Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (88 page)

News traveled. Servants carried it. ATerafin carried it. The men and women who frequented the healerie with their pathetic aches and scrapes carried it.

The Terafin spoke at length with each member of her Council; with each man or woman of power who had already begun the negotiation of the dispute that would end in several deaths and a new House ruler. He had not expected that. Should have seen it; Amarais was a cunning woman, and not to be tricked by foolish display. Of course he'd intended to have the men killed once they finished their duty. They would be silent bodies—bodies that he, in fact, had some part in apprehending for their heinous crime. He could produce proof of their loyalty to Haerrad—but it was useless now.

Useless.

He was not a man given to grand gestures or to grand rages, but if anything could drive a man to either, this was it, this failure.

"My Lord."

He turned quietly, irritated that he had been unaware of the messenger's interruption. That irritation had already fallen fast beneath the surface of a benign expression. He turned. "Rise," he said.

"I bring word from the merchant Pedro di'Jardanno," the messenger said. He did not hold out a roll of paper, did not offer a scroll, which was common in the Empire. There was no privacy between the man who sent the message and the man who received it, and he liked it not a bit.

But to kill another man's property was not, given the abject failure of his internal plans this evening, a wise decision; he refrained.

"Give your message," he told the waiting seraf, "and then leave quickly. I am already under some suspicion."

The man bowed in the Southern fashion, and had to be ordered to rise again before he would speak. A lifetime of slavery to another's will probably had that effect. Or a certainty that failure in any little grace was death.

He was fascinated by the Imperial culture. Repelled by it. He wished to rule
men
, not these shadows of men, not these intelligent cattle.

"Speak," he commanded.

"Jewel ATerafin, Commander Allen, Commander Ellora, and Commander Devran are still alive."

He'd seen at least the first for himself, but he'd assumed that the assassin had had to hunt them separately: indeed he'd sat through the interview with The Terafin, her right-kin, and Jewel ATerafin thinking about the fact that she would not have the younger ATerafin as a weapon for much longer. Amused by the thought.

"Yes?"

"And the brother who was hunting them has died."

"What?"

"It was reported to the Kings' Swords. He is said to have been killed in the attempted commission of a crime."

This profound a failure.

"Thank you," he said softly. Wondering, idly, if he now had either the contempt or the enmity of Pedro di'Jardanno to worry about. Neither was desirable. He alone of all Terafin had seen what that man might do. Could do. Had done.

"Do you have word to send to my master?"

"I will send word as I am able. Tell him… he has my profound apologies. It appears that there are forces at work here that neither of us are fully aware of."

He rose, this seraf, this half-man, and was gone.

22nd day of Lattan, 427 AA

Averalaan Aramarelas, Coliseum

It seemed incongruous to Serra Alina, watching the foot race, that men of ungainly size and stature should in fact be faster than those whose build seemed, on the surface, to suggest fleetness of foot, grace of movement, light quick steps.

The Northern barbarian, for instance, was large and broad; he was tall, for he cast a tall shadow, but seemed shorter than his height to the eye because he had that barrel chest that seemed so admired in Imperial standards of male beauty. She thought he looked heavy, and heaviness implied lack of speed. Clearly, her sheltered life, both here and in the harem of her oldest brother, and her father before him, had not prepared her for the truth of the race: Such size and such muscle counted, yes, but for more, and not less.

Valedan's muscle was youth's muscle; he was taller, or seemed taller, to the Serra, and—although she never said it aloud—he was graceful in the sinuous, unaffected way few men are.

She also knew that he was fast.

The oddsmakers had placed Eneric of Darbanne in the lead, and indeed, these men were men who knew how to make their money, although they had lost much in the test of the sea.

Here, they placed Valedan either first or second, but with a greater likelihood of second place. Carlo di'Jevre had actually been ceded third place, but he had withdrawn, and that left Ser Anton with only Ser Andaro. He was ranked lower, between fourth and seventh, with some probability of either third or second, and some very small chance at first.

