Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (18 page)

Her first words were, "Verrus Korama, that will be all."

Verrus Korama nodded, the movement as precise as the salute that protocol forbid between people of their rank. He bowed, slightly, to Duarte AKalakar, gaze glancing off his face.

Duarte heard the door shut behind him and wondered what a corpse would hear when a coffin lid was dropped. Her words, he thought, as they came, were the patter of dirt.

She did not immediately turn to face him. Sunlight made a shadow of her back; a shadow with slightly stooped shoulders, and a head that was bowed toward the ground beyond his vision.

"Captain Duarte," she said. The shadows darkened her pale hair; they were not as strong as shadows cast by full sunlight, but they were there, if one knew how to look. Duarte had spend his life looking into the shadows. "You've never been given the easy duties."

He said nothing, but his body fell into rigid lines; feet firmly planted against the grain of old wood, hands behind his back, chin up, face forward.

"And when you perform the duties that are required of you, you perform them in shadow; you perform them as if you were a step above criminal. I have always thought that a crime." She turned, now, her expression so many things, its chaos was unreadable. Her pale hair had been pulled back from her face in a severe knot; he saw the lines around her eyes, the lines etched in her forehead; time's gift and judgment. They seemed deeper.

He knew.

He knew then. But he waited.

"You have always done the impossible. You—you
personally
—made the Ospreys, culling them from the gallows in ones and twos. You took the risk and the responsibility of… correcting your errors in judgment. You gave the South something to remember, and gave the North the clean hands and breathing space
we
needed.

"That has never been acknowledged by anyone who is not Kalakar. Not even the Kings themselves have been moved to commend you in a fashion that you—and your own—deserve."

He was profoundly weary. But discipline held him.

"Nor, to my profound shame, can I." She started to turn, and then her feet became as rigidly planted as his own; no coward, Ellora. Only a leader, and at that, a leader to follow and die for.

"Why did you summon me?"

Her expression shifted slightly. The silence was pointed, but she did not extend it.

"You will not understand this," she replied, in a tone of voice that might be mistaken as conversational by a casual listener—if there could be such a thing, in a room like this, in these circumstances. "You will not understand it, and I'm old enough, and powerful enough, not to beg you to make the attempt. You are not a stupid man, Duarte. If you were, you would never have been accepted by the Order of Knowledge; if you were, you would never have retired from its vast and useless walls. You don't have the look of a killer about you, but if you hadn't the heart of one, you would never have survived the Ospreys, and the Ospreys would never have survived the war."

"They almost didn't."

"No," she said, the single word displaying a ferocity that he realized she had kept from the conversation so far by force of a will that was legendary. It eased him, somehow, to know that she hurt.

His own pain was building.

"Yes," she said evenly, forcing that quiet into her voice again, "they almost didn't."

"They wouldn't have, Commander, had you not personally interceded."

She winced. She had the grace to wince. "You are a dangerous man," she said, when she at last chose to speak. "To remind me of that, here."

"It was not said as a political gesture," he replied, staring now at the surface of an uncluttered desk, an uncluttered room. "But as fact. We know what it cost you. We know that Commander Allen all but forbid it. But you chose your men from among the House Guard, and you led them personally into the trap that killed two thirds of our number. They were willing—even eager—to lose us. But not you, not Ellora AKalakar."

"No," she replied, ferocity returning as his words pricked restless memory, "the House Guard was not eager to lose you. You were always a part of the House."

"The House Guard," he said, "was not, technically, yours at that time. Not yours to risk."

"No. But mine to lead."

"Yes."

She looked away. "And they are still mine to lead." She swallowed. "But the Ospreys are
yours
, Duarte. Tell them."

"Tell them?"

"That if they desire it, there is still room for them within the House Guard."

The enormity of the words took a moment to sink in. "Still room?" he said at last, reduced to mimicry, his voice almost too quiet to be heard.

"No matter what decision they make, they will be AKalakar until they commit a crime too great for the House to overlook. They've been under your peacetime care for over a decade; I can well believe that they are capable of retaining the honor their role in war purchased."

She closed her eyes. Opened them, as if unsheathing a flawless steel that had been carefully guarded until that moment. "I am retiring the colors of the company," she told him, each word flat and without inflection. "The Black Ospreys—as they were—do not have the numbers necessary to form a unit in the army, and because we will be traveling through largely friendly terrain in the South, it is believed that the Annagarian cerdan will be up to the task of fulfilling the role they once held."

He was speechless.

She expected this. She started to speak. Stopped. Started again. Protocol was something she understood well; how could she not? She was
The
Kalakar; ruler of one of The Ten, a political force to be reckoned with among the most elevated of the patriciate.

But she was more than that. Much more.

"Duarte," she said, voice low, "understand that I have no choice in this."

"Just as," he said sharply, "you had no choice in the Averdan valleys?"

"
Just
as," she spit back, as if slapped. "Figure it out for yourself. Or do you want me to say it?"

He didn't answer.

"Very well.
You
were the single force responsible for the Southern fear of the Northern armies. And with cause. I am not ashamed of the role you played. I would not have had that responsibility in any other hands. You did better than any of us could have foreseen. But if you travel with the army, the Tyr'agar and his retinue travel with the army. You know the politics of the South. You know that this is not the last war we will have. Either this generation, or the next, will come back to the borders with something to prove."

He nodded.

"I can withdraw you from the service of the Tyr. That was my first choice."

He bowed his head then.

"You know why I can't."

"I would prefer that to this."

"I know. You lived and you died for those colors; they're a part of everything you've achieved. To retire them in battle—at the end of the war—may have been the wisest decision. But I thought to leave you what you had achieved. I did not intend to—It doesn't matter. The colors will be retired. If you wish it, you will be absorbed into the House Guards, and with honor."

