The Uncrowned King

by Michelle West

  “How?”

  “Best not to discuss it,” she warned. “When you see it, it will be obvious enough.”

  He nodded to her.

  “All right, the rest of your guards will have to wear them as well.” She raised a hand to her brow.

  Valedan moved at once, and Kallandras thought, watching him, that he had not noticed—that none of them had noticed—that the ACormaris had said not if but when.

  To say that the Ospreys were mutinous was inaccurate; had they been, Duarte would have been forced to act. But to say that they were happy or complacent would have been to miss their point entirely, and they made it. He was willing, for the sake of peace, to actually don the first ring.

  It helped that his magic was capable of telling him that the power of the ring was defensive and informative, and that the transformative magic that resided within the gold—not an easy spell, in his estimation, because it was so very subtle—was meant for the gold itself, no more. But even knowing this, there was something very wrong about watching gold—one of his favorite metals—curl around his finger like a snake and then harden there. It was . . . disconcerting.

  Alexis followed his lead. Auralis obeyed as well, although he couldn’t refrain from cheap theatrics when the ring fit itself to his hand. Had the Princess of the Blood not been in attendance, Duarte would have rewarded his fake cry of agony with a good reason for a real one. But that did the trick as far as the magic-suspicious Ospreys were concerned—because any cowardice on their part would now be seen as worthy of Auralis’ mockery, and no one subjected themselves to that willingly.

  Unfortunately, when Kiriel took the ring and slid it around her slender finger, it exploded.

  She felt nothing when the ring touched her palm, and she had been trained so well, magic should have set up a shiver that started there and passed through her as if she were a bell and it a clapper. Oh, she knew it was magic; gold didn’t move like that without cause—but she couldn’t feel any of it.

  “What are the rings for?” she whispered to Cook.

  He’d shrugged. “Don’t know how they work—but I’d guess they’re supposed to help us separate people from demons, somehow.”

  Made sense. She didn’t know how she’d accomplish the task had it been made hers—but then again, there was a reason the Empire was respected, even feared, among the denizens of the Shining Court; the speed with which they approached their crises did not surprise her as much as it should have. As it might have, once.

  Her fingers curled up round the edges of the gold as she made a fist, driving its cool lip into her skin. A moment of clarity gave her pause: this ring was meant to detect the kin, or their master’s work. And what was she, if not the latter?

  She started to speak. Lifted her hand to catch the Primus’ attention. It caught light instead; light along the rounded curve of polished platinum.

  All right, she thought, lowering her hand. You’ve deprived me of what I am. How far does it go?

  “Cook, do the rings do anything?”

  “Don’t know. You heard Duarte—or weren’t you listening?”

  She said nothing. He rolled his eyes.

  “Person’s not the same as the first person it fit itself to, it’ll let the Kings’ men know. If the body’s the same, but it’s been tampered with somehow, it’ll let the Kings’ men know that, too.” His eyes narrowed. “Why are you asking all of this?” he asked suddenly, as if only just remembering that Kiriel never asked an idle question.

  She met his eyes. Smiled softly. He stepped back from that smile, and that made her smile deepen and lose its edge. “Let’s find out,” she answered. She slid the ring onto the ringless hand. Because, of course, it was her less-favored weapon hand. Old habits, deeply ingrained.

  The light came.

  Burned.

  Expanded in a ring of white fire.

  She had the time to cry out, and the strength not to, as shards of hot gold scored her clothing and her flesh.

  The pain itself was like a cloud of smoke; it cleared with air and time. And as it did, she looked up to see that Primus Duarte was covering his face with both hands. Her hearing was not what it had been—a gift, no doubt, of the cursed ring the seer had ‘dropped’—but she knew that he was swearing under his breath.

  “Well,” Auralis said, filling the silence before anyone else could, “that answers that.”

  “What answers what?”

  “We know what the ring does when it’s not on the right hand.” He laughed, speaking to Duarte, whose hands had come down and now rested at his side. “Anyone stupid enough to try to take her out, or worse, take her over, deserves whatever the Hells they get.”

  That caused laughter, even hers. It surprised her enough that she stopped. Stared at her hand, which was bleeding and messy.

  “The ACormaris is going to be pissed,” Alexis said, from the corner of the room. “What do we tell her?”

  “To get us a ring that goes on the normal way. Auralis is absolutely right,” the Primus said.

  “Which means,” Cook whispered, for Kiriel’s ears alone, “it’ll be his fault if something goes wrong.” He stopped then, stared at her hand, and swore. “Med!”

  “It’s nothing,” she said curtly.

  “There’s a reason they don’t let soldiers self-diagnose.” He reached for her arm, stopped himself an inch short, and frowned. “You’re an Osprey, you follow his orders. Duarte!”

  “What?”

  “That light was a bit more than just pyrotechnics.”

  “What?”

  “Kiriel’s hand has been fried.”

  “Tell her to get to the medical division, post haste.” He paused. “Make sure she doesn’t see a healer, just in case there’s one on site.”

  “Right, sir.” To Kiriel, he added, “You heard him.”

