Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (50 page)

"If I am to speak freely, let me speak plainly and beg for your forgiveness and your compassion. Callesta has seldom had so important a visitor, and the city itself is ill-prepared to accept you in the fashion you merit. Please, accept a mother's grief as excuse for what must clearly be inexcusable; accept a wife's promise that in future, all honor that accrues to you will be rendered onto you in a fashion that befits both your family and my husband's."

"A mother must care for her sons," Valedan replied. "And a wife, the children of her husband. Only a fool or a weak man would seek to elevate the simple fact of his presence over the loss you have suffered."

Again, the veil protected her expression—but her eyes, he thought, had rounded at the corners. He had surprised her. He was almost ashamed of the momentary satisfaction that gave him, and turned to her husband, who waited quietly, his expression unmarred by surprise, weariness, or grief. "If you would not take my presence as interference, I would pay my respects to your kai."

"The respect of the respectworthy is never unwelcome, kai Leonne." He spoke quietly, but not so quietly that the words would not stretch the distance, and fill the silence, between his men and the men who served Valedan. This was not unexpected. The informality of his tone, the use of the correct but informal title, were. Were it not for the circumstance, such a lack of obvious respect for the differences between their ranks might have been seen as insult.

It could have been, had the tone been different.

As it was, it was a claim. Of familiarity, certainly.

Valedan kai di'Leonne bowed. When he rose, he nodded to Ser Anton and Ser Andaro; they joined him in silence. "Wait for me," he said quietly.

Baredan di'Navarre was there in an instant, by presence alone imploring him to think better of his next action before it was too late. Valedan's smile was turned inward, a hidden jest. He walked to the palanquin which contained the Serra Alina, and as the Tyr'agnate had done with the Serra Amara, he offered her his hand.

Her expression was flawless, perfect, unadorned by the disapproval he was certain she felt.

"Join me," he said, taking care to speak loudly enough to be overheard. He had learned subtlety at the feet of the woman he now faced; he was certain that the standing guards could barely overhear what was said. Barely was enough; she could not now refuse his request without demeaning the rank that she so valued.

She was, of course, aware of this. He had chosen the difficult route of request rather than command. This was Northern. He had, by making the request something that she could not refuse without damaging his reputation, turned Northern respect into a Southern gesture.

She did not speak a word; she came out of the awkward confines of the palanquin smoothing the wrinkles from silk that had been creased by her journey while she unbent. When she reached her full height, she folded herself to the ground, the soft and tended grass in direct contact with her knees, and bent there until her forehead touched the cool greenery.

The emerald of her sari's edge matched the blue green shade beneath her hands. She wore a single ring, but several strands of gold encircled her throat and wrists. She wore sandals that were meant for palanquin or mat; she was a Serra, not a seraf, and not expected to walk far. At any other time, she would have been prepared for any encounter. But the Tyr'agnate's kai had died, and she did not wear white; did not wear the blues of the sky, the gold of the sun, the pale silver of the moon. Had she been in the North, she would have; the death of a Tyr's son demanded garments of mourning from the daughter of Tyr, although as he was the son of her brother's enemy, she could— barely—survive the breach of etiquette unscathed. At least in the eyes of the men.

The Serras?

The Serras seldom acknowledged the wars their husbands chose to make. They maintained the polite fiction that in all things, matters of war were the games of men, and that women endured in silence the loss and the gain by which they—fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons— measured themselves.

She could not now maintain this polite fiction, and in these circumstances, such a fiction was crucial.

The obeisance was her criticism, and he endured it for as long as he felt necessary. Then he bid her rise and gather her fans, waiting until she was ready before he crossed the courtyard to join the Tyr'agnate.

The Tyr'agnate gave the Tyran permission to rise—but not by word; he simply stepped aside and led his honored guest toward the finely appointed temple that lay within Callestan walls. They rose when his back was toward them, and they followed in silence. Ser Anton di'Guivera and Ser Andaro di'Corsarro joined the Tyran, keeping just enough of a distance to preserve the separate identities of the two groups.

