Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (111 page)

That, at least, her training made almost impossible.

Margret cleared her throat.

Nicu looked up. In the moon's light, his expression would not have been visible—but in the unnatural light of the Sphere, it was. His relief was profound; it made him look like a four-year-old boy who had been lost for so long he had almost given up any hope of being found.

Against her will, she felt pity.

For him. For Margret. For Margret who flinched visibly and seemed to shrink back.

"D-did 'Lena s-send you?"

"Elena?"

"S-she was w-with the other c-creature. S-she watched the—the tower rise. I tried t-to catch her, 'Gret. I tried. But s-she was t-too far away. I'm sorry. I'm s-so sorry."

"What other creature?"

"A-after you —left another creature came. I-I thought y-you would know. H-he must b-be on our side. He fought Ishavriel."

"Another creature?"

Diora had seen men plead for mercy. She had seen men scream. She had seen them struggle, and crawl, and beg. She had felt pity for them, and contempt for their weakness, for their inability to accept with grace the inevitable.

And because she had seen these things, she had thought, until this moment, that she would be immune to Nicu's pain and fear.

But this was worse. He did not even understand what he faced. His ignorance, his pathos, were things she had not expected.

"Nicu," Margret said, her voice so terribly gentle, "what happened to Andreas? What happened to Carmello?"

"Ishavriel k-killed them. I t-told him not to. But he killed them."

"And Elena?"

"S-she disappeared. With the other one. They were standing there—" He pointed with his head; he did not have the strength to lift his arms, to place them in the cold of his sleeves. "And they vanished."

Margret was silent.

"I-its c-cold, 'Gret."

Diora stepped forward with the blankets she had gathered. She had only taken two, but, hands shaking, she passed them to Nicu. He stared at them with a blind gratitude that was almost physically painful to observe, but he did not touch them; his arms were still wrapped around his chest.

She should have thrown them at his feet and let him freeze. She should have turned away with the icy contempt only a Serra can convey. She should have told him that they were here to execute him for his treason, not to save him.

But it was cold, and the words froze before they left her. She felt a burning contempt for this man, this boy, that did nothing to ease the night's chill. And yet.

As gently as she could—and she could be very, very gentle—the Serra Diora walked to his side, and wrapped the blankets around him, tucking them beneath his shaking chin.

She rose and turned away, but there was no relief in that, for she came face-to-face with Margret, and saw that Margret was as frozen as she had been. The sword was in its sheath.

Neither woman spoke.

"'Gret?"

Margret closed her eyes. She closed her eyes, and her knees, which had locked the moment she'd placed her second foot on the flat of the tower, buckled as if the weight above them was too vast to even contemplate.

She threw her arms around her cousin's neck.

He wept.

And Diora, whose hearing was so acute, became aware, again, of why her gift was a curse.

For Margret was weeping too. "Nicu, Nicu, Nicu."

"I-I'm s-so-sorry. I'm s-sorry. 'Gret-I I d didn't know—"

She placed her fingers on his lips. Nothing Diora had seen had prepared her for how gentle the Matriarch was capable of being, and that gentleness did what no amount of anger or strength could do. Although she was aware of the rules of life in the desert, she wept also, but her tears were silent.

"'Lena is still alive," she told him softly.

"W-where? W-where is s-she?"

"I don't know. But I know it. Here."

"H-how?"

"The Heart," Margret said softly, as if to a very young child.

Yes, Nicu was that, at this moment. The years of experience, the complicated lessons and frustrations of adult life, had been stripped away by the night, by failure, by shock. All that he was, the Serra Diora could plainly see: a child. An Arkosan child.

And she knew what value the Arkosans placed, inexplicable and profound, on their children.

She knew, then, that Margret could not kill her cousin.

And knew, as well, as if for a moment she had been burdened with the gift of sight, that she could not afford to fail. This was her test.

And it was as bitter a test, in the end, as Diora's had been. As scarring.

