City of Night

by Michelle West

  “Then why was he asked to—” He bit back the words; there was too much anger in them, too much confusion. These, too, had to be hoarded. Alaric led and Angel followed, and this time the sailors moved to one side or the other, forming a tunnel as they did.

  Their hands rested on their weapons, but they did not lean against the rails or the great pole that seemed to impale as much of the ship as Angel could see; they stood, and they bore witness. Even in the heat, their faces dribbling sweat, they looked . . . proud. Certain.

  Angel straightened his shoulders, aware of what they offered in silence, and aware, as well, that he had to offer them something similar in return. For just a moment, he had to be Garroc’s son—because he was all that was left of Garroc, a man they appeared to have known and respected.

  Kalliaris, he thought. Smile, Lady.

  She smiled. He didn’t trip or stumble. He walked the deck of the ship until he came to a short flight of stairs, and he mounted these as well without incident, although the deck was slippery and wet in places.

  But he stopped when Alaric stopped. He could see the man’s arm lift staff and turn it sideways, and he could see the staff—perfectly steady—as it lay in the air a moment.

  Then Alaric walked again, but this time, he walked to the side of a man whose back was toward them both.

  The back of his hair was long, and braided; it was—or it would be, when cleaned—pale, a light shade of gold. But the peaks of his hair rose, bound around wire in an odd and familiar spiral. He wore a chain shirt, even in this weather, and no obvious tabard, but the shirt was large; the man’s shoulders were broad and straight. He wore a greatsword across his back, and a belt meant for some sort of weapon girded his waist; it hung loose at the moment.

  When the man at last turned, his hands fell from the rails to his sides. His face was scarred, but the scars were clean lines across his forehead and the left side of his face, disappearing into a thick and unkempt beard; he had both eyes. His nose had the angularity that suggested it had been broken a time or two, and it wasn’t small, but it suited the rest of his face.

  But it was his eyes that demanded attention, for his eyes were golden. Golden like the sun, like wheat at harvest, like fire in winter; golden, Angel thought, like Alaric’s. God-born. Two such men, here.

  He was not handsome, but had he been in a crowd of thousands, he would have commanded attention instantly simply by existing. It wasn’t his height, although he was taller than Angel’s father; it wasn’t the weapon that he wore at his back. It wasn’t his armor either; he could have worn sackcloth with equal ease. He just . . . demanded attention.

  He was Weyrdon. Angel understood the truth—the implacable and undeniable truth—of that as if he’d been born to it, and nothing else.

  “Alaric, clear the deck, and give the men leave to go ashore.”

  The older man nodded.

  “But do not leave with them,” Weyrdon added.

  The older man hesitated for a fraction of a minute and then nodded again. He turned briskly; Angel saw his robes and his staff out of the corner of his eye. He could not take his eyes from Weyrdon.

  Weyrdon smiled down at him when Alaric had left them. “Angel, Garroc’s son,” he said quietly.

  Angel nodded, unsurprised by sound of his name. The syllables were Rendish in pronunciation, although the word itself was Weston.

  Weyrdon’s gaze lifted, shot past Angel’s shoulder. “Garroc is dead.” No question in the words. But . . . an invitation lurked between the syllables. “And he sent you to me.”

  Angel nodded. He had never been chatty, but words had completely deserted him, and he struggled to find them while the ship’s decks slowly—and completely—cleared.

  But Weyrdon did not wait for long.

  “You’ve come to ask me why I sent your father from my side.”

  Angel said nothing.

  “It is not why your father sent you,” Weyrdon added.

  “No.”

  “Do you know why he sent you?”

  Angel had thought about little else on the road to Averalaan. He was—he couldn’t say the word out loud—orphaned. He had no kin, either in the Free Towns or in the City, that he knew of. His mother’s family must be in the Empire, if they existed—but if they existed, she had never, ever chosen to speak about them.

  And he thought his father might have sent him because in some fashion Weyrdon was his family, but even thinking it felt wrong. “. . . No.”

