Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (39 page)

"Okay, maybe it is my problem," she said softly. She lifted the glass. "My mother—" Put it down again.

There was only one. There had always been only one.

As if she could hear the thought, 'Lena said, simply, "You're all that stands between me and what I wanted as a child. And I'll do everything in my power to make sure that you stand between me and what I wanted until you make us a Mother's Daughter the proper way."

Margret emptied the glass; the wine would sour if she left it, and there was enough that was sour in her life. "What do we do?"

"We take her."

"And the others?"

Elena spread her hands out in a gesture that mocked helplessness. But her expression was serious. "They came to us in the fires. They came when we needed them."

"And the deserter?"

"The deserter's
descendant
," Elena said, stressing the word. "She—it's said she
stopped
the Hunt. How much of a deserter could she be and still have that much of the Lady's grace?"

"But her seraf—"

"He's no seraf."

"I know."

"I think he'd kill us all before he let us take her anywhere without him."

Margret grimaced. "And Kallandras?"

"Take him. He's pretty."

"I'm being serious."

"You're
always
serious. We can leave him behind; I think if you told him to get lost in a sandstorm, he'd do it. But we have to take the Serra Diora with us." She paused and looked at the dust on her boots. Or at something more interesting than Margret's face in the shadows.

"And?"

"What do you mean, 'and'?"

"What else are you not saying, 'Lena?"

"I want to take the Serra Teresa."

"Why? She's not family."

Elena's silences were uncomfortable because she employed them so seldom. But she did speak because Margret's patience was even less often employed. "She's never going to go home. Wherever she goes, she will always be outcast because of this."

The Arkosan Matriarch snorted. "What crime did she commit that her brother's daughter hasn't? And don't even try to tell me that the Serra Diora has any plans of forsaking the ruling clans."

"The Serra Diora… it is said… has done all she has done out of loyalty to the memory of her dead husband. The clansmen will admire that, in their fashion, because she has done it in a seemly way."

"And the Serra Teresa?"

"Unmarried. She has betrayed her brothers and her clan. But worse, she has done so in the guise of man. Wherever she goes from here, she will never have what she enjoyed before she made her choice. She's come to the
Voyanne
. And I think the Lady means her to travel it at our side."

Margret dreamed.

She looked into the face of a frightened young woman— a beautiful, slender girl with perfect skin and dark, sleep-wild hair. The girl was clearly a clanswoman; she had a scent that was flower oil and perfume and musky sweat. Fear didn't really have a scent, but had it, she would have embodied it. It was overpowering, demanding, terrifying. She reached for the girl, unsure of whether or not she was offering comfort or asking for it; she was mute.

But the girl pulled away, the whites of her eyes growing around dark irises, dark pupils.

"There's nothing to be afraid of," she said, or tried to say, although she knew with a bitter horror that it was a lie. The words wouldn't come. She felt as if her own words would never come again. In their place, the song of steel, the sharp, harsh crack of lightning's tongue, the cries of the wounded—storm's voice: the language of men, of war.

Promise me
, the young woman said, voice growing wilder as the sounds drew nearer to where they sat, trapped, waiting.

Anything
, she tried to say. Tried. The voice of the wind was a howl.

You brought our son into the world. You saved him. You birthed him. If it weren't for
—
if it weren't for what we can't say
—

Save him. Save only him. Please.

She wanted to make that promise. She wanted to defend that child with her life because what else was a life
for
?

But the words, damn them—she would hate words forever after—
would not
come. Instead, the screaming. The woman cried out in a voice so raw it would haunt Margret for the rest of her life, and given the sounds of approaching death, she prayed that wouldn't be long.

The woman handed her a baby, a boy, and then grabbed an expensive, large vase, holding it in her hands as if it were an awkward club.

Margret's throat was thick now; her arms were numb, but she forced them to gather the child to her breast, as if holding children were natural, as if nothing in the world were as delicate, or as precious.

As if by pretending hard and long enough she could change the fact that his neck was broken.

She woke in the dark, alone. Sweating, which given the chill of the night, was not good. Blankets were bunched in her hands and her arms were stiff as a corpse's.

Someone was knocking, gently, insistently, at her door. She owed them a favor, whoever they were. She owed them.

But the Voyani hated being in anyone's debt. She wrapped the blankets around herself once she could force her arms to move, and she stumbled to the door. There she stopped, pressing her head against wood, dragging breath into her lungs, buying time to compose herself. She was crying.

She hated the tears.

She opened the door upon the Serra Teresa di'Marano, backlit by full, bright moon, face lit by orange, dim lamp.

The Serra immediately bowed her head.

"What—is something wrong? Did Yollana send you?"

She shook her head; dark strands brushed her cheeks. Beyond the two men who served as a perpetual guard— and Margret was tired enough that she wasn't sure what the time was, and therefore who the guards should be— there was only one other person: Serra Teresa's seraf.

Wearily, she stepped back into the wagon, offering by action what she was disinclined to offer by word: hospitality. Grudging or no, it was accepted.

She didn't have the energy to be angry, and that was surprising; it was a Matriarch's first emotion, and it was usually a Matriarch's last. But—as her mother had said, when the sting of her open palm was subsiding—there was a world of emotion between the first one and the last one, most of it bitter, all of it necessary.

"What do you want?"

The Serra Teresa, by all accounts one of the most accomplished of the clanswomen, took no offense at the tone or the words—which was unfortunate, as some offense had been intended.

"I don't know."

Whatever she had expected to hear, that wasn't it. She frowned. "Why did you come here?"

The Serra was silent for a moment, and then she lifted her head and met Margret's eyes; they were of a height, although Margret had always assumed that the Serra Teresa was somehow more delicate, more diminutive. "I came," she said quietly, "because the Lady's Moon is strong and I had hoped to… convince you… to rethink your approach to my niece."

