Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown (10 page)

And she had, for a while.

There was a warmth at her chest, a warmth and a softness, as
if a child lay pillowed against her breast. And she realized that she
cared very much for these people, and this place; that not only her
dead, but her living, were here in numbers.

"Ashaf?"

It was Daro, his black hair swept in an unruly knot above his
forehead. His wife loved long hair, and although it was not at all
practical, he kept it so as not to have to listen to her complaints. Or
so he said; there was an affection in Daro that was strong and deep and
not afraid of the gibes of men.

"I am sorry," she told him softly, setting a callused hand
gently against his shirt.

"And I am worried. It's not like you to miss the call three
days running. Are you ill?"

"Do I look ill?"

"No. But I know you, Ashaf. You'd have one hand in the Lady's
before you'd admit that anything was wrong."

"Then why," she said pointedly, "do you waste your breath and
time asking?"

"Because if I get close enough to ask you over this din, I'll
be able to see for myself." The concern lingered in his eyes, and she
surprised herself by setting all work aside.

"Come," she said, and he followed, just as he followed her the
evening his daughter's fever had—barely— broken.

They climbed the highest of the hills that the forest shielded
from the outside, and sat there, looking down upon the men and women
who toiled in such high spirits below.

"We'll finish early," she said.

He nodded.

"Is the Tor happy?"

"You'll be able to ask him yourself," Daro replied. "He's
traveling this season, and intends this village to be his last stop."
As he spoke, he cast a sidelong glance at her, the question in his
voice unmistakable.

As always, the news that he would visit warmed her. He was not
her son; she reminded herself of this again and again, although in
truth she needed no reminder. He was the Tor'agar Danello kai
di'Valente; he held her life, and the life of this village, in a hand
that could just as easily curl into fist as open in offering.

But he held her in regard, he flattered her, and in the
privacy of the tiny home that she would not leave, he spoke to her as
if they were still prisoners in the same harem.

And that
, she thought,
was the
first life, and it is over
.

"Do you love this village?" someone said, and when Daro
replied, she realized it was her.

"It is my responsibility."

"And you understand responsibility well," Ashaf replied
softly. Proudly. "This is a village unlike any village in the Dominion,
and it was made by the Tor'agar and by you. Give me your word, in the
presence of the Lord, that you will guard it when I am gone."

"I have given just that word," Daro replied wryly, "to the
Tor'agar himself." He laughed as he saw her expression shift into
sternness. "But I am a wise man. He is in the capital. You are here.

"I give you my solemn word that I will guard this village in
your absence. The Lord sees all. May he scorch me if I lie, or prove
false to my vow. But, Ashaf," he continued, more seriously, "I don't
want to have to do it without your help."

"No," she said softly.

The sun was warm and high.

She returned home while the sun was still ascendant, casting a
shadow across the graves that she and her husband had made. That she
had made alone after his passing, changing the shape of the earth with
spades and tears.

Moving, she came to stand by the graves so that the sun cast
her shadow away from what lay within them. The day had softened the
edges of the loss, as it sometimes did, and she could sit here a
moment, speaking silently the names of her children and her husband as
if they were litany. Nothing lived within them, of course; nothing that
could answer the words she did not speak aloud.

But she had stayed here, by the side of the dead, because it
was here that their memories were strongest. She let them come; all of
them. But she held the tears until dusk, offering them to no
judgmental, unsympathetic Lord, and no Lady who, mother or not, had
seen fit to part her from her family.

He came that night.

She should have known, and perhaps in some way she did, for
her sleep was restless and easily broken. Yet it was not the sound of
his voice that wakened her, shouting through the screens; nor was it
the sound of his hand against the wooden beams.

She rose in the silence of insects and wind through the
valley's tree branches—the silence of the pause before breath, of the
stillness in a crowded room after the shattering of a precious crystal
glass. Something had called her from sleep, but no trace remained of
its sound except her certain knowledge that it was there.

