Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (89 page)

And Eneric of Darbanne was no one's decoration.

Valedan kai di'Leonne had to settle for second, and second was not without value. Interesting, to her, that Ser Anton's student took third. Two Southerners on the podium, a miniature war in the making, and each standing behind the Northern Champion.

I must not
, she chided herself,
make analogies out of everything
. But she had been raised in the South, and in the South, all such detail had significance.

She noted—how could she not—that Valedan kai di'Leonne was greatly pleased with the second-place finish; more pleased to her eye than he had been with either the tenth place or the first.

Mareo
, she thought, with apprehension, for she knew what his objections to Valedan kai di'Leonne would
and
must
be, you would like him. You would honor him, if you met him, if you took the time to watch him
.

You would come to understand that he is no Northern pawn. . Or you would come to understand that your concept of Southern honor
is
Northern to the core
.

And that, he would not do.

But to watch the boy, to watch him run and take second and be proud of it because his first place win had been so tainted gave her her first hope.

They did not need her brother's support, no.

But she knew well that if they did not have it, they would be forced to destroy the reigning clan of the Terrean of Mancorvo.

23rd day of Lattan, 427 AA

Terafin Manse

They faced each other. The Terafin and her domicis. Years had passed: years had marked them in ways that they barely knew themselves until they stopped to look and to question. The sun was a pale luminescence across the sky's edge; dawn soon.

Morretz carried a lamp, one glassed-in and therefore protected from the caprice of breeze or wind. Not that either existed in plenty at the height of this sullen, still season, but he took precautions with fire regardless; these were old habits, and old habits, for Morretz, had acquired a strength that was akin to a force of nature.

They sat in silence, bowed by the weight of things unsaid.

At last, she spoke. She would speak first, or no one would, and Morretz had perfected the art of waiting. Especially at times like this, when she chose to don the worn cloak of her dead grandfather, the blood relation of whom she had been so fond. It was too hot for such a cloak.

As if she knew what he was thinking, she said, "It still smells like him."

In the darkness, her voice might have been a young woman's voice.

He said nothing, knowing that this was not the time. And knowing well that she had paid a great deal of money to a mage of the Order to preserve the cloak in just such a fashion, to keep it as a living memory when her own memory failed as all memories do.

After a moment, she said, softly, "Alowan."

"Yes."

"How will I die, Morretz?" So cool her voice, so calm, the meaning of the words were almost lost to the tone.

You could not comfort this woman. You could try, but you could not do it, and he had long since given up the awkwardness of trying. He brought her the cloak when she desired it, or more often put it away when she had finished with it. She exposed so little, it was impossible to believe that she was afraid.

"Morretz," she said quietly, her hands settling into stillness in her lap.

How to answer such a question? He had not asked it of himself, because he had chosen to serve her, and her death was, literally, the end of the life he lived. Perhaps the end of his life; he could not see it.

"You are my most trusted servant," she said, "and one of my wisest. And before you speak to me of Gabriel—and I know you are thinking of him—I will only say that I regret the weakness that allowed him to persuade me to grant Rymark ATerafin his entry here. Rymark is Gabriel's blood son, and proof—if any had ever been needed—that blood does not run true.

"Yet he is the boy's father, with all that that implies, and he was close to the mother, who is dead. He sees… less clearly at the moment than I would like."

"And that leaves me?"

"That leaves you, Morretz."

"You are wrong," he told her firmly. "You should ask this of Jewel."

Her silence was long, and broken by a rueful laugh. "I should, yes. But I won't. To ask you is to ask a man of some cunning and some intellect to guess at what I guess at, to reach a logical conclusion in some fashion that I understand.

"But to speak to Jewel is to have an inexplicable, unreachable answer writ in stone—if she answers at all. I want an answer that
I
can reach, Morretz. An answer that intellect, confidence, or knowledge will take me to. I am not looking forward to death," The Terafin added quietly, "But I have seen my own death in at least three places in the last month—and in nothing so clearly as the attempt upon Alowan's life."

He would have argued with her. He wanted to. But he saw as she saw. He bowed his head in the dawn's colored light, exposing streaks of gray.

"Will you not change your mind," he said at last. "Will you not prevent Jewel from going South?"

She waited until he raised his face to meet hers. "I would," she said, "but I believe in the end that to call her back is to destroy the House; to let her go is to destroy only a single ruler."

"But the House—"

"The Terafin spirit," she said softly, softly, "gave her permission to travel South; indeed, he gave her the responsibility of it."

He knew her. He knew her, and he hated this in her: That she was the House Ruler, and that everything—
everything
, gods curse her—was done for the good of the House. He saw as she saw.

