Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (32 page)

He didn't recognize the attackers; they wore nothing that identified them as anything more than citizens of Averalaan. He was certain they were citizens.

He casually slapped a man, hard, his mailed glove giving the blow an authority which sent the man flying. He disliked a mob of spectators in the same way that soldiers disliked vultures, but vultures at least had the intelligence to remain circling until the dislike had been dissolved by death.

Devon commanded as if he had been born to it; he had certainly been trained to take control of almost any situation should the need arise, and he was old enough now that there was no question about identifying the need, and none whatsoever about resolving it. But even he found himself distracted a moment when he heard the roaring that filled the streets and set the shingles that hung from the buildings closest to the crowd to swinging.

The roar, on the other hand, stopped only him; the crowd, it set to flight, accomplishing his chosen task in the space of perhaps ten seconds.

Ten seconds was more than enough time to kill a man; he knew it for a fact, although experience removed none of the urgency of death's hovering.

To the south, perhaps ten yards away, perhaps less, Angel, Carver, and Jester; Jewel and her domicis were carrying the last of the fallen Southerners to join them. It was not only the Southerners who had fallen; the Essalieyanese had perished, and in far greater numbers from the looks of the scattered bodies, than the two Annagarians.

Three of the Annagarians appeared to be tending, with caution, their fallen companion; Jewel joined them, speaking quickly and with the animation that urgency provoked in her. They responded in kind, in their fluid, foreign tongue, seeking reassurance from this child of expatriate traitors or Voyani settlers. They couldn't know which, and it was clear that they didn't care; they turned, after her reply, to watch Anton di'Guivera.

Devon followed their gaze—after all, it was only the responsibility of the moment that had taken him away from the source of the roar—to see four people. Kiriel, Meralonne, Anton di'Guivera, a man he'd much admired in his youth, and something that could not, could never, have been mistaken for a human.

Devon ATerafin had been in the Great Hall when the creature that Kiriel had called Etridian had collapsed the ceiling and destroyed by living fire the priests the Court held in highest esteem.

Kiriel knew that to lose control here was to lose what she had built, what little of it there was, in this complicated city, with its weave of lies and rich deceptions, and the truths that shone so brightly in spite of—or perhaps because of—them. Jewel watched her, and she hated the fact, but she accepted its truth: She did not want the den leader who trusted her to understand the truth, the whole truth.

And besides, this demon, this one's name spoke to her across the arc and the curve of their crossed swords. His was the subtle art, but she could sense the ties that bound him. Blood ties. It shocked her, muted some of her anger a moment—a demon of this one's power was
never
bloodhound; destruction was preferred. To bind the blood was to bind the whole. Only one creature controlled the
Kialli
against their stated whims, and he, the Lord of the Hells.

Her father.

He recognized her, this creature, and she him: Abarak. Named, his own, a lesser lord.

Whose blood? Who could force such a thing?

As if he could hear her question, he spun, and the whole of his focus was devoured by her: even Meralonne APhaniel, even he, fell beneath the range of his notice.

"You," Abarak said. He laughed. "When I send your head back to your master, he will be ill-pleased."

She saw his shadow as he saw hers, and he drew back, falling behind the sword and the sword's defense, as he began in earnest. With his shield, he shunted Meralonne aside; a mistake, but not costly enough.

He came bearing down upon her; she felt the shadow's edge devour her waiting, her desire for anonymity—and then he answered her question; he cried out in a terrible fury, a trembling of lips over perfectly formed teeth.

"He wants you… alive."

She did not name his master, but said, through this creature that had been made his, "Come then, and get me." And swung.

It was Jewel who saw it coming; the loss of the Kiriel that she knew to the Kiriel-that-was. She cried out to Kiriel, and knew that Kiriel was beyond her voice's reach, beyond caring for the words the voice held.

But Kiriel was a girl; she was Jewel Markess', and she had chosen. Jewel didn't give up so easily. She turned, her voice clipped and perfect, to Avandar, to Avandar who hovered above her like a shield, so unlike her den, and yet so much a part of her life.

