Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (44 page)

As if she could hear him, Jewel ATerafin sat up in bed, her hands still gripping the man who had healed her. As if he would leave her. As if, Alowan thought, he could. He marveled then at the things that the seers could see, and the things that were hidden from them; the truths, old and odd, of the heart.

She held him thus a long time, and then Finch—it was often Finch—approached her, tentative as she always was with the injured, the sick.

"Jay?"

They both turned, Daine and the girl whose name she spoke, as if they were one. Finch stopped, awkward now, knowing what she was interrupting. Uncertain, Alowan thought, about how much the healer knew.

"Don't stand," that healer told Jewel, as he ignored his own advice. Levee was there before Alowan could be, and before him— before him, Avandar, his hands under the arms of the collapsing, pale man who had saved his vocation, his chosen master.

Their eyes met; Avandar looked away first.

"Give me my charge," Levee said, when that moment was broken—but not, Alowan noted, before.

Avandar nodded, passing the young man to the older one as if he were both precious and a burden. Levee took hold, and only when his hands were firmly attached to Daine's forearms did the tension leave the line of his shoulder, the set of his large jaw.

"Come, boy," he said, the gruffness surrounding the two words without the slightest ability to penetrate them. "You've done good work here. It's time—it's time to be home."

"It's time," Alowan said suddenly, "for
all
of you to leave."

Finch started to object. The eldest man in the room chose to wield his age as authority, rather than weakness. As wisdom. As command. "No, Finch. No argument. You will all leave this room. Devon. Avandar. Carver. Jester. Follow Healer Levee out."

"But we can't—"

"
You can
."

They looked to Jewel, but she did not meet their eyes; indeed, she met no one's; her eyes fell flat upon the pale sheets that rested against new skin, old skin, dried blood.

"Jay?"

Alowan felt a moment's anger—surely the result of weariness. But the anger was just that: momentary. Finch, of all the den save Teller, he had a weakness for, a soft spot. Stunted in youth, she would never reach full height, and she seemed to him very like the ideal youth, for all her thirty or more years.

He caught her by the arm. "Finch," he said softly. "We must give her privacy. It is not ah act of desertion, but an act of kindness. She will not thank you for staying."

"We're her den," Finch said.

"Yes. But there are things that Jewel has never really shared well with anyone. Come."

She could not be driven away by his words. She could be brought away by his hand, by the pull of his arm.

I am sorry
, he thought, but he did not look back.

She was alone.

She had always known it, and she had
never
known it, not until now. Even so, she waited, counting each footstep's echo as if it were a curse. Holding breath. Clenching fists and forcing them, forcing them to relax. She did not dare to look up. She did not want to see him leave. Because if she saw him—saw him
leave
her, she might say something unforgivably stupid. Weak.

You promised you'd stay.

Oh, she'd done with that. She'd done with that when she was ten. And twelve. When she realized that her parents were never coming home. They'd gone to wherever it was that her grandmother had gone, some dark shadowy halls that didn't open for young children like her.

She remembered how much she'd hated Mandaros then.

How much she hated Kalliaris.

How much she hated the Lady.

And it was nothing to this. Or it felt, at years of remove, as nothing to this. Not a child now, no. She wasn't a child. But she felt this pain that was a child's pain, couldn't be anything but a child's pain, this entirety of emptiness, this horrible sense of absolute desertion.

Is this what I did to you, Arann ? You must have hated me, then.

I never promised you that I'd spare you the pain. But I will. I'll never let you get that close to freedom again and force you home to nothing.

She was weeping.

She was weeping because she could, now that they'd gone and left her. It had been so long since she'd wept, she'd thought she'd left it all behind.

Daine.

She saw him as clearly as if he were standing before her. She could feel his hands in hers, and she knew where they were callused from writing and weaving—the tasks he'd set for himself as a way of recalling his youth in a noble's house. As a way of separating himself from the longing he felt for Corniel ATerafin. Longing for him, loathing himself for the longing.

