Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown (45 page)

"No. Only tell me he doesn't look too much like our husband,
and I'll be grateful."

Diora laughed—but Serena clearly considered this
inappropriate. "Na'dio, Na'Deir, that is
quite
enough. Your husband is the man who will rule the Tor, and he
must
be treated with respect, gravity, and dignity. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Serena," Deirdre said, not in the least repentant.

Diora had the grace to blush. But when she gave Na'dani back
to his mother, she whispered, "He's already far more beautiful than our
husband could ever be."

Which, of course, set Deirdre to giggling, which in turn set
Serena to frowning. Life was returning—
would
return, if Diora had any say at all—to normal.

She joined Serena by the screen doors that had been opened to
let in light and a view of the rippling lake a full building's height
and more beneath their feet. They sat in the silence the view created,
feeling peaceful, hopeful.

Diora spoke first, but that was often the case when these two
sat alone. "I need your aid," she told the older woman quietly.

Serena waited, listening to the muted whisper of the waters as
they moved between rushes and lilies, over rocks and plants and a bank
of sand. This was the voice of the Tor Leonne, because it was a symbol
of life in a land that seemed to care so little for it. The Lady's gift
to men bred by the desert winds.

"If I have no child this year, no one will notice," Diora
continued, speaking so that only Serena might hear.

"True. But next? I think next year, it would be remarked on,
and not in our husband's favor."

"Then I would have that child next year, not this one."

"Why, Diora?"

The younger wife glanced over her shoulder at Deirdre
en'Leonne and the babe she held so close.

"Because I believe that my child will be the death of that
one. Not now, not for many years—but it is coming. It always comes when
the Tyr feels his hold on his clan is weak." She spoke now with the
Marano voice, her father's crisp and dry precision informing every word.

"And what will waiting a year or two do?"

"In a year or two, many things can change, Serena. Before the
Lady came to these lands, the Lord's lands, it is said by many that
there was only the desert and the desert winds. Nothing stands against
those winds when they howl across the open plain.

"Yet the Lady stood. And if not for the Lady, there would be
no life in Annagar."

"So it is said, yes. And you see yourself as the Lady come to
the Lord's Dominion?"

"To bring life, yes. Or to preserve it. I believe that I can
change our husband, Serena. I believe that I can help him rule—that I
can, in a year, maybe only a little longer, make him confident enough
that he need not raise my son to be quite so… cautious."

"Delicately put, Na'dio. You could offer to have no children
at all."

"But, as you say, that would hurt our husband's reputation,
and I have no desire to do that. His loss of face would no doubt be
blamed, by Leonne, upon his Serra, or his wives, and his heir would be,
would have to be, the child of a mere wife, a concubine.

"And even if I decided to have no children, and he was forced
to choose among his wives' children for
one
son
to elevate, do you not think that single son would have to be far more
ruthless to survive? Each and every one of his brothers would know that
if it were not for a slip of the finger, a mistaken gesture on their
father's part, they would be ruler of this vast domain instead of
merely elevated serafs, or Tyran, if their brother so desired.

"Oh, no. If that were to happen, I would say that the son so
chosen would be foolish indeed not to have the rest of his brothers
killed because
he
would have justification in so
doing."

"And your child would never need to take such drastic action."

"No."

Serena offered Diora a measured smile, one of the few. "You
are wise, Diora en'Leonne; wiser, I think, than many have given you
credit for. I will aid you in this endeavor for the course of a full
year—although there is risk in the timing. Illara is… a young man, with
a young's man's sense of himself. I believe he already considers it a
slight that you do not carry his child."

Diora shrugged elegantly. "I will bear the Leonne heir in
time, and I will make that child and this house stronger than either
already are."

"I believe, having delivered Danello into his mother's arms,
that you will do just that," Serena said. But there was something in
her eyes, some distant sadness, some lingering sorrow, that Diora could
not understand.

"Be careful, Na'dio," Serena said softly. "Remember that the
heart is a dangerous land, and there is not one more painful to have to
leave once it is full entered."

But Diora did not hear her elder; she had already turned
toward Deirdre, her ear caught by the slightly off-tune hum of a cradle
song. Dusk was approaching.

Month of Scaral,
426 AA 
The Tor Leonne

The preparations for the Festival of the Moon once again
changed the face of the Tor Leonne. Where the Festival of the Sun was
powerful, political, the Festival of the Moon held a hint of the Lady
in everything; in the flowers planted in beds by the palace and the
pavilions, in the blossoms, that came as if by unspoken decree to
pinken the skirts of the red-leaved foreign trees, and in the loons
that stopped to water in the lake itself.

