They were not in the Tor at the moment.
With cold respect, Ramiro di'Callesta folded his arms across his chest and waited.
As if that were a signal, the men slowly resumed their bouts, reluctant to stare at a Tyr'agnate, but equally reluctant to expose the weakness of their training mistakes—if indeed they made many this close to the competition itself. They did not, Ramiro noted, seek to take the title; they sought, rather, to take the single rod upon which the man-to-man combat depended. Or so it seemed; no man lifted a weapon that was not a sword within the confines of the hall.
But the two men with whom Anton worked continued without pause that was not caused by their master, until in the end they were slick with the sheen of summer heat in a building that hid them from both the sight of the Lord and the cooling touch of the sea-laden wind. Even then he pressed them, watching their feet, their feet's placement; correcting their shoulders and the arc they made when they swung. At last, when it was clear that they could do no more, he stepped in, drawing his blade in perfect silence.
The younger of the two unknown men grimaced; the older readied himself.
Anton di'Guivera was an older man. Against two who were new to the fight, he was no longer guaranteed an easy or a complete victory. But against these two, tired with training and the rigors to which they were subjected, he was a joy to behold, a thing of almost perfect grace.
And he taught them in this way: by being what he told them to be. Ramiro could see that the line of his arm and the extension of the blade were perfect; that the only time the edge of the blade wavered was when it turned, edge to flat; that Anton di'Guivera, twice chosen by the Lord, was still blessed by him. No doubt they would bear scars, these students, but Ramiro could believe, watching the flat of this man's blade play against the light, that those scars would be deliberate gifts or medals, not the chance slip of the blade, not the misstep of underconfident youth.
He disarmed them both.
And then, as if that were his introduction, he pivoted. Bowed, not to the Tyr'agnate, but to the absolutely silent man who stood by his side. "Baredan."
"Anton."
"Have you come to compete?"
The General's smile was as narrow as the edge of the master's blade. "Yes," he said softly.
"And I, I think." He lifted his sword; held it a moment parallel to the straight line of his body. "I did not think you would survive, but I am not… unhappy to see you."
Ramiro glanced to the side in time to see the color of the General's face seep away into that peculiar paleness that was often called white, although it wasn't.
"You were a part of the assassination?"
"I?" The older man's smile was as thin as the General's. "Baredan, had you been a decade younger, you would have been among my students, I think. And I would have served you better than your previous master by beating out of you the sense of loyalty that drives your life.
"You are not Tyran. That was not the life you chose. Nor," Anton di'Guivera said, sheathing his sword almost—but not quite— as silently as he'd first drawn it, "was it mine."
"You trained the kai Leonne."
"What of it? You supported Alesso di'Marente."
Stung, Baredan snapped, "Not in this, Anton. Never in this."
"Oh? And why?" Anton di'Guivera had never been a small man, but he rarely chose the arrogance of making those about him feel his height. He chose it now, crossing arms that no amount of time would soften across the breadth of his chest.
"Because the clan Leonne—"
"The clan Leonne was a weak clan," Anton said coldly. "Not a single member of that clan survived the culling of a simple night's work."
Silence. And then Baredan smiled, brightly as a sword in sun's light, fencing with his expression. "You know."
Fencing, sadly, with a master. "I know that the son of a concubine remains alive in this Imperial City."
"Not even you could deny him the legitimacy the waters—and the Tyr'agar—granted."
"Does it matter, Baredan?"
"Of course not," the General replied. "I've traveled to this city only to watch your half-trained men lose the foreign challenge."
"General," Ramiro di'Callesta said, breaking the cadence of their conversation before Baredan could embarrass himself, "I believe that we have as much answer as we came to receive." He bowed. "Ser Anton di'Guivera."
"Tyr'agnate." Anton di'Guivera bowed. And then, as he rose, his eyes widened ever so slightly. Ramiro noticed that they remained at the level of the brilliant crest that broke the simplicity of black and gold. "Bloodhame," the older man said faintly.
"Bloodhame," Ramiro replied.
"You are not like Baredan di'Navarre," Anton di'Guivera said, rising. "His folly is not your folly. Yet you stand by his side, with that sword; it is clear that you have made your choice."
"We all make choices. Some of them are irrevocable." And as he spoke, he placed his hand upon the hilt of the Sword of Callesta—the surest symbol of his commitment, and the only one, in truth, whose declaration meant much.
"Yes." Anton replied, distant and distinct. He bowed, again, and turned; where he might fence with the General, he did not seek to cross words with the Tyr'agnate. Anton di'Guivera had never been a fool.
But as he turned, he spoke. "I hear a rumor, in the holdings, that we are not the only men of the Dominion who seek mastery of this Challenge."
"Rumors are always a dangerous thing to put faith in."
"Indeed."
"We will see your best upon the field."
"And I, General, Tyr'agnate, will be most interested to see yours."
"Anton—" Baredan began, but Ramiro cut him off with a slight gesture. The gesture that he gave his waiting Tyran was less subtle; it snapped the attention that they had been giving the legendary Anton di'Guivera as if it were thread that led directly from them to the swordmaster. As a man, they took their positions.
