Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown (59 page)

Serra Amara en'Callesta was no longer in the flower of
youthful beauty; she had borne two strong sons and three beautiful
daughters, and at the Lady's mercy, all but one had survived into
adulthood. A night thought, that—but evening was fast approaching, and
the Pavilion of the Dusk, positioned so that one might feel the
solitary wonder of the Lord's decent, made way for such musings. The
living could never hurt you as profoundly as the dead. And the dead
were legion.

Serafs attended her in silence, and she allowed it; Tyr Ramiro
often told her that she was far too patient with their maunderings and
their ponderous service. But as wife of the Tyr'agnate, she was allowed
her pick of serafs, and chose only those whose company soothed and
eased her.

It was said, among the clans, that she had never once suffered
a seraf to be put to death, and if that was not precisely true, she did
nothing by action to refute it; thus she held claim to the title Amara
the Gentle—and she held it fiercely.

"Amara?"

She did not need to turn; the voice, soft and pleasing, could
only belong to Eliana en'Callesta—the youngest of the concubines in Tyr
Ramiro's tightly knit harem. Youngest and, without question, most
beautiful. Amara appreciated beauty and grace—but more, she had the
uncanny knack for seeing its potential; Eliana had been taken from her
family—a serafs family—at the age of eight, with her second teeth
barely in. It saved money, to be so perceptive, and while Averda was
the richest of the five Terreans, prudent management, where it was
possible, was to be valued.

Prudence. She almost sighed. There were times, although only
under the Lady's Moon could such things even be thought, when she felt
closer to Eliana than she did to any of her sons or daughters—for
Eliana would be hers to keep, no matter the whim of any other clansman;
she was the property of Ramiro's harem—and the harem was Serra Amara's.

"Eliana. Have you come to keep an old woman company?"

The girl's laugh was musical, bewitching; it wove a spell of
pleasure by its utterance that evoked a response as genuine as the girl
herself. "I have come," she said, "to keep company with Serra Amara if
she will have me."

"And the Tyr'agnate?"

Eliana's full lips turned down in a slight frown. "He is alone
again this eve. We thought he might be drawn to the Inner Chamber, but
he will not be moved."

"We?"

"Sara, Deana, and I."

"It is this business with the General," Serra Amara said.
"Come, Eliana. Sit by me; it is dark and the Lady's fingers are running
through my thoughts." It was true, of course, but also untrue. The
young girl took her place upon the silks, and rested her head upon the
older woman's shoulder.

"Tell me," the Serra said.

"The General is like other men, and unlike. I told him that
the Tyr'agnate—and his wife, the Serra Amara en'Callesta—had been
called away to attend to their kai, and that I would be pleased of his
company. He followed me to the Outer Chamber willingly enough."

"And?"

"He was gentle," she said as if it surprised her. "He—" she
hung her head a moment, and hair the texture of silk and the color of
gold curled around the hollow of her neck. "He did not desire me."

"That I do not believe."

"No?"

"I saw the way he observed you at the meal, Eliana." She sat
forward, and a seraf handed her a goblet of sweet water. "But it says
enough of his character that he did not accept what was offered." She
watched in silence as the nets were drawn across the pavilion's face to
keep insects at bay. Serafs, like shadows, were bitten as they worked,
yet they never once complained. "He did not mention the incident to
Ramiro," she added quietly.

Eliana lifted a shoulder so gracefully it could hardly be
called a shrug. "And the Tyr is not angry with my failure?"

"No. But he isn't surprised either; Baredan is one who would
speak after loving. He practices caution as he can." She smiled. "Tell
me of the General."

"I think he values loyalty," was the quiet reply. "What he
says, he means. Do you know that—" she paused, silent, as Amara waited.
The moon was brightening above them.

"Tell me," the Serra said, making of the command a request.
"Whatever it is, I will not laugh."

"I took him to the Outer Chamber. He sat upon the bench by the
fountain, staring into the water in silence. He wanted no music, no
food, no love—but he asked me to talk. Just speak. It was odd, Amara;
he is not like Ramiro."

"No."

