Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (41 page)

"No," she said immediately. Knowing she wasn't supposed to talk about it. Knowing that she would, to Alowan. "It was Kings' business, all of it."

Some of the tension left his expression; none of the weariness. "I cannot save them both," he told her softly.

He was wavering in her vision; she turned her back and rubbed her hands angrily over her eyes, as if she could squeeze them dry. "Will you—would you be willing to—to save one of them?"

A long pause. A
long
pause. And then. "Yes."

Anyone else, anyone else and she would've known who he'd pick. But Alowan didn't judge the way anyone else did.

"Who?"

He smiled at that, smiled wearily. Because she asked. Because she knew that to him, to the part of him that healed, life was life. There were precious few in the House—with its political tensions, its fractured struggle for power—who understood that at the moment.

They both heard the doors to the healerie open. No question who it would be. None at all. Devon had gone at once to fetch her: The Terafin. They entered the room, the armored man and the woman who was so sure of her power it seemed she didn't need armor. Morretz followed in her wake, as silent as always; his eyes flickered over Avandar, who stood apart, who stood alone watching Jay from a distance. Watching her, knowing that that watching did nothing, or so it seemed to Finch.

The healer tensed; she saw his shoulders slump and then rise, saw the line of his jaw stiffen. He turned and bowed. "Terafin," he said.

She wasn't a stupid woman. She must've heard it in his voice, because she said, "You have not begun."

"No. There are… two… who cannot be brought back by anything but the call."

She was silent a moment. Then, "There is only one who is important to the future of the House. Do what must be done."

"I will." He bowed his head again. "But it will not be to your liking, Terafin."

"What?" Devon's voice, harsh, loud where The Terafin's was soft, for all that you could hear it anywhere.

"We do not argue here, not in this place. It is the healerie, and it is
my
domain. If you wish it, Terafin, I will leave your grounds having achieved no healing at all. But for reasons of my own— good reasons—I believe it is the boy that I must save."

"Boy? He's not been a boy for twenty years!"

"And you. sir, for longer."

"If she dies, we lose her sight, we lose her vision—we lose—"

"What do we lose, ATerafin? You will speak of House matters when The Terafin does not?" He turned away then.

Finch was silent, although she paced back and forth in front of the fronds whose tips touched floor from a height that was greater than Avandar's, pretending not to hear the raised and lowered voices, the imprecations, the near-pleas, the curses.

Avandar moved to stand beside Jewel's bed. He made of silence a weapon, one turned in both directions: outward and inward. Finch had never seen him so grim, so pale, so—downtrodden. The Terafin, she thought, had aged, putting on the weight of years the minute she crossed the threshold between her manse and Alowan's healerie. And it was. indeed, Alowan's healerie, no matter that it was located in the heart of Terafin's finest dwelling. They had forgotten it, at times, because they
could
forget it; not even during the last pitched battle, the aftermath of it, had he contravened any order, ignored any request. The Terafin had chosen to give him.

Finch had nothing against standing up for oneself against power—after all, it was not as if Alowan had ever chosen to take the Terafin name—but she wasn't certain she would have chosen now to do it, if she had been someone else. If she had been him.

But if she'd been him. she wouldn't have been able to act at all. There were some choices that should never have to be made, and this was one: Alowan, hovering between the barely breathing bodies of Jay and Angel. Finch was afraid. Maybe, at his age, there was no way he could bring even one of them back. But if that were the case, surely he'd say it? She bit her lip to stop from thinking; didn't help. Never did.

Jester and Carver had gone, with Meralonne, to find the demon-trapped young girl's parents, to deliver her to them. To hear Devon speak, she wouldn't have found her way home, otherwise; she was in a state of grace that people who've forgotten what pain and terror
really
feels like call shock. Devon was speaking now, and it was clear that what he had to say didn't do much but annoy the healer.

She tried not to listen.

Because The Terafin and Devon were
both
doing it. They were talking about Jay and Angel as if they were just two weapons; Jay was the House sword, and Angel was a well-made, but common, dagger.

