"And you told us," she said, the edge of accusation nonetheless evident, "that you were better with a dagger than a sword."
He met her gaze, and the familiarity of her tone, coolly. "I am," he replied.
They locked stares; Alexis broke first, more out of consideration for his rank than any discomfort on her part. But she shook her head as she turned, the smile creeping back over her lips. The little bastard, she thought. And knowing Valedan, it's probably true.
The fountain ran at their backs. This courtyard had become a second home to Alexis. She had despised it on first sight, both as a home for monied Annies and a bastion of authority. But it was a fundamental truth of Alexis' character that she despised everything on first sight. Only those things strong enough to weather her withering disregard stayed around for long enough to earn her approbation. In this case, the fountain itself—like any natural formation—was above her like or dislike. Easy, in that case, to learn to like it, because there was no risk involved.
But still… she saw Valedan kai di'Leonne pull away from the Serra Alina beneath the rising glow of gold and pink and orange at the edge of sky turning blue. Pull away and come to stand by the fountain's edge, the lip of carved stone that was so perfect only the hands of a Maker-born could have fashioned it. He knelt, casting long shadow, the water beneath his spread hands. As if he was saying good-bye. As if that stone boy, blindfolded, blind, a figure of supplication, was more alive than they were.
He looked his age.
Not once had she truly seen him look his age, and it shocked her more than nudity would have. She wanted to turn away, but did not.
Because when this boy walked through the open arch, when he left this courtyard, he was leading them—Ospreys and Empire— to war. His were the shoulders that would bear the cause behind which tens of thousands. Southern and Northern, would flock, and for which they'd die, the meager coin they earned unspent.
The cause for which the Ospreys themselves would once again lose numbers.
The valley came back to her then, as it often did. The visible scars had faded with time; the hidden ones, never. It worried Duarte, and she let it. Let weaker men let go of their anger and their pain. She needed both, and she faced this truth fully, here on the morning of the last Challenge day. Anger and pain were the rod and the crown in her life, the things by which she governed, the links that made her, at heart, an Osprey.
She did not kneel beside him, although she came to stand at his side. Kneeling, supplication of any type, was not her way.
But she spoke with muted respect when she did choose to break his silence. "Kai Leonne," she whispered.
He looked up. Met her gaze, his already losing the vulnerability that at once made him both appealing and disgusting.
"Commander Sivari is waiting for us."
He rose. Turned to the kneeling—when had she fallen to hands and knees in so debased a manner?—Serra, and bowed, correctly. Exactly.
The last day had started.
Ser Anton di'Guivera had named his sword after the first man— and he differentiated between men and the bandits that he had spent so much of his life hunting—he had killed. It was not the way of the Southerners to name their swords in such a fashion, and at that time, he had been much censured for it. Had he not been a favored student of the weaponsmaster who ruled the Tor Leonne's best warriors, he might have had many, many names to choose from that day.
But he had chosen, and the sword had served him well.
The day that he had had his discussion with Alesso di'Marente and Cortano di'Alexes—Sword's Edge, and a man that Ser Anton had always privately disliked—he had forsaken that chosen name; he desired another. Had come, in fact, bearing a nameless blade seeking no less than the right to name that blade anew.
Leonne.
The test of the sword was upon him, upon them all. At his back, steel rang in the early morning air; Andaro's sword, tracing an arc of air and sunlight so swift the sword itself seemed insubstantial. Until it struck, of course.
Much to be proved today.
But the sun's fires had burned so high—untended, it seemed, and carelessly so—that the taste of ash was in his mouth. Here, on the day of his triumph, he could not hear her voice at all, and it was her voice, the texture of it, the softness that concealed a precious edge, that, reached for at need, had sustained him.
The ache was profound.
What had he thought would alleviate it?
Ah, as always, death. Death.
He turned lightly on foot then, his blade's arc promising just such a death. The edge of blended, tempered steel came to rest against exposed skin, cutting it ever-so-slightly.
