Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (54 page)

But her hair was long and perfect in its drape across bent back, and her face was the same face—measured, neutral, perfect in shape, in size—that he had, once seen, desired.

It was a desire which had been rebuked.

Worse, her father had chosen to accept the suit of the Tyr'agar's heir. He remembered her wedding night. There was almost nothing he would not do to rid himself of that memory.

"Serra Diora," he said, bowing formally.

She did not look up; her posture, delicate and perfect, made a shield of submission. He knew her well enough to understand that no wilting shyness marred the strength of her spirit; beneath all trappings she was as wild, as willful, as Sword's Blood. But she was more cunning.

"Ser Sendari," he said quietly, "I understand your desire to hide your daughter, but your attempt to transform her into a common seraf is less than laudable. She is not to be the wife of a common clansman; she is to be my wife, and I expect her to be attired in a manner appropriate to that station."

"She is not yet your wife." The Widan's voice was mild; his expression was as neutral as his daughter's. There was no doubt in the Tyr'agnate's mind that the daughter favored the father in intellect. He did not recall ever seeing Sendari's first wife—he knew, as they all did, that she was dead—which meant that she could not favor the wife in looks. There were some pairings that were fortuitous.

"She is not yet my wife, no. But as she will be—and soon, soon enough—I… request… that you respect my wishes. If money is the sole reason you have chosen to hide your daughter in every possible way, let me alleviate it for you." He removed a large bag from the folds of his robe and had the privilege of seeing Ser Sendari's shuttered face stiffen into something hard enough that it might be steel.

It amused him to drop the money squarely in front of the Serra Diora's bent form.

"Serra Diora," he said softly, the two words a command. She heard it; she lifted her head.

He knelt before her, reaching out with his ungloved hand. "I have been patient," he said softly. "I have been as patient as any man can be." His hand hovered an inch away from her cheek.

She pulled back.

He caught her chin in that hand; caught her hair, the back of her head, with the other. She had too much dignity to struggle. "Do you understand?" he said softly, too softly for any hearing but hers. "I have waited since the evening that you were given to the kai in waiting. Ser Illara kai di'Leonne. I have waited patiently since he made the mistake of telling me a single glimpse of you is all I would ever have.

"And I remember that glimpse," he added; her face was very close to his now, her lips ever so slightly parted, her eyes involuntarily wide. "There is not a night that has passed since then when I have not thought of you.

"I would not treat you so harshly; I would not offer to others what they have no power to take for themselves." His hand tightened in her hair; she could not look away. The most escape the grip afforded her was the simple expedient of closing her eyes. She did not disappoint him; if there was fear in her—and there was; he could smell it—she did not allow it to rule her actions.

"You have already refused me once, little Serra. But there will be no General to intervene on your behalf—and no interfering kai el'Sol. You will be my wife in a few long days.

"Do you understand what this means? You will be my wife. You will make my harem. You will bear my children. And you will
never
play games of refusal with me again."

Before she could answer—and he suspected that she would not, for she was so finely mannered, so perfectly graceful—he brought his lips to hers, holding back just that extra second so that he might feel her draw a sharp, short breath.

She did.

He cut it off with his mouth, pulling her to him with handfuls of hair so soft it might have been the folds of silk unwinding. Her hands came up; she rested them against his chest.

He might have laughed had he not been otherwise occupied; she pushed. She pushed him back, her palms flat, her arms as weak as any woman's.

He had waited so long he was not yet—not quite—willing to be put off; he kissed her more fiercely, bruising her lips, wanting to bruise them so that he might see them at their fullest when at last he chose to withdraw.

If he chose. He closed his eyes. This was as close as he had ever come to the Serra Diora di'Marano. He wanted, suddenly, to be a little closer; to touch a little more; his hand slid down from her chin to stroke the length of her throat, the nape of her neck, the perfection of her pale, pale skin.

Not enough. Never enough.

Her tongue fluttered against his like a trapped butterfly against the walls that confined it; he was gentle, but he was unyielding. She would come to understand and desire what he offered her. She had never desired the kai Leonne.

His hands brushed silk, folds of silk. Of a sudden, he wanted to remove it. Her eyes widened; this close to her face, he could not miss it.

The hands that had been open palmed became fists—but she did not strike him; did not otherwise fight.

Nor did she need to.

The fire did.

The fire was his strength. Of the Widan's many spells, it was the first to have come to him. He could remember few moments as clearly as this: The lighting of the first candle.

