The Uncrowned King

by Michelle West

  “ATerafin?”

  “I think—if the boy is safe—that it would be in our best interests to procure the services of the magi or the Mysterium for the duration of the challenge.” He took a step; Kallandras turned away so that he didn’t have to watch his knees buckle. They did; but Devon was Devon; he continued to walk. He would accept no help, and in this, he and Kallandras were not alike: Devon was practical, but he had his pride, and that pride had not dimmed with either necessity or age.

  “Member APhaniel,” Kallandras said softly, as Devon and the mage drew closer entirely by the ATerafin’s effort, “there is still the matter of the sword.”

  “Yes, there is,” the mage said softly. His gaze was steely and distant. “But I am a mage, and if I remember my history correctly, that blade is not for me or mine.”

  “Your history plays you false,” Kallandras said. “Or Southern history does.”

  Silence, there. One rarely corrected a member of the Order of Knowledge. “Perhaps,” the mage said, “I was being too subtle for you. Let me try again: The sword is your problem.” His eyes fell upon the back of the headless corpse that lay against Devon’s feet. “That one, and his kin, is mine.”

  “You recognize him?”

  “Yes and no. He is of an order of mages that dwells South of the Empire; the Sword of Knowledge cannot contain them, and the Order has never tried. They are assassins,” he added, his eyes flickering a moment over Kallandras, “of a common type—but they use what they learn to advantage. It seems that there is truth to the rumors.”

  “Those?”

  “They mastered the forbidden arts.” He turned to Devon. “ATerafin?”

  Devon said quietly, “I’m ready.”

  “Member APhaniel?”

  “What, Kallandras?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble, do you think you might wake the rest of the guard?”

  A white brow rose in a pale face. “I think,” he replied, still somewhat frostily, “that the Kings’ own mages can attend to the trivialities.” His face softened momentarily. “Kallandras, we cannot wait. I do not know what occurred, but from the young boy’s rather panicked description, I can guess.

  “We have time, but not much of it; what is at risk is not Devon ATerafin’s life, but his experience.”

  Kallandras fell silent at once. Devon, he thought. Their eyes met. You are better than I knew at concealing yourself; I did not hear this in you.

  They left him alone, with a corpse, a sword, and the sleeping bodies of Imperial guards.

  He knelt before the sword again.

  Meralonne took the light with him, but as night settled, the clarity of moon and stars made everything less harshly visible. Still, in the darkness, in any darkness, he would have seen this sword.

  It was not for him. The life that he led, the path that he had chosen, the path that he had chosen to walk away from, all of these things had ill-prepared him for the life a wielder of such a weapon should have.

  The only thing that worked in his favor was the war itself. He remembered old stories; older stories. Remembered that the swords of the desert cities were swords that took a man’s name and bound it, almost as his had been taken and bound. And he remembered that the swords themselves could avenge the deaths of the masters they had chosen. Magic, old magic.

  Southern magic, blood magic.

  It was said that men were killed by the thousands to build such a weapon as this. That they were taken and measured and stripped of all essence, that they were somehow used to give the sword a measure of life. It was said, and said, and said, and each telling held something of the teller’s fears or desires in it.

  No such magics existed in the here and now.

  And no such weapons.

  But looking at the crescent of slender blade, he wondered that any of it could be true; the blade itself seemed the essence of steel, something perfect, too pure to be quenched in blood.

  Why? It is only a weapon. It does not care how it was forged, or tempered. No more than Kallandras himself.

  And yet . . . he bowed again.

  Reached out, his hand hovering in the darkness a moment. He lifted the blade.

  And to both his relief and his profound disappointment, the sword remained silent.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Early morning, 18th of Lattan, 427 AA

  Avantari

  Ser Anton di’Guivera waited for the sunlight in a grim, a bleak, silence. Those who knew him well—and they were few—would have seen the blackness of the rage in the stillness of his face, in the silence, the forced economy of his movement.

  At his feet, thrown there like so much refuse, were eight medallions. Eight, stripped from the throats of their bearers, who now resided in the magisterial courts as common—and dangerous—criminals.

  The man who delivered them had been most insulting.

  But that, of course, was not what angered Ser Anton; he expected poor manners and poorer grace of the Northerners. No; that man had departed in a proper Northern snit, in the dead of the Lady’s night.

  They had not left it at that.

  They had sent him envoys that could not, not quite, be ignored.

  “Ser Anton?”

  He lifted his face, smoothing the lines of his mouth to a taut straightness. “Princess Mirialyn,” he replied.

  “We realize, of course, that you are not to be held responsible for the behavior of the witnesses that your students have chosen.”

  He was so weary of politics. The night sky was still in ascendence, and the temptation to be impolitic under the Lady’s moon was strong, strong, strong. He wanted the dawn, the steadying influence of the Sun; the touch of the Lord.

  “Of course,” he said at last. “That is why you are here. To assure me that no blame attaches to me or my students.”

