Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King

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by The Uncrowned King


  The Terafin's laugh was short, brief. Then she turned to the seer. "I do not understand you, but I understand that the burden you carry has become your life. What will you be when you set it down?

  "I," she added softly, "have the comfort of knowing that I'll be dead. Absent. I came to ask Jewel ATerafin to take up the burden that ends with my life. But your presence here marks a larger war; it always has. The demons that run in the city streets and the ATerafin that sleeps in that bed are not separate: they are part of the same war.

  "Will it end?" she asked quietly. "If that war takes her, and the best that she has found in this House, if I accept the risk to House and kin and do nothing to stand in your way, will the fight at least end the war?"

  "I came," Evayne said softly, answering a different question, "to ask Jewel ATerafin to walk the path when it opens for her, regardless of what the House requires." She bowed her hooded head. "Not an answer, I fear." Turned, but before she took a step, turned back. "But I believe, Terafin—believe, and do not know— that when the war ends, for good or ill, it will end."

  "That," The Terafin said quietly, "is all I require. My own battles, it appears, are destined to be fought again and again."

  "The gods value finality, of a sort."

  She was gone in a step; Amarais was alone.

  In the darkness, robbed of a splinter of a seer's soul for light, she stared at the bed's sole occupant, and then bowed deeply and walked away.

  And in the bed. Jewel Markess ATerafin slowly unbunched her fists.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  16th of Lattan, 427 AA

  Avantari

  Two of the kin still walked the streets.

  She could scent them on a wind that carried nothing but shadow, but they were far enough away that she could not name them, could not summon them and challenge them.

  Jewel was alive.

  She did not know how to react.

  She had known Isladar for all of her life, had watched him, had learned from him, and had—and she could say this only to herself, and only now, in the dead of night, when the darkness made her as sure of her power as she could ever be—fled from him.

  But she had never known Isladar to fail, and he had intended to kill Jewel ATerafin. She should have felt triumphant, because for the first time in her life she had bested him, and this was not the first time in her life that she had tried.

  But those had been schooling games, and in the end, they had always been under his control. The world had, until now.

  She was free.

  She was free, and an emptiness so entwined with anger that she could not separate one from the other drove even the facade of sleep from her reach. There were no languages in which she could curse him, or damn him; he was Kialli, and willfully, voluntarily damned—if damnation was the burning wind, the vast expanse, the song of those who have finally made their irrevocable choice. She would not think about that here.

  Could not; it was an ache. Like anger, like the thing that fed anger, it turned in upon her. Demanded action.

  Her sword, in the Shining Court, spoke for her. This was not that Court, not that Palace; in this palace, the only prey was human; the only fight, a fight that was layered with human weight, human desire, human strength and weakness. If there had been anyone that had marked her as enemy, she might have chosen this night to carry the fight to its inevitable conclusion. But to make real enemies, to make enemies whose end was satisfying enough to ease the building shadow, took time, took the intimacy of jealousy or hatred.

  She was restless.

  But she wasn't the only one.

  She heard him before she saw him, and she knew who he was because the particular fall of the step, the timing of it, had become familiar enough to be distinctive, even over the clinking chime of chain mail. That, and the smell of him, the mixture of sweat and scent and—in her heightened state of awareness—steel, old leather.

  She did not turn when he came upon her back because she knew that he knew she was aware of his presence; not a single one of the Ospreys had yet managed to come upon her unaware, and most of them had stopped trying—not that many of them had bothered to begin with. They were an odd group: they'd probably die defending her right to be one of them, but they were aware that she wasn't one of them. Couldn't be.

  "Kiriel."

  "Auralis."

  Silence. Awkward, unleavened by ale or wine as it often was with Auralis. With the Ospreys. He waited for her to say more; she didn't.

  At last, he broke. Unusual. Usually he walked.

  "You had no luck today."

  That stung. The shrug she offered was her only answer.

  "You're going out hunting tonight."

  Have I become that obvious?

  "Look. I know that officially it's the Terafin girl who's responsible for finding and tracking the demons. I know that the white-haired mage is supposed to augment her ability. You want me to play that game? Fine. I'll even pretend I believe it.

  "But when you go out tonight, I want to come with you."

  At that, she did turn. "You?"

  In the darkness, his face was shadowed, the line of his chin lost to the long line of neck. There was light enough, though, to see his eyes; fire was reflected there, caught, as it was offered, by torchlight, but made brighter. He bore two swords, one strapped across his back, one in the grip of a hand bound by the half-gloves that the Ospreys favored for fighting in what they called this season. She knew he carried at least two daggers, water; that he could— but seldom did—don helm when the mood to fight struck him.

  He had often dressed just like this and gone out into the city streets, refusing the company of his chosen companions since his defeat—public and costly—by the younger Valedan kai di'Leonne. Kiriel was aware that the loss of youth was a fear that most mortals labored under once they reached an age. She was also aware, as no other member of the Ospreys could be, that it was not the defeat itself which had humiliated Auralis; not the fact of the defeat which drove him to seek his solace in fighting, in the streets of the city's hundred holdings. No; it was the comparison; it was looking at Valedan as if he were the mirror held up to Auralis.