  Weyrdon nodded. Turned back to the sea. What he said next was not what Angel was expecting—if he had, indeed, expected anything from this man.

  “We will see war in our lifetimes.”

  Given that the sailors bore so many scars and so much obvious weaponry, the statement almost made no sense. Angel hesitated, and then said, “You’ve already seen war.”

  Weyrdon turned and lifted a brow, one bisected neatly by a slender scar. His smile was deep and sudden. “Aye, we have at that.” His eyes were bright and clear. “And no doubt we’ll see more.” The smile dimmed. “But those battles were merely a foundation.

  “And the war I speak of will touch the entirety of the Empire—no matter how tenuous its hold—before it runs its course; it will stretch to the West, as far as the Western Kingdoms, and to the North, where not even my kin go. It will reach to the South, beyond the Empire, and,” he added, gazing a moment at the water in the bay, “to the East, upon the Islands.

  “We will fight in the North,” he added softly, “as we can, and where we have the power to do so. Here, in the Empire’s heart, such a power exists, and here, too, war will come. I think . . . it may end here, one way or the other. But of that, I cannot be certain.”

  Angel frowned. “My father—”

  “Your father knew what I knew,” Weyrdon replied.

  “But who—who could start a war that’s fought everywhere? Who could lead an army that could destroy the Empire?”

  “That,” was the soft reply, “is the question. We do not—I do not—have the answer, not yet. And in some small measure, I’m grateful; when we have the answer, the war will be upon us all.”

  “And this has something to do with my father.”

  “Yes. And no.” Weyrdon’s eyes, as he turned, were the color of the sea. It was a trick of the light, but for a moment, on the decks of this ship, he seemed to encompass the breadth of an ocean that not even the horizon could break. He lifted a hand and gestured, and Alaric, standing down-deck, joined them, his staff a counterpoint to the rhythm of his steps.

  “Alaric is Wittan,” Weyrdon said. “And counted wise beyond even the lands that Weyrdon knows. All that I know, he knows, although the inverse is not true; he keeps much to himself.”

  “Indeed,” Alaric said, with the faint hint of a wry smile. “And in part because Weyrdon dislikes secrecy and politics, however much these may be necessary.”

  Weyrdon frowned; the frown did not seem to upset Alaric so much as amuse him. The amusement caused his weathered skin to fall, for a moment, into different lines. They were etched there as well, and even the passing of the smile could be seen for a moment. “But he can lead, and where he leads, men follow. He is what he is,” Alaric added, “As am I. But you, Angel, Garroc’s son, are not bound as we two are bound, to this war in the North.”

  Angel was silent for a moment, gathering what might have been called courage were it not so feeble. “Weyrdon,” he said gravely, “why did you send my father into exile?”

  Weyrdon glanced at Alaric.

  “He leads men,” Alaric said, “but as always, in difficulties that do not involve Cartanis, he is content to let others speak.”

  Weyrdon grimaced. “Alaric is not entirely just in his portrayal of my leadership. Very well. This will make, perhaps, little sense to you. It makes little sense to me; there is too much of hope and fancy in it, and not enough blood and bone.

  “We face war, as I have said. But it is not a war of men, or not of men alone, and there are some
fell things of which I cannot speak, even in your fair city.”

  It wasn’t Angel’s city. But he nodded anyway.

  “Understand that we are, Alaric and I, the sons of our fathers. We are bound in some measure, by blood and birth, to our fathers’ world—and it is not your world, not Garroc’s world.” He hesitated. “Understand as well that what the gods know, men cannot fully understand—and we are men. Gods speak in riddles, and often the unraveling of their meaning is not done until after the events of which they speak have transpired.”

  Angel frowned and Alaric snorted.

  “Alaric,” Weyrdon said, looking pained. “It is for this reason that I had the men go ashore. My dignity is, unfortunately, necessary, and Alaric’s care of it lessens the farther away from a field of battle we travel.

  “We have traveled far, indeed, to be here, Angel, Garroc’s son. We had word that you would come to this port, to meet the Ice Wolf.”

