"I am not my legend," Ser Anton said. "You have seen the truth of it here."
"I have seen it tested," Valedan said. "Part of your legend was the love that you bore your wife and your son—and what you were willing to do in order to avenge their deaths."
Ser Anton bowed his head, and when he raised it, he offered Valedan a glimpse of vulnerability—the first. "She would have liked you, my Mari. She would have approved of you."
The sun began its descent as the last sword was sheathed.
* * *
EPILOGUE AIDAN
6th of Seril, 427 AA
Averalaan
For the first time in' his life, Aidan felt self-conscious going home. It wasn't that he wanted to stay at the Palace—although part of him did—it was more the company that he brought into the holdings with him. They were used to a very fine life, one that Aidan had seen at their side for long enough that it wasn't quite a dream anymore, and nothing in the holding he called home could in any way match that life. Nothing.
Up above them, the matchless trees of the Commons gave way to the lesser trees of the twenty-fifth, and then the twenty-fourth. The streets weren't empty, but they'd lost the crushing press of people evident everywhere during the Kings' Challenge. The city had returned to normal.
He brought a hand to his chest. Touched it, surprised to feel anything beneath his palm at all. Almost unconsciously, he cast a nervous glance across the road to where the healers walked. Neither of them were Dantallon, of course. Dantallon attended the Queens, and he left the healerie in Avantari only when the Queens left the Palace. Like on the last day of the Kings' Challenge, the Challenge that had been won—and like all Challenges, would be confined to his perfect memory just as every winner in the history of the Challenge—by Eneric of Darbanne. Not by Valedan kai di'Leonne, but that didn't matter. Valedan had won the important battle.
That was the only thing that Aidan truly regretted: that he hadn't seen the battle with the demon. No, he'd been curled in the arms of Dantallon the healer, in a place that death couldn't quite reach, and life couldn't touch at all without a healer's help.
Hurt, to think about. So he thought about something else instead. Homecoming. And that didn't help much, either.
Please, Lady, he prayed. Please let him not be drinking. His worst nightmare: Walking into the two rooms where he and his father lived to a raging, drunken father. It didn't happen often, but it did happen. Only let it happen any other day, and he'd live with the bruises.
"Aidan," Valedan said.
Aidan jumped. Straightened his shoulders out of their almost forgotten cringe. "Yeah."
"It doesn't matter where you live; it's what you do with the life you have that counts."
Great. He needed platitudes like he needed—well, maybe more than he needed a drunk father. But not by much.
Valedan caught him by the shoulders and turned him round; Aidan didn't even try to resist. "Do you think this is so very terrible?" he asked, nodding in an arc that was meant to take in the tall, cramped buildings of the holding.
Aidan shrugged. Then, because it was Valedan, and because he spoke quietly, he answered. "No. It's just that—I've seen the way you live. I don't live like that."
"You've seen the way I live in the North," the would-be ruler of the entire Southern Dominion replied. "And to be honest, I remember finery as a way of life in the South as well. But I remember this: That I was born to a seraf—a wife, but still a slave. I was a very well-kept slave, freed only to be a hostage in the North."
Aidan was silent.
"You don't even understand what freedom is."
Aidan shrugged, stung slightly. "Hunger," he said. They stared at each other a long time. It was Valedan who broke the gaze. But he said, staring at the space just to the right of Aidan's shoulder, "I do not judge you, Aidan. I can't. I owe you my life. It doesn't matter to me where you come from." He paused for a long moment. "I am going away to war."
"I know."
"Ser Anton is coming with me."
"So's half the city."
Valedan winced, but continued as if Aidan hadn't interrupted him. He often did that. "He asked me to tell you that after we've won the war, he is thinking of coming North for a time, and if he does—and if you're willing—he'd like the opportunity to see to your training."
