Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (70 page)

But Adam often followed her.

She doesn't mean it.

Doesn't mean it?

Doesn't mean any of it. She tells you to pay attention to fear. Pay attention to hers.

Hers
? Margret's laugh was bitter; she felt a trace of it between clenched teeth, although it had been a few years.

Three. Adam had been so young then. So young.
What fears does she have? There's nothing she can't do. Nothing she's afraid of
.

He had stood at her back, shuffling in that awkward way • that she hated as he tried to choose between caution and honesty (or cowardice and courage).
She's afraid of you
, he said at last.

Of me?. Then why is it
my
face that bears the handprints
?

She doesn't know how to tell you she's afraid. She's afraid you'll be more afraid than you already are
. He paused.
So this is how she speaks
.

Then let her speak to someone else.

He shrugged.
She doesn't like to waste her words. You're the only person important enough to make her this crazy.

Adam was patient.

She's hit you.

She hits everyone. It's not the same
. Perhaps patience wasn't the right word. It didn't occur to him, most times, to
be
impatient. He lived in a world that she could barely see. Sometimes that world was a world of people who looked like the ones she knew, but had nothing else in common with them. Sometimes it was stranger than that, He had a profound sense of wonder, a sense of the other that was only invoked in Margret when Evallen taught her the ceremonies of the Matriarchs, and sometimes not even then; Margret was practical by nature.

When she walked the
Voyanne
, both of her feet were on the ground; when she traveled in the Matriarch's wagon, she knew which way the wheels were turning.

There is no other Arkosan she'd choose for this
, he said.

Margret snorted, but with less force.
Ask her that now
.

Why? I know what she'll say.

Elena.

He laughed.
Maybe. Mostly she doesn't want to let go. She doesn't want you to suffer
.

Margret had laughed. And laughed.

It's true, 'Gret. She knows what you'll suffer, and she wants to make sure you're tough enough that it doesn't hurt you.

Hurt me???

Hurt you
, he said, looking away, looking toward the wagon in which Evallen of Arkosa was now quiet—more due to the slammed door than anything else.
She wants to protect you, or to teach you how to protect yourself, from all the things that hurt
her
when she became Matriarch
.

Adam was quiet. He was gentle. He was sometimes hesitant. He did not have the force of personality that either Margret or Evallen possessed. But he was strong in his fashion, and his words, given quietly, reached her ears where shouting and screaming failed.

You can see it
, he told her.

She said nothing.

You can see it now. Fear. What it does. What it makes you do. What you don't want to see when you do it. She's not a good teacher. She is a good Matriarch. I wish… I wish for both of your sakes that she was a better mother.

All this returned to her. This and more.

Because as she stood at the prow of this awkward, unlikely ship in the deadly chill of desert night, the moon was crisp and clear as new steel; the stars, just as clear and just as harsh, just as cold. The Arkosans lay, wrapped like infants or gifts in the layers of cloth that would protect them—most of them—from the worst of the night. There was no one, not even Adam, who could give her insight; who could open a window into her sensibilities from the vantage of theirs. The only other person who was awake was the Serra, and there was nothing of Arkosa about her except for the pendant placed in her hands by Evallen, the Matriarch of Arkosa.

But she understood, from the single backward glance the Serra gave her tent, understood from the moment of complete stillness that preceded the graceful lift of her arms, that she had
hesitated;
that she had teetered on the edge of a decision, that she had, for a moment, felt either unease or fear before she chose to make it. And when her hands caught the heavy, rough twine, when they slid and her breath suddenly ceased because she could not—would not—express so trivial a pain, Margret understood why she had looked back.

And what she had decided.

The Serra Diora di'Marano, without the aid of her seraf, struggled in her heavy, unflattering robes, extended her slender arms, and pulled her slight weight, hand over hand, up the side of a wagon.

She expected no help. Margret had expected to offer none; had expected to feel a vicious vindication as the woman who had always been spared a life of honest labor was finally forced to—quite literally—pull her own weight.

But she had not been forced to it; she had chosen. Margret watched. She said, and it surprised her, "Wrap the rope around your foot; you can stop a slide that way."

The Serra said nothing; Margret wasn't certain she had heard her. She waited. Hand over hand, breath now less deliberate, she approached the rail, approached Margret.

Margret reached out first with one hand, and then both, and as the Serra reached her, she offered what she had never offered a clansman.

She helped the Serra up, onto the almost nonexistent deck of her ship, her wagon. She waited, as silently as an Arkosan could wait, while the Serra caught her breath; felt a momentary pang of contempt as, in the silver light of the moon, the Serra first examined the palms of her hands for any sign of damage before she sagged slightly with relief.

She was shaking, although Margret expected that this had more to do with physical effort than cold or fear. But she forced herself to be still. And when she spoke, she spoke with the same cool distance that informed all her words.

"Accept my apologies, Matriarch. And my thanks for your intervention."

Margret bristled; it was the tone of voice. But she said nothing as the Serra reached into the heavy layers of cloth that hid her and kept her as warm as one could be kept when exposed to this night.

The Heart of Arkosa shone in her hand when she withdrew it. Margret forgot to bristle; she forgot to be irritated at the somber, stately tone of the Serra's superior voice. She saw only the Heart, heard only the pace of its erratic beating.

She took a step forward, and forced herself to stop. Her mouth was dry, but the urgency that the sight of the Heart invoked left no room for the bitter anger that she still felt toward her mother. "Is it—what does it feel like?"

"Feel like?"

"Is it warm?"

"It's uncomfortably hot to the touch, but it doesn't…seem to leave a mark." And she glanced down, although no skin was exposed for her inspection.

Margret did not have time to despise her vanity. Much. "Does it—does it speak to you?"

"Speak to me?"

