Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (24 page)

Silence.

"You know," Alexis said, her voice knife sharp, "you don't have any choice. She gave us our colors and our unit
because
we'd won the war for them, and they could keep their hands spit and polish and shiny while we bled and we died. They paid us what we were
due
.

"But that was during peacetime. This is war. We're
soldiers
. That's what we're paid for. You've been given your orders. Quit
whining
."

"We're
Ospreys
, damn you!" Fiara countered. Fiara, stupid, fierce, beautiful in defiance in a way that she otherwise never was.

Yes, the trees shadowed them, but there was no shelter there; Duarte had provided that for as long as he could, and now the scales were off their eyes.
This
was the reality they had always known: the swift boot. The kick in the teeth.

The flag was flying. Black bird of prey against a background of House colors mercifully muted by the fall of dusk. They were right: the Osprey was what had always counted.

Soon, Duarte thought, the music would start. Cook would play. There would be no singing, but the notes, dirgelike, would be song enough by which to lay colors to rest. He was surprised at how much pain the reality could cause; he had thought—more fool he—that he had made his peace with it in The Kalakar's quarters, when she had given him her oblique orders, made her oblique offer.

"You're
all
AKalakar," Alexis continued, doing for him what he had become accustomed to in war: fulfilling the role of adjutant; speaking when he could not, for a moment, speak, and the words needed saying.

He would pay for it; that was the nature of her gifts. She would turn on him later, tongue sharp as her steel, eyes flashing with contempt and anger and the pain that she held back in order to soothe theirs. All of it had to go somewhere; he knew who the target would be. But here, now, he would marvel at the gift for what it was.

"AKalakar. She didn't take that from you, and she could have. She would have no choice if she could hear half of what you're saying now. Less. She
knows
what we did for her. You think you're dirt? There are people out there now who are less," her hands swung, now wildly, but precisely, to the gates at her back. "We all know 'em. People who would have sold
us
into slavery to get what we
earned
. The Kalakar's name behind us."

"Well, what if we don't give a shit about the name?"

"Then you're as much a fool as everyone always said you were!"

Saying what he could not say because he was their captain, and she was… family.

Kiriel turned quietly to Auralis. She touched him, gently, on the arm between elbow and shoulder. It was a signal of sorts. Jewel called it shorthand because she knew how to write. She said it was like the signals that had been used by the den—ones that Kiriel had learned in days, and would never forget.

Kiriel had learned how to read; Isladar had pressed that upon her as if it were a weapon. But her writing had never become the equal of her reading, and both lagged behind the skill that had defined her early years: the sword. So she understood the concept of shorthand poorly. Not as poorly as she understood the concept of friendship; it was like ally, except there was trust beneath it, and trust…

But she was capable of learning this, this language that wasn't language. She touched his arm.

He failed to notice.

She wasn't sure what this meant, and after a moment, Fiara's angry voice the only sound worthy of note, she touched him again. Spoke his name, like an enchantment, to call him back from the place he had gone to.

He looked down at her. "What?"

"I don't understand."

"What don't you understand?"

"They are… retiring… the colors?"

He didn't answer.

Hard to know whether to speak or to leave things be; she spoke after a moment, the desire to understand greater than the desire to be… politic.

Politic was a word Duarte had taught her.

She'd learned it because he was lord here; she could not understand how it was that so many of the Ospreys failed to do the same.

"How will you ever be powerful if you can't learn from those who have power?"

"If someone big attacks me with a sword right now, what happens to them?"

Kiriel shrugged. She had learned, with time, that Auralis' pointless questions served their purpose and had learned not to interrupt him. It was a lesson she had never been required to learn with Alexis. She had never interrupted the woman who claimed Duarte. If she thought about it for a moment, she realized that she'd never interrupted Fiara; on the rare occasion that Mirialyn ACormaris had had cause to address them, she had likewise known that it would be unwise to break the flow of her words.

She regularly interrupted the men and wondered if this was significant.

"They die."

"So?" She had also learned that arguing the validity of the finer points of his torturously slow explanations—for instance pointing out that his outcome did not take into account the relative power of said attacker—only served to lengthen the time until her enlightenment, such as it was, and besides, older instincts prevailed. One did not question another's claim to competence unless one was willing to prove how little it was worth. And she was strangely unwilling to kill this man.

"Kiriel?"

"Yes?"

"Did you even hear what I said?"

"No."

"I said yes. They're retiring the colors."

She frowned. "What does this mean?"

He closed his eyes. "To you? Nothing. Nothing."

"But it does."

"If it meant anything at all to you, you wouldn't have asked. You wouldn't have needed to."

"But it does," she said, touching him for emphasis.

"Kiriel—please. Not now."

"Why?"

His expression paused the way it did when he was between anger and vulnerability. She felt it: a sharp, terrible sweetness that passed so quickly she forgot about his pain. No; she forgot that it was his; forgot that it was anything other than a way to satisfy a hunger. The sensation was like pain. The pain was exquisite.

She cried out when the ring took it away, replacing it with a fire that was far more mundane.

"Kiriel?"

She did not look at him; she could not. Not yet, not when he had almost been… Food.

"You're right," she said, her voice sliding uncomfortably over the syllables as she struggled to master the first, the most important lesson: show no weakness. "It's not important to me."

He watched her for a moment and the lovely expression that had arrested all thought dissipated.

It was replaced by an expression that she understood better, one that she could easily associate with this man's face. "Then why did you say it was?"

"Because," she replied, clutching her hand as he somehow failed to notice the smell of singed flesh, "it's important to you."

"And that's important? Why?"

"I… don't know. Maybe because whenever you're angry you fight poorly."

