Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown (105 page)

The Serra Diora had not been the cause of a collision such as
this since she was a child of four or five; she was stunned a moment,
and before she could continue to run, he caught her wrists. Her hands
were pressed into the pendant; the strength of his grip did not break
the strength of hers.

She wondered if anything could; the pendant seemed a part of
her flesh; she could not tell whether the pulse she felt was hers or
the crystal's. It didn't matter. The presence of a man without the Lord
of Night's eyes was a blessing and a comfort, even though he was a man
of power.

"Radann par el'Sol." Her soft voice was completely natural.

"Serra Diora di'Marano," he replied. "It is late, and it is
not seemly that a woman of the clans should be seen, alone, with a
Radann of the Lord. You will forgive me, but I have taken the liberty
of assuring your privacy, and I believe it is best that we retire
immediately."

That way.

The words came on the crest of a warm summer wind.

"As you say," she replied, but she could not stop herself from
glancing over her shoulder. Moonlight silvered shadowed trees; the Tor
Leonne seemed to be sleeping within the Lady's night.

He pulled her along, and after a moment, noticed how her hands
were clasped. Marakas was not known for his attention to detail, either
among the Radann, or among clansmen who were powerful enough to have to
be wary of them. "Follow," he told her softly, releasing one wrist.
"Speed is of the essence."

He did not tell her where she was going, and she did not care
to argue; she could hear what he could not: the movement of the
kinlord; the words of the Widan; the curses, quiet but heartfelt, of
the Radann Peder par el'Sol. And although the listening was exhausting,
she could not stop.

So she listened, sparing only enough of her attention that she
might walk in the Radann's wake while clutching the pendant's warm
crystal in the folds of her palms. And because of this, she did not
recognize where their retreat took them until she lifted her face to
the wide doors that guarded the sanctuary of the Sun Sword.

The Radann Marakas par el'Sol opened them and led her in.

There were servitors within: four, each armored and armed as
if for combat and not the duty of guarding a highly placed official.
They were watchful, but they took a moment to pay the Lord's Consort
her due; they bowed, very low, and held that bow a fraction of a second
longer than etiquette demanded. Respect. Why?

"We were not followed," the Radann told his servitors.

"My apologies, Radann par el'Sol, but I believe that we may
well have been followed," Diora said softly.

"I saw nothing," the Radann par el'Sol replied, but he watched
her face intently and took no insult from her contradiction.

"You knew," she said, her wide, dark eyes narrowing into
slender crescents.

"Yes. I had you followed."

"But I—"

"I had your seraf followed each of the last four nights.
Tonight, I followed personally." He paused, and then added, "No man who
looked at your face could mistake you for even a fleeting moment for
Serra Fiona's child."

"But why—"

"Because, Serra Diora, I did not trust you."

She was stunned, and she was not used to being stunned. It was
summer, but the air was as chill as the sharp sea winds in the rainy
seasons on the Northern coast.

"Who follows us?"

Silence.

He stepped forward and caught her by the arms. She thought he
would shake her, but he did not; he closed his eyes instead and she
felt—she felt a warmth in the palms of his hands. "Serra," he said
gently, "please. You must answer the question."

"Radann par el'Sol," one of the servitors said, "I believe
that it is not necessary to question the Lord's Lady."

They both looked, the Lord's Consort and the Lord's Radann.
Glowing fiercely bright beneath the window that gazed out at the Lady's
night was the Sun Sword. And the light that flared was a clarion call,
a call to battle—if there were a hand that could wield it.

Leonne legend told of a light that harsh, and it shone for one
thing alone.

"Tell me," Marakas said, his voice gentle but insistent.

She had, for the moment, no fear of him. Later she would
marvel at herself; later she would deride her lack of control, the
weakness that such immediate trust—that any trust, here, in this place,
showed. "The Widan Cortano, the Radann Peder par el'Sol, and—and a
servant of the Lord of Night."

She had not thought his face capable of anger, but it was, and
the anger was cold and implacable. "Why were you there?"

