The Uncrowned King

by Michelle West

  Still, no war had been declared, and the Callestan Tyr, or so rumor had it, was certain that if war was to be declared, it would be declared by the height of the Festival of the Sun. The eighth day of Lattan had come and gone; it would be two days yet before word could be expected to arrive in Averalaan, carried most likely by members of the bardic college. The Kingdom had time to mobilize.

  No doubt that was what the Dominion intended to do as well.

  “Primus Duarte,” Fiara said, her voice rather chilly, “permission to speak?”

  “Granted.”

  “We’ve never been allowed up to our full tally. We took the brunt of the slaughter in the valley—”

  “We were one of three companies, Fiara.”

  “We were the only company that counted, as far as the Annies were concerned.”

  “Ah, Alexis. I was wondering when you would decide to join us.” His smile never started. “The term Annies is not to be used under this particular tour of duty.” His tone and his expression indicated clearly that they’d both agreed to this at least a dozen times.

  Nor did she argue now. “News,” she said grimly.

  “What news?”

  “You aren’t going to like it.”

  “Alexis.”

  “Do you want to finish with Fiara?”

  Fiara’s dark gaze had started to drill a small hole in the side of Alexis’ face—or it would have, if eyes had that particular strength. Alexis, apparently, did not notice. Which fooled neither the woman standing beside her nor the man sitting in front; she was sharp as a Maker’s blade; she missed nothing.

  “Yes,” he said at last, hoping that he’d remember to tell her that, as Sentrus, she was being unconscionably rude—hells, as Decarus, before she’d been busted down a rank, it would still have been poor behavior among Ospreys. Of course, correcting Alexis in public had its own special consequences. It made Duarte uneasy a moment. This woman was his companion, as much of a soul mate as he had ever allowed himself to find. But that bond had been built after the war’s end—formed in the fires and grime of the Annagarian dead. Formed, he thought, by a need to escape the war’s cost, the war’s loss.

  They had never faced combat together as a couple; he’d half-thought they never would. And he wasn’t at all certain that the shift from peacetime friction to wartime rule wouldn’t destroy what they’d built. He wondered, idly, if she ever thought about it.

  “Duarte?”

  “My pardon. Sentrus,” he said, turning to Fiara AKalakar with a grimace, “You might recall that not one of these soldiers came to me without passing through the ranks of either the House Guards or The Berriliya’s regiment first. You might, if you care, further recall that more than a handful of those that did come to me were given, without pause, to the Kings’ Justice.

  “I built the Ospreys. I know how to build the Ospreys. But they’re built out of war, in war. They cannot be tempered in any fire weaker than that. The Ospreys are mine, Fiara. It appears that you’ve forgotten that.”

  She stared impassively at his face for a moment; he thought she was actually going to argue the point. And then her face cracked into a sudden grin. Her salute was far less feeble—if far from perfect.

  “It seems that Sentrus Alexis also has her concerns, and I would like to take them in private.”

  “Primus.”

  How the hell was he going to beat them back into army standard? And had they ever really been up to army standard, or was his memory being exceptionally—and uncharacteristically—kind? He leaned back in his chair and gazed up into Alexis’ neutral expression. It was the one he least liked. Temper, if unpleasant in every other way, lent a color and a richness to her face. Also a certain deadliness, but as Duarte had founded the Ospreys, he was not a man to shy from danger.

  “Well?”

  “It involves our . . . current tour of duty.”

  She was right. He didn’t like it at all. The current tour of duty was one that most of the Ospreys were not completely confident in to begin with: instead of killing, covertly or otherwise, they had been assigned to preserve and protect. And the boy—which, as he was fully of age, was an unfair word, but used regardless—whom they’d been assigned the protection of had already tangled with one of the Ospreys, been wounded, and kept his mouth shut placing, by that action, one foot across the circle that separated the Ospreys from outsiders.

