Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (76 page)

Avandar bowed at once; a signal.

Jewel started to, but her knees locked in place—and not just from terror, although terror would have been a good excuse. It would have been helpful if she'd understood why she couldn't bow; she'd done her share of bowing and scraping in her time, and had learned not to take the protocol personally. But she was fighting against an instinct as strong as any she'd ever felt, and she'd never learned to beat her instincts. She struggled for breath, found its rhythm, forced her lungs to adhere to it.

The Winter Queen.

The lack of obeisance did not escape her notice.

"You are bold," she said softly, "and boldness is not always unpleasant."

"Just now," Jewel replied.

"Indeed." Her hair was not as long as the hair of the rider Avandar had named Celleriant, but it was like silver, and not like ice or snow. Her eyes were gray, and her skin pale, and she was taller than Avandar; taller, in fact, than any woman Jewel had ever met. Her gaze narrowed and slid off Jewel's face. "Warlord," she said softly. "We are destined to meet on strange roads."

He rose then, at her acknowledgment. Jewel would have found it galling in any other circumstance; it seemed merely natural now, which was warning enough. "As you say, Lady."

Her smile was genuine, but it was not warm. Nothing about her was warm. "You would have been a King without compare, Viandaran."

"You honor me, Arianne," he replied, bowing again. "But I flatter myself: I believe that I was a Warlord beyond compare."

"You were. It is a surprise to find you here, and so diminished."

His facial expression did not change at all, but Jewel knew that her words had found their careless mark. She did not wish to fence with the Winter Queen, so she offered no defense of the man Whose service she had reluctantly accepted so many years ago.

But Avandar needed no defense.

"Come here, child," the Winter Queen said, and Jewel started to walk. Started, and stopped. Avandar's hand was on her shoulder, and her foot was an inch away from the magical line that was still glowing incandescently against the rock at her feet. She had failed to note it. A very bad sign.

"Viandaran, I will offer you warning: do not interfere."

"I have pledged," he said, "my service. Understand that that pledge would have had meaning in your court not through your power or your guarantee, but through my own sense of honor. It has that meaning here, Arianne." He bowed again. "And I have made no pledge to you or yours to break."

"No. But there is wisdom, Warlord. The political extends to all realms, wherever power gathers."

He bowed again. Jewel didn't think she had seen him bow this much before in her life—even if you counted every half nod that acknowledged an authority greater than his own.

"I say to you again, do not interfere."

"I understand, and thank you for extending your grace. It is with great regret that I must refuse you."

"So be it. It is noted." She turned back to Jewel. "You have taken something that is mine, little mortal, and I will have it back, or I will have an equal measure of obedience and servitude from you in its stead."

Jewel felt her breath lurch, and she steadied it again. "I'm sorry," she said, and she truly was, "but I don't know what you're talking about."

"No?"

Avandar closed his eyes.

"No."

"Perhaps, Warlord, you might care to explain to your charge the nature of her crime."

He turned to Jewel then, as he had not done when Celleriant had offered a more roughly worded and less dangerous order. He spoke quietly, but he looked just to the left of her eyes, and she could not read
anything
in the cast of his expression. Avandar was not a histrionic man, but he was not a subtle one; by word, lack of word, or stiffness of bearing he made certain she knew exactly what the right—and the wrong—thing to do in any given situation was.

And she realized, as she waited upon him for a signal that it slowly dawned wasn't coming, that she'd come to depend on that. That she had, in fact, grown dependent on a man she had never much liked, and truthfully didn't like much now.

It pulled her up. "What laws, exactly, have I broken?"

Neutrality answered. "Celleriant is a rider in the Queen's service."

"Not anymore, he's not."

"Yes, and that is the problem. The creature that he was riding
was
the Queen's creature; gifted and bound to Celleriant by her magic. In… expelling the creature… from this realm, you have stolen property that she has claimed as her own."