The words only made sense gradually; taken all at once they were so enormous they were almost impossible to understand. Ser Anton di'Guivera, the swordmaster of the South. Training— Aidan? The lesser trees, the ancient buildings and the newer ones in poor repair, the rutted roads, the poorly dressed people edging out of the way of Valedan's well dressed—and more noticeably well-armed—party, vanished. He saw a sword, and a circle, and a man who had twice won the crown the Kings offered once a year.
"But—but the cost—"
"He says to remind you that he has no son. And that he owes you a debt greater than mine." Here, the kai Leonne smiled almost ruefully. "Even in that, we are competitive. I, of course, think my life is at least as important as his honor."
Aidan turned away and started to walk because he had a sudden urge to cry and he couldn't, couldn't, couldn't embarrass himself that way in front of Valedan. Or anyone.
"Are we almost there," the older healer said brusquely, "or are we going to stand and talk in the street while frightening the pedestrians?"
"Uh, almost there, sir."
Everything about the older healer was short-tempered and a hair's breadth from rude, even his look; he was covered in dark hair from brow to chin, and his jaw was squarer than the courtyard of the biggest merchant bank. If he'd come off a ship in the port, and was surrounded on all sides by angry magisterians, he'd've looked more at home.
But there was no arguing with the twin palms that hung round his neck like a beacon. Wasn't much approaching 'em either, but that was probably best—this man, this Levee, was going to have to heal Aidan's father. Somehow he couldn't quite see Dantallon knocking his father over and sitting on his chest.
But Levee had promised that he'd do just that if that's what it took. Promised it, not to Aidan, but to Dantallon.
Dantallon, of course, had been horrified. A healer couldn't force a man to accept a healing he didn't want. Aidan believed it. Of every healer but Levee.
The healer met Aidan's half-defiant, half-hopeful gaze. Rolled his eyes. "Well, we don't have all day. Or at least I don't. I've students to tend to, and people your age are always in need of discipline."
"Healer Levee," the younger man said.
"You can't let these people waste your time. How many times have I told you this, Daine? You'll be turned into a cushion for fat patricians before you're thirty if you don't develop some—"
"—ill humor. I know." The younger healer grimaced, sharing some of that expression with Aidan.
"I'm not blind," Healer Levee said gruffly. He turned on heel and stalked off, in the direction that Aidan had pointed.
"He's not as… bad as he seems," Daine said, wincing slightly. "And he's had a rough quarter."
"Why'd you come with him?"
"Because I wanted to see him actually heal," the young man declared. "He'd kill me if I told you this, but he's got a soft heart buried under that ugly exterior. I—he taught me. He saved my life at least once. He gave me a chance to make something more— much more—out of it. But he's always seemed uncomfortable as a healer, and when I heard he was going to do this—this healing, I asked permission to come."
"I'm surprised he said yes."
Daine's smile was pained. "He said no. But in harsher words, and more loudly." He looked up then, at the broad, retreating back. "I'd like to go to him." And he did.
Made Aidan glad he wasn't healer-born. It was probably the first time in his life, since his mother's death and his father's accident, that he'd any cause to be glad of it. He juggled his embarrassment at his home and his possibly drunk father and his fear of the Healer Levee; embarrassment dropped like a heavy stone.
First surprise: The stairs were clean and cleared.
The hall was also clean; no empty baskets, no empty jugs, no garbage to be carted down to the streets. Aidan hesitated a moment as he reached the closed door.
This time, Valedan said nothing. Levee said nothing. They waited while he put his hand on the door's tarnished handle, drew a breath as deep as his still-tender lungs would hold, and pulled.
The room was clean. The chairs—both of them—were tucked neatly beneath a table that held two bowls, two spoons, two forks, and two mugs on either side of a basket full of fruit that was, to Aidan's jaundiced eye, no more than two days old. The windows were clean; the curtains—curtains?—pulled back.
He detected Widow Harris' firm hand in every corner of his home; he hardly recognized it. But it lacked one thing: his Da.
