Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (69 page)

She was weary enough that she wanted to ask, but she knew that by asking such a question she would forever change the geography of the life upon which they stood, and she needed the constancy of that ground beneath her.

But she was aware, as she slid into the heavy silks meant for sleep, that her inability to change the way she spoke with this seraf was not, in the end, unlike Margret's inability to see her brother as a support.

More than that, she chose to leave until morning.

Heart or no, Margret of Arkosa knew they were almost at their destination. A day's journey, maybe two, and they would be above it, their footsteps tracing a thin trail in the desert that would be wiped clear by wind, sand, and time as it always was.

A day's journey, two, and she would stand in the same spot where her mother, her mother's mother, and all of the mothers who had come before in a tenuous but unbroken line, had stood for the first time. There, she would have to perform her first true obeisance, offer herself for the first real judgment.

Beneath the deck, the dry hollow of a winding riverbed sheltered her people; the wind's voice was unkind this night, and she had chosen to shelter in the wadi.

Wait. She was not good at waiting.

You'll have to learn
. Her mother's voice. Evallen's voice.

Is there anything I don't have to learn!

Manners.

Her mother's voice was so clear it was almost a comfort. She wondered what she would hear of it when she finally stood upon the soil of Arkosa itself. Wondered what she might hear when—if, a nagging doubt said—she entered. She could not know. Although she had accompanied her mother on this journey a handful of times, she had never seen what waited—what truly waited—at journey's end. No one had. Only the Matriarch walked into the desert marked as Arkosan. Only the Matriarch knew where the grave of the City lay.

Or only the Matriarch had.

This time, a stranger held the Heart of Arkosa around her perfect, pale neck. And this time, she thought bitterly, when she retraced her mother's steps, a stranger would accompany her and be accorded the honor that she, living daughter of a Matriarch, had never been accorded.

She would enter Arkosa.

"Matriarch?"

She looked down from her perch in front of the cabin. There, in the faded colors of sunset, stood the Serra Teresa di'Marano, her face obscured by the layers of cloth the Voyani wore to protect themselves from wind and sun. But her voice and her posture—like those of her arrogant, icy niece's—were unmistakable.

"Serra," she said curtly. "You should be inside."

"And you, if I am not mistaken."

"The Matriarch doesn't sleep," Margret said, offering a slight smile, "until the rest of the Arkosans are in bed."

"Then comfort yourself, Matriarch; for those not abed are not Arkosans, and therefore not your burden."

Margret shrugged. "And why are you here?"

The silence was just long enough. The Serra Teresa smiled almost grimly and nodded. "I am here at the behest of Yollana of the Havalla Voyani. She… wishes to set… Havallan protections around the perimeter of the encampment."

Margret frowned, leaning forward into the hands that gripped the half-height rail. "Why? I mean, why now?"

"She did not say. And I have learned not to second-guess a Voyani Matriarch."

"She couldn't come herself?"

"Not easily. The air is cold; she… has had trouble walking."

"Which means she's basically crawling or being carried."

The Serra said nothing. "What kind of protection?"

"I don't know, Matriarch. I am not sure she would answer me if I asked. But you? If you asked, she would answer."

But Margret frowned. "Why now?" she repeated, but to herself. She was aware that Yollana was reputed to have the strength of blood not seen in Matriarchs for generations; that she was gifted with true sight and true vision.

She took a breath. Exhaled it; watched the cloud hang in the still air. "Yes," she said. "Tell her yes, and with thanks, my thanks, for the effort. Tell her that I know it is not the custom for the Havallans and the Arkosans to work together in such a fashion—but it is time. The Lord is watching."

"Well?" the old woman's voice was a crackling, sharp bite of sound.

"As you guessed, Matriarch. She accepted your offer with as much grace as I have seen her accept anything."

"Meaning," the old woman said with a bark of a laugh, and an exhalation of pipe smoke, "she didn't spit."

