Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown (110 page)

As if he could read what could not be upon her face, he
smiled. "A General knows when to surrender some of the men in his
command to his enemy's slaughter, that the war effort elsewhere might
continue.

"But I will ask a boon, daughter of our enemy."

She waited in silence.

"Do not judge the Radann Peder par el'Sol too harshly, for he
will
be kai el'Sol." He offered her an arm, as if the steps were steep, and
she took it. "The only loyalty required of the Radann is loyalty to the
Lord. If he were to be judged by the Lord tomorrow, at the height of
the Lord's power, he would not be judged unworthy." He took a step and
then stopped. "But I must say in honesty that he does not know about
the… gift the Voyani woman left you. He knows of the woman."

"He had her killed."

"He had no choice. You will understand that, one day, or you
will never understand it. Her power was detected.

It was detected by the Sword's Edge. Peder could expose her,
and maintain his role, or he could attempt to save her and doom us all.

"We are fighting a war, Serra. We are all, singly, expendable.
All.

"The Tor Leonne will not be open to travel until Alesso wears
the crown and holds the Tor. Until open travel is possible, we can send
no word, gather no information, inform no others. The Tor will be the
General's; we cannot prevent it. But I swear before the Lord's Sword
that it will never belong to the General's allies."

As he spoke, she turned and the light along the blade flashed
starkly and sharply in the poor light.

"Alesso di'Marente would never serve the Lord of Night." It
was pulled from her grudgingly, as if it pained her to say anything
about the man at all.

"No? Perhaps not willingly. But he overestimates himself, or
underestimates his allies. If Peder believed that the General could
withstand the forces of the Lord of Night, he would never have come to
me. Peder par el'Sol is no loyal friend—but he is no fool."

"Kai el'Sol, with your permission, I would like a moment
alone."

His arm fell away from hers, as if it had become too heavy; he
bowed, and waited for her to make her descent. She ascended instead,
and stood, as he had stood, before the gleaming crescent sword. And
then she knelt, as he knelt, and pressed her head against the stone.

But her prayer, spoken, was silent; her gift and her curse
protected the words from the ears of any save the Lord himself.

If the Lord listened.

He heard her sing from a distance enforced on all sides by the
Radann, and although the song had ended and the sweet stillness of the
Tor had passed, he remained to greet the fall of night in the same
position that he had held when she departed. The healers had done their
work—at cost, and not to him alone—but the skin was new and pulled when
he moved quickly; his clothing, heavy enough to protect him from the
full heat of the sun, chafed.

The demon was gone, but others remained, less easy to destroy
and far less gratifying.

"Alesso."

"Sendari." He did not look away from the pavilion.

"The Tyr'agnate of Oerta has been looking for you."

"Let him look."

Sendari chuckled dryly. "It is early for that game, Alesso. We
have already agreed. Until the Festival's end we cannot afford this
antagonism."

"Whether we can afford it or no, old friend, we will pay. I
have done as you required, and I have mollified Garrardi in a fashion.
But he was not soothed by Calevro's death."

"Calevro was the Captain of the oathguards. He broke his oath
for personal gain. If Garrardi thought that we could afford the stain
of his allegiance, he is a greater fool than I would have thought."

"Which," Alesso replied, lifting and swinging his arm as if
the morning's exercise was not yet done, "says much."

"Indeed."

"Sendari, might I not—"

"No."

The frown flashed across the General's face and passed in an
instant, yet it could not be easily forgotten. A harbinger of the storm
to come.

"It is not my choice," Sendari said, matching his friend's
momentary anger. "And we will not argue about this again, I swear it by
the Lord's grace. The Radann guard her at all times. If she is awake,
the kai el'Sol attends her personally. If she is asleep, she is
attended by his personally appointed servitors. Not even I am allowed
into her presence."

"And you accept this? She is your daughter."

Sendari said nothing, but turned instead to gaze up at the
face of the moon in the clear, clear sky. It was a long moment before
he answered, but although the shallows of night hid the twist of his
lips and the quickly changing contours of his jaw, Alesso knew him well
enough to wait.

