Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (29 page)

Eyes attuned to it could see the colors that edged his skin, the line of his body, the folds of a fabric that had been woven, thread for thread, under his supervision. Orange, of course, because no man approached a combat unarmored. But above that glimmer of pale fire, a redder light, a darker one: Fire.

He had protected the spaces that he had claimed from unwanted intrusion. But it was easiest, when protecting his space from the distance-walking that could bring a man from one edge of the continent to another—had he the power—to protect it entirely; to leave no door to enter by. That he had left a door to
leave
by had been costly enough.

He did not choose to breach the spell he had laid into place; too costly, especially given that he did not know the nature of his enemy. But he suspected, and he was displeased. He was not a young man, to run from the Lake's edge to his haven.

He ran.

She watched him kill.

Around her, against the background of the finery so coveted and despised by the Voyani, the men circled; their hands formed a pattern of light across the air, intertwined like a fine, fine net, crackling with Lord's light, blue fire. From such an attack, such a threat, she had no immediate safety; all that she had worn had been stripped or shorn from her. They had not left her her hair, and she accepted its loss with poor grace; the man, the Sword's Edge, had been thorough in his fear.

But no power that she had invested herself with would have let her walk unscathed through that complicated spell. None whatever would have let her walk, with perfect, catlike grace,
above
it. He walked in air as if the air itself were his platform and his home.

They were stunned by it; they froze for an eye blink.

She would have done the same.

Paid the same price for the minute hesitation.

She watched him, her body as still as the shadows that hid her, her thoughts turned inward when she could tear her eyes away from the terrible flash of his blades in the poor light.

They screamed, one or two of them; cried out in a fear that was almost too slow in coming.

Almost, in light such as this, he seemed inhuman, a thing of night, of the Lady's. Or the Lord's. But she had heard the whisper of his distant voice; heard it still, requesting movement to the right or the left, words that seemed to come from a different chest, a different throat, interrupting nothing.

She had never seen him fight.

She had known that he could, of course; he was marked in a way that could only rarely be hidden from one who had the blood, however dilute that blood was. Could never be hidden from one who wore the heart of the Havallans. But knowing it and witnessing it were two different things, and the latter made her uneasy.

What price, Lady?

The Widan fought with spell, when they chose to fight at all; he walked above or beyond the reach of fire, the earth's grip, the water—and there were few indeed who could call water in the Dominion. Five men died in a handful of minutes, and they died quickly; so quickly that their blood, when it left them in a spray of red, almost seemed to be moving, to be alive.

"Yollana,"
he said, and she stiffened.
"This is the last. The worst will follow, and we must be done. Can you run?"

She grimaced. Tested her feet against the hard ground. Shook her head: Yes. Knew that he would take her at her word; that her word, once given, would bind her. Knew that she would stumble; that her muscles—those muscles not sliced or cut, would somehow,
somehow
hold her weight.

She had the blood, and with the blood came vision. She
knew
. It should have offered her comfort.

He separated head from shoulders, but not cleanly. Then, while the bodies of the fallen were still twitching, he added to their wounds, tearing their flesh with the tips and the guards of his blade. It was quick work, but bloody, and the only thing that kept her eyes upon it—besides the sheer stubbornness that was her most famous quality—was the cool stillness of his face. He did not smile; did not blanch; did not otherwise seem to react to the work he had chosen.

"Now,"
he said, his back speaking. He turned, then; held out a hand.

Wincing, she took it. Her own hands, she feared, would never be what they had been without a healer's touch—and they had few enough of those in easy reach. Aye, she'd lost two fingers, and the ones she'd kept had been broken. As if broken fingers would give the servants of the Lord of Night the answers they sought.

As if anything would, from Yollana.

She had made her oath; the oath, she kept. Even with the heart exposed, and gone from her these many years. Gone. She was not a young woman, but she could not afford to make Evallen's mistake: She could not afford to die and leave behind daughters bereft of power and guidance at a time when power and guidance were the only crutches daughters could rely on to walk the distance the coming war demanded of them all.

All.

He took her hand; she tried to accept his offer of strength. And she did run, as she had seen, her gait uneven but unbroken in its awkward stride. He adjusted to it, moving to her rhythm, leading her into the shadows she knew best, the evening's strengths. She added to the shadows as she could, whispering her own benedictions—if they could be called that—and blending in with the trees, the grass, the living things that were part of the Voyani hidden ways.

But his hand was slick with blood, and although she had shed blood in her life, there was something about its warmth and his coolness that jarred her. Distracted her.

Yollana, who had not been led since before her mother had raised her up from the waters of the riverbeds and proclaimed her the Matriarch-in-waiting, the Lady's choice, was led now, and she followed a man whose hair was pale silver in the moonlight, whose body was shadow defined, whose death—whose death was the Lady's coldest death, her darkest offering.

The Widan Cortano di'Alexes did
not
rage. Rage, in its most primal colors, its loudest expression, was the signal gesture of weakness a man of power might otherwise show: not only was it a severe loss of control, but it also implied the end of a battle, and that battle's loss.

The Sword's Edge did not lose.

But here, the facts were incontrovertible.

The five men he had personally chosen were dead; there, a limb, beside it a severed head, the flesh on the youngest scored in multiple places as if—as if he had been picked up, like so much limp refuse, and mauled by large claws, by inhuman teeth.

The heads that had been detached were not cleanly removed, and at least one appeared—for the moment—to be missing. But the bodies themselves had not yet begun to stiffen; the deaths were new.

Hands shaking, lips so thinned they should have prevented any sound from escaping, the Widan Cortano di'Alexes made his way through the wide hall to the door that led into his personal chambers. Here, the effects were different; fire had scoured the room, scorching fans and low tables, cushions and mats, into a blackened curl. They had been finely made, chosen for the perfection of their matching colors, their contrasting textures.

