Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown (103 page)

"Interrupt? You mistake me, kai el'Sol," he said, looking past
Fredero to the woman who sat upon the shoulders of the Radann. "I
intend to win it."

He drew his sword, and in the light of the clear sky, the
blade flashed white.

"Alesso."

The General turned, and when he saw who called him, his
expression cooled. "Sendari."

They stood a moment, watching each other like wary beasts of
prey. It was the General who at last broke the silence. "We have not
spoken for the past few days.'"

"We have both been busy." Sendari bowed. "But I have come with
word."

"Ah. You play the messenger." Before the Widan could respond,
he added, "And as usual, it suits you ill. Come, old friend. Take the
water with me." Serafs came at once, dressed in the white, gold, and
blue that were the Lord's colors. They set a silver pitcher upon the
flat, low table, and then bowed their heads to the ground. They were
dismissed, leaving the General and the Widan to sit in quiet isolation,
measuring each other.

"We do not make good enemies," Alesso said at last.

"No," the Widan replied. He lifted the pitcher and poured,
knowing that if he waited for Alesso, he would wait long. It was not
that the task was beneath his dignity—the waters were, after all, from
the lake of the Tor itself—it was merely a detail, in an afternoon that
was full of too many details, each requiring his attention. They would
be parched with speech—or the effort of stilted silence—before he
thought to lift glass.

Sendari understood the failing well; had he not, many times,
left food untouched while he embarked upon the study of the Sword?

He was silent as he sat in the presence of his oldest friend—a
man who, by his recent actions, had become more of a stranger than the
sister he almost hated. "Alesso, Diora has been promised to Garrardi."
It was said.

A man did not like to discuss the disposition of his daughter
with his friend; there was a wrongness to it, a feeling of things
forbidden by men who followed the ways of the Lord. And neither he nor
Alesso were such men, except as it suited them. But still.

"Yes," Alesso said, the single word curt.

Sendari felt the chill of anger settle about his shoulders; he
lifted his chin and met Alesso's brittle stare. And then, of all
things, the General Alesso di'Marente laughed. It was a bark of a
laugh, sharp and harsh, and the bitterness in it reminded Sendari of
youthful anger.

But all anger was youthful, in its way.

"I cannot lie to you, Sendari, except by omission."

"You endanger us, Alesso."

"Yes." He laughed again. "And if I were so enamored of safety,
I would have remained the faithful vassal to the end of my days,
toiling for a fat and mediocre Tyr." He raised a hand. "I could tell
you that I am insulted that you think I would endanger our alliances
and our plans for the sake of a woman—any woman. I could accuse you of
valuing your daughter so highly that you think any man couldn't help
but do the same. I could fence with words, Sendari, and it would solve
nothing
.
Let us leave them behind. Between us, there should be truth."

"There is the matter of Diora."

"Yes," Alesso said. "And it would have been cleanest had she
died with her husband." The accusation was in the words, but it was not
a harsh one.

"She almost did."

"I know. You have helped me in all things, Sendari. And you
know what I desire. You know also that we need Eduardo kai di'Garrardi,
and you might as well know that we've already clashed once over the
girl."

"I might as well," the older man said, and his smile was
forced out of him by the General's will, not his own.

"Help me, then. She was made the Lady of the Lord for the
Festival, and it did not displease me."

"You did not seek to consult me."

"No more than I would have consulted the Tyr about the timing
of his assassination. You would have refused."

That was Alesso. Against his will, Sendari felt himself relax.
"You have already killed two wives," he said coldly.

"Childbirth killed one," was Alesso's soft reply. About the
other, he did not speak.

Sendari had never asked. He was silent a long time, thinking
about Teresa's words, and Cortano's threat. "Alesso," he said at last,
"she will not make a good wife."

"She was good enough for the kai Leonne."

"Yes. But there is something about her that has become
disquieting. If you would take my advice—"

"I won't."

"—you would search elsewhere. Did you hear what she sang at
dawn?"

Alesso frowned. "It is always sung at the Festival," he said
at last, with a feigned nonchalance.

