Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown (34 page)

And no oath seemed less tenuous than the oath given by Ramiro
di'Callesta—the man who had been most hurt by Leonne's ill-considered
and poorly planned war. Baredan understood this, but not with the
precise intellectual gleaning of Alesso or Sendari; to him, it was
instinctive. It came like breath and with just as much thought. Of the
four, he favored the most dangerous with the pleasure and privilege of
his company.

Callesta was the most dangerous clan in the Dominion, and only
its position—at the border of the Empire itself— had stopped Callesta's
complete political dominion over the clan Leonne for its catastrophic
failure in its war effort. If Alesso had proved himself to be the most
capable of the Generals, Callesta—
this
Callesta,
not the father who died upon the field—had proved himself to be the
most canny of the Tyrs, bound by no strict rules of honor, no outmoded
warrior code, no rigid Radann's edicts.

Of the three Generals, Alesso knew it best. It was under the
command of the young Ramiro di'Callesta that General Alesso di'Marente
had made his mark. They were tied by that, and separated by it as well;
men of power became wary of men of power. It was a fundamental truth of
the Dominion, and neither sought to deny its effect.

As he approached the pavilion, the Tyr looked down and smiled.
"General Alesso." The smile was genuine, as was the smile that Alesso
di'Marente returned. They clasped arms, as men do, and then drew back,
regarding each other with an almost open appraisal and a mutual
satisfaction. Time had robbed them of little. Yet.

He could not use this man.

He could not trust this man.

Of the Tyrs, Ramiro di'Callesta gained most by the rule of a
weak Tyr'agar, for he was subtle enough to manipulate a man who did not
take the advice of what counsel he had well.

Beneath the sun of the open sky, upon the Pavilion of the Sun,
of the Lord himself, he met the eyes of these two men without
flinching. Baredan di'Navarre. Ramiro di'Callesta.

And he knew that he would have to have Baredan assassinated.
Ramiro di'Callesta was a canny man; war would take him before the
assassin's blade—but such a war would leave Averda open for division,
and Averda was the most fertile and the most prized Terrean in Annagar.
He considered, briefly, an alliance with the Callestan Tyr; the winds
took the thought. Ramiro and Alesso were alike in too many ways, but
Ramiro di'Callesta's bloodline had a history that predated the founding
of the Dominion—and in the Dominion, blood counted for much. Too much.

Winds take you, Cortano
, he thought, as
he smiled.
Winds take you. The Lord won't
.

On the day before the wedding which had drawn these diverse
men together, Alesso di'Marente took the first step upon the path that
would lead him to greatness or obliteration. Took it without moving,
without raising sword, without lifting voice. Oh, he knew there was
more to the war than these two men; far more. The path that would lead
to the lake was a shadowed path, one that would never clearly be
discerned if approached with timidity.

He was not a young man, but he was not an old one; he could
see the length and breadth of the future unfold before him as a series
of obstacles, of challenges, each of which must be met.

And more clearly than that, he could see the Sword's crown,
the Sun Sword, and the rippling perfection of the lake itself as it lay
beneath his feet.

One did not pray to the Sun Lord.

One vowed.

Alesso di'Marente committed himself upon that day, at the
sun's height.

"Some men will tell you what they like," Alana said quietly as
Diora knelt on the mats before her feet. "Some won't."

"That's helpful." Illia's voice was thin with sarcasm and
tension. She rubbed oils into the palms of her hands and then
carefully, evenly, spread them down the length of Diora's exposed back,
starting first with shoulders that were hard and tense. "And you won't
have to worry about
men;
just
man
.
One. He'll not give your services to a visiting dignitary; he'll not
expect you to warm the arms of a man he wishes to reward or comfort."

Serra Diora di'Marano said nothing.

"Na'dio?"

She nodded, the dutiful daughter, and rose as Illia stepped
aside. Her skin was white and flawless, but it was cold, and the
pliancy of a feminine body had been replaced by steel. "Na'dio," Alana
repeated, her voice almost a croon. "Please. You have nothing to fear."

Diora bit her lip—a habit that she'd thought lost to childhood.

