Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (33 page)

But she thought it without panic, without rancor; just such idle thoughts had kept her awake as a child, while Ashaf dozed in darkness—or light—and she lay against her, listening to the insistent, the persistent, beat of her heart.

She had not fled the North to avoid the consequences of her actions. She had not fled to avoid any possible retribution for the deaths of the
Kialli
lords who served her father, and there had been many. She had not fled Isladar, although in the end… in the end perhaps that was her only lie.

It didn't matter.

It didn't matter here, now; it was cold, and dark, and she understood the cold and the dark in a way that she had never understood the warmth, the sunlight, the people that gathered in it.

"I believe," she heard, at a great remove, "that you are… late… Lord Isladar."

She had almost forgotten the Swordsmith.

"Do not interfere."

"I do not have that capability. Had I, I would have… but this is more… enlightening."

She turned in the direction of his voice; turned in the direction of Isladar's footsteps.

"She is strong," the Swordsmith said softly.

After a pause, Lord Isladar's voice, closer now, cooler, "You have changed, Swordsmith, if you define as strength the weakness that allows your blade to kill her without a fight."

The Swordsmith's silence was brief. "I have always defined mortals by their ability to endure; so few can, and live. And you are wrong, Isladar. She has fought—and beat—the blade; she did not kill the mortal, and the blade should have given her no choice.

"She has not chosen
Kialli
battles, but she knows how to fight the battles she does choose."

It was odd, to hear the words and see nothing.

"Perhaps," the single word was even colder.

"She is mortal," the Swordsmith continued. "Our Lord's child, or no, she will die in such a brief period of time; does it matter if it is sooner rather than late?"

"Anduvin, you are beginning to bore me."

Silence, followed at last by wild, wild laughter. "You were never so dangerous, brother, as when you were bored."

Footsteps.

Kiriel rose, and only when her knees unbent did she realize that she had been crouching against the ground. She could see stone, and ice, and shadow.

The Swordsmith said softly, "I do not know what you intended for her, but I can see your hand in her now. Look; she stands."

She lifted the sword.

Isladar said something in a language that she did not understand. Spoke forcefully, the smoothness of his voice breaking over syllables with some emotion that she could not identify because he had shown her so little by which she could judge.

Can I trust you?

No.

As his footsteps grew louder, he fell silent, but the shadows parted; she could see, if not Isladar, than the sword he carried.

"You killed her," Kiriel said softly.

"Yes."

"And you enjoyed it."

"Yes."

Her cheeks were hot. She was used to this, had become used to it in the months during which she had labored under the bane of ring and heat and Osprey training.

"But I loved her."

Silence.

"And if I betrayed her then, somehow, it doesn't mean that I have to keep doing it. There was only one thing she wanted from me while she was alive."

"And would you have given it to her, while she was alive?"

"Does it matter? She's
not
alive now. And—" her cheeks were
so
hot. "That's all that really matters."

She lifted the sword, and she realized her cheeks were wet as well. Wet and hot. She knew, then, that she looked pathetic, pitiable, weak.

And she didn't care.

She was too tired to care.

She had never been so tired.

He saw his sword. She waited. And then he lowered it, slowly, and she saw his eyes through the odd mist that had taken the world away. "Kiriel," he said. He walked toward her. She did not lower her sword.

"I have miscalculated," he said, in a voice that was so familiar she might have been a child in the Shining Palace again. "I did not realize how young you would be, at this age, at this time. You are not like we were, when we had life and a form born of this plane, and not wrenched from it. Your age is reflected in your appearance."

The sword began to shake; her arms were not strong enough to hold it. But strong enough or no, they did.

"Come," he said. "If you have made your decision, abide by it. But remember that you are mortal, and that all things mortal know both growth and change; that no decision is forever fixed."

He continued to advance, and as he did, his sword's light guttered and vanished. Shadow, the
Kialli
version of sheath, took it.

She thought he would stop then.

But he kept walking.

"
Isladar, no
!" Anduvin's voice, so changed in pitch and tone it was almost unrecognizable. His footsteps started at a distance, but grew closer very quickly.

She felt the cold begin to dissipate; felt the oppressive weight of light's absence ease. Neither of these—cold or dark—had ever troubled her in this way before. She didn't like the sensation.

The sun was in the sky, swathed in a glorious magenta. It had been growing dark; it would be dark soon. But she saw the color of the evening sky and for the first time realized that something as trivial as color could be… beautiful. The sea breeze was still salty. The heat was still oppressive. But they were like a blanket now, that covered everything, that lay above and beneath all sensation. The ring…

The ring no longer burned.

With the return of light came vision. The edges of the city's streets came first, color bleeding into a lifeless gray, although the streets were otherwise still. The buildings on either side of the cobbled road then cast shadows, but the shadows muted color rather than destroying it, dipping with the contours of the road, traveling the edge of broken and shattered stone, rising and falling along the mounds of unsettled earth.

Where shadows weren't cast, the colors were brighter, arcing from the distance to where she stood like the beginning swell of a wave.

She had seen the ocean; the waves could kill.

The footsteps were close; she looked to them, because it was easier. She saw Lord Anduvin, and realized that the only time she had
ever
seen a
Kialli
lord run was the single time she had appeared in the Shattered Hall, sword in hand, feet upon the table. But they had been running away. Lord Anduvin was running toward her.

"Isladar!"

She looked up, then. Not right or left, as she had done, and not above to clear sky, nor to ground, but directly in front of her. It was hard. She flinched before she could see, for the shadows that the dusk dispelled in all other corners of the city seemed to have retreated to this single spot, to regroup, retrench. If she lied to herself, she could pretend they could not yet be pierced.

