And loss was something that Jewel had never dealt well with.
“I don’t think,” Jewel said, as cautiously as she could, “that this war is the only war.”
“Meaning?”
“It’s a big battle.”
“And you say this because?”
“Commander Allen, I say it on instinct. It’s the instinct that I was born with. If you asked me to bet my life on it, I would.”
“And how many other lives would you bet on it, Jewel ATerafin?”
“As many as you have,” she replied. “If we don’t win this battle, somehow, we’ve lost the whole thing.”
“‘Whole thing’?”
“The Empire,” she said. “The Western Kingdoms. The Dominion. Everything.” It settled upon her, around her, within her: It was truth. Having spoken it, she could not turn back, and she knew, as her glance skirted The Terafin’s stiff features, that the spirit of Terafin had known it when he had given her permission, even indirect orders, to go South.
“You will,” the Commander said quietly, “allow us to speak privately for a few moments before we continue this interview.” The Berriliya and The Kalakar had already drawn closer to his back, but he didn’t turn that back upon her; he waited. Showing, no doubt, that his manners were vastly better than hers.
Still, it wasn’t a request. She nodded, afraid. Because she knew—not as a seer, but as an intelligent young woman—that the war that was coming was in his hands as much as anyone’s, and if they were to win it, it must remain that way. The Eagle was the only thing that could effectively bind and lead the other two. The Hawk. The Kestrel.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Well?” Commander Allen turned to the man known as the Hawk.
“She’s known for her capabilities. It is rumored that when she is certain, she’s infallible.” Dry now. The Berrilya had the best information-gathering network in the capital; he valued it with a cool sort of pride.
“Infallible. Ellora?”
The Kestrel’s eyes were still upon the door that had just closed. “I wouldn’t,” she said, half to herself, “want to be the unfortunate fool sent to kill her. That domicis of hers is only barely a servant, if I’m any judge of character. I wouldn’t have had him if he hadn’t come from the guild.”
“You wouldn’t have him if he did,” Commander Allen said; her scruples were well known.
“We are not speaking about the domicis,” The Berrilya said, a bit too sharply.
“They come as a pair, Devran.”
The Hawk subsided. The Kestrel continued. “But the young woman?”
“She’s at least thirty, Ellora.”
“She’s young for thirty, in some respects.”
Commander Allen did not argue the point. Instead, he waited. Ellora AKalakar—no, The Kalakar—had instincts that had been tested in battle; honed by death, by the dying. The Berrilya relied on structure, on order, on a clean rationality; The Kalakar took her chances upon the sword’s edge. Both had survived, which was the test, perhaps the only true one.
“I’d trust her.”
The line of his shoulders fell ever so slightly; he lifted a hand to his eyes a moment, as if to clear them of dust. “With your life?”
“My life, certainly.”
“The lives of your men?”
Her answer took longer, but he knew her well enough to know what it would be; he wasn’t disappointed. “Yes. Even if she swore no oath to me.”
“But?”
“But I’m not certain that I would trust that girl with the deaths of my men. Or yours. Or his.”
To someone who had never been a Commander in time of war, the words might have held no meaning. But to Commander Allen they were cutting.
“Devran?”
“Concur. The girl can barely follow The Terafin’s command; I doubt that she will follow ours if it does not suit her purpose.”
“That’s not what I said.” The Kestrel dropped her hand flat against the tabletop, slapping Devran’s reflection. They were powerful, these two, but they were not above heat and ire. To Commander Allen’s abiding regret.
“It is not at the heart of what you think you said,” was The Berriliya’s cool reply, “but it is at the heart of the matter. She will do what she perceives to be ‘right,’ rather than what we perceive to be necessary.”
“And do you counsel that we leave her behind?”
The Berriliya said nothing.
“Bruce?”
“No.”
“Why?” Devran turned his back upon Ellora.
“Instinct,” the Eagle said, his smile sharp. “Hers and ours. She means to come, and I think that means we need her.”
“How will we control her?”
“Crowns’ mandate.”
“The Crowns’ mandate,” The Berriliya said balefully, glaring at The Kalakar, “doesn’t even keep our own in line.”
Ellora’s smile was cool. “It doesn’t keep us under your control, Devran. I believe you’ve forgotten what the Crowns’ mandate is.” Before he could answer—and there was no doubt whatever in Commander Allen’s mind that a reply was forthcoming—she turned to the man whose lead they both followed. “We’ve given you our opinions, and as usual, they’re . . . diverse. I note that you’ve withheld your own.”
“Perhaps because I haven’t formed one.”
“I don’t believe you.”
At that, Commander Allen smiled. It was something that Ellora, direct and to the point, would say; Devran would think it, but keep his own counsel. Neither of them would be fool enough to believe that he had drawn no conclusion. “Time hasn’t dulled you at all, Ellora. You’re right.”
“You like her.” No question.
“Yes.”
“You think she’ll make a terrible soldier.”
“Yes.”
“You never had any intention of leaving her behind.”
“True.”
“Then why this discussion?”
“Because I’ve been wrong on occasion, and my understanding of people like this Jewel ATerafin is often . . . limited.” He raised a hand and placed it almost absently upon the hilt of his sheathed sword. “She is no soldier.”