  But she did not understand precisely what it was that he'd seen in the mirror that had that effect. Only that it had less to do with Valedan and age than it had to do with his own fear and the past that all humans—that all creatures—hid behind the supple lines of the facades a life helped them build.

  She could see the pain, of course. She could even appreciate it. But she couldn't see what caused it. No more than he could see hers, this night. The past. Loss. Isladar.

  "What does the Primus say?"

  He said something that was meant to be rude, and she understood it as such, but it did not move her.

  "I'm not on his time."

  "The Kalakar said—"

  "I'm not on her time either."

  "It is not safe. Even at—not even the mages hunted the kin."

  He shrugged. "You take the mages with you during the day. Doesn't matter. I'm no mage."

  "Auralis—" She stopped speaking a moment. When she started again, her voice was cooler. "Why?"

  He shrugged. "Because you'll find 'em. I've been looking for a good fight for almost two weeks."

  She shrugged. "Join the Challenge."

  At that, his teeth showed white. "Too late for it, or I'd've tried. You know, Kiriel, that's the first time I've ever heard you try to be funny. Maybe a couple of years from now you'll succeed."

  Her turn to shrug; she never recalled shrugging so much in the Shining City. Habits. She'd forgotten how easy it was to absorb them, from humans.

  "I don't want to take you."

  "I know."

  "If you die, Duarte will blame me."

  "I'll be dead. I won't care." He smiled. She saw his desperation then, hidden in the folds of his smile the way the knife's edge was when the blade was turned away from the light and only the flat was visible. I
t was hard not to turn that desperation in on itself; hard not to twist what she could see so clearly into a shape that was more gratifying to her.

  She would never have tried to deny herself that pleasure had it not been for Ashaf.

  Ashaf.

  Isladar.

  Jewel.

  "Yes," she heard herself saying. "You can come with me. But I warn you—I'm accustomed to fighting alone."

  He shrugged. "We all are, Kiriel," he said, staring into the moonlit night, the quiet of the courtyard. "Do you think it's any different, just because we're Ospreys? In the end, we all fight alone, because in the end, that's the way we die."

  He was good at what he did.

  Some men were killers without competence, killers of convenience; some were killers because they could think of no other way of affirming their power. Some killed out of desperation, to protect the things that they valued, some because they had built a life around following the orders of a more powerful authority, and some killed out of boredom.

  She could not tell, watching Auralis—for her eyes, in the darkness, were drawn to him again and again, as if he were one of the dangers of the city, and not in fact a willing ally—which of these things Auralis was. Did not know why she was curious.

  Did not understand why he was here. Why she let him be here. And she did not want to think about it, so she turned her thoughts, her senses, her instinct, toward two kin in the streets of the city.

  How human.

  They were not together.

  One was stationary; and one was on the move, and it was the one on the move that caught her attention; it was that demon's power that was the greatest. She had been taught, time and again, that to confront the strongest of the kin was two things, simultaneously: It was the best way to proclaim her own power, and it was the easiest way to expose herself to combined attack. She was what she was; the kin constantly underestimated her ability to survive them. Such estimation served her well in an actual fight; it served poorly because it was the reputation of power that protected one from having to fight at all.

  That, to Isladar, was of import.

  To Kiriel it was not.

  Yet she stopped a moment, beneath the moon's strong light.

  "What?"

  "There are two."

  "Where?"

  "Different places."

  "And?"

  "There's a powerful one and a not so powerful one."

  "Where are you going?"

  "To the powerful one."

  She could see his smile in the night shadows as clearly— perhaps more clearly—than she could in the open day.

  "I think I understand," she said softly, "why Alexis worries about you so much." And for a moment, she surprised herself, because she did.

  Even at night it was hot.

  The kin did not mind the heat, as they did not mind the cold; they rose above either, unconcerned. Kiriel, trapped halfway between their power and the frailty of mortality, preferred the cold. She'd gotten used to the heat, but she could not get used to the heaviness of the air itself, the wetness of it.

  When she was four years old, she'd tried to stop breathing because Isladar did not need to breathe. She had, in time, grown immune to the cold, as Isladar was, and immune to the heat, and fire in particular seemed to melt to either side of her skin as if it were a prettified variant of water. But air—she needed it. 'Just as she needed to sleep. Oh, not so much as the rest of the human court did, but the need was there, a weakness that waited to be exploited.

  Everything about her life was weakness.

  As if to deny that, she hunted.

  She'd learned that. To hunt. To kill. To strip the kin of their physical facade and send them screaming back to the Hells, where their names were so weakened by the journey they could not be defined by them, held by them. She had thought that if she could do that enough—hunt and kill—they would finally fear her. That she would become like Isladar.

  Like him.

  She needed the anger, tonight.

  She needed it, so she let the hurt come; they couldn't be separated, not with her. What had he taught her? Not to trust kin.

