Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (76 page)

He felt no anger as he contemplated the death; no heat. Just the chill, perhaps of water, perhaps of true night.

He was slow; that was it. Slow, his gaze turned to the interior landscape and not the exterior; the battle within and not the slaughter without. Whatever held his attention, it kept him from seeing the obvious until it occurred.

Carlo di'Jevre broke the line that comprised the fourth heat. He spun, neatly, took five steps, kicked aside the robes and the tunic that passed for Northern modesty as if he couldn't stand the sight of them. He bent, turned, faced the water again, and leaped.

Ser Anton cried out. Andaro cried out. Both voices blended in words of denial that only the water heard.

Carlo di'Jevre had taken his sword into the watery domain.

He had never enjoyed the kill.

That was the truth, and it was the assassin's truth: Men who enjoyed the kill too much were wed to the death, not the Lady, and the Lady was jealous by nature. Such men as those, she did not take in, and if she did, she did not keep; they joined a different brotherhood, and served a darker purpose. In the darkness of sun striated by the movement of heavy water, he remembered that truth.

And although he couldn't afford it, he remembered more: The tenth time he had woken in the night at the brotherhood's home in the deep South. One of the soft-spoken boys he had—hesitantly— allowed himself to become close to, lay awash in so much blood the silks and the mats couldn't swallow it quickly enough.

All that was left of the moment following it were impressions. Hand on a dagger, in the darkness. Dripping, bloody dagger. Lamp, poor light, on a face. Another boy's. Grimness there, and deep satisfaction. That boy, like Kallandras, had been taken off the streets of a Southern city, a place where a seraf was not quite a seraf, and a clansman not quite free. Then.

Now.

The
Kialli
moved, sensing the things that the bard could keep off his face, out of his movements, out of his voice entirely—but never, never out of his thoughts. It was a mercy, to strike at him, if not an ease; it had been years since he called upon the power of Myrrdion's ring. Years since it had called upon him, and he was comfortable with its absence.

The creature moved lazily out of his way.

So, too, had that young man moved. Lazily. Easily.

He waited, with that dagger, with that death. The masters had come, bearing light to alleviate night's cover. They witnessed the work of the boy they had thought to take in. and to teach.

In silence, they had listened to his claim:
I have proved myself worthy of you
.

Kallandras felt the grieving anger that he had felt then, even now. That he had risen, from ground and mat-side, to speak, to give voice to before the turn of robes and feet carried these men from him—they, so elevated, he so desperate.

"You have killed your brother!" he cried. "And the brotherhood is the only thing that separates us from common killers. We have each other!"

Something in his voice, even then. Something in his voice caught them all, masters and would-be
Kovaschaü
alike. Maybe that's when they had first realized what his voice could mean to them.

"What is this brotherhood that you speak of?" the oldest Master said softly. "We have the Lady." But he bowed to Kallandras, not yet novitiate, not yet initiate, just a child a step above serafdom.

Then. Now.

The creature struck him, and he—he missed; his blade made a wave, a swell of water, that fanned out across his cheek. He knew that he had caught the creature's attention; that his anger, unearthed and somehow still alive although it had been more than three decades laid to rest, was a hook. That and his pain.

Assassins don't enjoy killing. The truth.

But they use whatever weapon they have at hand when a killing must be done.

The old man had bowed to Kallandras, and when he rose from that bow, his lips were curved in an odd smile. "See," he said softly, "to your brother."

He had been left with the dead then. Left there, with no idea of the honor, oblique and painful as it had been, that the old man had conferred upon him.

He had understood the value of the brotherhood, the desire for its society and no other, before they had taken him into their number and made him one with it. He understood it now, and it burned him; the pain made him careless—or as careless as one can be who has been trained by the
Kovaschaü
masters.

Did they curse him now? He knew that one, only one, of those masters remained alive; the others, age had taken.

He knew the loss, of course, but today he let it in.

Beneath the moving waters, beneath the theater of their sun-harsh light, he let it in.

Above them both, the assassin and the kin, Valedan kai di'Leonne was in motion.

He reached Andaro in time.

Caught his wrist in the grip of a man who was both older and undaunted by that difference in age. The sun had darkened him.

the wind had hardened his skin; he took from time; time did not take from him.

But if Andaro's hand had been stopped short of gripping his sword, he could fence with his eyes, the gravity of his expression, the accusation it contained. He did not, however, demean them both by begging.

"'The adjudicators gave their order," Ser Anton said softly, seeing the wreckage of splintered wood upon the water, the corpse of a single mage — the others had somehow survived both the weight of their robes and their underwater enemies, and had made it ashore. "The magi will act when the waters are clear; they cannot risk magery in the water; it may well kill the challengers."

