Silver Moons, Black Steel

by Tara K. Harper

  Roc’s face, hard up to this point, went blank. “Talon,” the woman began.

  Dion twisted her head and met the other woman’s gaze. The wolfwalker said nothing, but her violet eyes blazed. It was Roc who backed down.

  “Kiyun,” she said to Talon. “Tehena.”

  He didn’t turn his head. “Make them comfortable,” he ordered. “Don’t release them.”

  Dion opened her mouth, but closed it again without speaking.

  Weed grunted something at Wakje and made his way to the room next door to set a fire in the grate. Oroan and Rakdi followed, but as they did, there was a rumbling outside. Talon looked up sharply, and Drovic, feeling as if he was losing control, snarled at Ki. “Have all nine moons descended on us here? First Dione, then her friends, then you? Ki, check the stables.”

  The brown-haired man hesitated, and Drovic’s face stilled. Talon nodded, and Ki left quietly.

  “So,” his father said softly of Talon’s men. “They are yours now, not mine.”

  “They are their own,” he returned.

  “They will never be that, not after what they have done.”

  “Any man can stand away from his sins and choose a different road.”

  “Aye. But when he does, he’ll pay for those sins sooner, rather than later. Turn them now, and you give up their lives to the trial block—” He broke off at the sound of running feet.

  Ki burst back in. “Moonworms, Talon, but there are over a dozen riders—”

  Talon’s men spilled out of the room, drawing the weapons they’d just sheathed. Talon dragged Dion with him. They reached the outer rooms just as the double doors opened and snow-dusted figures poured in. A wolf leaped in first, almost tripping the man who followed. Other men charged in their wake. The wolf seemed to fly across the room, and Dion wrenched free of Talon. “Hishn—”

  Wolfwalker!

  “Dion!” Rhom shouted.

  Gamon took two steps in his wake and actually froze. “By the moons—” he gasped.

  “Halt!” roared the Lloroi.

  Both groups stiffened like stone. Men stared at each other. In spite of the years, in spite of the countless battles, in spite of every bruise of training that he’d suffered over the years, Gamon was frozen in place. His thoughts ran like lightning toward the older raider leader: the sense of familiarity at the coast, that recognition of a stance or movement, his unease at his suspicions, and Dion’s description of the raider who had hunted her so many months ago. Gamon stared at Drovic, but even as he recognized the threat to his county, his men, his family, his eyes were drawn to the man beside Drovic, the man with the icy eyes. Even the frigid death of the final hell could not at that moment have reached him.

  Snow dusted the threshold. The clumps of men almost vibrated with the violence of standing still. The raiders were still half dressed for the cold. The Ariyens had shed their heavy coats in the stable and wore only their fighting mail. Both sides poised in a jumble of stances, held where they had halted.

  Hishn growled, low in her throat, and Dion gripped her scruff. Aranur—Talon? had grabbed her arm again to keep her from the melee, and it was a vise that crushed her biceps. She didn’t care. The musk of the wolf was in her nose, and gray fur beneath her fingers. Hishn’s face was jammed into the crook of her arm, and the cold, wet fur contrasted oddly with the warmth of the wolf’s inner body. Wolfwalkerwolfwalker, Hishn simply sang. Dion held her like a lifeline and stared at her twin brother, her weight balanced against her forward lunge and Talon’s hand holding her back. Her face was tight with emotion.

  “Stand down,” the Lloroi grated into that moment of stillness.

  Wakje and Weed exchanged glances. Talon did not urge them forward. Instead, the tall man stared at the Ariyens, and Sojourn’s stomach sank. Rhom, midstep like the others, held himself without moving. He was poised between the raiders and Ariyens, with only Gamon truly at his back. Twelve swords faced him. His twin was held among those blades, and the man who crushed her arm—Rhom’s breath was still paralyzed—was Aranur .

  Dion started to speak, but her throat clenched with half-healed tissue. She buried her hand in Hishn’s scruff as Talon’s iron grip hauled her back to her feet. The wolf bared her teeth at him, but he merely eyed her, and she subsided, leaning hard against Dion instead. Gray Yoshi remained in the doorway, a shadow in the snow.

  Wolfwalker, Hishn hummed in her mind without stop.