  What had he hoped to teach her?

  Not to trust? No. Too easy.

  Jay.

  "What?"

  "Nothing. I thought I heard a name."

  She did not understand this unknown demon's game. She could sense that he moved, and that he moved in a straight enough line that he was either magicked and hidden from sight, or human in seeming. Human, she thought. Human in seeming would make the most sense. If he were here to kill Valedan kai di'Leonne, what better guise to take? There were, more humans in this city than there had ever been Kialli—she was certain of that—and it would be easy enough to lose one in the crowd.

  If one wasn't Kiriel.

  But it was hard to force the world to render human image, human form; hard to force the world to render a body that was not unlike the forms the Kialli once had when they walked the world of their birth. This world, Isladar said. This world was home, and foreign to them.

  Do not underestimate the desire for home, Kiriel, he would tell her. It is strong in humans as they age, and they never reach the age of the Kialli. Home is where we were young, and even though we do not remember our youth as clearly as you remember yours, we desire it.

  When you are Queen, you must remember this. It is a weakness, and one of perhaps two.

  The other, she thought, was arrogance.

  Auralis ran a hand over his eyes. "Can you find him, in there?"

  "Yes."

  The light from the tavern's many lamps smeared and cast shadows. It was night, but the moon was high, and on the morrow the Festival would begin in earnest. There were bets being placed, coins being exchanged. Money. She'd learned about money. "Are they comfortable, like that?"

  Auralis cast a sideways glance at her, one heavy with suspi-cion. He was more afraid of humor than venom; of laughter than pain. She could see it there, behind his eyes. She had been so careful not to watch anyone in this city too closely; not to stop and stare, not to study them. They were so different in texture and feel than the men and women of the Court, she might be trapped watching them for hours. But she watched him now because it was easier than asking him questions.

  "No," he said, when he was satisfied that her question was exactly what it seemed, "they aren't."

  "Then why do they do it?"

  "Company. Money. Connections." Pause. "Is he hiding there?"

  "I don't know."

  "Is he going to kill them?"

  "I—I don't think so."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I—I' in not close enough." She wasn't. She wasn't close enough to see his name, to hear it announced by the presence of his power. But he was a power, or she would not have felt his summons from so great a distance. Would she?

  "What do you mean, not close enough? You followed him all the way here."

  "Yes."

  "Can you even get closer?"

  "I don't know."

  "Can you take him?"

  "Not without killing half a dozen humans. Not in there."

  Auralis was silent for the space of three heartbeats. Then he smiled. "We can clear room."

  What had she learned in Averalaan Aramarelas? What had she learned in the Shining City? How did they intersect, the Kiriel before and the Kiriel after? The smell of smoke and sweat and ale was overpowering in the heavy stillness of the air, but it did her the mercy of driving away the smell of the sea and the harbor that otherwise always lingered.

  She fingered the hilt of her sword, for comfort more than utility.

  "Don't speak," Auralis said. "Let me do the talking."

  The command was offhand; he expected her to follow it. Did not conceive of her doing otherwise. She tensed; her grip whitened her knuckles. But she nodded. This is not my territory. She said it three times, and then let herself believe that it was not a weakness, to say it. To acknowledge it.

&nbs
p; She knew that he was at the heart of the tavern, not too close to the bar, and not near the exit.

  "He's where the betting is," Auralis said. "I can't believe he's smart enough to be where the betting is." He cast a sidelong glance at her—as if she wouldn't notice the flickering stray of his eyes. "I guess he's spent more time around people than you have."

  "I don't know. I don't know who he is."

  Auralis shrugged, and then his eyes narrowed, his expression sharpening because of it. "You don't expect to know every soldier in a war, do you?"

  "No. But I expect to know the—the officers."

  Auralis said, "You've got a lot to learn."

  She bristled. He shrugged, an elegant, graceful gesture. His apology; she could tell it by the way his colors shifted, muted. "Did you kill a lot of people back home?"

  "People?"

  "Humans. Us."

  "There weren't many of you 'back home.' "

  "Did you kill the ones there were?"

  "I? Sometimes. Not often."

  "When?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "Yes."

  She raised a dark brow. Wondered why she let him question her. Why she'd let him follow her. Why she was going to answer him. Because she was. "When they tried," she said at last, "to kill me. Or when our Lord ordered it."

  "Did you ever kill for fun?"

  "Not—no."

  She thought he would press her. Ashaf had pressed her, Ashaf had hated every one of those deaths, although the excuse of self-defense muted her anxiety. But he was satisfied with her answers.

  "All right. Do you think he knows you're here?"

  "Yes."

  "Right here?"

  "Possibly. Probably."

  "Is he hiding from you?"

  "I—no." She- frowned. "Yes. He must be hiding somehow. But…"

  "Does he have reason to think that you'll care whether or not these people die?"

  "No."

  "Do they hire people?"

  "Yes…"

  "I don't think that's the game. What's the game, Kiriel?"

 

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