Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (63 page)

Sivari had never before understood the force of the words,
there are no clouds in the sky
so clearly. It was a Southern phrase; it meant, as far as he could tell, that all masks had been set aside. Or it had meant that. But here—here it was that and more.

"Put up your weapon," Ser Anton said, again in Weston. "I have been granted permission to intervene by the adjudicatory, and as a contestant here, it is not in your interest to deny their command."

"Let them make it," Valedan said. "Between you and me, there is only one judge."

And he swung.

It was sudden, the movement; unexpected, even by Sivari. He had seen tension gathering in his half-student; he had seen the line of his jaw stiffen to shaking, the knuckles on his hand whiten. But he had not seen the small clues that spoke to him of movement, of attack.

He forgot that; a pole flew.

It was not Valedan's.

Silence struck them all, an unexpected blow, an unlooked-for attack. Ser Anton di'Guivera, in the history of the Challenge, had never once been unarmed.

Bitter truth, there. Sivari was first to recover. First to acknowledge that age made a difference; it took what experience built, ate away at it like the Northern rivers against the 'mountain beds. He hated age. For a moment, he
hated
it. Not in and of itself, no— but for what it had done to Ser Anton di'Guivera; what it had taken from him.

Valedan himself stepped back.

And Ser Anton di'Guivera stepped forward. Unarmed, he was not without weapon. Not without grace or speed or strength. He did not attempt to grab the pole that Valedan held; he did not throw himself to this side or that; he simply turned, pivoting on a foot at precisely the right moment. Valedan was raw energy, skill just being honed; Ser Anton was… the Southern Champion.

The sun was watching; there were, indeed, no clouds.

No words, not from the judges, not from the student who had managed to raise himself up from the damp grassbed, and had limped to safety.

If he could have spoken to Valedan, he would have. He might have given him the pointers which would have extended the combat; might have given him the confidence to see that Anton chose to wear him down, and how. But could he, he might not have.

Ser Anton di'Guivera ended the combat with the open palm of his hand. He raised it, snapped it shut at just the right moment. In it, for all to see, was the end of the pole's blunted hook.

They stood, swordmaster and pretender to the Southern throne, separated by the length of a boatman's pole—and joined by it.

"Valedan," Ser Anton said—speaking in Torra. "I sit under the cover of no cloud today. What I have said is the truth, no more, no less; I do not speak it for my own purposes, and perhaps I should not speak it at all if it serves yours. But I will speak it. My student, my Carlo—he is a foreigner; these lands have taken life from his family in war, but they have given him
nothing
in return. The respect he owes these people is the respect of manners, and his are, understandably, poor.

"You are different. The North has sheltered you; it has protected you; it has granted you the only legitimacy you are likely to see. The rules of the combat here are not the Lord's, and you have, by your existence here, agreed to respect them, foreign as they are.

"You owe them honor." He opened his hand.

The unsupported end of the pole fell heavily to the ground.

Valedan said nothing at all.

"Ser Valedan kai di'Leonne," the older man said. He bowed.

"Ser Anton di'Guivera." Valedan replied. The pole fell then.

18th day of Lattan, early evening

Avantari

Andaro was mutinous.

And that, in a person of his control and skill, merely meant silence; the silence of a slightly turned head, a turned back, a stiff jaw.

Ser Anton was not amused. "Andaro." he said.

"Ser Anton." His tone of voice robbed the three syllables of any warmth of familiarity or respect due a name; they could have been foreign babble, children's nonsense.

"You will practice."

"I will practice," his best student replied, "when Carlo is ready to join me."

They stared at each other; the distance between them was measured by anger. Sadly, in Ser Anton's case, part of that anger was turned inward as well as out. He hated disobedience; he hated lack of respect. Yet in this case he felt it was—almost—deserved. He had bruised Carlo's ribs, and quite possibly cracked two of them. The blow he had struck he had struck in anger, and anger had controlled the connection, not skill, not intent, not prudence. The physician had been quite clear: it was in Carlo's best interests to withdraw from the Championship and rejoin it again the following year. Carlo himself refused, as Ser Anton would have expected.

"Andaro," Ser Anton began again. "We both know that Carlo is not in appropriate condition to continue with this practice."

"Or with this Challenge?"

Challenge was there in his words. Ser Anton's hand came to rest, lightly, upon the hilt of his sword. Andaro did not blink.

You are
, Ser Anton thought,
too much like your master in his youth
. And in his youth, he would perhaps have been equally imprudent defending those he cared for. He tried to remember this.

He tried to remember the young man he had been, before his life had been buried by the sands the wind brought, blistered by the fire, scared by the sword.

Tried and failed. "Carlo chose his course."

