Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (103 page)

It was good to wake up in the same place where she'd gone to sleep. It was less good to wake up to the sound of an argument, but there was something about it that reminded her of her childhood; older woman's voice raised in annoyance, younger woman's in defiance. She had forgotten how much her mother and her Oma argued when she was a child. She hadn't, however, forgotten the particularly sharp sound of a slap.

The wagon was dark. The flaps were closed. She sat up a bit too quickly and smacked her forehead against something hard. Her cursing brought light; someone lifted the flap. "It's about time you woke up," a half-familiar voice said. "We'd've woken you, but the guy at the side of the wagon started threatening to torch circles in the grass." It was Elena, Margret's cousin. Her face was lit from the side by day; she looked haggard even in the shadows cast by tarp. "Food," she said quietly, "and then work."

Jewel rubbed her forehead. There was a ledge above the flat bench she couldn't quite bring herself to dignify with the name bed. There were books on it. And bottles. Great place to put bottles. "I'm coming."

Elena took her to where there was a small horde of screaming short people running around. Two of them attempted to enmesh her in their game of catch-me; she failed to project the correct aura of deathly gloom because they didn't let up until Elena shooed them away. They did not, however, go near Avandar.

"Teach me that," she said out of the corner of her mouth as they took a seat at a table made of platform planks.

"Teach you how to kill children?"

There was something about the tone of his voice that made it clear that he was only half joking. Bitterness. Anger. Pride.

"Never mind."

"At your command."

That set the tone for the day. She saw him as he was—but she also saw him as he had been. Beneath the mountain. On the path. She couldn't forget it.

"Uh, Jewel?" Another voice. "Is that you?" She looked up into the face of a dark-haired, bright-eyed young man. Handsome, in a Voyani fashion, his skin dark but not yet cracked by sun or wind.

She nodded, and then realizing that everyone else was talking with their little cheeks and mouths full, said, "That's me."

"Good." His shoulders sagged with obvious relief. "The Havallan Matriarch is looking for you."

"So tell her I'm here," Jewel said. But she was being mean, and she knew it. "No—never mind. I'm joking. I wouldn't send you to a fate like that; you're a perfect stranger. You've done nothing to offend me. Yet."

He laughed. "And I'm not going to, either—not if that's what you do to people who
do
offend you! I'm Adam," he added. "Margret's brother."

"You're the Matriarch's brother? Funny," Jewel said, rising quickly and setting aside the breakfast that was about to be grabbed by an energetic child whose age she couldn't quite guess. "You don't look like you're covered in bruises."

He laughed. "I'm faster than she is."

It did not escape her attention that she was being fed with the children. And the significance of that, if not the actual experience itself, was flattering. She briefly considered wresting that flatbread away from the ill-mannered child. Decided against it. Indeterminate age or no, he looked decidedly too skinny.

Yollana was not amused that they took their time coming, where the phrase "took their time" in Jewel's opinion roughly translated into the Weston "weren't here instantaneously." Her frown lines were distinct and pronounced; it was clear that they were either the same lines that she used for smiling, or that she didn't smile a whole lot. Either way, Yollana of the Havalla Voyani was a singularly impressive presence, all of it simmering.

"We were—"

"Don't bother making excuses," she said, lifting a hand sideways as if the edge of her palm were a weapon. "You've wasted enough of my time. You," she added, her frown becoming more pronounced, "you watch over
her
, clear?"

"I have," Avandar replied, his voice as dry as desert air, "made that oath."

"Good. Keep it. You'll travel with the Serra and the Northerner into the city tonight, but you two are staying there. They come back."

"What?" It wasn't Avandar who spoke.

"I don't know why," Yollana snapped. "It sounds stupid to me. But you two don't come back with the rest of 'em. And I'm hoping it's not because you can't."

"But we—"

"So I want you to take these. Pay attention, girl. I'm tired and I need my strength."

"Uh, Yollana?"

"What?" Whip-snap sharp, that word; the old woman's hands froze at the flap of a generous pouch.

"You were captured, right?"

"Yes."

"And you weren't expecting to be captured."

"No."

