Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (44 page)

To buy the time her sister-wives might need to escape, however short a distance their flight would take them. To die trying, because death seemed a comfort now, an ending. She no longer believed that the howl of the wind carried the souls of the dead, because she had listened and listened and listened and she could discern no voice at all in the keening and whistling of night air.

Only memory held their voices.

She had lived while they died, but as an outsider. A— bitter word—clansman.

And in the end, it was as clansman that she sat, in this scorched, dry place, among men and women who denned power and strength by the duty one owed to family. It was as clansman that she stood accused by a graceless, ill-tempered woman. Dark-haired and dark-eyed and quick of tongue—

Ruatha.

She knew why she had lost her temper.

The knowledge did not ease her. Evallen of the Arkosa Voyani had ventured into the heart of the Tor Leonne. She had given into Serra Diora di'Marano's keeping the Heart of Arkosa… and it was the Heart of Arkosa that guaranteed the Serra Diora's safe passage. The Arkosan Matriarch had survived neither gift.

And this—this temper, this pain, this pride—was poor payment of the debt that Evallen's death had laid before the Serra's folded lap.

She was no fool; Yollana's shout and Margret's obedience injured Arkosa. Voyani or not, they were still born and bred to the South; they traveled and lived beneath the Lord's sky, the Lady's night. What people were not damaged by the knowledge that their Lord was weak?

She felt a dryness in her throat, a heaviness about her neck where the Heart of Arkosa hung. She did not know what Margret had been about to say. But she did know that if she had no way to ease her own memory—no way that would not weaken her beyond repair or use—she had a way to ease the memories of the watching Arkosans.

It was simple.

Serra Diora di'Marano—Serra Diora en'Leonne—sang. She sang, fitting words around the memories that drove her. She bowed her head because she did not wish to look up; did not wish to see what the Arkosans felt when they understood what she was offering them: a glimpse into the truth, her truth.

She saw a shadow pass before her. Saw it falter briefly.

She could not raise her head to see who had cast it, and it mattered little; it was in the present, and in order to find the song she had begun, she had pushed aside the hangings that were drawn across the past.

Shadows fell across her samisen; the samisen sat across the spill of silk in a still, perfect lap as the Serra leaned over it. Around her face, like a perfect frame, fell hair that was dark and twined in strands. A pearl brushed her cheek.

She sang of Deirdre, Deirdre the gentle, Deirdre the mother of their husband's son. Raven-haired, dark-eyed, lush in the way that women are when they are young and have just borne a child; skin smooth, curves rounded and softened, heart opened to the wonder of and piercing fear for this noisy, helpless miracle.

She sang of Deirdre the hesitant, Deirdre the peacemaker, Deirdre the timid. It hurt to speak of joy; it was infinitely worse to sing of it.

When the words failed her, the voice did not; she skipped across syllables, stretching octaves in a brief display of range and depth. She flew, like a hawk; she soared; she plunged. There was a freedom in the wordless song that was so pure and perfect if she had not been joined in that wild flight by the deeper harmonies of a tenor, she might never have landed.

At another moment she would have been angered.

With the bright clarity of morning sky as witness, she had offered not Deirdre but her own attachment to Deirdre. In penance for her inability to control her own temper—the edge of it so bitter and sudden, so
foreign
—she bound the attention of the Arkosans now. The Flower of the Dominion. The woman whose destiny, beneath the open sky, was to wed the man who could wield the Sun Sword without being consumed—as even the Radann kai el'Sol had been—by the fires it contained.

Kallandras had come, to rob the moment of isolation. But she could not be angry. In the guise of harmony, he offered words, and beneath words, he offered loss. It was profound; profoundly moving. She did not understand why he sang. He had no penance to perform. Nothing at all to prove.

But what he offered
was
genuine; it was a truth, a vulnerability, that she had never heard in his voice before—for his voice was, as hers, perfectly schooled.

