Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown (30 page)

Or so she told herself; by the fall of shadows in the sun's
light, she had been kneeling thus for the better part of an hour, kept
waiting, as if she were a seraf. Her hair, she knew, looked like
child's hair in its unadorned fall. Like child's hair, or like the hair
of a wife in the harem, one not suitably attired for public consumption.

That had been Teresa's choice and in truth Diora favored
it—she wished to be as unassuming as possible in the eyes of the clan
Leonne. And if the Tyr'agar Markaso kai di'Leonne, the man who by right
of blood and law wielded the Sun Sword and bore the Sword's crown, was
a careless man who was too used to the authority of his clan's title,
his wife, the Serra Amanita en'Leonne, was not. She was sharp as good
steel, and if she was not young, she was still comely enough to merit
her chair at the side of the man who ruled the Dominion.

The minutes passed, and Diora knelt, silks protecting her from
the sun's open kiss, her back turned toward the nearly flawless sky.

"Sendari, you look as if you've swallowed fire."

The Widan stiffened slightly, and then struggled to control
the lines of his face, forcing them into a forbidding neutrality that
well-suited his title. He also forced himself to bow, albeit it
shallowly, to the man who had spoken; rank did not demand it, but
respect did, and in all things, even as his daughter below, Sendari
strove to be respectful. He hated it, of course.

"Widan Cortano."

"I believe I see your greatly favored daughter. Or at least
her back."

Too perceptive, the Sword's Edge. And cutting, as befit his
status. There was much about him to fear—the scars upon Sendari's hands
were reminder enough, if he needed it. He was not a foolish man; even
before he had honed his power, expanded it, increased it, he had known
that Cortano di'Alexes was a man to respect. And to fear, if it came to
that.

"The Tyr'agar," Sendari said, through teeth that would not,
quite, unclench, "is a busy man."

"Oh, indeed. Of course he has summoned no clansmen into his
presence while the Flower of the Dominion crouches, unfurled, at his
feet. I had heard that you were difficult to negotiate with. I see,"
the Sword's Edge added, offering a rare and unwelcome smile, "that it
was truth."

They stood upon the pathway that led to the Pavilion of the
Dawn; it was covered, carefully, with the natural growth of trees, but
those trees provided shade for a very particular time of day—a time
that had passed with the hours. From here, it was easy enough to see
the Pavilion of the Sword, the pavilion from which the Tyr'agar could
view the waters of the Tor Leonne with ease and comfort. An ease and
comfort that were denied—were publicly denied—the daughter of the Widan.

"Come, Sendari. He will not give the girl leave to rise while
you watch."

"He doesn't know I'm watching," Sendari replied, the words a
snap of irritation. His lips closed over them, but not before they
escaped, and he became tight-lipped and silent. •

"Of course he knows it. There isn't a spell of concealment
cast in the Tor that he doesn't know about." It was Cortano's turn to
smile thinly. "The Sword of Knowledge, after all, serves the Sword of
God. I'm surprised at you; it took some courage to negotiate the terms
that you did with the Tyr'agar. I hear you've become, among other
things, one of three personal advisers."

"Indeed."

"It is not a title I myself hold," Cortano continued softly.

"You did not choose to marry and beget a daughter who would
catch his errant son's attention." The Widan cast his long gaze across
the waters to see the stillness of unmoving silk before he allowed
himself to be drawn away.

"I? No. I have little patience for women."

Sendari shrugged. "I have little patience for serafs and their
handling. I have little patience for the details of a house. I have a
wife who sees to these things while I see to my art."

It was an old argument among the Widan, and comfortable
enough; certainly more comfortable than the sight of a daughter made to
kneel, as if she were a mere seraf, for hours on end.

"Indeed. And note that I have been delving, and you have been
standing, half-cloaked, on the edge of a lake, watching a woman's bent
back." The Sword's Edge frowned, running his hands through the length
of his beard. "Leonne is arrogant."

"The prerogative of one who rules."

"Indeed."

Moonlight, welcome moonlight. The Serra Diora, boxed in on all
sides by the confines of a garden far finer than any the Marano clan
had ever owned, breathed freely for the first time that day. The stone
beneath her legs was cool, as was the breeze; there was no Tyr above
her, no humbling etiquette to follow by which the whole of her father's
clan would be judged.

Alana and Illia had massaged her back and bathed her with
scented water while the moon rose in the darkening sky; they had
offered her food and water, although she declined both, and in the end,
sang her cradle songs while she lay, close-eyed, upon the mats in the
harem, this unfamiliar place which was to be the unwelcome substitute
for home for these coming two days.

Teresa did not come to her, and for this she was grateful;
Teresa was not like Alana or Illia, in the end; there was very little
about her that was soft, that understood how to be gentle.

Because this gentleness that you value is illusion.
Forget it, Diora, forget about it. You will be the wife of a Tyr
—
and
this softness is
not
what a Tyr's wife must have
if she is to survive
.