Masks were made and masks sold, and in the streets of the
lower city—a city that the wives and the Serra of the kai Leonne were
never privileged to see, wines were being pressed in preparation for
the festival of the following year, and the previous year's vintage,
for the less discerning of the revelers, being carted through the
streets.

No Tyr missed the Festival of the Sun, for it was by its
nature a gathering of men who claimed power. But Moon-night was
different, a door into the hidden world, a place where the power they
spent their lives, and their family's blood, building afforded them no
purchase. The Tyrs who chose to make this trek—and this year there were
only two, the Tyr'agnate of Oerta and the Tyr'agnate of Sorgassa, had
begun to arrive with their retinue. Diora saw their approach clearly
because she recognized the banner of clan Lorenza, with the rising sun
and its clearly marked distinct rays bordering its lowest edge, and the
horse of the Tyr'agnate Eduardo kai di'Garrardi. She prayed, although
it was full noon, that she would not have to look upon his face at any
closer proximity than this—but it was Festival time, and much about the
Festival was unpredictable.

The Tyr'agnate was the only unpleasant ripple in the tide of
the day. Her husband, Ser Illara, had come and gone several times,
sneaking past his wives when he thought they might otherwise be
occupied to gaze upon the face of his infant son. The child was young
and had only very recently started to smile, and the father—the angry
and sullen father—had become captivated in some small way by that
display of unaffected joy.

If joy it was. No one could quite say what would make Na'dani
smile—and many things had been tried, most with so little dignity it
might seem the Festival of the Moon had already arrived within the
harem's heart and merely waited the chance to spread its wings wide
over the rest of the Tor.

Deirdre was happy, if nervous still, and Ruatha took great
pains to absent herself from her husband's side when he chose to visit
this previously unwanted child. They held their breath—Deirdre, Faida,
Ruatha, and Diora—as if it were drawn by a single person, waiting.
Hoping.

The Serra Amanita also chose to visit the harem, but where her
son was cautiously affectionate, she was quite cold; it put them all on
their best behavior immediately, her visit, and it did not let go of
them for days afterward. Her shadow was long and dark when it fell.

It fell heavily.

Of the women of the harem, only the Serra Diora en'Leonne was
requested to avoid most of the revelry of the Festival itself, and she
found this a bitter, bitter blow—although it wasn't unexpected. During
a Festival night, many things, unasked for, could happen—and some
things must
not
involve the Serra of the kai
Leonne. The Tyr'agar could not, of course, command her absence—it was
the Festival of the Moon, and she was no criminal— but his request held
the force of law. Of the Lord's law. Of all the men in the realm whose
bloodline must be unquestionable, it was his.

Still, if she was to acquiesce graciously to captivity, she
was given her choice of companions, each of whom would then bear the
weight of a similar "request." She hovered between selfish and
selfless, and settled upon selfish with both guilt and hesitation. She
wanted Ruatha and Faida and Deirdre to remain at her side. Deirdre was
still often tired; for a small and completely immobile infant, Na'dani
seemed to rule as much of her life as she let him. And, given her
reluctance to place him with even the serafs who had been trained in
such things, that was much.

Faida and Ruatha, on the other hand, had much more to lose,
for the Festival of the Moon was the single night of absolute freedom
that any of them might know. But they agreed willingly enough, setting
only a single condition upon their voluntary captivity: that they might
plan their own small celebration within the Leonne garden. Such
permissions as were required were not withheld.

Unfortunately, such permissions not being withheld, they went
about their plans with zeal and determination— and without Diora. They
knew her strengths well; they did not speak in her presence and if
conversation turned, in a sudden pivot of words, to the Festival Night,
they would fall just as instantly silent.

The plans of the great and the powerful had never been of as
much interest to Diora as the plans of these three women, these
sister-wives. Had the days ever passed so slowly?

22nd Scaral, The
Festival of the Moon,
426 AA 
The Tor Leonne

It had started here. Sendari often thought it would end here,
by the lake, with the moon full and hanging in a clear, cool sky. He
knelt to touch the water's edge, remembering the shallower ponds of a
boy's youth, where mosquitoes nested. They did not nest here, although
perhaps it was because the dragonflies that hovered over the lilies
were
more efficient.

He doubted it.

He was a man of knowledge, and not a man of mindless
superstition; he did not, as many of the Widan did not, believe in the
Lord and the Lady. But this lake… this lake tested his lack of faith,
and in the darkness of night, much to his great bemusement, it often
won.

He stood alone this eve. Last year, just one year past, he and
Na'dio had skirted the edge of the lake together. In the moonlight, the
waters were shimmering, pale light into which one might descend
forever—a door into the Lady's realm, a place of peace. Her hand was on
his arm; he
could feel it still, resting delicately against the raw silk robes he
wore; she bowed her forehead into his shoulder and spoke a moment of
childhood. Her childhood.