Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (68 page)

She had always had a fondness for stringed instruments. But this instrument had a voice that she knew as well as she knew her own; it had never sung for her.

No. That wasn't true. It had offered her its music time and again, but always in the hands of the Northern bard from Senniel College, that mythical residence that produced men who could speak with the voice—the terrible, the relentless voice—of the wind.

She closed her eyes.

Freed from the tyranny of sight, she could hear the rise and fall of reverberating notes that began in her earliest memories.

Kallandras.

What did she remember of the night she had first met him? Vision faded. In the gray-black cocoon of unhurried repose, the decade had robbed her of images. She was an intelligent woman; she could reconstruct what must have been seen by her four-year-old eyes with the precision of an architect—but she could not imbue those images with color or life. A fleeting smile was frozen in time, bleached of anything but the rawest of attributes by memory, her truest impression of Lissa, her favorite of all her father's wives.

However, when she entered the darkness, she shed the need for sight; she was left with the only sensation that scarred her memory. Sound. The first time she had heard this lute, during the festivities of the Festival of the Moon, she had not seen it. Nor had she seen the man who wielded it, deriving strength from the music he both accompanied and invoked. But she had heard his voice, and while the other wives spoke of his face or his form, his exquisite manners, the honor bestowed upon him—and he, a
foreigner
—by the simple fact of his command performance in the presence of Tyrs, she had thought of the quality of his voice.

It was devoid of emotion, of anger or bitterness or avarice, of love or pain or hope. It was the
only
voice she had heard that contained such mystery, such complete privacy. And the prologue to the story that voice told was the strains of the instrument that sat, silent, in her lap.

He had not carried his lute when he had come to the harem the night that Lissa en'Marano lay bleeding to death, the child she carried inside dead, but still able to hurt her. He had not played the lute when he had finally lifted the veil from his voice and had sung—if such a wild, terrible thing could be called song—with the Lady's darkest voice: he had summoned the wind.

He had saved Lissa's life by forcing a recalcitrant healer to heal her. Not more, not less.

And Lissa?

She had chosen to leave the harem—and Diora—forsaking everything she had been given in return for the love of a man who had initially refused to be polluted by the act of healing a concubine. Would loss have been less painful had Lissa been left to die rather than deliberately choosing to abandon them?

Yes.

But would she change the outcome, had she the choice? Could she silence the bard before he spoke with the Lady's power, and allow Lissa to die the death that her own mother had died over sixteen years past?

She remembered the voices and sounds of the women, her mothers in the harem of her father. Pain, terror, fear, and bitter, bitter anger. All of this trapped beneath the surface of inadequate words, the surface of well-trained voice. Only the Serra Teresa had blended resignation into that terrifying mix of raw emotion; only her voice seemed to bespeak, to force, calm.

Of course
, the adult thought, as she spoke to the memories of the child.
She has the voice
.

But knowledge of that gift did not—could not—destroy the power of that memory.

Could she listen to those voices again and feel no pain, no desire to ease pain? Could she listen to those voices as they faced the inevitable, and accepted the death of a woman they all loved?

Her hands touched the strings' that faced her; her fingers slid over them, resting with enough force to test tension. No sound escaped. She could hear Lissa's voice clearly. Alana's. Illana's.

The past was made of voices such as these.

Where were you, Kallandras?

She plucked the first note; listened to the reverberations of string die in the stillness. This was
Salla
. Of all instruments, this was his—the man whose voice had been a haven, an oasis, a thing free of the strain and terror, the incomprehensible passion, of the rest of the speaking world.

Where were you the night of
—

She plucked another, and another, slowly shifting the position of both bowl and neck as they rested in her lap. The music caught her, as it always did; it spoke for her, freeing her from the delicate cage of words, a Serra's words.

But because she was cursed, the music turned, again and again, to the night she could not give the substance of word. Or confession.

Her eyes snapped open because she needed reality, she needed the here and the now that voice and sound alone could never provide.

Across from her, one knee in the dirt, was Adam. His expression was unguarded, his forehead creased, his brows drawn slightly in. She was familiar with the look, although it took her a moment to recognize it because she had not expected to see it on any Voyani face.

She had deliberately invoked such a feeling in the past, without remorse and without pride. It served her purpose in her father's—or her husband's—court. But she found that she did not want a pity that she had not, through artifice, requested. Not from a child.

Not from a child.

* * *

Kallandras stood beneath the growing depths of night-blue sky. The brightest of stars were gathering light and strength; the palest had yet to make themselves seen. The air had gone from pleasant to cool, but it was not yet cold enough to kill the unwary, or the unfortunate.

It would be, in scant hours.

His curiosity had led him here, and he watched as Adam approached the Serra Diora. Watched as Salla left his youthful hands and entered the Serra's, his clumsiness giving way to her grace as if such a surrender were inevitable.

She plucked a single string. The sound, the perfect note, grew softer, louder, softer, until it was swallowed by the intensity of her silence. In the gathering shadow, a lamp was lit. It surprised him, because the lamp was not Voyani in origin; the Voyani carried torches into the Sea of Sorrows, and they lit fires, but not fires as contained as this.

But the lamp was carried by seraf hands. It was set down, a few feet from the Serra's bent lap, where it might cast long shadows in the muted illumination of orange-and-yellow light. She did not speak. Without the subtle nuance of her voice, even Kallandras found it difficult to gauge her thoughts; she existed in the perfect privacy imposed, within and without, upon the Serras of the High Court.

But the boy across from her had known no such life, and when Kallandras saw his expression, he winced. Still, there was no danger here that he could avert by intrusion; he had his answer.

He said, "I've never been alone in my life."

She did not understand why he was speaking. The words were clearly an overture, but an overture to a conversation whose existence made no sense.