They were not friends, although the journey from the heart of Essalieyan to the heart of Callesta had given ample opportunity for familiarity to grow. But the Tyran had witnessed the pledge of allegiance that both Ser Anton and Ser Andaro had offered the young Tyr'agar, and the memory was a scar. A battle scar, something to be worn openly with pride, even if it could not otherwise to acknowledged.

They
knew
the mettle of the Northerner's allies. And if they did not trust them—and in the Dominion, trust was a child's game—they wasted little time on active suspicion.

The Serra Amara en'Callesta and the Serra Alina di'Lamberto followed between the men who ruled and the men who served. Valedan had introduced the Serra Alina very carefully. It was known that Mareo di'Lamberto had, with some glee and anger, surrendered an unmarriageable sister to the Northern Empire, and that there was little love lost between them.

But the weight of her name on this day was costly.

The Serra Amara en'Callesta had greeted her with a cold, perfect grace; her manner was flawless, impeccable, and utterly devoid of pleasure. The Serra Alina di'Lamberto was wise, Valedan thought; she—in a manner of speaking—bared her throat, forsaking pride in much the same fashion that the Serra Amara had forsaken warmth. She did not acknowledge the Lambertan part in the young kai's death in any other way, but the humility of her posture was enough—for now. The Serra Alina di'Lamberto had come as part of the entourage of the Tyr'agar, and to demand abasement and obeisance from any member of the Tyr'agar's handpicked retinue required either a certainty of power or a willful, reckless madness.

The Serra Amara had neither, or chose to display neither.

But she walked at her husband's side to the Radann's temple, woman or no, for these last steps of their life with their son. She was bringing her oldest son his father, and her husband his kai.

For just a moment, a window, a small arrow slit, appeared between the forces that had shaped Valedan's childhood and the forces that now, vast as mountains, governed his adult life, and with a sharp clarity of vision that he seldom attained Valedan saw the Serra and the Tyr'agnate clearly. He wondered if anyone else could see the echoes of the very first time she had presented her son to her husband in this, the last one.

The temple was small. Wide, long slits in the curved stone exterior let sunlight and skylight pour through to temple floor, but the light was stark and pure.

Gone were the great glass panoramas of the Northern cathedrals; gone the tapestries and the long hangings that were suspended from sweeping heights to stone floor. There would be no choirs here, no voices raised in morningtide and eventide to fill those heights with that tapestry of voices, high and low, that spoke of the glory of the Northern gods.

What does the Lord value?

Men of power.

But why? Why is it that we suffer with so few gods, when the Northerners breed such a pack of them, such a frenzy of beliefs, that there's practically a god to blame for stubbed toes and hangnails?

Kneeling before the temple stairs, the Serra Alina di'Lamberto could barely believe that she had uttered those words.

Frenzy of beliefs?

But she knew who had uttered the rest, and because that memory was cherished—when so few of her memories were—she held on to the belief that even her perfect Southern manners could be reduced to so weak a veneer that they might crack in places when pressed, stretched, challenged with such infinite care as the Princess Mirialyn ACormaris had taken.

Is that not what you call it? You are a woman, but it doesn't matter to the Essalieyanese; they throw themselves at your feet because you are descended from the descendants of your so-called gods.

They are not
my
gods, but my grandparents
, Mirialyn ACormaris had said.
And perhaps the frenzy of belief we have resides in that truth
.

That the gods are your grandparents?

Mirialyn's laughter was rarely evoked, but she had chosen to laugh then.
You speak well for a Southern-bred Serra; you speak with an edge in your voice
.

All women know how to wield words.

Not so, Serra Alina. In my experience, what the Serras know how to wield best is their silence; it is their lack of words that cuts.

Is it not this way in the North, ACormaris? We each make weapons out of the things we can.

Or tools.

