The Uncrowned King

by Michelle West

  There could be only one lord in the Dominion, save the Lord of the Sun. That was the unwritten law; the truth that men understood.

  In the light of the Lord’s law, Valedan kai di’Leonne began to extend the fight, choosing stamina over experience, choosing, as he would become known for, the ability to wait out the enemy. To make of waiting an art, an action rather than an inability to act. Sweat graced his brow, and blood from the third of Ser Anton’s glancing blows.

  But the third blow had been a lucky blow—and if luck counted, it counted only if absolute, and Valedan still stood, still lived. There would be no fourth blow, no fifth; but the blood drawn by the third would mark the Northern-raised, Southern-born Leonne, as no crown, no title, given by Northern Kings, could.

  Ser Anton di’Guivera began, under the heat of the open sky, to tire. Valedan kai di’Leonne pressed him, pressed him hard. It seemed that he, too, was flagging.

  But it was, as so many of his opponent’s attacks had been, pretense, a feint. He found energy; he found strength. He pressed his attack, this last round of blows, with a stinging fury, a sudden passion, a driving, precise anger.

  The unthinkable happened.

  Ser Anton di’Guivera lost his sword and fell in a single motion.

  One sword was raised in the circle. One hand.

  Kallandras nodded quietly.

  The first test had been met, had been passed. But the second, and perhaps the greater, had only just begun, and it would be passed or failed in a sword-stroke.

  Ser Anton had fallen outside of the circle; his body lay half on green grass and half on brown, marking the division by its crossing.

  He saw the swordmaster lift his hand, not in supplication—for that was neither his way, nor the way of the combat he had chosen—but as a shield, the only one he had chosen to carry.

  And Valedan kai di’Leonne carried the sword, the single weapon remaining them. Carried it in a combat in which a death had been promised. He paused a moment, the sword raised in sunlight, the man unarmed beneath it no longer an opponent, just a defeated enemy. Just the man who had become the sword that killed Tyr’agar Markaso kai di’Leonne; the man who had shown no mercy at all, and therefore deserved none.

  Kallandras did not speak. No one did.

  But he was surprised to find that he was holding his breath.

  There was one sword raised.

  Ser Anton di’Guivera would not speak for himself.

  He did not ask for mercy; he did not offer surrender. But he did not scramble away, did not choose to end his life without the dignity with which he had lived it. Life and death were the sword’s edge. It was strange, that a man could offer death to so many, and could meet it only once.

  There was no triumph in the face of the first man in history to best him. But there was anger there, and not a little of it.

  Ser Anton wondered, as he watched, if the sword was suspended in time, if time indeed had stretched out the last second of his life beyond imagining, or if the kai Leonne was still fighting some struggle of his own.

  He said, because he felt compelled to say it, “Kai Leonne, this is not an execution. It is combat; it is the Lord’s work. No fault accrues to you—and no guilt—by my death.”

  The younger man’s face darkened; his knuckles whitened. Ser Anton drew breath.

  He faced the man who had killed his father, and he found, as the sword began its descent, that he could not strike for his father; not his father. Not that man. But there were other reasons to kill.

  For Carlo di’Jevre, who had served Ser Anton faithfully and had, by his choices, been betrayed.

  For Andaro di’Corsarro, who had lost Carlo to the Kialli, and who would be scarred by the loss forever.

  For Aidan, whose family name he could not recall ever knowing, whose life had been lost because he was stupidly full of romantic notion and a belief in the nobility of this—this trial by combat, this test of steel. What had it proved? Nothing. There was no nobility in it.

  But death. There was death. And he had chosen to face it, thinking—stupidly, as stupidly as Aidan had—that he could face the war and be the only one to pay the price for it. Idiot. Child.

  He was no child now.

  He was the victor.

  He was the Tyr’agar, the kai Leonne, the last of a line. And he knew, because he could be honest with himself if no one else, that the real reason he wanted to kill this man was because this one man had been a hero to him, and it was his action, here, that had destroyed his ability to believe in the heroic.

