Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (15 page)

6th of Scaral, 427 AA

Averalaan

The dust was still in the air. It mingled with the stunned silence of the crowded city street. Silence, that is, if you didn't count the panicked nickering of horses and the screech of penned-up fowl ten yards away. The people farthest from that swirl of dust had already run as fast as their feet would take them, shouting and cursing as they sought out the magisterial guards who were supposed to protect them from one of the least legal things in the Empire: illegal public displays of magic.

Jewel had seen silences like this before; they would pass into gossip and heresay as shock and fear gave way to the demands of day-to-day life. Unfortunately, it would only pass that way once she and Avandar disappeared.

Which they were doing by two expedient means, the first being magic—his—and the second being a good, swift pair of legs. Well, two. She hated running when she was, to the eyes of the casual observer, invisible.

This was not an auspicious start to a journey.

Hells, it wasn't an auspicious start to just about anything. She had never gotten the hang of disappearing in this fashion and rammed into the elbows, backs, and legs of a dozen unsuspecting pedestrians before she at last stopped dead and called a halt to their flight.

Avandar's face was about as pleasant as the sky during a thunderstorm when he turned; she had the certain knowledge that hers was worse by his reaction. He opened his mouth to speak and when no words came out, closed it with an almost audible snap, as if he were biting silence.

Great.

They appeared more or less instantly, but no one seemed to really notice, and given that this had occurred in the streets of the Common, Jewel's frown was deep enough it threatened to become permanent. She had always known he was a mage, of course. But any display of his power annoyed her.

She was past annoyed now.

Avandar Gallais, her domicis, and a man hired for life by The Terafin herself, had killed a man in the streets of the city. Killed him pretty much instantly, and in front of more witnesses than she could count. She knew; she'd started.

"What
exactly
was that about?"

He was silent. But he offered her a shrug as he readjusted the heavy pack whose straps cut into his shoulders. "You will expect," he said, the words suspiciously like an order, "minor difficulties on the road we're traveling."

"Minor difficulties?" She turned in the direction they'd come from. People were now moving out of their way, which meant they could at least be seen; they were not, however listening, which meant they couldn't be heard. She could live with that. "I don't normally call a small speech in a completely foreign—and unpleasant, by the sound of it—tongue, followed by whatever-the-Hells you call that burst of fire, to be
minor
. I don't call loud, piercing screams, followed by complete and utter destruction, to be
minor
. Please correct the parts of these sentences you disagree with."

"You
are
aware that this is a war?"

"I'm aware that we're about to be involved on the periphery of one, yes."

"Well," he said, speaking slowly and carefully, "that was one of the
bad guys
."

Had he been one of her den, she'd have slapped him. It wasn't perfect behavior, but it was an old habit, and at times like this, old habits reasserted themselves the minute she forgot to pay attention.

"I haven't been a child for thirty years."

"No? Your pardon, ATerafin."

"What was that about?"

"Did you recognize him?"

"I don't know. There was something odd about him—and if I'd had more than a second before he turned into a human torch, I might have been able to place it."

He caught her hand, pulling her gently out of the way of a rolling wagon. No horses, not this far into the narrow paths of the Common, but wagons were still pulled by the next best thing: young boys and girls. From the looks of them, hungry as she'd once been. At least their labor was honest.

He pulled her into the stand of trees that was closest; she leaned against bark so broad it was easy to imagine the curve of the trunk went on forever. These were the Common's trees, and they were the one thing about the Common that still had the power to move her, no matter what her mood.

"He was a demon," Avandar said.

She knew, the moment the words left his lips, that he was right. Had known it on some level the minute he'd approached Avandar. He'd been perfectly attired for a patrician; his clothing fine, and enough in style that he was obviously a social creature; his eyes were dark, his hair darker still, and the line of his jaw was perfect and unbroken by years on the streets.

Just the type of man she couldn't stand, but he'd held her attention, made her uneasy. Hells, she was still uneasy.

