Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (85 page)

She would smack herself later; magic or no, night was Kind's element.

The guards at the gate were ATerafin, of course. She flew between them, lifting a hand; torchlight glinted off worked gold, worked platinum.

"Hey, Jay!" a voice called, and she skidded—literally—to a halt across damp grass.

She turned to face Arann.

"Where's Torvan?"

"Hells if I know—
Avantari
."

"But—you—"

"The
healerie
, Arann—we need to reach it.
Now
."

He left his post. She'd remember it later; he left his post. And followed.

They were four people: Jewel, Kiriel, her friend Auralis, and Arann of the House Guard. They could not move quietly, but they could, having cleared the checkpoint, move
quickly
. No tangle of weed here, no dip in road, no web of crowd to either side or, thanks to alcohol, underfoot. Here, the halls were wide and well-lit, and they went on in relative peace and quiet.

Relative peace.

Relative quiet.

The healerie.

Kiriel heard it first, or at least, Kiriel said it first:
Swords
. Jewel couldn't hear it at first, and she cursed her talent-born blood, cursed the fact that she couldn't summon vision. It was master and she was not—like a horse, she waited to be ridden.

Was this Evayne's lesson?

Hard to hear anyway; Auralis and Kiriel in half-armor, and Arann in the full armor of the House Guards, thundering at her side with each heavy footfall. She had no time to summon other guards. Took no time. Kiriel heard swords.

And swords were forbidden in the healerie.

They took a corner, took another one; the halls in Terafin were wide, and they could run four abreast. Jewel should have been the fastest; she should have gotten there first. But Kiriel, wearing armor, carrying a sword—when had she unsheathed it?—was somehow lighter on her feet. Devoid of shadows, robbed of the menace of the supernatural, she retained
something
. And something, tonight, was a blessing.

Jewel was next; she drew no weapon. First, she still didn't know how to wield a sword. She'd taken a lesson or two—could hear, now, Angel saying,
you fight like a girl
! just before she decked him—but both she and the swordmaster concurred; she wasn't large enough or young enough to become a master.

And at sixteen, newly ATerafin, it was master or nothing.

At thirty-three, at thirty-three she hated the hubris of her younger self. Breath began to scorch the sides of her throat. Too much soft living. Too little real labor.

She heard Arann's intake of breath. They were close enough now that he could hear it: Steel against steel; the short cry of a man's voice. Neither he nor she recognized whose. They put on a last burst of speed.

There: the healerie's solid, simple door. Closed.

But no question, no question at all. Beyond it, the sounds of fighting, distinct. Swords in the healerie. And one didn't take swords into the healerie without Alowan's permission. The consequences were simple: Cross the threshold with the weapon, and never cross it again as a patient.

Jewel knew what it meant: Whoever had opened the door didn't give a rat's ass for the consequences. That meant one thing.
Alowan
.

Or two.

She hadn't said it. Hadn't spoken it aloud, because in the Empire, and in the mind of a superstitious girl in the twenty-fifth holding with a Voyani mother and grandmother, words had power—what was said could resonate through the years, scarring the speaker. Could catch the attention of the winds—or in the Empire, of a capricious, an irritable godling.

She said it now, a prayer, a promise, her shaking hand on the healerie door.

"Teller. Angel."

The door was locked. Arann kicked it in.

The first thing she saw made no sense—but fear did that to her; heightened immediate images into a sharp clarity of here-and-now that sometimes robbed them of context. Men were at a door. Men in armor, with heavy swords. Chips of wood were flying— they were using their swords as axes.

Context tumbled in.

Alowan's door.

She thought—would remember thinking—
why don
7
they just kick it down
? before Kiriel jogged her elbow.

"Jay?"

The metal against metal wasn't coming from the men at the door, obviously; it came from inside the healerie itself. "Them," she said thickly. Kiriel bobbed, head rising and falling; she cut a path through the greenery as if she
were
a demon and the word a dismissal.

