If it gave them pause, they showed nothing; it was not in their nature, and their training—in this, Carlo was acceptable—was to deny any display of weakness, such as surprise.
But when the man rose, bleeding, from the water's surface, shedding salt and sea and blood as if all liquid were one thing, one of the two men froze in place.
The adjudicator bid them hold at once; the mages—and the mages were ever-present, turned in their crafts of heavy wood, their hands raised as shields and weapons, the words breaking their silence, leaving their lips, in much the same way as the man broke water.
Wood splintered and shattered in that moment.
Screams now. Screams that did not quite carry to the men who, trapped in the third heat, toiled under cloudless sun and shadow.
The man who rose fell, his flight cut short by some ill wind.
The Southerners understood better than any the caprice and the malice of the wind. But Carlo cried out to his brother, lifting a bronze arm.
Ser Anton followed the direction of that pointed hand, and he saw—as Carlo did, curse the quickness of his vision—the water creature that stood, momentarily, like a pillar in the air. Easy enough, to miss such a creature; easy enough to assume that the water had risen in the wake of the bleeding man.
Easy enough, Ser Anton thought grimly, for a student that he had not trained.
The man broke water again, and behind them all—behind the standing tableau of fifteen naked or near-naked men, the Kings' men were coming, their voices both raised and controlled, army voices. Fighting voices.
He shaded his eyes against the sun's light; looked beyond the dispersing blood and the gush of breaking bubbles to see that the front-runner, the man by far in the lead in this contest, was indeed the kai Leonne.
Helpless target. Unarmed.
With just this ease, he thought, cold in the summer's heat, the fight was over. He had all but vowed that it would be his hand that ended the line; had, in fact, were he honest, vowed it.
He felt no anger as he contemplated the death; no heat. Just the chill, perhaps of water, perhaps of true night.
He was slow; that was it. Slow, his gaze turned to the interior landscape and not the exterior; the battle within and not the slaughter without. Whatever held his attention, it kept him from seeing the obvious until it occurred.
Carlo di'Jevre broke the line that comprised the fourth heat. He spun, neatly, took five steps, kicked aside the robes and the tunic that passed for Northern modesty as if he couldn't stand the sight of them. He bent, turned, faced the water again, and leaped.
Ser Anton cried out. Andaro cried out. Both voices blended in words of denial that only the water heard.
Carlo di'Jevre had taken his sword into the watery domain.
He had never enjoyed the kill.
That was the truth, and it was the assassin's truth: Men who enjoyed the kill too much were wed to the death, not the Lady, and the Lady was jealous by nature. Such men as those, she did not take in, and if she did, she did not keep; they joined a different brotherhood, and served a darker purpose. In the darkness of sun striated by the movement of heavy water, he remembered that truth.
And although he couldn't afford it, he remembered more: The tenth time he had woken in the night at the brotherhood's home in the deep South. One of the soft-spoken boys he had—hesitantly— allowed himself to become close to, lay awash in so much blood the silks and the mats couldn't swallow it quickly enough.
All that was left of the moment following it were impressions. Hand on a dagger, in the darkness. Dripping, bloody dagger. Lamp, poor light, on a face. Another boy's. Grimness there, and deep satisfaction. That boy, like Kallandras, had been taken off the streets of a Southern city, a place where a seraf was not quite a seraf, and a clansman not quite free. Then.
Now.
The Kialli moved, sensing the things that the bard could keep off his face, out of his movements, out of his voice entirely—but never, never out of his thoughts. It was a mercy, to strike at him, if not an ease; it had been years since he called upon the power of Myrrdion's ring. Years since it had called upon him, and he was comfortable with its absence.
The creature moved lazily out of his way.
So, too, had that young man moved. Lazily. Easily.
He waited, with that dagger, with that death. The masters had come, bearing light to alleviate night's cover. They witnessed the work of the boy they had thought to take in. and to teach.
In silence, they had listened to his claim: I have proved myself worthy of you.
Kallandras felt the grieving anger that he had felt then, even now. That he had risen, from ground and mat-side, to speak, to give voice to before the turn of robes and feet carried these men from him—they, so elevated, he so desperate.
"You have killed your brother!" he cried. "And the brotherhood is the only thing that separates us from common killers. We have each other!"
Something in his voice, even then. Something in his voice caught them all, masters and would-be Kovaschaü alike. Maybe that's when they had first realized what his voice could mean to them.
"What is this brotherhood that you speak of?" the oldest Master said softly. "We have the Lady." But he bowed to Kallandras, not yet novitiate, not yet initiate, just a child a step above serafdom.
Then. Now.
The creature struck him, and he—he missed; his blade made a wave, a swell of water, that fanned out across his cheek. He knew that he had caught the creature's attention; that his anger, unearthed and somehow still alive although it had been more than three decades laid to rest, was a hook. That and his pain.
Assassins don't enjoy killing. The truth.
But they use whatever weapon they have at hand when a killing must be done.
The old man had bowed to Kallandras, and when he rose from that bow, his lips were curved in an odd smile. "See," he said softly, "to your brother."
He had been left with the dead then. Left there, with no idea of the honor, oblique and painful as it had been, that the old man had conferred upon him.