“And that,” Devran said unexpectedly, “is a pity, because I believe by the end of her tenure in Terafin she will either learn to be one, or she will not survive.”
Commander Allen turned sharply. “What do you mean?”
“The girl is not a killer. You are, Bruce. Ellora is, I am. The Terafin is.”
“Why, thank you,” Ellora said wryly.
“This is House business, not Crown business,” the man called the Hawk added, his eyes sharp and clear as his namesake’s. “But the rumors are stronger than they have been in fifteen years.”
“What rumors?”
Ellora and Devran exchanged glances, and Commander Allen reminded himself that they, these two and he, were not yet upon the field of battle; they were The Kalakar and The Berriliya, and his concerns and theirs, in this so-called civilian life, did not meet or touch often.
It was Ellora who replied. “Even Kalakar has heard the rumors—and fielded requests.”
“Requests?”
“For support.”
“Ellora, Devran—time has passed if you’ve forgotten how little patience I have.”
Devran answered. “The Terafin is being pressured to choose an heir. There are, that we know of, four candidates, and of those four—Rymark, Haerrad, Elonne, and Marrick—two have emerged as the true contenders: Rymark and Haerrad. Regardless, all four have quietly petitioned The Ten for aid and support should they be the chosen heir of Terafin.”
“I see. And?”
The silence was uncomfortable.
&nb
sp; At last, Ellora said, “You serve the Kings, Bruce. As do we when we wear these uniforms. But the requests came not to the uniforms, nor to the Crowns; they came to us. It is House business.”
Which meant, Bruce Allen thought bleakly, House succession war. The Kings did not interfere, not directly, in a House War, unless it grew out of proportion. And proportion, to the Wisdom-born King, was a hundred deaths, not ten. It was within The Ten that those who sought power tested themselves, and weeded themselves out. The Twin Kings were proof against the succession wars that had devastated human empires for centuries, even millennia, before the birth of Veralaan. “Were there only four?” he asked.
Ellora and Devran glanced to and away from each other so quickly their expressions hardly had time to shift. It was Ellora—always Ellora—who finally said, “There was a fifth. Possibly a sixth.”
But more than that, she would not say. And his intelligence, within the Houses, was not up to the task of finding what she did not offer. He could ask Duvari, the Lord of the Compact, but that would draw attention of a type that neither the Hawk nor the Kestrel ever gracefully accepted.
He would say nothing.
But he wanted, in his own way, the simplicity of a war that could be fought in the open.
“We’d best speak with the girl, then,” he said at last. Thinking of Duvari, he added, “we won’t have her services until the last serving member of the Kings’ Court has been officially cleared by the Lord of the Compact—and I believe he intends, with The Terafin’s permission, to use the girl’s peculiar vision.”
12th of Lattan, 427 AA
Avantari
Five days.
Valedan kai di’Leonne rested a moment beside the fountain that had never once ceased its quiet cry. Blindfolded, the carved statue that had been an affront to so many of his compatriots stood in the center of the water that came from his cupped hands. Justice, its maker had called it. Tyrian Justice. They translated Tyrian to be Annagarian, and perhaps it was; either way, it was clear to those who had come from the Dominion what its intent was. An insult. A slap in the face.
Usually the intent of such a slight was lost if you were not from the North, with the rain’s water and the frozen winter for blood—after all, slavery was a fact of life, the Lord’s will; the Lady’s stricture. This statue had been carved by the branded hands of an escaped slave—one of the few who had probably stolen enough that he could bribe the Voyani to bring him across the borders.
No. Be honest. He knew, because Mirialyn ACormaris had chosen to tell him, that although the man’s hands had been those of a slave, he had been revered in his fashion, for he could make, out of stone, an almost living, breathing boy, an accusation that could not be ignored.
Not even by the clansmen of the South.
North, Valedan thought bleakly, or South. Where did justice fit in at all?
He was exhausted. His joints, even with no movement on his part, ached; he carried bruises that had only just turned yellow-gray. Purple, the more common color, decorated his shins, his forearms, but Commander Sivari was no longer able to touch his chest, his ribs, the side of his head. That much, he’d won for himself. He had hoped to hide his skill; had hoped to take them by surprise. A boy’s hope. A fool’s.
Five days. He could run the footpaths until he was exhausted, and then continue his run, the heat of the sun bearing down upon his clothed flesh, his dark head. This was Avantari, the palace of Kings, and in it, he was as safe as he could be. But the gauntlet was not to be run within Avantari; it was to be run within the hundred holdings—and beyond.
Five days.
Ah. He rose and turned, twisting his back slightly as he plunged his hands into the waters of the fountain, cupping them beneath the surface and drawing water toward his face. He felt guilty because he hid here, instead of returning to his rooms—but he could not bear the teary sight of his suffering mother for an instant longer than was completely correct.
It was hard enough to have made the choice, to have petitioned the Kings, and to have been accepted into the ranks of the many who would attempt to qualify themselves as worthy contenders for the wreath the Kings offered their Champion. Hard enough to know what the cost would be if he failed, worse to know that every step of the way he was exposing the entire fate of his clan—and he could say it now, with a perverse pride, a quiet and dogged determination, his clan—by the turn of his back beneath the open sky.