The man so struck did not move a muscle. Their eyes met in 'the silence of perfect control, one man the supplicant, and one the danger.
Ser Anton lowered his sword. He did not sheathe it.
"Ser Pedro."
"Ser Anton."
"You come late."
"By the Lord's will, I am here," was the smooth, rather chill reply. Gone was the fat, the dark hair, the rounded face; all that remained of the merchant Ser Anton had traveled North with were the eyes; sharp as a blade, and possessed of the same light when the sun struck just so.
Ser Anton shrugged. "I had expected you earlier."
"I am flattered," Ser Pedro said, in a tone that conveyed precisely the opposite, "that you expected me at all, given the nature and force of my opposition."
The older man shrugged. "Given the nature and force of your allies, I chose to have… faith. But, Pedro," he added, the coolness settling around the words and hardening there, "if you deny me my kill by drawing the attention and the fires of the Northerners before my time, you had best hope that the master you serve is all the mad priests promise him to be."
"A threat, Ser Anton? How distasteful."
"It is merely information," the swordmaster replied. "And you gather information in your skein. Make of it what you will." He turned then, and left the man under the sun's open glare. He was surprised at how much the slender man's presence irritated him. But it did, and he accepted this truth: This was not a day that he wished to share with an assassin. With a man who felt so much akin to enemy.
And why not? His sword-grip was white-knuckled. Do we not now serve the same Lord? The open sky waited. The Lord watched. The Lord had no patience for weakness.
No love for the women and the children who had not yet grown into their first sword. No love for the men who had served long and faithfully on the battlefields of the nation. No love at all, as far as Ser Anton had been able to determine in his adult life, but at least one great hatred: The Lord of Night. For only at the advent of the Night had the Day come into its strength and chosen to reveal itself in glory to Leonne.
To give Leonne the founder the Sun Sword; to give Leonne's Radann the Five.
What was Mari, what was Antoni, compared to that?
Perhaps the Lady loved her. Ser Anton had never truly been the Lady's man, and he did not know how to ask—for in the South, one thing was truth: One did not ask a question if one could not bear the answer.
It was almost done.
Almost time.
He did not leave his students, but he felt a sudden sharp yearning for sweet water, for the silence of its trickle in an empty courtyard where privacy was a physical thing and not merely a state of mind.
When had he noticed the boy?
Now, the last of the tests upon him, and unarguably in Vale-dan's case the most important one, Sivari had no choice but to stop and wonder. Miri had seen something in the boy from a much earlier age—that much, the Swords were privy to. She had trained him passingly well, but he had always carried the impression that she had offered him the skill that he displayed the previous day: the Northerner's heart. The bow.
Mirialyn ACormaris was no mean slouch with a sword; she had the caliber of a champion, but not the experience, and none of the drive that brought a man—and a very few women—to stand at this place on this day. He
might have thought she disdained it, although no disdain was ever evident upon her unusual features.
And yet she gave him Valedan.
Train him, she had said.
I do not have the time to train a box to the level—
Test him then. I ask it. Commander, as a favor; even if you find nothing of promise in the boy—nothing exceptional, I will consider the favor granted. And in her tone, unspoken but obvious, the other truth: that she had the rank and the power to order it should he attempt to refuse.
The curiosity was stronger than the pique. He had tested the boy. The Southerner, the foreigner caught between cultures and people, shorn of family by treachery and deceit. Meek boy, he'd thought. Too quiet.
Meek or no, he found his support among the Tyrs and the General Baredan di'Navarre. He had the respect of Serra Alina and of Princess Mirialyn ACormaris. He had surprised each and every one of them, quietly, as befit his nature.
Boy, he thought, because to him Valedan was a boy, surprise us again today.
He put the force of prayer behind it.
Exhaled when Valedan kai di'Leonne, flanked by his Ospreys and a rather testy looking General, came through the cloistered arch and into the main ground that would house his final practice.
