Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (54 page)

Tamara laughed. "To an outsider, it must seem strange."

"Well, either that or you have some unusual serpents. I mean—small blue flowers?"

The older woman shrugged. "Many things were supposed to be buried beneath the desert sands. One of those things was said to be the great serpents. This—" she lifted her arm in a wide sweep that included everything across the horizon, "was not always desert. There were trees here that are seen nowhere but in the Deepings."

Jewel felt like a gong must feel when it's been hit hard by a clapper.
Stone Deepings
, she thought.
Green Deepings
. She knew her maps; she knew that the vast expanse of forest—still considered impenetrable by even the most foolhardy of explorers—had always merely been the Deepings. Men had made a foothold in the Sangarin forests in the West, but those men also spoke with dogs and lived in a state of graceful savagery.

She looked out to the sands again, seeing them for the first time not as wastelands, but as something essential, elemental, itself.

"Tamara, do the Arkosans travel in the Green Deepings?"

Tamara's eyes narrowed. "No," she said at last, after studying Jewel's face for minutes, searching for some expression that might ease her—and judging from her own, failing to find it. "We do not travel in the Green Deepings. Only the cursed, the blessed, or the mad enter them willingly. Or at all."

"Is that what this is," Jewel asked softly, as if she had not heard the answer at all. "Deepings? Sand Deepings?"

Tamara said again, "Only the mad, ATerafin." She turned to look at the sand, as if seeing it through Jewel's eyes; it was clear from her shudder that she didn't like whatever it was she thought she saw.

She rose.

As if that movement were the end of an elaborate ritual, Jewel's attention snapped into focus; she rose as well. "Tamara—"

But the old woman shook her head. "I can't stay. I have work. But… you are clearly blessed, and cursed, by the Lady. What I can't tell you, it is my fear you will learn.

"We call it a sea for two reasons. The first is that it is deadly, no matter what it contains, unless you can rise above it. The second, that what it contains is deadly. In the old stories, there were beasts that slumbered in the ocean depths; they ate sailors, destroyed ships, made rubbish out of nets and long spears." She nodded curtly. Turned to leave.

"Tamara!"

Stopped. "What?"

"This doesn't make the desert seem any more welcoming."

Tamara laughed. "It's not. The difference is simple. It's easy to forget the old stories about the desert when you're in it. You're too worried about simple things like surviving the sun, the open sky, the wind. Predators have to wait in line."

"Then," Jewel said quietly, "I'll argue against the old adage. In this case, I'll risk the monster I
don't
know." She looked toward the North and East. "We really don't have much time."

The women rose at dawn to perform the ablutions that the Lady required; they escaped their wagons—and their children—at dusk to do the same.

Margret of Arkosa joined them at both of these daily offerings; her shadow seemed, to Jewel's eye, longer than the shadows of her cousin or her aunts, and closer to the ground. She wore what the others wore; the bloused shirt, the vest, the wide sash with its multiple concealing folds. She wore pants and thick leather boots, and her hair was tied back—but, like Jewel's, strands always escaped to plague vision and dignity.

She did not speak.

When her lips opened at all, they moved in the torturous, stiff way that Jewel—at a distance—recognized as ritual speech. The aunts gathered around Margret. Jewel recognized them: Donatella, Tamara, Catia. They were joined by Elena, and it was only in this gathering of older women that she seemed both young and subdued. She stood, or knelt, in the shadows Margret cast. Her lips didn't move.

During the ceremony, Margret held wooden bowl, stone bowl, clay bowl. Into the first, she poured water, and into the second, wine. Into the third, she poured air—literally— and while she poured this last, she made her plea.

At least it seemed a plea to Jewel; the signs were there in the curve of shoulder and bent head, the movement of arms—hands kept below the height of shoulder. Her knees did not move once she had bent them to dirt; she remained bowed until the bowls had been emptied, and the liquid in them—precious, now, at the edge of so much wasteland— given to earth.