He said, "Even after my mother's death—when Margret told the rest of us about it—people came to
me
. Because I'm the one they thought she loved."

The night was cold. She was cold. She could no longer separate the sensations. If she waited long enough, it would become so cold he would have to leave. Nights spent at desert's edge had not prepared her for the desert. The day itself, its terrible heat a dangerous burden, could not prepare her for the night. The lamp, she thought, as she defleeted his words with her impenetrable silence, would outlast them both if it was allowed to burn.

It was a waste of light and perhaps heat; she could not feel any warmth the flame gave.

The lute was silent. Her hands rested beneath its curved bowl.

"You wouldn't need the instrument if you could speak without it."

Against all reason, she was drawn into conversation with a boy who was in all ways a stranger. "I can speak without it, but I find I have nothing to say."

He stared at the lamplight, at the lute, at the man who stood paces away, waiting her word or her gesture. "No one spoke to Margret. One of my aunts slapped her. Because she knew that my mother had died, and she told no one. They expect her to be able to bear
any
burden, though. Because in the end, she'll have to."

"Why are you telling me this? Surely this is a Voyani matter."

He smiled. In the shadows, she could see the contours of his cheeks. "Maybe because I can't tell Margret," he said. "And maybe it's because I couldn't say this to any Arkosan."

"And so?"

He did not meet her gaze, although it was a moment before she realized that her gaze was fixed upon him. Night had fallen everywhere; it had descended within her. The boldness of anger and fear and exhaustion took root there. The Lady's hand was
so
cold as it rested upon her brow.

"There are some words that need to be said. Don't you believe that?"

"No."

"Oh." He shuffled slightly from foot to foot, his body beginning the shuddering dance of the cold. "I believe it. Why else would we have been given words when animals weren't? We were meant to use them."

"Animals were not granted words," she replied, letting the night into her voice to expel it, "because if they were, we would only feel guilty when we led them to the slaughter."

He was not so easily put off. "Why? We lead our own to slaughter every day without blinking."

"Not you. You don't."

She thought he would ask. If she could. She braced herself for the question.

But he was what he seemed to be: a gentle man who had not yet escaped the periphery of childhood completely. He did not ask.

Silence settled across the sleeping Voyani encampment, broken by the crackle of scant flame. The Arkosans had chosen to camp between the folded walls of a riverbed that had long since surrendered water and life to the Lord. The worst of the wind—and the wind was there—passed above where their tents were huddled. The wagons had been brought as close to the ground as they would come for their desert sojourn. Donatella had told her that they would touch the ground again only when they returned; to touch ground here, in the desert, was considered an ill omen.

She sat with her knees against that ground, and understood why.

Lady
. The night was so cold she looked for no mercy.

"She would talk," he continued, as if there had been no pause, no break. "She would have talked to anyone brave enough to go to her."

"Adam." She lifted the lute from her lap. Held it out.

He stared at it blankly. "Yes?"

"You are shivering. It is cold. I have no words to offer you."

"I didn't mean the words for me," he said, and she could not tell if the flush along his skin was due to cold or embarrassment. Little enough of his face was now exposed.

"You must have spoken with her. You must have offered to let her speak."

He snorted. It was the first confident sound he had made, and it changed the texture of his voice, adding a touch of age, like a fine patina, to the depth of his youth. "To Margret,
I
am my mother's baby. I am her baby brother. Like all of the Voyani women, she wants to protect the children from pain and suffering. She wants us to be fed, to be clothed, and to be put behind the lines of war when those lines are drawn. In sand," he said, looking at his feet as they hopped against the ground. "Or across fertile ground.

"I am the only person she could not speak to. Because to speak to me of pain means she would have to tell me— honestly, and not the way the Onas tell the children in their keep—that pain exists." His gaze became distant again. "That loneliness waits for us when we stop being small enough for the lap."

"Do you miss your mother?"

"Yes." Just that. A matter-of-fact word. She heard what lay beneath its surface: loss. But stronger than that, a fierce, desperate pride. In her. About her.

"I killed mine."

He stepped forward, and then stepped back, both movements wider than his awkward, stuttering attempts to keep warm. "Serra?"

"Yes?"

"I won't take the lute back. I won't ask you what you meant. But—"

"But?"

"No one went to Margret, and no one will."

She nodded.

"No one went to you."

And froze.

"I believe there are words that need to be said because they're too horrible, too angry, to swallow, to keep here," he continued, touching his chest with one shaking hand while retreating from the anger that she had displayed in that single curt sentence. "And I meant it. But I also believe that there are words that need to be shared."

She clutched the lute, lifting it from her lap as if to throw it at his retreating chest, for he backed away from her the way one backs away from a wild, terrified creature, a creature who has wandered by circumstance into the lands of men, and seeks only a way out.

But the lute fell. She watched as he left; watched until she could no longer see his form between the cluttered ground of tents and shadows and distant fire.

"You are not a child," she said softly, but in a voice that would carry no matter how far away he had chosen to run. To herself, quietly, she added,
Your sister deprives herself of a strength by refusing to see all that you are; she is a fool
.

She was surprised, as she slowly rose, to feel the bitter twinge of envy. To hear again, in the faltering sweetness of a stranger's voice, some echo, some shadow, of a dead wife's.

"Ramdan," she said, because she had to say something, "I am… tired. It is time that we retire."

The seraf nodded quietly. She had walked past him, had bent again to ground, for the flat of the tent did not allow easy access to those standing, when she froze.

She looked back at the man who waited, who always waited, his form perfect, his expression neutral.

And she wondered what words he kept to himself. Wondered if he, like the boy, felt that there were some words that must be spoken. Wondered what he would say, should she ask him what they were.