"Kai Leonne," he said, his voice sharp with respect and impatience—the perfect blend of drillmaster and man of inferior status.
"Commander Sivari. One last time?"
"I doubt very much it will be the last time," Sivari said, drawing his blade with the edge of a smile, "but yes. One more fight that doesn't count before the judges call you for the ones that do."
Heat.
Sun, pale and luminescent. Shadows short and sharp and dark, the wake of sun's light. Clash of steel; horns and bells—sounds of judgment in the slow, long day.
Sweat, heat, the taste of salt in air too close to the sea, too far from its cool surfaces.
Lord's light.
Lord's judgment.
Water came.
It came in gourd and jug, in decanter and wineskin, in stoppered flask and bottle, in bucket and in roughly shaped ladle. It came in heavy cloth, and in tubs meant more for fine bathing than public sport—and everywhere that water was carried to the men who labored or who waited, honing their skill and later, their state of mind, there was cheer.
Not all of it loud, of course.
The Northerners were rousing in their appreciation; they were foolish and excessive in their glee. They lost focus as they made rivulets of sweet water from head to toe, setting their blades aside to revel in relief.
The Southerners were not so foolish, not so disrespectful of the Lord's glare; they took what was offered both thankfully and watchfully, and if it was offered with rougher grace than many of the men were used to—no serafs here, after all, and Kings Swords made servitors of infinitely inferior grace—it was still gratefully accepted.
This heat, though—this was not the heat of the summer heartlands; it was not the heat of the South. What the Northerners found so exceptional, the Annagarians found only barely worthy of note. Were it not for the presence of the damnable sea and the sea's heavy air, it would be unworthy of note at all.
"Andaro."
Ser Anton di'Guivera's premiere student looked up at the only voice he had yet acknowledged that did not, in fact, belong to the swordmaster.
"Water?"
He couldn't help but smile. The flask that Carlo held was still stoppered. "You've not had any yourself."
"I'm not in the running; I'm as useful as any other Northerner here. Let the water go to the warriors."
He caught Carlo's wrist in his shield hand; his sword, leather throng damp with sweat, did not leave his fingers. "You've proved yourself in the eyes of the Lord. You've fought his enemy, and bested it. What will I fight? Men. Northern men—and the North, while not the Lord's, has never fallen to the wiles of the Lord of Night. Never entirely. Be proud of your accomplishment, or be quiet."
Carlo smiled, a flash of slightly crooked teeth in an otherwise perfect face. "Will you win?"
"For you, yes." He cast a cooling glance in the direction of the swordmaster. Then he released Carlo's arm. "Drink if you're thirsty," he said. "I will take water later."
"This is it," Duarte said.
Auralis said nothing; Alexis nodded. Kiriel split her attention between the rest of the Ospreys and their leader. The Primus was finely dressed and sharp as a good blade; the men who followed his command—and they did, if with poor grace—were discomfited in the sun's glare.
As was she.
But as Duarte did not condescend to notice it, she hid her own discomfort as best she could. Duarte knew when to show weakness in the face of humans who were, by their very nature, weak, and he chose not to show it now. She was learning.
"Sentrus," he said, and she knew by the slight edge in his voice that he was referring to her.
She snapped a sharp salute—sharper, in fact, than was the wont of a regular Osprey. She felt Auralis rolling his eyes at her back.
"You know what we're looking for, Kiriel. I give you dispensation to deal with an emergency as you see fit. The rest of you," he continued, his voice both louder, firmer and somehow less stinging for it, "will follow standard procedures. There will be no heroics—"
That was interrupted by catcalls and jeers: he allowed it—for three seconds.
"Admittedly a poor choice of words, given the audience. There will be no grandstanding—"
She did know what he was looking for. The problem at the moment seemed to be giving it to him. Her practiced eye swept the hands of all Ospreys present, looking for the thin band of gold that separated her from them. But all she had to go on at the moment was her vision, and her vision was not what it had been.