  Unfortunately, it was a tour of duty that couldn’t be failed. There had only been one assassination attempted since they’d taken over their role as personal guards. It had cost them one life; it wasn’t an amateur attempt.

  It had its value, though. If it wasn’t war, the single death of one of their own cemented their dedication—such as it was. It made the shadow enemy a real one. He waited for Alexis to continue. Waited a bit longer.

  He hated these games, small though they were. “Alexis . . .”

  “I’m not certain if you’re aware that the Kings’ Challenge is just around the corner. You’ve been kept so busy,” she added sweetly.

  “Alexis.” She knew damned well he was aware of the Kings' Challenge—there wasn’t a House raising troops for the Kings that wasn’t. All of the hopeful young men with any brawn and little enough brain made their trek across the continent in search of a challenge, a way to make their names, and a golden reward. Those men, disappointed in their attempt to reap a greater glory, were often easy pickings for army recruiters.

  As a mage-trained scholar, Duarte had avoided recruitment; as a man indentured to Kalakar by the cost of the Order of Knowledge’s training, he had not.

  “You’ve too much on your mind, Duarte. Let me spell it out for you.

  “First: Take the Kings’ Challenge. Big contest, full of young men with more brawn than brain. Contestants arrive from as far away as the Western Kingdoms and the Southern Terreans of Oerta and Sargasso—even this year, when war is so close, and the Kings should damned well know better than to risk the influx of spies or assassins. But I digress—and that’s your trick. So, take the Kings’ Challenge, in which everyone without a real brain feels he should try to prove himself to every other person without a real brain.

  “Next: Take one young, very fast, very competent man, who’s been sword-trained and dagger-trained, born to the saddle and gods alone know what else. Make him a man who, of all these entrants, does have something to prove.” She smiled as Duarte went suddenly pale.

  “Alexis, if this is a joke—”

  “Not even I have a sense of humor this grim.” She waited, and then, when Duarte did not deign to interrupt her silence, added, “Valedan kai di’Leonne has undergone the trial, before judges, and has been chosen as one of the hundred men who will undergo the King’s Challenge.”

  “This is insane. The boy’s sun-mad!” Ramiro kai di’Callesta felt the chill of the night winds stretching across a continent. Here, in these so-called Annagarian halls, there was water and wind and the touch of the open sky. And men who did not wish to risk the scouring of the wind stayed inside, in safety. An old adage.

  This day, this single day, he would have given much for the company of his wife, the Serra Amara, known across the width and breadth of the Dominion of Annagar for her gentle qualities. But although they stood beneath the warmth of the same sun, toiled beneath the blue of the same sky, the boundary that separated them, one from the other, was more than mere distance: She resided within Callesta, the city of his ancestors, in the heart of the verdant and much-prized Averda—and he, he stood as honored guest within the palace of the Imperial Kings, Reymalyn and Cormalyn. A nation stood between them, and the ghost of each old war that had moved the boundary of Annagar or Essalieyan by mere tens of miles every few decades or so. He wished her momentary advice and her silliness—for she, alone of many, could evoke laughter from his dourest mood.

  But she w
as there. He was here. He made do. “The boy doesn’t realize what he risks.”

  His brother, Fillipo par di’Callesta, nodded grimly. “Perhaps he will listen to the Wolf of Callesta, where he would not listen to a mere par.” He leaned back into the shadows cast over the fountain by the light of morning sun; his hair, removed from the glinting light, was as dark as his brother’s, his eyes as narrow. There was, between these two, a very strong family resemblance; it had often been said that the clan Callesta was doubly blessed: first, for being graced with two men of such high caliber and second, for the real affection and loyalty between them. Both were true.

  Ser Kyro di’Lorenza snorted. He ran a hand through age-paled hair before returning it to its customary repose atop sword hilt. He was Annagarian bred and born, a man with little taste for politics and much for war. “I fail to see the insanity in it, Tyr’agnate,” he said, his tone neutral with respect. He was both beholden to this man—they all were, for his coming had sealed their survival—and suspicious of him. Ramiro di’Callesta was known across the Dominion as the Imperial Tyr.