"He chose," Andaro replied coolly, "to accompany the man he most respected—"

"He respects his desire, Andaro, and my skill. Little else."

Andaro's silence was long and thin, a thing that seemed easily broken until a man tried.

"Is that what you think, Ser Anton?"

"Pick up the sword," Ser Anton said softly.

Andaro measured his resolve against the resolve of the sword-master. He was no fool: in the end, he was no fool. He picked up the sword.

But he did not stop speaking. "Do you believe that he came just for his own glory, that he came because he desired the crown?"

"Yes."

"Do you think that your name means—
meant
—nothing to either of us?"

Ser Anton bent to ground; he came up bearing the practice blade.

They stood, two armed men; that was enough, in the eyes of the Lord.

"My name had nothing to do with his behavior. I've met harem children who were less disgraceful in
private
."

"Your name," Andaro said, "had nothing to do with his behavior. But your behavior, Ser Anton, affects us all. Carlo is not—is not from the ruling clans. Neither were you. He follows you as he can, he worships you, as he must. You are honor to him. You are the goal he seeks to attain. Do you understand what you've done to him? I do not expect you to be other than what you are. But you have always been more than that to Carlo."

He did not refute the truth of the words; there was nothing to be gained. "Carlo is a fool," he said at last. "A skilled, a skillful, a competent, fool."

It was meant to anger; it angered. But it did not fluster. It did not distract. Because they both held swords; because they both stood on even ground in the sight of the Lord. Because Andaro was everything that Carlo was not.

"We did not come here to serve the Lord of Night, Ser Anton. We came to serve you."

"And you feel that somehow my service and His are conjoined?"

"Tell me, on your word, swear to me by the dead that you value, that this is not true. We are not fools, Ser Anton. We could not help but note the absence of the eight. And we have heard the stories that the Northerners are even now passing among themselves. You are not the only man with the presence of mind to learn their tongue."

Not the only man, no. But one of the few.

"Yes, he is hotheaded. Yes, he is impulsive. Yes, he lacks control, and self-control. But none of these things changes the truth: he lives for you, he lives to cast your shadow.

"To see it bent and twisted, to see it—"

Enough.

Ser Anton
moved
.

And Andaro proved himself to be the best of his students; he was not there to greet the blow; not there to parry it. Proved himself to be perhaps better than the swordmaster knew, because in the end, he set the terms of the contest; there was anger between them both, held in check, kept in its place, but evoked and invoked. A binding.

18th of Lattan, 427 AA

Aramarelas, Magisterial Court

"What were you
thinking
?" Commander Sivari kept a lid on the words that he might otherwise have spoken had he not been in the company of ladies. It was, in Valedan's opinion, a poor conceit; neither Mirialyn ACormaris or Serra Alina di'Lamberto had any delicacy that he could easily offend. Or quite possibly offend at all. "Valedan?"

They waited in the courtyard of the magisterial docket that had been commandeered for the games. Here, crimes such as cheating—or brawling, which was far more common—were dealt with, complaints against the contestants were heard, fines were meted out, where fines were appropriate and not too politically difficult.

That I was tired of listening to Carlo-the-imbecile
. He did not, however—and wisely—choose to speak the words.

The complaint against Valedan had been formally issued in front of the three men whose task it was to pass judgment. It had mil been issued by Ser Anton's student; it had been issued by the judges themselves. And they bore witness.

"Getting into a fight is bad enough—but
starting
it?"

There was very little he could say. So he said nothing. He knew that that wouldn't make Sivari any happier, but was fairly certain at this point nothing would.

The sun's shadows were getting shorter; the midday break was approaching. Valedan had been forbidden the rest of the test of the river; that hadn't been in question. Whether or not he would be disqualified from the rest of the tournament was what they waited to hear. And Commander Sivari did not wait patiently.

"Valedan—"

"Commander," Serra Alina said, more sharply than was her wont. "Someone approaches."

He looked up. A man in magisterial robes nodded in their direction; they rose from the shaded stone benches upon which they'd been sitting and followed him.

"This is not an unusual offense," a very bored looking judge said. "In fact, it's so common it's a small wonder there's any Championship at all. Usually, however, the contestants have the good grace to do two things. First, they
leave the grounds
. Second, they get drunk so as to have some semblance of at least a pathetic excuse for their behavior."

"Yes sir." Valedan said, bowing his head.

"However, they are usually far more truculent about their misdemeanors, and as an old man I know that the Championship is its own punishment. Therefore I have fined your party the standard fee—" Valedan had no idea what the fee was, but Sivari obviously did by the under-the-breath deprecation, "and because I am feeling exceedingly mellow, it being the start of the season and not the end of it, I will allow you to finish last, beneath the man with whom you were brawling, in the portion of the river-jump that you did not complete."