A claim isn't the same as ownership
, she thought; she wasn't stupid enough—not quite—to expose the words by speaking them. She chose instead to speak a less difficult truth. "I didn't choose to expel it. It was expelled. There is a difference."

"There
is
a difference," the woman he had called Arianne said quietly. "But in your case, while you speak what you believe to be the truth, you lie. I do not understand how, because the art is long lost, but in walking this path, you have made it your own."

And what you own, you have power over
, her Oma said, in a voice that Jewel almost didn't recognize.
It is a lesson that Arianne understands better than any of the Firstborn. You would do well to heed it
.

Jewel glanced quickly at Avandar, lifting one brow.

"There is no other way," he said, answering the question she hadn't bothered to put into words, "to have torn the creature from the grip of the Winter Queen. Her power is tantamount except where she does not reign; in lands unclaimed or unowned, the… binding that grants her power over her subjects is—"

"Unbreakable," the Queen said quietly. "You have therefore taken from me something of mine. I will have it back, or I will have something in return that I value as much."

"If the bond were unbreakable, it couldn't have been broken." Jewel straightened her shoulders. She would have rolled up her sleeves if she'd been in her kitchen; would have rolled them up if she'd been heading into a tricky political encounter.

Of course, Avandar would then berate her for ruining the sleeves of the garment he'd chosen, but there were certain habits that were ingrained. "All right, Queen of Winter," she said softly, and with as much respect as she could put into what was, essentially, a counterthreat. "Maybe if these lands
were
unclaimed, I might have committed some sort of crime. But if I understand what you're saying correctly, these lands
are
claimed. By me."

Avandar's face might have been made of stone; he did not flinch, he did not smile, he did not nod. But he did not take his hand off her shoulder, and the line he had drawn in the ground was glowing as brightly as a living flame.

"Viandaran."

"Lady," he said quietly. But this time, he did not bow.

"Tell your mortal that she plays a dangerous game."

"Does it matter," Jewel countered, "as long as I win it?"

A gleam of a cold smile touched the most beautiful face in creation. "No," the Queen said softly, "it does not. But this is the only place in which you might have the smallest of chances to win, and you cannot remain here, in this pass, for eternity. My memory is long."

"Actually," Jewel said softly, lifting a hand and gently prying Avandar's fingers free, "this is the one place that I
can
stay for an eternity. I don't really need to eat. I don't need to rest. Sleep is a permanent state. Anyplace else, and you could wait me out."

She motioned her mount closer.

"I wouldn't if I were you," Jewel said quietly.

"You could not conceive of what it means to be me," the Winter Queen replied. She motioned the mount forward, and it obeyed her. The two closest riders made to follow, and she raised a hand without looking back; they froze in place.

"Do you know who we are?"

"No."

The word was so blunt and so forceful Jewel thought the two who had stayed at their lord's command might charge forward. But Arianne lifted a hand again and continued to edge her mount forward, until it stood at last on the edge of Avandar's circle.

"Do you know who I am?"

"No."

"Viandaran, please."

"She is one of those called Firstborn," Avandar said quietly. "The Firstborn are children of the gods."

"Fair enough. Some of the people I respect most are children of gods."

Arianne's smile was chill. "They are children of neutered, tame creatures, they are not children of
gods
."

"Before you speak again," he said, lifting a hand, "let me say that the neutered, tame creatures she refers to are not the human parents; those are completely beneath her notice and her contempt. She refers to the gods that are worshiped across the Empire of Essalieyan."

"And am I so forgotten that my words must be explained?" the Winter Queen said. "Then it is time to be
remembered
." Her foot, covered in leather that seemed very thin and very supple, dug swiftly into the sides of her mount—but Jewel
knew
that the gesture was entirely for show; the creature did not need to be visibly forced to do anything. It existed at her whim, at the convenience of her thought.

Brace yourself.

She did not need to be told.

She had taken Avandar's hand from her shoulder; he did her the surprising grace of leaving it at his side.