He had understood the value of the brotherhood, the desire for its society and no other, before they had taken him into their number and made him one with it. He understood it now, and it burned him; the pain made him careless—or as careless as one can be who has been trained by the Kovaschaü masters.
Did they curse him now? He knew that one, only one, of those masters remained alive; the others, age had taken.
He knew the loss, of course, but today he let it in.
Beneath the moving waters, beneath the theater of their sun-harsh light, he let it in.
Above them both, the assassin and the kin, Valedan kai di'Leonne was in motion.
He reached Andaro in time.
Caught his wrist in the grip of a man who was both older and undaunted by that difference in age. The sun had darkened him.
the wind had hardened his skin; he took from time; time did not take from him.
But if Andaro's hand had been stopped short of gripping his sword, he could fence with his eyes, the gravity of his expression, the accusation it contained. He did not, however, demean them both by begging.
"'The adjudicators gave their order," Ser Anton said softly, seeing the wreckage of splintered wood upon the water, the corpse of a single mage — the others had somehow survived both the weight of their robes and their underwater enemies, and had made it ashore. "The magi will act when the waters are clear; they cannot risk magery in the water; it may well kill the challengers."
Andaro made no reply. Nor would he.
He stared out into the still spot in the water where he thought Carlo must have dived.
Watched as, less than a minute later, that familiar—completely drenched—head bobbed up, seeking air.
It was not enough.
Kallandras lived through the pain, offering it to the demon like a drug; he used himself, as he had been taught to use himself, mercilessly.
Kallandras saw
the expression, so appropriately glassy, that held his enemy's face; saw him slow and shudder a moment. But the assassin was accustomed to pain, and in the end, so, too was the Kialli: he looked up, and saw as Kallandras did: the passing of his intended victim. He smiled, he only paused to smile, and then the water took him beyond Kallandras' reach.
Air wrapped him round; enveloping him, like a stream too thin to be seen, it answered his call. He followed, but not quickly. Not quickly enough.
But there was one other in the water, with a single crescent sword, a sword that moved too slowly given the water's pull; a sword that dragged him down with its weight. He struggled, but he kept himself near the air that was his life.
Saw the first of the swimmers.
Waited, in the water, and then, with one last breath of air, gave in. Slid beneath it.
He saw, as clearly as he could, the man who had come out of the water, followed by the unholy water itself—only this time, the positions were reversed.
No question; none whatever. The creature was here to kill the kai Leonne.
Lord of Day, Carlo di'Jevre thought. Gripping his sword, he waited. Beneath him, beneath the approaching kai Leonne, the man whose golden hair now filled the water with strands not unlike the legendary mermaid's suddenly pursued; he carried something too small to be a real weapon in his right hand, and in his left, nothing.
The creature turned, lifted a hand that was slender and long, and hurled something, something unseen—but not unfelt.
The water rocked with its sudden unfurling. But the target, the man, had somehow stepped aside. As if water were something that offered him purchase.
"HOLD!" that man cried, and Carlo froze. So did the creature; or rather, it slowed, as if waking to water for the first time and realizing that it had weight.
The creature's snarl was carried by wave; he raced up now, up toward the kai Leonne.
Carlo waited. Held his sword. Readied it—as much as he could in water like this.
He would regret it later—if ever—but the creature's back was toward him, its attention divided between the kai Leonne and the man who pursued him. Carlo was certain that such a thing must realize that he was there—but perhaps not, or perhaps he was only another swimmer, another fragile, easily killed man, with no magery to protect him.
But it didn't matter; he did not call the creature; did not demand the right to face him in honorable combat. This was no creature of the Lord's, no creature meant to stand and fight beneath the open sky. Night here, night in the depths; all men fought a night such as this. He heard its terrible gurgling; saw the kai Leonne pass above them both, and struck, as true as he might, the creature's transparent spine. Then, because his body wished air more than he wished the sword, he rose up, leaving its weight behind. Leaving his sword.
And because he did, its claws cut his calf to bone, drawing blood, but not life's blood.
He had the privilege of knowing that his strike was not wasted; the man struck, with the dagger that seemed so beneath notice, and even surrounded by water as it was, the creature began to burn.
Lord of Day, Carlo thought, as he reached for air, gasping. Lord
of Light. He made his way to the open boardwalk, reached up. and was hauled onto his feet by two angry men.
He laughed before his leg collapsed. Laughed in the face of their silence, their anger, their concern.
"What does it matter," he told Andaro's grim, white face, "about the Challenge? What will they do? The Challenge is a game, Andaro—but I—today I have faced the first true enemy."
"And was it worth your life?"
"I'm alive."
"You might not have been."
Carlo grimaced as Andaro lifted him. "What do you think?" And he laughed.
"I think," Ser Anton said, looking into the water's deeps as if all that lay beneath its moving surface had been laid bare to him, "you've lost your sword."
The third heat made it to the boardwalk. The fourth heat was delayed.
And perhaps because of the delay they swam poorly when they did at last receive permission to swim. So, too, did the fifth heat.
