Blade-dancers played their games, in the South, danced on death’s edge. Were any watching, had any witnessed, they would have thought that Kallandras and his brother were such blade-dancers, for Tallos deigned to draw weapon and close. Hard, to speak with the bardic voice when every breath you drew was necessary; harder, when the voice could never—never quite—be made as instinctive a weapon as a sword. There was a power in it that did not lend itself to death. Even by Kallandras.
Tallos was no fool; the deaths at the broken window were deaths he had promised—but unlike Estravim so very long ago, he made no attempt to throw his life away completing the task that had been promised to the Lady. A single death, and he might have.
But he might not have.
The Kovaschaii were human in their fashion.
This death was not a death that had been promised to the Lady; it was a death that had been promised to the brotherhood, by the brotherhood, decades past. Tallos would not forget. As Kallandras could not.
These two, they had trained together. Worked together. Taken flight on their first—and only—task together, as brothers were allowed to do when they had not yet been deemed capable enough.
Kallandras remembered.
He started to offer the ritual greeting, the respect due a brother. At least the last Kovaschaii he had met had given that much. He snapped his arm up, and in the night’s scant light, gold and silver glinted; the ten-point star that neither man needed to see to understand the presence of. He lifted his sword to draw the sigil and the challenge; to declare his tier, and his ability.
Not so Tallos; not so, a man for whom the betrayal was both collective and personal. He came at once, the swing of his arm, the slight doubling of his step, unmistakable. All nicety, all hope for even the convention of the brotherhood here, was gone.
Kallandras replied in kind.
Bound in memories, bound in the anger that comes only from memory, their swords struck and slid off one another, strike and slide, strike and slide; timed, as all things were timed—by the heart, the heart’s beat, the movement of air into lung: the rhythm that marked their lives.
Ellora was first off the floor.
It wasn’t that her hearing was keener—or so she would later say—it was that she loathed the smell of stone. And this close to stone, side of mouth and cheek pressed into its flat, cool surface, air dragged into mouth along its length, she’d argue that it damned well did have a smell.
But she also heard the blades dance.
“Ellora,” Bruce said; he and Devran had retreated to a safe place beneath the table. Silly thing—none of the Commanders had thought to carry either crossbow or longbow to a private, if heated, meeting.
They had swords, though. The scabbard of hers made an unpleasant noise as she dragged it up across ground with her. The blade made a different sound as she separated it from scabbard; she held it, knees bent, the sound of a dozen blades filtering in through the broken glass.
“Ellora.”
She heard the scrape of chair against stone; it grated. She knew that Bruce was going to be annoyed. Oddly enough, he’d be more annoyed than Devran; Devran ABerriliya—The Berriliya now—expected no less from her, and probably privately hoped she’d get pincushioned for her lack of caution. Her ostensible irresponsibility.
Slowly, she made her way to the windows, cursing the fact that the Kings had enough money to make the damned things so grand—and so very long.
Blood and blood; blood and blood; they exchanged these cuts as lovers exchanged caresses; angry lovers who are not quite distant enough to let go of what they had when what they have is so bitter. They called upon the reserves of their training, not for strength, but for speed, burning that reserve in a flare of motion, of movement.
No fight between brothers ever lasted long.
Or rather, no sparring did; how many brothers fought, and how many killed each other?
He was weakened by the morning’s fight and the loss of blood; Tallos should have been able to kill him. Should have. But the wind was strong in this small courtyard; leaves were torn from trees out of season, falling in swirls like a green rain, at his whim. He would pay. He would pay for it all. This power had come a little too easily.
He could not speak; he desired it, but the price for speech was death. Here, Tallos knew his weaknesses and his strengths, and he had, it seemed, never forgotten them.
Blood and blood; touch and touch.
He thought there might be no distinctive strike, no final blow; they would whittle each other’s lives away in this courtyard, in a battle that showed the bruises of Kallatin’s choice, decades past, across both of them.
But he was wrong.
In mid-strike, Tallos lost his rhythm; his sword flew back inexplicably, and Kallandras heard, as if from a great distance, metal striking metal, and the curse, cut short, of a woman’s voice.
Heard it at a distance that did not allow him to stop; his sword was in motion; Tallos was in motion; the two connected perfectly.
No last words, even. He found the assassin’s heart, and stilled it with the runneled steel of blade. It took a long moment for the body to fall, and in that moment, Kallandras had dropped his sword. His arms were under the arms of his brother, to ease him in his fall.
“I don’t think,” he heard someone say, and hated her for it, “I’ve ever seen you fight, Master Bard. You’re good.”
The Kalakar stood in the moonlight.
Holding his brother under both arms, he acknowledged the compliment with a toss of the head. Acknowledged what lay beneath it as well; suspicion, curiosity.
“Who was he?”
He shrugged. And then he did what he was sworn, by Senniel’s oath, not to do. “If you would, Kalakar, the Kings’ Swords should be summoned.”
