Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (55 page)

"You have Arkosa."

"After what I did, I'm lucky to have that." She wanted to tell him the truth. She
hated
that she could not tell him the whole truth. Hated that men were trusted, but only so far, only ever so far, when Adam was a man—or a boy who was on the edge of adulthood—who could be trusted with
everything
.

"It's not luck, 'Gret. You're the only person who
can
do it. We all know that. You're Evallen's daughter. The only person here who doesn't trust that is you."

"Adam, you're lying."

He was quiet for a moment.

"You are such a terrible liar, you should know better than to try." But she loved him for the attempt.

"Anyone who
counts
knows it. Elena knows it. Even Yollana knows it. The others will learn."

"It's not just a matter of trust," the Arkosan Matriarch said quietly. "But you'll know the truth soon enough. When we go to the desert, when we go to where we must go, you'll come with us."

That shut him up for at least a minute.

"C-come with you?"

"Yes. You're my brother, the Matriarch's brother, and you've proved yourself worthy of that, even if you have such a pathetic Matriarch for a sister."

"You're not pathetic, Margret. You're just human." He smiled; she felt something lodge in her throat, and she
hated
that. "Don't be like her."

"Like who?"

"Like the Serra. She's—her song—she's so lonely, Margret. She's so isolated."

"Adam—"

"You
have
family. You have us. Don't try to be what you're not."

Her laugh was low and shaky. "That's exactly what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to be the Matriarch of Arkosa."

The desert heat was miles away, as was the desert night— but here, at its periphery, heat and cold seeped in along the boundaries that separated the Voyani from scrub, bush, and caravan and the endless ridges of sand, the unfettered howl of wind. Even at a distance, the sound of waiting death unnerved those who understood the nuance of its language.

At night, that nuance was chill and death, but it was a chill replete with life—for in all but the harshest of deserts, the Lady had some purchase. Night plants blossomed with their heavy succulence; small desert mice, the large-eared, tiny foxes, the scaled lizards with serpent's tongues—these found food and society beneath the face of the majestic moon.

When the Arkosan Voyani at last set foot upon the part of the
Voyanne
that led into the desert's heart, they would take their cue from these diminutive desert siblings; they would seek the darkness when the Lady's face was full and bright and clear, but before the lands were too cold, and travel least during the height of the Lord's dominion.

The desert was his.

The life in the desert was hers.

As always, it flourished in her time, and at her whim.

They knew it, the Arkosans. The lone Havallan. The strangers who, with the Matriarch's grudging permission, had made the encampment their home. During the day, the Arkosans mingled as freely as they were allowed with the outsiders, but during the night, when the air took a chilly edge, they retreated.

Some sought shelter, where shelter existed; men and women, children tucked between them or to either side, cuddled in that particular human warmth that could, by dint of affection and the insularity of flesh, deny the cold that waited, an hour at a time, until the dawn gave way to heat.

The night fell on a caravan that had not changed in two days. The shadows cast by wagons, the shadows cast by the fire in the growing twilight, the places at which the children sat—these had become fixed in place.

And being fixed in any place made the Voyani restless— regardless of which family they were born to. The
Voyanne
made its demands. Yollana of the Havalla Voyani, left to her own devices as much by her desire as by her host's, was an uneasy exception to this rule; she was an uneasy exception to most of the rules that, invisible as unshed blood, bound the Voyani to their own.

Kallandras, foreign by appearance, by experience, stood beside the log she had made her uncomfortable home. The Serra Teresa di'Marano sat at her feet, as if to pay court to her. None of the Voyani approached her.

But she was approached, as if she had answers to offer to those who had the power or the audacity to demand them. Jewel ATerafin was circumspect; the man who in theory served her was both more and less so.

The two that were touched by the Lady's darkness did not approach at all, but the Havallan Matriarch was no less aware of their presence; how could she not be? The white-haired, pale-skinned man—if such a word could refer to him—was piercing in his beauty and his obvious disdain. The children did not speak when his shadow crossed their path; the Arkosans fell silent until he had passed, and after he was gone, their words were made of awkward pauses and gaps. Their gestures were more eloquent: they warded themselves against the Lady's dark face.