"Yes," he said at last, and softly. "She is my daughter." His
shoulders fell.

"I will not dishonor her," the General said, almost awkward.

Sendari shrugged. "Alesso, leave it be. You are right; I
cannot think clearly where she is concerned. She is—she is much like
her mother before her."

The General's silence was less complex, but longer. At last he
said, "What will Isladar do?"

"Nothing. He will take word back to Assarak. In fact, I
believe he will enjoy that, although I cannot say for certain. They are
not allies."

"The kin cannot form alliances."

Sendari laughed. "And what are we, Alesso?"

"Pawns." The General's smile was a gleam. "But we need them."

"For now, yes. And later?"

"Later, Sendari, we will form a different alliance, with
another enemy. Why do you think they want this war, the Shining Court?
Because they have already faced the Empire once."

Sendari lifted a hand, calling for quiet in a silence made of
magic and intensity. "Yes,. Do not underestimate the Northerners. And
do not underestimate the Lord of Night."

"Sendari—"

"We do not know what occurred in Averalaan; not well. We know
of the three weeks, and we know of the shadow that rose from the heart
of the old city. But the shadow's grip was a poor one; the sea winds
blew it away in the dawn of their First Day.

"This time, Alesso, the shadow's grip is not so poor or so
uncertain."

"And how do you know so much, Sendari, when you speak so
little?"

"I see it," the Widan said, his eyes taking on the half-vacant
look of a man staring into the ephemera of his past, "in Cortano's
face. I hear it in Isladar's word. I know it by the fact that the
kinlords and their servants are growing both in strength and in number.
If you know how to look, you can distinguish between even the imps."

"We plan to make use of the kin."

"And they, of us. But the game is growing dangerous if Assarak
feels he can make a point of rulership," he paused to touch the bruises
across his throat, "with impunity."

They had chosen their course; there was no turning aside. Nor
would Sendari have requested it. But although it was the Festival of
the Sun, they thought of the Lord of Night, wondering when his reach
had grown so long.

The night was cool, and the breeze was silent beside the
waters of the Tor Leonne.

The Radann kai el'Sol found dressing almost painful— but not
nearly so much as the servitor Jevri did. For Jevri was almost an
Artisan, and the Radann kai el'Sol was not the demure and graceful
clanswoman for whom his designs had been intended. He was a man, with a
man's impatience for purity of detail, and had he been any other man,
Jevri would have given up in quiet disgust two hours past. Had he been
any other man, the servitor would have given up in noisy disgust one
hour past. And this servitor had been raised seraf and trained in a
powerful clan's house.

But they had been together a long time, these two. Jevri held
the needle between his lips as he paused to inspect the detail of his
work in the poor light. Of course it would be poor light; the Radann
kai el'Sol was expected to greet the dawn. And the most annoying thing
about such a meeting was that he would greet the dawn in the same fine
but serviceable robes that he had greeted Jevri wearing.

The needle pricked the old man's lip, drawing both blood and a
curse.

He had been given to Fredero on a whim, a request made, gently
and firmly, by the kai el'Sol's mother of her husband, the Tyr'agnate
of Mancorvo, a mere week before he left the fold of clan Lamberto
forever, choosing the halls of the Lord's Service over the halls of his
blood kin. The Tyr'agnate had not been happy with his choice— but then,
what man would see his family forsaken, even if the cause be as noble a
cause as the Lord's service?—but he had granted his wife's wish.

Fredero was ever the stoic, and Jevri, the dutiful seraf. But
both men could not help but think the change in station inappropriate,
for Jevri was not the seraf to serve the harsh and spare Radann.

Oh, he worked.

When Fredero came to tell him that he was to be given his
freedom, Jevri acquiesced, as ordered. When he in turn offered his
service to the Radann as servitor, Fredero accepted without question.
Such had been the Serra Carlatta's will, and Fredero had rarely argued
with his mother's wisdom.