Valedan and Levee came in, and the younger healer—the self-professed unwanted company—followed; two of the Tyran and two of the Ospreys likewise forced themselves into the vanishing space near the door. The rest of the honor guard were forced to wait on the stairs; there simply wasn't room for them to move, let alone be effective should the need arise.
"Ummm, wait here," he said. Wasn't like there was all that far to go, after all; there was only one other room, and the door was closed. Aidan walked up to it and hesitated for a long time. Then he knocked.
"Da?" he called through the closed door. "Da, are you in there? I've brought a couple of friends I'd—I'd like you to meet 'em."
He wanted to say more, but he couldn't; his mouth had become completely dry between the first word and the last. What if— what if his father weren't here?
But Kalliaris was listening, and, frown or smile—he'd find out which soon—the door to the sleeping room swung open, creaking a bit on its hinges.
His father was dressed to visit the Mother's own temple. Not as finely as Valedan, but almost as finely as the Healer Levee— which probably said more about the healer than it did about his father—and his breath was mercifully free of the heavy, sour scent of too much ale.
Aidan stood there, his mouth half open, staring up at his father's face.
"I—I had word you'd be coming," his father said, both gruffly and lamely. "I'd've come to the Palace but I—but I had work."
He was lying. They both knew it. But they both knew he hadn't come because he didn't want to be embarrassment; a half-whole father to a hero son.
"She sent a letter, you know. Widow Harris—she recognized the seal."
"She?"
"The Princess. I kept it. She says you saved a King's life."
Aidan shrugged, uncomfortable with the truth now that it was actually in his home. "If it hadn't been me, it'd be someone." Before his father could continue, he added. "Da, I'd like you to meet someone." And he turned to see Healer Levee, arms folded across his chest, sitting on table top. He wished—he really wished— that it had been the other healer who'd agreed to his request. But that other healer was quiet as a mouse beside a large, angry cat.
His father's eyes narrowed and then, seeing the symbol around the man's neck, widened. Aidan had done the same—for different reasons, though. It was hard to think of Levee as a healer.
"This is Healer Levee."
His father limped forward, struggling with crutch that he rarely, if ever, used in the confines of his own home. "Stev Brookson. Pleased to meet you," he added, sounding anything but. Still, he held out a hand, and Levee gripped it easily.
"You probably won't be after we're finished," Levee replied.
His father's head whipped around.
Aidan didn't say anything; Valedan, waiting in silence, did. "I owe your son a great debt. I offered him money, of course, because money is the way most debts are paid, in either Empire or Dominion."
"You—you're that Southern King!"
Valedan's easy smile was years older than this face. "Aidan didn't want money. He figured you could make that on your own. But he did ask for the services of a healer."
Aidan's father frowned, and then his entire face froze. Aidan knew exactly what that meant, but this time he didn't cringe. The healer's grip on his father's hand whitened as he attempted to pull away. "Aidan—"
"Da, he says—he says it'll hurt 'cause it's old. The break, I mean. But he says that, swear to Mandaros himself, he can fix your leg."
"You asked for that? Without asking me?"
"Da, I—"
"You just went out on your own, just asked for charity for me?"
"It's not charity. I earned it!"
His father was that shade of red-purple that was ugly for so many different reasons. Aidan stopped a minute, caught between a cringe and the silence that he so often hid behind when his father was angry. Stopped a minute longer, angry himself, angry in front of the healer and the Ospreys and the Tyran and Valedan.
It had been easier to stop the demon. Easier to make that damned decision than this one. Easier to act. And that was just stupid.
"That's what I want, and I'm the bloody hero," Aidan replied fiercely, aware that all eyes were on him. "I want my father back."
"And what if that's not what I want?"
"Then," Levee said, speaking for the first time, "I will knock you over and sit on your chest and heal you without your permission." He was among the largest men in the room, even unar-mored. Had his father been whole, it would have been a good fight. But he wasn't, so it wouldn't be.
"Levee—" the younger healer said.
"Aidan—" his father said, at the same time.