  And he knew it. His smile was brittle indeed as he acknowledged Ser Kyro’s comment. “Baredan?”

  “I am not in a position to comment,” the General Baredan di’Navarre replied. “But if the boy succeeds—”

  “There is no chance that he will succeed, brother,” Fillipo said quietly.

  “If he fails, he will lose more than he gains if he succeeds. Why take the risk?”

  It was Ser Kyro who answered, and at that, only after the shadows of the day had grown visibly shorter. “There are clansmen here who will take that same test. They need only know that he can best them, and they will be impressed.”

  “It is not as simple a thing as that, Ser Kyro.”

  “It is exactly as simple a thing as that, Ser Ramiro. You play a Tyrian game, and you play it exceptionally well. I do not. And although it might pain you to admit it, most of the men—the Lord’s men—do not. We see clearly because we desire simple things: A good horse. A good wife. Strong sons, a strong sword, a battle worthy of killing and dying in. But more than this, a leader worthy of following.”

  Even Baredan had the grace to wince slightly at Ser Kyro’s words. Ramiro grimaced. “Thank you, Ser Kyro.”

  Ser Kyro frowned. He started to speak, stopped, started again. “General. Tyr’agnate. You must, of course, feel free to speak with the boy. But I tell you now that he will not listen. He has made this decision.

  “I will also say that the—that his guards, his Imperial guards, find the situation at least as distasteful and questionable as you do.”

  Cold comfort indeed, to be in agreement with the Black Ospreys of the Kalakar House Guards. For a moment, an old anger caught him by surprise; he felt pain, heard the cries of the dying, across a bridge of years made of memories too strong for a single lifetime to shake. He did not speak; the cloud passed.

  “Baredan,” he said at length, “what does the boy do?”

  “He trains,” the General replied evasively.

  The evasion was not lost upon the Tyr’agnate. His eyes narrowed. Is this the way it is to be? he thought, as his eyes glanced off the General’s. But again, he did not speak. Baredan was the Tyr’agar’s General, and Ramiro di’Callesta, in time of peace, the Tyr’agar’s subtle rival. They had their duties and their roles.

  “I do not believe that speaking with the boy will change his mind,” Baredan said quietly. He paused. “No word has come from the Tor Leonne.”

  It was a question. Ramiro shook his head. “No word.”

  No war, then. Not yet.

  But it was coming, as inevitably as the rise of the sun and the fall of the night, the Lord’s time and the Lady’s. They were, each of these four men, seasoned by war, anointed by it, elevated by it—and wounded by it. But they were warriors born; the wounds, they buried deeply beneath the facade of proud scars.

  10th of Lattan, 427 AA

  Terafin, Averalaan Aramarelas

  He had served as Chosen for almost twenty years. Taken up in what, at this remove, felt like his distant youth, he had stood his ground in the face of demon and darkness; he had proved his worth time and again.

  But he had not fought in the Terafin war. The grizzled veterans—and that, they were—of that early battle had about them a mystique and a confident wariness that the younger among the Chosen envied. He was not so young now. Not so foolish.

  Or perhaps it was because they were dead, those veterans, with a few exceptions, that their early years of glory and loyalty were no longer such a siren’s call. Captain Alayra, one of the last of The Terafin’s first Chosen to continue to serve, retained her title in a form of retirement that honored her early service.

  He had never seen her look old before.

  “News, Torvan?”

  He saluted her. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  She nodded, her eyes on a spot someplace beyond the windowless walls. Seeing, he thought, the war. Old battles. He had been blooded in the South, and he knew now that such a blooding, in a foreign land, at the hands of distinct and clear enemies, was the easier introduction to death.

  She rose from her solid, simple chair. She walked with a cane during the humidity of the summer months; it was beneath her slightly gnarled knuckles as she made her way to him. “Arrendas?”

