Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (25 page)

"Then let them! Are we to spend our lives running like beaten dogs? We are Voyani! We are Arkosans!"

The men behind him took up the last word like a cheer.

"You, stranger, get out of the way. This isn't your fight."

"Nicu, he
saved
the children while you were out killing!"

"Then I'll do my best not to kill him if he
gets out of the way
."

Kallandras heard the death in the words. Softly, much more gently than Elena was capable of speaking, he said, "This man will face you to protect his fallen. It is an act of honor. I ask you to treat it with honor; this is the Lady's Festival, and mercy is often granted when the Lady holds sway."

"We will treat him with as much mercy," Nicu replied, his voice as bright as his sword, "as they have ever shown us." He lifted his sword. "This is your last warning."

Kallandras shrugged.

The man named Nicu charged.

And behind him, slower to follow, came the rest of the Arkosans. It would be a difficult fight, if he did not wish to kill them—and he did not.

But he did not count on aid, and aid came; Elena of the Arkosans and Ilia of the Arkosans came to stand, blades drawn, on either side of him.

The cerdan stood behind them all, almost forgotten, but he, too, wielded naked sword—and well enough, by the look of him.

Nicu stopped ten feet from Kallandras, his jaw unhinged in angry shock. "You cannot mean to do this, Elena!"

She said nothing, which in Kallandras' opinion was wise.

"Ilia, you cannot mean to stand by the side of a known enemy!"

"I stand," Ilia said, from between clenched teeth, "by the side of the Matriarch's
heir
. She has chosen, Nicu. She would have died saving our future; if she feels this fight is as important as that one, I'll fight it."

Nicu took a step forward. But his men—his men did not. They were suddenly completely ill at ease. He knew it. He started to bark an order; stopped. In this mood, Elena was not one to offer mercy—and there was no way to fight her without some quarter offered. She was deadly. They'd all seen her in action.

And she
was
as close to the Matriarch and the Matriarch's will as any of them got.

"Nicu," Elena said. "The children are safe. The Arkosans wait. Let us forget this and go back."

"So they can continue to hunt us?"

Ilia spit. "They'll hunt us
now
," she said, her sharp gaze grazing their bloodied armor. "They'll hunt us all for sure."

"Andreas!" Elena said, her voice a heavy bark.

Almost shamefacedly, all battle lust misplaced, Andreas of the Arkosans stepped forward. "Elena," he said.

"Put up your sword. Come. We've yet to find our shadows and make our way back to our own. Carmello?"

"Nicu led us to victory," he said.

"And I will lead you only back to the
Voyanne
," Elena replied. "Are you coming?"

He glanced at Nicu's back. Nicu had not moved.

"Nicu?" Carmello stared at his leader's back, trying to get something like an answer from its rigid line.

She called them one by one. With the exception of Carmello, they put up their swords, or sheathed them, the exultancy of their mood broken by hers. In the bright, bright street, only Nicu and Carmello stood apart; the Arkosans came together behind Elena's back—and well away from the Tyrian cerdan. She'd seen to that without being too obvious about it; Kallandras was impressed. Women of her temperament were often devoid of subtlety.

That left only Nicu.

Nicu stepped forward.

For just a moment, Kallandras heard Elena's soft breath at his back; heard, in the voice that carried that sigh, relief.

But he saw nothing at all in the face of Nicu of the Arkosa that didn't speak of anger or death; when the Arkosan sword swung out in a sudden thrust to the side, Kallandras was prepared for the movement.

Prepared for everything but the strength of it.

He parried, dancing forward, his blade the shield behind which the surprised Tyrian cerdan might momentarily find shelter.

The blade
snapped
. The guard did not.

But he felt it, as their blades met: a ringing dissonance. He brought his second weapon up, and for the first time in the city streets, began to fight in earnest.

So, too, did Nicu.

There were cries; there was anger; there was fear; words rushed around them, an audience of a type familiar to Kallandras and ignored by Nicu. But the fight contained them; the imminence of death spurred them on.

Kallandras had been trained to the kill. Nicu of the Arkosans had not. But Nicu wanted it; even—and this was an obvious truth— enjoyed it; he derived strength from it, where Kallandras had been trained to derive purpose.