Beadwork caught the lamplight; trailed down the edge of a
knife and a needle; softened the sheen of crushed silk. Darkness
brought a subtle beauty to the light.

And the clansmen were not known for either their subtlety or
their appreciation of subtlety. At least, the clansmen of honor were
not. Among these, Lamberto was first.

How had it started? Fredero had learned to fight. He was not a
small man, and not a fool for all that he chose to wear honor's
righteous face. He understood cunning and deceit; he merely chose not
to practice either. Jevri saw in this man, daily, a man worthy of a
seraf's service. Even the best of the serafs.

But it was not in combat in the service of the Lord that the
kai el'Sol was to distinguish himself, for the Radann were all
well-versed in the arts of war, and to compare a kill—and the Imperial
war provided many—in a roomful of warriors was no way to set oneself
apart from the rest of the Radann.

He took care to adjust the inner straps of the headdress that
the Radann kai el'Sol would wear. He took less care when offering the
Radann kai el'Sol directions on how best to stand—with straight
shoulders, for one—while it was being fitted.

This finery was reserved for the height of the moment: the
declaration of the winner of the Lord's test. Rumors and money were
exchanged with equal facility as the servitors and the cerdan played
their favorites from among the five who were to meet for the final time
in the sun's heat. Jevri's coin had never been added to that game,
although this one year he had been sorely tempted to place his bet upon
the Tyr'agnate; the man fought like one sun-maddened.

And if Jevri was almost willing to be parted from his coin, it
meant he would earn little for it; he was not a man given to games of
chance.

No, it was certainty that he valued. He let the hem of the
robe fall away and ran a hand across his weary eyes.

"We're not finished yet," he told the kai el'Sol.

"Jevri—"

"No. It
must
be perfect today."

Their eyes met; they both glanced away like shy children, not
turned blades. Oh, they knew how to argue, at times like this, when no
one was there to witness such impropriety. But not today.

Jevri knelt at the hem of the kai el'Sol and found his needle.
The beadwork had already been glued into place, but he had had to be
certain that the fall was perfect before he fastened with thread and
needle these little repositories of sunlight.

He understood the importance of light at the Festival of the
Sun.

For a long time—many years—he had tried to understand the
puzzle of the Serra Carlatta's choice, for he knew, with some piqued
pride, that he had been among the most favored of her serafs;
certainly, the one most envied her by other Serras. In the meantime, he
had cooked, swept, cleaned, and mended as the Radann Fredero el'Sol
required, puzzling, always puzzling.

Until the morning that he saw his first Festival at his Ser's
side. Others had eyes for the clansmen, for the combat, for the Serras,
the wine, the food, and the Sun Sword. He had eyes for only one thing:
the raiment that the Lord's Consort wore. It was splendid in its
fashion, a work that was almost—almost—art.

And seeing it, he knew that he could better it, given only
time and the proper materials. He had never made a dress so fine,
although he was well capable of it, for such a dress was beyond
ostentatious; only here, only upon this platform, in this company,
could a Serra—the choice of the particular Serra did not concern
him—truly shine, wife to the Lord for the Festival's stay.

Oh, it was selfish, and he knew it.

And he wondered, as his heart raced, if the Serra Carlatta
understood what she had given him to. Because it was the Radann who
decided what dress and what style was appropriate for the Lord's
Consort.

It was important; it was so important that he had had to
strain and work to prevent himself from blurting it like a common
market seraf to his clansmen. But he did wait. And after the Festival's
end, he asked for the only favor that he had ever asked. Asked with
humility, as befit his station. Asked with grace. Asked with a plea
that, try as he might, he could not keep out of his voice.

"Jevri, I am not a rich man. To do as you ask—to get you the
material you require—would beggar me. And for what? A woman's
dress
!"

He had not said no.

Jevri had one weapon left him; he used it now. "Fredero,
please."

Silence—a long, almost uncomfortable one. Two men, separated
by birth and experience, and bound together by birth and experience,
waited to see who would break it.