"They won't do it," he said.

She didn't insult him by asking who. Instead, she leaned across the desk. "You have never disappointed me. Not in any way that matters. You know why I did not withdraw you from service to the Tyr'agar."

"Because you're afraid he'll die."

"Because I
know
that anyone else will fail," she said quietly. "I will deny this, and you know full well why, but no other unit could have achieved what you have in the months that we've been preparing for this war. The boy is
alive
. And alive is how we need him. But not even the Ospreys are good enough to travel in Averda with that flag flying in their gods cursed winds. Not without the rest of the army. You're a legend there," she added, with a trace of bitter pride. "The Berriliya would be happy to see you make the attempt if he was not also certain it would cost us the life of the boy."

Duarte AKalakar—no longer captain—was silent for a long, long time. "What happens after the war?"

"You will always be AKalakar," she said. "You will always have a home in the House."

"And the colors?"

"What has been retired," she replied evenly, "can be honored again by men and women who have proved their worth—and their loyalty—to the House."

"And what if they would rather stay with the House?"

She snorted. "You serve me," she said softly. "But they serve
you
. They always have."

"Kalakar—"

"I need you there."

"And is that an order?"

"I have a suspicion that the moment you leave this room, I will no longer have the legal right to give you a military order; I can't as much as inspect your uniform."

"Probably a good thing."

She smiled. Gallows humor. "I have the legal right of the head of a House, and that is murky and easily contested."

He nodded. It was true.

So much about her was true. If he closed his eyes, he could see her face in the harsh and unforgiving sunlight of the Averdan valleys, blood streaming from a grazed forehead, like the proverbial river; he could trace its flow down the creases of her face as it met with the blood from a badly wounded shoulder. He remembered the shock of it; the one wound and the other; it was as if a statue was bleeding, no, worse, as if a
House
was.

She spoke, her lips moved, the sound came to him over so many sounds it was hard to distinguish the words; but because they were her words, and she was inexplicably there, and bleeding, he had struggled to do so. Light glinted off mail and glove; light off sword, as if her sword were somehow burning. She was the Lord's Lady, on this field, and at her back, grim-faced and feral, stood the House Guards of Kalakar.
Did you think we would leave you behind? I'm on the field, Captain. You're
mine. It was foolish, but at that moment, surrounded by arrow and magefire and the broken bodies of the men he had forged into weapons, and worse—gods, so much worse—into friends, he had felt… safe. She had come to bring them all home.

Strange, that he should recognize the feeling, when he had never experienced it before in his life, either in youth or in adulthood.

Safety.

Home.

And he had known, then, although he had suspected it before that moment, that he would willingly follow this woman for the rest of his life, no matter how long or how short that might be.

"Duarte," she said quietly.

He frowned and then realized that he had been staring at her, searching for the old scar of that particular battle. Like a map, he thought, the scar would lead him. But to where?

She met his gaze, and he stared at her face for a full minute, understanding what she asked of him. Understanding what she promised: that she would cross the valleys for him—and his—again.

If he did this; if he followed yet another set of orders that it was not within her legal power to give, and not within her power to acknowledge directly.

He found himself smiling, although his mind was already twisting and turning around the explanation he would have to give his Ospreys—his, regardless of the flag that flew above their heads. "One question, Kalakar."

"Ask it."

"Who's going to pay us?"

It had been so long since Auralis had blushed that he would have bet money—his own even—that he was no longer capable of it. Luckily, it wasn't a bet that anyone with half a brain would have taken, even after a night of heavy drinking, so his money, what little of it there was, remained safe.

"Auralis?"

By way of reply he kicked a stone. Unfortunately, that stone was part of a road that was actually in very good repair, given the section of town they were in. You could always count on the roads to be whatever it was you didn't want. He cursed.

Kiriel frowned. "You tripped over the
road
?"

"It happens."

"Oh." She paused, her gaze half glare, half question. Since the night that she had lost most of whatever it was that had made her so deadly, she had also lost the preternatural ability to pick out a lie from a truth, or vice versa. She had what everyone else had: instinct. She also had very little raw ability to use it. But she was Kiriel. Anything that had an offensive application, she learned
quickly
.

"Did you hear my question?"

She also denned the word dogged when it sat in front of the word determination; once she started in on something she simply refused to let go. He had seen mastiffs who were easier to shake off.

In a fight, it was a trait Auralis admired. She approached each combat as if the possibility of dying was so foreign a concept her language didn't contain a word for death, except in as it related to
other people's
. Unfortunately, she approached everything else the same way.

"Kiriel, that's not a question you can just come out and ask a man."

"Why not?"

"Because you ask that of the wrong man, and you won't like the answer."

She snorted, an unattractive habit she'd picked up from either Alexis or Fiara. "At least I'd
get
an answer." She paused a moment, and then smiled.

For just that stretch of lip and teeth, he felt the hair on the back of his neck go up. He no longer faltered in stride or reached for a weapon when this happened in Kiriel's presence, but the upper and lower halves of his jaw met in a tight grinding of teeth.

"Besides, if I didn't like the answer, he'd never give it again."

"True enough," Auralis said, forcing himself to shrug. It wasn't hard; by nature his movements were quick and graceful. Even caution couldn't force stiffness into them. "And then every magisterian in the city would be after your head. I've
seen
your idea of 'never'." As he rounded the buildings that formed a tall and narrow corner of the intersection, he reached up and smacked a heavy sign that hung from two twisted chains. The words were lost to darkness—or dirt—but he knew what they said. This was Smacker's place. Neither he nor Kiriel had ever started a fight in it, and consequently it was one of a handful of places where they didn't have to circumnavigate a large man with a sword to get in.