“But Valedan kai di’Leonne chose to assume the title that his father’s death, and his kai’s death, dropped upon him, and he sent both a summons and a challenge to the Kings’ Court.”
At that, Anton raised a brow. “And you will tell me that this was not your doing?”
“No. I will not insult your intelligence, although it is tempting. It was, indeed, my intent.”
“Then—”
“He took the title, and he took our oaths beneath the open sky.”
“And you had weapons with which to offer it?”
“Of a kind.” Fillipo shrugged. “He was granted his audience, and that audience was not before the Kings alone, but before their counselors; the mighty of the realm. He spoke for us, and against their action, and in the end, the Kings granted him his life, and his line’s life.”
“I see. Obviously, yours as well.”
“No. Our deaths were mandated.”
“The condemned are not given free run of the city,” Anton said dryly.
“They are not. The kai Leonne refused to stand apart.”
“What?”
“He refused to stand apart. Granted his life, he chose to stand with the men whose oaths he had taken.”
“Ah. I see. Another fool.”
Fillipo fell silent. His face was reddened, but the words that might have accompanied the anger did not follow in the presence of his brother. “Yes. A fool. He held Bloodhame when the Tyr’agnate came into the hall as witness, as proof that not all of the Tyrs supported the slaughter. He held Bloodhame when the servant of the Lord of Night came up through the marble floor as if it were a thin layer of water or oil; he stood his ground when that creature attempted his destruction.
“Do you remember your history, Ser Anton? Bloodhame was created for another war, by a greater swordsman than even you. And Bloodhame knows the truth of it; that the kin of demons was sent against Leonne, and it failed, as it did when Leonne first rose against the darkness at the Lord’s behest. Had we not chosen to follow the kai Leonne before, what choice have we now? The Lord of Night works against him, and we will not turn Averda over to the Lord of Night again. Not while a single Callestan still bleeds.
“You are the fool,” he said at last, but coolly now. “For you serve the Lord of Night, whether or not you wish to acknowledge it. Go down in darkness, Anton, and let it devour your body; it has already devoured the rest of you.”
He turned then, and made his way to the small door that stood in place of hangings.
“Ser Fillipo?”
“Yes?” he answered, although he did not turn.
“You speak with a great deal of passion, and yet if I were to guess, I would say that it was not you, but your brother alone, who was in that hall.”
“You would guess poorly,” Fillipo said. “I was not in that room, not present—but the Tyran were, and they are as much a part of me as my sword is. What they saw, they spoke of, and what they spoke of was truth.” He did not turn. “Lord’s light,” he said softly.
Ramiro heard the rest of the curse. Scorch you. He did not call his brother back; it was a dramatic, even a reasonable exit—for one who did not have the duties of Tyran to uphold. But he would not humiliate his brother in public if his own actions had not already achieved that. Judging by the expression on the sword-master’s face, they had not, by some miracle.
Ser Anton di’Guivera was silent a long time.
At last he rose, stiffly and heavily. “I thank you,” he said, “for your attendance.”
“I have one other duty, Ser Anton.”
“And that?”
“I have been asked to convey an offer of hospitality to you and the men whom you train.”
“And that?”
“You are to be given a hall upon the grounds of Avantari, the home of the demon kings. There are training grounds there, and ample protection against—distraction.”
Anton’s smile was thin. “And a chance, no doubt, to observe us before the fact.”
“No doubt. Although if you think you have been unobserved here, you are almost as naive as you would have Baredan be.” Ramiro di’Callesta rose. “I hope that you will consider what the captain of my oathguards has said. And I hope that you will consider the offer made to you.”
Anton said, “I have. And I believe, Tyr’agnate, that I will do you the discomfort of accepting it.”
Serra Alina was quiet.
It was not, as it would be with many of the younger ladies of the Imperial Courts, a bad sign in and of itself, but the Serra had taught Valedan, by both instruction and the far more valuable example, that every silence had about it a quality of its own, a hidden portent if one knew the person well enough to know how to look, and how to listen, to the things that were not said.
The things that were not said, today, were wrapped about her like the finest of silks.
“Alina,” he said at last, when it was clear that her silence was not for the gathering of words, but for the keeping of them, “what’s wrong?”
She did not like to lie to him, or so he believed; she said nothing.
“Serra Alina?”
But she could not choose to say nothing forever—not without offending the rank she was trying, by example, to teach him to honor. “It is Ser Anton,” she said quietly.
“You do not want him in Avantari.”
“I would be happy,” she replied, “if he had perished in the fighting. Happier still if he had perished before he brought his chosen students to the North.” She rose then, lifting a crystal decanter, a thing she said was different from the niceties of life in the home he would return to.
“Why?”
“It is clear to me that he has been sent, as he was before, to prove a point. But it is not to prove that point to the Empire; here, he has nothing to gain. He has been sent with men of quality to take the Crown of the Challenge. To prove that it was Leonne weakness, and not Annagarian training, or its lack, that has always been at the heart of our poor performance here.”
“Alina,” Valedan replied softly, “that much is obvious to me.”
