Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (23 page)

"Those four men, you see 'em?"

He did, of course. "No. Wait—those ones?"

"No,
those
ones. Armored, with drawn swords. Over
there
!"

One of the four men looked up; Benito's words, spoken against the wind, were easily loud enough to carry. It was one of the traits that would have endeared him to many of the Northerners he knew—none of whom would be in attendance at the Tor Leonne during the Festival of the Moon.

Kallandras recognized both the man's interest—unfriendly— and the crest he wore: Tyrian cerdan. He spared him a glance, no more; spared his companions less. They were exactly what they appeared to be: Men sent, judging by their direction, to weed out the Voyani among the merchants and bring them up to the plateau for questioning.

"Benito," he said, huffing and puffing with the exertion of movement, his thoughts as far from his facade as they could be, "I think we want to be somewhere else."

"Where else, eh? You think there's so much room in the Tor Leonne at Festival time?" The merchant swatted him heavily across the arm. "Use your head!"

But he could see, beyond the obvious four, another four men, and he knew as he watched them that they were far too confident in their numbers to be just eight. The clansmen and the Voyani clashed frequently on both the edges of wilderness the Terreans boasted and in society itself, and they had only one rule when facing each other: No quarter. None given, none asked.

Among their own, the Voyani infighting was fierce, but unless an actual clan war had been declared—and it had happened twice in his lifetime—there were niceties and rules that were observed most of the time. Not here. Not among these.

He guessed that the Voyani had had word from the plateau. Guessed that they were scattering even as the merchant, Benito, continued to drone on and on to his left, a sort of toneless, heavy chatter that might have become musical if uttered by a different voice. Benito's daughter's, perhaps. Or his son, a lad as sharp as Imperial steel, but hotter in temperament.

"You, you two!" The Tyrian cerdan whose gaze had passed over them shouted.

Benito froze. "Us?"

"You! Come here!"

Kallandras shrugged; he waited for Benito to move, and then, when the merchant finally found his feet, followed to his right and behind.

"Who are you with?"

"With?"

"Whose caravan?"

Red rose in the merchant's cheek. "My
own."
he said, his chest inflating with a bit too much air. "I am Benito di'Covello, and I—"

"Have you been to the plateau?"

"Yes. We just—"

"Do you carry the medallion?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said, do you carry the medallion? You were required to make an oath," he added, speaking as if to a simpleton or a fool. "And that oath was made over a medallion of the Tyr'agar's manufacture."

"I
am not
used to discussing the oaths
I
make," the merchant replied, heat giving way to Northern ice. "Oaths are between
men
. You have an oath you wish to force on me, then try."

The cerdan stared at him for a long time. Kallandras was mildly surprised when the armed and armored man looked away. Nodded. "We've had complaints," he said, "about Voyani thievery. This Festival is important to our Tyr, and we're about to end the offending behavior. I suggest you mind your manners and remain close to your personal caravan for the next several hours."

Before Benito could reply, one of the cerdan lifted his voice.

"Attelo!"

The man turned. "You see them?"

"Some. There!"

"Men?"

"No—it's the women."

The line of the cerdan's jaw compressed into square disgust. "My apologies," he said to Benito. It surprised Kallandras. "It's hard on a man, to be sent hunting
women
." He lifted his sword. "Don't stand there gaping, stop them!"

They were almost out. Elena had seven of the children under her wing—and her wing was expansive. They were young, these; not a one had seen more than five Festival Moons, and two at least had seen far less than that. She carried one bundled under her arm; her mother, Tamara, carried the other.

This was her most important duty, to get the children to safety— or as much safety as the streets allowed for. And she knew her ability to handle duty was about to be sorely tested.

Fail this, and every other success meant nothing; she knew, had known as a child, that the children were the only real future the Voyani had.

Donatella was with her. "Dona," she said, handing the wine-sleepy child to her aunt. "I've work here."

Donatella nodded grimly. She was older now, although no Voyani woman was so old that she couldn't fight. "The streets here twist; we'll find our way out."