She didn’t notice, or didn’t appear to, the use of the bardic gift, the laying of compulsion beneath words that were reasonable in their own right. Kallandras was a master. In the poor light, she bent, searching the flagstones, and then the tamed wild blooms, for the sword that Tallos, in breaking his rhythm to deflect, had lost his life to.
He could be patient; patience was an art that the Kovaschaii worked hard to force their younger brothers to develop—for death required patience, of a sort, and an attention to detail that only the patient ever achieved.
But he could not be patient now, not with this woman, not in this place, the body a demand and a responsibility.
He lifted his brother as she lifted her sword; held him as she sheathed it. “I will send for the Kings,” she said, and she left him. Left him for just long enough.
He carried the body into the shadows, cursing her, cursing the Challenge, cursing the crowds that robbed him of the thing he most required. Privacy. Peace.
Framed by the waved curve of broken glass, Commander Bruce Allen watched the master bard leave. “I think it’s safe, Devran,” he said. “Ellora will join us shortly.”
The Berriliya, dour, was silent; Commander Allen laughed. Ellora was a woman who could fall face first into a pigsty and come up with a rose between her teeth—or at least a wholesome meal; she habitually challenged wisdom and common sense as if they were her enemies. It did not always work, but she had never quite been humbled enough to fall prey to the mixture of fear and experience that most men called caution.
No; that was unfair. She was cautious much of the time.
And had there been AKalakar here, they would have served her purpose. But in a room with only two men, neither of whom were under her direct command, she did what she felt she had to do.
Remarkable.
As remarkable as the fact that she had taken the request of the bardic master as if it were an order. He made a note, and kept his own counsel.
He danced.
In a tiny room in Senniel College,
a place that defined him, and that he—against his early will—had come to define, there was refuge and privacy. Journeymen crowded the walls, of course, and the hopefuls who might be chosen as apprentices should they impress a master, but as he was such a master, they neither questioned him nor followed when he bid them go.
He had passed beneath the arch of the great hall that separated the masters from the rest, and rested a moment there; death had achieved what his brother had never achieved in life: Tallos was graceless and heavy.
But at last he found his room, and pushed the door wide; he carried Tallos across the threshold and closed that door behind him, as if it were more than aged wood, iron hinges.
Then he’d laid the body out in the five point star.
He danced, his body not so graceful as it once was, nor so artful. But if youth is passion—as all songs suggest—there was a wild quality to the dance that showed any who witnessed it that there were parts of his heart that were protected from age and time, from change.
And she witnessed it, of course. She heard the song that words didn’t carry; saw the way he leaped and landed, each strike of foot against floor a part of the star that was hidden, the secret self.
The room was given to mist, to the half-world, to the land where the gods might roam freely and the mortals might join them. And standing in shadows that were colder than the Northern seas, and far older, stood the Lady.
“Tallos,” she said, and her voice was a revelation, “born Simeon, I return to you your name.” A gift. But not for one such as he.
Tallos rose, shedding his body as if it were clothing in which he had traveled months of dusty road. Kallandras could see his back, and not the expression upon his face; he did not know if there was rapture at being, finally, united with the Lady, with his name—this true self—and with the brothers that lay beyond death, above death.
But he knew, when Tallos turned, that not all of his life had been left behind. He did not speak.
“You have summoned me,” the Lady said. “You have freed your brother.” Her voice was cool. “I have not forgotten,” she added softly, “that you braved the ruins of Vexusa to free two we could not find.” She placed a hand upon Tallos’ stiff shoulder, drawing him closer. “I have forgotten nothing.”
He knelt, the force of desire sapping the strength from his knees, as if a desire that strong left no strength for anything else.
And this, too, she understood. It was not for her; it was for Tallos. For his brothers. “Lady,” he said, belying the truth in the only way he knew how.
“One of my own would have found him, bard,” she replied softly, a warning there.
“I did not dance his death because no one else could dance it. I danced it because—” He looked up.
Met the eyes of Tallos, the Tallos of his youth, the man-boy whom the sun had darkened. Tallos said nothing.
“You danced,” she said. “It is enough.”
“No one will dance for you,” Tallos said, speaking at last.
“Do you think I don’t know it?” He could hide bitterness when he chose; he could make a mask of his voice just as most men made masks of their faces when the situation demanded it. He spoke softly, the words measured, the truth, or the fact that he had accepted it long ago, evident.
“No, Kallatin,” Tallos said softly, “I think you do know it. Of all my brothers, you were the one I—” He glanced at the Lady; Kallandras heard the shift in his voice, but did not curse it; he was bard-born, and heard what had almost been said. “The one I least understood.” He bowed, then.
“Lady,” Kallandras said, still upon his knees, abased in every way a man could be abased and still be what Kallandras had become. “A question.”
“Ask,” she said.
“After—After Vexusa, I would not have thought—I would not have thought that you would take the deaths requested by those who serve the—the Lord of Night.”
Wind howled a moment from the folds of her robe; the bird upon her shoulder rose with a screech in its wake, settling only when silence had returned. He bowed his head.
