“Pardon?”
“I asked the ACormaris for permission to examine the body.”
“And you felt that you might have some insight into the manner of death that the Northern mages and their experts did not?” He did not bother to hide the incredulity in his words.
“Obviously.” Nor she her sarcasm. He was surprised. Refreshed by it. “However I am not completely familiar with all of the signs.”
The signs. He froze, unable to mistake her meaning however much he might have desired otherwise. Then he pushed past the ACormaris, and knelt at the side of the Serra Alina.
She folded her hands in her lap as if they were a fan; lowered her chin, straightened her back and waited. Waited as he brushed the hair above the left ear lobe aside, turning the rigor-released flesh so that he might better examine it.
There, on the inside of the lobe, scored there as if by brand, was a single mark. A five-pointed star. He spit to the side and stood as if the touch of the mark against his flesh was beyond his ability to contain disgust for. It was.
“This mark,” the ACormaris said. “Is it as the Serra fears?”
“It is Kovaschaii,” the General replied. “And marked in such a way as to claim that credit.”
“The Kovaschaii do not mark their victims,” the ACormaris said, frowning. “Did they, we would have known what the marks meant on our own.”
“They do not mark men who are not meant for marking, no. In the Empire, I imagine that such a mark would be anathema to those who would seek the brotherhood’s aid to begin with. But from what I have heard, the brotherhood of the Lady’s dark face will grant a death that you specify, at a cost that she specifies. Easiest by far, and for that reason less costly, is to ask for the death and to allow them to openly claim it for what it is: a gift for the Lady.” He let the hair fall, and sat back from the body, the warmth of the sun having deserted him completely beneath this sky of stone and wood. “We were meant to know this.”
“Why?”
“Because,” the General replied, “demonkind has failed far more often in its attempts than the brotherhood has.”
The spears that had been passed before the eyes of the mages were passed beneath them again upon exit; they would, should the contenders choose the same weapons, be inspected again when they lifted weapon by shaft and walked up to the line drawn in grass. Easy enough to control that, here.
Easy enough to control everything, Valedan thought, save the flight of the spear itself. Wind helped him, or rather, its absence—but breeze or no, each contender was granted a space of minutes in which to ready his spear, minutes in which to throw it. The adjudicatory body, made restless and a little too sharp by the day’s delays, were strict in their enforcement of these laws, and at least five men had been disqualified from the medium-range throw because they waited for the wind to lessen.
None, so far, had been removed from the long target; one man’s public failure was another’s—several in this case—lesson.
Still, Valedan waited, not so much counting the seconds as feeling them, sinking into them. The long target was more difficult than the medium target, and far more difficult than the test of distance. The Serra Alina likened it to the life he had chosen, and she was probably right.
He was aware that to his left, fifty feet away, Eneric was also lining up his shot—also waiting, playing the time out until it came close to the edge, to see how Valedan threw.
He recognized it, of course, because he did the same; they might have been one man in an imperfect mirror, caught waiting.
Waiting to see who would flex arm first, who would put shoulder behind motion, who would loose the shaft.
And how far it would fly, how true.
It was not uncommon in the test of the long target for all men to fail, but there were degrees of failure.
No wind, none, and the sun scorching its way into the unwelcome distance. He hated to squint; he squinted.
It’s hard to strike the right balance, Sivari had said. Tough. Pay as much attention as you need to to your enemy; never pay more.
And how in the hells am I supposed to know what ‘enough’ is?
If you win, that’s enough.
It was a game, to wait; a test of something.
He counted. As carefully as he could count while waiting, while watching out of the corner of his eye, while glancing at the unblemished center of the target that Eneric of Darbanne needed to strike.
Thirty.
Ramiro di’Callesta watched from his seat at the curve of the coliseum’s height. He heard Miko say, although he was not close enough to see who the benefactor of his words was, “What by Lord’s Fire is he doing?”
There was no answer, but the Callestan Tyr smiled.
Young, that boy; young and hot-tempered as the young are—they had seen evidence of that during the River Jump. The first thing he had done, striking the arrogant, ill-mannered student of Ser Anton di’Guivera, that had been likable. Oh, he was admirable, and Ramiro granted him admiration with ease, but he admired many men. Even, although he did not say it loudly, the General Alesso di’Marente. Especially the General, who played his game so well he might indeed gain for himself what none of the Tyrs could ever have taken: The Tor Leonne. The Dominion’s prize.
Yet if he admired Alesso, if he thought him a man worthy of regard, he did not like him. This boy, by being—for that instant, no more—a boy, like any young man, had made his mark on the Tyr’agnate.
“Why isn’t he throwing the spear?”
Because, Miko, Ramiro thought with some irritation, he waits to see who throws first: The Northerner who thus far is his only competition, or himself. They have a limit of time imposed upon them; step over it by a second and the throw is lost entirely. But throw too early and all advantage is lost. Let the other expose his power and his skill first for your inspection.
