Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown (28 page)

"I am not inclined to care what they think."

Alesso rose, angered. "And my regard, Sendari?"

The serafs were nowhere to be seen. Water had been brought,
and something to blunt the edge of the hunger that might occur between
meals; both had been left in the stillness that lies between two proud
men.

Sendari should have noted their absence for what it was, for
Alesso rarely argued where any ears but his could hear what was said.
"I am not the keeper of your regard."

"Your actions define it."

"Then judge me," Sendari said, rising as well, so as not to
give Alesso the advantage of too much height, "by those actions."

"If you choose to act at all."

This was not the first time that these two had argued; it
would not be the last. They were like brothers in that regard, although
no blood bound them. "Alesso."

The General subsided a moment. "You are my closest… adviser,"
he said, when he could speak again. "And I will not lose you because of
your oversentimental attachment to a daughter. She is not your son, old
friend, and if she were, she still would not have the value of a kai;
you are the second son of the Marano clan.

"Even Adano has urged you to think clearly upon your action."

"I am
Widan
, Alesso. It is unlikely that
I would think any other way."

Silence again, heavy with the struggle to leave things unsaid.
To speak things in anger gave words a power and a history that
friendship weathered poorly; and for all that they disagreed, the
friendship between these two men was genuine and worth much to both.

"Sendari," the General said, bowing. "She is only a daughter."

The Widan bowed in return, stiffly. "Yes."

"But even so, ask yourself this: Would this match not be the
very thing that she would have desired?"

Because Alesso so rarely acknowledged his previous wife, it
took Sendari a moment to understand who that "she" was. And when he
understood it; when the words had sunk, like water, between the cracks
of a dry and parched land, he rose, his face the desert's face for just
that moment.

The dead did not remain buried.

"You are… unkind, Alesso."

"Yes. But not to you alone." He turned, but did not leave; not
yet. His hand sought the hilt of his sword and found it. Almost,
Sendari thought, as if to still himself, to steady himself. "I despise
weak men," the General said.

"Understood."

"And the Lord offers only contempt for their struggles.

"She weakened you, old friend, and I cannot decide whether or
not I, in my turn, desire to face that weakness or no. But dead, she
controls your life. Even in this."

"In this?" Sendari felt anger's echo, a thing much weaker than
anger itself, but no less haunting. "Why? You are right, Alesso. Diora
is only a daughter.

"But I believe I might drive a hard bargain for her in such a
way that her value will be known across the Dominion."

The General did the Widan a courtesy; he did not turn until a
moment had passed in which the Widan might carefully school his face.

28th of Seril, 426
AA 
The Tor Leonne,
Annagar

Some scars healed.

Eleven years after the test of the Sword, the Widan Sendari
di'Marano's arms were the pale, white color of fire-touched flesh. Gone
were the blisters, the cracked skin, the rawness of blood brought by
heat too close to skin's surface; all that remained were these marks,
like an oiled parchment. And the rank. Widan.

Wise.

He stood, clenching his fists, the morning sun bleaching the
water of all color until it resembled, in his eyes, the shade of the
scars on his arms and hands. White.

"Sendari?"

He looked down at the feel of small hands across his chest;
delicate hands, and cool, as if they had been washed in the waters of
the lake that he gazed upon. They hadn't, of course; the waters of this
lake were special, and given to only a few for such frivolities. This
was, after all, the Tor Leonne itself, the seat of the power of the
Dominion.

There was only one woman who came to him thus, only one who
was not wise enough to know when to leave him alone, and when to
approach. The Serra Fiona en'Marano.

Passing the Widan's test gave him a patina of power, an aura
of authority, that belied his rank; the clansmen came, with their
marriageable daughters or sisters, to pay their respects.

And he wished a wife, a clansman's wife.

Not one who would ask him to make promises that she herself
could not keep.

