Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (53 page)

She shrugged, everything about the movement brusque. "There's not a lot to be happy about."

"There never is."

"Avandar—"

"No. There never is. All of mortality is defined by its moments of loss and crisis."

"That's not true."

"Is it not?" He stared into the vista that had caught her attention, and she knew he was seeing something completely different; he always did. "The height of man's greatest achievement lies buried somewhere within its greatest wastelands. And yet in the act of losing what they built, of surrendering the ability to stand, shoulder to shoulder, with the gods and those whose lives have never been measured by time, they achieved a greatness they have never since known."

She would have snorted, but the intensity of the feeling behind his words silenced her. It was genuine. She did not want to know more about it; stepped back, although that did not diminish her understanding. Her arm ached. Her mouth was too dry. "Acts of sacrifice have always existed."

"Do you glory in them?"

"No." She looked at rippling air, heat above sand. "Yes."

"Thank you."

"But there has to be more. More than that."

He laughed.

"What?"

"You have made it not only your business, but your existence, to disprove that. What do you enjoy? What do you love? How do you choose to live your life?"

"Avandar—"

He lifted a hand.

She felt its shadow as a momentary coolness against her skin. She stepped back. Back again, her heels reaching tentatively for the ground behind her, as if she knew that she was standing close to the mouth of a great abyss. Too close.

He said softly, "I know."

She felt his absence, his sudden absence beneath skin, behind thought, as if it were a presence.

"But you cannot stand within the shadows of your early life forever."

"I'm part of the governing Council of Terafin. I'm heir—" and she had never said this so rashly, so
loudly
, "to the Terafin throne. I have the ear of Kings. I am hardly standing in the shadows of my early life."

"No?" He reached out again, fingertips to face, and she shied. "Leave it, Jewel. You have left almost all else."

She didn't look at him. After a moment spent gathering breath, spent straightening the lines of her face, she said,

"We don't talk about our past. When you join my den, that's the only rule: the past
is
the past."

"I was not speaking of my past," he replied. "And I have never been a member of your den." Permeating the spoken words was a very strong distaste at the idea that he might come to her for protection. For aid.

"Can't you understand," she snapped, "that I might feel the same way?" She turned, the robes cumbersome, the boots heavy as she lengthened her stride and left him standing in the morning air, the memories he had invoked driving her.

She sought shelter among the women and their loud and cumbersome children. In their efforts, some brusque and short, she saw her own: they understood that these children
were
Arkosa, and they fed, clothed, and protected them. It was no different from her den, in its way, birth and age notwithstanding.

Tamara of Arkosa met her, interposing her substantial girth between Jewel and the children. She was not otherwise unfriendly, but a warning had been wordlessly given, and Jewel accepted it with equanimity. She understood it.

"Will the children go into the desert?"

The older woman looked faintly scandalized. Except for the faintly part. "Into the
desert
!"

Jewel laughed and held out one hand, palm up, in surrender. "I wouldn't have asked—but they're still here."

"We don't take most of the men, or the women either. The Lord knows no mercy in the heart of the desert. We expect that. But the Lady forgets all mercy as well." She relaxed, the line of her shoulders gradually dropping two inches as her hands found her hips. She did not, however, move.

"Is that why it's called the Desert of Sorrows?"

"It is called the Desert of Sorrows," Tamara said curtly, "by clansmen. And maybe by Northern merchants." She sniffed, her shoulders rising again as they followed the line of her chin. She was possessed of the Voyani gestures of expression, and they were many; they animated the speaker even when words failed to leave their lips.

"And the Voyani call it?"

"The Sea of Sorrows."

"It doesn't look a whole lot like any sea I've ever seen. From a distance it doesn't look like there's much in the way of water."

"Sea can have many meanings. In Torra, everything can." She shrugged. "We don't talk to outsiders much, and you're an outsider. An outsider who looks a little like the rest of us—or would if you weren't so pale."

"At home, I'm not considered pale."