She could see, through the lens of Daine, the distorted image of that man, and she thought—she thought that had he lived, she would have had him killed. She, who had never assassinated anyone, had never really conceived of doing so.

She felt that she could protect Daine; she felt that he could protect her; there was a circularity and a completion in the desire.

And it was a lie, and she knew it because she was Jewel and she didn't flinch from knowing the truth; real pain, after all, had the benefit of at least
being
real. What else did she know?

She was alone.

She hated to be alone.

She needed to be alone.

He did not reach the front gate.

Oh, he tried. He put one foot in front of the other. Allowed himself to be led by Levee, as he had always been led by Levee. There was a comfort there, a familiarity, that allowed him to be carried above circumstance. Almost. But the halls were long. Had he been brought to a small dwelling, had the healerie been closer to an exit, an entrance, he would have made it out, into sunlight—if sunlight indeed remained, given the flickering glow of torches and lamps—or the moon.

He had been brought to Terafin.

"Levee," he said.

He felt the older man shudder to a stop, as if the name took time to reach his ears. "What?"

"I can't leave."

"You can't stay," Levee said. "You can't stay- with her. Not yet. You know the danger."

"Yes. I—I won't go to her. Not, not yet."

"Then come home. Come back to the house. Gather your thoughts—and if you're still decided, gather your things then. Take time, Daine." Levee's dark hair, dark beard, were the shadows across his face that made the paling of his skin seem extreme and sudden in comparison. "You've gone through this once, boy."

"I knew you would say that," Daine replied, stung, but struggling with his anger. He had not struggled so in two months; the anger had rein. "But it's not the same."

"It's never the same."

"She's not what he was."

Levee nodded. "But she's still a member of the patriciate. She's still a member of the Council of
this
House. What do you think to do?"

"Serve," he said, simply.

"You can't."

"Why?"

"Daine—you've done it twice now. You've walked where even I won't walk. Serve her—serve this House, and you'll be called upon to do it again and again. Look at what it's done to Alowan; look at what it's cost him. We are not so very different in age, he and I."

"After Corniel," Daine said quietly, "I thought I would never, never heal again."

"But you—"

"No, you don't understand. Never
heal
. Not walk to the dying, not go into the darkness—but deny the rest as well."

"I… I know. I know," Healer Levee said, as he said all things. Gruffly. Shortly. "But you recovered."

"And now I see her," Daine continued, paying his master's words no mind, "and I see that I can't not heal. She's
here
," he added, thumping his chest. "I know what she has to do. Because I saw what she was running away from. And I know her well enough to know that she can't run, not forever. She
needs
me. And I—I need her. I need to do this, Levee. I need to do more than heal the results of a war caused by men like… like Corniel. He's part of me, still. He calls to me, still. There are days I wake up, and I'm already burning in the Hells.

"How do I deny him? How do I deny a man who walked right through my soul and left marks in places I didn't even know existed?
You
can heal. You know who you are. You know who you were. You might even know who you want to be. Let people come to you, take their money. You
know
you're doing the right thing.

"But I don't. If I serve her, now, I lay him to rest. Do you understand? If I serve her, I deny,
by action
, what he wanted, and what he was. I'll be doing something to prove to myself that I can do something."

"You don't just serve until you feel better," Levee said. "Not a House like this. You don't think Alowan felt the same way?" He was shouting now. On the other hand, it was a minor miracle that he'd prevented himself from shouting for this long. "Look what it's done to him! He's isolated here, he has no peers. He has a little garden in the middle of a pit of vipers. Is that what you want?"

"I think," Alowan's voice said, from some distance away, "that that is not a fair question, Levee."

Levee didn't have the grace to be flustered. "Tell him! Tell him the truth!"

"He's right," Alowan said serenely to the young man. "As are you. And he has not said, although it bears saying, that in the early years, there were several attempts upon my life. None, as you can see, were successful."

