Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (49 page)

You watch over your brother
, she had said. It was not clear to whom she spoke, perhaps not even to her, although she was a woman who loved words that held multiple meanings.

With my life
, they had replied, one with heat and one with an irony that did not deprive the words of meaning. They had looked at each other, then, and Carelo had laughed out loud; Alfredo had smiled.

It had been a perfect moment; it was perfect still, in memory. But memory was an imitation of life, a ghost of something already past.

Wind had guttered flame.

The Tyr'agnate's grip on the sword was so tight it was painful. That pain, however, would end soon; he could feel the tingling in curved fingers that preceded numbness.

He reached the end of the gardens, reached the steps that led to the private courtyard his wives used at the height of the day. There was a fountain at its center, and around it, in the shade provided by carefully cultivated trees and the height of the building itself, were low, flat platforms.

They were empty. His footsteps echoed in a stillness deprived of even the dance of leaves. He had walked the edge of the Sea of Sorrows in his youth, and he could not mistake this palace for that desert, but no other experience had prepared him so well for this walk.

He crossed the courtyard and hesitated in front of the golden rails, the brass chimes, the Callestan crest with the artistic embellishments he allowed his wives to use across the heavy drape of raw silk. It took only a moment before he realized what was missing, and he thanked his wife in silence for the foresight that led to the absence of Tyran.

Ramiro di'Callesta was not a man who spoke to the Lord or the Lady; he was not a man who made a habit of useless gesture and he knew, from long experience, that the gods,
if
they existed at all, had more amusing things to do than listen to the pleas of a person who walked the edge between strength and death.

He bowed his head in silence. He counted, each number like the lash of a whip across open skin. The line of his shoulders was bowed; he corrected this oversight in posture.

Amara.

Carelo.

He pushed aside the hanging and entered the harem.

She was waiting for him.

His wives—the rest of his wives—were nowhere in sight. Although he could see their hands in evidence in every distinguished element in the room—the arrangement of pillows across the mats, the complementary colors of the three fans that rested, in perfect harmony, against the wall, the types of fruit that had been chosen and the way they were carefully washed and arranged in a single, wide bowl—they had fled the heart of the harem, no doubt at the order of the Serra.

He carried the sword to her, but he could not release it; his knuckles were white.

She stood; she did not assume the subservient posture, and he did not expect it, not here.

"When?"

She did not meet his eyes. Her hands, clasped loosely before her, gave her the appearance of a woman of the North. Her hair, the single feature of which she had been so proud, was no longer the color of unsullied night; here and there, streaked as if at the touch of a ghost, he could see the glitter of pale silver.

He knew whose ghost moved her.

It was the Callestan Tyr who bowed.

"I always thought," she said softly, "that he would be his own death. I thought that he would rebel in a way that you—or Callesta—would not tolerate. I spent hours with his wife, planning against such a day." Her fingers danced against the backs of her hands as if skin were an instrument.

She stared at the expanse of wall across which lay a single, simple painting, an imitation of the sky at dawn or dusk, when neither Lord nor Lady could claim dominion over Annagar.

"He seemed so much like you. You always walked the same edge with your father. Did you know—did you know that your mother spoke to me about your safety and the way your impetuousness threatened my future?"

"No."

"I thought her very foolish," she said, and she laughed, and the laugh itself was a terrible sound, both harsh and weak. "Until the moment I spoke to our kai's wife. He was so very headstrong."

"Amara—" He reached for her.

But she was not yet capable of seeking shelter. She shied away from his hand.

From the hand that did not carry his son's sword.

"Alfredo has not moved."

Ramiro bowed his head. The weight of the moment was unbearable.

And he bore it. That ability, in the end, defined him.

"Where is he?"

"He is with the Radann."

"Amara."

She looked away from the illusion of freedom from the whim of gods. "Was he worth it?"

The question was sharp. Pointed. He had expected comfort from her, but accusation seemed natural when it finally came. He heard pain, guilt, rage, sorrow; he did not hear strength.

