Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown (70 page)

These men and women were finely attired, and they sat in rows
of softly cushioned chairs that rose steeply toward the heights, that
no one might miss what took place upon the floor. They were his judge
and his jury, not his peers.

And they had to be his peers, or he had already failed.

"Tyr'agar," Princess Mirialyn ACormaris said. She bowed, low,
the gesture Imperial. "The Crowns and The Ten await your petition." She
stepped back, and then said softly, "Stand on two feet."

Something about the words felt strange; it was a moment before
he realized what. The Princess was speaking in Torra, the tongue of the
Annagarians. He wanted to thank her, but knew it would have to wait;
she stepped away, falling to the side as if he, and not she, were the
one who was moving. The Kings' Swords did the same, as did Kallandras.
He stood alone.

And on two feet.

The whispers started; he heard them as if they were the gale
itself. Anger, sibilance, reflective debate. He recognized many of the
men and women who sat here, waiting. To the Triumvirate, he bowed. It
was not his plan, or even his intent, but as they, golden-eyed, met his
gaze and held it, measuring him, he felt compelled to bend. In the
Dominion, he knew that each of these three would have died before they
drew a second breath. And he knew, as they watched, that they knew, and
they judged.

The golden-eyed were demons' get, or so his mother oft
whispered, but Valedan was no child to be scared by the tales of the
harem. Eight years, almost nine, he had lived here; surely, if these
were demons, then in the afterlife, hell was no punishment.

Or was it? In their stern faces, he saw no pity.

But he remembered, because he was not so very far from the
time when he could listen to the tales of the valor of Leonne the
Founder, that the Lord himself had said that the Northern Kings—and the
Kings alone—were not of tainted blood; their eyes were the color of the
sun's light and the sun's justice. And those Kings had proved true to
the Lord of the Sun—they had ridden, at the behest of Leonne the
Founder. They had fought, and many, many of their people had died. How,
he thought, could one tell when the blood was tainted or the blood was
blessed?

The Lord's words, his mother would say, and she would be stern.

"Courage, Valedan," someone said. The voice carried from the
heart of the gathered crowd, but although he searched, he could not see
the person who uttered those two words.

Courage.

He took a breath. Another, deeper. He was here. If he failed,
he and his compatriots would die—but that sentence hung above them
regardless. At worst, his actions here would change nothing. Almost too
numb to think of anything but that sentence, those failures, he stepped
forward into the circle that lay against the darkwood floor as
if held there by golden, moving light.

King Cormalyn, dark-haired and golden-eyed, sat in robes of a
midnight blue such as the Lady's servants might wear, at evening's
fall, in the Tor Leonne; King Reymalyn wore white and gold, with a cape
the color of the sea at dawn thrown back over broad shoulders. He was
fire-haired and fire-jawed, although his beard was silvered with time,
and his eyes were so cold they seemed black for all of the gold about
their center. To either side, in thrones less high but no less regal,
sat the Queens Marieyan and Siodonay; he met the eyes of the eldest
Queen, the Queen Marieyan, and almost faltered at what he saw in them.
Compassion, regret. And steel. She looked to him to be the age that
Serra Tonia had been so many years ago. Queen Siodonay wore the
ceremonial sword of her office, and more; a glittering of chain beneath
a silken hauberk. The crown that rested upon her brow was her face's
perfect adornment. Beside each of the Queens sat a young man. One was
red-haired and clean-shaven, the other dark-haired; they seemed to be,
both in mood and demeanor, the youthful image of the men who ruled the
Empire. Even their eyes were the same liquid gold. The Princes Reymar
and Cormar. At fifteen and sixteen they were barely his junior, and in
bearing, they had always seemed adult by comparison. He felt that
comparison keenly now.

But he did not bow to the two Kings who sat in judgment.
Silence reigned beneath their watchful eyes.

At last, King Reymalyn turned to King Cormalyn. "You see?"

But the wisdom-born King did not meet his brother's gaze.
"Stand forward," he said, using no title, granting no authority. "Stand
forward, and speak; this is the audience that you have requested, and
it will only be granted once."

