Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (73 page)

"And you?"

"I watch the boy; he is, after all, of interest to the Kings and their future security." Light, that. Light and easy, said without inflection. Without passion.

Devon ATerafin was a silent man; a still one. He had better control of his speaking voice than most bards, and he gave little away, save when he chose to do so. Kallandras had rarely seen him unguarded. But if he was neutral by choice, unknowable by discipline, he was a man whose convictions could be felt.

It comes
, he thought,
to the boy. To Valedan kai di'Leonne
. "Very well, ATerafin," he said quietly. "Arm me. Arm us both. The dawn is scant hours away, and I am not a youth, to forgo sleep with ease."

"Before the Challenge?"

"By the basin, yes." He rose. Made his way to the balcony the curtains obscured. As his hands touched the material, drawing it noiselessly to one side, he heard his name. He turned his head, acknowledging it.

But the ATerafin seemed to have lost his thought, or to have decided the better of offering it for inspection; silence fell, uninterrupted, as he left.

20th day of Lattan, 427 AA Averalaan Aramarelas

Sun.

Light on the waves as bright and pale as platinum, the wind in lull. It was unseasonably cool an hour past dawn, which meant it was bearable to the men who stood waiting. At the break of dawn, the officiants—among them the Kings themselves—had in solemnity and gravity declared the start of the day's events. An hour had drifted away, and it was a rare hour indeed, in the company of speech makers and men whose identity was defined by their clothing, that passed with so little boredom on his part.

Golden-eyed, the Kings were called demon-born in the South— but Valedan thought their eyes very like gold, the sun's metal; he could not countenance them as demons of any nature.

But Valedan kai di'Leonne was only one among many.

The Kings had made their speeches, offered their salutes, granted their permission, and the procession had moved from
Avantari
to the edge of the docks themselves—or rather, the boardwalk which led to the docks. These docks were short and squat; low to water, unlike those used by the famed vessels of the Empire. Wide and solid, they were kept for the purpose of the Kings' leisure: Swimming, fishing in small vessels, watching the sunrise with nothing at all between water's reflection and vision. Valedan had seldom seen wood so rich in color and so seemingly new that had obviously weathered decades; the work of the mage-born, no doubt.

He hadn't long to marvel or to wonder; the contestants formed up across the length of the boardwalk, waiting, waiting. His guards and his watchers outnumbered them.

"We cannot protect you here," Baredan had said. "Forgo this test."

His eyes flitting across the mages who patrolled the water in little vessels that moved as if oared by madmen—none of whom were visible—he spoke to his first General. "And will I forgo the marathon as well? Without either, I have no hope of winning."

"This isn't the war, Valedan; it's a battle. At this early stage, we can afford to lose everything but you."

"We've had this conversation before." Valedan replied.

As Baredan had not expected to have an effect, he bowed stiffly in the morning's light. He turned his head to either side, counting and taking the measure of the men who had been chosen to guard the kai Leonne—although he knew both number and measure well enough by now.

Ser Anton's students were in evidence, but the threat they presented had nothing to do with their scant abilities in this challenge. A mage had been stationed by their retinue, and they were "protected" by several of the Kings' Swords.

Ser Anton did not appear to notice; Carlo was actively annoyed. He was so much like an Osprey in temperament that Valedan wondered if he'd truly been culled from the South at all.

"Third heat."

Valedan nodded at Commander Sivari's words. They weren't necessary, but he found the sound and tone a comfort. Here, the challenge was simple: Swim from the isle to the mainland and back. Quickly. The javelin had served him well; the water, he hoped, would serve him well again. In this test, neither far North or South were well-served by their natural environs. Not so the heartlanders, as the citizens of the strip of land that surrounded Averalaan liked to call themselves: oceans and rivers in the center of the Empire, especially here at its heart, were warm and calm. Swimming was a pastime of leisure: if a swimmer were pressed, it was also an activity that welcomed practice, and it rewarded skill over bulk or muscle—although muscle and skill combined would almost of necessity win.

Valedan cast a glance at Eneric. and the Northern barbarian waved, his hands splayed wide in an open palm gesture that was not unlike flailing.

He, too, was in the third heat.

Fifteen men stepped forward onto the lowest portion of the boardwalk. No seawall here: the seawall fortified the eastern edge of the isle, petering out to either edge. Behind each stood their chosen witness and a single trainer; the witness watched, and the trainer waited to receive the clothing they wore. They stripped to skin beneath the sun's glare. Only one of them appeared to find it amusing, and Valedan was immediately embarrassed for those women he knew with certainty were witness to the event. The man's companions in this swim maintained their dignity and their seriousness, ignoring him and each other. Or trying to.

The judges counted.

