Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (26 page)

But the South was there, at the core of his heart; a Northern boy would have taken the cut that Ramiro desired to offer— because a Northern boy would have trusted the guise of both ally and the formality of "rules."

Still, enough. For they were in the North, and it was the Northern armies that would be their best weapon. He had no intent of letting the Tyr'agnate further antagonize either the Princess or the Commander.

"Ramiro," he said, drawing close, the tone of the single word genial, the hand upon his sheathed sword not. "A good fight. I trust that you have what you came for?"

The Tyr'agnate spared the General a glance, and then he smiled thinly. "Not entirely what I came for, Baredan. But I am… satisfied."

"Sheathe the sword then, and be done."

"As you say." Ramiro di'Callesta lifted
Bloodhame
, and ran her edge lightly across his cupped palm. She bit, but not deeply, not in his hands.

"You are not," the Tyr'agnate said, turning from Baredan to the master he served, "what I feared you would be. You… fight well, and you are wary enough. Be so, and you may survive what follows."

Valedan did not smile in return. Instead, he sheathed his own, unnamed, sword. "One does not have to be treacherous to understand treachery, Tyr'agnate."

"Not in the North," Ramiro said softly.

"Nor in the South," Baredan added. "There is a difference between cunning and treachery, Tyr'agnate. at least to most clansmen."

"Not the clans who rule. General."

"Not all of the clans, no."

They bristled a moment, the General and the Tyr'agnate.

It was Valedan kai di'Leonne who took the edge from their words. "You did not come here," he said, his voice betraying some weariness, "to argue among yourselves." It was a question, and a statement.

Baredan had the grace to bow. "No, Tyr'agar, we did not."

"Good. You have news?"

"We have."

"Join me in the baths, then, and let me hear what you have to say."

"Alina," Valedan said quietly, as he fitted himself with the soft, silk robes that were meant for evening's use, "What does it mean?"

"What," his closest adviser replied, "does what mean?" She motioned to the mats on the floor, and after loosely tying the sash around his waist, he knelt there.

"Anton. Anton di'Guivera."

He felt her sigh wuffling through the back of his hair, a soft breeze rather than a sound. He was tired, but if his legs and arms would cease their near-endless ache, he thought he might be momentarily content. Today he had accepted the sparring challenge of Ramiro di'Callesta—and he'd bested him, although it had been a near thing. Commander Sivari was, after all, a better swordsman than the man whose life had been forged in the fires of the Lord, and to come from the first to the second had given him an edge he wasn't certain he'd have otherwise.

She said nothing, but he felt the smooth strength of her palms against either side of his neck; she lifted one hand and pushed his head forward, murmuring a graceful request that he relax.

"Alina?"

She sighed. "You
must
relax. Tomorrow, you will run and you will ride; you will swim, and you will fight. And the next day. And the day after that."

He did not reply, not directly. But as she massaged his neck and his shoulders, he shifted, lowering the full length of his body into the coolness of the mats. He buried his face into the arms he crossed beneath his chin.

"He trained my half-brother."

"Valedan."

"Do you know what they told me?"

"That he is here? Yes. I'd heard."

"And you didn't mention it?" Valedan knew better than to rise; he let his words carry his surprise.

"The Princess told me," she said quietly. "But I knew that Ramiro and Baredan would have that information—and more— brought to you. It is better, with men like Baredan, that they feel they are being useful."

"Do you know what—what our enemies—told Anton di'Guivera?"

"No," she said gravely. Her hands stilled. "Do you wish me to know?"

It surprised him. "Alina, what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

He sat up and turned; she knelt against the mats, her hands uncharacteristically folded in her lap. "You've been almost too quiet all evening."

"And I am usually too loud?" Her smile was, for a moment,
her
smile, not the smile of an attendant. It left her face quickly.

"Have I done something to offend you?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"I spoke with Miri before I came," she said, her eyes upon the lamps, and not his face.

"And?"