Valedan raised his eyes from the circle of light, uncertain as
to when his gaze had fallen there. "I am Valedan kai di'Leonne, the
Tyr'agar of the Dominion of Annagar."

"They cannot hear you, Valedan," a soft voice whispered in his
ear. "Speak loudly, and speak without fear. King Reymalyn is
justice-born, and if you address him well, you will be heard."

That voice again, quiet and feminine and sure. He knew, as it
passed, that no one else in the room could hear it. Straightening his
shoulders, he spoke again, and this time he put force behind his words.
"I am Valedan kai di'Leonne. The Tor Leonne is mine by right of birth
and blood; no man of honor in the Dominion may call any other Tyr'agar
while I live."

The King Reymalyn, red hair bound in a plaited braid in She
Northern warrior style, spoke quietly. "You are the son of a concubine."

"The Kings of Essalieyan would have taken no concubine's get
as suitable hostage for the behavior of a clansman," Valedan replied.
"Before the assembly of the clans, I was claimed by the Tyr Markaso kai
di'Leonne. In the waters of the Tor Leonne, I was baptized. Those who
did not gainsay the Tyr then cannot gainsay him now with honor."

A murmur to the left and right, the susurrus of disapproval or
surprise. Valedan met the eyes of the justice-born King as if they were
the too-bright sun. And he had long been warned against staring at the
Lord's exposed face.

"Well said." King Cormalyn drew Valedan's attention away from
his brother's burning eyes.

Valedan did not acknowledge the praise of the King, although
he felt a momentary warmth at the words that King offered. "I have come
to the Kings of Essalieyan to seek justice."

"Justice." King Reymalyn, his voice a cool neutrality.

"Even so. My father has been murdered. My brothers and sisters
lie in a seraf's grave, without prayer or blessing. But while I remain,
clan Leonne exists, and if rumors are true, you will be the last of the
assassin's blades."

"Take care," Valedan's unseen adviser said, the words sharp.

It wasn't necessary. The hall erupted in a cacophony of angry
whispers, shouts, insults. In three places, he heard the sound of metal
against metal—swords being drawn, men straining forward and down, as if
to reach him as he stood in isolation upon the great chamber's floor.

The Kalakar nodded.

"Ellora."

"He's got spirit," she said, leaning into Korama's shoulder.
"You've got to give him that."

"He's got gall," Vernon snapped.

"He has," a younger voice said softly, "nothing to lose."

The three turned to see Kiriel, staring down from the gallery
as if mesmerized by the handsome young man. Only Korama smiled, and it
was because he chose to believe that her attention was the same,
measure for measure, as any romantic young woman's would have been when
confronted with a handsome, youthful—and unmarried—monarch.

"I have committed no crime against the Empire," Valedan
continued, as the Kings called for, and received, the hall's silence
once again.

Jeering, wordless because he chose to ignore the suddenly
foreign Weston language, replied. The King Cormalyn turned and
whispered something sharp to a fair-haired boy at his side; the boy
nodded grimly and disappeared. The King then turned to glance at his
brother. To demand, if Valedan was any judge of gesture and expression,
that Reymalyn respond.

He did.

"You have committed no crime against the Empire."

Valedan froze a moment, but the King did not give him any
chance to feel false hope; he was not a cruel man.

"But you are not being judged as an individual, or a group of
individuals. You are being judged as the surety that you agreed to
become when you crossed the border at Averda. You are the deposit, if
you will, which was to be forfeited in the event that the Dominion
chose to betray the trust that we held sacred." He rose, and the
runners to either side melted away as if his wrath burned. "Will you
argue that you are helpless to influence the decision of those you left
behind? I will agree. You are helpless. But that is not your function
here. We have been made to feel a great and grievous loss. You are the
instrument by which we will respond." He lifted his hand, and in it, a
scroll glowed suddenly with the light of his seldom-used power. "This
is the testimony of the witnesses that were allowed to pass out of the
Tor Leonne after the massacre. This is how our people—each and every
one—died."

The stillness of breathing left Valedan as King Reymalyn
unfurled the scroll and began to read.