"The Heart," she said urgently, swallowing the words that she wanted to add.
Just pretend
, she told herself,
that you're speaking to a child
. And then, unbidden,
It's not like she's much older than Adam
.

The Serra hesitated. It was not as obvious a hesitation as she had shown before she caught the rope Margret had thrown her; it was punctuated by no backward glances. But it was there.

"Well?"

And it continued for some minutes. But the Serra chose, with a directness that was informed by her grace and delicacy, to speak. "I do not understand you, Margret of Arkosa. I do not understand your anger."

It was not what she expected to hear. "My—my anger?"

The Serra nodded.

Nonplussed, Margret felt her fingertips reaching for her palms in a reflexive curl. "And what am I supposed to be angry at?"

"Supposed to be? I cannot say. But it is your anger at your mother that I find confusing. She understood all of the facts laid out before her; she chose a course based on those facts. If there was folly, she paid. If there was mere necessity, she paid as well. She chose the price."

It was damn cold out. "You're right," Margret said, each word brittle. "I
am
angry."

"I know."

"And you're being unusually direct about your accusations."

"Yes. It goes against everything I have been taught."

"What a surprise," Margret snapped back, hating the Serra's dignity. Hating her. "A clansman is taught to be dishonest."

"To be dishonest with people who have power over my life—and my death—when the words that are most truthful will be least pleasing, yes. Honesty may be highly prized among the Voyani, but even Evallen came to the Tor Leonne in the guise of seraf, and remained hidden among the Radann."

"Honesty among outsiders is irrelevant."

Diora's laughter was unguarded. Musical, Margret thought, surprised that anything that seemed so lovely could also sound so bitter. "In my life, in the life of the High Court, there are nothing
but
outsiders. You are not of the clans, but in the end, you feel no more foreign."

"Except for my anger. With my mother."

The laughter was gone. "Except for your anger."

"You want to know why I'm angry? You really want to know?" She turned. Caught railing that for most of the rest of her life had seemed like pointless decoration; she had never ridden the skies with her mother.

Diora nodded quietly.

"In the end, as far as I can tell, my mother died just so
you
could leave the gilded cage."

The words did not seem to surprise the Serra. But then again, so little did. Margret resented her composure. Wondered why she resented it. Wondered if wondering was a good thing.

"She died so that I might fly to a different one."

"What do you mean?"

"The Sun Sword."

"The Sun Sword." Margret bowed her head, as if in surrender. "The Lord of Night."

"The Lord."

They were both silent for a long time. At last, Margret said, "And the Lord is more important than Arkosa."

"I… think that enmity of the Lord is the foundation of the
Voyanne
."

"Would you give up everything you valued and everything you knew to defeat him?" Margret leaned into the railing; felt it tucked against her elbows through layers of heavy cloth.

"Yes."

The silence was long. And it was broken by the Serra. "But in honesty, had I known then what I know now, I would give you a different answer. Had I seen the end of the world in the Lord's hands, but been promised the life of my—
my
—family for another ten years, I would give you a different answer. I would take those ten years. I would treasure them. I would face whatever death He offered almost gratefully. If I could, I would never choose Evallen's path, no matter what it meant for the rest of the world. No matter what it meant for my family, in the end, or for me.

"I admire the strength Evallen of Arkosa showed. I admire the dedication that brought her to the Tor Leonne. I cannot conceive of feeling anger for her in your situation."

"Is that why you asked me?"

"Why you are so angry? No. I had other reasons."

"Oh?"

"The Heart did speak to me."

Margret felt a flash of envy someplace deep within her, like the strike of a well aimed dagger. The momentary calm of a conversation she could never have foreseen eluded her as she struggled for breath. Found it.

"Margret, in the end I am merely a way station; you are the heart of Arkosa in any way that matters."

She
hated
the grace. Hated that in her anger she could still, somehow, appreciate it. "What did it say?" The words were gruff, but they were spoken.

"I… I'm not certain."

"What do you mean, not certain? Riddles? Prophecy? My mother was damn good at that."

She froze for a moment, and she looked so natural in the ice of desert night, Margret wondered what she would look like if set in the Northern Winter.

"Serra?"

"Your pardon, Matriarch. I meant simply that while the Heart speaks, it speaks in a language I do not understand. It is not Torra, although I hear some of the cadence of Torra in it."

Margret closed her eyes. How many times in her life had she been told her destiny was unique? How many times had she rebelled against a future in which she had had no choice? When had it gone from being something she dreaded to something she valued?

"I think," the Serra continued after a pause, "that you should hear what it says."

"You can repeat it?"

"Yes."

Margret gestured. The wagon rose out of the tunnel, like a bird that appears too fat for its wings. "Not yet," she said, hands on the rail. "Not so close to the ground that the words can be heard."

"If it is important that the words not be heard, the Lady will guard them."

Margret snorted. "Save it," she said, "for them." She nodded to the ground that was receding. "They need it. Matriarchs learn early that we make our own luck."

"So, too," the Serra said softly, "do the Serras." She folded her arms across her chest; above the enclosed walls of the small tunnel, the wind was bitter. Sharp, knife's edge.
Lady's knife
, she thought. It could kill, but it had no color, no scent that was not borrowed, no taste, no true texture. Nothing at all but sound. And the sound was enough; it spoke to her, through her, beyond. Wind's voice. Wind.

She wondered what the cold would do to her skin. Wondered when the corners of her lips and eyes would bear the same lines that seemed to scar Margret's face with their intricate network. Wondered, last, what it would be like to
be
Margret, to live a life assured of one's fate, regardless of beauty, of grace, of physical demeanor; to age into one's power, rather than away from it as the Serras did, groping for each passing second and clinging to the youth that was, day by day, destroyed by sun and wind. It looked, to the Serra Diora, very much like freedom.