Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (91 page)

"It was known only to the man and his wife; it is now known by four, and not two, for I was told, and I have told you."

"And who told you, Evayne a'Nolan? The man? I doubt it. And the wife is dead."

"Yes. The wife is dead. But the gods guard and shepherd the dead," she said softly, "and the gods speak. They speak in a language that occasionally we are given leave to understand. From Mandaros, at the behest of this woman, this story came to the hand that has fashioned so much that is so bitter about my life. And from Him, to you.

"Take this ring, and tell him. Tell him that she loves him, that she waits for him, and that she does—as he suspects—like the boy. Tell him that she says she's still not very patient, and she won't wait for more than a lifetime, so she respectfully requests that he not do so much that he has to live through another one in atonement."

He turned then, to see her face, and before she pulled the hood low, he could see the faintest glimmering in her eyes. He felt it in his own. They, neither of whom were moved at death or causing it, were moved at this—this act of sentiment.

Of love.

He missed the race's finish, although he heard it announced in a roar that shook earth, it was so loud. Anger there, and jubilance.

He turned back to the track, and he could see that Andaro di'Corsarro held his head particularly high as he sought—and found— someone in the stands closest the ground itself, and raised his hand in proud salute. First, then. But Valedan, somehow, was second.

His hand curled protectively around the ring that Evayne had given him, but his thoughts were for that young man.
Whose hand
, he thought,
and how
? And. unbidden,
What price will he he forced to pay for anything he's granted here
?

Ser Anton's students were louder, by themselves, than the whole of the Northern contingent. They had entered the coliseum for the first of the two events by which real men were known, and they had showed their strength: Andaro di'Corsarro, born to and of the Dominion of Annagar, carried the crown on proud brow. He had placed third in the foot race, but he had placed behind the northern pawn that they had come this far to defeat. Had, in fact, placed behind him in every event but this one.

There was not enough wine in the city for the men who followed Ser Anton di'Guivera. Luckily, they were not given much chance to prove it. Ser Anton was still their master here, and he looked not to the past day's glory, but to the next day's event.

The hundred run was so named because the path the runners took led them through every holding in the city, high and low, rich and poor. They would run through a pass made of people to either side, people held back by the flimsiest of barriers and their ancient belief in the authority of the city's many guards.

Hours. Hours away.

He rose from his silence like a man shedding water after a long dive. Shook himself and made his way out to the edge of night. There, Andaro di'Corsarro, the much celebrated hero of the hour, sat beside Carlo di'Jevre. They were quiet, and between them there was only one glass, and that in Carlo's hand. Andaro would not risk the run to Northern wine and the excess of celebration.

He had been much like Andaro in his youth, but Andaro in his wisdom attached himself to no helpless woman, no helpless babe.

They looked up as his shadow passed them.

"Ser Anton," Andaro said quietly.

"You did well," the swordmaster said.

He was too old to be pleased by praise, or rather, too old to show it. He nodded, kept his head bowed that extra half-second that spoke of respect.

They were silent beneath the face of a moon unfettered by cloud.

"Tomorrow?" Carlo said at last.

"The hundred run, yes."

It was not the question he'd asked; not the question that hovered beneath the single word. The silence stretched awkwardly between the swordmaster and his students. It was the master who was forced to retreat from them, the brightest of his students, the two of whom he had been most proud.

The moon was high and bright, almost impossible to ignore.

And so he found himself by the fountain, staring into the stone cloth that covered the eyes of the blindfolded boy. The water here was heavy; it was abundant. The sea did not taint it with salt; the winds did not cover it with sand or dirt.

He would not have said he was waiting, had any chosen to ask, but he
did
wait.

And in time, the waiting was rewarded.

The boy, Valedan kai Leonne, came out of
the
shadows like a shadow, into the glow of mage-stones and moon. He started as their eyes met, but the surprise rippled over his features and was gone.

They had spoken in the clipped fashion of Southern men in anger; some of that remained in the boy's bow. The bow surprised him, and he returned it with a nod, much as he might have returned the regard of a—student.

"You ride well," he said grudgingly. "But you chose your mount poorly."

"Or undermastered him," Valedan replied. "As a horse, he is fine, but high-strung."

"He is Mancorvan?"

The boy shook his head. "Callestan."

"That, I cannot believe. He was probably Mancorvan originally."

"He bears no brand."

"The Mancorvans do not brand their horses. They count on the quality of the beast itself to tell the tale of its breeder."

The boy stood quietly, awkwardly, in the moonlight. Watching made Ser Anton weary. Where had it gone, the fire of his youth, his younger self? Where did the determination that had carried him through not one, but two, of these Challenges now reside?