“Maybe he’s too nervous to throw,” another of his guards said—and Ramiro was grateful for the existence of Torra, regardless of the language barrier that was so difficult to surmount, because it meant they could only humiliate themselves by displaying their ignorance among the few Annagarians present.
The adjudicator lifted his hand; there was a grimness about his expression that could be easily seen in the half second Valedan spared him. Time.
Fifteen.
No movement to his side. No shadowed flight across grass, no spear’s arc.
Ten.
The spear had to leave the hand before the last of the time was counted. In the space between breaths he had time to wonder if his count was correct. Only that much time. The sun was hot, the wind scant.
Five.
He pulled his arm back slightly; his breath, he deepened. Close now.
Three.
Close enough.
Valedan kai di’Leonne threw the spear—and as it flew, he saw that it did not fly alone.
Ramiro smiled.
His men were a great deal more effusive—far too effusive, given the behavior expected of Tyran—and that broadened, rather than lessened, his smile; there were, after all, no women present to note the breach of manner and sensibility—and no Southerners of rank close enough to judge him by their enthusiasm.
Neither spear flew completely true; neither hit the center of the target, which was, after all no bigger than the heart of a large man—but they hit the targets well.
Valedan kai di’Leonne frowned. He heard the roar of the crowd; heard Weston, some Torra, some of the Northern tongue, syllables blending and disappearing in the tumult.
But he was not satisfied.
Not even when the adjudicator returned to him and bowed. “Your throw,” he said.
Eneric of Darbanne appeared at his side, expression as cool as the sea in the rainy season. But he bowed, and then extended a
hand in the Northern style. “I have not heard of you before,” he said, “but I will not forget the name now that I have heard it. A pity that you did not compete in the River Jump.”
Was it meant as an insult?
Valedan shrugged. Did it matter? Form was form; he had forgotten that at the River’s test, and he had paid for it. He took the offered hand. He had expected the Northern man to do what many Northerners do—to make of this shaking of hands some primitive contest of strength.
Eneric did not. He brushed pale, pale hair from eyes that were almost too blue to be real and smiled. First smile. “You are not satisfied.”
Valedan shrugged again.
“You bested me here, and equaled me in the medium throw.” He started to speak, stopped, his smile broadening. “In the North, your displeasure would be an insult; to me, it is not.”
“An insult?”
“Yes. It is clear that you consider the throw inferior—and we were both off our mark today. But to consider it inferior when it bested my best—it implies that I am beneath notice.”
“You speak well for a Northerner.”
“And you speak well for a Southerner.” He released Valedan’s hand. Bowed. “I believe that you have been underestimated, Valedan di’Leonne. But I believe that this next test is mine.”
Valedan looked at the size of the Northerner, torn for just that moment between the competition and grace. To his surprise, grace won. Eneric was larger than Valedan, with the longer reach—none of which mattered; he was well-muscled, bulkier; he carried a momentum through size and strength alone that, for distance, Valedan could not match. “Yes,” he said. “If someone challenges you there, it will not be me.”
He bowed then, Southern style—and then when he rose, he struck his chest with a curled fist.
Eneric returned the latter gesture, and they parted.
Ramiro watched.
“Well?”
He glanced up, surprised at the interruption. Beneath the shade of a wide brim, his par waited in silence.
“The . . . hat . . . it does not suit you.”
Fillipo met his brother’s eyes a moment and then removed it. “You were lost to wind,” he said.
“Or sun’s glare,” Ramiro replied.
“He threw well,” Fillipo said politely.
But they were kin, these two; he knew that the throw itself could not demand this attention from the Tyr’agnate of Callesta. He waited patiently.
At length, as the contenders began to assemble for the last of the three tests, he was released, and turned to his brother, rewarding patience. “I do not know who that boy is,” he said. “I thought—we all thought—that he was seventeen, and weakened both by thinned blood and Northern life.
“And then, I confess, I thought him a Lambertan pawn—the student of Alina di’Lamberto, no more.”
“And what has changed that?”
“That man,” Ramiro said softly. “That pale-skinned, pale-haired man. Do you recognize him?”
“Eneric of Darbanne, I believe. He is said to be the Champion in waiting,” Fillipo shrugged. “You did not hear what passed between them, surely?”
Ramiro frowned. “Of course not. But in watching it, enough is clear. The kai Leonne has made a friend, if I am not mistaken.”
“Men make friends,” Fillipo replied. “It is hardly worthy of remark.”
“It is worthy when that man is your enemy.”
“Ramiro—this is the Kings’ Challenge, not the Lord’s. The competitors are often friendly.”
“Granted,” the Tyr’agnate said, unmoved. “But Valedan is a stranger to tests. I would have said, the first time I saw him, that he was a stranger to the sword as well. But now I understand that he is a stranger not to its use, but its allegiance. He has the Lord’s grace.”