"Jewel?"

"It wasn't him," she said at last.

"What wasn't?"

"It wasn't his death that bothers me. It wasn't the fact that you killed him without once referring to me that bothers me. I think— even if things did move damn quickly—that you saved my life back there. Thanks."

"But."

"But," she said, irritated to be so obvious, especially to a man like Avandar, "something does bother me."

"Or we'd be on our way to safety. Jewel, we must—"

Six inches from where her hand lay, palm against the rough grain of perfect tree bark, wood splintered as if struck by lighting.

Funny thing that. It was.

Avandar cursed; Jewel was already halfway into the head-and-shoulder roll that stopped the next bolt from demonstrating the effect of lightning a little more personally than she'd have liked.

She
saw fire
. She had only rarely seen fire quite so strong, and she had seen a lot of magic in her tenure at Terafin—a lot more than anyone should have, who still called themselves sane. She shouted his name; it was all of the warning she had time for. Steel bit her where lightning had missed, shearing cloth—and some skin—from her shoulder.

It shouldn't have hit her. She'd had enough warning. Bleeding, she drew a dagger of her own and turned to face her attacker.

It was sort of like having a sword while standing on the ridge facing the advancing army. Even if that army was an army of one.

Not only was he not human, but a chorus of screams at his back made it clear he wasn't her imagination either. She'd thought to face a creature that used a knife; instead, she faced one that wore them over every square inch of his body.

"Please," he said, in a voice that sounded like the clash and scrape of steel being sharpened, "don't take this personally." If she hadn't already pegged him as demon, she would've then: his voice was, clash and clatter or no, a thing of beauty, a thing sensuous and powerful. With anticipation. With pleasure. "You attend the Warlord. There is
always
a price to be paid for that service."

"Warlord?" She slipped out of the path of his arm; his blades gouged the side of the tree as he brushed past. Centuries-old wood gave before he did. Bad sign. Between lightning and blade, she thought, the tree that she had so admired was already dead. Couldn't be certain, but it angered her in the way that the helpless are often angered.

"The Warlord. The man to whom you were speaking before this… interruption."

Fire lit the demon's face in a glow that came from behind her. She didn't bother to look to find its source; she knew.

"You've got it wrong," she said, her legs tensing, her back bending slightly as the grip on her dagger shifted. "I don't serve him. He serves
me
."

The creature laughed. "Is that what he told you? He serves no one but himself, and he has a particular penchant for being the only man to leave the field of battle—any battle he joins—alive. Allow me to demonstrate."

"By dying?"

"You really are a clever creature; it must amuse him to have you."

She watched his face expand in a sudden stretch of thinning flesh across widening eyes, widening mouth, a visage of fear, of realization, of—surprise. Watched this expansion as if it were a natural growth, a natural outcome. It was. She knew the sight when it hit her, borrowing her eyes, subverting her vision from the here-and-now to the there-and-will-be. Unaware of this, his mouth kept moving, his arm swung back, his eyes narrowed in a way that only demon eyes
can
narrow.

She had time to return the cruelty of his smile with a demonic smile all her own. She didn't even bother to move out of his way. That caught him by surprise; he hesitated.

Even had he not, it wouldn't have saved him.

Fire ate him from the inside out.

His ashes hung a moment, bearing the form and shape he had occupied, before gravity and wind blew them away. The silence beyond the stand of trees was deafening. Satisfying, for just a moment.

The screams that followed it, breaking it, twisting it, were not.

She looked out; the city streets were, literally, broken; cracks had not only split the stones upon which much of the Common stood, but had uprooted them. And between these stones, above them, below them, trapped between living and dying, were the people who had been examining merchants' wares minutes ago.

She started forward.

A hand on her wrist stopped her. "I am sorry, Jewel."

"Sorry?" The word made no sense.

