Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown (116 page)

What would he have done?

Anything.

"And how," the Serra Teresa continued, her gaze now intent,
"would that man stop you from exacting vengeance?"

There was only one way, and they both knew it. She picked up
her lamp and swung its shadows in the darkness of the Lady's night.
Then she crossed the small space between them—the necessary space, the
terrible distance—and she placed a palm on his shoulder. "Sendari, what
will you do with her?"

"Is that your question?"

"Yes. And it is the only question I have, tonight, tomorrow
night, and in the nights to follow. It is the only question I will have
until it is answered and I—and we— move on, following one path or
another."

He raised a palm, as if to ward her, and said, "What other
choice do I have?"

And because it was as much of an answer as he could give, and
her gift would make this clear, he waited in silence until she left.
Because until she left, taking with her the question that he had not
been able to ask of himself, he could not breathe.

The Serra Diora di'Marano was weeping.

You must not move.

The hardest thing she had ever done was to sit in the harem's
Inner Chamber and listen. To the voices that she recognized, distorted
by screams of pain and fear, ended by death. Knowing that she could use
the voice, that she could force these men to stop for long enough that
they might somehow, some way, escape.

Aie, she
knew
that she could not have
done it. But her heart did not know it. And it never would. She had
sat, while their blood splashed her lap, and she had lilted no hand,
spoken no word.
She had done nothing
.

The rings that bound her fingers bound her heart; she swore to
the Lady that she would never again remove them.

She had hoped, somehow, that the act of striking at the men
who had been responsible for the deaths of her sister-wives—and her
child, her son, no matter that Deirdre had borne him—would give her
peace.

But there was no peace.

Because the last word that had been spoken to her had been a
single word: her name.

And she could hear it now, rebounding in the emptiness of the
room that was, for the moment, her prison.

Diora!

Ruatha's voice. Ruatha's shocked and terrified voice. Ruatha's
angry, betrayed voice. Of the wives, only Ruatha had seen her, sitting,
the power of her voice completely silent while the treacherous Tyran
killed them all.

Killed— her son.

She could not breathe, except to weep. Her arms, she wrapped
around her body, as if the ghost of Na'dani could be caught and held,
just held, just one more time.

Diora!

And could she offer explanation? She told them all, in the
private voice, that she loved them—that she would not let them be
forgotten or unmourned. But she knew that Na'dani did not understand
the words—and that Ruatha, her Ruatha, of the wives the one that she
had loved most fiercely, had gone to her death bitter and betrayed.

If she could, she would go, now, and claw through the earth
with her hands, digging up grass and worms and flesh until she found
them where they lay in their bed of earth. And she thought, oh, she
thought, that she might join them at last.

The Serra Diora was weeping.

Because she was the Flower of the Dominion, and her work was
not yet done, and she did not know how she could continue it without
them; they had been her strength. What remained of their memory, the
months had leached from her, until all she could remember was their
deaths, and her part in them.

Evayne
, she thought, as her voice
quieted, as she struggled to ride it and tame it,
you were
wrong. I have righted nothing
.

Ruatha, please, forgive me. If you watch from the
heart of the whirlwind, forgive. I have struck the first of the blows I
will strike, and I strike it in your name.

She had not lifted a hand.

Please forgive me.

She had not raised her voice.

Please.

She had not used
the
voice.

Ruatha…

The night was endless; she had swallowed it, and it was
devouring her. She knew that in the morning, when the sun rose, she
would carry this night within her; the only people who could have
gentled it with the coming of dawn lay dead.

And the worst of it was this: She was the Serra Diora
en'Leonne
.
In the morning, she would
wake, and she would plan. Because she had declared war, and now she
must fight it. Nothing else was left her. Nothing at all.