But the stag, the great horned beast that neither ate nor slept, was worse. He wore animal form the way a god might. He did not speak—but not even Yollana would have said that speech was beyond him. There was an intelligence about his eyes, a disturbing direct gaze that animals did not possess, which spoke of either wisdom or knowledge; possibly both.

These two were the shadows that the woman who called herself ATerafin—although her family's blood was once bound to the
Voyanne
, Yollana was certain of it—cast; they were present when she was present.

Yollana gestured imperiously, as she did all else, to Kallandras. With impeccable tolerance, he chose to understand the gesture, and offered her the few logs of dry wood that remained by the fire's side.

Flame was lapping its way through chill; she could feel the warmth of what appeared, to the naked eye, a meager fire. With the help of the foreign bard, she knelt awkwardly before that meager fire, and murmured a few words. Someone familiar with old Torra would know that she offered the fire thanks. But no one familiar with Yollana would guess that if they did not know the tongue, and old Torra was taught to very, very few.
The old things
, she thought bitterly, as she gave the log to the fire and the fire accepted it.
If we could just leave the old things behind. I would have a daughter who speaks to me. My people might build homes for themselves if they chose; they might continue to follow the open road. My grandchildren might have a chance to
be
children
.

She had never missed youth for her own children. She had been driven by the necessity of raising leaders; of raising a daughter who could defend Havallans beneath the shadows she was certain were lengthening. Yollana had more than a touch of the old gift—
a curse
—and she knew how deep the darkness would get before it abated.

If it ever abated.

What she did not know, what she had never known, was whether or not she would be there to face it. She turned from the unnatural warmth of such a small fire and looked into the heart of the Arkosan camp, where the wagon of the Matriarch, occupied now, was guarded by two heavily dressed men. This was her nightmare: Evallen's fate. Evallen's departure.

Leaving her daughter behind, as Margret had been left, to face the coming of the Enemy they did not name, devoid of experience, devoid of fire, devoid of Heart.

She turned back to the fire. There was something, in the end, about fire's warmth that was compelling, even if it was magically induced. She spoke again to the wood beneath the flame; implored it—if entreaties and her tone of voice could coexist at all—to resist the flame.

"What is she waiting for?" a stranger's voice asked.

Yollana continued with her slow approbation of wood and the thing that consumed it, but she knew two things: that she should not have heard that voice in this inner circle of Voyani heartwood, and that only a man with knowledge of ways long dead could have made himself so heard.

And
that
drove the night chill home as if it were a blade. She gestured to Kallandras again; he offered her his arm. When she took it, her hand was shaking, and she didn't bother to expend the effort to stop it. She also chose to stay within the lee of the circle her fire, invisibly, created.

With a gesture, she opened her ears; the noises of the night came rushing in. Better, she thought, to stoke vanity; better to pretend that the option of discussion was hers and hers alone. And that might have been true had she been another woman.

"Who are you?" she demanded, speaking to Avandar.

"I am the
domicis
of Jewel ATerafin of House Terafin."

The old woman spit.

"Matriarch," the young woman in question said. She bowed, smartly, her unruly hair shuffling onto and off of her forehead. "He does serve me, in his fashion."

"So you believe."

Jewel ATerafin shrugged. "I have more than belief, but I don't have any pressing need to convince you of anything. He asked a question that's reasonable. The Tyr's men
must
be searching for us. They
are
searching for us," she added, her eyes widening slightly, and taking, for just a moment, the appearance of flat, dark glass.

That appearance… she had seen that look take over and transform an expression completely before—but only on the face of one other woman, and her eyes were violet.

Lady, it was a cold night.

Yollana looked back to the fire. "I know," she said flatly.

"You… know?"

"They've been searching for days. We… they suspect that we have at least three things they desire."