  In the noble.

  This challenge almost always ended in a death.

  The sword fell.

  “Valedan, don’t!”

  The sword stopped. It stopped with such a force of will and sudden lack of motion it sent a snap up his arm and shoulder—both of which had been severely tested in this trial. The sun cast the blade’s slender shadow across the length of Ser Anton di’Guivera’s motionless face.

  The kai Leonne lowered his sword slowly, as if waking. He met the eyes of the man on the ground, and then stepped back.

  “Ser Anton,” he said. Sheathed his sword. Turned.

  There, by the circle’s edge, supported entirely by the Queens’ healer, Dantallon, stood Aidan. He was absolutely white, and his cheeks and eyes were surrounded by gray-black hollows that looked suspiciously like bruising.

  The healer didn’t look much better. “We had to watch,” he said softly. “It was . . . necessary.”

  “He was—”

  “Dying, yes. I thought he was dead.”

  Valedan bowed to the healer. Stood. His own brush with a healer’s touch gave him some understanding—and he wanted no more than that small enlightenment.

  “Did no one explain the nature of the challenge to him?”

  “No.”

  “It was to the death,” he said quietly, turning to Aidan, the witness that he had chosen in the streets of the hundred holdings in what seemed another lifetime.

  “I know,” Aidan said softly, swaying like a young tree in a heavy storm. “I know it. But . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “But he’d stepped outside of the circle.”

  Just that. Valedan turned and saw that Ser Anton di’Guivera had indeed crossed the boundary. Strange, that he’d missed that. “The circle is not a Southern custom, Aidan,” he said gently.

  “You aren’t fighting in the South,” Aidan replied. “Neither of you stepped outside that circle for the whole fight. And anyway, he—he didn’t have a weapon. You couldn’t just kill him. It’d be murder.”

  “It would be justice.”

  Aidan said nothing.

  But Dantallon said, “It would be murder of a different sort, Valedan. We believe in the heroes of our choice, even when they have to struggle to live up to our beliefs. It was not just Ser Anton’s life that you spared today.” He stiffened. Lifted a hand. “I will take Aidan from you now; I have need of the healerie and the privacy it provides. If you wish to see him, he will be there, although we will be forced to keep him for at least a week, at best guess.”

  “My thanks, Healer.”

  “And mine.” The healer did not bow. He couldn’t, without dropping Aidan.

  “Valedan—”

  “Yes?”

  “Could you tell my Da, do you think? I—I haven’t sent any word for a couple of days now. He might be worried.”

  “Yes. I can do that.” He turned away from the boy, unable to speak. Unable to describe in words the peculiar knot that had settled around the base of his throat. He walked over to his enemy, to this man that he had admired so much in his youth, and he realized that he wanted what Aidan had wanted. Still.

  He walked past Ser Anton, and retrieved the swordmaster’s fallen sword. It
was heavier than he had thought, looking at it in action, and it was infinitely simpler than many a fine blade; the hilt was unornamented, unfilagreed, unremarkable.

  “I had heard,” he said, turning carefully, the blade extended, “that you had forsaken your sword’s name.”

  Ser Anton rose, then, as if the comment were permission. “It is true.”

  “That you had come to seek a new name for it.”

  “I had.”

  The young man offered the older man the blade; the older man bowed and accepted it. The anger between them was gone; it had been guttered in the fire of the Lord’s Test, and what remained was, if not peaceful, then at least quiet.

  There was no accusation Valedan could make that did not sound childish at best. He said, instead, “A sword can be a sensitive thing. If I were you, I might choose to give it back its name.”

  “I have chosen a name for it.” He bowed. “You have not named yours.”

  “There is only one sword that I will wield that will be significant,” Valedan replied.