She thought—she thought that Avandar would join them. That he would demand, because everything with Avandar had the weight and feel of demand, no matter how he worded it, that the healer heal Jewel. But he seemed content to let The Terafin speak for him. To let Devon speak for him.

"Neither of you understand. I expect that lack from you," Alowan said, frowning at Devon ATerafin, "but from you, Amarais, I expect better."

"Better?"

"You should know who this young woman is."

"She is thirty-two or thirty-three by her own reckoning, Alowan. She is not a child."

"No. But she is not a power, not yet. She is useful. She is necessary—but she is
not
a weapon that can be reduced to the value of its obvious function. You do not know the steel that goes into her; you do not understand, either of you, that
this
is the time when the sword is being tempered." He lowered a voice that was seldom raised. "But you should, Amarais. You should. Ten years from now, I would tender a different answer. But I know what you intend, as she refuses to know it, and I tell you now that if I choose differently, the sword will be poorly tempered; the edge will be brittle."

"If she dies, Healer, and she (Joes approach death, she will not survive the temper." Devon's voice.

"Yes."

"Alowan—"

The old man looked across at the woman that he had served, without name, for half of his adult life. "Call me a coward," he said softly, "if you must. But I have done what you ask of me once—twice—in my life, Amarais. It is how I came to be trapped here, when I abhor things political.

"I offer no lie. What I have seen in healing
you
, I have seen in her. If you could force this choice upon me, it would break her for the House purpose. Understand it. There are sacrifices that one
must
come to on one's own. You did."

"If the House does not have that time?"

"Then, either way, the House will fail. Accept it, Amarais; what is precious in her cannot be forced."

She fell silent then; she did not flinch or blush or pale. She was, in Finch's eyes. The Terafin.

"The boy," Alowan said softly. "The boy I will save. But if you do not leave us, they will both die."

Devon stepped forward and reached out; Finch held breath as she realized that he was going to
grab
the older man. But his hand stopped, froze suddenly, as if the hand and the man were struggling. The man won.

"You have money," Alowan said, as he bent down to place his hands upon Angel's broken chest. "And time, if you wish to save Jewel ATerafin. The boy's injuries are worse."

Time, but not much of it.

Avandar stirred. "You've decided, then."

Not a question, not really. "It's not what Angel would've wanted," Finch heard herself say. She bit her lip; she'd meant to stay out of it entirely.

"No," Alowan replied, without looking back, his voice as gentle with Finch as he himself always was. "And I can guarantee that when I've finished, it will be the last thing he will be willing to face again. Remember, Finch; he is not the first member of your den that I've called back from death's lands."

And she did remember. Arann.

She walked over to the bed. Sat down on the other side of it— or tried to; she had to scramble to find a chair. "I'll wait."

He didn't answer.

But as she watched the lines of his face deepen, she realized that sometime in the last decade he had crossed the line between old and elderly; that his power, the power to heal and comfort, was as tenuous as his life. Angel.

Damn, she wished she could
see
.

"Your pardon," Avandar said softly. "Before you begin?"

"I have little time," Alowan replied, but the heat had given way to a tired coolness.

"I understand why you choose as you do. We both understand her that well, healer, and I will not argue against your judgment; it is, I believe, the least costly of the two choices. But you know that there are very, very few of your kind—and of those, fewer still who will—who are willing—to call a man back from death."

"Yes," he said. "And I know that there are three people in this room who will move heaven and earth—and Hells, if need be— to find one. For her." Softer, so softly that Finch could barely catch the words, he added, "Ten years from now; a decade, and she will be wise enough to understand what it is she must endure. But try to train a man too harshly before his time, and more often than not you break the spirit you wish to nurture."

And Avandar said, again, "I know."

And Alowan replied, "It wasn't to you that I was speaking. Go. She has time, but not much."

Carver came to take up watch. Jester. Before the end of his shift—and they all knew when his shifts ended—Arann walked in, no armor, no sword, nothing to mark him as a House Guard.