He could not afford to hear no strength. "You must judge him, as you judge all things, for yourself. Judge for me, as you have done; be my guide."

"He is here?"

"He is here, Amara. He waits in the courtyard of the pale moon, with Baredan di'Navarre and Ser Anton di'Guivera."

A flicker of light danced across the surface of her eyes. "So, that was true."

"Yes." It was his turn to seek comfort in illusion. "The Northern armies will follow."

"We know."

Silence again. Silence had often been a comfort, and perhaps it would be again, but now it was merely a tarpaulin across the unsaid.

"We received word," she said quietly. "I… received a letter."

"A letter?"

"From the Serra Donna en'Lamberto."

He waited as patiently as a man in the Hells can. When his wife did not continue, he said simply, "She does not frequently write to the Serra Amara en'Callesta."

"No. And she did not mention the Northern army. But she did speak, in passing, of the rough ways of the men to the South, and of the importance of both oath and family to her husband."

Ramiro di'Callesta closed his eyes.

"She wrote of the death of her son. She asked me—"

"Amara?"

"She spoke freely. She asked me to become her, for a moment. She asked if I thought I would be strong enough to forgive those who brought about the death of my son, if I had suffered such a loss."

"Did you reply?"

"Yes."

"What did you say, Amara?"

"I told her that, for the sake of the Terrean, I would hope that I might forgive what no woman would naturally forgive. I told her that I was not a strong woman—and I am not a strong woman, Ramiro—but that, in the end, the decision to forgive or avenge was in neither of our hands; she and I are merely wives. It is our husbands who decide our fate, and the fate of the Terreans themselves." She looked at him then, dry eyed, terrible in the way the edge of a sword is terrible when it is inches from your throat.

He understood what she did not say; how could he not? They were kindred spirits; their rage and their loss was almost identical.

But he was not a man who made commitment lightly. "Where is Carelo?"

"In the temple of stone," she said. "It has been four days, but the Radann have—have done what they can to preserve our son against the hour of your return."

"I must tend to him, Amara."

She nodded. "I will join you there."

"Amara, I will not play the game of rank or status here. Not today. You have been, since I was younger than Carelo, my strength, my grace. If there has been a day since the death of my father that I have required strength and grace, it is this one.

"Join me, if you can, but when you join me, be
with
me; do not wear your anger as armor against me. I am not your enemy. If I have failed you, speak plainly. If I have failed our son—"

She raised a hand to ward off the only weapon he had ever used against her: his words. But he was still a warrior, still a man of the Lord, and he sensed a weakness in her that had not been there moments before, an opening that he might exploit.

He was a ruthless man in his fashion.

"Yes, I have failed our son," he said, the words intense, and no less finely honed for the fact that they were the truth. "I went North. I followed Baredan di'Navarre in his fool's quest. I lingered there, to watch games. I negotiated with the three Commanders who once shed much Averdan blood, solely to return South with a boy who is untried and untested.

"Was it worth my son?
No
." With his free hand, he reached for her shoulder, and this time she stood for his touch. "But my son is gone. What is left? What is left us?"

She said nothing at all. But the silence was different.

"The bodies of the others?"

"They are with the Radann."

"And are you satisfied with the answers they offer?"

She looked at him, then. Her eyes were not as dry as he had thought them when he had seen her profile. "The Tyran have conducted the investigation. I am your wife, I am Serra Amara the Gentle."

"You offered them no guidance."

"No."

He lifted his hand and very gently cupped her chin—her stiff, tense jaw—in his hand. "I have been in the North overlong," he said softly. "This is my home, and I am defined by it, as I define it. But I curse the foolishness that deprives my men of your wisdom in my absence."

"Bless it instead," she said quietly. She closed her eyes and then raised her chin slightly; straightened out the line of her shoulders, the graceful line of her back. The only hesitation she showed at all was brief, but it was marked; she froze a moment before she made a decision about the veil that lay carefully folded upon the pillows.