  “Yes.” Ser Anton di’Guivera gazed at his sword’s edge. “The Sun Sword.” He knelt, his sword still in his hand. “Tyr’agar,” he said softy. Their eyes met.

  Without looking away, Ser Anton di’Guivera planted the sword he carried deliberately into the earth at Valedan’s feet. There was silence in the crowd that, almost forgotten, watched.

  “Did you not promise allegiance and loyalty to my father and his father before him?” Valedan said softly, a reply that the wind did not carry.

  “I did.”

  “And what of those oaths? Why should I now accept what has already been betrayed?”

  “The father of your father,” Ser Anton replied, without flinching, “murdered my only wife and my only child. Had I known of that risk before I made that vow, I would never have made it. Had I known the truth of their deaths before I made that vow to your father, I would never have made it.

  “But I know the truth, Valedan kai di’Leonne, and I have taken both the measure of my allies and the measure of the man who would rule the Dominion, and what I give you now I did not think I could—ever—give. You will accept it or reject it; either way, this will be known: That you bested Ser Anton di’Guivera, and that he offered, in his turn, to serve you.”

  Valedan was silent for a long time; his gaze drifted down to the sword that stood in the dirt, and then up again to the man who had planted it there.

  “What name,” he asked quietly, “have you chosen for this sword?”

  Ser Anton paused a long while before answering, but he did choose to answer. “Mercy.”

  They stayed, one standing, one kneeling, while the sun inched toward the horizon. Ser Anton knew how to wait, but Valedan knew how to wait as well; they measured each other in the stillness.

  But, as in the circle, it was the younger man who spoke first. “Be what you were,” he said. “Be all that you were, and I will take your service, and your legend, and I will honor them both.”

  “I am not my legend,” Ser Anton said. “You have seen the truth of it here.”

  “I have seen it tested,” Valedan said. “Part of your legend was the love that you bore your wife and your son—and what you were willing to do in order to avenge their deaths.”

  Ser Anton bowed his head, and when he raised it, he offered Valedan a glimpse of vulnerability—the first. “She would have liked you, my Mari. She would have approved of you.”

  The sun began its descent as the last sword was sheathed.

  EPILOGUE

  AIDAN

  6th of Seril, 427 AA

  Averalaan

  For the first time in his life, Aidan felt self-conscious going home. It wasn’t that he wanted to stay at the Palace—although part of him did—it was more the company that he brought into the holdings with him. They were used to a very fine life, one that Aidan had seen at their side for long enough that it wasn’t quite a dream anymore, and nothing in the holding he called home could in any way match that life. Nothing.

  Up above them, the matchless trees of the Commons gave way to the lesser trees of the twenty-fifth, and then the twenty-fourth. The streets weren’t empty, but they’d lost the crushing press of people evident everywhere during the Kings’ Challenge. The city had returned to normal.

  He brought a hand to his chest. Touched it, surprised to feel anything beneath his palm at all. Almost unconsciously, he cast a nervous glance across the road to where the healers walked. Neither of them were Dantallon, of course. Dantallon attended the Queens, and he left the healerie in Avantari only when the Queens left the Palace. Like on the last day of the Kings’ Challenge, the Challenge that had been won—and like all Challenges, would be confined to his perfect memory just as every winner in the history of the Challenge—by Eneric of Darbanne. Not by Valedan kai di’Leonne, but that didn’t matter. Valedan had won the important battle.

  That was the only thing that Aidan truly regretted: that he hadn’t seen the battle with the demon. No, he’d been curled in the arms of Dantallon the healer, in a place that death couldn’t quite reach, and life couldn’t touch at all without a healer’s help.

  Hurt, to think about. So he thought about something else instead. Homecoming. And that didn’t help much, either.

  Please, Lady, he prayed. Please let him not be drinking. His worst nightmare: Walking into the two rooms where he and his father lived to a raging, drunken father. It didn’t happen often, but it did happen. Only let it happen any other day, and he’d live with the bruises.