Aidan said nothing at all. He stood, mute, the triumph of his homecoming exactly what he'd been afraid it would be. In time, maybe in time, his father would forgive him.
But this time, his father's face slowly lost its red, ugly color, lost its frozen, growing anger, lost almost everything.
He said, "You come then, boy. You come here, and you give me your hand. You're my son, you're my only son. You stand by your Da while he does this."
* * *
EPILOGUE: SER ANTON DI'GUIVERA
6th of Seril, 427 AA
Averalaan Armarelas, Avantari
Kallandras came upon him in the full light of the Seril moon. Moon at full, a time of mystery and promise, a hint of wildness and hunger.
Yet although he knelt beneath the moon—the Lady's Moon—Ser Anton di'Guivera showed no wildness, no hunger. No movement.
The Arannan Halls were quiet; the Hall of Wise Counsel in Avantari proper was not. Valedan kai di'Leonne, Ramiro di'Callesta, Baredan di'Navarre, and the Kings and Queens were sequestered with the Flight—Eagle, Hawk, and Kestrel. Voices had been raised, voices had fallen; there was a rhythm to the heated anger that was carried by breeze and night air when the words themselves had been carefully obliterated by the magi who served the Kings directly. Only a bard would catch it.
There would be no drawn swords; no direct challenges. Not yet, not here. But Kallandras knew that the blood between the Callestans and the Kestrel was bad; sooner or later that rift would open, and that blood spill. Sometimes it was considered wise to bleed a patient. He would see.
But it was not of Valedan's council that he had come to speak, and not of war, although war was the order of the hour, the day, the month.
He waited, the shadows his cover and his counsel.
But Ser Anton di'Guivera did not move. The moon cast a soft shadow, hard to see at this distance, of the blindfolded boy who graced this courtyard in the Arannan Halls. That shadow touched the swordmaster like a benediction, it fell so gently.
The water from his cupped hands did not.
We were both trained. Kallandras thought, to bring death. Not pain, not torment, not freedom—but death, the simple fact of it.
He stepped into the moonlight. Before he had moved five feet, the Southern swordmaster had risen, turned, drawn his blade in near-perfect silence, and frozen, becoming as much a thing of stone as the boy carved by maker-born hands at his back.
And aro
und the stone, beneath it. within it, the waters of life. They were alike, the fountain and the swordsman; it was no wonder that he was drawn here to find peace.
Peace.
Kallandras held it in his hand, roughly made and still flecked with baked clay. He bowed.
"Ser Anton."
"Master Kallandras of Senniel," the swordmaster replied, returning the fiction of the bow politely but maintaining his grip on the sword.
Silence, then. A meeting of equals.
"You are… astute, Ser Anton."
"You are a bard of the North. In the South, I do not believe we would suffer you to live."
"Ah?"
"A man cannot tell men what to do by voice alone. Or so it is said."
"It is said. It is not true even in the South where no bard is suffered to live, of course, but it is said."
"Not true?"
"The Tyr'agnate of Callesta orders a death, and his Tyran obey, regardless of what they deem correct."
Anton's smile was dim with night colors. "You are right, and you are wrong. Of the Tyrs, Callesta is the most dangerous. He sees too sharply, and he understands his people too well. The binding he places upon them works both ways. He would kill to a man any man who did not follow the orders that he gave—but he would die before he gave orders that would destroy that binding, and he knows their measure well." But the swordmaster seemed to relax. He did not, however, sheathe the sword. "If you have come to find the kai Leonne, he is not present at the moment."
They both knew that Kallandras had not come to speak with Valedan. But the bard understood manners, especially Southern ones. "I did not come to speak with the kai Leonne, Ser Anton."
"Ah."
Silence. At last Kallandras said, "I am not a young man, not anymore."
"I would be surprised. Bard, if you had ever been a young man."
"The young, if protected, have the luxury of vulnerability." He shrugged, a deflection of the truth in his opponent's words. A parry. "The old have the luxury of wisdom."
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King Page 77
