Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown (12 page)

BOOK: Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown
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"Oh, Teresa," Lissa said, honorific forgotten again as she
gazed upon the child that meant more to her than almost anyone else in
the harem. "Look at her."

Serra Teresa could see nothing else. This slender-boned,
high-cheeked, large-eyed child was perfect. Her mother's daughter. Dark
hair fell, unfettered by the pearls and pins, by the braids and twists,
that graced an adult's. She wore a white sari, edged in the same gold
embroidery that Serra Teresa's more elaborate silks showed. Her hair
touched her cheeks like a shadow as she bowed to the quiet audience,
and a whisper shook the clansmen as they saw, for the first time, the
child of the Serra Alora en'Marano. Her brother's wife.

Alora
. Four years dead, and already the
shadows of her passing could be seen—could be felt—in the face of her
child.

Unease? No.

Value nothing too highly, especially not your own
life, Na'tere
. Her grandfather's voice, stretching out from
a past that was almost beyond memory's grip.

Why?

Because it will make a coward of you. A coward
.
Only an oathbreaker committed a graver crime—although there were many
who would argue that fear was the more unmanning of the two.
Care
too much, and you lose the power to act because every action you take
will cause a loss. Every one
. He was dead now, dust; he had
failed in the clan test because he had been too proud to acknowledge
that he could no longer ride with the riders. And he was the only man
in the clan Marano who called her Na'tere after she reached the age of
five.

And even at five years old, she had not been naive enough to
think that he cared so much about her, although she felt secure in his
indulgence, for she was a girl. A girl.

A boy, and she could have ruled Marano; she knew it, and
thought it without much rancor; it was a truth written upon wind, and
by wind scattered.

Serra Teresa was thirty-two years old. Unmarried and
childless, she saw to the harem of her brother, Ser Sendari par
di'Marano. Adano, the kai of the clan, had a living wife, and no need
of his sister's aid. At least, she thought grimly, not in the affairs
of the harem. With her brothers, she had a polite and reserved
relationship; they served the same interests, no more and no less.

She had had no suitors—at least, so Sendari and Adano claimed.
She knew better, of course, but knew also that no suitor was grand
enough to take her from the clan Marano, whether she wished it or no.
So. As a woman, she had no place in the rulership of the clan;
unmarried, she had no husband, no children and sister-wives of her own
to guide and instruct and protect. She existed, like something outside
of the natural unfolding of time, for poets to make a mystery of.

What did she have?

Loyalty to the clan, of course. Loyalty to the two men who
protected her from the life she might otherwise have led. Loyalty to
Sendari's harem, and even affection for some of the sub-wives she
herself had chosen for her brother's use. But care? No. She had
listened to her grandfather well, and the event of his death had driven
home the truth of his words. A valuable lesson. Very little of the
activities that defined her life had the ability to move her.

As if in denial of that, the sun flashed bright across her
hand. She looked down to see it: finely crafted, so beautiful in
design, so expensively jeweled, that it should have been a husband's
morning-gift. A ring. Sendari had asked her once where that ring had
come from, and she had demurred; Adano had not even noticed. The only
woman who would have answered was dead four years and more, in
childbirth, or so it was said.

Diora was Alora's child.

Serra Teresa di'Marano listened, breath held, as her heart
kept an awkward, uneven time to the samisen strings. And then, as Diora
di'Marano began to sing in her clear, soft voice, she froze completely.

There was a strength in her voice that no child—no natural
child—could ever have. It wasn't possible; it shouldn't have been
possible. Diora—her Na'dio—was only four.

But like knew like, and in that instant, she knew that her
niece, the child that she had never had, and would never have, bore the
curse.

Serra Teresa di'Marano was afraid, and she had named the fear.

She found Sendari by the Lady's shrine. The moon's face was
almost full in the clear night sky on the end of this first day of the
Festival. He was not, the man she wanted to see—or rather, she wished
to see no men at all, and of them, he the least. Her private
supplication to the dead and the lost could not be spoken in his
presence, and she wished to be free of the words, even if only the Lady
and the open sky could catch them.