  “Aidan,” Valedan said.

  Aidan jumped. Straightened his shoulders out of their almost forgotten cringe. “Yeah.”

  “It doesn’t matter where you live; it’s what you do with the life you have that counts.”

  Great. He needed platitudes like he needed—well, maybe more than he needed a drunk father. But not by much.

  Valedan caught him by the shoulders and turned him round; Aidan didn’t even try to resist. “Do you think this is so very terrible?” he asked, nodding in an arc that was meant to take in the tall, cramped buildings of the holding.

  Aidan shrugged. Then, because it was Valedan, and because he spoke quietly, he answered. “No. It’s just that—I’ve seen the way you live. I don’t live like that.”

  “You’ve seen the way I live in the North,” the would-be ruler of the entire Southern Dominion replied. “And to be honest, I remember finery as a way of life in the South as well. But I remember this: That I was born to a seraf—a wife, but still a slave. I was a very well-kept slave, freed only to be a hostage in the North.”

  Aidan was silent.

  “You don’t even understand what freedom is.”

  Aidan shrugged, stung slightly. “Hunger,” he said. They stared at each other a long time. It was Valedan who broke the gaze. But he said, staring at the space just to the right of Aidan’s shoulder, “I do not judge you, Aidan. I can’t. I owe you my life. It doesn’t matter to me where you come from.” He paused for a long moment. “I am going away to war.”

  “I know.”

  “Ser Anton is coming with me.”

  “So’s half the city.”

  Valedan winced, but continued as if Aidan hadn’t interrupted him. He often did that. “He asked me to tell you that after we’ve won the war, he is thinking of coming North for a time, and if he does—and if you’re willing—he’d like the opportunity to see to your training.”

  The words only made sense gradually; taken all at once they were so enormous they were almost impossible to understand. Ser Anton di’Guivera, the swordmaster of the South. Training—Aidan? The lesser trees, the ancient buildings and the newer ones in poor repair, the rutted roads, the poorly dressed people edging out of the way of Valedan’s well dressed—and more noticeably well-armed—party,
vanished. He saw a sword, and a circle, and a man who had twice won the crown the Kings offered once a year.

  “But—but the cost—”

  “He says to remind you that he has no son. And that he owes you a debt greater than mine.” Here, the kai Leonne smiled almost ruefully. “Even in that, we are competitive. I, of course, think my life is at least as important as his honor.”

  Aidan turned away and started to walk because he had a sudden urge to cry and he couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t embarrass himself that way in front of Valedan. Or anyone.

  “Are we almost there,” the older healer said brusquely, “or are we going to stand and talk in the street while frightening the pedestrians?”

  “Uh, almost there, sir.”

  Everything about the older healer was short-tempered and a hair’s breadth from rude, even his look; he was covered in dark hair from brow to chin, and his jaw was squarer than the courtyard of the biggest merchant bank. If he’d come off a ship in the port, and was surrounded on all sides by angry magisterians, he’d’ve looked more at home.

  But there was no arguing with the twin palms that hung round his neck like a beacon. Wasn’t much approaching ’em either, but that was probably best—this man, this Levec, was going to have to heal Aidan’s father. Somehow he couldn’t quite see Dantallon knocking his father over and sitting on his chest.

  But Levec had promised that he’d do just that if that’s what it took. Promised it, not to Aidan, but to Dantallon.

  Dantallon, of course, had been horrified. A healer couldn’t force a man to accept a healing he didn’t want. Aidan believed it. Of every healer but Levec.

  The healer met Aidan’s half-defiant, half-hopeful gaze. Rolled his eyes. “Well, we don’t have all day. Or at least I don’t. I’ve students to tend to, and people your age are always in need of discipline.”

  “Healer Levec,” the younger man said.

  “You can’t let these people waste your time. How many times have I told you this, Daine? You’ll be turned into a cushion for fat patricians before you’re thirty if you don’t develop some—”