Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (99 page)

This was how it started, Anton thought, feeling no such indecision in the touch of the Lady's proffered circumstance. He crossed the distance that separated them. It was not great.

"Aidan," he said, offering the boy the iron smile that he had offered him the second day they met.

"Ser Anton." The boy hesitated a moment longer and then thrust his hand forward. Ser Anton wore light armor—which, in this heat felt anything but—without gloves; the gloves were at his belt. He clasped the smaller, smoother hand and shook firmly.

"I should have thought to find you here. This is where the swords are singing."

Aidan's smile was instant, unaffected; it had a depth to it that only a boy's smile could. Unalloyed. Bright. A thing of wonder that he had not quite learned to conceal. Wonder and vulnerability were so closely twined they might almost have been the same thing.

And yet it was safe, in the presence of the dour swordmaster, to share such a thing. He stared at the boy dispassionately, thinking only that, at twelve years of age, he was probably too old to truly master the sword—but that, had he been born in the South, Ser Anton might have tried to teach him anyway; the instincts were there and an instinct and passion like Aidan's couldn't be taught, no matter who the teacher might be; one was born with it, or one did not have it at all. He had met very few born with it.

"Your Challenger?"

"Five fights," Aidan said. And he answered so enthusiastically, so proudly, that Ser Anton realized it had not occurred to him that Ser Anton himself was paying at least as much attention as Aidan had. "Five fights, and not a scratch on him. But it's almost impossible to get near him in between the fights; the Ospreys are thick as bees 'round honey."

"His sixth fight?"

"Soon. After these two. No, after the two
after
these two."

"Do you know who his opponent will be?"

At this question, perhaps a little too obviously disingenuous, Aidan fell silent a moment. His face hardened into the expression that children the world over wore when they lived too close to the streets and death. "You already know," he said curtly.

Ser Anton, unfazed, nodded. "Andaro. My own. I should have liked to see him face Eneric first, I think. That man is better than I would like to admit."

Silence. Then, "See who faces Eneric first? My Champion or yours?"

Anton laughed; the sound was short and sharp, rare enough to draw attention to them both. He waited until that unwelcome interference had passed before replying. "Your Champion, of course. My own, whose strengths and weaknesses you have seen today, I would save for that ultimate test.

"He is here, after all, to prove to the men who watch—the men from the South, the merchants and the cerdan who guard them, the Tyr, the Tyr's Tyran, the General—that those born and bred to the South are superior in every way to those whose blood is dilute at best and who have lived a pampered and soft life in the Courts of the feminine North."

"I thought," Aidan said, with perfect dignity, "that he was here to kill him."

Anton's turn to offer silence in the place of words. At last, rather gruffly, he said, "Ser Andaro is my best student; he was rivaled by Carlo, and he has always claimed that their skill is equal; it is not true. He is my best in every way.

"He has taken the field, Aidan, and he understands well what is at stake—but in the end, I do not believe that he will turn this from the test it is into the killing that it might otherwise be. I have had him for too many years, and in those early years, I was a different man."

No question of it; in those years, he would never have explained himself to a mere boy, and at that, a boy one step away from serafdom—if that. He knew he should leave. "A question, Aidan."

Aidan shrugged.

"Who do you think will win when Andaro and Valedan finally face each other?"

Another boy would have answered with boastful pride. Aidan grew thoughtful, and this distance in his expression gave way to the compulsion that had, in the end, drawn him to Ser Anton's camp.

"I think," he said carefully, "Andaro has the best chance of beating him. Andaro's skill is always the same, no matter who he's fighting. Valedan—Valedan seems to get weaker with weak opponents and stronger with strong ones."

"As if the fight itself were a conversation, some sort of give and take, rather than an absolute skill set?"

Aidan frowned.

Anton suppressed a smile. "Never mind, Aidan. I understand what you said. It is a habit of the old; they make everything as difficult as possible when they choose to discuss it—and if something is stated simply, they cannot help but adorn it with more words.

"Do you think Andaro will win?"

Silence. Then, "No."

Ser Anton nodded quietly. "We shall see," he said. "But I would concur with your evaluation. Valedan kai di'Leonne has an instinctive response and a fluidity of style that I have only rarely had the privilege of seeing in action. He is not what I expected, Aidan.

"And you are not what I expected. I had forgotten how surprising the North could be. Come; I believe it is two Northerners who are to compete next, and I would be very interested to hear you speak of the difference in style between my own students and Master Owen's."

He shouldn't have been speaking to the old man. He knew that the old man was an enemy.

But did it really matter now? There were so many guards and mages all over the damn place a
fly
couldn't get through to Valedan—and there wasn't ever much harm done by watching.

He remembered being angry with Ser Anton. If he worked hard at it, he could be angry now—because Ser Anton had, dammit, been a
hero
, not just another Southerner. But if he watched the swordplay, he didn't have room for anger, and the moment the anger left him, he was standing beside the only man in the audience who probably felt the same way that he did.

So he said nothing.

When Ser Anton moved closer to the field itself, he followed, standing closer to the old man than the man's shadow, which at this sun height was pretty damn close. The guards were perfunctory; they examined Aidan's medallion and looked carefully at both Ser Anton's and Aidan's rings. But they knew both Aidan and Anton by now—who wouldn't know Ser Anton once the fight had started?—and they were willing to allow him to be as close to the fight itself as the judges.