Steel clashed, rang, sang in the open streets while the Lord looked on. Two men, reach extended by steel, sought an opening, a weakness, an exposure. They used the ground they were given to advantage; they
moved
, feet as precise as blades, eyes almost unblinking, backs exposed to friend and foe, friend and foe, in a twist that was not unlike a dance.

The Lord watched.

These were men, these two; they fought for his benediction, because like it or not, all fights between men who would claim power in the Dominion of Annagar
were
fights offered to the Lord, if they were given like this: beneath the open sky, the unfettered sun.

The Arkosans were Voyani; they knew the dangers the sun presaged; they sought shadow. And the Brotherhood served the Lady; they understood the demands of the Lord, but they preferred the subtleties and the intricacies of the Lady's dance; they, too, sought shadow.

But it was the Lord who watched.

The Lord who judged.

Nicu fought with heat, with ire, with an anger whose growth should have hindered him. Kallandras fought coolly, precisely; his senses came into a sharp, sharp focus as he found the five points of his personal style, and leaped lightly from one to the other.

There was, in this fight, nothing that should have reminded him of his youth—but he had not been tested like this since the days of his training. Nicu was good. And Nicu was
not
of the brotherhood; he was like a boy half formed but skilled.

Or so it seemed to Kallandras.

But there was a rhythm to the fight itself that was awkward, ungainly; it was almost as if Nicu's desire to place his feet in one position was overruled by the whim of the blade he carried; he would set a foot down, or almost, and then lurch to left or right, forward or back. Not capering, not quite; not visibly hesitating. Visibly overbalancing to Kallandras' sensitive eyes.

He did not know, could not be certain, that he was correct— but the
Kovaschaü
were trained to prize instinct.

Kallandras, born Kallatin, trained by the brotherhood and refined by Senniel College, changed his tactics. He moved in, moved quickly, and shifted the emphasis of his weapon hand randomly, seeking not his enemy but the weapon his enemy wielded.

A different fight. A fight that was taught to the older students, those skilled in seeking a death.

The Lord's gaze was hot; it did not waver.

Neither did Nicu's blade.

As if it were intelligent, as if it could somehow divine Kallandras' intent, it avoided a certain type of parry, a thrust that led too far.

Kallandras began to fight more conservatively; to draw the battle out; to force Nicu to dance, or perhaps to add steps to the dance that had already begun. Nicu was trained to the sun and the road—and the shadows. He had fought in the streets of the Tor Leonne's city, and he had run. To Kallandras' eye, he was tiring, and if the sword itself could aid him in a combat, there was a price to be paid for its weight, its heft, its frenzy.

A price that Kallandras of Senniel knew how to pay.

He heard Elena's voice. He heard Ilia's. He heard the man Elena had called Carmello. Around their cacophony of words, he heard Nicu's breath lose its smoothness; take on the ragged edge of effort.

Soon. Soon. He danced.

Sweat graced them both; sweat, the Lady's blessing at the height of Lord's heat. Words fell away; silence reigned, broken by metal against metal, foot against ground, breath, heavy and light. Soon.

He watched the blade, not the man. The blade rose. The blade caught sunlight as if the light were a weapon it could use—and it was, but not against an assassin of Kallandras' calliber—and the blade fell, but it was met by either the resistance of weapon or the emptiness of air.

Now.

He moved, opening himself up to the weapon's thrust. It was a subtle motion, a misstep, a heartbeat's poor timing. A brother would not have been drawn in by the display of vulnerability, any more than he would willingly have been drawn by a weapon's feint. ,

But Nicu's blade was.

It extended itself for the same amount of time that Kallandras' chest was exposed; pulled itself slightly out of the sure grip of the man who wielded it.

The assassin did the rest, catching it, blade and guard, guard and guard, both pulling and throwing it free in a continuous arc of motion.

Nicu cried out in pain and surprise; Elena cried out in denial.

But Kallandras' weapons, so effortless in their motion, were also effortless in their lack; they stopped, blade casting a thin shadow against the bloodied, sweat-stained fabric of Nicu's shirt.

"Elena," Kallandras said quietly.

