Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (86 page)

For the first time since they'd arrived in the healerie he had a chance to actually look at the stranger who had come with Jewel— and he saw, to his surprise, that a dead man lay on the floor at his feet. He fought one on one with a Terafin House Guard—and Arann thought he was winning.

Would have put money on it.

He didn't feel her hand on his shoulder—not through the armor— but he heard her voice and turned toward it. It was surprisingly gentle.

"Do I look that bad?" he said, or tried to.

"Don't speak," she replied, which was as much an answer as he needed. She led him, and because he had always followed her when things were darkest, he followed her now, giving over the responsibility of action and decision.

And shortly thereafter giving over the light, the greenery in the arborium, the sound of water's gentle fall, close enough now to be heard above the din of sword.

He heard a scream, something shrill, from the rooms where the beds were. Bolted up; she pushed him down. "I
said
lie back."

More like the Jay he was used to. She pulled the helmet free from his head and he felt water, blessed and cool, across his forehead. And that was all.

The silence from the healerie was awful. She wondered, as she cleared the arborium and headed toward the beds, whether she'd ever be able to come here again and find the quiet peaceful.

Probably. People had memories like sieves.

Kalliaris
, she thought.
Smile. Smile, Lady
.

The three beds closest to the open arch had been slashed by two blows: sheets had been torn back and exposed. A body lay here, on the floor, a sword still gripped in its hand. She didn't recognize it. So far so good.

She stepped through the arch, passed beneath it. and steeled herself.

Kiriel stood a few feet away, cleaning her sword with a bed sheet. Alowan would have been furious.

"Kiriel?" she said briefly.

"They're alive." was Kiriel's terse reply.

She took two steps, two quick steps, and then stopped six inches away from the youngest member of her den. She was always shy of touching this one. "Kiriel?"

The girl looked up, warily. Blood flecked her cheeks, her forehead—none of it, on first inspection, her own.

"Thank you."

But Kiriel looked away, turned away. Not much she could do to change that.

She left her. Deeper into the room, to the left, she found Angel attempting to bind Teller's wounds. Both men were as white as the sheets they were using, if you didn't count the green tinge to their skin. Or the blood.

"What—what happened?"

Angel didn't look up from his work—and Teller didn't look up either. They seemed to be absorbed by this simple attempt at doctoring.

"Teller," she said.

He shook his head. Closed his eyes.

It was Angel who answered, and he answered with a jittery, a single, motion. Pointed.

Beyond them both, beyond them were the dead. But they weren't simply bodies; they had lost arms, legs, half a head; they lay strewn across the breadth of the room as if they were dolls an angry child had destroyed in a fit of berserk rage. Armor was rent as if it were cloth, and there were two blades that were sheared in half.

She closed her eyes.

Squared her shoulders. Opened her eyes again. "What happened?" she asked, taking a breath. "'Not—not that. I can see that with my own eyes. But I heard swords—"

Angel nodded.

"That woman," he said. "The one that came during our fight with—with the Allasakari. In these halls. She came tonight. She had two swords and a warning. Dropped the swords on the bed and disappeared.

"We had enough time to hide; to make mock bodies under the sheets. I think they thought—Hells, of course they did—that they could just walk in quickly and kill us all."

"They sent a lot of men for a quick kill."

He shrugged. "Guess you can't be too certain."

"Jay—" Teller said softly, eyes still closed.

"I know," she said just as softly. He reached out for her hand and she gave it to him—but her attention was with the youngest member of her den. Kiriel.

"All right," Jewel said, knocking at what remained of the door— and there wasn't much of it. Swords weren't effective axes, but they'd almost got through.

"I don't know who built these doors," Auralis said, his syllables blending into a long, slow drawl, "but if I ever build a fortress, I want him." He bent, touched splintered wood, and whistled. "They should have been able to knock the damned thing down."

She hit the door, and then kicked it; both sounds were curiously flat. "Alowan!"

"Jay—"

Finch. Finch had come from somewhere to lay a hand on her shoulder. It should have been comforting; it was a touch she couldn't have mistaken for anyone else's. But she shrugged it off.

Because Alayra was dead.

Had it been so long since she'd seen death? So long since she'd felt its presence, and worse, the lingering shadow it left in its wake?

Yes. Too long. They weren't even
her
dead; they were just dead. She drew breath, sharply.
Answer the door, Alowan
, she thought, curling her hands into knuckled fists.
I won't have had it all be for nothing
. As if the eight dead men were sacrifices; not hers, and therefore lives she could offer up.

Squeamishly.
Get a grip
, she told herself. No one else would have dared.

And then she heard it, something grunting and creaking, the sound of something heavy being dragged or pushed across the floor. She almost laughed. But it would have been too close to the edge of hysterical, and she didn't want to go there. She bit her lip and smiled instead.

