Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (18 page)

"I am to be given privacy."

"I am not in control of everything the Sword's Edge does, but I believe that privacy can be arranged."

"Then let us eat, Tyr'agar, let us drink. The night of the Festival Moon is not yet upon us."

In the pale light of moonless night, it glowed.

Set in its cradle, perched atop the steep stairs upon which incense braziers were set to burn in its honor, protected by the Swordhaven that was famed throughout the Dominion, the curved crescent of flawless steel spoke in a ringing voice that none could hear:
Demon. Kialli. Kin
.

7th of Scaral, 427 AA

Evereve

Nothing was an easy thing to be.

Nowhere, just as easy a place. Safe. Quiet. Devoid of the things that she'd last seen: the dead, the dying, the creatures that made them from the living like sculptors or mad artists, in their frenzied rush to stop Avandar from making his escape. From making
their
escape.

So she kept her eyes closed when she heard her name. This had the added advantage of keeping the world where it should be: at a distance, and stationary. Seen through the crack of a barely open eye, it spun in a disconcerting blur of light that immediately reached for the contents of her stomach.

Which she had no intention of letting go.

"Jewel."

The voice was louder.

But that wasn't what made her open her eyes. At a distance, at a remove, the voice itself had been what she expected: male. Worried. Quiet.

Now it was simply disturbing. She didn't recognize the speaker, but there was something distorted about her name as he spoke it, something cumbersome, uncomfortable. She forced herself to look. Saw ceiling, sort of. At least that's what she assumed it was, as she was pretty certain she was flat out on her back.
If I

ever own this much gold
, she thought irritably,
I'm not going to waste it on interior decorating
. Or at least not on ugly interior decorating. Gold, in sculptured leaf, lay everywhere that wasn't surfaced by dark blue-green opal. The combination of colors was striking; unfortunately there was so much floral work in the patterns those colors were put to use creating, the effect was cloying. The possible exception to this gaudy rule was the central pattern in the ceiling's peak, of a distinct and powerful sun, which offered striking simplicity of line and theme when compared with the cacophony of the rest of the crammed images. All of which had nothing to do with the stranger's voice, but she found to her dismay that she almost couldn't turn her head.

"Jewel," the man said again.

She embarrassed herself by attempting to speak. Frogs sounded better.

"Avandar?"

"The master sleeps," the stranger replied. As if aware of her discomfort and her inability to easily turn her head a few inches to the right, he leaned over to offer her the comfort of vision.

She closed her eyes.

But not before she had clearly seen that the lines of his face were pale alabaster, shot through with smoky gray and blue; that his lips, full and soft in appearance were as perfect and uncreased as the stone they had been carved from.

"My apologies," he said quietly, and the stiffness of stone suddenly informed the tone of his words, "if I cause you discomfort. That was not my intent. I am here—at the master's orders—to serve any need you might have."

"I'm… fine," she managed to say.

He disappeared from her field of vision, which was so narrow it didn't take much work. She heard footsteps; expected them to be heavy. What else would stonefall sound like?

But they weren't, of course; they were light enough that she had to really listen to catch them. She closed her eyes, shutting out the gleam of gold in the curve of ceiling above. It was fairly easy; lids fell, gold, like magelight in a closing hand, turned off. But what she could not shut out—because it was already part of memory and her memory was such a badgering pest—was the expression on the face of the stone man.

He was upset; possibly angry, possibly hurt. Hard to tell; he was gone before she had the time to understand what the turn of lips and corners of eyes meant in this strange mimicry of a human face.

Briefly, she wondered if she'd managed to fall and
really
bang her head. And then she didn't wonder much anymore.

"Jewel."

That
voice, she recognized. Out of habit, she scrunched her lids tightly shut and turned over, pulling the blankets up and around the swell of her shoulder. But the feel of the blankets in her hands stopped her in mid-motion. They were so soft that if it weren't for their weight she'd have wondered if they existed at all. She didn't deal in textiles—that was Ruby ATerafin, and both she and Ruby, for sad and obvious reasons, were often confused although they were different in every possible way if you didn't count the fact that they were both women—but she knew quality when she touched it. She opened her eyes. Stared at the light that lay against the surface of cloth as if it were trying to cling there.

"Jewel."

Warily, she turned.

Avandar stood an unusual distance from her bed. About thirty feet, in fact. It took her a moment to realize that he stood where he always stood—in relation to the wall. The wall that was only marginally more tasteful than the ceiling when it came to the use of gold. Someone had too much money and too little taste.

That wasn't the only problem.