But she was patient, the Serra Teresa; she knew how to wait.

"Serra Teresa," Ser Sendari said, bowing very low.

"Ser Sendari." It was always thus with them, and perhaps it
was better so; false affection, or worse, true affection, weakened one.
Had they not both learned the truth of that, time and again? She bowed
in return, and held the bow, not grudging him the respect. Although he
was two years her junior, and Adano four her senior, she favored
Sendari.

He was, after all, following the path of the Wise. The Sword
of Knowledge had opened its doors to his study, and he had become a
blade in their service; he missed only the final tempering, the edge
gained by the test of fire. Already he had learned to twist elemental
fire to his use; to call it to hand, and to light the lamps and the
contemplation fires.

"What brings you to the shrine this eve?"

"Festival night," she replied. "It is the custom."

He glanced around as if to make a point; the pavilion was
empty.

But she did not offer him another explanation, and he did not
demand it; what good would it do? She could not be made to answer a
question that she did not wish to answer.

He had night thoughts of his own, perhaps. Sendari had always
been a deeper man than most.

A strong breeze blew through the pavilion, scattering the
shadowed petals that lay there like a fragrant blanket.

An echo of the wind's voice, the wind's touch. So much had
been taken from them.

"I heard that Diora acquitted herself well this day."

Was there a question beneath those words, and was it sharper
than Sendari's wont? Or was it imagination, was it her own fear? "Your
daughter sang well."

"I heard that the Tyr of Oerta himself offered her a blossom
from the height of the Tor Leonne's trees."

"That," she said, the smoothness of her voice edged with a
rare severity, "was exaggeration. I hope you did not hear this from a
source you consider reliable."

"It was not garnered from any of my sources," he replied.
Silence, heavy, between them. Then, "I will take the test of the Sword
two days after the Festival, before the Lady turns her face into shadow
again. I will face the fire of the sword-sworn, and I will prove myself
equal to their power." His smile was caught by the round glass lamps
that quartered the shrine as it fell into her silence. "I have
surprised you, Serra Teresa."

"Yes," she said softly; there was no point in lying. He knew
it, and she, and there were no other witnesses to keep count.

"And angered you."

She did not answer him; her anger was his guess, and if it was
shrewd—if it was, indeed, correct—he did not have to hear it from her
lips. But she knew, then, why he waited by the Lady's shrine. It was
for her, may the wind take him.

The ring on her finger was cool; she gripped it a little too
tightly, hiding the hand in the submissive posture and hoping that he
would not notice. But he was Ser Sendari; he noticed much. Too much.

"She does not look much like her mother."

"Appearance," Serra Teresa replied, "is all guile; the Lady's
mask. What lies beneath, only time will tell."

"Serra Teresa," he said gravely, turning his face to the moon,
"you will speak freely; you do not need to wait upon my questions or my
prompting; I do not require you to hamper your speech to suit mine."

"You mean, for this evening," she said, and if there was a
trace of bitterness in the words, he did her the grace of ignoring
them. "I am, after all, only a Serra."

"You are Serra Teresa di'Marano," her brother replied coldly,
"and we both know what that means."

A threat? She met it without flinching. What did it matter,
after all? Sendari was par, not kai, the younger brother, not the
oldest one—and her life was thus not his to end. Only Adano had that
privilege, and Adano had not felt the need to travel to the Tor for the
Festival of the Moon. Once a year—for the Festival of the Sun—was
enough.

She did not reply, and at length he spoke.

"Yes," he said softly. "Even that vow, I will break." His face
was grave as he turned to her. "I have surprised you again, Serra
Teresa."

"Yes." She bowed. "What will become of Diora if you fail the
test?"

"She will go to Adano."

"Adano has daughters of his own; three—and not one of them is
a match for Diora, in either beauty or ability. And, I believe, he will
soon have two sons."

"Does it matter? I have no other issue; she has no brothers to
protect her. She will go to Adano, and he will do as he will do. If I
fail. And I do not intend to fail."

"Have you been at a testing before?"