"They didn't have to be," Levee said bitterly. "They had you anyway."

"Did you heal her?" Daine asked.

"I was arrogant as a youth. You were not. It was my choice to embark upon the healing; choice was taken from you. But, yes, Daine. I healed The Terafin, and I think I know what you see in Jewel because I think it is stronger in her than it was in Amarais at that age.

"Levee is right. This is not a salve, not a way of easing yourself or comforting yourself. It is a life, and it will be the only life you lead. And there is no guarantee—not now, not from where we stand—that you will succeed in what you intend. Or that she will."

"She saved us, you know," Daine said, although it was forbidden to speak of the healed and the knowledge gleaned by the intimacy of that act.

"I know."

The young man closed his eyes tightly, shutting them both out.

Losing, for a moment, the halls of the manse, the torches, the lamps, the crystal chandeliers that both caught and cast light. Then he turned, just as suddenly, and looked into the tall silvered glass that showed such a stark reflection. His own. "I can't leave," he said, meeting only his own eyes.

"I know," Alowan said. "I am sorry. Come. Let me show you where you will live." He paused, waited as Daine continued to stare at his image in the mirror as if he couldn't easily discern which of the two of him were the real one. At last Alowan turned, to meet Levee's eyes. To meet Levee's anger.

"I am sorry," he said, in as deep a voice, as sincere a tone. "But the boy was lost anyway, and we both knew it."

"I did not know that you knew."

The old man bowed, and when he rose, his lips were turned up in a bitter, old smile. "I have lived my years in a House built upon traditions of the patriciate, old friend. And I… have performed a healing for a young man who has literally lived to serve and protect Jewel ATerafin for all of his adult life. Forgive me this."

"If he survives it. And if you do," was Levee's bleak reply.

When he returned to the healerie's fountain, exhausted and satisfied—if satisfaction could have such a bitter tinge—he found Avandar waiting for him. He had never been fond of Avandar Gallais, not in the way that he was of the woman he protected, of the men and women
she
harbored, but there was respect between them.

Avandar bowed. "The boy has chosen?"

It irked him, to be so transparent. "Yes."

"Will he be your match?"

It was not the question that the healer had anticipated. After a moment, he offered the slightest of smiles. "I am arrogant enough to think that no one can watch as I watch, or offer what I have offered."

"That is not arrogance," Avandar replied. "Or rather, it is a pleasing arrogance, for it is based in fact, and not fancy."

"He does not need to be my match. Young Jewel has gifts of birth that The Terafin does not possess, and they will protect her well."

"It is not Jewel directly whom I fear for."

"No." The healer bowed. "She will be gentle with him in a way that Amarais could never allow herself to be with me. She will ask him to save no lives that she does not value personally. Not yet.

"And the first time that she does, she will break a trust between them, and she will break it because of the cost she sees in doing otherwise. But he will be older then, wiser, and I think he will see it as she does. I hope.

"I am tired, Avandar. Perhaps it is true that I overplay my age to spare myself hardship, but my age
is
a fact. I did not dream— I did not hope. But it appears that a god watches over me, and has seen fit to grant me a successor."

He did not say, and Avandar did not, that he feared the god was Cartanis. God of Just War. Of war.

"I am in your debt."

"No. You are in her service. You have not been tested, Avandar. But I believe that this is what you've chosen to devote your service to, and you will have your chance."

Avandar was completely still. And then he offered the healer a smile, one that was, if cold, quite genuine. "We are all more obvious than we would like to be. I
have
chosen to serve power. But we are all changed by the service we take and the service we perform. It is never what it seems at a distance, no matter how great our knowledge, how certain our power.

"She is not like The Terafin. Not like any ruler of any House that I have seen, not among The Ten. She was not raised among the patriciate. She knows enough of their manners to get by when she can be bothered to exercise them, but even that has been an uphill struggle." He offered a rare smile. "We value what we fight for. Healer.