"I'll join you. Mother—"

"I'm staying."

"You're going."

"Elena—"

"That's not a request." Her sword, shorter than Nicu's, but sharper and lighter, came out of the scabbard that rested easily across hip and thigh. "Ilia!"

The other woman her own age nodded grimly. Drew sword as well. "Over there, Elena."

"Shit."

The children said nothing. But they knew how to count; they'd have to, if they were old enough to beg or steal, and most of them were.

Four men. Four armed men. Swords. "Mama,
now
."

Her mother took a breath. Elena wanted to smack her.
Not now
, she thought.
You hold the future, right behind your skirts. You protect it, damn you
. There were no wagons to hide behind; no stalls; they were exposed. "RUN!"

Tamara of the Arkosans hesitated. Past her prime, she had never been one to run from a fight, and she left behind her her child—adult or no, still her child—facing four armed cerdan. But she knew Elena was right. Knew what she herself would have said to her own mother, had her mother dawdled like a sentimental idiot and somehow failed in the duty—the foremost duty, the important duty—of protecting the future of the family. The children.

She swallowed. Two to one.

No joy there.

"Mikala," she said, to the child who had almost crossed the boundary of five, "I need all your help now, with the rest of the children."

"I'm not a children," Polio said; it was the phrase he used most often this particular month. It was also said quietly and without vehemence. His mother was gone; gone with the men and the women whose duty it was to carry the few items they valued to safety. He was alone with Ona Tamara, and Ona Tamara was frightened.

Mikala, bless her, grabbed his hand. Tamara shifted an infant in her arm, picked up the second. Took two steps.

And a man she had never seen before in her life, a man who wore no armor, and whose hair was the color of Northern demons, stepped into the cobbled roadway. "There is… no one to bar your way, Tamara of the Arkosans. The road to the East is clear from here to the Easternmost Fount of Contemplation. It will be clear for perhaps half an hour.

"If you are concerned with the well-being of the children, I suggest you move quickly."

She was stunned a moment. "Who are you?" she asked, sharply and quickly.

"I? I serve the Lady," he replied, speaking in Torra as if Torra were something that, like the finest and softest of silks, could be donned. He turned to look down the street, to look beyond Tamara's bent back. Paused. Knelt. "You are Mikala?" he said, to the five-year-old Voyani girl.

She nodded, unafraid, the suspicion that was completely automatic for Tamara waived in the case of this stranger.

"You are a brave girl," he said. "You will grow up to be part of the Voyani pride." He smiled. Lifted his head, so that he could see all of the children.
"Listen well to Ona Tamara. Do as she tells you until she tells you you are safe."

They nodded, all seriousness, the youngest child barely walking, the oldest nervously glancing at the men who were drawing closer, closer still. He rose then. "I regret," he told Tamara softly, "that I cannot accompany you. But my skill is better used."

"We'll be in your debt," the older woman said gruffly. Wondering, as words laden with personal meaning and fraught with difficulty escaped her lips, if she
was
the older of the two. "They don't—they don't usually hunt the children. If we'd known, we would never have sent the others away. The children—"

"They are not hunting children," he replied, turning toward the causeway where her daughter and Ilia now hid in what little cover there was, swords drawn. "But women."

Donatella, silent until that moment, reached down and picked up one of the children whose feet had given out on him. "Tamara," she said softly. "It is time."

"They don't usually hunt women; they aren't that smart."

"No." The stranger shrugged. "But the Voyani—especially the Arkosans and the Havallans in this generation—usually know better than to take the Tyrians on in a street fight. They melt into the shadows they can find—and they can almost always find the Lady's shadow, even in the brightest of the Lord's light.

"Today, a handful have sought the Lord's light, and there is blood in the streets; the cerdan have called for reinforcements, and the men are out in greater numbers."

"Who would be
such a fool
—"

The words froze in Tamara's throat.

Her best friend, her closest cousin, bent her head. "Dona—"

"Enough, Tamara. The children."