Younger than the concubine whose service to him had been the
price of her life, the Serra Fiona had been lithe and supple, and prone
to a self-importance that time had not yet worn the edges off. It
wasn't pleasing, but it pleased him to indulge it in some small way. He
knew that she would suffer for it in the harem, for although it was
technically her harem now, and his concubines her sister-wives, he knew
that her place among the women who had not been her choice was still
delicate. In eleven years, these women had not forgiven her youthful
arrogance and her attempt to rule what had never been ruled: the harem
of Widan Sendari par di'Marano's previous wife.

Previous wife.

"Sendari?"

He caught her hands, pulling them round his chest and pinning
them there, so that she might feel that she had his attention. He was
not a man who wished his wife to be a counselor or a coconspirator. He
wished his wife to be pliant, and obedient, and graceful; he wished her
be desirable, to dress perfectly, to play the samisen as a woman alone
could play it; he wished her to be pleasing in all things, but pleasing
in a way that did not, in the end, touch more than the senses, did not
warm more than the body. He had suffered enough at the hands of the
Lord's whim, at the howl of the desert wind. He would not willingly
suffer more.

Her hands slid, playful, down; he caught them, feeling a rare
annoyance. "Fiona," he said softly. A warning.

She was well enough brought up that she heeded it, retreating
as delicately as she could and gathering her silks about her
shoulders—but he knew, as she hid the ivory of her skin from sun's
light and her husband's eyes, that her pride had been pricked.

His concubines would suffer for it. Youth could be so
petulant. But the rest of the concubines could take care of themselves.
And if, for some reason, they could not defend themselves against the
wrath of a rejected wife, they could no doubt turn to the Serra Teresa
for guidance and wise counsel.

For Teresa was among them, albeit as visitor, and where she
went, she reigned. Even Fiona did not raise voice against her.

Left alone, Ser Sendari di'Marano contemplated the magnificent
waters that defined the Tor Leonne. Thinking that fire—the sun's
face—was the Lord's aspect, and water, the Lady's; thinking further
that the Lady's aspect was the heart of the Dominion, its seat of
power, if not its regalia. Thinking that the anger of the Lady must, in
the end be far deeper than the anger of the Lord, for it was the Lady
who, time and again, demanded the due of life.

At night.

It was morning, now; the sun should have offered comfort as it
hung in the summer sky. But its travel over the waters reminded him
unaccountably of scars, of scarring, of loss.

Loss.

The Serra Diora di'Marano was to be married in three days
time. He had refused no less than six offers for her hand, finding some
pretense, some excuse, that might shield her from the interest of the
clans for just a day longer, or a week. His wife was his wife, and as
all men, he did not trust a man not to treat his daughter in as
dismissive a fashion as he treated the lovely Fiona—and the certain
knowledge that his daughter, his intelligent, cunning, perfect daughter
would be so regarded angered him and worried him both. She was of an
age where she as yet had no desire to leave the harem that had been her
home for all of her life—and he… he was still her father.

But the seventh offer was an offer that he could not refuse.
And even so, he had delayed his response until he stood upon an edge
very different than the Sword's—and one far more dangerous.

Did it matter? He was here, now, obedient and richer for that
obedience; he had drawn the attention of the Tyr'agar himself, both for
his negotiating skill and for the golden sword that he wore upon his
breast; and his daughter was there—somewhere among the many pavilions
designed by Leonne the Founder to grace the lakeside in such a way that
they might see no other, granting not the illusion of privacy, but
something rarer in the Tor Leonne: its substance.

His daughter.

And not his daughter anymore.

He stared down at the pale skin that covered his hands,
remembering the test of the Sword, and the reason he had taken it;
aware that he had passed another, and at no less risk. What he did not
know, as he stared at the waters, was whether this test, like the last
such test he had taken, had empowered him—or whether it had robbed him
of some meaning, some strength that was hidden from the eyes of the
clans.

The Radann Fredero kai el'Sol stood in the courtyard of the
edifice that had been built, at the behest of Leonne the Founder so
many years ago, when the dark years had come to their close with the
death of a Tyr whose name, and whose clan name, had been carefully
expunged from the texts by which history was learned. Leonne the
Founder had been a man both blessed and chosen by the Lord as his
warrior; it was to Leonne the Founder that the Sun Sword was given.