At the end of each of these offerings, Margret would rise and leave the rest of the women. They watched her. They watched, and Jewel looked away because there was something so intensely personal about their concern and their fear that she felt awkward being a witness to it.

But not as awkward as she felt knowing that they were right to be so afraid.

3rd of Misteral, 427 AA

Sea of Sorrows

Another day passed.

The Serra Diora di'Marano, bereft of wagon, had been given a sturdy tent—a tent, Jewel thought, that had been made decades past, but had weathered sun, wind, and sand with the same ferocious tenacity the Voyani did. She did not know where the tent had come from; no one seemed to, although many of the men asked. If the women asked, they were furtive in their curiosity.

Just as well.

The sun's heat was fierce; the fear of discovery, fiercer. But the caravan—men, women, children—did not move.

Avandar was frustrated. Having spent well over a decade as the cause of such a state, Jewel was familiar with all of its nuances; the slight compression of lips, the narrowing of eyes, the intermittent movement of the muscle just above his jaw on either side of his face. He did not pace, but he wasn't precisely still.

The Arianni lord was. He could sit in sunlight and make a patch of hard dirt look like a throne. Dirt clung to him, but it clung differently than it did to anyone else; it seemed raiment rather than filth. He did not speak. If he had questions, he kept them to himself. He was like a very beautiful, ornamental piece of rock.

There were times when that would have bothered Jewel; now wasn't one of them. If he wasn't happy, he wasn't obviously miserable; he was one less thing to worry about. The stag had vanished into sparse vegetation, but Jewel
knew
that when the Voyani finally left—or perhaps when she did—he would return. The magic that bound man into stag, and kept mortality at bay was a magic that defied simple geography.

That left Avandar, the Voyani, and the troubling inertia in the encampment.

Jewel's right arm ached. The mark that lay against it, like a brand made of jeweled paint rather than scar tissue, was throbbing in time with the muscles of Avandar's temple. He was too close to where she stood, and she wanted distance, no matter how illusory distance actually was.

It was there in abundance, but unfortunately it wasn't the geographical kind. The Voyani had themselves descended into a silence that had none of the grace of the Lord Celleriant's, and even less ease, if that were possible. The younger men were either sullen or angry; the women irritable or fearful; the older men wisely chose to find the children's playful games extraordinarily amusing.

Kallandras of Senniel College, much like Celleriant, seemed unperturbed by the waiting. He did not look over his shoulder to see if, among the straggly greenery at desert's edge, the Tyr's men lurked. He carried his lute, and he often played it, singing so quietly Jewel could not make out the words unless she stood beside him.

Beside him was one of two safe places to be.

"ATerafin," he said as she approached. His bow was slight, but there was nothing perfunctory about it.

"Do you know what's happening here?"

A brow rose; his fingers rested against his lute's strings as if they were skin. "I believe," he said at last, "that the Matriarch is waiting."

"For what? An invitation?" The words were sharp, but they were
quiet
.

A small frown marred the bard's expression. "ATerafin." He spoke her name in the tone of voice he reserved for the children. "Understand that Margret of Arkosa has the responsibility not of a single den, but of the equivalent of a House. As I recall," he added, his gaze glancing off her profile as she turned away, "you did not leap at the chance to have such a responsibility for yourself. She is younger than you are, Jewel; she is from a harsher place. Examine your own fears and reluctance as if she were your least forgiving mirror."

"'Gret?"

Margret of the Arkosan Voyani sat on the slender, hard bench in her mother's wagon. The boy at the wagon's door lingered a moment to one side of the door's frame—the safe side. She waited in silence for him to leave.

"'Gret?" He called again.

He had never been particularly bright where she was concerned, she thought unkindly. Just well-loved and beautiful. She was in the mood for neither tonight. Because she had been neither, in her own estimation, and was unlikely to ever become them.

No, that was unfair. She had been neither—which was not his fault—and in one day, in one encounter, she had come
this
close to stumbling on the knife's edge and speaking openly of the terrible secret that the Matriarchs barely discussed among themselves. And why?