But she had never learned—as Lord Isladar had said— the subtle use of the craft; she was a poor liar. The shadows were strongest; she could sense their struggle here, but they, too, were diminishing. They gave way to simple vision, to simple color, to simple fact.

She could follow the stretch of her arm from elbow to hand, which still clutched the sword by the hilt; from hilt to steel; from steel, inexplicably, to flesh.

And from the place in the expanse of a remarkably still chest, where steel and flesh were joined, she could lift her gaze, could raise the sudden weight of her head, until she could look into the impassive eyes of the only
Kialli
lord she had ever obeyed.

The sword shivered in her hands as if it were alive. Isladar grimaced.

"I had hoped that this would be less… obvious."

She could see that the shadows were lessening, lessening. But she had thought they were her shadows. Now she understood what she saw. What she wanted to see. What she had dreaded seeing.

She cried out, the sound so raw it contained too many emotions to be simple: anger, grief, triumph, denial. She pulled the sword free—

Or tried—

And it would not budge.

Anduvin came. She could see his hands on Isladar's shoulders, could see his perfect skin cast in the alabaster that the
Kialli
almost never know: fear.

"It won't—it won't come free!"

"You fool," Anduvin said, and his voice was wild. But he did not speak to her. "Do you know what you've done?"

"I… have suspicions."

"Why?"

"Because, Brother, I have plans. Obligations."

"You have—"

"I made my oath," he said.

"You did not bind yourself to it."

"Spoken like the
kin
."

The shadows were diminishing. She thought if they spoke a few moments longer the shadows would be, in their entirety, gone.

And with it, Lord Isladar of the
Kialli;
the man she had sworn to kill.

"Do you think I remember nothing of honor?".

"Our honor never involved the sacrifice of our own for the…"

Silence.

She cried out, again, "The sword
won't come out
!"

And this time, they both looked at her, Isladar with the resignation that often touched his features when a particularly difficult lesson had failed to take, and Anduvin with incredulity.

"She doesn't understand what you've done—she can't comprehend what
you've done
!"

"Anduvin, you are making a fool of yourself."

"Does it matter? The only witness of value is you, and you will be gone."

"Anduvin—"

"She is your student, not I. What is weakness, if none are there to witness it? What is strength?"

She had never heard a
Kialli
lord speak so wildly. It seemed that she must have succumbed to the sword after all; that she must be caught by delirium.

The blade, she thought, as she looked away from them. He had—he had walked—he had walked
onto
the sword.

The fear came upon her like a frenzy and she understood not Isladar, but Anduvin.

The sword was feeding. He had… he had done this. He had freed her.

She was afraid. She was terrified. She would not name the fear.

But she would not sit idly by while it consumed her. She removed her glove. Looked at the sword's edge as it caught magenta. "This is your own fault," she told him softly, although she doubted he was listening. "You should never have asked for this sword."

And steeling herself against pain, she grabbed the blade by its edge and forced her palm up, until steel split skin.

And then, and then she pulled, straining.

She had strained like this as a child; Ashaf had suggested that she take the old, thick rope that was used for the flag on the Tower, and give one end to Falloran; she had, and Ashaf had directed her to take the other. Then she had said, simply, "Pull." It had seemed a stupid game, to start.

But Falloran was strong, and in the end—it was a game they could play that did not involve the death of one or the other. There were few games in the Hells, all of them deadly. Falloran had thought it strange—she could tell this, although he had no words, no voice. But she had loved it, because as she had grown, she had become strong enough to move him.

And that was the strength she used now.

She
pulled
.

The blade moved. But not enough.

"Kiriel," Isladar said—and unless her imagination was unusually active, his voice was weaker, softer, "that was foolish. A blade must know its master, and the taste of its master's blood is not the way in which to teach it that lesson."

"Why?" she said, ignoring him, forcing her bone to meet steel, feeding that steel her blood in some desperate attempt to distract it.

"Give anything that you desire to serve you a taste of power or weakness, and it will rule."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know."

She was sweating. She felt water slide along the contours of brow and cheek, tuck in beneath the underside of her chin.

This was a better death than he had given Ashaf. A cleaner death. She had meant to kill him. She had vowed to kill him.

She pulled. The blade moved.

Lord Isladar flinched. It might have been winter, and she a mortal; she froze, chilled.

And then a hand touched the back of hers. She looked down; the hand was slender, fair, unblemished. Unmailed. Lord Anduvin of the
Kialli
bowed. She had not even seen him move.

Her life depended on her ability to be aware—
always
— of the movement of the
Kialli
. She had not seen his hands leave Isladar's shoulders.

"This is like Isladar," he said softly. "The Isladar of
my
youth. He was impulsive, and he was wild, and he was willing—always—to risk everything playing games that no one of us could understand."

"You—you called him—brother."

"It does not have the same meaning among the
Kialli
that it does among the mortals." He turned away a moment. "But it is not without significance.

"I do not understand the events of this day, Kiriel, and I dislike them. I have never interfered in the games that the Lords play."

"Neither has Isladar."

He laughed, and the laughter was rich and sweet, a terrible sound in the darkening streets.

"That is
all
he has ever done, but he is infinitely subtle.

"But… he is also the only one who truly remembers. The only other one." The Swordsmith lifted a hand. Hesitated a moment, glancing at Kiriel's open fear, and at Isladar's impassive face. "Did you plan this, Brother?"

"I? It would be a foolish plan indeed that put me in this position." His smile was cool. "A foolish plan that depended upon the generosity of the
Kialli
."

"W-what are you doing?"

"You do not have the necessary strength to do what you are doing, child," he said softly. He rose—and only then did she realize that he had bent to one knee so that their faces were level. He walked past her. Walked around her. She saw his arms come to either side—
he's behind me
!— and her first instinct was to spin, to drop the sword, to stop him.