Tamara nodded. Who was she to criticize one of their own in the presence of a stranger? Especially when that one, as she suspected, was the son of her good friend?

But she whispered a benediction to the Lady as she began to lead the children down the gently sloped road.

Their advantage was a simple one, but it had two faces. The clansmen didn't like to fight women. The first type of clansmen would happily kill them in village slaughters, rape them, enslave them, sell them—but
fight
them, that was beneath their station as men of the Lord. The second type of clansmen looked at fighting women in the same way the Voyani women themselves looked at fighting their children in earnest: It was killing the weaker, the helpless, the people in life who must be protected.

She couldn't tell, looking down the road, which face the four men wore; most likely it was some sort of combination. But they didn't look gleeful, hunting the Voyani—and their
children
, Lady's blood—and that was something.

Ilia cursed quietly. It was hot; the leather and cotton grips that kept a sword safely in hand weren't proof against a profusion of nervous sweat. Elena looked across the road, willing the men to stop where they were. A handful of minutes, and it wouldn't matter.

But when the men did stop, she cursed.

The foremost among them drew his sword. It was clear that he had been marching in armor; it was the first time that day that she'd wished it were summer's height and not the Lady's season.

"Surrender," he said, his voice a boom across streets that were emptying quickly at the sight of the unsheathed sword. "We have no wish to harm you; we only wish to enforce the Tyr'agar's lawful edict!"

Ilia met her gaze; held it a moment. Shook her head.

"By what law," Elena said, "does the Tyr'agar hold the Voyani at the Lady's Festival?"

"The Lord's law!" A second man replied. She couldn't tell, although the distance was not a great one, whether or not the first man was irritated at the interruption. She would have been, but she wasn't cerdan.

"You waste our time," the first man said; the second was silent again. "And your lives. So be it." He nodded; the three men who obviously followed his orders came toward them bearing naked blades.

"This," Elena said, through gritted teeth, "is
not
going to be fun."

Ilia laughed. Unfortunately, she laughed the way she always did when Elena stooped to understatement: nervously. It was only in the most dire of circumstances—sarcasm aside—that Elena ever bothered to understate anything.

She took a breath; held it. Expelled it. Took another breath, a deeper one. Brought her sword forward; grabbed it in both hands. She'd never learned the art of fighting sword and dagger, although she could fight with two daggers at close quarters better than anyone but Margret and Evallen.

Evallen, who was dead. Dead at the hands of men like these.

That gave her some fire; it burned briefly where she needed it to burn. Elena of the Arkosan Voyani said, loudly enough for Ilia to hear it. "For Evallen."

And then, before she could move, the three men approaching her staggered like a row of tall grass being trampled, slowly, by a sauntering horse.

Kallandras came out of the shadows.

The men who fell were not, he thought, dead—although he was slower than he had been at the peak of his agility, and there was some possibility that he had mistimed his throws. He meant what he'd said: the Voyani did best when they sought the shadows and left the fighting to the clansmen. They were used to Voyani who ran in the face of greater numbers, and in the history of the Tor Leonne, there had been no open fighting between the Voyani and the ruling clansmen. The lay of the wild land was different; there, the Voyani ruled in their wheeled strongholds.

The man who had ordered the cerdan forward froze; he looked around from side to side, and then, in a moment of foolish bravery, dashed forward through the street. He had not seemed young to Kallandras until that moment. Watching from shadows that were better chosen by far than either of the two Voyani women's had been, he saw the man kneel into the cobbled stones. Touch the bodies of his fallen comrades, looking for some sign of weaponry: bolt, quarrel, arrow. Something.

He would find it eventually, but by that time they would be gone.

Or so Kallandras had hoped.

But the woman with a blaze of fire in her otherwise dark hair chose that moment to step forward. Her face, sun-bitten and wind-carved, was both lovely and hard. These odds, he thought, these odds she favored, and she meant to take advantage of them.

The stories about Voyani savagery were based, as most stories were, in fact, and if the clansmen distorted that fact for their own purposes, that fact remained.