The Uncrowned King

by Michelle West

  “Right. Or at the very least bust you down to sentrus.”

  “I’m already at sentrus,” Fiara said, although they both knew it.

  “Pity, that. This is war, Fiara. It’s not a little bit of infighting or a bit of ugly rivalry. And you know what Duarte’s like in a war.” She shook her head; stray strands of hair clung to her face like black filigree.

  “Yeah, I remember,” Fiara said distantly. The distance, the sudden quiet that took the words, made it clear that she did. “But you know something, ’Lexis?”

  “What?”

  “You were worse.”

  Alexis’ turn to be silent, to let silence acknowledge the truth in the words that might have been an accusation had they come from an outsider. “We weren’t really talking about either Duarte or myself. We were talking about Valedan. He’s not at liberty to start a fistfight because he feels like it. Not now. Not ever.

  “They’re letting him know it, probably as gently as they’re allowed to get away with letting him know it. Certainly a helluvalot more gently than Duarte would’ve. Oh good.”

  “What.”

  “They’re back. Heads up. Look sharp. You’ve got your orders.”

  Kiriel di’Ashaf, off-duty for the moment in the shadows of the tented awnings that had been put up by what might have been a small army of men and women had they been carrying something other than tent poles and fabric, stared at Fiara, then Alexis, her head bobbing back and forth between them as they exchanged sentences.

  She did not understand the Kalakar guards.

  “Was he given an order, then?” she asked Cook.

  “Who, Valedan?”

  “Yes.”

  “About what?”

  “About how to behave.”

  “No.”

  “Then the example Alexis gave makes no sense.”

  “Kiriel—” Cook brought his hands up to massage his forehead. Or at least to cover his face; Kiriel couldn’t quite tell which. “Valedan wants to be a King.”

  “He wants to rule, yes.”

  “Kings don’t start fistfights.”

  “But—if they want, and they rule, who would dare to stop them?”

  “No one.”

  “Well then?”

  “Valedan doesn’t rule yet. He has to impress a lot of people before he gets to be ruler.” Cook’s expression shifted slightly; he smiled as Kiriel stared at him. The smile cracked when she spoke, though.

  “And he’s going to impress people by allowing himself to be belittled in front of witnesses?” It did not occur to her to keep the scorn out of her words. “Are these judges trying to weaken him? Are they in the thrall of his enemy?”

  Cook covered his face with his hands again.

  “You two!” Alexis shouted.

  They both looked up.

  “Look sharp!”

  Cook straightened out. Kiriel stared at him. “But we’re off duty,” she said at last.

  She understood, by his reaction, that he was not pleased with the outcome of their conversation. That he had not, in fact, been pleased with the outcome of most of the conversations they had beneath the open sky, on this terrible, hot, wet, endless day.

  Neither was she.

  They made no sense. They made no sense at all. The men were here to prove they had power and skill—but they were forbidden to fight. Absolutely forbidden to kill.

  That there were levels of ‘forbidden’ was new to her. New as this city. New as these strange, confusing and irritating people that called themselves Black Ospreys. In the Shining Palace, forbidden had only one meaning.

  She would have remained silent, but she had to ask one more question. “Cook?”

  “Yes, Kiriel?” His voice was almost inflectionless.

  “What’s the purpose of ruling if everyone you surround yourself with has more say in your existence—more power—than you do?”

  Morning.

  The second day of a trial that had been more of a trial than Valedan could have imagined. He had thought—and he knew, now, how stupid he’d been—that he might display the skills he had built, over time, with the aid of Mirialyn ACormaris; that he might distinguish himself in the eyes of his people.

  And then what?

  Be admired? Be held in high esteem?

  A completely innocent girl was dead—and he had no reason to believe that that death had not been a hideous one. In her wake, eight men, eight unquestioned and unquestionable men, followed. The work, he was told, of the Dominion. He believed it.

  “You’re thinking again,” Commander Sivari said.

  Valedan shrugged.

  “He’s brooding,” the ACormaris said gently.

  He started at the sound of her voice.

  “I cannot stay,” she said; it was true. Here, only the personal trainers and the witnesses were allowed to gather. He had offered to cite her, and Serra Alina had emphatically refused to allow it; to be trained, it seemed, by a woman was worse than no training at all.

  He started to speak, and she smiled, shaking her head. “I’ve brought you a gift; I wish you to both use and keep it.” And turning to the men who accompanied her, she lifted a spear by its thick wooden shaft. “It is not magic,” she said, “but it has been crafted by a master, and it is a simple enough thing.” Her smile faded. “I gave you your first sword,” she said softly, “but it is not up to any of the tasks you have chosen to face. I am glad of it, and I would replace it equally gladly—but I fear that you will have no significant sword until you raise the Southern one.” She bowed. “Do well today, Valedan. You can.”

  He was surprised by the gift, although he shouldn’t have been. He bowed in return. “Are you—”

  “Allowed this? Yes, of course. There are similar gifts being given throughout the coliseum. No weapon, no artifact, is brought to the field that doesn’t pass beneath at least three sets of mage-born eyes. And for this Challenge, given the events of the past nights, I would judge that estimate conservative.”