“Then think, Valedan,” she said, with a hint of her old sharpness, her scratched pride, “what it means. He has these men, the best, and they did not perform in the Lord’s Test. Think: He has been training them in the tasks of the North. For how long?”
He started to speak, but having begun, he saw that she meant to continue.
She turned away from him to the open window, to the sunlight of the late afternoon, the lengthening shadows. “He is there among them, even now,” she said softly. “He speaks to Mauro and to Kyro, he courts them; he talks with Ramiro’s Tyran, with Fillipo—with everyone but you.”
Valedan shrugged. “He serves a different man, Alina. We did not expect that he would come to us to pay his respects.”
“No. But he is respected, Valedan. He has that in the Dominion, and he will always have it. He is no Court politician; he is more dangerous than that. It is not to the head that he speaks—not the rulers, not the Tyrs or the Tors. It is to the heart. He is an enemy, Valedan.”
“Alina, I know this.”
She turned to face him again, white as the Northern Queen. “It was his hand,” she said softly. She waited for the understanding, but it did not come; her pupil, and her lord, waited patiently for the words the silence did contain.
“It was his hand,” she repeated at last, “that killed the Tyr’agar, Markaso kai di’Leonne.”
He rose, then. Bowed stiffly. “Serra,” he said gravely.
He left.
The sun in the North was hotter than he remembered it, and he was no stranger to sun; the heat alone didn’t even darken his skin. No, it was the sea that bothered him. Days, he had been in this foreign city, and the salt touched everythin
g, turning even the innocuous gesture of licking dry lips into something unpleasant and distasteful.
He was old, to be here.
He had thought never to subject himself to this place again. But twice, twice he had done; had come with swords strapped to his back, and himself strapped in turn—loosely—to the back of the finest horse it had been his privilege to ride, before or since. He had practiced with the three men sent for just that purpose, each of them bitter at their exclusion from the true test, at the height of the Lord’s Festival, and he had quietly entered himself into the Northern ledgers, making a mark that was only graceful in comparison to the crude symbols drawn by many another, all barbarian.
He had been tested, briefly; had been chosen. It had never been in question.
And he had won that year; he had been the first, the only, man to take the wreath from the North and bear it to the South. Kings’ Champion. For her. For Mari.
The next year he returned, riding the same horse, bearing the same swords, and facing the same Challenge. And that, too, he had won. For Antoni.
He had thought, the day that he rose from his bow to face the crowded amphitheater a second time, that he had paid his wife and son the highest tribute that he could; he had given, to the South, the gift of his skill in their names.
That they might be at peace.
He had failed them in life. In death, he meant their names to be remembered. And gaining the twin wreaths was, he thought, the only way he might achieve such remembrance. Because they were of the Dominion, he, his wife, and his son, and in the Dominion, only the names of men counted. His son was so far from being a man that had his father been a greater clansman, he would never have been seen outside of the harem. His wife—Mari—
The wreaths, he had offered to the Tyr’agar, and the Tyr’agar had accepted them as the prize that they were. Ser Anton di’Guivera became in all things a rich man; gold was his, and his choice of horses, his choice of swords; he was given lands within the Tor Leonne’s city, and leave to train those he saw fit. The sons of the clansmen of wealth and power—if the two could be easily separated—were sent to him; his name lent credibility to skills that were often meager. He took their money.
Once or twice, a boy showed promise, and on those rare occasions, he accepted no barter, or trade; the chance to temper and hone the weapon was enough. It was his life, all the life he had left him, and he was too afraid of cheapening the memory of the dead to choose another life, although many were offered him.
The wreaths were displayed in the palace itself, that the clansmen might witness this proof of the superiority of the Lord over the Northern demons.
And while those wreaths were displayed, Anton di’Guivera had become a legend, to young boys and old men, and the range of power that falls between either extreme. For his wife and his son had been killed in bandit raids—along with half of his village, and all but a handful of his clan—and it had become his lifelong obsession to see banditry ended. Each season, he was given young men in their prime, and they traveled across the width and breadth of the Dominion, seeking, always, the men who had been responsible for the death of Mari and Antoni. Of so much of Guivera.
The wreaths hung, for the nobility to see; Anton fought for the serafs to see; from the heights to the depths of the Lord’s and the Lady’s service, his was a name and a presence that was known.
Even here. Even in this Northern Empire, with its demon Kings, its lack of tradition and respect, its law against the owning of serafs, those born to serve, and raised to make it a fine art. He was known, in this place. For it was here that he had twice earned the title Kings’ Champion.
With the death of the Tyr’agar Markaso kai di’Leonne, the wreaths had returned, dented and slightly bloodied, to him.
And he had taken them, one and the other, and he had repaired to the lands that were his, in the city that he had come to hate, the Tor Leonne. In the privacy of a night sky, the moon itself so slender a crescent of light he’d carried four lit lamps into the darkness to see by, he’d returned them to their rightful owners: His wife. His son.