"And so you couldn't have prepared to be here, right?"

"Yes."

"So how is it you have anything to give me?"

"That's very clever. If you were Havallan, girl, you'd be rubbing your cheek right now."

"Which means you aren't going to answer me, right?"

"Clever, as I said. We need these back. Just to make you comfortable, the penalty for stealing them is the death of your clan."

"That would be easy; I don't have one."

"We'll improvise. We're good at that."

"I bet. All right. They come back."

"But if they're lost the
right
way, you'll probably scrape by with groveling and sniveling."

"Good to know. What are they?"

She took two objects out of her pouch. One was a small silver horn; it was straight from mouthpiece to bell, and it was so delicate Jewel wondered how it had survived being carried in Yollana's pouch; it certainly didn't seem padded or cushioned. It was about as long as the stretch from her index finger to the inner edge of her wrist. "I suppose if I ask you how to use this, you won't answer?"

"I could give you a guess, girl, but I have a feeling that you'll know how to use it if it needs to be used."

"Great. So do I." Jewel very carefully slid the horn into the pouch she carried. After all, that was the way Yollana had carried the damn thing, so it couldn't be that fragile. It couldn't be.

"Second, take this."

The inspection of the horn had pulled her attention away from Yollana—who looked about as pleased as one would expect—and when she looked up, she saw that Yollana had a thick, very plain silver bowl, about the size of two cupped palms, in her hand.

"And this is?"

"A bell."

"A bell."

"Yes."

"It looks like a bowl."

"Gods help you if you eat out of it, girl," the old woman said darkly. "Anyone that stupid would get the fate they deserve. And we have enough stupid people here," she added, spitting to the side. "We don't need another one."

"Yes, Matriarch."

Yollana frowned. "That's it, then."

"That's it?"

"That's it. It's getting late. Go and get ready. Both of you. I'll see you again."

"When?"

"That would be telling. You've got the gift, don't be so damn lazy." That was her exit line. But she didn't get up and walk away; she glowered at Jewel until she took the hint and dragged Avandar off.

"It is not a surprise to me," Avandar said quietly, "that the clansmen find the Voyani Matriarchs so difficult."

Jewel laughed. "Oh, I don't know. From where I look, her position is the one to reach for—she can say whatever she thinks and people have to take it exactly as given. None of this political garbage."

He raised a single brow. "If you believe that the Havallan Matriarch is not political, then you still have some of that charming naivete about you."

"On the other hand," Jewel continued, "Maybe I just like the position because if
I
were in it and you said that, I could just slap you instead of answering."

"And you haven't?"

She was silent. After a minute of high-stepping over weeds that would not be tromped flat no matter how hard she tried, she said, "Come on. She's given us warning. Let's pack."

"And this meets with your approval?" The Radann kai el'Sol glanced up from the table upon which only an unscarred, flat medallion sat. It was round; in diameter slightly larger than the widest part of his palm; it was perhaps an inch and a half thick. But it was heavy, solid wood, and the Tyr'agar waited, his hand on the hilt of his undrawn sword.

"It meets with my approval," the Tyr'agar replied quietly. "It was my suggestion."

"I… see."

"You do not trust me."

The Radann kai el'Sol said quietly, "I cannot understand what Could be gained by this, but it is, in principle, a ceremony that I approve of. You have been very security conscious; it is by your will that the gates and the grounds of the Tor have been turned from pleasant landscape and architecture to fortification.

Alesso laughed. "This is not fortified, not truly. But I wish to open the Lake for the day and perhaps the early evening. My reasons are my own, but you have been a staunch ally, and I therefore choose to explain them. There have been troubling rumors in the streets of the lower Tor. We are not proof against their travel; wind takes them everywhere.

"It is said that I consort with the Lord of Night."

Peder kai el'Sol said nothing.

"Therefore, I wish my respect for the celebration of the Lady to be well known. I wish the populace to come to the plateau and see that there
is
no truth to the rumors of a Lord of Night as Consort. I wish my eminence as Tyr to be remembered. Therefore I wish to open my Lake to the Festival goers, so that they will be blessed by the gift of the Lady."