His expression soured. She was always surprised when she found it could get worse. "I don't fight any worse."

"You do."

"I don't."

"You do. Your swing," she said, pointing to his sheathed sword, "goes wild. You only think of attack; you open up your lower left side; you extend yourself too far. If you paid attention, you'd fight a bit more conservatively, but… you don't pay attention to your own pain."

"Oh, and you do?" He laughed. "You of all people?" His smile turned, as hers had often done, onto an edge that was thin and dark. It was why she was comfortable with Auralis. With many of the Ospreys. This was what she was used to.

And used to ignoring, when it suited her.

"Yes. I do. I don't let it control me. I don't show it. But I feel pain. And I pay attention to what I feel; pain exists for a reason."

Pain exists for a reason, little Kiriel. Your own pain serves as a warning, and it is a warning that you
must not
share with others. But heed it. When I cut you, and you bleed, there is a shock that pierces skin… here. Here. The bleeding is not heavy; the wound will not kill. But if I cut you deeply, if you are foolish enough to remain where I
might
cut you deeply
—
and you are not
—
the pain would be exquisite, and the blood would tell the brief story of your life
.

It is interesting in those moments. Some people understand what the end of that story will be; some don't. Some fear that end, even if it is not the story being told by the fall of their blood, the depth of their wound. I have watched humans die countless times, and it is often fascinating; even the

weakest will surprise you in the fashion with which they choose to acknowledge the truth of their death.

And the
Kialli? She had asked him.

The
Kialli? His stare was cool.
You change the subject, little one
.

Do I? Hand on blade, hers; she could remember the feel of the supple leather in the curve of her palm even at the remove of years. There are some things that cannot be taken away, cannot be given away.

We are not mortal, Kiriel. You are. I speak of the death of mortals.

But you are not eternal
, she had answered.
You live, somehow, and you die
.

You are developing a dragon's smile. Be certain, little one, that when you use it, you have the breath behind it to give it strength; it will almost certainly be necessary, for in the Shining Court, where everyone knows of the weakness of your birth, the taint of your mortality, false bravado is certain to attract challengers.

He had not answered her, not directly. But she had been persistent then, as she was now.

Do the
Kialli
feel no pain
?

He had laughed. Lord Isladar. The sound of his laughter, like the edge of his momentary claws or the matte feel of leather against palm, was hers to keep even in his absence.

All
we feel is pain. Why else would we have chosen to be the reavers of the mortal dead
?

And he had ended the lesson.

But the lesson itself had taken root in the darkness of thought and memory, and like all of his lessons, flowered unexpectedly in difficult places.

Her eyes were stranger's eyes. He had seen the look before. Not often, and not recently, but a different man could spend the rest of a life trying to forget a glimpse of that expression; could wake up wrapped in the knowledge of it, nightmare's grip so visceral he couldn't hear over heartbeat and labored breath.

They didn't speak of her past. Here, all pasts were insignificant; it was the present and the future that counted.
Ospreys
, he thought bitterly.
We were Ospreys before we were whatever the past made of us. We could leave it all behind
.

The flag was flying. Or it should have been. But it was a hot, still day, and the colors, just like any common fabric, clung to the pole as if afraid to fall.

She was right. It was just cloth.

As long as they paid him, he served under it, but it was all the same to him.

Something caught his eye. Something hurt his throat. He wondered idly if the summer sickness had managed to find him. But although he was good at lying to himself, Auralis AKalakar was not a miracle worker.

The
bitch
was retiring the colors they had laid across every gods-cursed coffin and
every
gods-cursed Osprey grave in the Southern valleys. Two thirds of their number, butchered, screaming or silent as they took their sweet time getting to Mandaros' Hall. Men who had died at his back, had lived up to the oaths that real battle
should have
destroyed, taking the swords that were meant for him. She was destroying what they had built without having the courage to face them.

And maybe that was wise.

He heard the rumbling anger of Cook, a man who would never have made it to the Ospreys had it not been for the unexpected savagery of his hidden temper. He was speaking, and Auralis, having somehow made Decarus again, knew he should be paying attention. Even Fiara had fallen silent.

It should have been easy. Cook was saying what they
all
felt. All of them but her.

"Kiriel?"

She turned as if he hadn't spoken and left the grounds. It wasn't hard to do; she was never comfortable in crowds and when forced to join them, stayed on their edges. One place where edges didn't cut.

"Kiriel!"

He realized he was in danger of interrupting Cook, and hesitated a minute on the edge of the crowd that he had chosen to stand apart from as well.

Then, cursing quietly, he followed.

Isladar was everywhere. There was no place in which his memory did not exert power. The streets of Essalieyan were almost literally alive; the stone broken by weeds and the roots of great trees which would have found no purchase in the dominion of her father. And around those trees, odd creatures: cats and dogs; spindly-legged red-furred things that seemed a cross between the two; birds of all manner that in the poorer quarter were still hunted for food. On a bad day she enjoyed killing them, but she was beyond bad now; no simple death would serve.

There were places in Essalieyan that were dangerous. It had taken time to discover them, and once she had, she hoarded the knowledge. Although it pained her to admit it, the magisterial guards were more efficient than
Kialli
at weeding out the men and women who posed the danger she craved.

Simple things.

The fight for survival.

She thought of the succubi. Considered the weakest of the
Kialli
who could still remember their ancient choice, all of their power resided in their ability to beguile, to convince their victims to surrender, through desire, what nothing else might convince them to relinquish. In the Hells it was their only option; they could not take by force what they required from the kin.

She pitied all but a handful of them; they did not seek the glory of simplicity because they were not certain they could survive it.