"Your combat with Ramiro kai di'Callesta—you did not choose to tell me how it ended."

"I did not— Oh. That."

"Valedan—I would not have guessed that you would escape the scratch he intended to give you; not I, not Baredan, not Sivari. Only Mirialyn was not surprised."

"So?"

"You are not the boy that we think you are; you are already more of the man that you must be. Not one of us clearly understands you—-but until this afternoon, each of us, born and bred beneath the Dominion's sun—thought we did."

"The sun is the same anywhere," Valedan said, almost absently. "Sigurne from the Order of Knowledge teaches that—"

She laughed fondly. It eased the stiffness that he did not care for out of her features for a moment. "Even I would have guessed that you would have been cut, measure for measure, as Ramiro was. Why weren't you?"

As if it were a real question, and not one posed almost entirely to herself, he answered. "He was angry," Valedan said softly. "Gracious about it, but angry. He didn't sheathe his sword; I assumed he was waiting until I was… less prepared."

"He couldn't sheathe the sword.
Bloodhame
requires blood before it's returned to its scabbard—at least, that is the Callestan legend."

"Oh."

"You didn't know this?"

Valedan said nothing for a long moment, weighing the truth, weighing a lie, glancing, as he balanced the cost of each, at the neutrality of the Serra Alina's face. She was the only person who both understood the Dominion and whom he trusted, and he did not want to lose either her affection or the sharpness of her mind; it was a weapon at least as graceful as the Callestan sword, and perhaps more deadly.

Lie? Truth?

"No," he said at last, reluctantly, "I didn't know that."

Her dark eyes widened in surprise, and then she laughed, and he saw the shadows leave her eyes. "The Lady protects you, even when the sun is at its height. You must never tell either the General or the Tyr'agnate what you have just told me.

"But come. Tell me," she said, "about Anton di'Guivera."

He did, hesitantly at first.

Because he knew that he had lied to the Serra. And that she believed it, because he had never lied to her before. But he knew, then, that the lie would ease her where the truth would not—and he was young enough to need that ease, and that confident affection, old enough to know how to best get it.

One day, he promised himself, almost guiltily, one day, he would tell her the truth.

The moon was high above the manse, the air almost cool, although at the height of any other season, no one would have called it so. Everything was relative.

Jewel ATerafin stood on the path not ten yards away from the shrine of Terafin, moonlight shining like half-lit silver along the bent leaves of flowers that night had brushed color from. She had not traveled this distance alone, and it galled her, but not so much as the idea that one of the remaining two ATerafin—Elonne or Marrick—might come upon her unprepared and unaware. As Rymark had done.

As someone had done, to Teller.

Teller.

She drew breath and balled her hands into fists, feeling the bite of fingernails against the flesh of palm. She did not want to think of it. Could barely think of anything else. It brought old memories back; removed the patina of experience from the years she had spent here.

Like silver, she thought; take away the tarnish and the stuff underneath hasn't changed all that much—but it certainly looks different in either state, cared for or careworn.

Avandar was the shadow over the face of the moon's light. He did not accompany her to the shrine, but there he was, like an awkward third arm, or leg, a thing to be gotten around. And he knew it, too. She wondered, for a moment, how a man like Avandar could make it his life to
serve
when command seemed the natural inclination to him; she had never really wondered that of Morretz. Or of Ellerson.

There. In the shadows beside the shrine, sitting on the lowest of the steps.

"Stay here," she told her domicis.

The domicis raised a brow—she could see it, although she didn't actually look at his face; his face, his plethora of expressions, was etched in memory, a conscience of sorts to pull out when she needed one and he happened to be elsewhere. Or to be avoided, when he happened to be present.

But he followed her gaze, and when he saw the man on the step, he gestured. "Very well," he said. "But I will wait here, Jewel."

"I'm not a target," she snapped, irritated.

"If that were completely true, you would not have agreed to my escort."

Worst thing about Avandar was that he wasn't stupid enough. She muttered something less than graceful under her breath and started out across the path, shaking her hands slightly to take the edge off the tension balled fists always produced.