  “Of course,” the pale-haired man said, speaking far more smoothly, and far less expressively, than the Princess. Ser Anton was certain that this man was born with the twisted tongue of the Northern bards. “But we wished to warn you, Ser Anton,” he said, “because there will be rumors attached to the evening’s events, and because it appears all of your students’ chosen witnesses, were involved in the unfortunate event, you will be under suspicion by people who are less open-minded.”

  “Of course.” He folded his arms across his chest like a shield, unconsciously choosing to take advantage of his height and his size. “And you now speak for the Crowns?”

  It was the Princess who replied. “I was not, unfortunately, witness to the events, Ser Anton. Had I been, I would have, of course, confined the interview to persons of appropriate affiliation.” She shrugged elegantly, casually. “Kallandras of Senniel happened to witness half of what occurred.

  “And although I do not believe you have met him, we have a young boy who was witness to all.”

  She turned, spoke a word to the two guards at her back. One of them disappeared for a moment, but it didn’t matter. Ser Anton knew who he would bring back.

  He did not pray to the Lord for anything but strength, and he did not pray from a position of weakness.

  Bruised, definitely black-eyed and swollen, the face was a little less familiar, a little more of a shock, than he expected. But he recognized Aidan. He knew failure when he saw it.

  Ser Anton di’Guivera was not a man accustomed to failure, but against common wisdom, he acknowledged that he was merely a man, and had failed in his time. Still, he was not a man to be glad of it, grateful for it, when the failure was his own.

  He did not know, therefore, how to feel at the sight of the boy.

  He listened to the bard recount the evening’s events; he even listened intently, wondering how much of it was true, and how much false. He would have to speak to the men himself, if they survived
their incarceration.

  Then he turned to the boy.

  “So,” he said, inclining his head, “you have seen your first battle, have been party to it. Do you still want a warrior’s life, young Aidan?”

  Aidan, grim-faced and hesitant at the same time, showed his age. He squared his shoulders, lifted his bruised chin—possible cracked jaw, from the look of the bruise’s color, and said, “Yes.”

  “Then you are very brave, very foolish, or both.”

  Aidan shook his head. Glanced up at Kallandras of Senniel, whose gaze was trapped by Ser Anton’s expression, or lack of it. “If we don’t fight 'em, they win.

  “I don’t know how to fight yet, but I will.” He was silent for a moment, then.

  Too silent. Too still.

  It was not yet dawn; the sun was half an hour away. He said, “Did you know what they were going to do?”

  Such a desire in those words, such a ferocity, such a quiet waiting. Lady, Lady, help him. He crouched—a posture distinct from kneeling, separate from it.

  “Aidan,” he said softly, “there are no rules in war. I ask you to remember this.”

  He knew that he would have caused the boy less pain if he had struck him, full out; if he had deepened or added to those bruises.

  What he had not realized, or what he had prevented himself from realizing beneath the Lady’s Moon, was that he would have caused himself less . . . discomfort as well.

  Was it a sign?

  And if it was, did it matter? He was Anton di’Guivera. No odd occurrence, and no discouragement, had ever served to sway him from his course. How was this different?

  The light was shrouded in smoke; fire burning the last of the night, and its oil, away. Behind, in the rooms down the long, stone hall, he could hear the echo of early rising. Almost certainly Andaro and Carlo.

  Today was the test of the river, the first test. They, all of his students, felt it auspicious to begin their exercises when the dawn lapped the edges of the night. It still surprised him. He wondered whose idea it was, because he could not conceive the pragmatic and political Andaro choosing such a superstitious course—but Carlo was a man of the open sky, the high sun; it defined him.

  Still, whoever chose the hour made a statement: for the hours between the Lord’s ascendence and the Lady’s descent were the hours in which a man was free to be himself, a follower of neither, a child of both.

  He stood, listening to the sounds of the day herald the day in.

  How, truly, was this different?

  Killing bandits, of course, was easy. Killing Tyrs hardly less so, in the end. She would have accepted their heads, in her name, and if not in her name, than in the name of the son—her son, the one territory in which she was ferocious in her protectiveness. But his Mari, his Mari would not, in the end, gladly accept the head of a boy.

  Did it matter?

  Surprising how the answer could change with the direction of the wind.

  Aidan was silent.

  Valedan was silent.

  The woman—the Princess, the ACormaris—was silent.

  Aidan had never realized just how loud, how uncomfortably loud, so much silence could be. He was miserable. He wished, although he wasn’t stupid enough to say it, that he had been ordered back to the guesthouse. He hadn’t, and everyone was so damned busy he was afraid to interrupt them and ask them the only question that really ate at him.

  That scream. Had it come from Sam’s room?

  He wasn’t stupid enough to think he could’ve made any difference. Hells, he’d seen what had happened to the ATerafin. But he hated that he’d run to safety when he’d heard the scream, because he thought—he was pretty sure—that it had come from her.

  He looked up, met the unnerving, and unblinking, gaze of the Member of the Order of Knowledge, and looked down at his feet again. They were all tense with waiting, all of them. But the Member of the Order of Knowledge had been the only person here to insist that Aidan be sent away.

  Valedan had refused the request.

  Problem was, it didn’t sound like much of a request to Aidan, and he knew better than to trust a mage. Especially after last night.