Ellora rose as Kalakar's House name passed the lips of the
Justice-born King. Rose, hand across her chest, fingers tight around
the pommel of the weapon that she carried by right. Vernon stood to one
side; Korama to the other. Memory hurt them, and the knowledge that
there would be no other chance to make new ones. The King's voice,
laden with anger and sorrow, made of the death of Madson AKalakar a
loss that everyone could feel as keenly as The Kalakar and her advisers
had upon first hearing word.

At once, the approval that Ellora had felt, reluctantly drawn
out by the courage of a young man, was buried beneath the greater loss.

She gazed blindly across the gallery and met the dark eyes of
The Terafin.

He knew how they died, of course. Serra Alina made the horrors
of their executions clear. But somehow, until the King spoke their
names and the manner of their individual deaths into the heights of the
vaulted chambers, they had not been real. They would never, after this
day, be anything else. Shaking, Valedan willed himself to stand as
straight and tall as possible. He lifted his chin; his eyes held fast
to dignity and shed no tears of horror, although they hovered at the
edge of his open lids.

We will not escape our deaths
, he
thought, and knew it for truth. But he had not been sent to accept
failure, and as the King's voice died into a grim, terrible silence, he
cleared his throat and began to speak anew.

"These actions were carried out by the men who would rule the
Tor in my stead. They asked for, and received, no blessing from me—nor
would they have.

"If you kill me, they will take the Sun Sword, and the Tor,
and they will hold it by the Lord's right and the Lord's test. All that
they have sought to accomplish by the massacre of your people, they
will have accomplished. I am the only threat they face."

It was King Cormalyn who answered, perhaps only King Cormalyn
who could. "We are aware of your claim." He
paused and then smiled grimly. "Tyr'agar." The term held only a hint of
respect. "And it is true that your death will accomplish nothing—for
the Crowns— within the Dominion. It is for this reason, and this reason
alone, that we have considered sparing your life."

The King Reymalyn's eyes were the eyes of the Sun. "It is
true. For you would be a thorn in the side of those responsible for the
deaths of our people. But you will stand alone if you stand after this
day; your people will meet the fate that is their due.

"For we have had no word that the Tyrs of the other four
Terreans have been assassinated, their clans destroyed; indeed, we hear
that they flourish. Such a hand as was behind this strike is a hand
that would not have been raised without the approval of the Tyrs.

"You have been abandoned. There is no clan that will follow
you, and if your claim is one of blood-right, it is not the first in
history to have been cast back, like shadow, by the harsh light of the
Lord of the Sun." He rose. "The assembly has reached a decision,
Valedan di'Leonne.

"You are the wronged party, singularly, and you are the
claimant to the Tor Leonne. Should you choose it, we will grant you our
amnesty. But you will accept it in isolation. The others will be
executed before the sun's rise."

"I have taken the responsibility for their safety upon my
House," Valedan said, his voice steady.

"That is your choice."

"Then you do not understand the rules of the Dominion, and the
rules of honor. I will not flee to the skirts of your wives to plead
like a coward for my life while your executioners do their work. We
will share a single fate, my people and I."

"So be it," King Reymalyn said grimly. He lifted the staff of
his office, and the light once again limned his hands. But the light
was shed by the staff. "I pronounce judgment, in the name of Reymaris,
Lord of Justice."

The doors at the far side of the hall were thrown wide,
letting light and noise into the stillness of a vast audience that was
hushed with the waiting of several hundreds of people.

"HOLD!"

Striding into the chamber, followed by guards who wore the
dust and sweat of the open road as heavily as their armor, came two
men: and one was Tyr Ramiro kai di'Callesta, and the other, General
Baredan kai di' Navarre.

Tyr Ramiro kai di'Callesta was known to The Ten; he was known
to the Crowns. Even dust-stained and worn from travel, his bearing was
unmistakably that of a man of power. And that power had no place in
this chamber, at this time.

At his back, his cerdan faced not the thrones, but the doors,
and following a discreet distance behind them came the Kings' Swords in
great numbers. He ignored their progress across the chamber floors;
ignored the swords that they had drawn by right of liege-defense. He
walked, looking neither left nor right, up nor down, until he stopped
five feet away from the only other man in the chambers to stand
directly upon the audience floor.