Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (51 page)

But he honored it instead; he bowed to Ser Anton di'Guivera. "Thank you," he said.

Ser Anton bowed in return, the bow deeper and longer.

"It is all," he said, "that I have to offer. I am of a simple clan; I have coin, but coin is not of value to
men
. I can make oaths," he continued quietly, "but any oath of value that I have sworn, I have sworn to the clan Leonne while its last member breathes; I would not offer a lesser oath in the face of Callesta's loss."

Serra Amara the Gentle stiffened. The sole Lambertan present did not raise her head or turn to the side to see if she had broken with prescribed tradition to look full at the face of Ser Anton di'Guivera. But she heard the rustle of undrawn veil across shoulders.

"You honor us."

"As I can," Ser Anton said. "Come. You are the Captain of the Callestan Tyran."

Ser Fillipo nodded and followed his brother into the slanted light. Ser Anton did not sheathe his sword, but he carried it easily at his side as he joined the younger man.

Ser Andaro di'Corsarro fell back, behind the ranks of the Callestan Tyran. Although it was his right to accompany the Tyr'agar—and indeed, his duty—he, too, gave way to the protocol of loss and grief that could only, in this way, be acknowledged.

After all, men expected to lose things of value in a war. Sons, brothers, fathers; these were the price they paid to
be
the Lord's men. The Lord was not kind.

He did not acknowledge the loss. He only acknowledged victory.

There would be no tears shed today. Serra Alina was certain of it. But when the Lord's time passed, when the Lady reigned—then, in her dark cool shade, they might be free.

A body lay against stone in the heart of the temple. In robes of white, edged only in the azure of the clearest, highest sky, four men stood at the corners of the bier across which the kai Callesta's body had been laid. They wore the sun in gold, and when the Tyr'agnate entered the room, they drew swords as one man and held them skyward, their expressions as open as the surface of the stone upon which the body lay.

Their precision was perfect.

The kai Callesta's arms had been arranged so that they crossed the breadth of white silk that was not quite shroud. The gash across his forehead had been cleaned and tended, but it was visible, and it was ugly.

Had he survived the taking of that wound, the scar would have served him well. No one trusted an unscarred man. Lack of scarring spoke of three things: cowardice, youth, or inexperience. But the wounds that produced scars often produced other things as well. Death.

The Tyr'agnate stepped forward; Valedan stayed his ground. In the light and shadow of sun and stone, Ramiro di'Callesta bowed.

"Tyr'agnate." The oldest of the Radann returned his bow twofold. The tip of his sword touched the ground and remained against stone as he rose.

But the Tyr'agnate's gaze had moved on to rest a brief moment upon the face of his dead son—and the back of his living one. Alfredo par di'Callesta stood as close to the altar as a man could without lying upon it, his back to them all. He had not chosen to turn to face his father when his father approached.

He could offer—although it would have been fiction, and a fiction that relied entirely on the generosity of the listener at that—the excuse that he had not known whose footsteps resonated above in the meager height of the ceilings; the Radann's brief greeting removed that excuse. But the boy did not turn.

The Tyr'agnate of Averda considered his options briefly. But only briefly. "Alfredo," he said quietly.

The line of his younger son's shoulders stiffened, straightening slowly as if by force of will. But he did not turn to acknowledge the Tyr.

Ramiro felt the spark of a kindling anger. He chose— with care—not to fan it. In a different circumstance, there would have been no anger to fan. And in a still different circumstance, the anger would have been vast as chasms in the Tiagra.

"Ser Alfredo," he said, raising his voice. "A guest of import has accompanied me in order to pay his respects to Ser Carelo kai di'Callesta."

The shoulders stiffened further. The boy's hands, shaking, were bunching into fists. Ramiro wondered how awkward things were going to become. Alfredo had always been the more careful, the more cautious, the more observant of his two sons. He had also been the less tractable. Where the oldest was fire and fury, he was also capable of the tactical retreat when it was expedient. On one or two occasions it had saved his life. The youngest only seldom extended himself, but when he did—when he did, all who knew him understood the weight of the decision. He had chosen to stand and die.