After all, the contestant was his student.

The only uncomfortable moment for Aidan was in the chance meeting with Commander Sivari. Also King's Champion, although once to Anton's twice, he had come as Valedan's trainer. He raised a brow when Aidan's glance skittered guiltily across his face before he bowed very respectfully. Bows were good for that—they hid your face if you did 'em properly.

"Ser Anton."

"Commander Sivari."

They bowed as formally as the contestants themselves would have; Aidan could almost imagine that these two, and not their students, were the combatants. They took each other's measure while he watched in awkward silence.

"I was going to send for young Aidan here, but I see that you've saved me the trouble. Will you join me, or will you join your own camp? They've lined up as close to the circle as the judges will let them; two, in fact, have been disciplined."

"Crossing the line?"

"In the opinion of the guards; the adjudicatory body was not called."

"My thanks, then." Ser Anton nodded. "I will, of course, take my place with the rest of my students." He turned to Aidan. "You are welcome to join me; I would welcome your observations. But I would welcome those observations at Challenge's end just as happily if you chose to remain here."

He wanted to go.

He wanted to watch the two men meet at the side of the only other man who he was certain heard the same song that he did when the swords finally met. The desire made him miserable.

But Commander Sivari laughed. "You have a student in this one, Ser Anton."

"He is old for a student," Ser Anton replied, but there was a glimmer in his eyes, a softening of the line of his lips, "but if circumstances were different, I believe I would take him and make a swordsman out of him that even your student today would have trouble besting."

"Then if you want my blessing, you have it, Aidan. Valedan himself would be pleased for you—and proud of you, if he heard Ser Anton's words. Go if you want."

He almost reached for the old man's hand, just as if that old man were the father of his younger years, or the grandfather he'd lost to death. Did—and then froze, and then forced his hand to his side. He hoped that Ser Anton hadn't noticed it, but he knew that Ser Anton noticed
everything
.

But the old man shook his head, said nothing.

The distance to the coliseum wasn't far.

She'd taken Angel and Carver with her. Kallandras waited patiently throughout. If he heard The Terafin's private words—and it was said that some bards could hear the spoken word more than a mile away—his face betrayed nothing. Face like that never would. It was beautiful, in its way, but it was impenetrable; better armor than the Terafin Chosen were given when they were selected for their duty.

She found Kallandras of Senniel intimidating, although he had rarely been anything other than charming and polite. Of all the master bards she had met—and she was willing to allow that, even as a member of the Terafin House Council, she'd not met all that many—he was the most dangerous.

To a seer, danger had its own feel, and the men and women who wore it, wore it like a translucent mask. A warning. A statement. A fact.

She felt particularly uncomfortable with him today, and put it down to the harried way she'd stepped from bedroom to meeting room with a pause—at Avandar's absolute insistence—to add the finishing touches to clothing that might, just might, be seen by royalty who would judge the House by it. But she noticed that this day of all days, Kallandras the bard was shorn of his famous lute. He carried daggers and a slender sword so naturally she had failed to understand their significance at first sight.

As if understanding the thought and the direction, he nodded, offering no smile, no easy camaraderie.

Kalliaris
, but she hated battle.

They were given a carriage; both Avandar and Kallandras could live on a horse if need be—Hells, Avandar looked like he'd been born to it—but although Jewel's den had learned to mount and ride, they'd never taken well to it, and the horses—damn then all—knew when they carried nervous riders. Jewel was the best of the lot—she could manage just fine as long as there weren't many people underfoot. She thought of the typical streets at Challenge time. Snorted.

Just how in the Hells you were expected not to be nervous when you had a couple of thick hunks of rope and leather as your only method of controlling something that probably weighed ten times as much as you and could crush you flat with iron-shod hooves, Jewel had no idea. But Avandar managed with annoying calm.

Unfortunately, Jewel found the carriage ride to be the far more comfortable of the two methods of travel—which wasn't saying much given the speed of the driver and the roads beneath the wheels. The streets themselves were, of necessity on this last Challenge Day. packed; it was hard to negotiate them without having to come to a halt.

Too many halts.

"Jay?"

Angel's voice, tense with sudden knowledge.

Her sudden knowledge.

"ATerafin?" Kallandras' voice, asking the same question that her den-mate had, but with an edge to the word that brooked no silence, no time to gather thoughts.

"We're late," she said, her eyes caught by the edge of a ghostly vision that was torn from her by sunlight and movement and color.

They all froze, but in different ways. Carver and Angel drew breath, but Avandar and Kallandras seemed to settle into the edges that made them dangerous men. If they were afraid of any possible outcome, they hoarded their fear jealously.

"Someone's already dead," she added, "and he doesn't know it yet."

"ATerafin—"

"I don't know. I don't know who. They'll kill the boy—"

Kallandras reached for her; Avandar's hand was in his way in an instant. Their hands met, bard and domicis. Jewel knew that she could not have moved as quickly as either man had in response to her or each other.

They did not argue. "Which boy, ATerafin?"

But while the certainty was not fleeting, the details were. She looked at him, and then looked out into the streets that now seemed more impassable than the twenty-fifth holding had when it had been littered with magisterians looking for her den. "I don't know," she said, in helpless frustration.

And then, Kalliaris smiled.

"Aidan."