Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (66 page)

"Don't you ever think about it, 'Lena?" He was standing within the bounds of space she considered her own. She swallowed. Let him be.

"Think about it?"

"Think about what we used to have. It's here," he added, his arm swinging out in a wide arc. "Here, or there, or there—the sands contain it. The secrets of the Matriarchs. The blood of Arkosa.

"But
I
have that blood. You have it. He has it," he added, jabbing at a random figure who was standing close to where the Serra Diora knelt, beneath the cover of canvas. She squinted. It was Andreas, the youngest of Nicu's men.

She shrugged. "So?"

"Do you think, in that place, do you think, in
Arkosa
—"

"Nicu,
enough
!"

"Am I not even to say the name? There is
no one listening
. This is our place. The clans don't come here. The end of the
Voyanne
lies in the sands."

Elena swallowed. "I don't know who told you that—"

"Listen to the stories we were told as children. Everything about our lives tells me that. This," he said, beating the left side of his chest with the flat of curved fingers, "tells me. We lived.
Lived
. We had more power than the clansmen dream of. And in those cities, do you think the Matriarch slapped our hands when we—"

"Yes?" She could not keep the desert night from the word; she had almost lost the desire to try.

"The women didn't rule," he told her.

"No.
That's
why there are no cities."

"That's what we've been told."

"And you don't believe it? Is that it? You can say that to me? You? The only person in Arkosa who has
ever
carried a weapon forged by the Lord's servants—"

He slapped her.

Without thinking, she slapped him back.

In the wake of those two very personal acts of violence, violence was forsaken; the echoes of the sound of flesh against flesh died into a barren, silent stillness.

Just as suddenly as it had come, the anger slid, like liquid, between the clenched fingers of Nicu's hands. His eyes widened, as if he could see himself mirrored in her unblinking stare. "'Lena—"

Wearily, angrily, she said, "it comes to this, time and again. Nicu, we
all
serve the Matriarch. Even Margret. Especially Margret."

"She is the Matriarch."

She saw him clearly, as child. "You think that means she gets to make all the rules?"

"Doesn't it?"

"No. The rules were made for her. She walks the thin road, the
Voyanne
at its harshest, and she does it for us. Can't you see that?"

He caught her arms—the movement a movement she hated. "I try," he told her. "I try because it's important to you. Elena—"

"Don't, Nicu."

But he bent his head toward her, covering the distance between their heights. His lips pressed against hers; she felt the line of his teeth behind them, and tried to take a step back; the hard, cracked dirt pressed up against the heel of her boot. He circled her shoulder blades with his arms.

She pushed him; he held on. His tongue slid between her open lips and she controlled a very visceral urge to bite it and be free. But she became completely, utterly still. She gave him nothing.

After a moment, he pulled back, his eyes unblinking, bright. "'Lena—"

"Nicu, don't ever do that again."

For a moment his grip tightened, and then he released her. "I—"

"Not now, Nicu."

"We should talk—"

"Not now." She had to leave him. She had to leave him because it was either that or kill him, one way or the other.

But she heard him shout her name, and she cringed with each syllable.

There was something pathetic about sexual desire. Lord Ishavriel was not above vanity; he desired a work that was worthy of his intellectual endeavor. This? Were it not for the difficulty posed by the City itself, any of the lesser demons—
any—
could have competently extracted, from the young man, all that needed to be extracted.

He waited, as patiently as any lord waited, for the woman to free herself from an embrace that was clearly unwelcome. The depth of her revulsion amused him, although it was a pale thing compared to the emotions evoked in the Hells.

The heat of the passing day and the cool of the coming night meant nothing to him, but he paused a moment at the glory of the cloudless, untainted sky, the clarity of the sky's color. Here, in the heat, one could truly believe the sky was ablaze.

He watched the motion of sun toward horizon, lost in the awareness of the beauty of its fall, his memory taking the ephemeral and giving it a very personal, very singular immortality. The mortals were forgotten; the Northern Wastes distanced. In his youth he had watched every species of flower lay itself open, petal by petal, leaf by leaf, in its march from bud to death. He had not had the patience to watch all of the trees grow, although those older had. He had thought, in his impatience to grasp the rougher, cruder forms of power, that one tree looked much like another in its unfurling.

He reviewed this thought, this memory. Clearly, he had been young, in perhaps as feckless a way as the man and the woman who stood, separated by their inability to speak a simple sentence. But immortality gave one a chance to mature.

He had played games with youthful mortals in his youth; they were pleasant memories. But to play them now diminished the significance of everything that had passed between that youth and this maturity.

The air, caught between the heat of day and the ice of night, was beginning its lazy movement; he could feel it against his upturned cheek.

It was not the sensation he remembered. And he was
Kialli;
memory was all that he was. No humiliation, no defeat, no loss, could deprive him of his past. Nothing could make him turn a blind eye to what he had been. But he had a capacity for anger that was matched only by a capacity for the desire for vengeance. He
knew
what had been lost now.

His form was fluid; all demonic flesh was, in some sense. It responded to magic and will, to power and the demands of power. It served the same role that garments once had. Perhaps, when he had been alive, his contempt for the merely sexual would have been informed by some recognition of the desire.

But now the touch of wind was distant; the touch of a palm, distant; the feeling of velvet, silk, heat, and the chill that comes with the anticipation of heat—distant except in memory. Everything displaced by the simple expedience of an eternity of choice.

Isladar.

The
Kialli
had awakened. Perhaps—just perhaps—Lord Isladar had done them the favor of pointing out what they did not suspect of themselves: that they slept at all.

How did that serve his plans? What
were
his plans? Not dominion, and not power.

What else was there?

Treacherous, traitorous, the answer came quietly, like the desert night had:
in the Hells, nothing. But we are not in the Hells
.