  She frowned, but it was half-hearted. The ring had exploded upon sealing itself round her finger. No one else had had that effect on it. Somewhere, buried so far within her that she couldn’t reach it no matter how desperately she tried—and she had—she was still herself.

  Funny, how much that mattered.

  Ser Anton watched as Mirialyn ACormaris slid a ring that he had chosen from the clutch of slender, simple adornments onto her finger. She made the movement masculine, graceless, and public, lifting her arm so that the men here, most of whom were taller than she, but not all, could see what followed.

  It wasn’t particularly pleasant; the gold itself seemed to shudder at impact with flesh.

  “Now,” she announced, “the ring itself is proof of my identity. It will change in appearance if it is removed, and it will . . . warn us if the rings change hands. It will also alert us to the presence of foreign, but hidden, magics.

  “You may, of course, desire to test the truth of my words. A word of advice: Don’t. After this event, no athlete will be allowed into the Challenge grounds should the ring be altered.”

  Ser Anton did not bother to soften the words she spoke; he translated truly, keeping up with their sense rather than their exact tone.

  “At this point, you may feel free, any of you, to leave the grounds should you choose not to wear the rings that we have made. We understand your suspicion, and ask your patience and understanding for ours. We have no choice. A young girl has already died, and it is only our vigilance that will prevent a similar death. If you choose not to bear such a ring as this, you will be escorted to the bridge, but you will not be stopped or questioned.” She turned, bowing to Ser Anton di’Guivera.

  He watched her rise. “I am impressed,” he said. “If I were in the South, ACormaris, I would almost suspect, by the speed at which you responded to the threat, that the threat was somehow manufactured by you as well.”

  She did not speak; did not choose to frame a reply t
o an accusation that was, in the end, no accusation.

  He held out his hand.

  “No, Ser Anton,” she replied, her lips devoid of smile, “I will not choose the ring you wear; choose it yourself, as you chose mine.”

  He nodded, thinking that she was, in the end, a very perceptive woman. That she understood that women had no visible power, no authority, in the South, that they were considered fairer and weaker in many, many things. That by understanding that truth, she had used it against them all. For she was a woman, and she had donned the ring he had chosen without flinching. Any man here who now did less unmanned himself in front of his compatriots.

  Cleverly played, he thought, as he picked up a slender circlet of gold. And then, unbidden, another’s face came to him, another’s name. Serra Alina di’Lamberto. He placed the ring on his finger and turned to his students.

  “Put them on,” he said, in a voice that brooked no refusal—and no questions. “The test of the javelin will proceed when all contestants and their chosen trainers and guards bear such trifles.”

  Tyr’agnate Ramiro di’Callesta did not wear the golden circlet upon his finger; Baredan di’Navarre did. It said much about these two men, and that saying was lost on neither when they met to observe the contenders in the coliseum below.

  What was interesting to both men was that the Serra Alina di’Lamberto was so adorned, although she had chosen, for such public display as Serras were subject to, to ring her hands with such gold and gems as had been given her by her family. It made the ring hard to spot unless one knew what to look for. Both men did.

  “Is there truth,” Ramiro said softly, “to the rumors?”

  “There is truth,” was Baredan’s less stern reply, “to all rumors. But if you refer to the attack upon the guesthouses, yes. Your information is good, even here.”

  His sources of information within the Empire were unrivaled across the length and breadth of the Dominion, and both men knew it. It was Southern, to stand thus, knowing so much and saying so little. Peaceful, in its way, because it was normal. So very little was normal in the world these days.

  He found himself missing his wife. Serra Amara the Gentle. And his wives, his concubines. He did not yet miss his sons; they had reached the age where the wildness of their youth was second only to their determination to prove that they were, in fact, unimpaired by that youth, and it was tiresome to argue with boys who could only barely refrain from speaking the words that might force him to kill them.

  Yet he had been such a youth, and had become a man, having survived his father’s increasingly justified wrath; he had hopes that his sons would do the same.

  “My son,” Baredan said, “would have appreciated this far more than I; he would come to it with new eyes.”

  “And not eyes weary of spectacle? General, I am surprised.”

  Baredan smiled, the curve resting easily on his lips. “The Northern air,” he said. “It affects us all. All,” he added, with a sideways glance, “except yourself and the Serra Alina. A sword is softer than that woman, and less sharp.”

  “I would not have suspected that the North could provide such ease of spirits; had I, I might have convened a meeting of Generals here, claiming neutral territory.”

  “And I would have refused such a request, thinking it either insult or trap,” the General replied. “But I find it odd, to stand beside the man who, of all Tyrs, I least trusted—”

  “Garrardi, surely.”

  “Garrardi is dangerous in his fashion, but easily predictable; his cunning is turned to his pleasure and his pride, not his power. But you interrupt me, Tyr of Callesta.”

  “To defend my honor, surely. But continue.”

  “I stand beside the man I least trusted, surrounded by the Northerners who follow the demon Kings I’ve fought against for half my life, watching a hundred youngsters heft spears across a manicured waste of greenery. It is . . . not what I expected.” He laughed. “I have to be given leave to wear my sword, not to meetings between men who have much to fear from each other, but on simple errands, on a stroll from one end of this ancient palace to another. In everything, this life confounds my experience.”