  “You knew my father was dead.”

  “Only by that; not while he was alive would he have sent you to me.” His expression lost all of the exasperated amusement he had shown his adviser; for a moment, it was as pale as it might be in the land of Winter. “I would have had him by my side to face the endless night, had I the choice.” His hand rested briefly on the rails.

  Angel said nothing, waiting now. He didn’t try to mark the passage of time; there was no contest in the pause, no quiet battle of wills.

  “But I did not have that choice. We are given little advantage in the battle that is—if all fails—to come, and what very, very little we have is not to be found on the field of battle, or not on a field that Cartanis understands. Not even on a field that Teos does,” he added.

  Cartanis was a name that was familiar to Angel, if for no other reason than that his father had often invoked the god when he was particularly annoyed during his long weeks teaching the Free Town boys to hold, and wield, swords. Teos, however, he did not know.

  “The god of knowledge,” Alaric said, correctly divining Angel’s ignorance.

  “Does he know everything?”

  Weyrdon laughed out loud and Alaric frowned. It was Weyrdon who answered. “He knows what his sons know. He knows what his Priests know. He knows what his Priests since the dawn of time have known. But he does not, and cannot, know everything that occurs in the world of man—no god can, and in that lies our hope. But it is, I admit, a scant hope, and not one to my liking; there is too much that will be decided in lands that I will never personally see, and too much of the war itself fought in the same fashion. It is not to my liking to leave so much to chance or the leadership of strangers, but what we cannot change, we accept.

  “Some years ago, when we were young and my armies were a fraction of the size they now are, word was sent to Alaric, and from Alaric, to me. Signs were given, and they were signs that Weyrdon would know and recognize; I understood that the word itself could not be challenged; it could be questioned.

  “We questioned it,” he added. “Alaric risked the displeasure of his parent not once, but thrice, and in the land between the thunder and the snow, the air was thick with the god’s annoyance when we took our leave the third time.

  “But in the end, we could not ignore what was asked of us, and we summoned Garroc.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Garroc’s duty lay in the Empire, or in the city at its heart.”

  “But—”

  Weyrdon lifted a hand. “It was not to fight that he was sent; he was my best, but one man is not an army. It was not to gather information; we have those who could serve in that capacity. It was,” and he frowned, now, lines framing slightly tightened lips, “to find a worthy lord.”

  “He had one.”

  “Oddly enough,” Alaric interjected, “those are not dissimilar from Weyrdon’s first words when he learned of the task that he must set Garroc; nor are they dissimilar from his final words. It is not easy for Weyrdon to consign men whose oaths he has taken to serve another. Nor,” he added, “is it easy for Weyrdon to imagine, in the end, that there could be any other who might deserve Garroc’s service, if Weyrdon himself was to forgo it. He is a great leader of men, but he is not known for his humility.

  “Garroc, however, accepted with grace what Weyrdon could accept only with difficulty, and when the Ice Wolf sailed, he was upon its decks. He assumed that his task was to find a worthy lord within the heart of the Empire; we all assumed it. We also assumed it would take time, if it proved possible at all—the North and the South are different.”

  “But he was sent into exile.”

  “He was sent into exile. Only those who sailed the Ice Wolf understood that he served Weyrdon, still. His name is spoken only here.”

  “But—”

  “Tell me, Garroc’s son, did you not encounter Northerners upon the farm that was your home?”

  Angel fell silent.

  “So. You understand.”

  No, Angel thought. No, I don’t understand. But . . . those men had died. They had come and they now lay buried in the soil of Evanston. But so, too, Angel’s father, and his mother, and half of his friends.

  Weyrdon said nothing.

  “And . . . if he found this lord,” Angel said, thinking of Terrick’s anger. “What then?”

  Weyrdon’s silence was different. At last he said, “He did not find his lord.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The same way,” he replied, “that we knew you would come, seeking the Ice Wolf. The same way,” he added, “that I knew that when you came to me, I would offer you in the end none of the respect that your father’s sacrifice deserves.” He turned, then, to Alaric.