In the end she chose to wear it, but it was a close thing. That, more than anything, told Ramiro di'Callesta that his wife was almost ready for war, for she trusted herself to show no weakness in the Lord's sight unless that weakness served her purpose.

When the Tyr'agnate of Averda returned to the courtyard in which his guests had been left to wait, he was transformed. The dust of the road still clung to him if one knew how to look, but his attire itself was fresh and pale; like the men who wore headbands or armbands, he had marked himself with the colors of grief.

It was Southern, to mark oneself externally so that outsiders might understand that you felt an emotion you were forbidden, by etiquette and the rules of strength, to show. The front panels of his loose shirt were white; the sleeves a pale blue, the cuffs of his wrists, dark midnight. So, too, were the pants; his sash was gold, but a gold distinct from the brightness of sun. He wore
Bloodhame
openly, but that was not remarkable. What was, to Valedan, was the fact that he carried his son's naked blade in one hand.

The Tyran fell into the most subservient stance he had ever seen them adopt in the presence of their Tyr. Each man touched one knee to ground; their sword hands went to their hilts and rested there; their free hands fell to thigh, their chins to chest.

Baredan di'Navarre chose to remain on his feet, but he bowed, and he sustained that bow for a full minute. Ser Anton di'Guivera did the same.

Valedan chose to follow their lead. In the North, he thought, grief was different. He could remember clearly the Imperial reaction to the news of the deaths of their hostages, and no man or woman in the North that he had seen had lost their eldest child. Were they weak for their displays?

No.

They were human.

He raised his face as Ramiro stood, tense and unmoving beneath the face of the Lord. The Tyr'agnate's eyes were narrowed, his lips only slightly thinned. He did not seem to see the Tyran who waited, like perfect statues or perfect weapons, before him.

But he did turn when a woman joined him.

She, too, wore the colors that spoke of loss and death in the Dominion, but she also hid her face behind the opacity of a veil that fell from the height of her Annagarian hair to her silk-draped elbows. When she reached her husband—for it was clear to Valedan that this woman was no other than the famed Serra Amara the Gentle—he turned to her and held out an arm; she took it, as if it were all of her strength. But some strength remained her, for she carried the sheath to the blade Ramiro kai di'Callesta wielded.

To Valedan's eyes, to his inexperienced eyes, it was not clear who derived more strength from the union of their arms. His father and his mother had never derived strength of any sort from each other.

Or perhaps that was unfair; perhaps what he remembered of his life as a child did not contain the subtle understanding of gesture, or the intricacy of a dependency that was not profoundly unbalancing. He was not surprised, however, that the Tyr'agnate did not speak until this woman was at his side. She had become, although her face was veiled and her manner exquisitely Southern, a woman to rival the Serra Alina di'Lamberto.

A danger, but a fine one.

It was not Southern custom, but he forgot Southern custom for a moment, and he bowed. When he rose, her veiled faced was turned toward him; he could see the line of her chin and cheek, the width of her eyes, but he could discern no exactness of expression that might convey her thoughts or her intent.

"Tyr'agar," the Tyr'agnate of Callesta said, speaking across the bent heads of his men, "It is my pleasure to present to you the Serra Amara en'Callesta."

The Serra Amara en'Callesta removed her hand from the haven of her husband's. She did not choose to lift her veil, but she did choose to prostrate herself in the slender shadow her husband cast.

"It is your pleasure," Ser Valedan kai di'Leonne said, bowing again, "but it is my honor. Much has been said of the Serra Amara, and I see that much of it is true. If it would not offend you, Tyr'agnate, I would be honored if you would feel comfortable enough in my presence that you would give your Serra permission to speak as freely as she might otherwise choose."

"Of course," Ramiro di'Callesta replied lightly as if the request was a normal request beneath the open sky, between two men. "Serra Amara?" He offered his wife his hand, and she accepted with perfect fluidity of motion, although clearly she was not a young girl, with a girl's easy grace.