The Uncrowned King

by Michelle West

  She turned, turned again, caught between the palace’s height and the shadows of the night—shadows that were darker to her eyes than they had ever been. Was this human night? Stumbling once, she began to run.

  She heard the commotion outside of the healerie door. If she’d been lucky, it would’ve woken her; she wasn’t; she couldn’t sleep. Sliding her legs out of the left side of the bed—and into a wall, as that was where the bed rested—she righted herself and grabbed her robe, not much caring for lack of dignity.

  Dignity had never been one of Jewel’s main concerns. Wasn’t one now, truth be told, but it was one she’d had to adapt to, as she’d gotten older and closer to The Terafin’s Council. She could put it on, but she had to be more on edge to do it, and she had to have a better reason than a bunch of noise outside of the healerie doors.

  Of course, it was the middle of the night, and Alowan was theoretically sleeping, and there was no doubt in her mind that Elonne was going to put in an appearance sooner or later, offering her that lovely mixture of threat and promise that Jewel had so learned to despise. But she didn’t quite expect it here.

  And anyway, if she had there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it—no dagger. No weapons allowed in the room by decree of one of the few people in Terafin that no one, but no one, wanted to piss off. She got out of bed on the right side, remembered that she always got out of bed to the right, not the left, and wondered if this were another thing left from Daine. From Daine’s life.

  She wanted to throw them all out and have done; to get rid of the bits and pieces of him that were her. Just the same as any woman would’ve done with a man’s things who’d promised her everything and then left her.

  Not fair, she told herself; it was true. She knew he was suffering as well, wherever the Hells he was. And that wasn’t her problem now; the door was.

  But when he opened it, she froze.

  She would have spoken his name, but apparently her mouth, for once, was in phase with the rest of her body. He looked away first.

  “I’m sorry, Jay—Jewel—Jay—”

  Her toes curled at the awkwardness of his flush, his bent head. She knew exactly what he was feeling. Exactly.

  “Jay,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter what you call me. You could call me rover or hunter for all I care, as long as you didn’t pat me on the head and order me to heel. You know who I am.”

  “Jay,” he said softly, pleased and discomfited at the same time. “There’s someone here to—to see you. Alowan won’t let her in, but she’s—I think you need to see her.”

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Kiriel,” he replied. “But she’s not the same as—as she was.”

  He knew that much about her. That much about her den. Just from the healing. Did she know that much about him? Her gaze wandered to the left side of the bed, to the wall there. How would she know how much she actually knew, and how much she knew the way she’d discovered that? Left side, for Daine. The way his room at home had been set up. Would more come to her if she wanted it? She was tempted to try. Tempted more not to.

  “What do you mean, not the same?”

  “She’s—she’s—I think you need to see her.” He took a deep breath. “Alowan’s going to skin me alive.”

  “Alowan’s no Levec,” she replied, pushing past him and into the open door, hardly aware of the fact that she’d covered the distance between them at all—because, after all, yards or inches, what difference did it make? He was not with her, as he had been.

  “No,” Daine said. “That’s why I’m worried.”

  They crossed the room, the ATerafin and her shadow; stepped into the arborium and stopped there. Alowan’s shadow was short; he was not. She could see that his body blocked the entry from the manse to the healerie, and could further tell by the set of his shoulders—the tension of their line—that he had no intention of giving ground.

  Made her nervous; she covered the ground that separated them awfully quickly. Trying, all the while, not to notice how close she was to the healer who had taken half of her with him into the partially unknown territory of the who that he was. It was easier than she’d thought it would be, and she had Kiriel to thank for that.

  Kiriel was kin, her chosen kin. Den-mate.

  “Alowan,” she said, as she drew close to his back.

  The healer turned only his face. She saw that his hands gripped the doorframe on either side of him. “Jewel,” he said, a faint edge of disapproval in his voice.

  Which meant, she thought, that Daine was right; he was furious. How had he known that, when she wouldn’t have guessed it? She was the one who had known him for half her life. She might ask him later. She would ask him later.

  If she remembered.

  “Alowan, what’s wrong?”

  “It’s the girl,” he said quietly. “Kiriel.”

  “Yes?”

  “She won’t leave her sword outside.”

  Jewel frowned, stepped to one side of Alowan and wedged her face beneath his underarm and the frame of the door.

  Kiriel stood in the hall, face flushed with anger, knuckles the proverbial white as they gripped the hilt of her undrawn—barely—sword. It was obviously with great effort that such control came to her; she was breathing as if she’d been fighting in the circle for half an hour—and that, against a far better opponent than a stationary old man.

  “Kiriel?”

  The youngest member of Jewel’s den stared up at Alowan’s face. Up, Jewel thought, as if only then noticing the differences between their heights.

  “Kiriel, you’ve left your sword before. When you brought me. Or you wouldn’t have been allowed in.”

  Kiriel swallowed. Nodded. Didn’t take her eyes off the man whose healerie, whose territory, this undeniably was.

  “Then what is the problem? Just leave the sword by the door; no one’s going to be fool enough to steal it.”