The Tyr'agar was crowned, and the crowning both lifted, and
lowered, his shadow. The blockade of the Tor ended with the Festival;
the merchants who had been corralled within its walls were granted
passage to their Terreans, be they North or South. Death had come,
dramatic and terrible, and death had gone, and in its wake, a new
leader had risen: the Tyr'agar Alesso di'Alesso; the founder of a new
line.

The clansmen left the Tor with their entourages, large and
small, like a human river moving down the plateau. And among that mass,
no one noticed or remarked on a single unremarkable man.

He dressed like a clansman, albeit in garb that was a bit too
broad for his shoulders, and he carried with him two swords, one girded
and one strapped to his back. He had only a small pack with the
possessions that he valued, and they were few indeed, and on his sleeve
he bore the emblem of the sun with indistinct rays on a field of blue.

He was tired.

Four days had passed since the crowning glory of the
Festival's Height; four days since the Radann kai el'Sol had chosen
both his death and his weapon.

This man was not a man with rank or station that allowed him
to witness the event, and he had no desire to do so.

But someone had to. Someone had to bear witness, bear it with
honor, and carry it home.

So he had done something that he knew the Radann kai el'Sol
would never have approved of: He had stolen a set of Radann's robes
from the temple, and he had come to the water's edge, as the rest of
the clansmen had come, both to witness the crowning of a Tyr—and its
aftermath.

After this, he had done the second of three things that he
knew the Radann kai el'Sol would not approve of. He had taken the
liberty—and it was a liberty punishable by death, although death was
fast approaching regardless— of filling three skins with the waters of
the Tor Leonne. Because the waters contained all that remained of his
master—the waters and the wind.

He had then returned to the temple, put away his needles, his
shears, his crystals and pearls—those things which, as a master with
little funding, he would have found difficult to replace. He took soldi
as well, gold coins and silver, although he privately thought Fredero
would forgive him that trespass.

What he would not forgive, what he would
never
forgive, was the third of the three things.

Jevri el'Sol, born Jevri kep'Lamberto, had taken the sword,
Balagar
,
from its place of honor. If it objected, it did not make its voice
known—not even when Jevri had, cautiously but with quiet determination,
unsheathed the blade, wielding it. It was not the Lord's way, and he
understood this, but he had never served the Lord; he had served
Fredero. And while he understood that Fredero forgave the Radann Peder
par el'Sol his treachery and his betrayal for the greater good of the
Dominion, Jevri was under no obligation to do any such thing.

This
sword had belonged to his master;
the master of his adult years, and the master of his choosing. He had
been blessed and privileged, and he would honor that privilege before
he sought another master.

If he ever did. He was not a young man.

The sun was hot during the day; the nights, cold. Not until he
was well quit of the Terrean of Raverra did he sleep without the
terrible ache in the bones of his fingers, his feet. But the roads were
safe for an old man such as he, bearing the crest that he did. He
stayed with men who accepted coin for hospitality, and he walked, cane
in hand, watching the merchant caravans as they fought for space on
roads that would soon see rain.

He expected pursuit. There was none.

When, he thought, would Peder par el'Sol—he could not bring
himself to even
think
of the name kai el'Sol as
any man's but Fredero's—notice the loss of the sword?

It was in the Lord's hands.

And the Lord did not choose, this time, to hinder. The days
passed; he walked through them all, keeping a steady, a stately pace.
The three skins, he did not touch, nor the sword, but he ate traveling
rations, honeyed wheat and nuts and dried fruits. There were rivers and
brooks as he proceeded North, into the plains that produced the finest
horses in the Dominion.

Jevri el'Sol crossed the Mancorvan border.

To reach the city of Amar was less easy than he expected it
would be; at every point along the road that a man could be stopped, he
was stopped; if it were not for the symbol of the Lord across his
shoulder, he thought his detention might have been rougher and lasted
longer.

Hard times, but he was calm; he expected no less.

Lamberto was not a friend of the new Tyr'agar. How could it
be, when the man ruled by treachery, by darkness?