How had two such difficult sons managed to survive their youth?

His eyes grazed the wound on his dead child's face and he grimaced as if the wound were his. And it was; the son had all the need for it that the dead have of anything.
Do not force this, Alfredo. You are all the son I have left; do not disgrace yourself
.

But offering such a warning was in itself a disgrace, for it implied that such a warning was necessary. He waited. His son did not turn.

"Tyr'agnate," the young kai Leonne said, completely unexpectedly, "it is my desire—if it is your will—to see the bodies of the Lambertans before I pay my final respects to your son."

Alfredo continued to face the altar.

Or my sons
, Ramiro thought, his anger deepening. He missed his wife. "Tyr'agar," he replied, bowing and holding that bow for long enough to acknowledge his son's dangerous refusal to recognize the presence of a Tyr. "I, too, wish to see my son's enemies."

Valedan kai di'Leonne said nothing at all. But the look that he cast—briefly—at the back of the par di'Callesta was a strange one.

One of the Radann bowed to the Tyr'agnate; he left his position and returned with another, younger man. The young man bowed as well, the movements slightly awkward.

Ramiro wanted, with a fierce clarity of desire, to be in the heart of his harem, where the Lord had no purchase and no dominion; where there were women with perfect grace and a silence that elegantly answered all questions, be they lazy or furious, peaceful or tormented.

Carelo.

Not yet. Not yet, but soon. If, he thought, there would ever be peace at the harem's heart again. To have peace, he would have to win forgiveness from his lovely wife for his absence from Callesta, when with his presence, the kai Callesta—her beloved son—might still be holding a sword.

To have peace, he would have to forgive himself.

And that was as close as he was willing to come to a night thought in the heat of day, when the Lord waited for a sign—any sign—of weakness.

"Tyr'agnate?" The Radann's neutral voice was less awkward than his bow.

Ramiro nodded, and the man turned toward a more modest set of doors that led into the interior of the temple. He gestured briefly, and servitors—clad predominantly in white, hastened to open them.

"Tyr'agnate," Valedan kai di'Leonne said, before Ramiro could follow the younger Radann's lead. Ramiro turned to see that Valedan kai di'Leonne had dropped into as full a bow as the difference in their ranks allowed.

All eyes were upon them, the Tyr'agar and the Tyr'agnate; the sun through the open windows watched the shadows they cast. "Tyr'agar."

"With your permission, I would like to have the bodies removed from the temple."

/
am weary
, Ramiro thought. The words the boy spoke made no sense. He struggled with them a moment, but the political edge that informed all of his observations had been blunted and dulled. "As you wish," he said.

The Radann framed by the open door waited. "Tyr'agnate."

"You are sworn to the Lord, not to Callesta," the Tyr said softly. "But Callesta has jurisdiction over the bodies of its enemies. I commend you for your actions in preserving my son's body against my arrival.

"If it pleases you, accommodate the request of the Tyr'agar."

"The Tyr'agar?" The Radann's eyes narrowed in obvious confusion and then widened in equally obvious shock, both of which clearly placed his station of birth. In theory, one abandoned one's responsibilities and duties to blood when one entered the service of the Lord—but blood was strong in clansmen and it did not surrender to simple words and weak will so easily.

"The Tyr'agar, Ser Valedan kai di'Leonne."

While the Radann digested this information—and it took a while for the full significance of all of the words to strike home—Ramiro di'Callesta turned to inspect the play of light across the open ground in which the Radann trained, fought, and occasionally died. There were no stains across stone, but there were boundaries marked in silver and gold in the shape of swords with curved blades turned away from the center of the space.

It was not, of course, a Northern circle. The rules of Northern circles had no place among the Radann. But it was the simplest measure of a man in the Dominion.

Had he been allowed, he might have challenged someone—anyone—to stand with him for the Lord's Judgment. It had been many, many years since he had done so; it was not a challenge to undertake lightly.

But it was better than the challenge he faced now.