"Yes. And at every other Festival, the Sun Sword is drawn.
They remember it now."

"They would have remembered it anyway. You saved her life,"
the General Alesso di'Marente told his oldest friend. "Did you save her
for a man who is willing to offer her dishonor before she has been
lawfully given?"

Sendari was silent for a long moment; his face was carefully
expressionless.

And Alesso di'Marente laughed. "She didn't tell you," he said
softly.

"I have not spoke with Diora since—"

"Not Diora, old man. Teresa. She came to the rescue at the
side of the Radann kai el'Sol."

"Very well. Enough, Alesso! We do not make good enemies. Let
us cease this bickering." He paused, and then added, "And how exactly
did you come to be aware of such an infraction against my family's
honor, when I was not? I doubt very much that either the kai el'Sol or
the Serra Teresa would come, with such news, to you."

"I wish, by the Lord's grace, that I could for once succeed in
an attempt to omit the slightest of facts in a discussion with you. I
was aware, of course, because I was there." The laughter left his face.
"I would never dishonor you."

"I know." He drained his cup, and smiled. "And now that we've
put this difference aside, there is another. What," he said sweetly,
"of the last assassination attempt against the boy?"

"Sendari!"

Light and heat. Light and heat.

The sway of the fans her attendants held did little to quench
the summer's hand; it was midday.

The Serra Diora di'Marano, Consort to the Lord of Day, sat
beneath a canopy that was both fine and simple. Much of its workmanship
was on the exterior: the dyes in the cloth that formed the tented dome,
the engraving on the wooden beams that held it, the inlay of gold and
pale wood and silver upon the steps that led to where she sat.

"They will rest," the kai el'Sol told her softly, as he stood
stoically beyond the reach of the heavy fans.

She gazed at the ranks of the men who had passed the first of
the tests—a series of interlaced armed combats that had quickly
separated the wheat from the chaff. Those that were injured were tended
by personal physicians or serafs; those that were too injured were
carried from the field by cerdan. She recognized the banners of many of
the men here, and knew that they were vying for the title of the Lord's
Champion. And the favor of the Lord's Consort. The Lord's Champion and
the Lord's Consort were the highest ranks given to one who was not Tyr
or Radann kai el'Sol at the Festival of the Sun.

This afternoon, after the proper respect had been paid to the
sun's most dangerous hour, there would be the basic tests of
horsemanship, both handling and racing. Racing was always interesting,
because the fastest horses were often the lightest, and they did not
take well to mounted combat. The final stretch of the Lord's Challenge
always began between mounted men. So the clansmen had to choose their
horses carefully, by their paces, but also by their abilities in the
arts of war. The Widan Sendari di'Marano was one of few men who had had
little love of, or little interest in, horses; his daughter had been
properly trained to show little interest in them as well, although by
the grace of her aunt, she knew more than her father professed to—and
less than he actually did, which was the case for many things.

She thought that Sword's Blood would be too heavy a horse for
the races, and she was proved wrong, although in the proving of it, two
clansmen withdrew their animals from the field because they had dared
come too close to the mount that had made Eduardo di'Garrardi famous
among the clans. It would cost Garrardi.

Although this seat was the favored seat in which to view the
games, she was not the only woman who sat so; nor the only noble who
watched. To either side, at the edge of the plateau, the clansmen and
their wives—carefully protected from exposure to either the Lord's face
or the clansmen's gaze—took their places, watching those who bore their
name. Exchanging money, although it was frowned upon.

She had watched these games with Ser Illara kai di'Leonne.
Attended by his wives—her wives, the women of her choosing; he had no
children who were old enough to be trusted to view the full ordeal in
its entirety with the appropriate demeanor, but in a few years, they
would have joined them.

"Serra Diora?"

She shook her head and smiled gently at the Radann kai el'Sol,
wondering if he would mistake her distance for delicacy and
heat-fatigue. Hoping.

In the silence, the wind carried a scream up the slope.