But worse was to have to justify it, again and again, to a woman whose worst fault was that she did not want anything to happen to her beloved, to her only, child.
Let Serra Alina take care of his mother.
Or Ser Kyro, if he was not fast enough to move out of her way.
The stones beneath him were cool; the shade, however, was moving as the sun rose in deliberate reminder of the time, of the lack of time. He swallowed a deep breath of air that was too warm to be refreshing, and then he picked up the unstrung bow that lay on the stones by his side, well away from the spray of water, from the glare of sun’s heat. Fighting, and running, and swimming he had already forced himself to face in the course of the early day; it was time for the targets.
Peace, there. A moment’s peace.
He thought he would like to see the Princess Mirialyn ACormaris, for it was her hand that had guided his to the bow that had become his strength, to the sword whose use so surprised his compatriots, the clansmen who were too busy to notice the activities of the son of a concubine. But he was no longer Valedan the boy hostage, to be permitted to run from room to room like an indulged child seeking the most indulgent of his gentle keepers.
He was kai Leonne.
But Mirialyn ACormaris would have recognized that boy in the way that this young man momentarily bit his lip before gaining his feet and throwing his shoulders back. Before leaving the courtyard that was, and had been, his sanctuary.
“. . . and it’s supposed to be the single best way to prove that you’re better than anyone else without actually going off and killing someone.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do all of that just to avoid killing someone?”
Duarte saw Auralis lift both hands to his face in a gesture that was only partly theatrical. The leader of the Ospreys was still not quite comfortable with the newest of his recruits, and watched her often, sometimes openly, sometimes surreptitiously, and sometimes by chance and serendipity. This was, he hoped, an example of the latter.
Auralis had been put slightly off his stride by his encounter with the young man who would be Tyr; the fact that, dagger to dagger, an apparently inexperienced boy could not only hold his own, but best him, had done more than cosmetic damage, although that aspect of the damage, fading fast, was hardly in evidence.
No; that wasn’t accurate. He wasn’t slightly off his stride. He was restless, a little too wild; Alexis was certain—or at least she was convincing when she spoke with Duarte—that he’d taken to drinking in the hundred holdings without the benefit of his companions. Probably true.
And everyone knew that meant he was looking for a fight, preferably a deadly one.
“Auralis,” Kiriel continued, her dark eyes completely unblinking as she stared at the cracks between the older man’s sun-browned fingers, “these men—they will all be soldiers, yes?”
“Not all.”
“But almost all.”
It was when she was like this that Duarte found her most compelling, least difficult. She had about her a childlike insistence, a terrible, strange need to know, that made the desire for knowledge seem a thing of dark wonder. He froze; often, if there were too many witnesses, she ceased to ask questions at all. As if the mere asking of questions were a weakness.
It was, Duarte thought, if he were honest at all.
“Yes, Kiriel,” Auralis said, pushin
g his hands up from his face and through hair that was only slightly darker than his skin at high summer. “Almost all of the men here will become soldiers.”
“Then, they’ll kill.”
“Yes. Then.”
“Why not just have the war, and judge by that?”
“You don’t have a war just to choose a single man as Champion.”
Careful, Auralis, Duarte thought, seeing suddenly where she was leading.
“But that’s exactly what you do do,” she replied intently, no hint of the victory her words were about to gain her in her voice, or the lines of her peculiarly delicate face. “It is not—”
“Yes, it is. We are going to war to choose a Tyr.”
Duarte saw the whites of Auralis’ eyes as he rolled them. “Kiriel, we don’t ride to war every year. And if we had a choice—”
“You’d ride to war every year,” she told him softly. Her voice changed, then, as it often did, turning suddenly cold and dangerous, as she revealed her edge, that dark perception that came from the mouth of a child.
They were used to it, in part—but it was hard to stay used to it, the turn from clawing kitten to overland cat was so sudden. He thought Auralis might react badly, and he prepared to intervene.
But Auralis’ face shuttered as if it were a window. “Yes,” he said.
She seemed nonplussed by the surrender.
“Every day. There are men I’d kill in a minute. Less. And not slowly either. There are women I’d take. There are enemies I’d give eternity to have in my power—in my complete power—for hours. Minutes. Is that what you need to hear, Kiriel? What you want to hear? I won’t deny it.” His voice was ice, as cold as the Northern winter.
For just a moment, the winds changed; Duarte felt that the intervention needed might after all be on Kiriel’s behalf, and not Decarus Auralis’. “I joined the Ospreys because I know who I am.
“Can you say the same?”
Her hand came up, but it came up empty; she clutched the strands of silver that held a pendant she was never parted from—a heavy, crystal thing that was, as far as Duarte could tell, a gaudy, near valueless bauble. That and the single, unadorned band she wore on the third finger of her left hand were, as far as any Osprey had been able to ascertain, the entirety of her nonessential worldly goods. She had sword and armor, but they seemed so much a part of her, no one thought of them as possessions.
The Uncrowned King Page 14