The light on the ground did not change, but at the last, at the last, Arianne drove her mount
across
it.

The creature screamed. Jewel recognized the scream, although it was distorted slightly because a different voice uttered it.

Inches away from her face, kept from collision by the grace and protection of Avandar's spell, she could
see
the creature's face. Stags, she had thought them, and she wished—incoherently—that she could still think of them that way. But no: The face that was burning in the light of Avandar's flame was a human face, distorted by shimmering spell and blood and fire's scoring, but recognizable for what it had once been.

She stepped back. She bit her lip and swallowed blood to stop the sound that was curled in her throat from escaping.

Avandar, damn him forever, turned to her as she stared unblinking at the face of a horror she could never have imagined, and said, "Your command?" in a voice as cool as ocean water. Light glinted across the surface of his eyes like light across the flat of a blade.

She understood the lesson he meant to teach her. She vowed that she would never willingly submit herself to such teachings again.

She did not raise her hands to her ears and she did not order him to drop the barrier that protected them. That was the point of this particular form of attack: Jewel's weakness. Well, she was weak. Didn't tell her anything she didn't already know about herself. She was weak in a way that Avandar and Arianne were not—and she refused to be ashamed of it. But weak or no, she wasn't stupid. Avandar's magic stood between her and the once human creature whose face was wilting—and while she might, for pity's sake, have saved it the agony of Avandar's magic, on its back, the true threat waited: The Winter Queen. Jewel could not quite bring herself to abandon all defense in the face of that threat.

But the screaming was
terrible
.

Jewel had been beaten in her youth; all the care and caution in the world couldn't prevent the streets from taking their toll. That had been better than this: the pain had been visceral, immediate, her own. She had thought, then, that she would not survive. She was afraid, now, that the memory of this moment would outlive her; that she would carry it to Mandaros' Hall and be scarred enough that it would echo down the length of the lives she had left her until she made her final choice.

She could not afford to show it, although she knew Arianne knew. A test. A game.

Gods, she
hated
these games. Hated Avandar, for playing them so well. Hated herself for learning them.

She had bowed her head. Wasn't sure when, but she could see the bright line of the ground, Avandar's magic neatly cutting the flow of the creature's blood. She would not order him to withdraw the magics that protected them both.

But she didn't have to stand by and let Arianne define all the rules of the game. If Jewel understood what she had done—or rather,
how
—with the other creature, she would have done it again, although her gut instinct told her that this time, with the Queen herself as rider, it would be impossible.

All right, it was impossible.

The fires were burning; she felt them touch her in the darkness; they
hurt
. And they liberated.

She wasn't helpless.

Jewel Markess ATerafin lifted her head. Stared a moment into the face of the screaming creature, and then, looked up and beyond, into the face of the Winter Queen.

She said, words as direct as arrow's flight, "You want to get through. Well, all right. I demand a price for passage, and if you continue this game, it will be beyond your ability to pay."

She didn't shout. Had she spoken in a whisper, she was certain the words would be heard. But she waited another heartbeat— and hers were coming thick and fast—and then said, "You lose a day."

Another beat.

"A second day."

Another.

"A third day."

The screaming stopped.

As simply as it started, it was gone. The creature's face, burned to bone and scoured by flame into a charred blackness that should have been beyond pain but wasn't, jerked up, out of the barrier. It stumbled as it took a step, and the silence that followed the stumble was profound.

But what followed made Avandar stop breathing in mid-gasp.

The Winter Queen dismounted.

17th
of Scaral, 427

AA Tor Leonne

Kallandras wasn't certain that she wouldn't disappear; with Evayne, one couldn't be. Nor was he certain—for he had to turn his back on her several times during their journey through the Tor Leonne—if she didn't disappear, that she wouldn't age or diminish by the time he turned to face her again. It had long since ceased to matter to him what Evayne looked like or who, in fact, she was. Over the years he had developed enough of a familiarity with the woman at any age to be at ease with the suddenness of her changes.