He recognized the fires as his own; recognized little else as such. He cast; he cast quickly, the words a bark, the edge of an angered roar. No footsteps had crossed these floors. None; not even hers.

But the woman—and her things—were gone.

He spoke; spoke again; drew his sigils in the air.

What he found there brought silence. He stood, at the threshold of his quarters, casting a shadow in the dim light.

At last he moved forward, moved on, his gait stiff, the anger sublimated beneath an envy, a desire for knowledge, that had defined half his life.

It did not surprise him when, after he had completed his descent into earthen darkness, he found only empty chains; did not surprise him that there had been so little sign of struggle. He might have cast again, but his thoughts were now upon the first of the rooms, the deaths, the quickness of the theft.

In silence, he returned to the room that his own fires had blackened and scorched. He touched walls, his palms flat and wide, the bodies of the men who had served him stiffening into the rictus of death and neglect. Let them wait. He would attend to them later, when he attempted to discern what had killed them— and what had not.

Minutes passed. Possibly an hour; he was Widan for a moment; the Sword's Edge turned inward, rather than outward. He wondered, briefly, where Sendari was; considered calling for him. Decided against it; he did not wish to interrupt the reverie that had taken him.

It was thus that Alesso di'Alesso, the Tyr'agar himself, found the Sword's Edge: kneeling in ash, his hands black with it, the remnants of finery scattered and inconsequential.

Evening of the 7th of Scaral, 427 AA

Evereve

"This is the first time since the death of his wife that he has come to
Evereve
with a visitor."

She turned at the sound of the voice, wary now with isolation. Jewel valued privacy; she always had. But there was a difference between the privacy you took in the cracks between contact with your family and the privacy that an underground castle, in which you seemed to be the only living thing—Avandar not excepted because, although she'd been searching for the better part of an hour, she couldn't find him—afforded.

She had gone up the scale from anger to worry, and it was when she was worried that she tended to see most clearly. Had to. Avandar had
never
asked her pardon for anything in their life together, and he'd done a damn sight worse than forcefully correct her table manners. So something was wrong—and it wasn't the crown on his head or the stupid clothing that, much as she hated to admit it, suited him far better than anything he'd worn in her service.

"Aristos," she replied, using his name because names could be neutral.

She hadn't expected to see him, not here; although she knew it was cowardly, she'd avoided what she now thought of as the Hall of Statues That Were Probably Once People.

"Lady," he replied, bowing so smoothly it seemed impossible that he could be made of stone at all. Even his garments, gray and marbled in their oddly Southern folds, rippled with the movement he offered her. It was not an obeisance.

She was silent; awkwardly silent.

"Are you searching for something?"

"Not—not something in particular, no. I'm—I probably won't get to see something as big and strange as this again,"
if I'm lucky
, "and I thought I'd—I'd just explore it."

"And would you mind company?"

It came to her then that she didn't want his company. Why? Because the fact that he existed at all said things about Avandar Gallais that she really didn't want to know? She examined that thought for five seconds—give or take a few—and tossed it aside. She didn't want his company because there was something about him, stone or no, that she didn't trust. A pity, because she liked him.

And she trusted Avandar?

If any of her den had been there, she'd have probably snapped at them in frustration. She was good at it; it came easily. Too damn easily.

"I think I need some time to adjust," she said, putting as much of a breathless and harmless cadence into the words as her voice allowed. Truth to tell, it wasn't much. Even at sixteen she'd've had trouble manufacturing it.

Aristos stiffened—he was stone, so it should have been hard to notice—and she felt that pang again; Guilt. "As you wish, Lady. I have, of course, been given no purpose other than to serve, and should you require me, you will find me in the Hall of Conjunction."

She should have shut up. That would have been the smart thing to do. But she
hated
to feel guilty for no good reason. "Aristos?" she said, as he turned away.

He turned back at once, pivoting as if stone had no weight. "Yes?"

"Is it true that you slept with his wife?"

A stone brow rose. Fell. "He told you that?"

"Someone did."

The smile on his face was as far from the expression of hurt that had stopped her dead as an expression can get. She didn't bother to take a step back, although when she was younger she would have. "Oh, my dear, you are so different from Elyssandra. I had hoped to make better use of you in time, but I see that you are…" his expression was almost a sneer, "rather common. Rather simple. Far, far too uncomplicated. I can see that the only weapon you will make is a blunt one. Very well.

"In a manner of speaking, yes. She was a very proud, very powerful woman in her own right; he has never been interested in anyone who isn't."

"A manner of speaking?"

"She did not see fit to explain the circumstances to him, which was indeed as I expected. The liaison was not to her liking, my dear; it was not, in fact, her choice." His smile was soft with memory. It was a memory that Jewel never wanted to be a part of. "I might never have been so… ensorcelled… had I not become careless. I never marked her; I never bruised her; I never destroyed an item of clothing, a strand of jewelry; I did not so much as remove—by hand—the clasp that held her hair."

"I'm not sure I want to hear much more of this," she said, lifting a hand. "No, strike that. I'm
certain
I don't want to hear any more of it. We can leave it as a conversation topic for another century. Or rather, you can. I don't plan on being around that long."

He stepped forward.

"I wouldn't, if I were you."

"You wouldn't what?"

"I wouldn't try anything stupid. Stupider."

"And what can be done that hasn't been done? I live encased in stone; I serve his whim. He offered me as a gift to her; he thought to wound her. She was grateful; spiteful, even. I do not think it impressed him overmuch, to know that she could so casually turn against a lover she had taken.

"But she was proud. She never chose to explain her humiliation. And it was, indeed, quite exquisite."

"Well, plan on not repeating it," Jewel replied. "For one, I think your build would make it generally uncomfortable, if it were possible at all."