Valedan kai di'Leonne was, against all odds, the winner of the event. And no victory, not even the fight with the young boys of the Essalieyanese court, had ever been so galling, so contemptible, so empty to him.
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Serra Alina came to him in the humid, cramped waiting areas adjacent to the open glory of the coliseum. The Princess brought her; the two women cast long shadows as the sun left the sky. It had been years since he had believed in the Lord and the Lady, but he yearned for the night now as if, indeed, it were that mythical Lady's bower, a place for peace.
Not yet.
Serra Alina publicly prostrated herself before him, as befit his rank and her own; it made the Ospreys uncomfortable—or worse, made her the objective of their insinuations, their colorful innuendo. She was a Serra, of course, and rose above it.
But he was Valedan. "Primus," he said, in as formal a voice as he ever used, "if you cannot teach your men to speak respectfully of a woman who is the ACormaris' equal in every way, I will kill them."
Silence, there. Decarus Alexis whistled softly under her breath, but her smile was sharp with approval—or with what came as close to approval as she ever offered Valedan.
"Tyr'agar," the Primus said at last.
"Dismissed." Valedan turned to Alina and said, more shortly than he had intended, "Rise."
She rose. Lifted the veils that separated her skin from the Lord's view. "Valedan," she said quietly. "You won."
He made no reply; she glanced at Mirialyn.
At last she said, "You joined this contest to win; to take the title. This is your first victory."
"If this is victory," he replied, his voice a low snarl, "I wish I had never entered the Challenge to begin with."
Mirialyn and Alina exchanged glances again; the glance told Valedan that Mirialyn had summoned the Serra.
"How so?"
"To win." he said, "I kept swimming. A man was fighting for his life against a creature that wanted mine… and I kept swimming. I offered no aid. no resistance, no battle.
"To win." He spit.
She frowned, a ripple of lines around mouth, eyes, forehead.
"And worse—worst of all—one of the men I believe was sent here to kill me did intervene. On my behalf. He struck the creature, and probably saved not only my life but Kallandras' life as well."
"Had Kallandras not been, present." the princess said, speaking for the first time, "that man would have perished. As it was, he was injured badly enough we believe he will now no longer be a contestant in any of the remaining tests." She was silent a moment. "He was favored." she said al last, the words oddly hesitant, "to win the test of the horse."
He knew what she was telling him, and hated it.
"Valedan." Alina said quietly, "you must come to the podium: they will call for you shortly. And when you go. you must honor the spirit of this competition."
"Is that why you came?" He turned away from her then.
"Yes," she said, unflinchingly. "You made your choice. You must now live with it, with grace. That is the mark of a man."
"You have come here to tell me that?"
"I had hoped," she said coolly, "to offer merely my congratulations." Reproof.
He was angry with her; angry with them both. But he valued her enough—barely, this one afternoon—to hear the truth when it was spoken, no matter how little he liked it.
The crowds that opened up before him shook with applause as the challengers entered the arena. The voice of the ocean itself seemed to run through the benches in waves, rippling and breaking against unseen shoals. Fitting, here.
Witnesses.
They had seen the blood, they had seen the shattered wreckage of both a mage's craft and a mage's life—and they had seen that the challengers themselves continued on boldly and without apparent fear of the dangers be
neath them. This was the stuff of champions and legends, the place where the one met the other and stayed wed.
And the man at the lead of the third heat—the heat which marked the turning point in the challenge, that made of it a blood sport—was Valedan kai di'Leonne. He was called last, and his name was lost to the crowd, taken by it, and carried on its tremendous voice. That such a thing could be formed out of disparate splinters—old voices and young, soft and harsh, male and female—seemed to the young kai Leonne a thing of wonder. He stood a moment, as if the voice of a god had been turned upon him.
And then he remembered why he had earned it, and the wonder left him completely: if a god's attention was upon him, the judgment rendered could not be favorable.
He walked the narrow path made of honor guards and witnesses. At the head of that path, Aidan, a young boy. Had he dreamed of heroes at Aidan's age?
Of course he had. He turned away from the boy's regard. Took his place upon the podium. Lifted his hands in twin fists.
The "merchant," Pedro, was beside himself with rage. It was a quaint phrase, that—a Northern phrase. It was also accurate; he seemed to have somehow stepped outside of himself and left only the anger behind. In the Dominion, the cost of such a display was not easily measured—or rather, it was measured by the power of the men in front of whom you chose to expose such a lack of control. And power was something that ebbed and flowed, a thing whose future could not be predicted.
Or so it had been in Ser Anton's experience.
Who, after all, could have foreseen the death of the Tyr'agar, and the fall of the clan Leonne?
"Why didn't you stop him?"
Foolish, to ask that question here. The crowd's roar was broken a moment as the kai Leonne took the podium; as the officiants in their brightly colored yet somehow somber robes began their crossing from podium to Kings.
The man Pedro referred to with such ire stood stiffly, his left arm slung over something the Northerners called a crutch. He had been offered something far less dignified—a chair, with wheels, as if he were merchant offal and it a tiny wagon—and had in the end chosen the rounded curves of hardwood. He could support himself, and he did; not even Andaro was allowed to publicly offer him aid.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King Page 55