"At home, you're not considered the offspring of deserters."

Jewel was quiet. For about five seconds. Then she lifted her head and met Tamara's gaze. Her own didn't waver. "I don't consider myself to be the offspring of deserters." Each word was measured, level.

"They'd hardly teach you about the
Voyanne
, would they?" Tamara lifted a brow. "They'd hardly teach you the old vows, the old ways, the old words. Because then they'd have to explain why they weren't following any of them."

"As much as any parent feels a need to explain their choices and their lives to any child."

Tamara's brows lifted a moment in surprise, and then she offered Jewel the most generous of her laughs. Rooted in her experience, it was low and deep, both with age and a resonant pleasure. "You've never put a foot on the
Voyanne
. But if I had to guess, Jewel of Terafin, you've walked roads that are harder and longer. None of us have forgotten how you came. Some of us resent the fact that you're just as human as we are, you're the child of deserters, but you've got the Lady's favor."

Her eyes narrowed. "I tell them you've got the Lady's geas, which isn't the same. May our enemies be your enemies if we cannot be family."

"Your enemies," Jewel said softly, "
are
mine."

"Good. Petrie! Stop that now or I'll lengthen both your ears!"

One of the children jumped two feet and nearly dropped his bowl. Jewel felt some sympathy for him; she jumped as well.

"You have to watch them," Tamara said, with a faint hint of smugness. "Even when you can't keep your eyes on them. What were we saying? Ah, yes. The sea. Let me tell you something. I remember the first time I saw the sea. It was while we wandered along the coast of Oerta, The storms there are harsh at the wrong time of year, and it's hard to find good roads. The Oertan Tyrs are not… friendly. We had been traveling for days." Her voice fell. The lines of her face shifted. Her expression was like a mask—and masks would never have the same meaning for Jewel ATerafin that they had once had. The stillness was unusual; it captured her age. In the glare of the sun—and the sun had risen—the cracks and folds of skin hid no shadows as she narrowed her eyes.

"For days. We reached the sea. I was a child, understand. Evallen's mother was Matriarch. The children are fed first—you know this. We had been fed, but the Arkosans had almost nothing to feed us. We had no time to stop and forage." She was quiet for a moment. "Although it was tried.

"A village along the coast was friendly to us; the headman's wife was particularly beloved of the Lady, and she aided us as she could. We hoped to reach her, to arrange for the supplies we needed.

"Or they did. I was young. I remember knowing that I was thirsty, hungry, that my feet were blistered, my clothing chafed. The rivers running inland were being watched by the Tyr's men; they were the obvious place to find or catch us. We caught water, when it fell, but it didn't fall often enough; it was dry, at that time. I remember that. I knew that my aunts and uncles smelled terrible, that they were always angry.

"When we saw the sea, it was so… so big. There was so much
water
."

Jewel cringed. "Oh, no."

Tamara's laugh was soft. "Oh, yes. The wagons had stopped; the Voyani had built themselves shelters in a small valley beneath the road's line, but near the sand and stone. They were all angry, all of the time. I ran to the water. I started to drink."

"You must have been sick."

"All over. All over everything. I can laugh about it now—but then? I couldn't believe that there could be so much water, and none of it could be for
drinking
.

"I realized then that I hated the sea. It was malicious. It was salty, terrible. It offered life and gave death in return if you couldn't keep it on the outside.

"The desert was at least an honest death." Her brow creased a moment. "Another child had run down to the water with me. He had been sick; he was weak and fragile. The water that he drank, he threw up—but he couldn't stop throwing up. He burned with a terrible fever for three days, and it only stopped when he died."

Jewel could think of nothing to say.

"People let their children play in the sea. We don't let ours play in the desert." The older woman looked very tired. "I started this because I thought it would be funny— a story about how ignorant I was about your sea. Sometimes a funny story can put a person at ease."

They were silent as their shadows shortened. At last, Jewel asked, "Is that why you call it a sea?"