Numbers had been one of the first things that Valedan had learned in this land of the two Kings, the demon-kings, the golden-eyed scions of foreign gods. Numbers, spoken with painstaking care, a finger and a toe at a time, under the watchful eye of both his mother and the Serra Alina.

Counting.

He watched the fifteen. Wondered if the water were cold, although he knew it would not be.

The judges counted, and he counted, in Weston, in silence.

Time.

The first man to break water in this event was also the man whose sense of play had seemed so out of place. Obviously dignity wasn't everything.

He crossed his arms. Set his lips. Watched.

They searched.

They searched in silence, and they searched in a quiet of simple movement as they slid through the crowds that the city, high and low, had assembled for the benefit of the challenge of the sea. Neither man was particularly modest; modesty was a profession of incompetence.

Devon ATerafin chose the lower city boardwalks as his hunting ground. He did not choose to explain his choice, and Kallandras did not choose to question it. although it was clear that the lower city was by far the more difficult terrain. For one, the boardwalks were wider and rougher, and the Kings' men had less visible control over the crowd that had gathered, in high spirits and with not a little money riding on the outcome, to watch the sea's test. No man gave up his place easily, and few moved with anything like the normal social graces that accompanied movement in a crowded city street—and there were few enough of those when the heat was high. Worse still, there was
no
room for fighting, and if a fight occurred, not only the enemy would die. Life would be lost drawing sword in the cramped spaces people made for themselves.

But Devon seemed comfortable with his choice, and Kallandras, measuring the Astari carefully, nodded. He preferred the open space to the closed one, although death was death: In either open space, with a full-run hunt, or in close quarters with barely room to lift a wrist, Kallandras of Senniel, who had once been somewhat different in the Lady's service, had no difficulty killing.

But he thought that Devon would have no difficulty in a similar situation; the Astari trained their own, and well—and in arts other than death's. Or so it was said. He knew better than to ask.

He carried Salla with him; it was a risk that he was loath to take, but he could see little way around. As a favored bard of Queen Marieyan—and as the foremost master bard of Senniel College—he was given leave to wander as if he had been born to the patriciate's heights, but to wander without a lute was to be uncrowned in front of a people that expected a King. Important, in games like this, not to disappoint expectation.

And therefore, he was polite, friendly, peaceful, and soothing by turns; he offered attention to one and all with a fealty to song and festivity that rose above the boundary of nation or competition. He was aware of the two Morniel master bards, and the single master bard from Attariel, and he coaxed a duet from both.

But he kept it as short as possible; the sweetness of voices so intertwined, so inseparable, was a special type of pain all its own—and he could not afford that distraction now.

He made his way slowly, from the full width of the well-kept stone streets to the flawless boardwalk, his hair beneath the brim of a wide, round hat that hid nothing but his cheeks from the slowly rising sun. He cataloged faces, adding names to them where names were appropriate: Northerners, their champions, their trainers, their witnesses; Southerners—all; and the men and women from the heartlands, some of whom called this city at the center of the world their home.

And all was as it should be.

The sun cast long shadows at dawn and dusk; any good bard knew that such shadows as these were both protection from the sun's lack of mercy and a negation of its light. Double-edged, like a Northern weapon; he wondered briefly what the Southerners used as a metaphor for just such a thing. If they did, at all.

And he had the time to wonder.

The Kings, he gave nod to; the Queens he actually stopped a moment to bow before. Queen Marieyan laughed when he sang a quiet chorus beneath her ancient chair. Of all the women of power he'd met in his life, she was the woman whose laughter he most enjoyed evoking; he wasn't certain why.

But the Queen Siodonay the Fair chased him off, and rightly; his cheek would be noted, and no doubt less fortunate and far more callow youths would attempt such familiarity without the . background and history needed to serve as root and platform.

It weeds them out
, he would often tell the Queens. He did not say it now, not surrounded as he was by so many callow youths, half of them near naked, all of them eager for the chance to prove themselves. Or to prove themselves worthy, as if this—a swim across the bay—could in fact do that.

And should he criticize?

After all, to prove himself worthy, had he not, instead, quietly taken a life?

He felt no shame in it now, but no unearthly joy; it was a fact of his life, the edges of it, and the sharpness, lost to youth. He shifted, restless, and caught sight of Valedan kai di'Leonne again, but there was nothing out of place, nothing amiss, in either the boy or his entourage.

The boardwalks could do, Devon thought, with a thorough cleaning. To start: the people could be swept aside and into the bay itself. Then the merchants' stalls—most illegal, and he would know, given the office at which he worked—and the wandering acrobats who played so artfully with fire.

He had half expected that they would turn up as demons or kin—for legends were explicit in the duplicity of fire, and the way the kin were drawn to it. But each and every such entertainer had proved to be merely that: entertainment. Passing entertainment, when one could back out of the crowd and escape it.