Whoever had decorated this room had also apparently crept in and decorated her domicis. He was covered head to toe in some bright red robe that used gold the way fire uses orange light. His hair looked darker, his eyes brighter, his shoulders broader. He wore a crown, and beneath that jewel-encrusted circlet—which was, after all, no more tasteful than anything else she'd seen in the room so far—his expression was as grim and forbidding as any she'd ever seen grace his face.

"Great," she said, to no one in particular, "I've died and gone straight to the Hells."

His expression shifted like the light the silks threw off.

She had trouble standing, and realized that she, too, had been transformed into some nightmare of garish proportion: she wore blue silks, studded with uncomfortably bumpy little jewels which she tried to pretend weren't diamond or opal. It would have helped a lot if expensive frivolities like special rocks hadn't been part of her purview in The Terafin's merchant lines.

Standing wasn't really worth the trouble, but it reasserted old habits, and besides, she felt acutely uncomfortable enmeshed in silk. Her head
hurt
.

She reached up to rub her forehead, and her hand scraped something that was definitely not skin. "Let me guess," she said, looking across the room to a domicis who had not uttered a syllable that didn't contribute to her name. "This is a crown."

He said nothing.

She wondered if she was dreaming. This had that very strong blend of real and unreal which marked the dreams she had come to understand, in her youth, were prophetic. But, damn it, she
knew
she was awake.

"Avandar, what in the Hells is going on?"

There was something about his expression that she didn't like. All right, there was almost always something about his expression she didn't like—but this, this surfaced from an unseen place. She was not used to being surprised, not like this.

She'd known Avandar for half her life.

And wondered, as she took an involuntary—and creaky—step backward, what that meant. This man, this man was a stranger.

He stepped forward. She stepped back, into the bed.

He stopped. She reached for her dagger.

It was gone.

Think. Think, damn it
. "Avandar." She kept her voice low. Formal. "You—you probably saved my life. Again. Where are we?"

She didn't feel threatened, not precisely, but the unease was so strong the only response she could give it was fear. She hated fear. Fought with it. This man was her
domicis
.

And what, exactly, does a domicis do with more gold than the merchants guild makes in a year plastered all over the walls and furniture of a single ugly room?

She really hated common sense at times like this.

Without speaking, she took the crown off and dropped it on the bed. It was very, very heavy. She'd've taken the dress off as well, but there was a lack of anything to replace it with—and although he'd seen her dress and undress more times than either of them could count, had, in fact, dressed her for every significant political occasion she'd been forced to attend, she suddenly didn't want to be naked while he was there.

"Where are we?" she asked again. The weight was off her forehead; she felt more like herself.

"We are," he replied, remote and cool, "in Evereve."

"Evereve?"

"My home." . She was absolutely silent.

"I apologize for your manner of dress. I hadn't realized how… ill it would suit you. I also apologize for your slow recovery. This… place… was meant to house only two living people. Myself and my—" He did not turn away; did not move. The words simply ceased.

That man had seen death, and he witnessed it again as he stood in front of her. She knew what memory looked like when it played across another's face.

She just didn't know what the memories were. Wasn't certain it mattered anymore. Pain was pain.

She waited.

"I—it took some work to stop Evereve from destroying you."

She sat.

"The compromise was your… current attire. I will have something more appropriate brought."

"Why exactly are we here?"

"Ah." His smile was his own, and familiar to her. Unfortunately it was also one of the expressions that she least liked. Not that she liked many of them.

"You are sensitive to the destruction done to your city and its people."

"Yes."

"To conclude our battle would have destroyed the Common— more of the Common," he added quickly, as her mouth opened and words almost spilled out. "I have no doubt you would have survived if it were, in fact, possible."

"And those demons?"

"Not friends."

She snorted. Shoved her hair out of her eyes.

"My clothing?"

"It—did not survive the transfer."

"And yours?"

He shrugged.

"Okay. One more question. The creature that looked like a walking blacksmith's reject. Why did he call you Warlord?"

"I was not aware that any of the demons did. Perhaps he mistook me for someone else."

Which was his way of saying he wasn't going to answer the question.

"There is food—or there will be—in the hall of welcome."

"You have a hall of welcome here."

"Yes."

"And this place, whatever it is, only lets two people enter it alive?"

"Yes."

"What if I told you I wasn't hungry?"

His frown was the most natural thing she had seen so far, although it wasn't at odds with the crown that split his brow. "I would hesitate a moment before I called you a liar, and I would have the food brought here."

"I'm not hungry."

He did, in fact, hesitate a minute. She counted. He turned and left.

Only then did she sink back into the comfort of a gaudy bed. Wondering who had last occupied it before her. Wondering— for there was no question whatever in her mind that it had happened—how that occupant had died.