"And that gift will be remembered as yours."

"Indeed."

"And you wish us to participate in the ceremony?"

Alesso frowned. He was not used to being questioned by the kai el'Sol. But his alliance had shifted dangerously; where he had planned for weak Radann, he now needed strong ones. For a moment the wind on the Lake was strong; it caught his hair, and the fallen petals of the flowering trees whirled about his face in a gentle dance. He might have thought it a sign, were he a religious man. Or a superstitious one. The petals were the color of Northern snow; the color of sun on water.

"I wish you to preside over the blessing ceremony."

He was gratified when Peder's expression cracked before he could shutter it. Surprise. "And what, exactly, do you see as our role in such a blessing? It is not the norm and we are not the Lady's servants."

"It is not the norm," Alesso agreed, prepared now to be genial. He drew his sword slowly and kept the edge toward ground. "And it will not become the norm. But your actions in the day— and the evening—will be in the service of the Lord, no matter how gracious the gesture appears to be."

"Oh?"

"I wish the
masks
blessed."

Peder kai el'Sol raised a brow. And then he laughed. "General," he said, deliberately accentuating, the title that Alesso had held before the slaughter, "in my considered opinion, if the Lord had to descend from the heights to bless sword and bloodline again, it would be yours he would bless. Markaso kai di'Leonne was not, and would never have become, your equal." His smile thinned. "And for the Radann?"

"The Radann will be strengthened by this, as you know," Alesso said quietly. "And I will give you my word, taken by blade in the the Lord's plain view, that I will do nothing further to weaken them."

"And your allies?"

"We will deal with the allies," he said softly. "I have the Dominion. You have the Radann. In the end, is that not what this alliance was brought about to secure?"

"And the war in the North?"

Alesso lifted his sword over the circular medallion. "That is a necessity. I have made my offer; you will accept it or reject it, but you will do so now."

Peder kai el'Sol unsheathed his sword; it caught the light sharply and perfectly. He raised it; lifted it; held it a moment suspended above the wood that would seal his vow. And then he brought it down.

Ishavriel was furious.

The conversation drifted past, heavy with excitement, the fluid syllables of Torra exchanging information almost fast enough that the individual words were lost to the sense of the whole.

But the excitement was tinged with awe; it was almost as if a miracle had occurred. And it had. The Tyr'agar upon the plateau— a plateau unattained by most of the citizens of this city in the course of their meager lifetimes—had, in a moment of insane generosity, invited those people who celebrated the Lady's Festival to visit the Lake by which She had made Her favor to
this
city known.

He did not want foreigners unless they, too, were willing to celebrate the mysteries and the wildness of the Lady's longest night; he therefore asked only one thing of the would-be revelers who sought to visit the Lady's Lake, and to perhaps even partake of the waters therein: That they prove their intent by bringing the masks which would hide them in the Lady's darkness.

Hide them and allow them, therefore, to be their truest selves.

Lord Ishavriel had underestimated the former General. Twice. It angered him, but he felt a certain admiration for an enemy who could, with such an apparent lack of information and skill, and so very little maneuvering room, still manage to outmaneuver him. The kinlord would make certain, however, that that admiration did not extend to a third such event.

He understood what Alesso di'Marente hoped to achieve. It was, indeed, a clever ploy on his part, and Ishavriel had not yet decided how best to deal with it. Which was unfortunate, because as difficult as it was, it was the least of his concerns.

The greater still showed no sign of resolution.

Twice, he had almost crossed Anya's path. He was certain of it; her use of magic had a telltale signature that hung a moment in the air if one knew how to look. There were no obvious deaths; no obvious scarring of landmark or melting of stone—a thing that she often did out of sheer boredom. But there was something, something like taste, but more tenuous, that hovered on the edge of his awareness.

It was almost as if someone, someone capable of hiding obvious influence, of sublimating all sign of his power, was aiding her in her deception, in her forbidden flight. On a different day, this would not have mattered; on a different day it might have amused him to pit his skill against an unknown other's. He would, of course, have to kill the other for his unwarranted interference, but that necessary death would have made the hunt more interesting.