"Who is we?"

Yollana snorted. "Don't waste breath and heat asking questions you know won't get answers. It irritates the elderly."

The younger woman was clearly not a ruler—but she was an authority, judging by the compressed line of her lips. Her so-called servant raised a brow in the direction of his mistress, but she did not condescend to notice it. "Very well, Matriarch. What three things?"

The old woman snorted again, and turned her back. "You lose intelligence when you leave the
Voyanne
, girl, gifted or no.
Think
."

The domicis shrugged when the young woman glared at him. It was a sudden glare, an instant swiveling of head and narrowing of eye. Under different circumstances, Yollana would have found it amusing.

"Never mind," Jewel said, after a moment had passed and her expression had rippled and changed yet again. "If you know we're being hunted, why aren't we moving?"

"It may have escaped your notice, but I am not the Matriarch of Arkosa."

"It may," the younger woman snapped, "have escaped yours as well, given the events of the last half-week."

Silence, as always, was profoundly less giving than what occurred when it was broken. There were a hundred ways to interpret a silence, perhaps a thousand.

They waited.

Yollana let the moment stretch, and broke it with a dry, dry chuckle. She reached into her pocket for her pipe and looked, piercing now, at the self-titled servant, this
domicis
of the North. But she spoke to the mistress. "You're wasted where you are, girl; you have what it takes to walk the
Voyanne
with a straight back."

"You'll pardon me if my life's ambition is not to be hunted like a rat in the. desert."

Again, the corners of the old woman's lips shifted in what might have been the start of a smile. But the smile dimmed as she contemplated fire, seeing—as did all young gazers at fire—her fears and her desires flickering in a dance within the heart of flame. "Young Margret—let these words never leave my fire—erred in judgment, and she is being judged as harshly as only a new Matriarch can be; she lives with her mistake.

"But her people are nervous. The desert waits. She—if I am not mistaken—will not take them into the heart of our oldest secrets without a sign."

"A… sign."

"A sign. The Lady is watching. It is the Lady who judges now."

"You didn't even blink."

Avandar Gallais stared out at the stretch of sand that contained the harshest leg of the
Voyanne
: its beginning and—in story, in legend, in weary dream—its end. Jewel did not recognize the expression on his face, but she could pretend that, in the blue-gray of dawn light, she couldn't see it.

It didn't matter; she could feel it keenly. Her arm, when she looked at its momentarily exposed skin, was glittering like jeweled metal. Or scale. She didn't like it.

"No more do I," he said.

"Please stop that."

"Why, ATerafin?"

"You know why."

"It makes you uncomfortable?" His smile was thin. "So does the decision you offered The Terafin before we left to travel South."

"That decision was my choice," she said evenly. "And I'll thank you not to compare them."

"And had you been given the choice, would you have made it? Or would you have argued with me, and perished?"

"I guess we'll never know."

"I would guess you already do. There is no doubt at all in my mind."

"And there ever is?" She turned to leave, and he caught her upper arm. She had always realized he was not a small man, but the evidence of palm against cloth, the way his fingers closed like a brace around the whole of her arm, was itself like the mark against her skin.

"Let me offer you advice, ATerafin, which you will no doubt accept with your usual grace and intelligence."

Sarcasm was comfortable; she accepted it. But she noticed that he did not release her.

"What has happened has happened. Accept it. Use it as the tool that it could be; become adept with it."

"Use—" She looked at the arm he held.

His voice changed; became something that was transfixing, compelling in a way that his voice had never been.
Yes. Just like this. Use it. Work with it. It will not go away
. She could not ignore it. But she was Jewel; she tried anyway.

What had Rymark ATerafin said so long ago it was almost a different lifetime?
You cannot always be the girl who says "No". You are no longer a child
. As if, she thought, childhood was as simple as that. As if her childhood had been a time of innocence, devoid of the violence and threats of violence that lurked beneath a more polished, civilized surface in a great House.