She nodded. “That was the preface.”
“Is there more?”
“Yes, and it is . . . unfortunate.”
“ACormaris, you are oblique. It is both refreshing and unlike you.”
“Very well. The mob was led by a demon. It was his intent to destroy the Annagarians, or so it seems.”
“So it seems?”
“The creature was destroyed before it could complete its attack. We believe—although we have not yet confirmed—that it was neither here alone, nor working on its own.”
He took the words in quickly, digested them. Spoke. “You believe the creature was responsible for the deaths that are being blamed upon my distant compatriots.”
“Yes.”
“Why is it here?”
“If you mean by that, do we know who summoned it, then the answer is simple: No. The streets are being combed by our own forces, and the citizens in the holdings are becoming both fearful and angry; the story spreads, and as is common, grows out of proportion.”
And it was not, Ramiro thought, within a reasonable proportion to begin with, as far as such incidents went. He said nothing.
“We are therefore put in the position of being forced to defend the contenders.”
He shrugged.
“It is difficult, within the holdings there are too many elements that are outside of our control. We therefore desire you to offer Anton di’Guivera the protection of Avantari.”
“No.”
“Tyr’agnate—”
“No.”
“We can watch them well from here.”
“You cannot watch Anton; he is too dangerous.”
It was Valedan who spoke. “They are splitting the forces they will need to protect our interests in their attempts to protect these men.”
“They will split those forces anyway,” Ramiro replied, wishing for a moment that Baredan were beside him. “We are not the only Southerners in the quarter.”
“They are not,” Valedan said. “But the deaths are occurring—or the bodies are being discovered—around that hall.” He was quiet a moment. “I ask it, Tyr’agnate.”
“You wish to see Anton di’Guivera here? He means your death, Tyr’agar.”
“Indeed. But if anyone is to be my death, it will not be Anton.” He paused. “I have seen him fight, three times, when my brother was training. I was young. He was—the best.”
“Tyr’agar—”
“Tyr’agnate.” He took a breath. Held it a moment, and then released it around carefully chosen words. “The kin are not here to cause trouble for Anton di’Guivera. They are here, we believe, to kill me—and they will choose some point, or points, along the marathon’s course to launch their attack.
“If our forces are spread across the fifteenth holding until the final moment, they will be in conflict with citizens, they will be injured, or forced to injure, their own. How well will they protect me?”
“They will not be split when Anton and his men join the Challenge.”
“Anton is not running the marathon; neither are most of his men. They will no doubt be training for the test of the sword—and they will train in the fifteenth. The Imperials will not follow the marathon; once they have seen some portion of it passing—or perhaps before or after—they will take things into their own hands. Perhaps with encouragement.”
“Are any of his men running the marathon?”
“Two. There would have been three.”
“I see. I understand your concern, Tyr’agar, but must say that I continue to think it ill-advised. If they cannot protect themselves, let them perish. They mean you harm.”
“They are the message I will send to the General Alesso di’Marente. They must survive to carry it.”
At that, for the first time, Ramiro smiled. “You have an edge, Tyr’agar, that you hide too well. Very well. If you insist, I will offer. But Anton di’Guivera is a man with his own mind, and if he refuses, the refusal cannot be ignored or overridden by any but the Tyr’agar.” He stopped a moment as he realized that he had made a very rare mistake. Because, of course, there was only one Tyr’agar—the boy he had offered Bloodhame to.
“By the Tyr’agar,” Valedan said smoothly, “of his choice. Understood. But you will do your best, and the best effort of the Callestans very seldom ends in failure.”
Ramiro bowed; there was nothing left to say.
In the valleys, there were wolves, and in the depths, sharks; in the high lands there were the great cats, and in the jungles as well. But the desert? What hunter did the desert breed?
Only men; the Lord saved his ferocity in the face of the sands and the wind for desert men. They were, or so it was said in the South, his finest. Anton di’Guivera had spent half his youth in the desert; the insignificant part of it. Leaving the desert for the milder climate that lapped at its edges, he found the woman who was to be his life: His first life, with child, when the weight of responsibility had descended upon him, when he had realized that that boy, that woman, were his not only to defend against any outsiders who meant them ill, but also to feed, to clothe, to shelter, and be as gentle with as he could.
It had been an odd thought for a man raised to the sword—born to it, as his uncle had often said—perhaps even an unmanning one. He had struggled against the deep humiliation of it, and in the end, in the end he had chosen to hide it as he could from men who might otherwise perceive it as a weakness. For seeing weakness, they felt obliged to exploit it—and who could blame them? It was the Lord’s law, after all; the Lord’s will. The strong ruled, and the weaker obeyed.
Yet she had, hidden, been his strength.
As she was now.
Mari. Her name. Antoni. His son’s. Not a good name for a child; too hard to make into the diminutives that made of a boy a thing a woman could love. But they’d managed, and besides, it was, as his wife obstinately insisted, a fine name for a man. Her husband’s name. His own.