She walked, a bit too' quickly, to stand at Nicu's side. "He's my kin." Her voice held multiple things: disgust, relief, anger, shame. Affection. Worry. Protectiveness. It was the last that was strongest.

"He is," Kallandras replied. "And I return him to you. But in return I must ask you two things."

"They are?"

"First: remove the sheath that your—cousin?—" when she nodded, he continued, "is wearing."

"Done." She bent a moment; Nicu slammed into her, knocking her off her feet.

When she rose, her face was red with something other than careless exposure to sun. Her knuckles were white, as white as Lord's light on water; they balled into fists and then into open, stiff palms. Without another word, she slapped Nicu. Hard.

The sound carried. Ilia looked away; the men looked to Elena. When she bent to remove the girded, empty sheath, Nicu was still—but her anger had traveled the length and breadth of her palm to his face, and he seemed to have subsumed it; he was shaking.

She rose.

"Thank you. Now, retrieve the blade that Nicu used, but do not touch blade or guard. Use cloth, use silk."

"You want his weapon?"

"No, Elena of the Arkosa. It may well
be
his weapon. But this is the favor I ask of you: keep this weapon until the Matriarch returns. It is said that it is difficult to fool Voyani eyes."

"Yes." She paled. He knew, from her sudden sideways glance, that she knew the rest of the saying well. She lifted her hand, as if to ward off the words, but they had been heard.

Ilia said clearly, "But the Voyani heart,
never
."

"Yes." The bard's voice was almost gentle. "I am a stranger," he said. "I am not kin. But if you would allow it, I would be honored to walk some part of the road in the company of those who know it best."

Elena nodded. Then, unwrapping silken kerchief—blazing red, a thing that was a poor match for her hair, and an even match for her temper—she walked to where the sword had fallen. Bent. Wrapped her hand in the softness of fabric, and still hesitated a moment.

"It is not… stained," she said quietly. Softly.

He did not answer.

She raised the blade, taking its weight as if it were twice what it had been in Nicu's hands. He heard her speak, softly, a benediction and a prayer. The blade made no reply, and as if that were enough, her shoulders took on a straight, even line. She sheathed the sword.

But he noticed that she did not, not even for the sake of convenience, choose to wear what she had recovered.

He turned, then, to the lone Tyrian cerdan who still stood in the city streets. "These men," he said, speaking in the most stilted, the most formal, of Torra's dialects, "will waken soon. They are the Lord's men."

The cerdan said nothing; his face had shuttered, just as a courtesan's does behind the perfection of smile and grace.

"Be aware," the bard continued quietly, "that to serve the Lord of Night—in any guise—is to forsake the Lord."

"You have never served the Lord," the man replied.

"No?" Kallandras looked up into the sun's height. "Perhaps not. But I serve Him now, in a fashion. Remember my words."

The night sky was just that: lit by star and a moon that was nearing its fullness. The Lady's time was coming, and with it the shadows, the length of her sojourn. Outside of the Tor Leonne, the Raverran night was cool, and the insects that occupied the fertile lands that conversely reminded Margret of the desert were louder than she thought she had ever heard them.

The children had come with Tamara and Donatella; they were safe, and for that, for that single thing, Margret was grateful. She said her prayers, and she said them politely; said them with heat and fire, with passion and belief. That much,
that
much, she owed the Lady.

But she said other things with
more
heat and
more
fire, for the children were not the only people to arrive. In ones and twos, in threes and fours, carrying sometimes a thing of value or history and sometimes less than a whole life, her people returned to the wagons that were always kept outside of a clansman's city in case of an emergency like this one.

And they carried word.

Cerdan had been engaged, and the clansmen had died. She'd somehow managed to avoid losing any of her own—how, she wasn't certain, but there was some old Voyani phrase about the Lady's partiality to fools that came fiercely to mind—but the toll taken by clansmen was
high
. Some of the men came back jubilant, and some of the women took up their high, high spirits.

But Margret knew, instantly
knew
, what it would mean to her: they would be hunted, now, and thoroughly—while the heart of the Arkosans lay hidden—at best—against the skin of a foreign clanswoman with no ties, no loyalty, and no damned
power
to protect it until it could find its way home.