She looked at her hands. Tried to open them.

"Serra Diora?"

"I was there," she told him softly, although she did not meet
his eyes, "to kill the Voyani woman." She added, as if in defense of
the action, "She had information which could harm us all."

He nodded. "I would have done no less, but she had been under
guard for the day." He paused. "And I would not see her suffer the
three days. Clansmen are cruel, where they are given the lawful right
to be so."

"She died," Diora told him softly, "without revealing
anything."

"How?"

She lifted her cupped, stiff hands, and he took them, and with
care pried them loose. Blood ran then, from the cuts in her hands that
matched, exactly, the facets of the large gem. The crystal itself bore
no sign of the stain; it was clear and bright as the Sun Sword itself.

"This killed her?"

She did not reply.

"May I?" he asked her, as he looked at the crystal.

She stepped back, and he bowed.

"As you wish," he told her softly. "But I believe that this is
one of the Voyani artifacts. Families are defined, among the Voyani, by
the old magics that they keep. Do you know who she was?"

Diora shook her head; wild strands of dark hair clung to her
face. She felt exposed, dressed as she was, with no finery and no
paints behind which to hide.

"She was Evallen of the Arkosa Voyani; the matriarch of the
family."

It was expedient to feign ignorance; it was also honest. Diora
knew very little about the wanderers. They did not affect the politics
of the realm, and it was in the politics of the Dominion that the Serra
Diora di'Marano was steeped.

"Evallen served the Lady," he continued. "And she has passed
that burden to you, and you have accepted it, whether you know it or
not." He turned to face the Sun Sword. "There is one Leonne left
alive," he said quietly. "And until he is either united with the Sword,
or dead, this Sword will not be raised in war against our enemies." And
then he smiled, and the smile was sharp. "But I wander, as always. The
pendant that you carry exacts a blood price, and you have paid it,
aware or no. You will be weakened for the next week, and the Festival
is only one day old." He unfurled her fingers, and they battled him
with a will of their own while she watched. "We will be safe here; if
they have followed, they will not follow into the swordhaven. The Sun
Sword protects us from that much.

"They will know that these magics were used if they are
following. But they will be looking, I think, for these." He touched
the wounds upon her hands. "And these are deep enough, and clear
enough, that you would not be able to hide them."

"He saw me," she said. "The creature. He
saw
me."

"When?"

"When I killed her."

"He was
there
and you escaped?"

"I wasn't—physically—there."

"What do you mean?"

"I—forgive me, Radann par el'Sol. I babble like a child. I was
not physically present. I approached upwind of the gates, and I heard
their voices. I could not kill the woman in the presence of witnesses,
for I would be acting against the orders of the kai el'Sol himself. But
as I sat in hiding, awaiting the right moment, I heard two voices I
recognized, and a third I did not. I don't know why, but I picked up
the crystal, and held it between my palms.

"And it took me to them—but not in the flesh. I looked, in my
own sight, a spirit, a ghost. They were—questioning the Voyani. She
could see me; they could not. She asked me to kill her before he had a
chance to bind her, for she feared what he would do in the Three Days
that he could hold her spirit. I—did as she asked. But as I did, he
turned to face me, and he saw
me
."

Marakas smiled with a weary relief. "What he saw, Serra Diora,
was your spirit. And the Dominion's women have housed the spirits of
Tyrs in the frail flesh of lambs. The only way they will know you is by
your wounded hands, although they will not know exactly what they seek
until they see it."

She raised a brow, motioning with that minute gesture to the
four who stood guard and bore witness to the words that had passed
between them.

He was not a subtle man. "These men are my personal servitors.
I trust them absolutely."

"Then you are—you are not a man who has many wives." She
smiled; the smile was shaky, but genuine.

His face darkened, although he returned her smile bitterly. "I
had one," he told her. "And I only ever wanted one." She wanted to know
how he, not of the Widan, knew so much about the Voyani arts. But
Marakas' background had always been hidden; he claimed no great clan,
and no Terrean, and no matter how her sources had searched, she had
never unearthed his secrets.