"My—" And the frown changed, sharpening the lines of Margret's face. "Convince me?"

Serra Teresa didn't answer. She didn't need to answer. They stood staring at each other in the wagon. "And you've changed your mind?"

"Yes," the Serra replied.

"Then why did you knock?"

"Because the desert waiting to swallow us is not the only desert; just the obvious one. I do not know what you have lost, Margret, but I suspect it is not much compared to what you
will
lose, and willingly, when you come into your power."

"You're a seer now?"

"No more than anyone who has experienced much." She turned. Turned back. "Ask Yollana, and tell her that if she wishes to speak of me, she has my blessing. But, daughter of a friend, let me offer you a warning. The name that you spoke in your sleep is a name that you would do best never to speak at any other time."

"Name?"

The Serra bowed her head. "Forgive me my intrusion," she said softly. "If you were not aware of the name you spoke…" She looked up. "It is not our way, clans or Voyani, Lord or Lady, to show mercy, or to desire it for ourselves."

She walked toward the guards; spoke a few words that were inevitably too soft and too distant to drift back to Margret. Her seraf bowed and fell into perfect, graceful step at her side. As if she wore fine silk saris, gold and the jeweled combs of her upbringing, and not the dusty, dirty, sweaty fabrics the road decreed.

All before Margret realized that the Serra knew who the woman in the dream was, and had somehow escaped without telling her.

Jewel didn't speak when she woke.

She bit her lip, curled up, arms wrapped around her body. She felt the ground beneath her cheek; it was cool. Had she fallen asleep outside?

Tines brushed her hair. The stag. The stag who had once been a man, and at that, a man who had once been the Winter King. She swallowed, tried to compose herself. It wasn't easy. Sleep had a way of stripping her of all defense, and only slowly did she gather it again as wakefulness took hold.

/
had
, the creature said, and she startled at the strange texture of his completely silent voice, although at the same time… at the same time it felt warm and natural,
a daughter once
.

A daughter?

I had several children. I had more than one daughter. Not all were… children that you would have approved of, if you indeed approve of anything rational.

She snorted. But his words relaxed the hard curve of her back; she could lift her head from the ground, could sit up.

But I had one daughter very like you.

One daughter?

Yes. It is… long ago now… and I had almost forgotten. It is not a fond memory.

What happened
? Jewel asked, clear proof if it were needed that she could put her foot in her mouth when her mouth wasn't even open. If she could have, she would have taken the question back; left the answer in the darkness.

What happened!

His eyes were not, would never be, human—but that robbed them of none of their ability to wound.

She was very like you. She was very, very weak. She was no fool
—
but you are no fool if you could force the Winter Queen to surrender anything she valued. I believe you will regret that, although it has been years since I could summon the power necessary to ascertain how
.

But I was speaking of the weak.

She was dead. They were all dead, this man's children, but not all of the deaths haunted him.

No, of course not
, he said, and the words were as dry as desert sand.
It is always easier to forget the tragedy inherent in the deaths of those who have tried
—
and failed—to kill you
.

She did not visibly recoil, but it made no difference; none of their conversation had been visible. Tines crossed her cheek in a caress, and she realized, perhaps for the first time, that this creature that she had rescued needed no further rescue; was, in fact, dangerous. Strands of her hair twined a moment around something that looked like ivory as he lifted his head.

It was my own fault
, he said.
I… indulged… the weakness that destroyed her, instead of destroying it. I valued it; she paid
. He lifted his head; the breadth of his antlers lay against the watching night like a cage, not a crown—if there was any difference between the two.
I did not make that mistake again
.

"And instead you raised children who tried to destroy you. Thanks, but I think I'd rather risk loss."

Who said this was a matter of choice? Why do you assume that it was
her
pain that I sought to avoid? In the end, she was dust, and I remained, and her memory, and the loss, is everlasting
.

She did not seek to hold him when his hooves compressed sand into the dirt; his trail was quickly lost to the evening.

But she sat a long time, hearing the dead, smelling the dead, and thinking about all the ways in which people of power kill—and had killed—each other.

Here, the sand not thirty yards away, the tent he carried by day a small and flimsy enclosure against the deep chill of night, Kallandras of Senniel College dreamed. It was a night for dreaming; a night in which ghosts and memory were very nearly the same.

But the ghosts were not of the dead; nor were they the brothers that he would never, by the binding of the Lady, forget. Here, he heard the passing howl of wind over barren plains, and in its folds, as it carried sand and debris to sting and rebuke him, were the voices of whole cities, lost to time, or worse, and buried without ceremony.

Death had no way to hold him; the dying had no purchase over him. His training had seen to that.

But the wind's howl and fury spoke of other types of loss, and when it ripped the moorings of his tent free with contempt and ease, he rose in its folds. He looked at his hand; saw no ring, and realized, belatedly, that he was not—quite—awake.

But sleep had different meanings for a man who had sworn his soul to the keeping of a jealous, an angry, god. He went with the wind, and the wind carried him, in the moonlit chill of desert night, to the place where shadows were growing.

Here
, it said sibilantly.

He could see a lone tower, like a knife blade, jutting out of the sand.

But the wind whispered,
There are four
.

As it carried him, he could see them, less prominent than the first, but there.

And what is the interest of the air in the four?

The answer: he fell, plummeting as he was given to gravity. The wind caught him before he struck ground—and presumably lost consciousness—and carried him up again, singing in accusation; pulling his hair from his face. The voices the wind carried were voices of those who had once served the wind, and had been served by it, in their fashion. Wild magics.

Wild mages.

How did they die?

They are not dead
, the wind said, and the storm came upon them both.
They are sleeping. Wake them
.