Devon ATerafin looked up as she approached. He smiled, but the smile was half-hidden by the poor light, and Jewel did not carry the lamp. "You summoned me."

"Yes."

"But you did not wish me to meet you in your quarters?"

"No."

"Very well." He stood. "Why?"

"I'm being observed, and my routine is known. No one blinks twice when I make my way out to the Terafin shrine. Anyone interested might do more if I make my way out to Avantari on business that hasn't passed through Council or Gabriel first."

"You have your own concerns," he said mildly.

"Yes. But they aren't, apparently,
solely
my concerns." She passed him, taking the steps two at a time until she stood by the altar, beneath the domed roof, where light might make the lines of his face—and the expression they fell into—more clear. He followed with his usual grace; the years had taken nothing away from the quality of his movement, and very little away from the speed.

Nothing away from the quiet force of his personality.

"Something happened," he said quietly.

She started a bit, and then laughed. Ugly sound, that—too weak by half. "Two things. I need your help with one—and you'll want to give it, so I consider that I'm doing your office a favor."

"I see. And the other?"

She looked away. "Since I'm doing you a favor, I want a favor in return."

"It's House business." Not a question.

"Yes."

"It is not… always safe to involve me in House business, Jewel."

She looked up at him, met his eyes. "I know," she said at last, acknowledging what was not often acknowledged within Terafin proper: That Devon ATerafin was one of the very, very few men of any power who owed his allegiance, in truth, to two lords. Acknowledging what had
never
been acknowledged by The Terafin, because of course it could not be: That the allegiance to the Crowns was stamped so thoroughly across every nook and cranny of his beliefs and endeavors that there might as well have been only one lord.

The Terafin had always liked Devon, in her fashion; Jewel believed that she found it convenient to have a man who served so close to the heart of the Kings' security. It was clear that the Kings understood that Devon was ATerafin; equally clear that The Terafin understood he was a member of the Compact, Astari. Devon himself was a gesture of The Terafin's political confidence in the Crowns, a sure statement that the woman who ruled the most powerful noble House in the Empire was certain that between the just and wise rule of Kings and the ambitions of the House, there would never be conflict. Practically, however, he was also a source of contact with the Crowns in an emergency that went to the heart of the matter through channels that were unpredictable and therefore nigh impossible to block.

But not even she would have given her House name to a man— or allowed him to keep it—had he once publicly avowed the greater loyalty to the Twin Kings. She had never asked, although they had walked that line time and again, finding anew how sharp it could be, and how close to cutting.

Jewel had never asked. Had never needed to.

"I know it's not often done. But this isn't just House business, and it's not—yet—officially Council business, so I can talk about it if I damned well please."

"Jewel—"

"Haerrad had Teller ridden down. Not killed. Just injured and left in the road."

"Jewel—I tell you again, there are things that we do not discuss—"

"I
don't care
what you don't discuss with The Terafin." She pushed her hair out of her eyes. Thinking, as she bit her tongue and got control of the level of her voice, that it never seemed to matter how often the damned thing was cut—it still skirted the edge of her lashes or worse. "I need your help."

"Do not ask me," he told her, his voice as formal as it had been in over a decade, "to choose sides in this. For the good of the House that you love, do not even force me to speak of the sides that exist. Jewel—House Wars are prohibited by the Crowns."

Bitterly, she said, "And the Crowns are hypocritical enough to look the other way as long as the death toll doesn't get too high.

Four, live, six—they won't blink. And six is all it'd take to wipe out what's left of my den."

He was stiff for a moment; she saw his lips thin at the open criticism of the men whose lives he was sworn to protect. "It's not hypocrisy," he said at last, coldly, "but wisdom. We are what we are. Jewel, and the Kings are what
they
are. The Houses are what is left of the old order, and if they've changed over time, what hasn't is this: Men seek power that they can rise to. The Ten provide the magnet to their steel."