  Hishn. Dion almost sobbed the name. The bond that had been so faint was now iron-hard and howling. She could feel the wolf like herself, feel the ache of cold deep in her dewclaws, feel the heat on her tongue as the wolf panted against her hand, feel the icy needle of Yoshi’s cut paw. And Hishn felt the burn of her wolfwalker’s throat, the rawness of Dion’s wrists, the hunger that almost blinded. None of those things mattered. It was Yoshi who reached into the two and sent the surge of unconditional energy to fill Dion’s throat and bend away the burning.

  I am here, Hishn answered. We are here. We are whole.

  The Ariyen Lloroi stared at Drovic, Talon, Dion, the wolf. He stepped up beside Rhom, and Gamon belatedly went with him. The black-haired Randonnen shifted slightly to let them come abreast.

  Drovic moved forward to meet them. Talon tried to move with his father, bringing Dion with him—he didn’t even consider letting go of her arm, but Drovic shoved him back. Talon stiffened and stalked forward anyway. Then the five men and the wolfwalker stood in two instinctive lines, facing each other like worlags.

  “Tyronnen,” Drovic said flatly to the Lloroi. “Gamon.” He ignored Dion’s twin. Drovic knew who Rhom was—he did not mistake the looks of her brother, but as with Dion, he considered the Randonnen man only a secondary player, and this game was Ariyen chess.

  “Bandrovic.” The Lloroi acknowledged his older brother with a steady voice.

  Gamon did not speak his brother’s Shame Name. He nodded, but his gray eyes were as dangerous as Talon’s.

  One of Rhom’s men kicked the door shut, and in the silence, both groups studied each other. The four Ariyens were like variations on a portrait. Gamon was shortest, but by barely two fingers’ width. The Lloroi was next, his usually gentle face hard with a grimness Dion had not seen before. Talon, still gaunt, was taller than his uncles, but still outweighed by his father. Gamon was the most lean; Tyronnen the most handsome. Talon had that wary stillness that Dion instinctively projected; and Drovic moved with the restrained grace that spoke of immense power at bay.

  Rhom started to move toward his sister, but Gamon stopped him with a hand. Gamon had seen the way that Talon tensed at the smith, and only Gamon’s quick reaction stopped Talon’s knife from striking. Rhom rocked back on his heels, watching the other man grimly. But then Dion met his gaze, and they seemed to exchange a message. Rhom looked down and met Hishn’s yellow eyes, and he felt the reassurance flow from the wolf and his twin. He seemed to stand down. It was not a true lessening of tension, but the poise of a man who knows he cannot yet act. He recognized with chagrin what Drovic had always known: that he and Dion had never been more than bit players in the Ariyen drama. Useful in their ways, catalysts in others—it would be up to the twins to become more if they dared. He knew Dion understood. The blaze of her violet eyes matched his.

  Talon watched Rhom warily. As with actions and voices, his eyes recognized the smith even when his memory did not. What he did clearly see was the threat in the men he faced. He automatically noted that the two groups were evenly matched. Rhom’s group was thirteen strong—fifteen if one counted the wolves. His own was fourteen strong, and he didn’t question that Dion would stand with him. The wild pack that had led him here was out beyond the Ariyens, eyeing the dnu and making the riding beasts nervous. This other wolf, Hishn—his mind picked the name from the graysong that fairly radiated from his mate—remained in the room, bristling with the hostility that pervaded the stone.

  Drovic did not look at his men, but his voice was flat and his order to the men was clear as
he said, “Leave us.”

  The raiders glanced at each other.

  Lloroi Tyronnen smiled faintly as he echoed the command to his own men. “Leave us.” The Lloroi motioned with his chin toward the opposite corridor.

  Neither group moved.

  Talon gestured sharply with his hand.

  Hesitantly, the raiders fell back, one step at a time, weapons still ready. The Ariyens mirrored their movements. Neither group completely left the room. Some stood back into the corridor; others backed against the outer walls, ringing the room like spectators. They could hear, but still be separate, and Talon knew their blades, now sheathed, were still ready.

  Drovic, Talon, and Dion; the Lloroi, Gamon, and Rhom remained where they were. There had been no question that Rhom would stay with Gamon. Nothing less than death could have moved him from near his twin.