But Arann and Auralis were armored, Arann for duty and Auralis for gambling houses full of drunkards who had lost too much money, and the opening of the healerie door had finally caught the attention of the men who labored, notching and dulling their swords. They looked up. They were four.

Four men, and she recognized the armor at once. Recognized the surcoat. House Guards.
Terafin
guards.

One of them swore.

"Kill them," he said. "Kill all of them except her."

Auralis and Arann exchanged a brief glance, and then their faces set in expressions characteristic to them, a hardening not unlike the taking up of a shield. Auralis smiled; that was all, the smile a broad splash of warmth across a face a bit too self-satisfied to otherwise be handsome to someone like Jewel.

Arann's face became a mask; a slight narrowing of eye, a stilling of lip, a setting of jaw.

Both men lifted their swords. She fell through the crack between them, although neither man spoke a word, and when she did, that gap seemed to close on its own as four men rushed in.

No taking of time, here; they had numbers—two to one were never good odds—and probably little time. The healerie door was open, after all. Someone would hear them. Someone would have to hear them.

She pulled her dagger and spun on heel, teetering a moment between this fight and the one that she could hear. And then she ran. It almost killed her, to run—because she didn't run toward the beds either.

She ran for the door, the exposed stretch of empty hallway. She ran for Captain Alayra of the Chosen. Alayra was always in.

There were four men in the healerie proper. They carried swords, wore full armor, and circled two men, both armed, neither dressed for combat, who stood back to back. One was small, too small for a fight like this; a slash crossed his chest from shoulder to waist, staining shirt and skin. His face was bruised and yellowed— old bruises, to her practiced eye. He was barely standing. Would not, she thought, stand long.

Teller.

The other, wilder beneath his tight control, was unwounded, had caused pain. He was taller—as tall as Aural is although not as broadly built—and although he bled, it wasn't completely clear why. His sword was stained.

Angel.

The other beds were empty. No—not completely; three beds were bumpy; the sheets had been slashed end to end. much as Teller's chest had been. She'd have to ask. Later.

Two to one. Poor odds.

Four to one were poorer.

She stood in the room like a small storm, and then, of all things, Kiriel di'Ashaf laughed.

Arann was the largest of the den. Heaviest. Strongest. He'd been in fights before that had almost killed him—and they were fights like this, not contests of honor, but simple attempts to end his life. The fact that these men wore armor and carried swords didn't change those rules. What changed them slightly was this: Arann himself had been trained, by Alayra, by Torvan, by the sword-master of Terafin. He wasn't the best—but he wasn't far off.

Two of the men were younger than he was; two older. He'd recognized all of them. Knew how they fought, as he'd drilled with the two younger men in the ring. Never for keeps.

This was for keeps.

They hadn't the time to build momentum, nor the time to build speed; but they were used to taking advantage of superior numbers. Alayra's gift. He was used to defending against superior numbers. Torvan's gift.

He took the first blow with the flat of his sword, side-stepping the man who delivered it; twisting him; using the slight lack of control momentum built against him. Almost worked.

The second blow—unparried—was glancing; it slid down armor and caught a moment in surcoat. That was all. He responded in kind.

Alayra was sleeping.

Figures. Middle of the Challenge, all of the men on tenterhooks, the streets full, The Terafin engaged in whatever it was The Terafin did during a season that saw the influx of every merchant and politico you'd want to see—and a whole lot more you didn't—and Alayra was sleeping.

Or at least that's what it looked like to Jewel.

But the minute she touched the bed—not Alayra herself, just the bed—she knew that the Captain of the Chosen was gone.

It hit her like an assassin's blade, shoved suddenly and deftly between her ribs in a single strike. She stepped back.

No time left. No time to honor the dead; no time to even speak of it clearly. She ran back from the room, retreating as if at the discovery of fire.

Ran to the door where two members of the Chosen—not too young, but you didn't get Chosen by being young—were standing. She didn't recognize the woman. But the man, the man was an old friend. Arrendas. Captain.

"What are you—"

"Julia summoned me," he said.