  “Angel, Garroc’s son,” Alaric said, the words like a chant, their pronunciation wrong. “You are of the Empire, and of Garroc. The only thing of Weyrdon you will have—should you choose it—is the mark; we will not hunt you and we will not kill you for your presumption in assuming it.

  “Perhaps what Garroc sought, in the end, was a Lord of the North; perhaps what he sought, and what he measured, he measured against the truth of Weyrdon, and against such truth, all men might be found wanting. We burden you with no such comparison; we burden you with no such struggle.

  “We thought it was Garroc’s duty, but we see clearly now.

  “If you will take up Garroc’s duties, seek what he sought, and seek it as a citizen of the Empire; perhaps you will see clearly what Garroc, in the end, could not, and thus prevent your father’s duty from ending in failure.”

  Failure. Angel closed his eyes. He could hear the lap of water against the ship; could hear the raucous cry of gulls, could smell fish, sweat, and the sea breeze. Everything but the sweat so different from Evanston; he had stepped into a different world.

  But that world, and this one, were anchored by one man: Garroc of Weyrdon. The man he had known as father. The man who had sworn his life to the service of the god-born.

  “If I refuse?”

  Alaric said nothing.

  “Can you?” Weyrdon asked softly.

  “I . . . don’t know.”

  “No,” the Rendish warlord said. He nodded. “You do not know, not yet, what we face.”

  “And you won’t tell me.”

  “What it is safe to say, I have said.”

  “You told my father more.”

  “Your father was mine,” Weyrdon replied. “I took—and knew—his full measure. You are merely his son. The nights are growing longer,” he added in Rendish. “And if my words or judgment seem harsh, take comfort in this: you have not taken my measure. I am not served by fools; while it might at times be convenient, I expect no blind obedience. You will find truth in my words, or you will not, but you will not forget what I have said.”

  “No.” The single word was soft. “If I—if I do as my father did not live to do, what then?”

  “What then?”

  “If I find what you seek, what do I do then?”

  Weyrdon glanced at Alaric, and the o
lder man’s robes rose and fell as he shrugged. “We do not know,” Alaric said at last. “It has never been clear to us what the purpose of such a lord might be; whether it be to lead armies, or no. We know only that in some measure it will be significant, if you both survive.”

  “If?”

  “Many will not,” Alaric replied. “Even here, in the heart of the Empire, where the god-born rule the Isle and the cathedrals, many will die. There is a shadow that is growing here; my lord Teos cannot pierce it. It spreads across the City, like mist, but night follows in its wake. Here, in Averalaan, sons of my father also labor; we are not kin, but the language we speak is not dissimilar for all their foreignness.”

  “Where? Where do I start?”

  Alaric’s smile was gentle. “Angel, Garroc’s son, if we could answer, we would not have surrendered Garroc to exile—and death—in a land that barely knows winter. But if what we were told can be understood at all, it is in Averalaan that you will begin to unravel the answer, and in the end? You will know more than the sons of Teos.” He bowed. “It is almost time for you to depart.” Reaching into his robes, he pulled out a small leather bag. “Imperial coin,” he said. “We have nothing else to give. No advice, no warning, no words of wisdom.”

  “We understand that you have not yet made your choice,” Weyrdon continued, when Alaric had placed the small satchel into Angel’s shaking palm. “And we will not therefore ask you what decision you have reached; if you offer your sword, I will not take it. Not yet. You will return to me,” he added, his eyes glinting for a moment, as if they had caught sunlight, although the sun was at his back. “And what you offer then, I will consider.” He turned his back upon Angel, and did not turn again. But he had not finished, and what he said surprised Angel.

  “Have you spoken with Terrick?”

  Angel nodded, and then, realizing that Weyrdon did not, in fact, have eyes in the back of his head, said, “Yes.”

  “Ah. And he warned you not to chance these decks?”

  Terrick had offered him hospitality and shelter. Angel did not choose to answer Weyrdon’s question.