The Serra's smile was genuine, almost rueful. She failed to comment, but said instead, "She wanted to know why you chose this evening to begin such protections."

"What did you say?"

"That I didn't know."

"Aie, Teresa, you play a game." The old woman spit loose, dry bits of leaf from her mouth along with the words.

"Perhaps," the Serra said quietly. "And perhaps I pay a debt to Evallen of Arkosa. Her daughter has instinct. Let her use it. Let her make a judgment here, when a mistake will not be so costly."

"You trust me," the old woman said quietly.

"In this, yes."

"But not in everything?"

"No more than you would trust me, old friend." She bowed. "What must I gather?"

"In the tunnel? Nothing. I have everything I need. Sleep, if you can."

The Serra nodded quietly, but she did not move.

"What is it?"

"Were you truly given no other vision, Yollana? Was your vision entirely made of the images of the servants of the Lord?"

"Not entirely, no," Yollana answered. The cracks of age were smoothed out of her voice; the ice of night replaced them. "We are almost there, and I can tell you now that no Matriarch of Havalla has ever set foot upon that soil. I am… not entirely certain… that I will be welcome.

"I saw glimpses, Teresa. Of things ancient, things Arkosan. I will not speak of them."

The Serra nodded quietly. "And nothing of the Voyani? Nothing of Margret, or her heir? Nothing of the fate of those who follow?"

The old woman, canny old woman, looked across the ashes of the incense she had burned. She did not answer, and that was answer enough.

Because she knew what the Serra would hear.

Margret did not walk on the ground. She did not sleep there. It had been her intent to find company among her kin, but she found, to her great surprise, that she was drawn to the heights, and even when the wagon—if she could call something squat and rounded that had been stripped of wheels a wagon—was brought close to ground, she had no desire to leave it. Huddled between the great clay jugs that became lighter with each passing day, she found a place for herself that defied the cold night howl of wind.

There was no room to live within the living space she had known for much of her life; all of that space had been given over to the simple fact of Arkosa's survival. In the night, she would lift her hands and run callused palms against the rough surface of baked clay, which was as close as she would come to touching the water, aside from drinking it. She used the sand to bathe, as she had been taught by Evallen of Arkosa many years ago.

Blankets were wedged beneath her back, blankets around her feet, and blankets beneath the curve of her folded arms. In the dark, she would remove her boots and the mask that protected her from sunlight and sand-laden wind, and she would lie, eyes open, staring at the shadows above until the wind's voice became simple noise, akin to heartbeat or breath. Sometimes that took minutes.

Sometimes it took hours.

And sometimes it did not happen.

Listen to the wind
, her mother once told her.
While the others fear it or shun it, listen to its voice
.

But it speaks of death.

Yes. And only death. But sometimes knowing which death you face is your best
—
or only
—
chance of avoiding it
.

She had been silent then. Evallen had never been a patient teacher, and when Margret was slow to understand a lesson, her mother's tongue would grow increasingly sharp.

What if
, she had said, weighing the cost of asking the question with the need she felt for the answer,
the death you hear is not your own
?

What
if?
It will almost
never
be your own. Did I raise such a stupid daughter? You are Arkosa. When you hear the wind speak about the death of your family, you act quickly. Arkosa is all that you are
.

No
, she thought, unwinding herself from her uncomfortable, cramped makeshift bed.
It is not all that I am. It is all that you were
.

She rose. She had time to grab her boots; time to fumble with the mask that would provide little protection against the night's chill.

The air
, she thought.
Something in the air
.

Something other than the ice that made the walls of her throat close and touch. She could see the breath that hung in clouds before her face; her mother had once called it the smoke from a human fire. She ordered the wagon to rise, and it obeyed, leaving the corpse of a riverbed rapidly beneath it.

The winds were strong. She braced herself; felt it through four layers of cloth. Something in the air.

Lady.

"Matriarch."

She knew the voice instantly. Echoes of its song still reverberated in a place that had encased certain memories in Northern glass, preserving them whole for inspection days, months, years after they had passed into history—no matter how much she might otherwise want to bury them.