The Radann—the men who spent their life's devotion, and their
lives, in the service of the Lord—had been commanded to follow the lead
of Leonne the Founder, and they had, in faith and strength, stood
beside him, wielding their own weapons against those who sought to deny
the Lord his dominion.

It was the time of legends, of their making.

The courtyard attested to that, with its fine arches of stone,
its flagstones, its interior sculptures, each of a piece of stone, and
each created by a man who could bring, to stone, a semblance of eternal
life. There, the sword bearer, and to his left, the crown bearer; to
his right, the vessel bearer, and across from him—across, the symbol of
the Lord himself: The many-rayed, magnificent sun.

The time of legend, Fredero thought, had long since ended.
Leonne the Founder had been a great warrior. His blood could barely be
seen in the man who now wore the Sword's crown: the Tyr'agar Markaso
di'Leonne. Markaso was a dour man and cold; he spent too much time in
the sun—Fredero lifted his hands in a propitiary benediction at the
thought—and too little with the sword, too little upon the horse, too
little with the war council that was built beneath his feet.

Danger, there.

He bowed his head a moment, and said a customary, solitary
prayer; it was no plea, of course, for the Lord did not listen to the
pleas of men. Rather it was a promise, a form of negotiation.

The Sun's weight was heavy, this day, and the Radann kai
el'Sol did not know why. But he felt it was inauspicious, this chill
within on a day so clear and so full of promise.

Where was Jevri?

As if the impatient words were spoken aloud, an old man came
briskly into view, followed by a half-dozen young servitors, each of
whom carefully handled the hem of a long train. They were obviously ill
at ease, these men; they were sworn to the Lord's service, and the
Lord's service—in their mute, but nonetheless obvious opinion—had
nothing to do with the carrying of exquisite garments. Serra's
garments, of course.

They were far too wise to state their opinions, although not
one of them was terribly good at acting. Fredero rarely chose his
servitors for their ability to dissemble.

"It's about time," he said testily.

The oldest of the men—by at least three decades— managed to
turn a bow of respect into a shrug. "It is timely," he replied. "We
have not yet seen to its fitting, however."

"Servitor, need I remind you—"

"Only if it will put you at ease. Among the six of us, we've
already heard it so often we've lost the desire to learn how to count."

Four of the five young men looked shocked, but they kept their
eyes firmly upon the silk that they carried—a misstep might stain it,
or cause it to tear, and that would be worth, if not their lives, their
positions at the least. Besides which, while they revered the kai
el'Sol as the Lord's Sword, they knew that his relationship with Jevri
el'Sol was almost a familial one.

Not familial, of course; no man could petition the Radann for
entry without first disavowing all ties of blood. Fredero kai el'Sol
had been known, in his youth, as Ser Fredero par di'Lamberto—brother to
the man who ruled the Terrean of Mancorvo. The Lambertans were known,
across the Dominion, for their honor; the Lord was willing to accept
his service before he'd observed his first rites.

Jevri, it was said, had journeyed with him. No one asked the
cantankerous older man if such rumors were true; at best, he'd box
their ears a time or two for neglecting the Lord's work to satisfy
their idle curiosity.

Jevri was like a fond uncle in the lowest ranks of a great
clan—linked by blood and name, but not by circumstance, to the seat of
power. The kai el'Sol was its forbidding patriarch.

But every patriarch came from someone's harem, at one time or
another. And what ties there were between Jevri and the kai el'Sol were
ties that the two men understood well—and that no other men sought to
interfere with.

"Does it meet with your approval?" This, the only genuine
question that the old man had yet asked.

The Radann Fredero kai el'Sol walked quietly around the
garment, squinting as a touch of wind caught silk and turned crystal
into unexpected light. He knew that, as a dress destined for the Serra
known throughout the Terrean as the Flower of the Dominion, it had to
be perfect. And he knew, as well, that no man upon the Lord's earth
could create such perfection if it were not Jevri.