Politics
, Jevri thought. And he continued
to walk. Because this was his gift to Fredero kai el'Sol, the youngest
of the Lambertan Tyr's brother's—youngest and most loved.

Days passed. He thought the sun etched lines more deeply into
his hands, his arms; he could not see his face, and was not
particularly sorry for the lack. But he missed Fredero, perhaps because
he carried so many responsibilities with him.

Perhaps because they were friends.

But Jevri el'Sol was patience personified in everything but
his craft, and his craft was behind him; his past before. He walked
from the heart of the Tor Leonne to the heart of the city of Amar, the
home of the clan Lamberto, and although the road and the wind and the
weather slowed him down, nothing stopped him.

The gates were not as he remembered them, and he felt a twinge
at that, a stab of surprise. There were Tyran here, bristling like
angry boars.

This was, however, Amar, and the Tyran here served the Lord
with honor. They did not—a single one of them—recognize him, although
he thought he recognized a few of their faces; it was hard to tell, the
years changed men so.

"I have come," he told the oathguard who barred his way, "to
speak with Tyr Mareo kai di'Lamberto."

"The Tyr is a busy man," the Tyran replied.

"Yes. And he is a man who serves the Lord. He will hear what I
have to say."

But these men, they were determined, and in the end, Jevri had
become curt. "I am tired, I am road weary, and I have come from the
side of the Radann kai el'Sol to speak with Mareo. I
will not
be put off by young, self-important men. Do I make myself clear?"

"You most certainly do," a familiar voice said.

And the Tyran parted at once, as if they were a tunnel and not
a wall. At the end, flanked by them, stood the Tyr'agnate who ruled
Mancorvo.

"Jevri," he said, with a broad smile, "welcome to our home."

But Jevri did not return the smile. "Tyr'agnate," he said,
although he had called him a good many things when they had lived under
the roof of Serra Carlatta's harem together, and none of them had been
that. "I have come from the Tor Leonne to deliver to you the tale of
the last day of the Radann kai el'Sol."

Mareo's face grayed at once, turned grim and dark. He waved
the Tyran away, and said, simply, "Follow." As if he spoke to a seraf,
a familiar seraf.

And Jevri, born kep'Lamberto, obeyed.

In the privacy of the harem—the same harem in which he had
watched Fredero grow up—he told the Tyr his story. He was quiet as he
spoke, as was his wont, and Mareo did little to interrupt.

"I will do my penance," Jevri told him, "for the theft of the
robe, but I have served the Lord faithfully these many years, and it is
in the service of the Lord that I have come."

But Mareo said, "It was in the service of Fredero that you
came, and you came to Lamberto. You know that my brother forswore his
family, to my father's dismay, and joined the Radann."

"Rather well," Jevri replied, almost dryly. "But he thought of
you often, and he would have wanted word of his fate to travel.

"He drew the Sun Sword, Tyr'agnate, that all clansmen of honor
might see for themselves the Lord's wrath, and make the honorable
choice."

"And you wished me to understand what my brother felt the only
choice to be."

"Yes. And more." He knelt and unstrapped the sword at his
back. "This is
Balagar
."

Mareo paled. "You
stole
the sword of the
Radann kai el'Sol?"

Jevri nodded grimly.

"But why?"

"Because when the armies ride, they will ride through
Mancorvo. And it was the kai el'Sol's fervent belief that the demons
who once served the Lord of Night will ride at their head. This sword
was a sword that could stand against those creatures; it was a lesser
sword than the Sun Sword, but it
is
a sword of
right, one meant to be raised in defense of the Lord of the Sun.

"Had he lived, he would have wielded it, taking the war to the
kinlords and their master. But he did not live. And I have taken the
sword," Jevri said softly, "to the only other man I consider worthy of
bearing it, Lord forgive my presumption.

"You need it, Tyr'agnate."

The Tyr'agnate was silent a long time. At last, he said, "Do
you know what they offered me?"