"No." He knew that she knew the answer well enough; no one who
did not, by right of combat, wear the Sword of Knowledge, had seen the
testing. He lifted a hand. "I know how few survive, Serra Teresa."

"And you will take this risk?"

Silence.

"Under the Festival Moon," Teresa whispered, turning to face
her brother.

"No—now, Teresa."

She let the anger show then, and it was clear and cold, like
the lake of the Tor Leonne. "You gave her your word."

"Alora?" He smiled softly. "A third time, sister. A third
time, you have been caught off guard. And if I, a mere supplicant, can
surprise Serra Teresa three times in the space of an hour, can I not
surprise the addled and arrogant minds of the Wise? I will be Widan
Sendari by sun's rise of the third day."

Alora
. He had not spoken her name aloud
for over four years. It was understood, between them, that the name of
Serra Alora en'Marano died when she had, her head cradled in
Teresa's arms, her babe mewling pathetically for food. Sendari allowed
no mention of her.

We both took oaths
, she thought, anger
warming the surprise. "It was an oath given to a woman," she said, each
word cold and hard. "You are not strictly honor-bound to keep it."

His face showed her nothing, nothing at all. But he had been
expecting this, and she, she was still off guard, as if she were no
more than a girl on this moonful night.

"It was given to a wife," he answered. "Why do we argue,
Serra?"

"Why indeed? You are Ser Sendari, and you will meet the test
of the Sword whether I will it or no—a dead woman's words
notwithstanding."

"And you," he said, the words as sharp as hers were cold,
"will protect my child if I fail the test. You have the means to do it,
Teresa, and you will do it." He paused. "Or does the breaking of one
oath warrant the breaking of another?"

She said nothing to that; nothing at all. "I wish you the
Lady's favor and the Lord's strength," she said, bowing very low. She
turned, then.

"We both loved her," Sendari said, as if he could not resist a
fourth strike at the heart of the woman who was his sister. "And we
have both paid."

She acknowledged the truth of that in silence, her hand around
the ring that Alora had given her to bind her to the oaths they had
sworn years before the birth of Diora.

So be it
, she thought, as the anger took
root.
I will protect my niece from everything, Sendari. I
will give her the life that was denied me, even if it does not serve
Marano's interests
.

Because I swore to protect Alora's child.

Because I so swore.

There was worse news to come.

"Teresa!"

Morning bright, Lissa pranced across the threshold of the
sleeping room, looking like the coltish young woman she was, and not
the demure wife she should have been.
My weakness
,
the Serra thought, although she felt no real regret. She sat up,
artlessly pushing the sleeping silks to one side of the mats upon which
she made night's repose. She occupied the wife's chambers, and these
rooms, no one but the sister-wives visited, not even dignitaries.

A sister-wife could be asked to entertain her husband's guest,
and in any event, had to be trained in the arts necessary to do so
discreetly; a wife could not. Not without insult to the clan of her
birth; not without casting doubts upon the legitimacy of the husband's
bloodline.

"What is it, Lissa? Do you feel the baby?"

"The baby?"

"I see," Teresa said wryly. "What is it, exactly, that you
have come to tell me?"

"There's a foreigner in the Tor!"

"There are many foreigners in the Tor," was the indulgent
reply. "It
is
the Festival of the Moon."

"Yes, but this one's special. He sang the morning anthem. I
mean," she added, not noticing the sudden tension in Teresa's face,
"that he petitioned to sing it, and he was allowed. By the Tyr'agar
himself!" She took silence as encouragement because she was young, and
continued. "He has hair like golden ringlets, Teresa, and he wears it
like a crown; he's tall and lovely, and his eyes are bluer than the
waters of the sea." The sea, of course, was poetic notion to young
Lissa, who had never seen it.

"I don't suppose you heard the name of this paean of earthly
beauty?" She should have reminded Lissa that singing fulsome praises of
the beauty of a man not one's husband was a dangerous and unwise
activity. Should have, but couldn't; the harem was barely a part of her
thoughts. It had been crowded out by sudden fear.

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