No
, she thought.
No. He earned his death. He betrayed Margret. He betrayed Elena. He lied to those who loved him best. This is
not
the same
.

But she heard his gulping breath, his shattered voice, heard his regret and his terrible, terrible faith. Both of these, for Margret. And they were genuine. He did not dissemble; she heard everything that his voice had to offer; nothing was hidden.

It did not occur to him that Margret had come to do anything but save his life.

"D-don't t-tell my mother," he whispered.

"Never. I will never tell Donatella anything. You never , told my mother how you got the scar on your left arm."

His laugh was shaky, but it, too, was genuine. "But she b-beat y-you anyway."

"Hush."

The Serra Diora closed her eyes; the few tears that had not yet fallen adorned her cheeks as her lids shut them out. The night was cold; she wrapped her arms around her chest and realized after a moment that she was rocking, empty-armed, in the clear night, the first night of Arkosa.

"Diora," Margret said, gathering her strength as if she had never shed it, "Leave us."

Diora nodded. It would be a relief not to bear witness to what would—what
must
—occur.

She turned toward the waiting ship. She even managed to take a step before she was drawn back to the two cousins who cuddled beneath the light of this captive moon, this glowing orb.

"Margret—"

"Leave us."

She had come in the dark of night because she had not wanted Margret to face her cousin alone, and if her Southern upbringing had in no way prepared her for
this
death, the resolve that had brought her here was one she was unwilling to abandon.

"'Gret—it's c-cold. C-can I g-go home?"

"Hush, Nicu. Yes. Yes, you can go home now."

He struggled a moment; his arms were bound beneath robes and blankets and he did not want to free them. Margret helped him to his feet, and he swayed there, his legs almost useless.

She bore his weight as they turned their back on the Sphere.

Diora began to sing.

She had never thought to sing this song for a man— any man, anywhere—and had she, she would never have imagined that man would be this one.

But the cradle song came to her lips, and she underlay it with the command that was her birthright.

The sun has gone down, has gone down, my dear, Na'nicu, Na'nicu child.

He looked up at the sound of her voice, his face alight with a smile that broke her heart. But broken or no, she had the strength to sing.

The Lady is watching, is watching my love, Na'nicu, Na'nicu child,

And she knows that the heart that is guarded and scarred is still pierced by the darkest of fear.

To sing him to sleep.

The time it may come, it may come my love,

Na'nicu, Na'nicu my own,

When the veil will fall and separate us,

And I'll bury you when you are grown.

For the heart, the heart is a dangerous place, it is breaking with joy and with fear,

Worse, though, if you'd never been born to us,

Na'nicu, Na'nicu, my dear.

He stumbled as Margret walked, bearing more and more of his weight. She bore it without complaint, without comment, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

And Nicu's steps grew smaller and smaller under the thrall of Diora's song, until they ceased completely.

"Mama?"

The Serra closed her eyes.
"Sleep, Nicu. Sleep."

She took the cold away with the force of her command.

And then she walked across the flat of the stone tower, her vision suddenly treacherous. She turned once she'd reached the rails, and gripped wood that should never have been so cold in one shaking hand.

She watched as Margret struggled a moment longer with her cousin. He did not stir.

Margret was weeping openly now as she bore his full weight.

"I don't want this," she whispered, looking up to Diora with all of the anger she had hidden from Nicu. "I
do not
want this."

"You are the Matriarch of Arkosa," Diora replied, as gently as she could. But that was all she said.

The Lady, in the desert, knew no mercy. Her light was bright, and if it allowed shadow, that shadow did not fall upon Nicu's exposed face.

The muscles that creased his forehead, that broke the line of his lips so pitifully, relaxed.

Margret bent down and very gently kissed his right cheek; she touched his left with her hand. "Nicu," she said softly, so softly that had Diora been any other woman, she would not have heard the words. "Wait for me. Wait for Elena. We will come to you in time, and we will forgive you everything then.

"We never stopped loving you, Nicu."

His lips curved in a smile, child's smile, and not even the line of his beard could invoke the specter of the adult he had become.