  “I don’t—I can’t be sure of that.”

  “And you could before?”

  Whatever had been holding her head up was pulled out from beneath her chin; her chin fell into the space between either side of the collarbone.

  “Alowan,” Jewel said softly, “I don’t think you’re needed here.”

  “And I,” the old healer replied, affably, “don’t think that it’s your position, as patient, to dictate to the doctor.” Steel beneath those words. There’d have to be.

  She thought about arguing with him; thought again. Pride warred with time, and time won; time and respect for the healer. “I mean,” she said quietly, “that I think I can guard the door a minute or two.”

  “You are not yet dismissed,” he told her softly.

  “I know. No, I mean it. I know.”

  “Good.” His expression seemed momentarily less glacial as their eyes met. It froze again, fast, when he turned away from her. “Daine,” he said. “I wish to speak to you in my quarters.”

  “But I—”

  “That was not a request.”

  The younger healer followed the older one, and as they turned a corner, disappearing beneath the shadows and greenery of the arborium, she heard him say, “A Terafin can afford to be ignorant and irresponsible; she’s not the healer. Do you know what you were risking by waking her yourself?”

  “She wasn’t sleeping—” He cut himself off.

  Not, of course, fast enough. Jewel cringed. Pulled her attention away from the two as they walked, because they didn’t need it. Kiriel did.

  “Kiriel?” she said. She started to say something else, but the words died as this child den-mate lifted her face. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

  She was mute; without anger to serve as brace, she seemed to have no way of holding herself up. No need to, now.

  “You can leave
the sword,” Jewel said softly.

  “I can’t. If it’s stolen—”

  “It won’t be stolen.”

  “But it—”

  “It won’t be stolen, Kiriel. I give you my word. This is the healerie.”

  Hesitant, Kiriel stood three feet across the threshold, like some creature of the night who needed permission to cross. No, not just permission. Jewel took a breath; braced herself a moment in the door, and then went to the girl. Caught her white hand, stiff-knuckled, grip-sure, and began to pry fingers from hilt. It wasn’t hard work, but it was work; it was as if the girl behind the hand had vacated the body, and resided only in eyes that were as brown as Jewel’s.

  As brown as.

  There was no trace of gold remaining in the edge of irises that seemed to have lost the light.

  “What—what happened, Kiriel?”

  She drew the girl in, and the girl came, wet with summer rain too old to reflect light.

  “It’s gone,” she said before Jewel could speak again.

  “Wait,” Jewel replied. “Here. Come into the healerie proper. There’s no one near my bed; Alowan’s rule. Too many ‘damned ATerafin’ walking around mistaking their daggers for their politics.”

  “It’s gone,” Kiriel said again, as if she hadn’t heard the words; as if Jewel herself was the only guarantee of privacy she required. “Not just the mantle, not the shadow, not just those—” She lifted her face again. “But these.” Cupped her hands over her eyes; pressed her fingers against closed lids as if she thought to discern something by touch alone. “I can’t see. I can’t see anymore.”

  Jewel knew that she wasn’t blind. “What,” she said softly, “can’t you see?”

  “You; I can’t see you.”

  Jewel waited. The moment lengthened until the passage of time was more uncomfortable than any possible invasion of Kiriel’s privacy. “Kiriel, I don’t know what you see when you see me.”

  “More than just the darkness,” Kiriel whispered, and then, before Jewel could speak another word, she began to weep.

  Without hesitation, Jewel caught her in arms that remembered how to do just that; how to catch fear, how to calm it; how to take strength from the act of being strong. It was easy to be strong, just like this; it reminded her of the past; made Kiriel a part of that past as well. Made Kiriel, truly, a member of her den, someone that Jewel could take under wing and protect.

  Later, much later, she would wonder about it; there was no pull away from Kiriel; no need to fight an instinct that screamed don’t turn your back or don’t touch, an instinct that was bred into blood the way only a seer’s could be.

  And later, not that much later, she would wonder how it was that unarguably one of the most dangerous people she had ever met could look so much like a child when she slept.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  17th day of Lattan, 427 AA

  Averalaan, Kings’ Challenge: Gathering of the Witnesses

  Here they fought.

  And here, in roads remarkably similar to these, they fell, their bodies lining the packed dirt of red, red streets. Weapons were pried from their fingers, picked up by men and women who the shadows hid so poorly. The sense of last stand defined their actions; they did not flee anything but cowardice.

  Were there children?

  Yes. Evayne A Nolan was the only person living who had seen them; who had seen that not all lays are lies born of large heart and little intellect. There had been smoke and fire that night, and death, of course; always death. Even after the enemy had been crushed, the burning continued; too many had fallen to bury decently, far too many.

  She could almost taste it, the dark and greasy smoke of those fires—but then again, she had seen so many war-fires. Folly to think that one was more horrible than another, or more memorable. It was just that she stood in these streets, again, and recognized them for what they were beneath the layers of history laid down above them.

  The fight was long past; four hundred years and more had a way of obliterating the most noble—or the most vile—of intentions. Story held some hint, song, more. But unless one had been there, or been somewhere very like it, that was all one had: some hint.