"Hide her!" she cried.

He started and then he understood; he understood what she could not put into words in the face of the watching Southerners.
Hide her
.

She saw the distaste take his features and transform them; she was certain that asking him to slowly torture a small infant to death would have been preferable to what she had asked. But he drew on his magic, and she had seen enough of it over her life to know the color of illusion. Violet light shrouded his body with the crackle of its aura.

She trusted him, but it was a trust that had come with time; it was not what she felt, odd though it might be, for Teller or for any of the rest of her den.

The Southerners, unless they were mages themselves—and none of them bore the marks—or seer-born, saw nothing but Avandar's unnatural stiffness, and he was of such a condescending disposition that they probably wouldn't notice. Hells, most of her den wouldn't.

She had to give him one thing: He was fast.

The shadow bloomed for her eyes, for hers, and Avandar's and Meralonne's; she knew that Meralonne's eyes would pierce any illusion that Avandar could create. But she thought that Devon, that the lone Annagarian who fought, on his feet, by Meralonne and Kiriel, that Carver and Angel and Jester, would see the snarling fury of a crazed, a lunatic, killer, nothing more.

Glancing over her shoulder, she wondered if they'd even see that; they were transfixed all right, but not by Kiriel; it wasn't the familiar that tempted or held the vision.

For just a moment, as Jewel turned back to the whirling of a dark cruelty that was blade and more, she could see what they saw: the terror of the kin, and the beauty, the perfect, unutterable power that he held over life and death. He held her gaze that moment, and held the others for the duration of his shadow's bloom. But she could see what they could not: what Kiriel was, at that moment. For the first time in years, Jewel ATerafin began to weep, quietly, in awe and fear.

She cried out his name, pinning him with it, as he cried out hers; she had no intention of leaving the site of this chosen battle until she scattered his ashes right to the doors of the Abyss itself. She saw the gray one, saw the other, darker, torn in his little human way by the life he had chosen; she threw up her hands in a final motion: this was her battle.
Hers
.

Meralonne APhaniel was not so young that he did not understand what the crying of the names meant; nor so young that he did not recognize a naming when he heard it. He was old enough to know himself a Power, and wise enough to know that power's limitations, or at least wise enough not to test it unless the cost of doing otherwise was great.

And he was wise enough to know that the lone Annagarian who stood, stunned a moment, by the twin cries, sword catching no sunlight, as if no sunlight could touch these streets again, was not a man he could sacrifice to the battle of two such as these. He was tempted; he knew what Anton di'Guivera signified, by his presence, at
this
Festival. He knew the harbinger of war.

And he knew, oddly, the duties that he had come to accept. Shielding himself from her coming wrath, he leaped above the battle to the kin's flank, and there, rolled into Anton di'Guivera, taking care to protect himself from the certain edge of the sword-master's reflex. The swordmaster's steel.

He carried them both to safety—such as it was—before the cobbled stones erupted in a spray that shattered glass and pocked wood and masonry down the length and breadth of the street.

They were smart enough to leave her alone when she cried. Angel. Carver. Jester. Even Avandar. They knew.

She watched, her vision blurred by sheen of water, as these two fought, seeing no swords now, no physical blows; seeing in their movements the movements of oceans, of mountains. It was over; she knew it must be over: she held her breath a moment as the hum of names—for there were two, twining round the fight in a circle made somehow of sound, some twisted, bardic working—broke and faded until one remained.

She had never doubted which name that would be.

Kiriel.

Kiriel roared, and the streets shook.

Now, Jewel thought, weeping, and wiping her eyes with the folds of a shirt she'd thought too heavy for the summer's humidity. Now. She straightened out at the knees, rising, as the name began to grow in volume.

Now.

Still, she hesitated.

And so it was that the half-god in glory met the gaze of the slender, fragile woman who moments ago had been her only concern. She stood, the outline of her sword coalescing slowly as the sun reached its height, stood wavering, as if the sunlight at its height was still a thing to be denied.

It was good to be here and to be victorious, and to let that victory be known. It was good because there were others, and she meant them to understand her intent.