  He took the spear. Held it tightly in both hands.

  At his side, the young witness gaped at the retreating figure of the Princess Royal.

  “I don’t like it.”

  “You’ve said that one hundred and twenty-seven times since I got out of bed this morning.”

  “I wouldn’t have said it at all,” Avandar Gallais replied smoothly, “if that bed hadn’t been located in the healerie. You’ve been—”

  “I’ve been fully healed,” she replied. Of course, as she’d said a variant of those words one hundred and twenty-seven times as well, she knew they were a waste of breath. And on a day like this, hot air was unpleasant and unwelcome.

  Torvan ATerafin’s face was stiff from the effort of not laughing—and if she could’ve been certain who he was almost laughing at, she’d have made sure he paid for it somehow. After the Challenge; until the Challenge was over, she was going to need him. Of all of the Terafin’s Chosen, Torvan was the guard she felt closest to; she had saved his life at least once, and he—he had saved something more precious to her than her own life. Arann’s. One of her den.

  Jewel was renowned for her long memory.

  She thought, looking at Torvan, that age had not yet found a way to settle on him; his shoulders were broader, and his face a little more lined, but his hair was still dark, and he had about him that hardness that death, and not age, diminished.

  Now if she could only do something about the sense of humor, she’d be set.

  “I did say it was all right,” Daine said, speaking softly, measuring his words as if words were precious.

  “And Alowan overruled you.”

  Daine winced at the memory, and then shrugged. “I’m here. She’s here. You can hardly call that being overruled.”


  “Say that,” Jewel muttered under her breath, “when this is all over and you’ve been locked in a healerie with an angry healer.”

  He laughed.

  And his laughter sounded so familiar to her, she joined in. Kept laughing, even when she realized why: it was a deeper echo of her laugh, full of bass and volume.

  “Besides,” she added, “Carver managed to get Angel the head list.”

  “The what?”

  “Head list. List of the contenders,” she added.

  Daine looked confused. Avandar looked disgusted. Torvan looked away.

  “Why,” the healer asked, “is that important?”

  “Those are the up-to-date lists we use for betting. There’s money riding on this year’s Challenge—and mine is some of it.”

  Avandar looked even less amused. He hadn’t reached the bottom of his limited tolerance yet; the decade and a bit had given Jewel a very exact sense of how far she could offend his sensibilities. “Jewel,” he said, “I must say again that I think this unwise.”

  “Must you?” She looked up, and between the opening and closing windows milling people made in the crowd, she saw a familiar face. “ATerafin!” She shouted, and then, as she looked around her, she added, “Devon!”

  She knew at once, and didn’t bother to question that knowledge, that something was wrong.

  It wasn’t that he was tense—although he was if you knew him well enough to look for all the right signs—it was something other, something else. Maybe, just maybe, it was the fact that he looked as if he hadn’t slept a wink in the last day. Or week, she amended, as she finally drew close enough to examine him.

  She had thought to be cool. She remembered that before she opened her mouth to speak. This man had been a friend, and he had refused her the aid that she’d all but begged for. Begging didn’t come easily to Jewel, ATerafin or no; it had never come easy to her; she would never do it for anything less than the life of one of her own. Her own life, and she’d probably spit in the face of all danger. But she still had to pull herself up short to stop the greeting that had been natural for her.

  I must be getting soft. “ATerafin.” She bowed.

  He bowed in return, and the bow was stiff. As if he were wounded, and hiding it. Or as if—

  She turned her head slightly, ever so slightly. There, in the shade provided by trees that had not yet grown too tall, lounging like one of the visible idle rich, was a man that she had seen only a handful of times in her life—and had intensely disliked each and every one of them.

  Duvari.

  The Lord of the Compact.

  “Tell me,” she said, all personal business forgotten.

  “Not here,” he replied. “And not in front of so many.”

  “I’ll have to take Avandar.”

  “Your domicis has been cleared, as is usual. The Lord of the Compact will be in attendance. As will, with your permission, a member of the magi.”

  “Meralonne?”

  Devon nodded. Stiffly.

  “Done.”

  They met in a room that Jewel had never seen the inside of—and instantly regretted entering. There were, of all things, no windows here, and although the room gave the impression of size, she thought it due to the fact that the walls were painted a flat, pale white. White that color was hard to come by, and a good thing, too.

  Unfortunately, it seemed that while the rare, pale white was found here in abundance, common things that usually made up the interior of any room were not: chairs, for one. Tables. There was a fireplace, and she supposed that in a desperate pinch she could crawl up it and escape.

  Avandar, as usual, was unflappable. And as he normally chose to stand, the loss of chairs were entirely cosmetic to him.

  They weren’t to Jewel; every man in the room was a good eight to ten inches taller than she was, and she hated to be at a height disadvantage; she was aware that it made her feel a bit defensive. That never worked to her advantage.

  “Tell me,” she said, turning to Devon, forcing herself not to dwell on her growing irritation by taking control of the meeting.