A thin film of water colored her vision, distorting his shadow and the slim length of strings beneath' her hands.

She did not love him.

She was certain that she would never love anyone again; all the people who had been capable of loving her were gone. Her father, her father's wives, her own wives.

Love or no, she heard herself in the song that he sang: his loss, like hers, stretched from the past into the future with no end in sight, no peace. He did not promise light at the end of the darkness, or darkness at the end of the day; he did not promise hope, or even triumph; his song was devoid of anything that intrusive.

She knew, then, that he understood her completely. She could not remember the first time she had seen him, but she could remember Lissa's excited description of the . golden-haired Northerner who had won for himself the privilege of performing for the Tyr'agar.

And she remembered the night of the Festival Moon, when he had come with the voice of the wind and had forced a healer to give Lissa back the life that was bleeding away. She had not thought of that in years, but she heard it now: his voice.

Why, Kallandras? Why did you save her?

But she knew he would never answer the question because she knew she would never ask it. Generosity was its own weakness, and neither of them could afford to be weak.

But when his harmony trailed into silence, when her words once again stood alone, she felt an inexplicable fear of his absence and looked up.

He stood before her. He cast no shadow across her face; the shadows had moved with the light. Only the audience remained where it stood, its silence as perfect as applause, but more telling.

"Serra Diora," the Northern bard said, bowing. He held out both hands, and cupped in his palms with a careless, precise grace, was a single, pink flower.

She stared at it for a long moment and then she reached out, her hands so much smaller and paler than his, to touch the petal of a cherry blossom.

Evening of the 27th of Scaral, 427 AA

Arannan Halls, Avantari

They came upon each other beneath the face of the watchful moon.

Ser Valedan kai di'Leonne had taken his customary place beside the fountain called
Southern Justice
. It was not, in the darkness, an accusation; it was a fountain, with a stone basin, rather than the marble work so often fancied by the Northern craftsmen. In the basin, standing on a pedestal submerged in fallen water, a young boy. The perfect lines of the boy's simple face were broken only by a blindfold; the lines of his slender wrists, by chains.

"Tyr'agar," someone said.

Valedan did not turn, choosing to present his back to Ser Anton di'Guivera. In the South, the act was not the insult it would have been in the North; a man's back represented vulnerability, where there were no Tyran or Toran to guard it, and exposing vulnerability indicated trust.

"Ser Anton."

"Have you come to say goodbye?"

Valedan's silence was his reply. But the silence was not, in the end, honest. "Moonlight," he said softly, and then, "yes."

He heard silence, and then retreating footsteps, and this time he did turn. "Ser Anton, a moment please."

The old man's face was visible in the magelights that girded the courtyard's walls. "Some things are best done in private."

"And you would judge me for my weakness?"

Ser Anton smiled. "I have yet to see it."

"Then stay." He paused. "This has been my home. But I will not return to it."

Ser Anton nodded. He stayed, his hand inches away from the hilt of his sword. Valedan did not point out that here, beside the fountain, in the isolation of the Arannan Halls, vigilance of that nature was not required. Because it would have been untrue. But it had been true, once.

It was those days that he said farewell to now. Had he realized how much he would miss them, it would have made no difference; he had chosen a course of action based in part on desperation, and although in the North the word of a desperate man, given under duress, was not counted as a word by men of honor, in the South it was different.

"Kai Leonne," Ser Anton said, after some time had passed in a silence broken by the trickle of water and thought.

Valedan nodded.

"When we leave, our roles will change."

"How?"

"You have studied under my tutelage these past few months. That will cease."

The water really was lovely as the splintered magelights broke across its moving surface. "Because I've learned all you have to teach?"

Ser Anton had the grace to smile—slightly—at Valedan's mock arrogance. "I am constantly learning; all men are, who still live. Therefore to teach all I can would be a work in progress, a neverending journey.

"But no, and you know why."

"I cannot be seen as a student, even to you."