To kill a Tyr had been remarkably easy.

To kill this, the least of a Tyr's seraf-born sons? In the moonlight he lowered his eyes.

The boy cut him. He said: "You must have loved your wife a great deal."

It was not what he expected to hear. Not what he desired. He did not speak; the shock began to give way to something akin to anger. But when he raised his face, he saw no hint of cruelty, no hint of mockery, in the boy's face; there was nothing there at all.

"You were raised in the North," he said at last, but softly.

"Yes," he said. "And born in the South, in the harem of a great man, to a woman he grew quickly to disdain. If there was love between my father and his wives, he never showed it in a way that we could clearly understand."

"You were a boy," Ser Anton said gruffly.

"And a boy knows nothing of love, of course."

Silence.

"Did any of his wives survive?"

"No. But you must know this."

Valedan bowed his head a moment. "Yes," was all the reply he offered.

The silence was thick. Heavy.

The boy threw it off first. "Tell me about your wife."

"Yours is the line that killed her," was the swordmaster's reply.

"And your son?"

"The same."

His own students might have been put off; they might have read the warning in the cutting edge of the words. Not so this one, who owed him nothing, certainly not respect or obedience. "Did she follow the Lady?"

"No." He rose. "She followed me. And I led her, in pride, to the Tor Leonne, for my first audience with the Tyr'agar." He could not call her back; could not unmake the choice that he had made. He could only do this: strike out. Kill. Avenge.

But before he had cleared a courtyard whose meaning he attributed to the malice of the Lady, the boy spoke again. "Ser Anton."

"Yes?" He did not turn. Something in the boy's tone told him he would like the question no more than any of the other questions he had asked this eve.

"The hundred run tomorrow."

"Yes?"

"Will there be more assassins?"

Wind take the boy. None of his own students had dared to ask the question so boldly. "I don't know," he said, offering the boy ignorance. It was truth, after all; he could not be certain.

"Thank you."

Lord scorch him. He turned, thinking to catch the boy's back. Caught his eyes instead, and held them. "Take care," he said quietly. He himself was not certain whether or not he meant the words in warning or threat.

"I'm sorry, Devon," Jewel said for about the twentieth time. "But you can't just point me in the right direction and expect me to start seeing for you. Doesn't work that way."
As you should damned well know
. And he did know, that was the Hells of it; he knew, but he obviously felt he didn't have much choice.

There were a hundred holdings in this city, some older than others to listen to the residents bicker, and she'd come nowhere close to traversing all of them. But Devon ATerafin had somehow managed to get her a horse—she wasn't comfortable on horseback, probably never would be, and the damned creature
knew
it—and permission to trace as much of the route as the runners would be following in advance of their actual run. Where permission was sort of like an order, but less easy to refuse.

Not that she would have tried. Because she knew what Devon didn't: that Kiriel couldn't sense demons anymore, the way she had with the first few.

Kiriel was as certain as she could be—which wasn't very— that they'd destroyed all of the ones she'd pointed out to Jewel what seemed years, but was in fact weeks, ago, but they both knew that the creature that had come close to killing both Jewel and Angel hadn't been detected at all—whether or not because he hadn't been
there
Jewel couldn't say, and Kiriel wouldn't.

Beyond the slim barricades, people gathered. They stood beneath awnings and wide-brimmed hats, huddling, when neither were available, beneath the shade of trees, as if sunfall were much like rain. At this time of year, it was worse.

She shook her head. Smiled jaggedly. "It's the twenty-fifth," she said. She'd traced the route on horseback, seeing the same crowds as the hours dwindled and the sun rose; there were more people visible than cobbled stones. Challenge season.

Devon nodded quietly.

She shrugged, almost embarrassed. "It's different for you." she said at last, lamely. "You get to go home if you want to." Not, if she were honest, that there was much to go home to: lack of food, shelter, and safety; a lot of hiding from magisterians and trying desperately to become good enough at theft that you could survive another week or two; the one friend she'd had outside of her den was long dead, and her den whittled down to bloody size before they'd managed to make their escape. But desperation had its own rules, its own stark simplicity. Nothing at all like life in Terafin.

Her hands stopped on the reins; the horse stood a moment beneath the sun, as if she had finished her journey through the city, rather than just interrupting it. She sat up straight, seeing the past in the thin arms and thin faces of the watchful spectators; seeing herself at their backs, her shaking hands attempting to pull money from their pockets, food from their baskets, anything at all that might help her den survive another day.

Dreaming, she remembered, of a day when they'd have enough, and she'd never have to be less than her father would have approved of again.

"Jewel?"

"Nothing here," she said softly. "Nothing."