  “We were hoping,” Duvari said—not much surprise, really, as that son of a bitch never ceded control of anything to anyone, “that you might tell us.” She hadn’t expected to like Duvari much better now than at any other time in her life, and in that at least, her expectations weren’t disappointed.

  “Why don’t I tell you I’m recovering from a grave—illness. This means that I tire easily.”

  Devon’s momentary expression was halfway between frown and grimace.

  Duvari’s was all ice.

  “What Duvari means to say,” the ATerafin said smoothly, “is that we have news. It is of a sensitive nature; it has not been cleared, and is not to be made public.” He paused. “Insomuch as that is possible given the witnesses to the event itself.”

  “What event?”

  “We will require, of course, your word.”

  What she wanted to say made it suddenly clear that her previous words were true. She was tired. Biting the words back and swallowing them was harder than swallowing the vile concoctions of lunatic herbmasters, but she managed. “You of course have not only my word, but the pledge of my House. The Terafin herself brought me the request; she’s promised you full cooperation and wishes to assure you that any member of her House will likewise cooperate.”

  She felt Avandar’s eyes on the side of her face. Tough. “But I can’t cooperate with innuendo, and I’ve also been requested to oversee something by the magi.”

  “We know what the magi require,” Duvari said. “It was our suggestion.”

  She wanted to ask him if the We was royal. Didn’t.

  “Is there anything unusual about the man you know as Devon ATerafin?”

  She started to answer. Stopped. The wording was incredibly awkward, and for all that he was a bastard, he was a well-spoken one. She turned her gaze to Devon.

  To Devon ATerafin.

  He met her eyes, almost flinching from them. As if he expected her to see something. As if he expected her to be able to read the secrets of his past, the embarrassing ones, or the painful ones. As if he expected to be somehow exposed. But he knew better. He knew how her gift worked.

  And that, of all things, made her nervous. He knew.

  She didn’t look at people this closely. Not often. Both she and they tended to find it uncomfortable and unnatural. But Devon stood, as he always stood when business was at hand: unflinching and quiet. It made it easier for her to forget that she was staring at him; he’d all but vanished from behind his eyes.

  His eyes were light; the light of sun on a blade or on water; nothing gentle there. Nothing vulnerable. The lines of his face, worn into the corners of eyes and mouth and the stretch of brow, told his age, but not to Jewel; as she watched them, they twisted, jumped, vanished.

  Vanished into shadow and darkness.

  Although she knew she wasn’t touching him, she could feel his hand in hers, hear the steadying murmur of wordless whisper. The tunnels beneath the city had devoured half her life in the space of a few short weeks: Lefty, Fisher, Duster, and Old Rath. They had given her her life: ATerafin, part of the governing Council.

  But while she’d been in them, that one time, with Devon, she had had little thought of what she had lost, and little enough thought of what she might gain. Balanced there, between life and death, the only alternatives were life. Death.

  She could hear her heart, feel it as if it were alive, a thing so foreign to her daily existence that it was beyond her control. She might as well have been sixteen years old again, in the darkness, looking for the demons who were closing the ways—and by closing them, opening the gate.

  Except that this time, in the darkness, she heard his heart as well. ATerafin. Astari.
Kin.

  He lifted a hand and opened it; she heard the movement more than she saw it, but the glow in his palm was mage-stone, light that could be contained without pain, hidden with ease, called upon when needed.

  “Jewel,” he said, using the silent motion of lips. “The light.”

  She lifted her free hand. Opened it. Reached for the stone—

  And cried out as it touched her skin, devouring it. Mage-stone lost all illusion; she looked at the shard of someone’s soul, someone’s brilliant, sharp-edged soul.

  In shock, she looked up, and she saw that his eyes were golden, that his hair was dark—that he was, in fact, not Devon, not a man at all.

  “You cannot see clearly,” the woman said, and she knew this woman, with her dark blue robes and her pale skin, violet eyes. “Take the test, Jewel. Walk the path.”

  The fire ceased to burn her; all that remained was the light, pale and oddly menacing. That light caught her eye as if it were a trap set for just that purpose and she gazed into it. It shuddered, as if gaze were touch, and that touch unwanted, undesirable even in nightmare.

  But she looked anyway, because at its core was Devon himself. He carried a long knife, not a sword, and a buckler; he wore no armor, and he’d obviously seen fighting; he was bloodied. Unbowed, though, and grim—as she might expect.

  She wondered what he was fighting.

  “The light,” he said, his eyes tracing the confinement of its shining walls, her cupping hands. “The light. Can’t you see it?”

  She did. She thought she might speak to him for longer, thought she would gain answers in this twilight that she had never gained; access to a part of Devon that was as hidden to her as his role in the Astari was hidden to most people.

  And she wanted to know. That was the worst of it. She wanted to know because here, in this place, she didn’t have to expose anything of herself to get those answers. It was one of the very few times in her life that the power of the seer-born had truly seemed like a weapon to her.

  She knew what that meant.

  She looked away. But not before she understood what exactly it was that he wanted from her; how exactly she could come to his aid.