"Ser Anton," the Callestan Tyr'agnate said softly. "Do not always trust what you have been told."
The man's head snapped around in the most gratifying of fashions. As did Baredan's. The swordmaster took a single step forward, as if drawn. "And will you tell me," he said, his eyes a sudden dark fire, "that Alesso lied to me?"
"You are what the Lord made you; you are what you have chosen. You have always made weapons. It is, and has always been your calling—to be the best; to make the best. Judge for yourself."
"I want," Anton di'Guivera said, his face hardening into a neutrality that did not quite sink roots deep enough to take his voice as well, "what the wind wants."
"Then stand against us, Anton, and you most certainly will receive it." . Declaration. Movement. Commitment.
Baredan di'Navarre and Ramiro di'Callesta left the great hall. But only Baredan looked back.
Later, in the questionable comfort of the Arannan Halls, the two men sat alone. It was odd, to sit thus; Baredan di'Navarre had yet to become accustomed to the lack of serafs in the rooms in which they sat. A man of his station had few, but he had them, and they were a constant presence, like weather, or breathing—a thing only noticed if it caused difficulties, but never otherwise questioned.
There was food here, and it was obviously made by the hands of a Southerner—but again, there was something in its flavor, some herb or spice, some barely discernible difference, that made him realize that the most the North could offer a man from the Dominion was the facade of familiarity, not the depth.
He wanted to go home.
But he said none of this; instead he noted, with some residual bitterness, that Ramiro di'Callesta was affected by none of these things. He was at home here, as at home as he had been in Callesta, with a foreign tongue spilling from his lips just as frequently as the Tyrian court tongue, and just as smoothly. Not all that was said about the Tyr'agnate of Averda was merely the rumor of the envious.
"It is not so lovely a view here." Ramiro said, as he sat back on a chair—a chair, of all things, in this
hall, a hard piece of dark wood and fine cloth that could not, in Baredan's opinion, ever be as comfortable as good, solid mats and cushions.
"It's a better view than I ever had."
"Ah. Well." The silence was uncomfortable; there was, between them, a single question that Baredan di'Navarre had spent the better part of two hours wondering how best to ask. Two hours. He shrugged. He was, after all, expected to be a General, not a ruler.
"What," Baredan said, as he lifted foreign wine in a thin goblet to his lips, "did Alesso tell Anton di'Guivera?"
He thought that Ramiro might smile, but in this he was mistaken; the Tyr'agnate's lips pressed into a line thinner than the rim of Baredan's glass. "What did Alesso tell him, or how do I know?" He lifted wine, but did not drink it; Baredan noted that although he accepted hospitality wherever it was offered, the acceptance, like much about the man, was a facade. "Baredan, you are a General; you will serve Valedan kai di'Leonne in this war. And if he somehow succeeds in his intent to claim the Tor Leonne, you will serve him as Tyr'agar.
"The interests of the Tyr and the interests of Averda seldom coincide .completely. We will not be such good friends then, such willing allies."
This was the Tyr'agnate that Baredan knew so well. He smiled. "True."
"But there must be some trust between us, a gesture if nothing else; we will fight this war with everything we have, and many things that we do not know we have.
"Therefore, while I will answer your first question, I do not choose to tell you how I know what I know. Although I'm surprised that you don't know. Perhaps you know it already, but have not thought to make the connection." He set the goblet down, untouched.
"This is only a story, Baredan. A rumor, you understand, a thing that cannot be verified at this remove."
"Anton is no fool. A rumor that was only rumor would not have—"
"Would not have this effect? Baredan, he is the swordmaster, if the Dominion has one—but he is not the lofty nobility of Leone's once great height. He is a man, just as I am—and just as you should be."
And why are you here, Ramiro? But he did not speak. Instead, he sat back, feeling the uncomfortable hardness of the curved chair's top along the line of his shoulders. Sun came in through windows open to the light of the courtyard; the leaves of plants too numerous to name—-and Baredan was not a court clansman, to name all variety of plants such as these—caught that light and made of it a colored vista, a landscape in miniature of a world that was too varied to be quite real.
"Do with this story what you will; if Alesso has spoken it openly, it is open."
"Tell me," Baredan said, as patient as he could be.
"The story goes thus: That when Anton di'Guivera was a young man, his skill with the sword came so easily that he came to the attention of the kai Guivera. Guivera is not a well-known clan, and for good reason; Anton di'Guivera, at that time, had already chosen the one wife his own labor could support, and had by her one child."
Baredan picked up the goblet again. "Ramiro, I am familiar with the basics of Anton's early life. He lost that wife, and that child, to bandits; it is for that reason that he chose to become the warrior that he did."
"Humor me," Ramiro said, adding with a smile's edge, "if you're aware of this basic conversational courtesy." It was not a comment that he could make in a room that contained serafs, or women, or Tyran or cerdan; only here, with one witness, and that the man being so prodded, did he have that luxury.
"He was foolish about the wife, as many men often become, and she had not grown so wind-worn that she did not find his prowess flattering. She was, indeed, proud that he had been called by the kai Guivera. Prouder still to find that he had been noted by the man who, at that time, trained the Leonne heir.