The third throw of the day belonged, decisively, to Eneric of Darbanne. The Northerners who occupied the northern side of the coliseum as if it were a recently taken castle, filled the whole of the isle with their jubilation when he took to the white line. It seemed impossible that their cries could grow louder, but they did, and almost immediately. He played no waiting game here; he threw with an ease that was dismissive, that acknowledged no competition.
Indeed, there was none. The spear fell just short of the line of benches occupied at times by the judicatory body, some ten feet, possibly twelve, from the next closest spear.
The test of strength gave him the lesser crown and closed the event for the day; Valedan kai di’Leonne, who had given him pause in the first and second throw gave him no pause in the third—although Captain Sivari was quick to point out that nothing short of a quarrel at close range would have done so—but in spite of his poorer placement in the third, he came second.
Andaro di’Corsarro finished best for the Southerners at tenth, and people were privately surprised at his finish; the Southerners did not favor spears or their use, and they were also poor archers.
No, the tests at which they excelled, always, were yet to come: The rider’s test.
And the sword’s.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The streets, during the Festival season, had a life of their own, a rhythm that sleep and work and the demands of a day’s labor could not suppress. The magisterians were out in force—and for the most part they were honest enough; they took little ease from the wine merchants or the sellers of ale and late-night food.
This wasn’t always the case, but the events of the evenings past had made of their patrol a necessity far more urgent than stopping drunken brawls. They were on edge, and that edge demanded, and received, their best. Whether you liked them or hated them, in the end they were almost all honest men. Tired, hot, overworked—but honest for all that.
The bards were out as well. Many of them, Kallandras recognized by sight, but a handful—a very, very few—had come new to the city from their colleges, Morniel and Attariel, and although they wore those emblems and carried new—and less valuable—instruments, it was easy enough to mistake them for revelers, wide-eyed and brilliant with youth.
Easy for one who was not Kallandras. He listened to the sounds of their voices, hearing that youth in them. Wondering why it was that the gods saw fit to gift so few with such voices, and even then grant them their full range and glory for so short a time.
His own voice had not sustained the easy tenor of his youth, but his gift made up for the lack—to most ears. His own, dispassionate, could hear the difference enough to remark on it. Enough to regret it, and he would not have thought, in a youth far, far different from the youth of the Morniel and Attariel students, that he could regret any loss. Any loss save for the one that had shaped his life: his brothers.
He held Salla in his arms with the easy familiarity of a master, but her strings were still.
“What, no song, Master Bard?” the wine merchant called, affecting a merriness which implied that his wines were better than Kallandras knew they were. Good or no, they would sell; it was the Festival season. They might sell late, rather than early, from the looks of the merchant.
“A moment, Varren,” the bard replied. “I see an old friend, and we might be persuaded to sing a duet.”
“Well, sing here, sing here if it pleases you,” the wine merchant said. Kallandras would have laughed under other circumstances; the man was literally rubbing his palms together with ill-contained glee. But the bard that he saw was, of all bards, the retired Sioban Glassen—and the only familiarity she granted him upon sight was that of relief.
He moved through the crowd toward her, murmuring quietly as he did; carving a delicate, almost unseen, path with his words, the subtleties of his voice.
“Sioban,” he said, as he reached her. “Why did you not call for me?”
She shrugged, and he smiled slightly. Of all bardmasters
, Sioban Glassen had become famed, in her time, for her use of the bardic voice—or rather, for her lack of its use. I’m not bardmaster because I can order any idiot around, she had been fond of saying. I’m bardmaster because I’m the only one here—next to Solran—with enough of a sense of responsibility.
Solran Marten had succeeded her, and Solran was voiceless—but not powerless. Never that.
“What is it, then?” he said, bowing. Knowing that she did not speak because her voice would give something away, although she was skilled enough to hide it from almost anyone else’s hearing.
“I’ve been sent,” she began, and he did hear it—the tremor of an old fear, “by Sigurne Mellifas. To find you.”
“Sigurne Mellifas? Why?” He wanted to ask a hundred other questions, for he had not seen her in literally years, and she had been among the most important of his masters in Senniel.
“I don’t know.”
Lie. He let it pass.
“If you would accompany me, Kallandras, she requests your presence upon the isle.”
He nodded at once, and she smiled. The years fell away from the corners of her lips, although the lines the smile rippled were many. Had she been beautiful in her youth? He could not recall; she was beautiful to him now in a different way. “How could I refuse? You found me, Sioban. It was . . . needed.”
They both knew that he spoke of his youth.
“You gave me all the life that I have now.”
The shadows flitted beneath her eyes; she turned, and then turned again. “But it wasn’t the only life you’d known.” No question, there.
He said nothing, old habit. They walked some ways together through the crowd, Kallandras sweeping it gently—always gently—aside.
“I have heard,” she said quietly, “from Solran.”
He waited, patient now, although it had never been his way to interrupt her.
“And I have heard from an . . . old friend. I desired to see him,” she said quietly. “I did not realize how close to the eve of war we’ve come. I’m glad, master bard of Senniel, that I am no longer the bardmaster. Once was enough.”
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