Miri had once explained these numbers to her, the why and the wherefore of them—but she had barely listened then; she had a head to remember numbers, and to listen for results. That was enough. She rarely forgot a thing once told.

The Serra Marlena en'Leonne was wringing her hands. Alina wondered idly, and not for the first time, whether or not this woman had been striking in the bloom of youth; she was not at all attractive now. She made of weakness a virtue, but not one to Alina's liking. For the sake of the event itself, however, they endured each other's company.

Short of leaving the box that had been set aside to provide a maximum of privacy to guard the modesty of the Annagarian women, they had little choice. Alina would have made her way to sand and ground and open sea wind—were it not for Ser Anton's presence.

Two reasons to dislike him, although she knew that the latter was unworthy of her.

"Look, look, Alina! He starts!"

"He is lining up, Serra Marlena," she replied. "The mages will be brought out first, and then the judges; there is some time yet before he runs." The older woman's grip on her arm was astounding in both its ferocity and its familiarity.

"Look at him—is he not the image of his father?"

She made no reply. It was both prudent and wise to make none. As always, this silence was taken for agreement. Privately, Alina thought Valedan favored neither mother nor father, although she had seen the Tyr himself only a handful of times in her adult life, and could not in fairness draw a good comparison.

He was taller than either, and wise enough to know when to accept a limitation; wise enough to know when to challenge that acceptance. She thought he would make, of all things, a
good
Tyr, and shook her head at her own folly.
I show my blood
, she thought ruefully.
Lambertan, for all the clans to mock
.

Good, after all, counted for little.
Powerful
was definitive. She believed it; it was, after all, truth. Serra Marlena was rare among the Serras; she clung to half-truths as if clinging was a type of salvation. As if, indeed, salvation could be gained by such pathos.

And yet… and yet… she could not name the emotion that she had felt the night the crowns were offered to those men who had braved the test of the sea; to the man who had won it. She had been angry at Valedan's lack of grace, and she had delivered the rebuke that only she could deliver—but she had not expected him to rise to the occasion in the fashion that he had: With grace, and without, in the end, absolving himself publicly of his private shame.

Mareo, she knew, would be proud.

Mareo, the brother for whom she felt such ambivalence.

Winning
, she had told him
defines us. As does losing
.

How we win
, he replied, seeking the sunlight with his eyes,
defines us. And how we lose
.

They had argued, of course. And in the end, he had chosen to relieve himself of the strife in his home by sending her, expendable and in fury, to the North as a hostage.

A kindness, although no doubt he had intended no such mercy.

She remembered that day clearly.

As wars go, the last war between the Empire and the Dominion was a short war, but a costly one; it had divided the Callestans and the Lambertans. guaranteeing a border in chaos for the Northern Lords. The harvest—the harvest had been taken by those serafs who had miraculously survived either side of the closing armies; who had survived the fires and the burning embers carried by wind.

She had been attended by her serafs; she claimed three, but was allowed none of them in her exile, by the will of her brother, the kai Lamberto.

"The Northerners do not believe in slavery," he had said; she could hear it now, as if the words had been trapped by malicious breeze to be carried over and over again when the sun was at this height, "and they will free the serafs to their Northern cities. I will not lose them in such a fashion."

She was insulted, of course; those serafs she had chosen and trained on her own, and she knew, she
knew
that they would never leave her. It was their duty, after all, their reason for existence: to serve.

Wryness, that. She was not too proud to admit—in the silence of thoughts, beneath Northern bowers where no spy of her brother's might witness it—that he had probably been right. She had seen it happen, here. And she could not even condemn it.

Had the North not changed her?

The winds were sharp today, they carried a chill in the shade that belied the summer heat, the summer humidity. As if she knew what that unlooked for coolness presaged, she looked up, her face half-veiled, her posture perfect.