"No. Here. I think Donatella has finished with the children—let's find some shade, wagon-side, away from prying ears." She gestured with her shoulder, sliding her hands from her hips so she could catch her thumbs in the top of her sash. Like many women her age, she could not bear idle hands; she had to perch and unperch them almost continually if she was on her feet.

Jewel made to follow her, but before she had gone ten feet, she was cut off by a tall man wearing a lot of attitude more easily than he did his leathers and his sword.

Tamara's shoulders came up and back more sharply than they had all through her conversation with Jewel. The hands folded themselves across chest in a way that left elbows tight against upper body. It was clear that Tamara was not comfortable with this man.

Clear, as well, that he was Arkosan. Family. Jewel stopped her hand from straying to her dagger. She watched, but said nothing.

"Ona Tamara," the young man said. He didn't speak with a sneer; he spoke instead with an obvious desire to be polite. To be, Jewel thought, approved of.

"Nicu," his aunt replied, the two syllables so clipped it was a wonder she didn't cut her tongue saying them.

The young man darkened; Jewel winced. There was history here, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know what it was.

"Has Elena finished feeding the children?"

"Yes."

"Just now?"

"Yes."

His pause was awkward. "Funny. Andreas tells me that he didn't see her feeding the children this morning."

Two heartbeats worth of silence followed, enough time to kill a man with a readied dagger. The old woman didn't draw anything sharper than her tongue. "Does the Matriarch know you're telling your men to watch the Daughter instead of the periphery?"

He flushed. "He was walking by."

"Walking by for long enough to watch the entire meal? No—don't answer that. Andreas is just young and stupid enough to walk in circles for hours staring at his toes. But
you
should know better. In spite of your betrayal, you've been given the responsibility of—"

"Don't tell me my duties!"

"Someone has to tell you—you're no good at remembering them on your own!"

"I didn't come here to talk about
my
work. I came here to talk to Elena."

"When you knew she wasn't here."

He flushed. "But you know where she is."

Tamara laughed in his face. The laugh was no more friendly than any of his words had been. "And if I did—
if—
why would I tell you? You don't own her, Nicu. Nobody does. Not even Margret."

"I never said—"

"You've never had to. If you could think of other people once while the Lord watched, you'd know where she was. Now go, before I get angry."

He looked as if he might press his point. Jewel couldn't actually see Tamara's expression, but her tone of voice made it clear that there was no way she could be forced to back down. He turned, after glancing at Jewel, and he left them both.

Only when the dust of his passing had settled did Tamara of Arkosa let go of rigidity. The shadows across ground had shifted; the sky had become a clear, deep azure, a frame for the Lord's gaze.

"He'll hurt us yet," she muttered. "No one can cause as much damage as family, if they've a mind to it."

"I wouldn't know," Jewel said softly. "All of mine died when I was young enough that they wouldn't have tried."

For perhaps the first time, Tamara of Arkosa turned to Jewel with an unguarded expression of horror. She reined it in as quickly as Jewel would have expected of any Voyani woman, but the Voyani were free with their emotions; it hung in the lines and contours of her face for what seemed a very, very long time.

When she had been a child, Jewel confused pity and sympathy. Not now. But her pride allowed her to ignore what was written there so clearly.

"You've… you've done well," Tamara said lamely, and after some time. "Without family."

Jewel lifted her hand; she had never thought of her skin as pale until she had traveled with the Voyani, but it looked pale to her now, and gold adorned it, simply. Significantly. "Not without family," she said softly. "But maybe you understand why blood is less important to me than it is to the rest of you."

Tamara nodded. "Come," she said. "At this speed, I'll be feeding the children again before I've said another word."

"There are stories," she said quietly. "We tell them among ourselves when we come to the desert's fringe. You see those plants? The wiry short plants with the deep blue flowers? They grow only here. The old aunts will pick them and press them between their palms."

Jewel nodded; she had seen Donatella do just that.

"They're called serpent scales."

"Serpent scales."