knew it was time to worry; you paid for the good things with bad, and it was always much worse.

He was stupid, though—he prayed to Kalliaris, same as anyone. He was probably the only boy in the city trying to find men
using
swords. But he knew this part of the hundred holdings fairly well—there weren't many places they could be and still be that loud. He stopped, as if he were testing the sea wind, listening to the blades.

They stopped, and he froze a moment in bitter disappointment. Even started to trudge back the way he'd come, hands clenched in loose fists, face set into the scowl his aunt hated. But he didn't get far before he heard them again.

There.

They didn't fight in the streets, but close enough to them; the courtyard of the building that housed so many foreigners was open to the traffic of the large manse. Merchants came with the produce that the kitchens required as well as the fabrics that were to be used in the rooms themselves, as curtains and throws and bedspreads wore with age and use; carpenters came, masons, women from the poorer holdings who were certain to find work during the Challenge season.

All those people. And between them, if one were careful, a boy too small for his age might sneak, head bowed like a servant or an obedient extra son. It was best, in Aidan's experience, to come in with the wagons that carried the food and drink. They were often crowded with people, and the people were the right kind. The cloth merchants were more refined, and no matter how well he washed, his clothing was stretched to the point of breaking and he sounded like—like his father's son, not his mother's.