Illana en'Marano turned her unusual honey-colored hair away,
and Illia, bold and beautiful still, cast her gaze toward the cushions
that lay, unused, against the far wall.

"It's not true," the girl who stood in twilight said. "Because
if I had nothing to fear, none of you would be afraid. And you are. You
all are."

"That's nonsense," Alana said, gruff now because she was old
enough to speak gruffly. But she was the only one who spoke, and the
two words were forced and heavy.

"You've been here for two weeks," Diora continued, her skin
white as clouds or lilies. White as the dead. "You have your serafs,
you have your days in the open sun. You've spoken with the wives of the
Tors and even the Tyrs upon occasion, because each and every one of
them has attempted to find out more about
me
."
She lowered her head, tilting her chin toward her pronounced
collarbone. "And I know you. I know you, Illia. I know you, Illana. If
Fiona would tell me nothing at all about Ser Illara, it would not
surprise me; there has always been distance between us.

"But not you. You are all my mothers. You've asked, in return
for the information about
me
that you've given,
whether that information is true or no."

"Na'dio, it is not nice to accuse your mothers of lying."
Alana's voice was as dry as fallen leaves. As light, as empty of life.

"No, and I hate to be in such a position that I must do so,"
was Diora's grave reply. "But you've
asked
, and
you've
heard
. Will you tell me nothing?"

"You've met Ser Illara," Illia said, her voice almost
completely devoid of expression. "Yet you have never chosen to tell us
what your impressions were, and of all of us, with one exception,
you've always been the most perceptive; you are Teresa's kin."

Silence.

It was Diora who broke it, because only Diora could. "I have
only seen him twice." Lifting her chin, she accepted Illia's hand and
stepped upon the pedestal, light and lithe in movement because such
movement had become natural to her. She waited for the dress to be
brought, her eyes dark and distant, a window into a summer storm, a
thing of heat and wind and death. "He is a man like his father."

"Ai." Alana bowed her head a moment, and then lifted it,
wiping her brow with the palm of her hand. Wiping her sari, staining
the silks dark with sweat. There were no serafs here; their husband had
forbidden the intrusion, and in a perverse way they were grateful for
the lack. Illana picked up the heavy fan and began to push the still
air around the room in a gentle mockery of breeze. "He's not a gentle
man," the oldest of Sendari's wives said. "But he's not a brutal one.
He's a man. If you're lucky, he'll take to the fields of the lower
plains with his father's Tyran, and he'll leave you to your harem."

"I think," Diora said quietly, "that he's killed a wife. At
least one. It's in his voice, in the way that he watches them." She was
not thinking, not clearly, to speak so plainly. But she spoke as the
buttons of the dress were, one by one, undone, and the silks laid
across her standing body as if they were a clansman's shroud.

"You've seen his wives?" Sharp question, that; Illia's voice
had thinned in the way that the Serra Teresa least liked.

"Yes—but at a distance. One of them—younger, I think, than
I—is with child." She closed her eyes, recalling that chubby face, the
shadows beneath the eyes, the pallor of skin gray with unease, even
fear. Had he beaten her? She could not be certain; could not ask. She
was, after all, a Serra, and the business of a Serra was not the way a
man treated the women he owned. "I do not think he is pleased by it."

Silence, longer. At last, Alana said simply, "He saw his
uncles slaughtered as a child. He sees a threat in his brothers—and
that threat is real. He has killed two wives."

Illia's intake of breath was so sharp Diora almost laughed,
although the well of laughter would have been a bitter thing. She was a
Serra; she held her peace.

"Why did you not tell me?" The second youngest of Sendari's
wives said to the oldest, her pale cheeks flushing with an unbecoming
anger.

"What good would it have done? He will not kill
this
wife, and this is the only wife that we must concern ourselves with."

"How?" Diora asked, the single word forced from between pale
lips.

"Na'dio, it is not necessary."

Diora heard two things when Alana spoke. The first, every wife
in the harem understood: that she would not speak further upon the
subject, no matter what entreaties were made or threats offered. The
second, what every wife in the harem feared: that the deaths had been
unpleasant, slow affairs.