Mirialyn ACormaris stepped into the box and bowed. North-ern style, to her. "He will run," she said, "and I thought, if you wouldn't mind, I might join you."

"You are not needed below?"

"Would I be here, otherwise?"

Not an answer. Never an answer with her, although she was counted wise and spoke truth when she chose to speak directly. Serra Alina frowned as the Serra Marlena began to speak. She raised a sharp, slender hand as if it were blade, and the older Serra subsided, although her irritation was plain to see.

Plain, and an embarrassment. Ser Fillipo's wives did not deign to notice her lack of grace; neither did Ser Kyro's wife. Graceful manners required no less than such feigned ignorance. Therefore Alina's response was almost as rude—although it was welcome, she had no doubt of it—coming as it did in front of a foreigner. An outsider. A stranger.

She rose. "I would be pleased to join you a moment while we watch the Tyr'agar," she said. Miri offered her a hand, and she accepted it; the dress that the Serra wore did not reward quick movements with grace. They walked to the front of the box and sat at its farthest edge, briefly exposed to sun as they gazed down upon the ground of the running field.

There, men lined up in a single row cast long shadows. They had run several races each today; this would be the last.

"ACormaris," Serra Alina said quietly.

"Serra."

"Four days."

"Yes. Four days, and there will be an end to this, one way or the other."

"You are prepared for the hundred run, as they call it in the city streets?"

"The marathon? Yes; as prepared as we can be."

Silence was awkward. Profound. "Ah," the ACormaris said softly. "The mage is finished."

"The ten men?"

"Will run. Look. The adjudicator has taken up his position."

The noise that had blanketed the coliseum lifted like a curtain; there was silence, tense and anticipatory. The men knelt. Lowered their heads. Touched the earth with both hands—she did not understand the significance of either the hands or the kneeling. In the Dominion, men who hoped for victory did not abase themselves in the eyes of the Lord.

But this was the North; how could she think otherwise, who stood beside Mirialyn ACormaris in the salt-laden air of the High City?

The adjudicator lifted a hand; a woman came up to the podium to stand beside him. Her hair was gold and gray, the color of wealth and wisdom. She opened her lips. Spoke. The entire coliseum could hear her as clearly as the contestants.

Bard-born.

"Prepare."

The men shifted almost in unison.

"Hold."

They were tense; she could see that now. To start before her given word was an offense in the eyes of the adjudicatory body, and that body held all power here to athletes whose lives depended upon their success. She played out the moment, as if inspecting them at a safe distance. Waited. The silence dragged on.

They were holding their breaths, and they two grown women, and no young girls to be impressed by a foot race. Mirialyn ACormaris had doubtless never been that young girl, but Serra Alina had been, and if she struggled, she could remember it clearly. It was humiliating in its fashion, as all weakness was; she rarely struggled that hard.

"Start!"

Sound returned in a rush as fleet as the men who now covered the ground with shadow and foot.

Don't look back.

He leaned forward, bent into the run, let his knees take his weight; he used his arms almost without thought, keeping time with the movement of his hips, his legs, the length of his stride. The sound of all breath was lost to the roar of the crowd, and he heard his name, time and again, made fuzzy by the number of voices that carried it.

Valedan.

The shadows fell the wrong way, though; it was later in the afternoon. He could see them across the ground, although they were distorted enough that he couldn't—quite—attach them to the runners themselves.

Didn't matter.

Nothing mattered but this: Run. Fast. Faster.
Faster
.

It was closely run.

Close, but not so close that it couldn't be called.

Serra Alina would have liked to think that the Northern men were bred and trained only to this purpose, there was nothing else that might excuse Eneric of Darbanne. But she knew, having seen him between events, that he was not a decoration—and this contest, in the end, this pitting of skill against skill, was a decorative contest.

No wars were decided here. No power given or granted; no armies destroyed or created. Pride was served, be it national or personal, but that was all.