Their child would have been better served by a boy’s name; he had not survived to take on the man’s.
Aie, it did him no good, to fret and wait. His men knew he was distracted, and he knew they thought it was due to the encounter with the foreign creature, the unnamed thing that had darkened the streets with Southern blood. Perhaps some part of it was. They did not know what he knew, and if they had, they would not have credited it with his discomfort—for Mari was a woman, and only a woman, and Anton di’Guivera was the finest swordmaster in all of the Dominion.
His sword was sheathed; he folded arms across his chest to watch the interplay of swords unfold before him: two men. He lost their names because their names did not matter. He knew how they gripped a sword, how they swung it, what their faces looked like before a feint, a parry, a strike—it was one of the first things he tried to lessen. He also knew that this was not a true test, this sparring; these men knew each other well enough by now to dance the sword-dance if they so chose.
Of course, if they did, he’d have to kill one of them. They could not be wasted on such frivolity, such useless purity of purpose. They were here for one reason; to serve the interests of the Dominion. And of Anton di’Guivera—a gift, of sorts, from the General Alesso di’Marente. A gift and an order.
What did it mean?
The presence of the demon he could attribute to the Northerners and their desire to protect their puppet—the last of a broken line. But the presence of their high clans? No. He’d seen the girl, and he knew the crest that marked her finger in gold and gold relief, for he knew the crests of the Ten Families. They had flown in their time in the Tor Leonne, until the ill-advised slaughter.
Terafin. The House that fancied itself first among equals. He knew what the raised ring meant, be it wielded by woman’s hand or no: She was of import, and she would be obeyed.
&nb
sp; Yet why send a demon to kill, only to intervene?
Politics?
Did they truly think that he was naive enough to trust in such coincidental salvation?
And yet. And yet. There were rumors. And the Northerners had proved—with one exception in their history that he was aware of, the Black Ospreys—that they had no stomach to sacrifice their own for the greater good of victory.
What would you do, Ser Anton? What would you do to finally avenge the deaths of your wife and your son?
Anything.
He bowed his head; the flash of steel caught it. Almost grateful, he fell into the fight and the lines of the fight; it was more natural to him than anything but breathing.
Anything.
Ramiro kai di’Callesta traveled with four of his Tyran, but it was noted immediately by the men who barred his entrance into the hall itself that one of these four was the captain of the Callestan Tyran: Fillipo par di’Callesta, the favored brother.
An escort of Imperial Swords stood in loose formation around the building itself; they had seen to the safe travel of the Annagarian clansmen, for they did not trust their commoners to behave. Fillipo could understand that reluctance; in the streets of this holding, and the one previous to it that they had passed through, the mood was grim. Four Tyran, armed with swords, were likely proof against it—provided no supernatural occurrence came to the aid of men who lifted not swords but common implements, as weapons.
“The Tyr’agnate Ramiro kai di’Callesta is here at the request of Ser Anton di’Guivera,” Fillipo said smoothly. “As the summons requested speed, we have come quickly; it would do neither of us good to keep the Tyr’agnate waiting.”
The cerdan exchanged a glance; the older man nodded slightly. “Wait here,” he said, but it was formality.
They waited less than five minutes before they were granted entrance.
“Ser Anton wishes,” the cerdan who had stood guard said, “to speak to you in private.”
“I bring only my Tyran,” Ramiro said softly.
“He wishes me to say that he will have no cerdan in attendance.”
“Nonetheless,” Ramiro replied, “Ser Anton knows that in any but one’s own territory, it is considered impolite—and even impolitic—to ask a man to strip himself of his guards. These are Tyran, and they are not Leonne. They serve my interests.”
It was meant as an insult not so much to the clan Leonne but to the men who ruled in its stead through the treachery of Tyran. Such treachery was one of the few that was—almost—unthinkable, even in the Dominion. The man stiffened slightly. But he nodded and said merely, “Follow.”
As a concession, Ramiro chose to bring only the captain of his oathguards into the meeting with the man who had once trained Tyrs. The Tyr’agnate was known for his practicality, and the room that Anton had chosen—a small thing with one window, and it unglassed—would not comfortably accommodate a single man; five were out of the question. He did not stoop to wonder if it had been planned; Ser Anton had chosen the only space in the open hall that was enclosed.
The swordmaster bowed.
The Tyr’agnate bowed.
They were both perfectly correct, which was surprising, if one knew the swordmaster.
“Please,” Anton said. “Sit.” He gestured to the cushions that lent the room its only color. “Water?”
“Thank you, but no.”
Ser Anton nodded gruffly; he poured for himself, clumsily; water dripped down the goblet’s side to the planks of the rough, low table.
“It’s only at times like this that I truly appreciate a good seraf. Lord’s lesson. All clansmen should be forced to come North at least once in their life.” He sat.
They were not comfortable in their silence, although both men had been raised to it. “You summoned me,” Ramiro said at last, at the same moment as Anton said, “You wonder why I summoned you.”