  As Talon watched Rhom, Gamon watched his nephew. Aranur was gaunt, and there was a look in his gray eyes that Gamon had not seen before. The older man half held out his hand toward his nephew. His voice was flinty with emotion. This was the son he had not had himself, the boy he had raised to a man when Aranur’s father abandoned the county. This was the child who had become a man and then died out of Gamon’s arms, where Gamon could not even burn the body. His throat tightened, and he steadied himself carefully. “You died.” He barely kept his words firm. “You fell from the seawall. Kiyun saw you go down.”

  Drovic’s voice was hard as he eyed his brother. “He was wounded—almost mortally.”

  “Right shoulder, ribs, lung,” Dion said softly. “Right wrist. Left hand.” Her voice was still rough, and Rhom’s eyes narrowed as he heard her.

  Drovic did not acknowledge her. “He broke his wrist when he fell. He was fevered for two full ninans.”

  The wolfwalker looked at Drovic then. “The saltwater should have killed him,” she said. “The parasites would have been in his wounds in seconds. Even if he had survived the fall, the parasites should have killed him in days.”

  “It should have,” the man admitted.

  “But he lived.” Dion’s healer mind kicked automatically into gear with the question Drovic’s words raised. “There are only two cures for the sea parasites, and neither can be used when the patient has open wounds—” Her voice broke off. “No.” Her ragged voice roughened as she strained it. “Moons, you didn’t.” But Drovic had been willing to use the vertal on her, then to burn her voice out more permanently. He had been willing to risk killing his son’s mate. She stared at the older man even as she stretched through the wolves toward Aranur. She could feel her mate through his hand on her arm, and the signs were unmistakable. The rictus in his muscles, the tension in the wolf pack as it held the convulsions at bay, the clarity that was missing from the thoughts he had projected. The lack of recognition—his expression was almost that of a stranger, not a lover. He looked down at her, his jaw white and his eyes tight with rage and their betrayal. He didn’t know . . . Even if she hadn’t been able to look inside him, she would have known from his face.

  “Antrixi.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

  Gamon stiffened.

  Talon nodded to himself, unsurprised. The herbs his father gave him. So now he had their name.

  The Lloroi watched Drovic’s face as his brother answered the wolfwalker in a flat, unyielding voice. “He would have died without it. The parasites were already in his wounds by the time I pulled him out of the bay.”

  She could not hide her shocked anger. “But antrixi?”

  “It forced him to heal.”

  Dion’s face tightened. “At the expense of his memories and the rest of his life. By the moons.” She took a half step forward to get around Talon to Drovic. She was brought up short by her mate’s hand. Her voice cracked as the rage reached her words. “No wonder he stayed with you. After two ninans of fever and antrixi, he wouldn’t know his name, me, his children. And you couldn’t have taken him off the drug once you started—the convulsions would have killed him.” She stiffened slowly. “It’s been almost four months. Didn’t you know—you must have realized that it would continue to strip his memories. First the recent ones, then the later ones, and finally, even those of childhood. He would become an imbecile, unable to remember where he stabled his dnu, unable to find his own home.”

  “He would live long enough.”

  The Lloroi was nodding slowly as if he understood Drovic’s rationale. Dion stared from the Ariyen to the raider as Tyronnen answered her unspoken question. “Long enough to attack Ariye.”

  Gray Hishn growled, and Dion’s voice was unbelieving. “You were willing to destroy your own son just to strike out at your brother?”

  Drovic met Talon’s gaze. “You think blood should make the difference between us? I would destroy the world if I could.”

  Talon nodded in turn. “No.” He stopped Dion as he felt her muscles bunch. “I understand.” He regarded his father thoughtfully. “You said I would die if I returned to Ariye,” he commented obliquely.

  “I never lied to you.”

  Talon raised one dark eyebrow.

  “Talon—my son—is dead. You stand there now as the boy my brother stole—the man the elders raised. A man with a different name than mine. A man of Ramaj Ariye.”