  “Ready.”

  “And you?”

  He nodded grimly.

  “Good. The Terafin’s waiting.”

  He saluted. Lowered his hand. Alayra was still bent, still old. We’ve fought demons, he thought, and mad gods. We’ve fought the South, twice, and won. We’ve fought Darias, we’ve fought Morriset.

  We’ve never done it without you.

  She met his eyes. “I’ve lived through one succession war. It was . . . enough. I did things in that war that I’ve been able to face because of the peace and the justice that followed it.”

  “Alayra—in war we all do things we wouldn’t otherwise do.”

  “A war for succession happens after the death of the reigning Terafin,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Why now, Torvan?”

  From anyone else, the question might have been evidence of the torment and the shadow of a war they both saw coming, inevitable as a sea storm. But, from Alayra, it was what it was; it demanded a real answer.

  He thought about it a long time in the confines of the simplicity of her rooms. At last, he said, “I don’t know. At this point, it’s not clear who gains if Terafin is severely weakened.”

  “No. It’s not.” She turned. “You’re escort, Torvan.” Pause. “I’ve assigned Chosen to Alowan. He won’t have them. It’s your job to force him to accept them.”

  “Gracefully?”

  Her turn to wince. “At all. I don’t care about grace.”

  By House rules, any member of the Council proper was allowed two attendants and two guards when the Council sat in session. It was a formality; a governing rule written into the House constitution—or whatever it was they called the rules; Jewel couldn’t remember and didn’t particularly care—during years that The Terafin preferred to pass over when she spoke about House history.

  Funny thing.

  Every member of the House Council save three—Gabriel, Cormark and Jewel herself—had, surprise, surprise, two attendants and two guards. The great chamber, which was called “the bowl” by anyone who had to work in it or clean it, had room enough that the addition of three or four bodies per member didn’t make the room seem that packed.

  But the lamps had been lit along the light rails, and they cast a brilliant, cut spectrum of hard edges against a tabletop that was completely free of fingerprints or grime. No food here, no water, just the sheen of polished wood. It was a very fine room in the way that the largest part of the cathedrals on the isle we
re fine: Grand, high ceilings that were meant to make the occupants feel even smaller than they were. The tapestries added to that effect, as did the curtains and the towering windows; this was not the hall for a war council.

  Jewel had the single attendant she was forced to accept by House and guild law: Avandar Gallais. To leave him behind was, unfortunately, to absent herself from the meeting as well; both The Terafin and Avandar had made it clear enough in their early years together that it had become a fact of life.

  Fact as well that Avandar was possessed of unspecified magical abilities that made him both servant—although the exact definition of the word serve had yet to be offered—and guard. Apparently good service and full disclosure had nothing to do with each other; Jewel could see when he used magic, but she couldn’t see what was available to him.

  His job was to see that she neither embarrassed herself—he called it the impossible task, which might have been true if his standards for so-called embarrassment weren’t so damned high—nor died, although, as she tartly pointed out, she was a seer.

  He was in a vigilant mood today. She’d learned, over the years, to figure out what was vigilant from what was sour; it wasn’t all that easy, given that most of the statues in the Terafin grounds were more expressive than he was.

  “Well,” she murmured for his ears alone as she took in the guards, the attendants, and the weapons that adorned the ATerafin Council like so much gaudy jewelry, “looks like Angel wins.”

  Avandar frowned. “At eighteen, it was, if not permissible then at least understandable, that he turn everything into a wager. But at his current age . . .”

  She laughed. “You tell him. Me, I’d be happy if he’d lose more often.”

  Her laughter, unguarded for a moment, caught attention. Just what she wanted.

  The doors to the great hall were left slightly ajar; they would be left that way until The Terafin’s arrival announced, by presence alone, that the Council meeting was in session. At that point, the Chosen who accompanied her would close the doors at her back as she took her chair at the head of the long table.