She knew that Mirialyn ACormaris was a woman of import; that she was the only blood relative of the King Cormalyn. But she was also cunning and observant in a way that many of the Northerners were not; she knew how to hoard both words and the infelicity of expression which gave away all thought, all emotion. Yet on that day, the sea winds squalling against a gray, gray sky, she had opened up that hoard and offered it to perhaps the only Southern Serra who would appreciate them.

But the gods
—
let me answer that question. There is a frenzy of belief in the gods because they are connected to us, and we to them, in birth, in life, and in death; they are like the parents
—
stern, cruel, abusive, or loving
—
that inform

our lives in the Empire. Even after our death we are not free of their influence. Mandaros waits.

Mandaros is the god of Judgment?

Indeed
. She did not seem at all surprised that Alina knew who the Northern gods were; but she had never shown surprise when Alina revealed knowledge about anything Northern, with the single exception of dance.

And it was that fact that had first been so intoxicating. This Northern stranger, with her exotic, pale hair, her pale skin, the odd hazel of her eyes, expected intelligence and knowledge from her as a matter of course. She did not dissemble. She did not ask the Serra she spoke with to dissemble. Or to smile or to defer or to bow and scrape. In no public circumstance had the Princess Mirialyn ACormaris been encumbered by the social need to hide her achievements or her abilities; in no public circumstance did she expect the Serra Alina to do so—but she did not comment or deride when the Serra chose, for reasons of her own, to fall into the display of perfect, implacable, Southern manners.

Intoxicating.

Especially to think about that freedom—utter, exquisite, rare—while she knelt, as custom dictated, beyond the open doors of the Temple of the Sun, looking in at the sparse decor from a distance that was equal parts intellectual, emotional, and geographical. Women did not enter that temple. Women did not touch the stones that graced the floor; women did not cast shadows in the light that streamed through stark, simple windows.

And women did not speak their thoughts freely.

Nor do men, in the South
, she reminded herself. But they walked in freedom beneath the Lord's roof.

She raised her head as some of these men—Valedan, among them—crossed the threshold, and lowered her head again when she was joined on the kneeling ground by the Serra Amara en'Callesta and the serafs who waited, like shadows in unpredictable light, upon her.

/
thought I would never come back. You said it was my choice; it would always be my choice
.

She bowed her head again.

The Princess of the blood had spoken truth, but it was her truth, Northern truth. Serra Alina di'Lamberto, unmarried, unmarriageable, was marked by the South; by a desire for both dry heat and the silence and serenity of quiet shadows in the face of the Lord's heat. She yearned, too, for the strains of a samisen handled by a master; longed for the vision of the cherry trees in full blossom at the heights of the orchard in Amar, the city that had been her home before she had been cast off to the North by her brother's loss and fury. Those blossoms she had gathered in childhood, and again in her youth, and they had meant different things each time she had done so. She wondered what they would mean today, tomorrow, next month, should she be allowed to walk in that orchard again.

The North had freed her, and the North would never be able to free her.

The Tyrs passed beneath the lintel of open doors, into the rays of slanted light cast by simple, curved stone. Valedan was younger than Ramiro di'Callesta; the shape of his face and the slender rise of his cheekbones was distinctive enough that the two could not be mistaken for blood. But Valedan gave way to the older man, the way a son might for a father.

He was canny, Alina thought. Canny? She felt something akin to shame; was glad for the moment that the Southern women did not speak before the Temple of the Lord. There was, in Valedan's quiet deference, a sincerity that she herself did not possess. And she had seldom regretted it as much as she did at this moment.

She watched.

Light paled the faces of the two men; the different shades of color, the features that spoke of Leonne and Callesta, were lost to white; to a ghostly glow that passed, as they did, into memory. Fillipo par di'Callesta walked behind them, beside Ser Anton di'Guivera; the swordmaster drew his sword as he passed through the stone entrance.

There was a collective hush of breath behind him. Even Fillipo, a match in every way for his kai, paused to stare at the sight of sunlight against silver sheen. He was the Captain of the Tyran; had he desired it, he could have spoken against such a display.