The dead were the worst taskmasters. No matter how you struggled, no matter what you sacrificed, what you lost, what you paid, they gave you no nod, however minimal, to show their approval. No benediction. No absolution.
Carlo was flagging.
He frowned, as the lackluster sparring caught his attention. His frown spoke volumes; it was the expression that no one of his students had ever been able to ignore, be they deaf to the words that followed. Carlo was no exception.
“It’s the heat,” the young man said, wiping sweat from his forehead before it reached his eyes. “And the air. It’s so thick you can hardly breathe it.”
Andaro’s subtle shift in expression was as good as a cringe in a lesser man.
“That,” Ser Anton replied, “is why we fight here. The Lord will not destroy the ocean overnight so that you can have the fight you’re accustomed to. A warrior fights the fight he’s confronted with; he doesn’t whine for a different one. We are not Serras longing for different shades of green silk so that we may best present ourselves; we are men. Learn.”
Andaro, thankfully, was silent; his face had fallen into that perfectly neutral mask that he used when he wished to convey nothing whatever to a possible enemy. That Ser Anton was that enemy in the young man’s eyes did not give the older man cause to worry; they were students, these two, and of them, his finest. He expected them to be wary.
Unfortunately, the fact that Andaro was wary enough for two did nothing whatever to instill such a wariness in his closest rival and friend; Carlo spoke too much, complained too frequently, drank too much, ate too much—and admired foreign women too much:
He had never been a man like Carlo, although he had served beside many; it was Andaro, silent and measured, who best reflected his youth, and perhaps because of Andaro, he had been too indulgent with the friend.
When Anton folded his arms across his chest, it spoke in a fashion that words alone could not; the two fell silent and returned to their sparring with a passion that spoke of anger, annoyance, and perhaps a touch of shame. Together, they could best him. On a very, very lucky day. No doubt they considered it from time to time, like any sullen children. They were wise enough not to try; there were tricks that one did not teach champions. And Anton’s early skill had been honed in a place where the sword decided not honor and glory but life and death; the imperative of survival could make a man cunning, and low. If the Lord judged, he did not judge harshly.
He did not need to.
The sun was high, hot; it bore witness to this, the beginning. Bear witness, he thought, to an end. Let there be an end.
Old. He was old, now, to think such thoughts at the height of the Lord’s power. He turned his anger out; Andaro and Carlo were not the only two men who served his purpose here, they were merely the best.
The woman watched.
Her hair, brass and silver, her eyes brown with hints of the gold that spoke of her demon heritage, she stood straight-backed, her head tilted to one side as if listening to the cadence of metal and metal’s strike. He had been guaranteed privacy when he had accepted the offer—her offer, he was certain of it now—to accept the protection of the Kings’ Swords within the palace itself. That guarantee could easily be invoked.
Ser Anton knew it because he had done it, not once, not twice, but ten times, forcing spectators to withdraw. He was not afraid that they would carry tales of his students and their exertions; very little that could be said about either Carlo, Andaro, or the rest of his men, could damage them.
But this woman—he could not deny her her observation. Because she had, upon her face, that intent concentration that spoke not of war, not of spying, not of prurient curiosity, but rather of mastery, of comprehension.
Such a vanity, in a man his age, with
so much at stake. But these eyes reminded him of a young boy’s eyes. What was his name? It was gone; he could see, clearly, the white, white hair that in the Dominion would have been both so rare and so highly prized, and he could see, more clearly than that, the intensity of his desire to be what Anton created. She did not have that desire.
He very much wished to see her wield the sword that hung at her side. But he did not ask her to spar, and she did not offer.
Who are you, demon daughter?
Princess Mirialyn ACormaris. Too valued by her father to be married off to any who might come asking. When she came to stand above them, in the rounded stone of balcony that was one of many in these halls of cold, tall stone, he could not bring himself to demand her removal. It was his weakness, still. Women. Children. It had always been his weakness.
He could not afford to be weak here. And yet . . .
Andaro disapproved of the decision—although not obviously, and not loudly enough to endanger himself or to truly anger Ser Anton di’Guivera. He was prudent, in all things prudent.
“She is only a woman,” Anton said genially.
“She is a woman in the North,” Andaro replied levelly. “And you yourself have said that the women in the North are as dangerous as the men, in their fashion.”
“If you think this does not apply to a Serra, you are young, Andaro.” Ser Anton shrugged, losing the facade of geniality slowly. “What she observes here will have no bearing on the Challenge.”
“It has bearing on Carlo already.”
“True enough, but if Carlo cannot concentrate in the face of the admiration of one young woman—”
“She is the daughter of demons, as far as Carlo is concerned.”
“—he will be utterly destroyed by the audience gathered in the so-called high city. It is best to face obstacles now, Andaro.”
“We face enough; we must fight in the sun and the humidity, in public, like common cerdan.”
It was Andaro’s pride that Anton least liked; he did not remember his own youth as so prideful a thing. And yet they had so much in common, his younger self of memory and this young man, that he was not now so certain of his own worthiness. Age took it away, that certainty. Replaced it with truth, much of it bitter.
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