Arann'd never been much of a talker. But he'd seen more fighting than any of them—most of it scuffling, some of it fatal—and he knew when he set eyes on Jewel that she wasn't going to make it without help.

"Torvan sent word," he said. "Gave me leave." Always Tor-van, among the den. No title. No rank. "What happened?"

They told him. Halting, interrupting each other and falling silent in awkward hesitation; they were nervous. They'd never had an emergency meeting without Jay before.

"Kalliaris," Finch whispered.

"Hells with that," Carver snarled. "Devon. Avandar. The Terafin." They clenched their hands into fists, and waited, watching the old man as he sat like a trembling statue over one of their kin, while the other bled slowly away.

The Queens' Court boasted a healer of skill and renown; the Kings' Court, three. But the healers of the Kings' Court were bound to the Kings' lives, and the lives of their heirs; not even the Queens were given leave to visit, and be visited, by these men.

It was, Devon thought, a good thing that healers were notoriously difficult to assassinate; the three had been targets before, and would no doubt be targets again. Still, they were chosen by the Astari, after intensive scrutiny, and with great care, and they served as law dictated. He knew them, of course; they were not invisible in the court—but the closest they got to healing was in the training of the young men and women who saw to the lesser injuries in the Kings' and Queens' Halls. By law, they could heal no one but the Kings.

He wondered, idly, what would happen if that law were contravened. Realized that he didn't particularly care. They were not useful to him. There was only one man in
Avantari
who might be.

Dantallon, the Queens' healer.

The halls were full; it was always this way the day before the biggest event of the year. Not even the Day of Return boasted such a pride of activity, such a fever of last-minute panic. He could hear the heavy soles of the Kings' Swords as they ran from one end of the palace to the other; this particular year had been difficult, and would be more so before a Champion was crowned.

But for all that they were busy—and irritable—they did not slow the passage of Devon ATerafin, a man they recognized as the most senior of Patris Larkasir's advisers in matters of trade and Royal concessions. A man in his position was a man who was privy to both the secrets of power and wealth—if any of the Kings' Swords could easily understand how these two were separated— and they did not so much as question him.

Dantallon, on the other hand, was never quite as circumspect.

He was busy. In the humidity of the summer, he was often faced with certain diseases that, when not contained, could kill far too many of the city's vulnerable inhabitants: The old, the very young. At the moment, he stood, arms folded across a chest that had always, and would always, be slender, his forehead creased, his eyes narrowed as he stared down at the tabletop before him as if it would provide answers, and now.

There was a map on that table, and it was marked in several places with slender pins, each of which bore a red flag. The two men to either side of him wore uniforms; one was definitively the red of a magistrate, and the other, the deep blue of a member of the Kings' forces, a circle quartered and lined up across a diagonal. Across from Dantallon was a man whose back was bent; he dressed well, but simply. Devon waited a moment; the man stood. Dark-haired, then, but grayed. Tall, broad-shouldered.

Devon ATerafin could walk into a room and remain unnoticed as long as no one was looking for him; he chose that moment to make the normal noise of entry into another's abode. His feet fell more heavily and his breath came regularly; he cleared his throat.

The magistrate did not hear him; the Sword and the healer did.

"ATerafin," Dantallon said curtly. "I hope this is not an emergency."

"You are already embroiled in one?"

"In two, if I understand the Sword and Healer Levee correctly."

The man in no uniform turned then, and Devon smiled. "Healer Levee." His bow was low, graceful.

"The Swords are attempting to ensure that a foolish young man survives a foot race. Or survives any injury he takes during that race." It was clear what Dantallon thought of that.

"I see."

"The healer and the magistrate are here to coordinate, with the Swords, an attempt to contain the crippling disease. It is late in the season for it, and it is more virulent than it has been in fifteen years."

"But they—"

"They would not normally be at the palace, no, but they require the cooperation of the Swords at this particular time; the affected areas cross into the areas whose security has come under the Kings' jurisdiction.