She rose and went to the screen that separated the world
without from the one within. The moonlight was bright enough to be
visible, but not bright enough to see by. Darkness, light—it made
little difference to Ashaf. Every inch of her home was more familiar to
her in the darkness than most places were in the day.

Little difference? Ah. Not this night. She felt that she
wanted the light, or rather that she should; she struggled a moment
with tallow and wick before she brought its flickering glimmer into the
night.

And then she remembered—and was surprised that she could
forget for even a moment such a fact: That the harem had never been
given over to night's darkness; lights abounded, proof to the wives—and
their children— that the Lord's will ruled in the harem of the Tor'agar
at all times. Very few were the people who had dared to speak against
this more than once, although it made even the Radann—the men whose
worship of the Lord of the Sun defined their lives—uneasy. "The Lady's
time will come," they would say, muttering among themselves in their
cloisters.

And it had. When the rites had been said over the newly turned
earth. Oh, she had smiled then, her face veiled and masked, her anger
hidden. The only joy she was allowed to show were her tears, and she
shed them freely, knowing that the clansmen would not understand—and
that her sister-wives would.

She stared at the candle until the image of its light had
burned itself, blue, into her vision, and then she carefully blew it
out.

The screen was heavy this night, as if her reluctance added
weight and stiffness to its movement. She put her shoulders behind the
action; they had borne greater burdens than this.

Moonlight silvered the grass and the leaves of the tall trees
beyond the village. Starlight, starcloud, and the deepest of blue
filled the sky. Somewhere, there were men and women who understood the
beauty of things that were glimpsed, not seen. She smiled wryly. Dreams.

And then the smile dimmed. The sight of sky was lost.

"Ashaf kep'Valente."

She stared at the dark, dark robes of the man who stood before
her door as if he were a stranger. There was something about his face,
something about his eyes, that she had not seen during their dawn
meeting, or their twilight one.

He spoke a guttural word, and from the folds of his cloak a
lamp fell, swinging as if in a heavy breeze although the night air was
still. She was not surprised to see that no hands held it, although it
was suspended in air. Not surprised to see that his eyes were all
blackness, his face almost white.

It was the Lady's night.

"Isladar of no clan," she said. She did not bow or kneel.
"Have you come to offer me a choice?"

At those words, spoken in such a quiet tone, he raised a dark
brow. She had surprised him, and from his reaction, he was not a man
who enjoyed the unexpected. But he nodded after a moment.

"Then enter," she said, standing aside. "Enter into the home
of Ashaf kep'Valente for this third night."

"Ah." He smiled grimly. "This is the third night. You are
superstitious, Ashaf. It is… charming." His cloak shifted; in the light
his lamp cast she could see that he carried something beneath it. "I
will accept your offer."

"I have water," she said. And it was true.

"Water? Ah. I forget. In the South there is the custom of
water as an offering of either hospitality or respect. It is not often
pursued in the Averdan valleys."

She walked to the table, the small, scarred table that was so
much a part of her life she couldn't clearly remember a time that the
house did not have it. Oh, she knew when it had arrived, but knowledge
and memory did not always speak the same language.

"Sit," she said quietly as she retrieved her bowls. They were
shallow; she saw this clearly in the glow of the lamp that no hands
held. "You are not Widan."

"I bear no Widan's mark," Isladar said agreeably.

She lifted the skin that Yollana had left her and poured,
sparingly, into both bowls. The first, she offered to Isladar, and the
second, she took for herself. She lifted the bowl, waiting; he lifted
his.

And then, as he brought the edge of the delicate clay to his
lips, the waters taken from the lake of the Tor Leonne began to steam.

His brow rose again, and then his lips turned up in a genuine
smile. "I think," he said softly, "that the hospitality of this house
is both too fine and too dangerous for one such as I." The smile
vanished as quickly as it had come. "Very well, Ashaf kep'Valente. I
will not ask you how you came by this water; it is of little import and
little consequence. This evening, I wear no disguise; I hide nothing."