"Jay?"

The noise continued, and before it was finished, The Terafin joined them in the healerie. She came with six of her Chosen, and her domicis; the former were armored and weaponed. The Terafin herself was dressed very, very simply—in a pale gown, something that the light bleached of color. Which seemed fitting. Morretz was in the loose but perfect robes of a servant, albeit a highly valued and valuable one. If he was armed, it wasn't obvious.

Nothing about the man was.

"You'd be best," Jewel said to the Chosen, "to leave your weapons outside."

One of the Chosen was Arrendas; she hadn't remembered him leaving.

"I believe," The Terafin said, "that the healer will forgive us this trespass." She stepped forward then. Knelt a moment beside one of the fallen. Arrendas knelt and flipped the corpse over.

"Do you recognize him?" The Terafin asked.

"Yes," her Chosen replied, his voice carefully neutral. His glance strayed to Auralis, Kind's friend. Osprey. AKalakar.

The Terafin's followed. She nodded and rose.

Auralis showed himself to be only half a fool. The Terafin and The Kalakar were not a study in opposites—not the way The Kalakar and The Berriliya were—but they were very different women. What the Osprey rarely offered the ruler of his own House—if reputation was anything to go by—he offered The Terafin. He brought his hand to his chest, sharply. Smartly. Bowed.

"I owe you a debt," she said quietly.

He smiled broadly, but the smile faltered. "I was… pleased to be of service," he said at last. "But I like a debt as long as it's not mine."

"And I," she answered. She turned, then, to Jewel herself. "ATerafin," she said.

Jewel nodded.

"The healer?"

"Whole, I think."

"Whole," the healer said, as what was left of the door swung open. There was, in fact, a thinning of wood that allowed the light to shine through. Jewel wondered, idly, what the swords looked like. Forgot about it the minute the old man stepped beneath the arch of his doorway and into the brighter light of mage-stones that rivaled sun for the clarity of their glow. He had aged—and she had always thought him ancient.

He bowed to her. Bowed low. "Forgive me, Jewel," he said.

"Forgive
you
—but why?"

"I—had enough warning to move the armoire into the arch to block the door." He did not look up. "But not enough time—not enough to leave my rooms in search of your kin."

"Then be at peace," Jewel said quietly. "Those kin are my den and my responsibility. If you'll forgive them for having swords in the healerie, I'll tell you that they're alive and whole."

"Swords?"

"They had enough warning to pick up the arms that were left them." She paused. "Teller's bleeding, but I think he'll survive."

"Who left them arms?"

Jewel hesitated.

"Jewel," The Terafin said, "I would be interested in the answer to that question as well."

When she'd first come to the House, she'd been afraid of The Terafin; when she'd been given her name and had settled in— had become as much a friend as the woman who ruled the House allowed herself—she'd found this quiet way of giving orders a contrast to the surliness of merchants or magisterians in the streets.

But she'd learned that there was a steel behind those words that surliness or temper couldn't hope to contain.

"Evayne," she said quietly.

"So," The Terafin said resignedly. "It's started. At least in our day we had the decency to wait until the corpse had cooled."

"Or at least until there was a corpse to add to," Alowan said gravely. "No one of you stood still, Amarais." He bowed. "Let me go to see to my two patients; we will have time to talk later. Whoever the attackers are—or were—they've failed, and they will not try again this eve."

He left the room, and The Terafin let him go because he was Alowan, and because his name was his own. He did not serve the House; he served
her
, and that choice was his own, had always been his own, to make. Or to walk away from.

But Jewel put a hand on his shoulder. "Alowan," she said softly.

"Yes?" He froze; he did not look back, either to Jewel or her Lord.

"There were four men in front of your door. There were four in the healerie. They are—dead. But not pleasantly."

"Oh?"

"I—no. Please wait—I'll have Teller and Angel brought to you."

He shrugged himself free of her hand. She knew better than to stop him.

Because she wasn't The Terafin, she tried anyway. "Alowan, please—"

"Do you think I haven't seen death?" he asked, and this time, he peeled her hand away. "I'm old enough, Jewel, to need no protection. A healer is a man whose touch heals the injured; the act itself is merely talent, like song or dance or even love—it says nothing whatever of what else these hands have done."

But the healerie was his heart; it was here that he worked his craft in peace. He adored the arborium, adored the light that shone through the windows at its heights—the costly, costly windows— the fountain whose voice could only be appreciated in the near-silence of a place of healing.

"It's not you I'm trying to protect," she said.

"Who, then?"

Jewel lifted her head. Let it fall to her side. "I don't know," she said quietly. Because there was only one name she could fill his silence with, and she didn't want to use it.
Kiriel
.

He walked away from her, from them, and into the healerie itself.