“I choose to answer this question because I am aware that my brother did not return to the Hells; aware that he has not yet paid for the crime that he committed against my chosen. But you will not question me in that fashion again.”
“Lady,” he said.
“What you . . . dare . . . to accuse me of is a falsehood. I have taken no deaths from the men who collude with your enemy, unless it be their own.”
“The eight.”
“Eight, yes.”
“But these—”
“No. These deaths were offered to me, and I accepted them, from a man of the place you call Averalaan.” Wind was the voice of her ire. “We may meet again,” she said softly. “But it will not be at your death.”
He was not a young man anymore.
It did not break him to watch Tallos walk into the mist, with no further acknowledgment, no farewells, no hint of understanding. It did not hurt him because the loss was so much a fact of life it had become all that he expected.
Until Tallos turned back to him, and he could see, in the other-world, the light that danced along the thin trail of his tears.
“Has Sigurne died?”
“No.”
“Then I’m amazed you managed to gain entrance into my chamber,” Meralonne said, his dry voice thin as old leaf. “She’s let no one in except Dantallon and the boy who brings what passes for food in these parts.”
“You are . . . well.” the bard asked.
“And you are a liar,” the mage replied. “Bring me my pipe.”
“I’d as soon bring Dantallon a noose and a yardarm,” Kallandras said, laughing. He could see that mage was shivering. “You recover well, Meralonne. I have seen men felled by—”
“Carelessness. Go on.”
“By fevers such as yours who were racked for two weeks before they either recovered or succumbed.”
“I have enough pride not to die making children’s baubles. Not an end for me, I’m afraid.” But he pulled the blankets up in hands that shook. “I will confess,” he added, “that I am weary.”
Kallandras bowed his head.
“And that I will not sleep until you tell me whatever it is you came here to confess.”
“Confess?”
Meralonne coughed. The weakness would hold him yet; Kallandras did not think he would see sunlight without the filter of glass until well past the end of the Challenge. “I will speak,” he said softly. “You are tired.”
The mage snorted. It was an oddly comforting sound.
“Tonight, an assassination attempt was made upon Jewel ATerafin and upon the three Commanders: The Kalakar, The Berriliya, and Commander Allen.”
The mage was still a moment, then the trembling set in and he stifled it. “Success?”
“None.”
“Good. Why is this significant?”
“To you?”
“Clever bard. Yes, to me.”
“Four deaths, Member APhaniel, and they were called for—and accepted—by a man in this City.”
Meralonne’s eyes were silver steel. “Kovaschaii?”
“I believe so, yes.” Neutral words. Safe words.
Safety could be such a lie.
“That would take money.”
“Rather a lot.”
“And the knowledge of how to reach the brotherhood at all.”
Kallandras nodded quietly.
Meralonne swore. “Can you find Dantallon?”
“No,” a stern voice said. The dragon, silver-haired and fragile, had returned to the den.
“Valedan, you’ve done well,” Serra Alina said, her hands as soft as her voice. She lay oil against palm, and then palm against skin, an
d where her hands passed, a warmth seemed to seep into the muscles of his back, his shoulders, his thigh. The bruises, she passed over. He wished she’d passed over the words as well, and said nothing.
Aidan was in the witness house; Aidan, whose wide eyes had seen both his victories and his falls with a kind of fascination that evoked, in Valedan, a sense of what he must have been like at twelve.
And that made him think of Ser Anton, which was uncomfortable enough—but from Ser Anton, his thoughts went to Ser Carlo di’Jevre, and that destroyed the lull of the Serra’s hands. She knew it, too; her hands paused a moment; she lifted them from his body, gathered her strength, gathered her oils, and then continued.
As if she were in truth his wife, a wife.
Which she would never be, in fact.
Eneric of Darbanne had won. No surprise there. Had he the habit of placing bets—and had Commander Sivari less fierce an eye—he would have put his money on the Northerner. He had offered his congratulations, and that offer had been received with self-confidence. With pride.
But Valedan’s attention had been drawn, time and again, to a man who had entered a challenger and become a witness: Carlo di’Jevre.
“Valedan,” the Serra said.
He could not discuss this with her; he had tried. She was as severe a taskmaster as Sivari, but the bruises she left in their training exercises were more subtle. “Serra Alina,” he said, groaning slightly as he rolled off the mats and found his feet, “my thanks for your efforts.”
She did not mar the stillness of her face with a frown, but he felt the night grow darker in the stillness of his rooms. “And you will sleep now?” she asked coolly.
“Yes,” he replied, “but let me take in the sea air a moment.”
“Do you wish company?”
“Thank you, Serra, but no; tomorrow is the test of the horse, and I desire to gather my thoughts.”
All lies, all of it. It was funny how two people could speak so pleasantly, mean so little by it, and still understand each other so well.
He went, as he habitually went, to the fountain of the blindfolded boy. Justice.
The Uncrowned King Page 63