"I spoke, at first hoping to please him, to rouse him. But he
stopped me, and asked me to speak, instead, as I would speak. I didn't
know what to say. He asked me questions, and I answered them."

"Questions?"

"About Averda. About my life in the harem. About Serra Amara
the Gentle. He did not ask me for any secrets, and perhaps I spoke too
freely. I don't know why he wanted to hear me."

With such a voice, and such a disposition, Amara would have
been unsurprised had the man been anyone but the General. But why?
Baredan di'Navarre was a man, no more.

"He spoke of war, Amara—but not the specifics," she added
hastily. "He said he had come a long way. He—" she lowered her face a
moment. "He rode his horse to death to reach Mancorvo. It hurts him."

"I did not know."

They were silent a moment, in respect for the loss that would,
in almost any other circumstance, be considered a grave crime.

"I had very little to say, after he told me. But I spoke of
things that please me—no, of things that make me happy.

As I did, he looked at me. He said I was beautiful, spoke the
way a man will. I thought, then, that he might lay with me—but he did
not. Instead, he turned to the fountain, and he said, 'Lady, grant me a
sign.'"

"He said this during the
day
?"

Eliana swallowed and nodded. She raised a pale face to the
moon's light and accepted the goblet that Amara held. "A butterfly
landed upon his shoulder."

"A butterfly?"

"Yes. And it was black and crimson."

"You have rejected Eliana, Sara, and Deana, Ramiro. And I
hear, also, that you have turned aside Aliane and Maria." Serra Amara
en'Callesta stood in the door of the vast chamber, raising her voice so
that it might be heard by the man who sat kneeling in the sparsely
furnished room. She wore deep, deep blue, a silk to match the color of
her eyes; her hair, still dark after the passage of so many years, was
bound by pearls and sapphires: the handiwork of the women of the harem.

"Did you also hear," the man kneeling said, without turning to
greet his wife, "that I sent Carelo and Alfredo about their business,
with little regard for their advice?"

"Oh, indeed, Tyr'agnate, I have. And the kai was most
understanding, given what his father was like at that age. Might I
enter?"

"And could I stop you if I wished it, Gentle Amara?"

"With but a word."

"That word would not be 'no.' "

"Ramiro, you make me sound like a Voyani shrew."

"A mistake, my love." He rose swiftly, turning with the speed
of a hunting cat upon his waiting wife. "And if I am very good, I hope
not to suffer its consequences."

She laughed as he swept her into his arms; he was the only
person who could make her laugh out loud, unmindful of the social grace
her station demanded.

"Why do you send me children at a time like this?"

"Because it is too tiring to come to you myself without
exhausting you first. I am not a young woman any more."

His laughter left a smile upon his lips as he touched his
wife's cheek, tracing its line to the tip of her chin. She knew him
well enough by now to know that it was the first smile that had rested
there since his quiet morning walk with Baredan di'Navarre two days
past. It was vain, and she knew it, but she took her secret pride in
the ability to evoke such a response where no one else, be they
youthful, powerful, or beautiful, could.

But she also knew him well enough to know that the smile would
dim, and then vanish as if it had never been. "Come," he said quietly.
"The serafs have been and gone, and we will have peace within."

"Peace? This, I will see." Her own smile vanished beneath the
weight of recent history. "The Festival of the Sun," she said to her
husband.

"I know. Baredan di'Navarre believes that Alesso is no friend
to Averda—but he will be an enemy in blood if we refuse the call to the
Tor Leonne. And Mareo di'Lamberto has so refused." Either Amara or
Ramiro could have pointed out that, with no Tyr'agar, there was in
truth no call, for only the Tyr'agar had that right, and there was
none. But the Radann were already mediating with the Lord of the Sun in
ceremonies that were older than the Tor Leonne itself, for it was the
Lord of the Sun, centuries past, who had first declared which clan
would rule the Dominion. The Radann were the ears and eyes of the Lord,
and it was said that Alesso di'Marente was the sword behind their
necks. There would be a Tyr'agar, one way or another, at the end of
this Festival. And the fact that his power had not been respected
beforehand had a cost they both knew well; which of the clansmen, in
matters of power, stood on nicety of form?

