Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (45 page)

"Perhaps, if she must fight for Terafin, she will learn to value it as highly as your master did." His smile deepened before it vanished. "And perhaps not. I am in your debt, as I have said. I— am grateful that the healer was found."

Jewel Markess ATerafin had finally given in to sleep. In the dark, a honeycombed room away from where Angel struggled noisily in the grip of a nightmare that did not—quite—force him to wake, she was utterly still; only her hands, clenched fistlike around gathers of blanket, gave any hint to the two who watched that she was not peaceful.

But neither were they.

They were both powers within the realm they had chosen, and they had come this distance to speak with a woman who was two steps away from being in the prime of her power. Had come, if they were honest, to take advantage of the weakness that Jewel herself would not own up to, to press her to take the last of those steps.

But they could not bring themselves to wake her, because the sleep robbed her face of all armor; it was a child's sleep, and she was, at least to one of the witnesses, much like a child.

"Do you travel," The Terafin asked her unexpected companion, "as you always do?"

"Yes," the woman in midnight blue robes said softly. "Always."

"Then you did not have the burden of slipping past the healerie staff." Her smile, in the poorly lit darkness, was genuine.

"No." She turned, this Evayne, and The Terafin, who had met her now a handful of times, saw that they were almost of an age; Evayne was perhaps a handful of years younger. It was hard to tell; her cape's hood had folds long enough to cast shadows that softened harsh lines. "Terafin, a question."

"Ask."

"I can see only so far in the life of this young woman." She reached into her robes and drew out the heart of her power, the glowing orb that rested between her hands like living light. "I have seen her here. I have seen that she has gathered to her, at last, the third—the last—of her pillars. If she can grant them the strength they're due, she'll stand."

"Not a question," The Terafin said softly, "but it answers mine, and I am comforted by it."

"Don't be."

"Why?"

She turned, then, the ball gripped in her palm. Started to speak, and then stopped, searching The Terafin's face. The silence stretched out between them, punctuated by Jewel ATerafin's breathing. And then, of all things, Evayne laughed. "I should have known," she said quietly. "He is at work here, even now."

"The Terafin spirit?" It was barely a question.

"Yes. He is not the harshest of taskmasters, but he spares you nothing once he knows you can carry the burden that must be carried."

"The same can be said of all good masters," The Terafin re-plied. But she felt it now: the edge of her death. "You cannot see beyond my death, can you?"

Evayne's gaze rose. "I can see," she said at last, "beyond it. I can see this young woman at the path that
must
be walked, one of the supplicants who must walk it if we are to find the first paths and face the coming war." Her violet eyes were wide, unblinking; The Terafin could believe, watching her, that she did indeed see it unfolding as she spoke. Like Jewel, and unlike.

"But I cannot see what she does; the choice offered her, I cannot witness. I cannot witness any of the decisions made. The first path can only be walked once."

"'What is your question, Evayne?"

"She is like your blade—your House blade, the sword by which you proclaim your office when war or ceremony demands such proclamation. But she is being tempered now, and she has never been sharpened. Will she hold her edge?"

The Terafin's laugh was short, brief. Then she turned to the seer. "I do not understand you, but I understand that the burden you carry has become your life. What will you be when you set it down?

"I," she added softly, "have the comfort of knowing that I'll be dead. Absent. I came to ask Jewel ATerafin to take up the burden that ends with my life. But your presence here marks a larger war; it always has. The demons that run in the city streets and the ATerafin that sleeps in that bed are not separate: they are part of the same war.

"Will it end?" she asked quietly. "If that war takes her, and the best that she has found in this House, if I accept the risk to House and kin and do nothing to stand in your way, will the fight at least
end
the war?"

"I came," Evayne said softly, answering a different question, "to ask Jewel ATerafin to walk the path when it opens for her, regardless of what the House requires." She bowed her hooded head. "Not an answer, I fear." Turned, but before she took a step, turned back. "But I believe, Terafin—
believe
, and do not know— that when the war ends, for good or ill, it will end."

"That," The Terafin said quietly, "is all I require. My own battles, it appears, are destined to be fought again and again."

"The gods value finality, of a sort."

She was gone in a step; Amarais was alone.

In the darkness, robbed of a splinter of a seer's soul for light, she stared at the bed's sole occupant, and then bowed deeply and walked away.

And in the bed. Jewel Markess ATerafin slowly unbunched her fists.

16th of Lattan, 427 AA 

Avantari

Two of the kin still walked the streets.

She could scent them on a wind that carried nothing but shadow, but they were far enough away that she could not name them, could not summon them and challenge them.

Jewel was alive.