Because, like any child, she was angry that her mother preferred another. The Serra Diora di'Marano. Her brother. The Arkosans. Always, always, always someone else.

Enough, Margret
, she told herself fiercely.
This is beneath you. She had the whole of Arkosa to consider. She didn't have time for kindness
.

Or love? But she loved Adam.

Everyone
loves Adam
.

"'Gret?"

She retreated from silence for the sake of expedience. "Go away."

Still, he lingered. She put both hands on the lowered table flat, palm down; the sound of her flesh slapping wood was dissonant. He retreated slightly, the movement almost imperceptible. But his fingers curved around the frame to stop Margret from closing the door—or rather, from closing the door without breaking them.

"Is it true that the Havallan Matriarch gave you an order?"

Her hands curled into fists. That was their familiar shape, these days. "You weren't there?"

"No. I was with the children."

"The children were there." She lifted her head, straightening out the line of her shoulders.

"They were there," he said softly, "at the beginning of your argument. But you—when you—why did you kick her instrument, 'Gret?"

Margret said coldly, "I would have thought that would be painfully obvious."

"I didn't ask why you wanted to. I asked why you did it."

"Because I wanted to," she replied, with no satisfaction at all. There was, about Adam, something special. And to tell him something that would drive him away—something with more substance than
get out
or
leave
—was never easy. But she seldom lied to Adam.

Because, damn him, he was selectively perceptive, and a lie was worse than a humiliating truth. He was her blood, her truest blood.

So she said nothing. He waited until he realized that's all she would say, and then he gracefully filled the silence. She could not ever remember being that graceful, that untemperamental. No wonder her mother had loved him best. No wonder they all did.

"I took the children away."

"You—"

"I knew Elena was there. I thought she'd be able to—" He stopped. No loss; they both knew where the rest of that sentence was going anyway. "Did Yollana tell you what to do in front of everyone?"

"Yes."

"Is it—is it true that you obeyed her?"

If he had been a sister, Margret thought idly, because it was easier than reliving the most humbling, the most humiliating, event in her adult life, he would have been a Matriarch that Arkosans would have killed each other to serve. Mother had loved him best, yes.

She should have hated him for that. Some days, she did. But she could not hold on to hatred or anger in the face of who
he
was. Because, in truth, Margret loved him best as well, and she had enough to hate herself for.

She nodded.

"Good."

It was not what she expected. She turned to him fully, sitting while he stood, the open door between them, the moonlight at his back. "Wh-what did you say?"

"I said, good."

"I heard what you said."

"Why 'good,' when everyone else is wondering what's wrong with you?"

"Yes," she snapped, wincing, "that why."

"Because you knew that it would weaken you, and you've always been afraid of weakness. But you listened anyway, which means that you thought she was right.

"You have to choose between what other people think is the right thing, and what you think is the right thing."

"Adam—it
did
weaken me. And if I'm weak—"

"No." He stepped into the frame, like a picture in a fine domo. She wanted more light then. The Lady's time was coming, it was strong; it took away the lines of his face.

"No?"

"It didn't weaken you. Your temper did. Momma used to say, "ride your temper, don't let it ride you.""

"I know what she used to say."

"Now I know why it's true. I don't understand why you hate that Serra so much. I think—if I were you—I wouldn't."

"You say that because she's beautiful."

"She
is
beautiful." His concession was devoid of warmth. He might have been talking about a flower, a bird, a horse. "But she is hard as steel. I think—I think once she might have been different. I don't know. But don't tell me I'm defending her because you think I love her. I don't know that anyone smart would.

"I say it because I heard her singing."

"You said you left with the children."

"I
did
leave with the children, 'Gret. I left with them, but I could hear her voice as clearly as if she sat in front of me, and it was—it was so personal—she might have been singing for me alone. I'm sure we all heard it that way.

"The children were weeping."

"The adults were weeping as well." Margret's voice was quiet, hushed. "She sang with the Lady's voice. And I—I have nothing of the Lady's." She slouched into her dagger's hilt, straightened enough to dislodge it from its awkward position.