"But it was not just the trainer who noticed the skill of the young Anton di'Guivera; it was the Tyr'agar himself."
"That would have been Maredan kai di'Leonne."
"Yes. Valedan's grandfather. He wished to see the young man trained to the full extent of his ability, and so he relieved him of his duties as cerdan to the clan Guivera, paying both the man and the clan that had nurtured him handsomely. The young wife, and their son, he brought to the capital.
"And there, the work began."
Baredan waited.
Ramiro turned away, to look at the finery and splendor of growth that the Kings chose to call the footpaths. His voice changed sub-tlely, although later Baredan could not quite have said how. "But the trainer watched the young man and although he was impressed, he was also, it is said, concerned. He saw, in Anton di'Guivera a weapon—but a weapon without an edge. He approached the Tyr'agar—remember, Baredan, that this is story and rumor—and he told the Tyr, "this man will be the Lord's Chosen twice over if he but devotes his time and his attention to the discipline."
"And the Tyr'agar said, 'He devotes all of his time now to just that; the mornings to riding and the afternoons to the sword." It must be said that he was not, coming as he did from a clan one step from serafdom, well-versed in riding.
" 'He devotes his time, Tyr'agar, but only his time. When he leaves my circle, he leaves it; he goes to his home.' "
Baredan paled.
" 'What will this young man be, if he gives you what he gives you now?' the Tyr'agar is said to have asked.
" 'A champion, perhaps; there are no certainties.'
" 'And if I grant you the student that you desire?'
" 'He will be two things: A swordsman beyond compare.'
" 'And?'
" 'And the only man to go North and return with the cursed wreath of Kings.'
"The Tyr'agar heard these words, and reflected on them a long time. At last, he said, 'I will give you the warrior that you desire. Deliver, for this, the champion that you have promised, and the Lord will consider our work here well done, and judge it accordingly.'
"Six months later, Anton di'Guivera and his young family returned for a visit to the clan Guivera. There, in the small township that Guivera administered, his young wife and his child were killed by raiding bandits, along with half of the villagers."
Baredan leaned forward in the chair; leaned forward so that he might momentarily cover his eyes, his face, with the comforting shadow his palms might provide. For the Lord had judged, and he did not wish to betray his own judgment of that judgment to the light that streamed in through the windows; the eyes of god.
But Ramiro had not yet finished. "Anton di'Guivera lost everything he valued in life but his skill, and it was to his skill that he turned the whole of his attention. He has never turned away. The winds have scoured him almost clean. There is no new wife; there are no new children. He exists outside of life, almost outside of time.
"His only regret, the only failing in his long life, was that he never found the bandits responsible for the death of the family that had been his life. He led many raids against many bandits— I believe he still does from time to time—but he never found their killers."
Baredan rose because he had to. Some men, when they receive ill news, are frozen with shock; some become stricken, dumb and cold as stone. And some are moved to act, to do something, long before they know what it is they must do.
"Alesso told him this."
"Yes."
Neither man questioned its truth. Truth had its own ring, even spoken as it was by a man famed for his ability to bend truth to suit whim.
"What does a man do," Ramiro said softly, "when the last of his demons have been confronted?"
"Have they?"
"They were, with the death of the Tyr'agar."
"The clan is not dead. The boy remains."
"Perhaps."
Sunlight grew warmer in the still air; Baredan longed for the wind of the plains. Home. "I've known Anton di'Guivera for most of my adult life," the General said quietly. "Certainly since the Tyr'agar accepted my service, and gave me my rank after the Imperial war. He is a swordsman, but he is not a butcher. He's not a young man anymore, Ramiro; the passions
of youth cannot drive him so long or so hard."
"Neither are we."
"True enough. Very well. What would you do if your demons were dead?"
"I think that if the death of his wife's killer had been the sole focus, the sole force, in his life, he would have seen the Tyr'agar dead, and then he would have laid down his weapons, disavowed their use; it was for his talent, after all, that his family was slaughtered.
"But he cannot quite deprive himself of that talent; it is what he is. I spoke no lie. Therefore, he must do one of two things: He must make peace with what he has become, and accept the history of his forging, or he must continue the war that he has already begun."
"You believe that he will try to kill the kai Leonne."
"I believe," Ramiro said bleakly, "that is what he came North to do."
* * *
CHAPTER FIVE
Four days.
Four days; long days. Sun too hot, wind not dry enough to take away the sweat of a day's labor. A life's labor.
Jewel ATerafin sat in a room made dark by heavy curtains. Light illuminated the folds of fabric that skirted the ground by an inch or two, as if the window were waiting for her attention.
It was a struggle, for Jewel, not to succumb to its call—even given the weight of what was at stake. She rose, unfolding her knees, tilting her chin to the ceiling and lifting her arms as far as they could uncomfortably go. If she sat for another minute, she'd grow roots and branches.
And not a thing had come to the dark corners of the room. Not a thing to the corners of her vision, the seer's gift.
At her feet there was water; Teller had brought it before Avandar let the curtains fall. She lifted the goblet and drank; the liquid was the same temperature as her mouth; it spilled down her throat as if it were almost nothing.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King Page 15