23rd day of Lattan, 427 AA

Avantari, Coliseum

This was the only test at which Eneric of Darbanne was certain to fail. And not to fail in a minor way, not to take second or third or fourth, but to fail, period. He would not make tenth unless some catastrophe occurred; he would be lucky, in the estimation of Commander Sivari, to break twentieth.

But he came, and he prepared, the same as any of the other contestants. Valedan admired that. He rode a horse that was, on sight, inferior to at least fifty of the horses that Valedan had himself glimpsed or inspected; it was too old a horse for such a race as this, and it was, simply, too short in stride, although it seemed rock stable, a dependable mount in a crisis. It was a gray, bleached by time of color.

Eneric of Darbanne smiled as Valedan's pace slowed.

"She's a good horse," he said.

Mare. "You don't—you don't take a mare—"

Eneric laughed. This man, this man who was favored to win the Challenge, knew he was going to lose this race. And he didn't seem to care.

"Valedan," Sivari said, bowing brusquely in acknowledgment of the Northerner. "Your horse—"

But Valedan stopped in front of Eneric. "Why?" he said.

The Northerner could have ignored the question, or he could have misunderstood it; it was, after all, a single word. But he shrugged instead. "I bought a new sword for the competition," he began, and then laughed when he saw the Southern shock spread across the younger man's face. "And a new shield. I had new armor made. New clothing. Even this," he added, hands momentarily tugging at a leather pouch that hung from a broad belt, "I had made new."

"But—"

"But none of them are alive, kai Leonne. None of them have seen me through battle and skirmish against bandit and encroaching noble the way she has." He scratched her broad head with a proud affection. "She's not what she used to be when she was a filly. But I've had her eight years, and she's never faltered and never failed me.

"I won't win with her," he said, acknowledging the truth that Valedan had not—and would not—speak. "But winning without her just wouldn't be the same. But truth—this is the truth—be told, I'd take another horse to race with if I thought I'd come close to the front, but there are too many damned Southerners here for that, and I won't slight her for less than victory." He paused. "Your own horse is a fine beast. True Southern blood there; I'd be surprised if she wasn't Mancorvan."

"I'd be surprised if she was," Sivari replied, before Valedan could. "You know how the Mancorvans feel about the North."

"True enough. But he's a fine horse, and he'll give the others their only real challenge." He leaned forward, held out a hand. "Good luck, kai Leonne. You're
our
Southerner. Win."

Valedan nodded almost absently, staring at the dark eyes in the white head. And then he followed Sivari.

When he said, "I don't understand," for the fifth time, the Commander laughed. Here, under the open sky, over a bed of flat grass that had been sheered into something so fine it felt like cloth, he said, "Eneric is a Northerner. First, they value the loyalty of living things. Second, and if you're a cynic, more important, horses are rarer, and more expensive in the Northern clime. To buy a beast like yours would beggar all but the high nobility, and Eneric, for all his worth, doesn't approach theirs in wealth. He might, in time, should he win here." He shrugged. "They have a rough honor and a rougher sense of justice—but you've managed to impress him, or he'd have spit just as soon as answer your question.

"They like an underdog in the North," he added.

"But—"

"Winning is almost everything, Valedan—but you yourself now know it
isn't
everything. If it were, you would never have chosen to share that podium. You've declared yourself, like it or not. It isn't a declaration that Eneric of Darbanne—that any of these contestants—could have made, but having seen it, they're impressed. Now come. We're testing the patience of the adjudicators as it is."

Valedan nodded.

And stopped again, in front of a waiting Southerner. Andaro di'Corsarro. They bowed to each other stiffly, and if Valedan rose first, the bow was not shallow. Andaro was, with the withdrawal of Carlo, the best horseman in the palace. No exceptions made.

This man
, he thought idly,
is here to kill me
. But it didn't matter— not at this moment. The track mattered, and the men who tended it were nearly done. The horses mattered. The race itself.

He said softly, "I would wish you luck, but you require none."

Andaro shrugged, and they both turned to their tasks. But as he walked away, he heard a soft voice say, "Carlo is watching us both."

The sun was not to the liking of the horses; not in the early morning, and not in the afternoon. But they were run, and run the way the men had been the day before: without pause, if they won or came close to winning. Of the races, there were ten in total, and the track at the end of the day was smooth by the artifice of those whose responsibility it was to tend those things.

Eneric did not progress to the finals; did not, in fact, place at all in his heat. He seemed content, his horse, upset. They looked an odd pair, this Northern barbarian whom everyone secretly bet on to win the Challenge, and his frost-haired, slightly-too-short-in-the-leg mount, but they did, in Valedan's opinion, suit each other in a way that made no sense to him.