She did not know how to react.

She had known Isladar for all of her life, had watched him, had learned from him, and had—and she could say this only to herself, and only now, in the dead of night, when the darkness made her as sure of her power as she could ever be—fled from him.

But she had never known Isladar to fail, and he had intended to kill Jewel ATerafin. She should have felt triumphant, because for the first time in her life she had bested him, and this was not the first time in her life that she had tried.

But those had been schooling games, and in the end, they had always been under his control. The world had, until now.

She was free.

She was free, and an emptiness so entwined with anger that she could not separate one from the other drove even the facade of sleep from her reach. There were no languages in which she could curse him, or damn him; he was
Kialli
, and willfully, voluntarily damned—if damnation was the burning wind, the vast expanse, the song of those who have finally made their irrevocable choice. She would not think about that here.

Could not; it was an ache. Like anger, like the thing that fed anger, it turned in upon her. Demanded action.

Her sword, in the Shining Court, spoke for her. This was not that Court, not that Palace; in
this
palace, the only prey was human; the only fight, a fight that was layered with human weight, human desire, human strength and weakness. If there had been anyone that had marked her as enemy, she might have chosen this night to carry the fight to its inevitable conclusion. But to make real enemies, to make enemies whose end was satisfying enough to ease the building shadow, took time, took the intimacy of jealousy or hatred.

She was restless.

But she wasn't the only one.

She heard him before she saw him, and she knew who he was because the particular fall of the step, the timing of it, had become familiar enough to be distinctive, even over the clinking chime of chain mail. That, and the smell of him, the mixture of sweat and scent and—in her heightened state of awareness—steel, old leather.

She did not turn when he came upon her back because she knew that he knew she was aware of his presence; not a single one of the Ospreys had yet managed to come upon her unaware, and most of them had stopped trying—not that many of them had bothered to begin with. They were an odd group: they'd probably die defending her right to be one of them, but they were aware that she
wasn't
one of them. Couldn't be.

"Kiriel."

"Auralis."

Silence. Awkward, unleavened by ale or wine as it often was with Auralis. With the Ospreys. He waited for her to say more; she didn't.

At last, he broke. Unusual. Usually he walked.

"You had no luck today."

That stung. The shrug she offered was her only answer.

"You're going out hunting tonight."

Have I become that obvious?

"Look. I know that officially it's the Terafin girl who's responsible for finding and tracking the demons. I know that the white-haired mage is supposed to augment her ability. You want me to play that game? Fine. I'll even pretend I believe it.

"But when you go out tonight, I want to come with you."

At that, she did turn. "You?"

In the darkness, his face was shadowed, the line of his chin lost to the long line of neck. There was light enough, though, to see his eyes; fire was reflected there, caught, as it was offered, by torchlight, but made brighter. He bore two swords, one strapped across his back, one in the grip of a hand bound by the half-gloves that the Ospreys favored for fighting in what they called this season. She knew he carried at least two daggers, water; that he could— but seldom did—don helm when the mood to fight struck him.

He had often dressed just like this and gone out into the city streets, refusing the company of his chosen companions since his defeat—public and costly—by the younger Valedan kai di'Leonne. Kiriel was aware that the loss of youth was a fear that most mortals labored under once they reached an age. She was also aware, as no other member of the Ospreys could be, that it was not the defeat itself which had humiliated Auralis; not the fact of the defeat which drove him to seek his solace in fighting, in the streets of the city's hundred holdings. No; it was the comparison; it was looking at Valedan as if he were the mirror held up to Auralis.

But she did not understand precisely what it
was
that he'd seen in the mirror that had that effect. Only that it had less to do with Valedan and age than it had to do with his own fear and the past that all humans—that all creatures—hid behind the supple lines of the facades a life helped them build.

She could see the pain, of course. She could even appreciate it. But she couldn't see what caused it. No more than he could see hers, this night. The past. Loss. Isladar.

"What does the Primus say?"

He said something that was meant to be rude, and she understood it as such, but it did not move her.

"I'm not on his time."

"The Kalakar said—"

"I'm not on her time either."

"It is not safe. Even at—not even the mages hunted the kin."

He shrugged. "You take the mages with you during the day. Doesn't matter. I'm no mage."

"Auralis—" She stopped speaking a moment. When she started again, her voice was cooler. "Why?"

He shrugged. "Because you'll find 'em. I've been looking for a
good
fight for almost two weeks."

She shrugged. "Join the Challenge."

At that, his teeth showed white. "Too late for it, or I'd've tried. You know, Kiriel, that's the first time I've ever heard you try to be funny. Maybe a couple of years from now you'll succeed."