"Indeed. You must be subordinate to none—for you will, in the end, be beholden to many. Were your power assured, it would not be a necessary to… abandon studies that I feel have been fruitful."

Valedan nodded. "Have I learned enough?"

"In the end, the Lord will judge."

"It is not the Lord's judgment that I have asked for, Ser Anton, but rather the judgment of one of the few men I can… trust."

"In my opinion, kai Leonne, you are at least Andaro's equal, and he has studied many years."

"But?"

"But," Ser Anton said, gracing him again with a rare smile, "I have seen the General di'Marente fight, and if in the end your future is to be decided man to man in that fight, and that fight alone—as I said, the Lord will judge. You have the advantage and the disadvantage of youth; he has the advantage of experience. But age has robbed him of very little. He is at the height of his power, and yours remains untested."

Valedan nodded quietly. "Thank you, Ser Anton."

Ser Anton lifted a brow; a question.

"You admire the General."

"I admire his skill."

Valedan's turn to smile. "I am not yet so easily offended. You admire the man."

Ser Anton turned to the fountain again. "I do not admire some of his choices… but yes, since you ask me to be blunt. Ser Alesso di'Marente is a man of the Lord; there is no weakness in him."

27th of Scaral 427
AA

The Tor Leonne

"The Tyr'agnate of Callesta," the former General said quietly, "will attempt to carry the battle to Raverra. He is well aware of the cost of waging war within his own domain."

"And our information?"

"It is accurate, as far as it goes. The Northern armies— to an extent that will remain unknown until the troops are called to move—will support Leonne in his attempt to take the Tor."

"That is hardly likely to make the Leonne cause more popular," Sendari di'Marano said, fingers pausing a moment in the drape of his beard as he contemplated the map. He had become familiar with the symbols and codes that Alesso used when marking the maps of the Terreans, of the Dominion, and of the Empire.

"Agreed," Alesso replied, without looking up. "However, the addition of Ser Anton to the Leonne forces may prove… costly." He lifted brush and lowered it again, deliberate now, his eye unwavering. "And I believe that we labor under the disadvantage of having made the Voyani our enemies for the duration of this war."

"That is not always a disadvantage."

"We have never had all four aligned against us, old friend."

"The four can barely keep from killing each other, and while I can acknowledge in theory the threat they pose— four querulous old women and the undisciplined boys who follow them are a threat only to the serafs in the villages that will be
behind
our lines."

Alesso's smile was brief and sharp. But his hand did not falter as he continued to draw a thin, dark line.

Sendari waited until the line was done, and then said, "I was sent by Cortano to tell you that the men are waiting."

Alesso nodded. "My horse?"

"Ready."

"Good. The serafs?"

"Those who are fit to travel with the cavalry have been seconded."

"Good. Yourself?"

"I have… very little. I leave my wives in the Tor Leonne," he added quietly. "They are… afraid for my daughter."

"They should be," the General replied, straightening and setting the brush aside. He clapped. "I will be but a moment."

Men—free, all—rushed in to fill the silence left after the contact of two palms. Alesso spoke curtly, and they disappeared; he stretched his shoulders in their absence, and for just a moment, Sendari could see the creases sun had made in brow and the corners of sharp, dark eyes.

An entire building on the flat of the Tor Leonne had been taken over, the view of the Lake lost to anyone of nonmilitary persuasion; it housed nothing but tables—tables in the Northern style—and maps in an endless progression. Men would come and go, and in their passage details would be added, roads altered, bridges removed; all under Alesso's watchful eyes. The mapmakers labored with total concentration; error here was death—and not a fast one— in the very near future.

But there was little chance of error.

Alesso chose his subordinates, as always, with care.

Sendari di'Marano had learned to read the maps made at his friend's command. He did not have the same fascination with them; the colored lines against paper were just that; they could not convey the truth of the desert, the rise of mountains, the depth of the valleys—or their lushness, their life—in any way that spoke of accuracy.

But they could be used to plan battles and death..