"You do not speak all the truth," she said, which was as close
as she had yet come to accusing a man with great power of lying. She
felt no surprise at all that the waters did not pass his lips. Fear,
yes—but not a visceral fear. A subtle one. A deep one.

"No one does." He nodded politely to her. "If we are to travel
together, you and I, we must travel this evening. Already, I have been
gone too long."

"What is the choice that you offer me?"

"To remain here, in this little village, as Ashaf kep'Valente.
Or to travel with me, to a North that you cannot possibly
imagine." He rose, and threw back the folds of his cloak. In the light,
in his arms, there lay a small, poorly swaddled child. The child was
crying; its face was almost purple with effort. But Ashaf heard no
sound at all. She looked up, once, to see Isladar's face; such an
expression could have been carved out of stone, so unmoved, and
unmoving, did it seem.

"What are you doing to the child?" She rose as well, her arms
already extended.

"I? I am merely silencing her cries. She can breathe."

She. Her. Ashaf asked for no permission as she took the child
from Isladar's arms. At once, the child's pitiful cries filled the
room. They were not strong.

"How old is she?" Ashaf said, all sternness.

"She was born," Isladar replied, "Upon the fifteenth of
Wittan."

"The Lady's dawn," Ashaf said softly. "The harvest." She
looked down into the child's face. The infant's face. "You don't know
anything about children." It wasn't a question.

"I know a great deal about how to twist a person," he replied
affably. "But not one so young, no. I see to her feeding."

"And who cleans her?"

He shrugged. "Does it matter? She is cleaned. She is healthy."

"And she's hungry."

"She is always hungry." Isladar frowned.

"No, I mean, she's hungry right now. And I don't have much to
feed her." She stopped a moment, staring into the child's purple-red
face. It wasn't lovely, and it was, and she felt it sharply as memory
stung her.

"Where is her mother?"

"In the Hall of Mandaros," Isladar replied. And then he smiled
coolly. "I forget. Annagarians are… quaint in their beliefs, and
entirely incorrect; you do not know who sits in judgment. Her mother is
quite dead."

Motherless.

This is not my child
, she told herself,
as she began to bounce her up and down while she gave thought to milk
and liquid rice and who she might ask for either. Then she stopped
again, and stared down at the waters of the Tor Leonne as they lay in
her shallow drinking bowl.

She sat carefully, holding the child with the ease of years of
long practice, before she lifted the bowl. No, she thought, too young
yet.

"I would not, if I were you," Isladar said softly, although he
made no move toward her.

Ashaf lifted her chin, met the blackness of his eyes with the
solid brown of hers, and then turned her attention away from his gaze,
his words. She rose, walked to the mats upon which she slept, and
beside them found a clean cotton shirt. Dropping the edge of this into
the water itself, she waited a moment. Then she lifted the wet cloth,
and laid it, cool, against the child's lips.

A second, two, and then the infant began to suck. She cried
out once, twice—a third time—and then she relaxed as the waters of the
Tor Leonne took the edge off her hunger. Rising again, balancing child
and shirt, Ashaf came to the table and picked up the Voyani skin. She
filled her bowl, and fed the child, knowing that the girl would sleep
soon.

Infants this young slept and ate and dirtied themselves in
both the Lord's and the Lady's time. They did not see, they did not
hear, and they did not crave the company of their mothers.

And so it was that Ashaf knew, by two signs, that this child
was no normal infant. First, the satiated child raised her reddened,
newborn face to gaze upon the person who had offered her the waters of
the Lord. And second, as those eyes met Ashaf's, she saw that they were
liquid gold. They had been brown when Isladar had placed the child in
her arms. Infant brown.

But the waters of the Tor were special.

Demon child.

Ashaf paled, but she did not drop the child, or in any way
frown as the infant's lids closed slowly over those damning eyes.