The only assassins she could trust were never summoned during
the Festival of the Lord. They served the Lady, and during this
threeday, the Lady's dominion was at its weakest. Out of respect for
the Lord and the customs of the Lord, the assassins did not choose to
accept a name—or so the popular wisdom went.

The Serra Diora di'Marano had been taught only a little about
summoning the servants of the Lady; she had been tutored in other
skills of a more personal nature: the arts of poison, the ability to
administer cures to those poisons that were swiftly diagnosed, the deft
handling of a small blade in close quarters. To summon the Lady's
servants took a different type of knowledge—one that she had little of.

And the Serra Teresa had refused to aid her.

"We do not summon the Lady's servants during the Festival of
the Lord," she said. Diora knew finality of tone when she heard it, no
matter how gracefully it was given.

As if she read in the silence all that remained unspoken, the
Serra Teresa said, "We do not have the resources it would require at
our disposal this Festival." She had taken care to use the voice to
hide the words, offering the words as if they could somehow cushion the
blow.

As if she knew what a blow they would be.

Moonlight was at its height. It was not a bright light, not a
full one, but it was more than enough to see by. The Serra Diora
di'Marano listened for the movement of Radann at her doors; listened
for the quiet huff of seraf's breath. Both came to her, neither as real
as the piteous cries that memory would not let fade.

Squaring her shoulders, she closed her eyes. She did not rise;
the serafs had been trained from birth to hear the slightest of her
movements and attend them at once, and as their lives often depended
upon such hearing and such instinctive reaction, they were more
difficult to escape than guards. Than men. She focused her thoughts and
opened her lips, hardening them with the strength of her determination
so that they would not tremble.

"Sleep. Hear nothing. Wake
in the morn."

You cannot order a man to do a thing that is against
his nature
—
not for long. You can hold him with the
force of your voice if you intend to kill him, but if you intend to
avoid notice, if you desire secrecy or privacy without threat of
discovery, find a thing in that man's nature and exploit it. Work with
his intent and his desires, not against
.

She listened for a moment longer and then nodded. Turning her
face, she rose quickly.

The seraf, Alaya, was younger than she, but in size they were
almost identical. For this reason, Diora had chosen her, and for no
other; she was Fiona's girl, after all, and if she was foolish and
sweet, it was to Fiona that she would report when her tenure here was
done.

Without another word, she donned the seraf's simple robes, and
with the paints of the day, she drew upon her wrist the brand by which
Alaya was known. Her hands shook; this was not her skill, but it was
night, and in the darkness, it would serve.

She did not wish to kill the Radann, but to order them to
ignore her was difficult and not certain to succeed. Success, of
course, meant safety—but failure meant that a member of the Radann
would know that she had the voice, and that she was willing to use it
against the servants of the Lord.

Against one man, she would have tried. The Radann kai el'Sol
had left no less than four. She was happy with the four, however; they
were well-behaved, and not one of them would have considered it
appropriate to their station to harass a young seraf in the dead of a
quiet night, even though her Serra would never discover the misdeed in
time to attempt to protect her.

Gathering the folds of her robes, she walked to the corner of
the room and picked up a delicate, porcelain pitcher—a gift from a
Northern noble, dead this past month. Then she drew the hood above her
face, and made her way to the doors, pausing only long enough to
retrieve a small object from beneath the hard mats. - She knelt, as she
had seen Alaya kneel a hundred times, slid the screen doors open a
crack, bowed to the Radann, and rose. Their lamps made her shadow seem
long as she crossed the threshold, holding the pitcher in perfectly
steady hands because she knew, of course, that the Serra Diora valued
it. She knelt on the other side of the doors, bowed again, and slid
them shut.

The Radann glanced down at her, but serafs came and went, and
besides, the pitcher in her hands made clear that she was to travel to
the waters of the Tor Leonne, at the behest of her Serra. The kai
el'Sol's permission to gather those waters, strictly and quietly
granted, had been given at the gathering of the Radann who were to
serve in the unusual position of guards to the Lord's Consort for the
Festival.