Serra Amara knew that if Callesta chose the Tor, and the
Festival of the Sun, Mareo di'Lamberto would be isolated. And most
probably destroyed. "You do not think that you will travel to the Tor
Leonne."

"No."

She exhaled heavily, although it was bad form. "Good. If
Alesso di'Marente had intended to share his power with you, you would
have had word—or invitation—before the fall of clan Leonne."

He laughed. "You trust no one, do you?"

"I trust you."

"You trust me," he replied, "in affairs that do not interest
you."

She placed an arm around his waist, and he an arm across her
shoulders; they knew each other's bodies well enough to be comfortable
walking thus. The large, empty chamber receded, and the small, sparsely
decorated room opened up. This was Ramiro's heart, this singularly
uncolorful room, with its lacquered chests and reliquaries. Here,
scrolls and bonds and papers, old as the clan's founding, were placed,
and here as well were the rings and the sigils, the shield and the
sword, upon which Callestans swore their adult oaths.

Or, in the case of Serra Amara, their marriage oaths. She
smiled, but sadly, as she saw these chests—and then the smile dimmed
completely as she noted that the last— the black-and-gold chest in
which the sword rested, lay open, its red silk reflected like
too-bright blood against the blade's curve.

"You've decided," she told her husband, as she left him to
kneel before the Callestan sword.

"Have I?"

"Mancorvo has taken the lives of a hundred of our serafs in
the past four years. We have ordered our cerdan across the border, and
we have brought back their serafs to replace those lost to us. We have
killed and been killed; the nightfires have burned throughout all but
the harvest season.

"But not once, Ramiro, except upon the day our kai proved
himself, have you considered such actions so bitter that you opened the
swordhaven."

"You think you know me so well, gentle wife."

Piqued, she rose and turned, leaving the naked blade at her
back. "And am I so wrong?"

"I opened the swordhaven," he told her softly, "because
Baredan di'Navarre is not a man I would dishonor with a dagger or a
common blade. He is a man."

She was speechless, and then she turned again to look at the
chest, at the sword that waited within, unsheathed. Ungirded. "You have
not killed him."

"No."

"I am slow, Ramiro. This game of war—it is no longer my game.
Tell me what you are thinking." She drew close, because he wanted it,
and put her arms around him, wrapping herself tightly to the pillar
that he had become.

"That I should kill him. That he will start a war that will
destroy Averda, and possibly Annagar, by delivering it into the hands
of the Empire; that he will prove to the rest of the clansmen that I am
as Mareo di'Lamberto says: a lackey of the bloodless Northerners, with
no sense of loyalty or honor."

"The Lady," his wife said softly.

"Yes. It is night—and I have never been comfortable with night
decisions."

"This was not a night decision," she said.

He smiled into her hair, bending as if from too tall a height
to kiss its darkness. "No; the decision to kill Baredan di'Navarre was
made two days ago, after dawn, while the sun rose."

"You admire him." It was not a question.

"Is it so obvious?"

"Not to Baredan, no." Amara pulled herself gently from her
husband's embrace. "But to me, now. You could have sent him northward
with your Tyran. They could have killed him easily, with no witnesses,
and disposed of the problem he poses. Instead, you are here, with the
sword of Callesta unblooded." She paused. "And you sent Eliana to him,
as a final gift, a last night."

"Yes."

"But he would not take what she offered, because he would not
dishonor you."

"Yes, curse him." He turned from his wife to the sword, and
she walked quietly to the hard mats at the farthest edge of the ornate
circle in which the clan's history lay protected. There she knelt, with
a grace that spoke of experience.

"You could have offered her openly."

"And what test," he replied with grim amusement, "would that
have been?" He reached down and his hand rested, open-palmed, above the
haft of the sword. Twice it wavered, and once it touched the twined
cotton grip around the hilt, but it did not close there. "I told him,"
he said, whispering because he knew his wife could hear the words,
"that we would travel together.

"I have not taken this sword from this room since the end of
the Imperial wars. If I take it, it will become known."