He had not thought to be so affected by the sight of his son's body. He was a practical man. He had known, the moment the Tyran had wordlessly handed him Carelo's sword, that Carelo was dead; no other fate would have parted him from that weapon. But to know it, no matter how deeply, and to
see
it, were apparently two separate experiences. Had he known how vast the gulf between knowledge and reality could be, he would have entered the temple alone and dismissed the Radann before he turned to gaze upon the face of his child.

Upon the empty hands that lay across his chest. A kai without a sword. A body without a soul. Both, in the end, meant death.

Aie, he remembered when that weapon had first come to his kai's hands.

Carelo had been quiet and proud; he had been wary. But the sword… the sword had been his pride.

"Wear it," Ramiro said, "and understand what it is that you carry. When you unsheathe that blade, you will have no place in my harem; you will have no home with your mother and my wives."

Carelo, face free of expression, had nodded. A moment later, the words that his father had so carefully chosen sank roots; Ramiro could recall the pride that caused the boy's expression to flutter like a startled bird before coming to rest again in lines of gravity and dignity that were vastly too old for his face.

When
. Not if.

The Radann had struggled to fall to one knee. In matters of precedence, the line between Tyrs and Radann could be hazy if the Radann so chose, but the line between Tyr'agar and Radann—never. The only man who was not required to offer full obeisance was the kai el'Sol.

This particular, extremely awkward near grovel would have been amusing in other circumstances. As it was, it merely worked to the Callestan advantage by giving Ramiro the few moments he needed.

And as if aware of that, as if aware of the reason for the Callestan Tyr's oblique humiliation of the young Radann, the kai Leonne waited a long, long while before acknowledging the kneeling man. Of course, had he been the Tyr'agar Markaso kai di'Leonne, he would merely have had the man killed for his gross and offensive ignorance. The father, weak and selfindulgent, was very unlike the son. Not so Ramiro and Carelo. Youth and experience separated them; that was all.

Had been all.

Fathers. Sons.

"Kai Callesta?" Valedan's voice. Quiet—as quiet as Serra Amara's voice might have been had she stood behind him at a moment like this. "The Radann are bringing the bodies to the front of the temple for our inspection."

Ramiro nodded. "Why the front of the temple, kai Leonne?"

Valedan's smile was a glimmer of eye, a quirk at the corner of lip that did not otherwise destroy the gravity— the proper, the respectful, gravity—of his expression. "I am not married," he replied. "But I have seen enough of women to know that they are frail in times of loss; they require the strength of their husbands. The Serra Amara en'Callesta has waited for you for months now; I would not keep her from your side for longer than necessary."

Ramiro kai di'Callesta nodded genially, but he met the Tyr'agar's eyes for a second longer than protocol demanded, and he saw in the boy—and it grieved him—a man that his son would never have become, no matter how much wisdom and experience he had gathered.

Mercy was a Northern concept.

White silk folded slightly as he lifted a sword arm.

But he did not return the sword to his kai. When he did, he wished no witnesses. He knew, now, that witnesses would weaken him.

"Tyr'agar," he said, raising his voice. "You are wise."

Valedan said nothing, but his glance strayed again to the back of Alfredo par di'Callesta; the boy had not moved. This time, when the kai Leonne's face offered the inexplicable expression that it had when he had first seen Alfredo, and had first chosen to ignore the gracelessness of grief, Ramiro recognized the look.

He did not understand it, but he recognized it.

Envy.

The men came.

They wore white; they wore azure; they wore gold. And above these three things, embroidered across a sash, the Callestan crest: The sword, the sun, and between them, the falcon, across an azure sky. She had seen the full Callestan regalia seldom; she knew that this was a reduction of the finery that the Callestans chose to wear when they traveled in a manner that demanded the respect of other Tyrs.

But that fact that this simplified emblem lay across the shoulders and chest of the Radann told her much about the relationship that Ramiro had with even these unallied men of the Lord.

It surprised her.

Had she been in Lamberto, it would not have; Mareo kai di'Lamberto was a man the Radann had always respected. But Ramiro, slippery, smooth, diplomatic—Ramiro, called traitor, or worse, because of his trade dealings with the Empire, by those who would never forget their losses at the hands of that same Empire—would not have been a man she would have guessed was held in high esteem by the Radann.