Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (62 page)

Elena told him what he must do: Who he must watch, and who he must never turn his back upon.

"You must be careful," he said, "of the daughter. She has your heart, but you do not have hers. You are Voyani, and not the clansman she has come to expect, and you will never have the finery she desires."

"But she is so delicate and so perfect!" Nicu replied, seeing nothing. "And in time I will win her heart, not just her hand. Tell me what I must do."

"Do not partake of any food the Tyr offers you," Elena replied. "And although you wish to please her, do not partake of any that the daughter offers you either."

* * *

She drew her arm back again, her face dry as stone and just as expressive.

Margret, the oldest, was silent.

But he loved his brother and wished to see him happy. "Here," he said quietly. "Take this sword."

"But it is your sword, Brother."

"Yes. And it is special; it has both a gift and a curse. Wield it, and you will never be defeated in battle."

"But you never use this blade!" her brother Nicu said, lifting it, marveling at its perfect edge, its perfect crescent curve. He had never looked at the sword so closely before, for his brother so seldom fought.

"There are some battles," Margret said—and she had never understood this part as a child—"that are best not won." He was, her mother told them, very, very wise.

It made sense to none of the three who listened, but it was Margret's favorite story anyway.

The whip fell.

Nicu grunted, and his back, his unbroken skin, was red with welt and blood that had come to the surface in the wake of leather's passing.

It came to pass, her mother would say, the moon in her words and the sun in the warmth of her lap, that Nicu took the sword, and entered the Challenge, and won every battle set for him by the Tyr, no matter how difficult.

The Tyr was a proud and powerful man, and he saw that the young Voyani was going to win the Challenge unless the rules of the Challenge were changed. And although he had desired a man beloved of the Lord, he was still of the clans, and he wished his daughter to be given to no Voyani.

Nor in truth did the daughter wish it, for the three brothers were Voyani, and she would be forced to live their life of hardship on the endless road.

And she said to her father, "You have asked for a man beloved of the Lord, Father, and indeed you have found three. Let us now ask for the second proof: a test of the rider."

And so it came to pass.

* * *

She lifted her arm again. Again. Again. She counted each stroke as it fell and she
forced
herself to watch.

"They will try to trick you, Brother," the middle brother, Elena, said. "And we are not so fine at riding as we are at walking; we value the strength of our own feet, and we stand on them well."

But Nicu would not eat or sleep, and at last Margret came to him. "They will not allow you to bring your own horse," he said softly. "But bring your horse this." And he held out a very strange leaf. "Give it to him and he will obey your every command almost before you have made it, for he will understand your word as if you spoke his language."

"Do not," Elena added, "use a saddle. They will bring you a horse that is ready to mount; tell them it is the way of our people to ride bareback, and remove the saddle over any protest they might make."

He cried out. It was not quite a scream. She had thought, she had prayed, that he would remain silent. Confronted with the failure of prayer, Margret of the Arkosan Voyani hesitated a moment.

But only a moment.

It came to pass that Nicu, with the leaf in hand and the advice of his brothers, rode the horse the Tyr had chosen. The horse was wild and willful, but when it accepted his offering of leaf and was free from saddle and bridle, it carried him like the wind carries sand.

"You see, Daughter," the Tyr said, for he was an indulgent father, "the young man has won both the test of the Sword and the test of the Rider. I have given my word to the whole of the Tor Leonne, and I will not be forsworn. In three days, you will become his wife."

Because she was a very fine Serra, she said, "Yes, Father." And planned.

Elena did not lift a hand; did not raise her voice, did not speak. But Margret felt her cousin's presence one step to the left, and she wondered if Elena the wild felt, at this moment, as sick, as angry, as horrified as Margret the Matriarch.

There were two bitter Voyani things, her mother had said, that every child endured. There were three things that every Matriarch endured.

* * *

The night of the race, victory was celebrated across the length and breadth of the Tor, but nowhere near as loudly as it was in the Arkosan camp.

And it was to the Arkosan camp that the Serra, accompanied by only two of her father's Tyran, came. She wore fine veils and a very fine sari indeed, but her expression marred her beauty.

Nicu heard of her presence at once and came to her, leaving his brothers to the Lady's shadows. But the Lady's shadows are the strongest weapon of the Voyani, and the brothers found places to hide in it, that they might listen to the Serra's fine, fine words, for Margret and Elena were wise men and did not trust the clansmen.

First death.

The family was everything, and when someone betrayed the family, they died for it. Every child knew that, and accepted it as a hard truth.

But what every child did not know is that betrayal comes not from the hated and the scorned—if they exist among kin at all— but rather from the loved and the trusted.

Margret had seen her first death.

She wanted to raise her hands a moment to stop Nicu's trailing scream from reaching her ears. She was almost done. She wasn't certain she would be able to finish. Important, not to lose count.

"Seven," a voice said, words carried by wind to a place that was deeper than hearing. "Six more, Margret. Be strong." Kallandras' voice. A stranger's voice.

She should have felt anger at his interruption. She couldn't. He was the only person in the camp who could offer her any help at all, because his help was invisible and unnoticed by the men and women who would follow her into death, if she demanded it. Not even Elena could interfere, and Elena was the woman that she depended on for almost everything.

The Serra's hair was as dark as the Lady's Night, and it fell about her face like a gleaming ebon mantle; her skin was white as the softest of silks. Her eyes were dark and filled with mystery; she was delicate and she was perfect.

Nicu of the Arkosans, the youngest of the three brothers, stood frozen with desire and fear. She crossed the distance that separated them, and then, lifting her face an inch from his, exposed her lips by pulling the veil back. He bent, his own lips drawn down to hers by the gravity of youth, and she lifted her delicate fingers to his mouth.