"But you're in armor—"

"Jewel, it's not that late. But you,
you
, not any other ATerafin, don't go running hellbent through the halls for no reason."

"You were—"

"I was. I'm back. What's wrong?"

"Alayra's dead," she said. Lifting her ring, showing it although it wasn't absolutely unnecessary, she added, "and Alowan's going to be if you don't go to the healerie
now
."

The ring gave her words authority and command.

Or something. She wasn't certain; her throat closed after they'd left her mouth and she couldn't have spoken them again had she wanted to. She turned, and she heard them at her back.

"Jewel?"

"Arann and a man you won't recognize are fighting four of the House Guards. And—and at least two of my den. Girl, armed, our side. Probably Angel."

They left, then.

House Guards were trained by the same people. Same way. They were good, these two. Younger, older. Good. He was wounded. Twice, a gash across the cheek, a strike, heavy enough to send him back, across shoulder. Two swords sought entry between the joints of armor, or through the armor itself; could be done. He'd seen it.

But it hadn't,
Kalliaris'
smile, been done yet.

At his side, the stranger fought. Arann didn't have thought to spare beyond this, but he prayed, briefly, that the stranger could hold his own. Because he thought it was just a matter of time, and if the stranger fell, he didn't even have that.

* * *

Four men against two.

Four men against three. Kiriel smiled.

And for the first time in her life, the result of her smile was this: one of the four men turned to another and said simply, "Kill her."

There was no sudden cessation of motion, no hesitation, no subconscious deference to
felt
power; there was unadorned order, as if she were of less consequence—obviously less consequence— than either Angel or Teller. One man—
one
man—broke away from their attack, his sword firmly, confidently held, his expression just a shade off bored.

"Don't you know who I am?" she cried, swinging her sword in a slow arc that was level with her chest.

"Doesn't matter," the man said. She heard the weariness in his voice, and that made no sense to her either. Weariness.

The ring on her hand was flat, lifeless; it had betrayed her once and had gone to sleep. But she knew—she knew that beneath its sullen, flat platinum, she
had
power, she was what she had always been. Hadn't Meralonne's ring proved that?

When you fight, Kiriel, you always have something to prove.

Not his voice. Not here. She parried the man's first blow as if it were a fly.

But if you fight as if you have something to prove, you will fail. The reasons for beginning a fight must be left outside of the fight itself, or they will devour what you need: concentration. Control.

And she had always followed his advice. Because she trusted him. Had trusted him.

Trust no
Kialli,
Kiriel. Not even me
.

She roared and the sound was a whimper, a failure of power, a weakness of breath. Human. But her enemy had been expecting no such thing and he paused a moment, stepping back from the engagement as if she were mad, as if the madness demanded an attention that her sanity was unworthy of.

He died, that expression still upon his face.

If Kiriel was not all she had been, the sword hadn't changed.

When he took the third wound, his left leg almost buckled beneath him. Almost. He held it straight, but the effort cost him: fourth wound. Glancing slash. He could feel the sweat running down his brow; hoped it wouldn't reach his eyes. He was tired.

The minutes were as intensive now as hours; he wasn't certain that he could actually—

Ah. Fifth blow.

He fell back, staggering, parrying.

Lifted his sword as a- sword caught the light; caught it, although his swing was wild enough he had luck to thank, not skill. He was going to die.

He didn't want to die.

He had prayed to
Kalliaris
, the only god any of them really did pray to when they stared death in the face. But this was beyond that; death was too close to him to even
see
clearly. And that close to death, that close, he forgot prayer entirely.

Prayer, after all, had never done him as much good as
she
had.

"Jay!" he cried, half-plea, half-pledge.

Metal slid off metal in a long, slow blur that ended with the hilt of his sword. It was a good sword. But so, too. were theirs; they were Terafin swords.

Jay answered.

To either side of him, the shadows silvered and moved; he blinked, blinked again, wiped a gauntlet across his forehead— which did exactly nothing—and then lifted his sword, almost renewed by what he saw: The Chosen of Terafin.