The guardian of her weakness—and she had come to think of it, perversely, as just that—sat upon her finger, as bright and unmarked as a newly made promise. Beneath it, inseparable from her life itself, was the thing that marked her as tainted—or as strong; her father's blood and gift. It was a distinction that she and Ashaf had often argued about in her fourteenth year.
And here, again, again, Ashaf came.
She could see the old woman's lined face, sun-bitten and wind-burned; ancient compared to the faces of the other human women who gathered in the Court. She was not afraid of age, but she was afraid; Kiriel had sensed it early. Had sensed also that it was not a fear that was—quite—satisfactory to feed on, to encourage, to incubate. It was a thing of wonder, that fear, and of curiosity, and she had spent many a night wrapped in Ashaf's frail arms, drawing warmth from the questions she asked her old friend.
Ashaf, what are you afraid of?
Would you be sad if I died?
Would you be sad if I killed a demon ?
Would you be sad if I killed a human?
Would you be sad if I didn't love you ?
Her face was so clear in the heat of the Challenge day that Kiriel had to close her eyes and turn away from it. Which only made it worse. Always did.
How much do you love me, Ashaf?
Will you love me forever?
And Ashaf would answer while Kiriel was rocked there, cradled in the weakest arms in the Shining Palace as if they were the only safe haven, the only true strength.
"Kiriel?"
Auralis' voice. He knew better than to touch her to catch her attention—they all did—but he could make a slap of his words by the tone he chose. This was more of a forceful nudge.
She looked up at him.
"Your hand," he said softly—and he almost never spoke softly.
She lifted her sword.
"Not that one."
Her other hand, then. Balled into a tight fist.
Ah. That was the problem. It was bleeding. He didn't ask her any questions—she thought he might; Cook would have. But the silence stretched out until she realized that he intended to stand a moment, as if he were already in combat, and guard her back.
Exposure. That w
as Auralis' fear.
And he shared it with her now. It struck her, numbing her hand, her arm, the lines of her face, that that was exactly what he was doing: He was sharing his fear. But not the way that scared humans usually do—no weeping, no wailing, no gnashing of teeth. No; his was a different gift. He blanketed her with the protection that he himself might have desired in the face of vulnerability. She had never, ever expected to see this from Auralis, the darkest, the most crippled, of the Black Ospreys. Had never, in fact, expected to see it from anyone but Ashaf and Jay.
But because he offered, she answered the question that he would never ask.
"I was thinking of the only woman who ever cared about me while I was growing up. A Kialli lord killed her."
She saw all the darkness in his unblinking gaze before he turned away, and she wondered how much of the kinship she felt was to that darkness, and how much to the flash of recognized pain.
Jewel Markess ATerafin was tired.
But when the silver shadows crept beneath the surface of her closed lids, she shook it—and fast. She sat up in bed, in her wing, surrounded by walls, doors and windows she was familiar with.
And standing before her, in the haziness of after-sleep, was a woman who belonged to none of these things, but was recognized immediately.
Evayne.
"Jewel," she said.
"Evayne." She was torn a moment between staring in stillness and silence to catch every word, every gesture, every nuance, and rushing to cover herself with the clothing most convenient to reach. But Evayne never came for a friendly chat; there was always something at stake. She dressed.
"I am… hampered. Jewel ATerafin."
Jewel frowned.
"There are forces at work, now, that I should have more clearly foreseen and did not. I had thought—" She frowned. "You are not yet what I have envisioned you to be. You have the power that I, too, was born to—perhaps, because it is so natural to you, you have the stronger gift.
"But it has lain fallow."
This Evayne, then, was younger than the woman who had come to preserve her life in the healerie; there was no demand and no command in her voice. She did not mention the oracle, and Jewel didn't ask.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King Page 70