  She stood in the dawn’s light. The rapid rise of pink and deep blue brought with it the hint of day’s heat. She would, if she were very lucky, be gone by the time heat came in earnest. Long gone.

  All around her, as if she were a large rock, people passed; those that jostled her did so unaware of just how close the crowd they were part of had forced them into the circle of one who openly wore the mage’s medallion. Order of Knowledge. Knowledge.

  She watched with knowing eyes. Saw the past that they did not see, these people who waited on glory in the open streets, clutching their coin, their tents, their belongings great or small.

  The battle for Veralaan had been here.

  As had Veralaan herself; the mother of the Kings; the priestess of the Mother. She raised twin banners, sun and moon to the people of the city, day and night; they had come. To the Mother. To the Queen.

  Here, the warriors gathered. Here, the enemy was met. One final stand. One final song. The women were as silent as the men. The children wept, but only the children, and they wept with cause, for the scouts of their enemy had come in a body and left their mark before passing. They were not careful to conceal their presence, and why should they be? The Blood Barons waited in force beyond walls that had already been breached. It was a matter of time, and a short time, before the city itself, the city of Veralaan’s birth, was laid waste, laid to rest.

  You were given your chance to recant and retreat, the Barons said, over the closing distance, their magery taking the words and giving it bardic strength without any of the bardic truths; perhaps you will hear such a generous offer again when you return from Mandaros’ hall.

  No one expected mercy.

  No one expected clean deaths, although the prayers were littered thick and fast, said loosely, but with a passion that was astonishing in its mixture of anger and clarity.

  She had come to save a life, just one. But because she was there to guard, because she was there to join in a fight, to be the shield behind which the children gathered and stood, to be the safety that parents otherwise occupied might send their children to—she was witness to the miracle of that age.

  The horns. In the distance, over the clash of steel, above the thick, wet sound of bodies made and fallen, they came. Weston horns, they were called, high and clear; but she had seen them, and she knew that they were fashioned, and patterned, upon horns far older and far less noble in cause. But they were made for power, and power resided within them; they spoke, and the whole city heard the promise of their salvation.

  Even Evayne. Even Evayne who had so often heard such sweet promise made a lie of, come too late.

  This morn, as that one, there were people, but what weapons they carried they carried concealed, and there were far, far more of them than the city had held after its single chance to spare itself the fate of the pretenders.

  And this morn, as that one, she watched over a child. Just one. He had been here two days—or rather, he had been here for the entirety of the two days that she was aware of. Hair a dusted white, eyes a deep blue, skin now red and white where it was peeling, he slept on the patch of ground that he had chosen as his own.

  This day was the first day of the King’s Challenge in the here-and-now. The challengers would come from their homes and their hotels, from their patrons and their tenting, to the West Gates. They would carry their tokens, and they would carry their helms; and in plain view, they would ride, armed and armored, throughout the hundred holdings.

  And the pale-haired boy, his grim little face masking the building pressure of hope and excitement, would be there to watch and witness.

  Because
she chose to bear the symbol of the Order of Knowledge openly, no one tried to dislodge the boy forcibly from his chosen position, for she shadowed him, hovered at his side. Fewer than ten merchants had offered her money to move on. She was pleased.

  It was peaceful here. It was so seldom peaceful, she took a moment to marvel at the quiet.

  The boy stirred; he would wake soon. When he woke, the path would take her to a different here-and-now, one more urgent, more dangerous. Hard to remember, when life was that cutting, that close to death, that this life existed at all: People daydreaming, working, singing, and bickering; people eating and drinking and trying to find companionship in a city crowded to bursting. Kings’ Challenge.

  At sixteen, she had hated them for having the freedom that she felt had been taken from her, be it her choice or no. At twenty-five, she barely noticed them; they were unimportant, unassuming—meaningless. But at forty, at forty it was different. She could begin to see her own youth, the awkwardness in her own early life, in the lives that went on around her.

  A woman pulling a wagon lumbered into view, cursing and swearing a path through the people who were even now trying to find a place to wait out the morning hours. Evayne lifted a hand and called the woman, using just enough power—and foolishly, at that—to be heard over the woman’s own voice.

  She had coin of the realm, and she used it, purchasing apples, bread, cheese; they were fine and fresh for all that she was so sour. Evayne took these, halved them; woke the boy.

  He started at the sight of her, heavily robed and girded with the medallion that mages wore.

  “You’ve nothing to fear from me. Not here,” she said, smiling softly. “And not today. It’s the Kings’ Challenge; almost everyone is here for the same reason. You’ve found yourself a good place, and I, a good place as well.”

  He didn’t answer, but she didn’t expect an answer; she’d seen enough to know that he was skittish and suspicious, and probably with good cause, from the yellowing bruise on his cheek. “If you will watch my spot until the sun is at its height, I will break fast with you at my own expense. If I am not returned by the time the sun is at its height, sell my place. Or give it up as you see fit.” She held the food out of his reach. “Do we have a deal, Aidan?”