"You have faced both of the contests of my father's making, and you have won his permission to marry."

He nodded; her presence had deprived him of not only clever words, but any words.

"But although no daughter's permission is ever needed in a marriage, I will promise you this: I am not chattel, to come and go at the whim of just any man. I have seen you, Nicu of the Arkosa, and I think it is possible that in time you might love me."

"I love you now," he said.

Her eyes widened delicately, deliberately, and she smiled. "Would that that were true."

"It
is
true," he replied, stung.

"You love others far more than you love me."

"There are no others, Serra."

"I would have you prove that to me."

"Prove it?" Nicu said, catching her delicate wrist in his strong hand.

"Yes."

First death.

Every child who survived the clansmen's raids and the family wars that occurred once a generation or two between the Voyani bloodlines learned to wield a sword in the defense of their families and their futures. They trained, usually with Uncle Stavos or men like him, large bears with easy tempers and a penchant for a humorous comment at the expense of a poor student.

And every child who had witnessed death was shocked the first time—the
first
time—they dealt it. Some were savage and wild, some angry, some deliberately cruel. The measure of the man could be taken in the manner of the first death.

Margret's first death had been all business, and after the witnesses had scattered word of it all over the caravan, she had finally been accepted in truth, as she was in fact, as the Matriarch in waiting.

But, Lady, afterward, after the victory celebration, after the eating, the drinking, the song and the dance, she had retired to the woods around the camp and she had been so sick she thought she would never recover.

She could still see the blood of that clansman on her hands, and on his face, where the sword had left the mark that killed him.

"You love your brothers more than anything in the world, and they treat you as a child. They tell you what to do and you do it without thought.

"If they were to tell you to leave me or to disgrace me, you would do it, and I will not live with that shadow, Lady forgive me."

Ah, the younger brother was wild with love of her. Crazy with it. "I love
no one
as much as I love you. I will send them away."

"They will return," she said coolly. She nodded to one of the Tyran, and he handed her a stoppered flask, a very, very fine one. "This is Lady's sleep," she said, as she took the flask into her own delicate hands. "Only grant your brothers her sleep, and I will be your wife and will serve you faithfully no matter where we travel, and on which road. Do not grant them this sleep, and
I
will seek it before I will marry you."

He was ashen, gray as bark that has served the flame fully. But he couldn't bear the thought of her death, so he reached out and took the flask she offered.

And Margret and Elena watched.

First death.

Every child saw both deaths.

Margret of the Arkosan Voyani would face the third. Her mother would hardly speak of it, but she understood why: it was
this
. This killing of kin. The Matriarch was the mother of them all, and she was harsh as Lord's Sun, cold as Lady's Night. Into her hands fell
justice
, and it fell in the shape of a sword, a whip, a noose.

This last of the three deaths was the only one that she had never faced. And it was the only one that she felt, as the whip came up, as the stranger, speaking in a private voice that only her ears and his would ever hear, counted the strokes, that she
could not
face.

The killing of kin.

And the three brothers, who loved each other as kin must love or else be forsworn, sat down at a low table together with wine that Nicu had brought them. Elena did not touch the wine set before him, but Margret—who was wise, after all—did, lifting the goblet swiftly and easily to his lips.

"To your victory, Nicu," he said softly, "no matter what the cost."

Nicu lifted the cup as well.

Lifted it in shaking hands, and then, before Margret could drink, threw the cup across the table. The unexpected blow knocked Margret back, and his own cup flew wide, the contents spilled across both the coarse fabric of his shirt and night's grass.

She could not face this last first death.

"Ten," Kallandras said. She lifted a hand; wiped the sweat from her forehead, her eyes. Looked at the length of the shadow she cast. At anything but the bleeding mess of her foolish cousin's back.

She
knew
she should kill him.

Knew it, hated it, denied it.

And the three brothers embraced.

Nicu went to his wife, and told her the deed had been done, and he claimed her for a single night, for she thought him so simple that it never occurred to her that he might be lying.

And in the morning, when the Arkosans left the Tor Leonne, they left this half-used wife abandoned at the palace gates, where all might see her and know that she was no longer fit as wife to any other man.

"And for that reason," Evallen would say, finishing the story, "the hatred of the Tyrs for the Arkosans has always been strong."

"Eleven."

"We are brothers," Margret would say, or Elena, or Nicu. "We are brothers, and Lady bear witness, nothing will come between us but death."

They would cross hands, right hands, one on top of the other, a jumble of childhood skin and childhood oath.

"Twelve."

Her favorite story, sitting upon her mother's knee. But her mother was dead, and the gift of title now rested upon Margret's aching shoulders.

She lifted the whip for the last stroke. Brought it stinging across his skin. Lifted it again.

Threw it, although she knew it would be seen as the weakness it was, across the length of the open circle where it fell at the feet of an older Voyani woman. Caitla. Stavos' sister.

The expression on that woman's face froze Margret in place. Elena's hand, a sudden weight on her shoulder, provided her the same steadiness. She wanted—Lady, she wanted—to drop to her knees at Nicu's side, to beg his forgiveness and his understanding, to wash the blood off his injured back and bring the salves that would both soothe pain and stave off infection.

And she could do none of these things.

None of these things for her brother.

She would never sit at her mother's knee again. Never choose that story, never hear it spoken aloud. And she would never trust him enough to drink from a goblet he offered her in the Lady's Night, with the object of his desire as the prize for her death, no matter what they had promised so intently, and so honestly, as children.

Margret of the Arkosa Voyani did not weep. The closest she would allow herself to come was to lift her heavy, heavy hand and grasp her cousin's—Elena's—as if nothing else would provide an anchor for the wind's aching howl.