"Why?" she asked softly.

To her great surprise, Alana caught her hands, both of them,
and pressed them together between her own, holding them as if they were
an injured bird; hard enough that she might stop them from flailing or
fleeing, yet gently enough that she might offer no injury, no hurt.

"The kai Leonne has reason to fear his brothers. They fear
him; they fear that he will choose his father's course, and have them
executed when their father at last passes on.

"His life is not secure. Men who fear for their lives react
harshly. He believed that these two, his wives, were in the employ of
his brothers; he could not prove it, and therefore could not demand his
brothers' deaths. But he sought to end the threat that his wives may
have posed. Na'dio, he will not harm you. Because your life and his
life will be inseparable; if he falls, you will fall. If he rises, you
will rise. Your children will be his heirs, and it is their blood that
will claim the waters and the crown and the Sword."

Diora left her numb hands in the hands of the oldest of her
father's wives, the oldest of her mothers. "They weren't guilty," she
said softly, only the barest hint of a question in the words.

"Does it matter?" Alana replied. "You have seen serafs killed
all your life for their mistakes and their folly—or the mistakes of
their masters. Did those deaths hurt you?"

Her hands, now, were a cage, not a nest. "Did they weaken you?
Did you notice them at all?

"They
are
serafs, in every possible way.
Honored, if their husband is honorable, and doomed if not."

"Alana—" Illia began, but Alana's glare silenced her.

Diora was cold. And perfect. She lifted her chin, raised her
shoulders, arched her back ever so slightly. And she met the angry eyes
of Alana en'Marano, hearing what had not been said.

That Sendari's wives were no more free, no more privileged,
and no more protected than Ser Illara's. That they had been given no
more choice in their fate and their disposition than his wives. That
she, and she alone, was granted a measure of safety because of who she
would be.

A clanswoman. The wife, not the concubine, not the sister-wife.

"Safety," Alana said grudgingly, "is for the dead." She
released Diora's hands, and those perfect, fair hands fell at once to
the young woman's sides. Then she turned and stalked out of the room,
as graceless as a clansman come newly from the field.

Come injured from that field.

"Forgive her, Na'dio," Illana said unexpectedly. "This is so
terribly hard for her." She lifted a string of tiny, perfect pearls
that, end to end, was as long as her arm. "She thought—she hoped—that
Sendari would never have to see you married. He refused the
Tyr'agnate
of Oerta." She reached up, and Diora bent, stretching her neck for the
clasp of cool gold. "She has lost one son and two daughters, and the
daughters of a concubine are always born for barter."

"But she thought you would be safe. And you will be. But it is
not—it is not what she desired. You know that Alana has always worried."

Illia brought combs, jade combs, of a green that was almost
blue it was so dark and deep. She wound them round with flowers, small
white blossoms that had been carefully preserved in the waters of the
Tor Leonne for just this purpose. She found a small footstool, and
gained its squat height. There, she caught the long, fine strands of
Diora's shining hair and began to bind them.

And Diora di'Marano turned her face to pale screens that hid
from sight the waning of the day. For on this day, no sunlight was to
touch her skin. She was to be given, unglimpsed, in all her finery, to
the clan Leonne and the kai Leonne in the time between the Lord's
dominion and the Lady's. For that was the time of men, and of the
meeting of man and woman. They brought rings for her hands, more gold,
the shimmer of opal on bracelet, the twine of worked metal in links
wide as her delicate wrists.

She bowed her head, lifted her arms, spread her fingers,
striving now to regain the calm and the poise for which she was known.

Wondering, as she did, where Ona Teresa was, and if she would
see her at all before she was taken forever from the heart of Widan
Sendari di'Marano's harem.

Dusk came quickly, a fall of stately hue across the horizon.
The concubines of Sendari di'Marano had become quiet with that peculiar
anxiety a mother shows for her children; only the Serra Fiona was
graceful and perfect as befit her rank. She had, with the inattentive
consent of her husband, procured a sari of such quality that she hoped
in some way to stand out among the gathered clansmen, once they had had
their fill of the so-called Flower of the Dominion.