She had no way of answering, which was just as well.

"Matriarch."
Then,
"Margret."

She turned in the direction of the voice; the ship turned with her, so much a part of her she need utter no command. Beneath her, in a darkness no longer interrupted by torches or the single central fire they had been able to carry wood for, she saw by starlight; by the interrupted face of the moon.

The Serra Diora stood before her tent, one hand outstretched. Although she was as heavily clothed—and masked—as Margret, there was something about the curve of her arm, the lift of her shoulder, the tilt of her chin, that would never, ever be natural to an Arkosan.

"I am sorry to wake you,"
she said.

Margret frowned.

"… if indeed you slept at all."

And smiled, the corners of her lips turning up almost reflexively. 

"But the Heart of Arkosa is burning."

The moment she heard the words, she felt their truth. She hesitated—or thought she did—but the wagon itself had already begun its descent, negotiating the still air above the peaked tops of small tents to the steady rhythm of her mumbled curses. The wagon was not meant to fly so close to her people.

There was no space to bring it to ground, had she desired to; there was space to stop, to cast a moon shadow, above the sleeping members of her family. Adam's tent. Ona Tamara's. Stavos.

She stopped above the Serra's.

"I can't land," she said, aware of the flat, thin quality of her voice in comparison to the voice that had brought her here.

"I… see that. It is not necessary." The Serra hesitated, staring at the underside of the wagon; it was within reach of her arm if she raised it.

"Can you climb?"

"I don't know," the Serra replied. "It was not one of the skills that was valued by my husband's clan."

Margret chuckled.

The Serra turned to look over her shoulder at the tent whose flaps were motionless in the wind shelter of the riverbed. Hard to imagine that water had once coursed between the runnels in hard-baked earth.

Hard, but not impossible.

Margret shrugged; she lost sight of the Serra as she rummaged in the darkness, with hands growing quickly numb, for the familiar rough feel of heavy twine. Rope. She held it in her hands, tugged it, felt it abrade skin.

She knew she was not the most perceptive of people. Any emotion that was not obvious, any struggle that was not offered openly for her inspection, any conflict that did not cause conflict for her had never been much of a concern. Subtleties escaped her; they had never been as relevant to her life as wielding a weapon, maintaining a wagon, feeding the children.

Her mother had had the sense to point out that some of these nuances, some of these problems,
would
be Margret's, given time to fester. So Margret had grudgingly learned to recognize all of the variations of anger. Because anger, unchecked, undetected, led to death, and it would be her job to either prevent death among the Arkosans, or to selectively cause the ones that couldn't be prevented.

But she wasn't naturally gifted. She had learned the intricacies of anger only when she fully accepted that anger was a weakness she possessed; that when she gave anger free rein, she did things that her mother later regretted. Evallen, in turn, made sure that Margret
really
regretted what she'd done. You could do many things as the daughter of the Matriarch, but you did not embarrass your mother with impunity.

Once she could accept that anger was a flaw and not a right—and she could only barely accept it, and there were whole weeks where the acceptance made no sense—the rest had been simple. The weakness that she despised in others she accepted as simple reflection. And she understood herself.

Fear had been harder. Anger was easy to accept and to own. It might be a liability, but it was also a weapon, a shield, in certain circumstances an act of strength. But fear? She loathed it. To admit to fear in any public way was an act of humiliation and surrender.

Of course. When your people are afraid, they look to you
. Her mother's voice. Following those words, she could feel the dim ghost of her mother's swift, open palm.
But if you can't name your own fears, if you can't understand what they force you to, you'll be a piss-poor Matriarch. And no daughter of
mine is
going to fail as a Matriarch, is that understood
?

Later, cheeks stinging, she had stormed out of her mother's wagon, ignoring Evallen's hoarse voice, her angry invective. No one else paid any attention to it either; they were inured to the sound of her irritation.