Margret struggled a little longer with his weight, and because she carried all of it, she labored. But Diora knew better, now, than to offer help with this last burden.

It was all she would have of him.

Margret made no sound at all as she stopped between the tower and the ship.

With infinite care, she pushed her cousin over the tower's edge.

If the Lady knew no mercy, the Serra Diora did.

He did not wake to cry out.

14th of Misteral, 427 AA

Tor Arkosa, Sea of Sorrows

They buried Nicu two days later.

The Matriarch of Arkosa rose in the morning and set out to the City, and when she returned, her ship casting a sharp, harsh shadow across the lands beneath the open sky, she carried his body.

She wept when she carried him from the wagon, but although the plank that led to the ground was wobbly and thin, she desired—and accepted—no help. Stavos waited at the foot of the ramp in silence, his wife by his side; Tamara stood, hand in hand, with Donatella.

Margret did not find Andreas or Carmello, although she found a single sword glinting in the upturned earth near the base of the first tower; the passage of stone and soil had twisted it almost beyond recognition, but she carried it with her when she returned—a reminder of the cost of the war.

As if Nicu were not enough.

Donatella took her son from the arms of the Matriarch, and only when she had gathered his limp and broken body in the cradle of her arms did she finally weep, and her disconsolate cry woke in the others the grief of loss and endless separation; no eye remained dry in the wake of her pain.

She never again questioned Margret about the end of her son, and what Margret knew, she carried with her for a long, long time in the impenetrable silence of a Matriarch.

The Serra Diora and Jewel ATerafin attended the last rites of Nicu of Arkosa; the rest of the strangers did not, although had they desired to do so, they would have been mutely accepted.

It was a far cry between acceptance and welcome. And silent, they knew it: Lord Celleriant who had ridden the winds to battle the Serpent of the storm, Kallandras of Senniel College, who had joined him, Avandar, the domicis that no one—not even his master—fully trusted, and the stag who had fulfilled his promise and returned the seraf Ramdan to his mistress.

The Serra Teresa di'Marano and the Havallan Matriarch likewise chose to absent themselves; they stood beneath the lengthening shadows of the City's walls in the dusk.

Yollana took the last of the tobacco from her small jar and carefully filled the flat bowl of her pipe. She gazed not toward the City, but rather toward the river that ran through it.

"We will see life return to the desert in our lifetimes," she said, the stem of the pipe hovering, untouched, near her cracked lips.

Teresa nodded quietly.

"Will you stay in Tor Arkosa, Teresa?"

"Will you?"

The older woman snorted. It drew a smile from her companion. "Will you take water?"

Yollana shrugged. "Drinking water is no longer in short supply. Yes, I'll take water if it will give you something to do with those pretty hands."

Teresa poured. There was, in the movements of her hands, the grace of a life spent at Court; she spilled nothing, and when she placed the bowl at Yollana's feet, it defied the broken ground to stand completely still.

"What will your niece do?" . "She will go North."

Yollana nodded.

"And you?"

"I will go North as well."

The silence fell again; Yollana lit her pipe as she watched the shades of color begin to deepen the sky.

"Matriarch."

Yollana raised a brow, no more. But after a moment, she gestured. "What?"

"Did you know what would happen here?"

"No."

"Ah. Do you know what will follow?"

"You ask too many questions, Serra."

Teresa smiled as well. "Yes. But I am no longer Serra here, and I think it will be my fate to travel with the Matriarch of Havalla for some time yet."

"I will be in your debt."

"Yes."

Yollana raised a brow. "There have always been two ways to discharge unwanted debt. Don't forget it." But the rough words carried no threat.

They turned to look North, beyond the City's curved walls.

"The Lord of Night will know," Teresa said quietly. "If he does not already know, he will be waiting for you. You must travel in haste."

"Aye, I know. I know it. But Havalla is not yet ready to face the test that Arkosa has faced." She grimaced. "Your child will travel North, to meet with the armies of the young kai Leonne."