Andaro made no reply. Nor would he.

He stared out into the still spot in the water where he thought Carlo must have dived.

Watched as, less than a minute later, that familiar—completely drenched—head bobbed up, seeking air.

It was not enough.

Kallandras lived through the pain, offering it to the demon like a drug; he used himself, as he had been taught to use himself, mercilessly.

Kallandras saw the expression, so appropriately glassy, that held his enemy's face; saw him slow and shudder a moment. But the assassin was accustomed to pain, and in the end, so, too was the
Kialli
: he looked up, and saw as Kallandras did: the passing of his intended victim. He smiled, he only paused to smile, and then the water took him beyond Kallandras' reach.

Air wrapped him round; enveloping him, like a stream too thin to be seen, it answered his call. He followed, but not quickly. Not quickly enough.

But there was one other in the water, with a single crescent sword, a sword that moved too slowly given the water's pull; a sword that dragged him down with its weight. He struggled, but he kept himself near the air that was his life.

Saw the first of the swimmers.

Waited, in the water, and then, with one last breath of air, gave in. Slid beneath it.

He saw, as clearly as he could, the man who had come out of the water, followed by the unholy water itself—only this time, the positions were reversed.

No question; none whatever. The creature was here to kill the kai Leonne.

Lord of Day
, Carlo di'Jevre thought. Gripping his sword, he waited. Beneath him, beneath the approaching kai Leonne, the man whose golden hair now filled the water with strands not unlike the legendary mermaid's suddenly pursued; he carried something too small to be a real weapon in his right hand, and in his left, nothing.

The creature turned, lifted a hand that was slender and long, and hurled something, something unseen—but not unfelt.

The water rocked with its sudden unfurling. But the target, the man, had somehow stepped aside. As if water were something that offered him purchase.

"HOLD!"
that man cried, and Carlo froze. So did the creature; or rather, it slowed, as if waking to water for the first time and realizing that it had weight.

The creature's snarl was carried by wave; he raced up now, up toward the kai Leonne.

Carlo waited. Held his sword. Readied it—as much as he could in water like this.

He would regret it later—if ever—but the creature's back was toward him, its attention divided between the kai Leonne and the man who pursued him. Carlo was certain that such a thing must realize that he was there—but perhaps not, or perhaps he was only another swimmer, another fragile, easily killed man, with no magery to protect him.

But it didn't matter; he did not call the creature; did not demand the right to face him in honorable combat. This was no creature of the Lord's, no creature meant to stand and fight beneath the open sky. Night here, night in the depths; all
men
fought a night such as this. He heard its terrible gurgling; saw the kai Leonne pass above them both, and struck, as true as he might, the creature's transparent spine. Then, because his body wished air more than he wished the sword, he rose up, leaving its weight behind. Leaving his
sword
.

And because he did, its claws cut his calf to bone, drawing blood, but not life's blood.

He had the privilege of knowing that his strike was not wasted; the man struck, with the dagger that seemed so beneath notice, and even surrounded by water as it was, the creature began to burn.

Lord of Day
, Carlo thought, as he reached for air, gasping.
Lord

of Light
. He made his way to the open boardwalk, reached up. and was hauled onto his feet by two angry men.

He laughed before his leg collapsed. Laughed in the face of their silence, their anger, their concern.

"What does it matter," he told Andaro's grim, white face, "about the Challenge? What will they do? The Challenge is a game, Andaro—but I—today I have faced the first
true
enemy."

"And was it worth your life?"

"I'm alive."

"You might not have been."

Carlo grimaced as Andaro lifted him. "What do you think?" And he laughed.

"I think," Ser Anton said, looking into the water's deeps as if all that lay beneath its moving surface had been laid bare to him, "you've lost your sword."

The third heat made it to the boardwalk. The fourth heat was delayed.

And perhaps because of the delay they swam poorly when they did at last receive permission to swim. So, too, did the fifth heat.

Valedan kai di'Leonne was, against all odds, the winner of the event. And no victory, not even the fight with the young boys of the Essalieyanese court, had ever been so galling, so contemptible, so empty to him.

Serra Alina came to him in the humid, cramped waiting areas adjacent to the open glory of the coliseum. The Princess brought her; the two women cast long shadows as the sun left the sky. It had been years since he had believed in the Lord and the Lady, but he yearned for the night now as if, indeed, it were that mythical Lady's bower, a place for peace.

Not yet.

Serra Alina publicly prostrated herself before him, as befit his rank and her own; it made the Ospreys uncomfortable—or worse, made her the objective of their insinuations, their colorful innuendo. She was a Serra, of course, and rose above it.