He drew breath. Was surprised at just how much of a difference there was between the cold, cold winter of the Northern Wastes and the dry of desert sand. The one, braeing, the other a prelude to the hush before the desert life— such as it was—peered out into darkness. There was a scent here of succulents, of the rare plants and flowers that cowered around the surface of the desert's few natural rocks. There were no people in either environment save those who were wary visitors: the much-cozened human courtiers of the Shining Court, in their furs and silks, to the North, and the Voyani, armed with water, with tenting, with the burden of each other's company in the South. That was all. As visitors, they would come and they would depart, leaving no roots, and little trace of their origin or their intent.

Like jackals, Lord Ishavriel thought, the
Kialli
were sent from barren land to barren land, errand runners for the Lord.

He stood a long moment, the sky turning above him, before he realized that both the woman and the man had departed, and his errand was still undone.

Isladar.

He returned to the safety of desert, brooding now, twisted in the words and the images that contained memories, defining them, redefining them. He took care, as he left the encampment, to shroud his passage; there were those with vision who knew how to look, and those with instinct whose response was more visceral, more dependable.

The night had not fallen. The sky was still a blaze of crimson, gold, burnt orange, the colors deep and almost crystal in their clarity. Breath—not his own—hung in the air, like a thin imitation of cloud.

The serpent was resting.

You hunger
, he told the creature.

The creature stirred. The scales of its long neck reflected the sunset, breaking it with the lines of overlapping curves.

Soon.

Kallandras had been listening to the awkward shuffling of a young Voyani man for ten minutes. He could not see him clearly for all of those ten; the unannounced stranger had chosen to stand between the gap in two of the large family tents, shoving his hands in and out of his sash and rearranging his footing for most of that time. He was wise enough, however, to believe that he knew his audience; he did not speak a word out loud until he was ready to approach.

"Uh… Uh, Kallandras… uh…"

Kallandras of Senniel College smiled; the smile was genuine, and he kept it to himself, smoothing all lines from the corners of mouth and eyes as he turned to face the young man who stood just outside the circle a campfire's light would trace across the ground. Although he was not a child by Voyani standards, he was not—quite—adult. Youth clung to him in many ways, some more obvious, some less. He had not yet reached his full height, his chest and his shoulders were slender although it was clear his frame was large, and his expression was devoid of the guarded caution that spoke of long, or bitter, experience. He was an earnest young man.

He invoked the same protective streak in many of his people that the children did. No wonder Adam of the Arkosa Voyani was so loved and watched over; he was willing to express himself in a way that made him seem vulnerable—and as they did all things both fleeting and beautiful, his people treasured his youth.

"Adam of Arkosa," the Northern bard said, bowing. "Does the Matriarch require my presence?"

"The Matriarch? Oh—" His skin was the same darkened bronze that typified the Voyani who lived upon the open road, but he still had the capacity to darken. "No," he said hastily. "No, Margret didn't send me." He took a step forward, squared his shoulders, and stepped more firmly into the clearing.

"What brings you here?"

"I—I—well—"

The bard waited patiently. It was his nature to speculate; to guess at what might be said, what might be asked, and what effect he might have by offering any of a handful of answers. But it was also his nature to know when to wait, and to wait with a semblance of patience that was never inattentive.

In all of his projections of the boy's motivation, the truth played little part.

"I—well—you aren't using your—your instrument and I—I wondered if you'd mind if—if I borrowed it."

For the first time in many years, Kallandras was truly surprised. Surprise did not deprive him of words, but it momentarily robbed him of expression; the lines of his face slid into a studied, cautious neutrality. "You wish to borrow my lute?"

Silence. Adam was young, but not completely stupid. If he had not understood the fact that his request was significant, he would not have struggled for so long to find the courage to make the request. But having found the courage, he now understood that the request was more than significant; it was personal.

The Voyani were very, very careful about accruing personal debt.

"I have not said no, Adam, but I confess I am curious."

Adam's skin darkened further.

Kallandras held his lute's case carefully. "Understand that you are borrowing a friend," he said softly and without artifice. He rarely spoke so simply and with such direct meaning; he was ruefully aware that although he could be immune to Adam's deceptively youthful aura if he chose to, his first inclination was not to make that choice.

"You brought your lute with you."

"Yes."

"But the desert heat—"

"Yes. But it was… specially made; it resists the ill effects of most weather. I have never been in more than a squall at sea; I would not test her against a gale if I were given a choice. But I believe that even if
I
did not survive a sea storm, she would.

"I am not worried that you might damage her; short of fire or deliberate malice—neither of which you wield in any quantity—she will be safe in your hands." He paused. "Do you play?"

"N-no."

Kallandras looked not at Adam, but at the lute that sat safely in a battered case. He wondered briefly—and for no reason at all—if any bard's case was ever anything other than battered; it didn't matter as long as the song of the lute itself was preserved.

"Yes," he said.

"Y-yes?"

"Yes, you may borrow Salla." He placed emphasis on the name for the boy's sake. Or perhaps not; he was vaguely aware that in his youth, he would not have been especially concerned if he had broken or lost any instrument—even this one. That had changed.

He wondered what that young man might have said to him, had he met the man he had become—not quite assassin, and not quite bard. Wondered, and knew. The young were not forgiving.

Adam still hesitated, and Kallandras quietly opened the lid of the case. The hinges needed oiling; the case seemed to speak in quiet creaks as he removed Salla. Almost reflexively, he ran his fingers over the strings. He was curious. "Do you know how to hold her?"

"Yes. Uh… no."

The bard's smile deepened. "Come here," he said, as if speaking to a much younger child. "Do not pull the strings; never lift her, or any instrument, by the strings; they'll only lose their tune and make that much more work for their player. Put your hands here, beneath the bowl, and here, upon the neck."