  “And yet you sound suspiciously content.”

  “I am content. I feel the war in the air,” he added. “I feel a battle. And it is not a battle of convenience—I say this now, who have never said this, either to the other Generals or to the Tyr we then served—but a battle that must be fought, against an enemy, finally, worth killing; worth dying to kill.” He laughed again; it surprised Ramiro. Had they been in the Dominion, it would have worried him. Such laughter, unconcealed, was either ruse or an inexplicable loss of control—for they had never been friends, and given the roles they occupied, were unlikely to become any closer than they were now.

  Not if they were wise.

  “I feel young again, Tyr’agnate. I feel young, and on the edge of a battle that will define not only my life, but life itself. And he,” he added, “bearing the blood of the Leonnes in his veins, has brought us to it. The demons have been called, and if the golden-eyed serve the demons in any form, then I am the Lady’s son, not the Lord’s. They cannot best us if we stand together, and so, for this war, we will stand.”

  Ramiro’s gaze glanced off the General’s shaded profile, and then down to where the contenders gathered.

  Valedan kai di’Leonne had come up to the line drawn across the grass with fine, white powder. He bowed, courteously and with obvious grace, to the adjudicator who bid him wait. All this they could see clearly.

  And this is the boy who is worth such a war?

  “The brawl with Anton’s boy was costly,” Baredan said, as if it needed saying. “But they watch each other now.”

  “They watched each other,” Ramiro replied, “because that ‘boy’ has at least one broken rib; he will wait out the wrestling, but will ride and fight. If he cannot take the crown for himself, he will make certain that the kai Leonne cannot claim it either.”

  Silence.

  Valedan stood as the adjudicator rang the heavy, perfect bell. He drew his arm back, his shoulder stretching in the sunlight, his skin exposed a moment from beneath the white tunic. No armor here, nor any need of it. Not in the North.

  There were three throws allowed with the spear. Two were for targets, and one for distance. The sun was in the wrong place for the former; for the latter, it mattered less. The kai Leonne lifted his hand to shield his eyes from sunlight. He stood a moment—a long, tense moment, and then he let the spear fly.

  They granted him silence.

  The rest of the crowd did not. At least in this, there was no difference between the North and the South.

  “My eyes are not equal to yours,” Ramiro said, lying baldly. “How did the spear fly?”

  “Who cares? It’s the landing that counts,” the General said. “And he’s hit the target faster, and more accurately, than any before him.”

  “Good.” The Tyr smiled. “But I confess I do not understand why the measure of strength is the last test, not the first.”

  “In the North,” a third voice said, “we value control over raw power.”

  Both men turned to face the Princess, Mirialyn ACormaris. She smiled, the smile reminiscent in many ways of Alina’s.

  The Tyr’agnate shrugged. “At least you acknowledge that raw power has its value.”

  “Yes,” she said. “In this world, at this time, there is no choice but to acknowledge that fact.” Then she bowed, respectfully, to the Tyr’agnate. “I must deprive you a moment of your companion.”

  “Oh?”

  Her gaze lingered a moment over his unadorned ring finger. “I beg your indulgence and your understanding,” she said, “but it is a matter Southern, and it is to be resolved in the arena and beyond; you have chosen not to venture there. General Ba
redan?”

  He nodded.

  Followed.

  Ramiro di’Callesta cursed, but inwardly. He could not trust himself to Northern magics.

  The Serra Alina was waiting for them, and at her feet was the body of a man dressed in the Southern style; armored, although the weather was poor for it. Unarmed, however. He wore no flashings, no colors to mark him, no crest that might attach to a clan—yet the value of the armor he wore was such that the clans were certainly involved.

  She looked up when Mirialyn entered the enclosed room.

  “Valedan did well,” the Princess said. “For the medium-range target, no one else has come close. I believe that Eneric will match—but not best—his throw.”

  “Eneric?” Baredan said.

  “The Northern favorite,” she said. “The man considered most likely to take the crown.”

  “Ah. The man who won the River jump.”

  “Yes.”

  Alina, however, having received that much news, looked back to the body. “General,” she said, “I beg your indulgence in this.”

  “This is a Northern affair,” the General replied, knowing well that she needed no indulgence of his, save for form’s sake—and knowing further that one did not withhold such indulgence from a woman of her reputation. “And you must, of course, feel free to interact in a method the Northerners find acceptable. I am not your brother, and not your husband; you are not my responsibility, Serra Alina, save in the way that all women in need of aid are.” And he knew that she would die before she required his aid, or the aid of any man. He bowed.

  And she surprised him by bowing as well. “I am . . . less familiar with these things than I should be,” she said softly. “My training with the Lamberto clan is not the equal of the training other women of powerful families receive.

  “But this man is one of the men who made their attack upon the Tyr’agar’s chosen witness. Or rather, he was.”

  “What is he doing here?”

  She was silent for a moment. When she spoke, she spoke as if there had been no hesitation. An honor, he realized, but only later. “I asked to see him.”