She turned, she was ready to leave, and saw the face of the woman, and she noticed that the face was smooth, but the lines around the eyes were somehow deeper, that the eyes themselves, dark enough to be mistaken for black by anyone but Kiriel, were rounded and reddened.

Reddened, she thought, with weeping.

Weakened, she knew, by fear.

Because she did not want to remember it, it took her moments to acknowledge that she had seen this before. Or perhaps it wasn't denial, perhaps it was due to the differences between the face of that woman, that older, that dead, woman and this one.

"Kiriel," this woman said, her voice nothing like the other woman's voice. It pained her, to hear the difference, when the expression was so exactly the same.

She wanted to be cruel; she could feel the ability to wound with words, and words alone, that would be far more painful than the dissolution she had inflicted upon the kin whose name the silence had taken. The shadow filled her eyes, touched her lips, moved her hair as if it were the charnel wind.

She spoke.

"Jewel."

"You've finished," Jewel said. "You don't have to do this anymore."

It wasn't what she'd thought to hear. She didn't know what she'd thought to hear. What had Ashaf said?

"I didn't come all this way to learn how to love—"

Ashaf was frightened, but she struggled to hide her fear behind the mask of anger, as if Kiriel couldn't sense fear better than she could sense life.

"I won't have you do this, Kiriel. I can't stay to see this." Her body was bent by the weight of the words, by the weight of the sight of the daughter, Kiriel knew, of the Lord of Night. Evil Incarnate, if Ashaf understood what evil meant at all.

Kiriel stood by the window. She turned her back to Ashaf; turned it to the waning moon's slight face, scant light. "What," she said to this momentary stranger, "would you have of me?" She lifted her hand and shadows filled it, and she knew that if she learned a bit more, just a bit more, she could unlock them all, all the shadows that were her birthright, and she never need fear the Court, human or kin, again. .

It was the night after her investiture. The ceremony of Allasakar. The rites of passage. And Kiriel had survived them, and . more. She was not the girl that she had been. Time, then, and time perhaps finally, for Ashaf to recognize this and have done.

"I don't—I'd have you give it up," Ashaf said then, and the tears started. "You have what you had. You have Falloran—"

"Falloran is the Hells' version of an ignorant beast. Kept in check by compulsion,
bloodhound
to serve me, probably stupefied into thinking that that's what he wants."

"But you—"

"Ashaf, I'm not human. If you came here thinking you could make me human, you're a fool, and you always were one."

Oh, she remembered the saying of those words, and they cut her and cut her and cut her because she remembered the dark joy the pain they caused brought. Because she hadn't meant to say them, and then, having said them, she was stopped from taking them back because of the heightened sensation, the
awareness
of the fact that they did hurt, they could hurt.

Regret and pleasure.

Pleasure and anger.

The shadows fled at once, done, drained by her need to scour herself clean of the taint that brought those memories back.

But she was fooling herself; she was as much a fool as Ashaf had ever been, and ever would be, had she survived her stupidity. She was never free, never clean: they were with her, her father's gifts.

I came
, Ashaf had said, with dignity, although the pain made her wrap her arms around herself and take a step back,
because I knew how to love you
.

And then she was gone. The triumph of the night was gone with her. gone with the warmth that she alone carried. Had Kiriel forgotten that warmth? Yes. For just long enough. For long enough.

She looked up, diminished, at the woman that she had led here. She spoke again, and again, she chose to express herself with a single word.

"Jay."

Jewel Markess stretched out an open hand, and after a moment, hesitant and suddenly far too tired. Kiriel di'Ashaf took it.

The sun was high, the shadows as short as they would be all day.

A continent away, surrounded by the blight of rock and lifeless waste, the towers rose, and he rose with them, taken by wind's whim to the heights.

He had witnessed the fight; the fight itself stirred some ember of something akin to pride; pride, after all, was no stranger to the
Kialli
race that had once walked these lands. It was no stranger to them when they ruled in the Hells, and human pride, he thought, was infinitely lessened without the
Kialli
to set a fitting example.