It was awkward; the Tyr’agnate was not used to awkwardness. He was also unused to the company of the swordmaster. They all were; the man avoided the court assiduously; he was to be found in the sun, beneath the Lord’s full gaze, working always with the sword and its students. They watched him, they listened to him, but they did not converse with him, in part because he was like a sword, and they did not wish to be the cause of his death. He had never quite mastered the art of politic intercourse. Nor, Ramiro thought, watching him drink, would he.
But there were none here who would remark upon any offense he gave, intentionally or unintentionally, for Fillipo would not.
“I wondered, yes,” Ramiro said neutrally. “We have chosen our sides, Ser Anton.”
“Yes. But this . . . war . . . is not a sword, and I am most comfortable with them. There are more than the two sides, many more, and each has its complexities and offers its death to the unwary.
“You said, Tyr’agnate, that I should not believe all I have been told.”
“Yes, I did. I note that you did not summon the General.”
“No. He is what he has always been, and well chosen; he has cunning, but in truth, he has the heart of a Tyran.” At this, his lips folded up slightly in a smile. “I mean by that no offense, Ser Fillipo.”
“And had you, I would still take none.”
“He follows his master, and I believe that he has chosen poorly; it will be his death.”
“It has not been his death yet,” Ramiro said softly, “and greater odds were against him for that first attempt than you will be able to muster again.”
“True enough. I did not say he was a fool, not precisely. He has cunning and wit and determination—but it is coin offered to another and not spent on his own behalf. Enough. I did not summon you to speak to you of Baredan di’Navarre; he will not listen, and you will have your own use for him.”
“Very well. What is of urgency?”
“You will, no doubt, have received some intelligence of the . . . difficulty.”
“Yesterday’s?”
“The very one.”
“Yes.”
“I was inclined to think it an attempt at either assassination, manipulation, or both.”
Ramiro was silent as he accepted and digested the words, as he built the interior, the political vision, of another man’s mind, testing it against his prior knowledge.
“But I understand the foreign tongue,” Anton continued. “I have forgotten much of it over time—but I learned it when I came to the Challenge, the first one. Language is part of an enemy’s arsenal.”
“I have often said the same, but I am treated with contempt.”
“It was only the language I adopted,” Anton replied.
Fillipo bristled slightly; Ramiro did not even darken. It was an old accusation, so oft-considered that it bothered him only slightly more than a discourse about the color of his hair might have in its inanity.
“You heard something yesterday.”
“Yes. It appears that the people who chose to attack us were accusing us—and the Dominion—of allying itself with a god the Northerners fear and have fought. Allasakar. They called us Allasakari; they claimed to be avenging their dead.”
“This is unlike you, Anton. The Northern gods are not our concern.”
“They are. Or you do not understand the language so well as you think.”
“The language is not concerned with the worship of foreign gods.”
“Only commerce, eh?”
Again, Fillipo tensed. “Rational commerce, yes.”
“What a man worships or fears defines him. I am surprised that you do not remember this.”
That was an insult. “I remember it well enough, Anton.” He spoke his words on the edge.
“Very well. Allasakar is the name they give the Lord of Night.”
Silence. Fillipo met his k
ai’s glance and looked away, toward the light streaming in through midday windows. The air was still, although no Northern glass blocked its entrance into the room where the three men stood.
“You know what I speak of.”
“No.”
“You know what they spoke of, then. You understand their accusation.”
Again the brothers exchanged a glance. “Yes,” Ramiro said at last. “You know of the deaths in the quarter?”
“Peripherally, until yesterday; I am fully apprised of them now. It was not, I think, of those deaths that they spoke.”
“I believe that it was. But the men for whom you toil miscalculated as well.”
“That is surprising.”
“Perhaps. During times of crisis, the Kings of this land meet with their counselors, their advisers, their—citizens.” He used the foreign word because it was the only word he could use; Torra did not contain the concept well. “Among those are priests.” He shrugged. “A demon was sent into their midst during one such meeting, and it slaughtered many before it made its escape.” He rose. “If that will be all?”
Anton nodded quietly. “But one question, Tyr’agnate.”
“Indeed?”
“Why had the Kings gathered?”
Ramiro said nothing. Fillipo said, “Tell him, Ramiro.”
“No.”
“Tell him.”
“Why? Will it reveal anything that will aid our cause?”
“Tell him, or I will. We owe the boy that much.”
“I advise against it, Fillipo.”
“Command against it, brother.”
Ramiro was silent.
“You were present, no doubt, for the slaughter of the hostages in the Tor Leonne.” Fillipo’s voice could not—quite—cleanse itself of an angry contempt. “That certainly was the act of true warriors—a paeon to the Lord and his law.”
But if he hoped to discomfit Anton—and it was clear that he did—he made no mark; the swordmaster was already parrying, and in silence.
After an angry moment, Fillipo continued. “We were meant to be slaughtered for the slaughter, a convenient instrument of vengeance. We were gathered in an open courtyard like so much cattle, and left to wait upon death.
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