  Valedan turned to look out the window. The sky across the whole of the visible ocean was purple-pink.

  “You don’t have much time,” the ACormaris said quietly.

  “No.”

  “Your presence here is not, strictly speaking, necessary.”

  “It is not,” the Member of the Order of Knowledge broke in, “necessary at all.”

  Her eyes were narrowed slightly as they met his. She said nothing, and he shut up. It surprised Aidan, that the mage would shut up like that; the ACormaris didn’t look particularly dangerous. Maybe rank counted for something.

  “I feel that the responsibility is partly mine. Unless you specifically request otherwise, I will wait.”

  “And the Challenge?”

  Valedan said nothing. Aidan’s glance bounced between them until he realized that that was his answer.

  The sky grew paler, and paler still.

  Commander Sivari found them. “You’re popular,” he said, but only after delivering a very correct, very formal bow. “I didn’t think they were going to let me in, and it’s career-limiting to refuse a Commander of the Kings’ Swords entry into any portion of Avantari. ACormaris,” he added, bowing.

  She smiled. “Commander.”

  “We’re . . . almost ready.”

  They both looked at Valedan. Valedan stared at the door.

  Beyond the door was Devon ATerafin, with another gods-cursed mage. The master bard was with him as well.

  “Ser Valedan,” Commander Sivari said, “this is admirable. And you must decide, now, whether or not being admirable to a handful of Northerners is what you hoped to achieve at this Challenge.”

  Silence.

  “I will be required to give notice to the adjudicatory body if you choose to forgo the test of the river.” He waited. Frowned. “But if you forgo the test of the river, then your enemy, in failing, has still found some measure of success.” His frown deepened, and after a moment, he bowed. Left, his steps mincing and loud in the huge room.

  Aidan looked past him to the ACormaris, and she met his eyes. She smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile.

  He sidled up to her, taking care to stay as far away from the mage as possible. “How long is it going to take?”

  “I don’t know,” she said softly. “What you saw—what he underwent—we have no history of it here. The effect of the dagger makes clear the nature of the attacker, but the nature of the attack itself is of concern.”

  He dropped his voice as much as it could possibly be dropped and still be heard. “Why won’t Valedan leave?”

  “You must ask him that.”

  “I already did.”

  “And?”

  “He didn’t answer.”

  “Then I should not.” She smiled gently, “but I will. It is not his answer, and it is not perhaps the answer he would give; remember that.” She drew closer to him, and he thought—he thought her incredibly beautiful. As beautiful as he had once thought his mother was, when she had been his whole world. “Valedan is going to be King in the South. The word for King is ‘Tyr’agar,’ but either word—King or Tyr’agar—is just that, a word. He is not old.”

  He seemed old enough to Aidan, but Aidan didn’t choose to correct her, and besides, the way she said it, it sounded true.

  “He chose you as witness.”

  Aidan nodded; she seemed to expect that.

  “And were it not for his choice, your life would have been in no danger. He wishes to keep you at his side because there, he feels you will be safe. And if not, he will be there to fight a battle he believes to be his own.” She looked o
ver the top of Aidan’s head. “He also wishes to know that . . . no permanent harm was done to the ATerafin. Or if there was, the method by which it was done; it will be used against him again, and the knowledge is as much a weapon as his sword.”

  She stopped speaking, looked up and past him, and then looked back down. “He must learn, for himself, the difference between personal responsibility and power. If he is to take a country, he will have to sacrifice parts of it; there is no way that this war will not be won—or lost—without the deaths of thousands.”

  “But he knows that. There’s going to be a war.”

  “Ah, yes. Of course.” She smiled again, sadly. “But you know—we all know—that our parents will die. It’s fact, but we weep when the truth of it cannot be escaped.”

  She might have said something else, but the doors opened again.

  Commander Sivari stood between them.

  And at his side, the dark-haired, veiled woman. She stepped over the threshold, and fell at once to her knees, lowering her head into the stone. It made Aidan nervous, because there was something about her that just didn’t look like it should be on the floor.

  He heard the ACormaris mutter something under her breath. He’d’ve paid money to hear what it was, but she’d gone too quiet.

  “Serra Alina,” Valedan said. “Please, rise.”

  She did so at once. As if he was the one in command. “Ser Valedan.”

  “Why have you come?”

  “I would speak, if you would permit it, in private.”

  “I will not.”

  He couldn’t see all her face, but he could see her eyes. They narrowed a minute like sharp blades. “Very well.”

  “Speak freely,” Valedan said, clearly annoyed. It had the feel of an old discussion—a sour one.

  “You have ten minutes to join the Challenge. I have come to remind you of this fact.”

  “I will join the Challenge when I know the extent of the damage—”

  “You will damage yourself, and doom both the General and the Tyr’agnate over a matter of pretty principle.” She was still, and her voice was as cold as the Northern wind. “I do not understand what you hope to gain by waiting here, by insisting on waiting here, but I will tell you what you accomplish in the eyes of the men you must impress. They will assume that you are weak, or frightened, by a single attempt on the life of a seraf.”