And now, she knew suddenly, he was going to give them to her.
And she wasn't certain if she wanted to know.

He closed his eyes and then took her hands. The movement was
so sure that it took her a moment to realize that it was subtly wrong.
The hands that now held hers were warm, and they grew warmer, although
she knew that they would not become uncomfortably hot; they reminded
her, in some ways, of the pendant; they offered protection, comfort.

Comfort.

She knew, then, that she could trust him. Knew that he was of
the clans, but of a clan so minor there was little difference between
it and a family of serafs. Knew that he had loved his wife, and knew
that he felt her loss as keenly as any bereaved husband, although the
loss was not a new one. She knew that he valued the serafs, that the
servitors that he had said he could trust
were
trustworthy, that he served the Lord's cause because he valued the
Dominion, but that he did not value the Radann overmuch, and that he
saw, always, a profound role for the Lady and the Lady's night. That he
valued things lost, and valued them profoundly.

His anger was not hers; it was not so cold and so absolute; it
allowed for grief. But Faida, Ruatha, and Deirdre were a loss that not
even he could begin to feel. How could she—

She cried out then, and pulled her hands away.

"Healer," she whispered, her face pale with both loss of blood
and shock.

"Yes."

"You didn't—you didn't warn me."

His eyes were lidded; his expression was suddenly neutral.
"No."

"Because you didn't trust me."

"Yes."

"And you thought to—to read this from me, while you healed
these?" She raised her hands in anger and before he could reply, she
struck him. He caught her hand before she could strike again; it would
have been hard to say which of the two was more surprised by her
action— the Radann or the Serra herself. The silence between them
stretched out in the darkness until one of the Radann's servitors
coughed.

"It was wrong," Marakas said. By that open admission to an
inferior, he once again set himself apart from the clansmen. "But these
are not times in which the right and the wrong done to one man or one
woman may rule us. I apologize."

"And are you satisfied?"

"No, Serra, I am not. But I will heal the hands, and you will
be forewarned enough to keep your thoughts upon what you will; the
injury does not require a deeper communion."

The Serra Teresa di'Marano sat alone in the garden beneath the
face of the open moon. In her lap the Northern harp's strings resonated
with the dance of her fingers, and her voice rose and fell in an
Imperial lament for a wildness and time long past. At least, that was
what the bard who gave her the song had said; she sang in a tongue that
was both foreign and old. She understood the Imperial court tongue, but
was less well-versed in its variants.

And she believed the bard, and sang with that belief.
Wondering, as she did, whether or not two people who had the voice
could lie to each other at all.

She was surprised to see Diora step from between two barely
opened screens into the lambent moonlight. Her almost-daughter's hair
was drawn back in combs and pearls, and she was dressed for the day and
not the night, yet she seemed a shadow, a thing not meant for sunlight.

"Ona Teresa," Diora said softly.

"Na'dio," her aunt replied,' stilling the music of the strings
with the gentlest touch of a hand. "Join me, if you like, but remember
that you must greet the dawn with the Radann."

Diora nodded. She made a place for herself on the cushions
that lay upon stone smoothed by the passage of water, wind, and time.
And then she drew her legs up, sitting with her chin upon her knees,
the very picture of a child.

"What," Serra Teresa said, resuming the play of finger across
taut string but giving her attention to other matters, "has happened?"

"Ona Teresa," her almost-daughter said, and Teresa knew, then,
that one never wondered an idle question beneath the full face of the
Lady's Moon. "Did you know that my father was in league with the
servants of the Lord of Night?"

They both spoke in the voice, with the voice; they bound their
words as tightly as they dared. Teresa thought, if the light were
sharper, that she would see the signs of it in Diora's face—and they
were signs that the Consort to the Lord could not afford to expose to
the clansmen. The Flower of the Dominion was expected to be exactly
that: perfect when in bloom.