Avandar stood beside the scored trunk of one of the trees the Common was so famous for. A branch had snapped; hand-shaped, delicate leaves were caught in the lap of the fire he'd summoned.

But not, she noted, devoured by it. She wondered how he'd managed that. Wondered if it had to do with power. Wondered why she'd so carefully never asked him about his power before.

Framed, the flowers were lovely.

"These creatures are… past enemies. They occasionally appear to make life difficult. But," he said, turning to scan what was left of a crowd that was as broken as the ground beneath their feet, "I fear they wish more than mere difficulty."

"Then we'd better get the magi—"

The words left her as the shadows surrounded what was left of the crowd. "
Avandar
!"

He pulled her into the circle his robes made across the burning ground. "I'm sorry," he said again, bending his head, tucking hers under his chin.

The light shifted.

Jewel ATerafin
screamed
.

And then, there was nothing.

6th of Scaral, 427 AA

The Tor Leonne, Terrean of Raverra

You may have pride, or you may have brotherhood: decide.

In the streets of the Tor Leonne, old voices were far clearer than they had been for decades. Senniel College, the home of his adult, Northern life, was far away, by the shores of a sea that the Tor Leonne would never know. There, gulls and morning mist drew the mind and memory, made of dawn and dusk a song that had slowly—when?—taken root. He was not—had proved, although the voices of his brothers were still the strongest voices he heard, that even
he
was not—made of stone. Things grew within him, things changed.

He had taken great pains to straighten his hair; to alter its color and its length; to change the lines of his face. These were automatic precautions, and even the Astari would have thought of them. He had also changed his girth, added a few years to his age, pounds of appearance to his weight. Again, simple precautions; the cautions of a life that had almost—and had never— passed him by.

But Kallandras of Senniel had other gifts; the most striking change of pace was his movement. Catlike and graceful by turns, he had exchanged his gait for something slower and stodgier, something that weight or posture had broken.

You
—
you look like
—

He had raised a brow at Solran Marten's total loss of words; it was rare indeed that a bard had nothing to say, and rarer still when that bard was the bardmaster herself. The expression brought her some comfort; it was his.

But if he could bring himself to change everything about his exterior life, he could not quite bring himself to leave behind the only possession he valued, and Salla, the lute that had been Sioban Glassen's gift, was tucked in the pack tossed over his shoulder. It was a risk; he acknowledged it. It was a foolish risk, a stupid one. It was, as his former masters might have said, prideful. Sentimental. Which of these was worse had yet to be determined. He had been both in life, and so far neither had killed him.

But death only happened once.

He thought, inexplicably, of Evayne a'Nolan. Of the young Evayne, striking in the narrow breadth of her white cheeks, her raven hair, her violet eyes. Those eyes, wide with horror or narrow with self-pity, would develop an underlying cast of steel as she aged, until the girl herself was buried beneath experience and expedience.

He had hated her when he was a young man. A boy. He had hated her more as an adult, first taking steps in the real world, and deprived of the only brothers to whom he wished to turn, to praise, to receive praise from. He was not that boy now, nor that man; and often, when she came to him as a young girl, he could not hate her. Could not clearly see the confusion that was now so obvious without feeling an almost protective twinge.

So much for vendetta.

She had come to him last night, her hands sticky with blood, her eyes wide and dark. The cloak that was her father's gift was already cleaning itself with an ease that profoundly disturbed her. It was not the first death she had seen, and it would certainly not be the last, but it was death, and she was tired of it.

Her hand clutched the lily that was her single adornment: a gift, a sixteenth birthday gift, from a friend in Callenton, the Freetown that had been her only home. He pried her fingers loose and found that she had cut them on petals and stem.

And she had watched him, as if he were a stranger that she hadn't the strength to stop. Looked at the blood pooling in her palms as if either all of it were her own, or none of it were. "Are you Kallandras?" she'd asked, and he realized that he was a merchant, with a merchant's clumsy gait and a merchant's Southern accent, heavy Torra.