Yes
, Ona Teresa, she thought, as the
moon's face illuminated her own.
Yes
.

But she thought: I will choose my own wives and my own harem,
and we will make a lie of what you've told me, and it will be our
secret. Knowing, as she thought it, that it was a girl's thought, not a
woman's thought, and that it was foolish, willful, childish.

But her arms ached, her back hurt, and the songs that she had
heard tonight were songs that, in two short days, she would never hear
again; she told herself stories, as she had often done, to comfort the
fear of the responsibility she faced. Did it matter if the stories were
true or not?

No; it was only their comfort that she required, and she was
not stupid enough, not even for a moment, to actually believe in them.

"It is not a good sign," Teresa said softly to Alana. The sun
was at its height, but clouds had come in from the east, rare enough in
their beauty that they could not be disliked, for all that they were a
dangerous portent in the matter of a Leonne wedding.

"No," Alana replied. Neither woman spoke of the obvious
clouds. Their eyes, from the height of a gently sloped hill, were held
by the standard of the clan Garrardi. Just arrived, less than two days
before the wedding was to occur. The Garrardi clan ruled the Terrean of
Oerta, and if they were not the richest of the ruling clans, their
lord, Eduardo kai di'Garrardi, was still Tyr'agnate. To come, so late
in the season, for a wedding of this nature was unfortunate.

The more so because, as both Teresa and Alana knew, his offer
had been one of the six that Ser Sendari had, with so much difficulty,
refused. They were both glad of it, for in the matter of husbands in
the Southern lands, the choice of a good one and a bad one was
literally the choice between life and death—unless one were, perhaps,
the Tyr'agar, marrying a daughter out of the clan. Such a man, one
could not afford to offend with a death.

Ser Sendari was not the Tyr'agar.

And Eduardo di'Garrardi was not a man famed for his even
temper or his good use of the concubines that he did have. He had no
wife; he had never deemed any woman suitable or worthy, until he had
first seen the young Serra Diora. There was only one man he could lose
her to in safety.

It had not been an insignificant part of Serra Teresa's
decision to… encourage the interest of Ser Illara and his clan in her
niece. The other, of course, had been the fact that Sendari could not
refuse the Tyr'agar. As her father, had he been so approached, could
not have refused him.

"My eyes aren't what they used to be," Alana said softly, "but
I'd say he looks displeased."

"I would have to agree. It is unfortunate."

"Ser Jarrani came early," Alana offered, her voice weaker than
was her wont.

At that, the Serra Teresa smiled warmly. "Yes. The
Tyr'agnate
Jarrani kai di'Lorenza did indeed come early. As did the Tyr'agnate
Ramiro kai di'Callesta." The richest of the four Tyr'agnati, and the
one least liked by the clansmen for his trade and barter with the
Northern Empire.

"Lamberto?"

"
Tyr'agnate
Lamberto, Alana. We are not
in the harem." It was a reminder that the Serra should not have had to
make.

Alana shrugged. "That we're not," she said, unrepentant.

Worry and fear are no excuse for graceless discourse
,
Teresa thought, but she did not say it; Alana was coming of an age
where such brusqueness was considered almost acceptable. Almost.

But not in the Tor Leonne. Acknowledging this without apology,
Alana continued. "The Tyr'agnate Mareo kai di'Lamberto came two days
past. Late as well."

"Yes. But his delay can easily be blamed," could in truth be
blamed, "upon his great hatred of the Tyr'agnate Ramiro kai
di'Callesta. The fighting between the Averdan and Mancorvan cerdan has
grown increasingly costly, and I believe that both of the Tyrs have
privately petitioned the Tyr'agar for intervention."

Neither would receive it, and Teresa believed that Ramiro
di'Callesta knew it; she was certain he observed the request for form's
sake. If Ramiro had been forced to deliver his lands to his Northern
enemies, he had also inflicted the greatest damage upon their armies;
the Tyr'agar would prefer to see him politically disadvantaged,
strategically occupied.

The loss of the war was still a bitter blow to the Dominion;
the loss of the lands in Averda and Mancorvo, a painful one. Although
it was not spoken of directly, that loss was laid at the feet of the
Tyr'agar and the clan Leonne. Annagar was not, like Essalieyan, a land
of overabundance; to lose those fertile fields had been costly indeed.

And it was not, of course, just lands that were demanded; not
just lands that were given. As a sign of future intent, the Tyr'agnati,
and the Tyr'agar, had been forced to surrender one member of their
family into the keeping of the Imperial Court.

The demon Kings called it a "hostage exchange," and indeed,
there were hostages in the Tor Leonne—men and women whose very presence
was a slap in the face of the Dominion. But of these, at least, Teresa
was secretly glad,
for it meant, on rare occasions, a glimpse of a man that she might, in
another life, have called friend. Kallandras of Senniel College.