  Talon’s voice was so clipped with rage that it chopped through the room like an ax. “And I lived thirty years like that—as this other man. As Aranur of Ramaj Ariye. Three-quarters of my years a lie. My boyhood, my schooling, my sons, my mate—you blinded me to all that? By all the hells that stain your hands, the Lloroi may have taken my name from me, but you took the rest of my life.”

  Drovic did not even shrug. “If you were to live, there was no choice. But look at it through my eyes. It let you see the man you could have been had you stayed with me instead.”

  “And what man am I now?”

  “You ask?” Drovic’s voice was cold and bitter. “Listen to your voice, to your words. Look at your face. You are no longer my son, my Talon. No longer a neVolen. You are dead to me. Aranur. Bentar. NeDannon.” He spat the names.

  Talon stilled. Talon Drovic neVolen—that was his christened name. His father’s name, and his father before him. “You took my name when you left.”

  “I took nothing.” The older man gestured with his chin at the Lloroi. “My brother, who took my position, my mate, and my children—he is the one who stole your name.”

  The Lloroi started to speak, but Gamon’s hand on his arm held him back.

  Talon managed to hold his voice firm, but he wanted to scream, to attack, to tear the truth apart and return to the lie he had lived. “It was a name of pride, to honor my great-grandfather and his father before him.”

  Drovic merely looked at the Lloroi. Tyronnen’s jaw was tight as he answered. “You were renamed not out of pride, Aranur, but out of shame.”

  Shame. Talon’s rage was pure ice.

  “Shame,” the Lloroi repeated. “To remove the name of a man who betrayed his county. A man who took up with raiders and did not die among them, but became a killer and then a leader of that scum. He came back to our county. You did not know that, did you?” Tyronnen did not take his eyes from his older brother. “He came back when you were fourteen. You had just passed the second Cansi test, and Gamon had started you training in Abis. But Drovic wanted you with him.” His voice grew hard. “With the raiders. He wanted you to learn to kill.”

  Talon’s voice was flat as stone. “That was not a lesson you spared me, either, Uncle.”

  “No. But you killed to defend Ariye, not to dismantle the county. You killed for the ideal. Look at him. Look at his men. Was it easy to kill for him?”

  Talon did not answer. His father did not yet know how often he had betrayed him. He turned his head to Drovic. “Why did your name not change?”

  “It did.” His father shrugged. “I am Drovic to you, but I am known as Bandrovic in Ariye—banned from Ariye, from my home, from my daughter and son.”

  Rh
om’s eyes narrowed. Aranur’s sister was his own mate. If Aranur had been renamed in shame . . . “Shilia,” he broke in. “Her name?”

  Drovic barely glanced at the Randonnen. He answered to his son. “Her name descends from her mother. It was not her shame that her mother died, but mine, that I survived. It is Talon who bears part of that shame—the guilt of another name, as do his sons, now that he knows.”

  “And so you became a raider.” Talon’s voice was flat.

  “It did not happen overnight,” Drovic snapped.

  “But it happened. How many of them knew?”

  Talon didn’t have to point at the raiders. Drovic met his gaze steadily. “Kilaltian, Liatuad, Darity, Sojourn, Ebi and Strapel, NeBrenton, and Roc.”

  Sojourn, he thought with that same strange, icy calm. Even Sojourn knew. “And the rest?” he forced himself to ask.

  “I brought them in from the far counties. None of them had met you before, although I suspect that most began to realize who you were. There were enough stories about Aranur’s death, and your description is distinct.” Drovic shrugged. “It did not matter. Getting you through the marine parasites and fever fried most of your memory. You would have remembered your later years first had you been at home, but with me, you remembered your early years and had no reason to remember the rest. And once you had begun taking the herbs and I had given you back your name, my raiders accepted you as my son, as one of them, and didn’t question your alliance.”

  “My shame, my brother, my enemy.” It was the Lloroi, in his quiet voice, unaware that he had spoken.

  Drovic’s eyes iced over. “An enemy of your own making.”

  “And now?” Talon broke in.

  “Now?” Drovic stared at his younger brothers, at Rhom, at the Ariyens who still faced them from the corridor. The Lloroi glanced at Gamon, and Gamon’s gaze flickered to Rhom, and then back to Talon’s people. Some part of Talon’s brain noted that it would have been comical, all this glancing around, except that they all held swords.