That candle, round and low, had been his hurdle. A thing of yellow wax, it had been set upon the small Widan's table by the hands of his reluctant wife.

"Sit," he'd told her. And then, unmanning himself because this was the most private of his chambers, he had added, "Please."

Her smile was like the flame, almost as precious, possibly more beautiful. Even then, even marred as it was by her rare display of unease. She had never loved the Widan's craft, but because he had asked it of her, because she had loved
him
, she sat by the side of the low table, her hands cupping the candle.

She had done this for four weeks.

And on the second day of the fifth week, her hands around cool wax, her eyes alert although she'd sat almost motionless for the better part of two hours in the summer heat, the fire finally heard his voice and answered.

All images, all memories, of any strength were as complicated as these. The fire was his strength.

But so, too, had Alora been before her death. His strength and his weakness.

The only person in his life that he had loved as much— although the nature of the love was different—had also betrayed him.
Diora
.

His daughter.

He did not think. Had he thought, he might have stayed his hand. But the fire sped down the length of his arms, contained within him until its spark left his fingers. Every Widan described the art differently; every Widan communed in his own way with the source of his power. And every Widan learned, immediately, that power without control was death.

Yet he did not control himself, not here.

The power came automatically, summoned by a fierce protectiveness he would have said—had any dared to ask openly—had died on the last day of the Festival of the Sun. Worse, rage was there, beneath the surface of the fire, and it was a rage that Eduardo's disgraceful behavior could not quite explain.

"How dare you?"

The Tyr'agnate cried out in pain. It was not quite a scream; there was too much anger in the mix, too much outrage. His hands left Diora's face, Diora's body, in the blink of an eye, and Sendari's daughter—his unperturbable, steely child—leaped clear of Eduardo, trailing serafs silk, her face turned away from them both.

The sword rang out.

The fire crackled.

Death hung in the air between them: One man's death. Or two.

It would have been a better death than Sendari had faced in years, a cleaner one. He could have stepped into the flow of the wind, have become just another screaming voice in the wind's maelstrom. He could have discovered, for himself—because no matter how great the desire for that knowledge, it seemed no Widan was capable of answering the question and returning with the information—whether or not the winds ruled the dead, or the Northern gods did, or the Lady. And he might see the wife that he had loved and hated in his time, the only woman whose light had been as bright as the fire's.

Eduardo di'Garrardi swung; Sendari dodged the blade, drew his own. Steel against steel was meant as a distraction, and it succeeded; the kai Garrardi was not trained to fight Widan. He called fire. Fire came as he parried the Tyr'agnate's blow and staggered back. The ferocity of the attack was astounding.

They had come here without Tyran or cerdan.

They had come to the chamber that had been her prison.

And now, the ground at their feet hazed by red light, the air overpowered by the scent of singed hair and singed flesh, they were fighting as men fought: with swords. She thought the roof might burn away, seared into nothing by the Lord's vision, the Lord's gaze. His work, this. His work, as all misery in her life had been.

She gathered the silks more closely about her; Eduardo had pulled at the sari only briefly, but his hands were strong enough to loose their binding.

She had thought—she had thought her father would not intervene. Her hands shook as she crouched against the wall, her face turned groundward in a semblance of the humility so necessary in a Serra's posture. Better that, though, better that than that either man should see her face before she had time to compose it. She was numb with the mixture of fear and humiliation that only men could cause, and it was slow to leave her.

But when the sword skittered across the fine, fine floor and stopped six inches from her bent knees, something stronger took its place. It was her father's sword.

She looked up then. Looked up to see the Tyr'agnate's armor, bare of surcoat, bare of detail by the grace of fire. His hair, his skin dusted black by ash, his face in profile, he stood over her father's prone form, and her father—her Widan father, her powerful father—lay weaponless beneath him.

Before thought could assert itself, before recent history could remind her of everything she had never thought she could forget—even for an instant—her mouth was open, her lips full and then narrowed around a single word.

A single powerful word.

"NO!"

He stopped at once, his sword in mid-arc above his head, his arms extended beneath its weight. Vision, when he fought for his life, took on a clarity that could only be the Lord's gift: All things moved more precisely, and slightly more slowly, as he watched them. He could choose what to react to; could override the instinct that had saved his life more times than he cared to count.

Her word struck him like a forceful blow; a Northern archer's arrow aimed slightly off true while he stood, both hands on the hilt of a sword, the killing blow already begun. He almost staggered with the effort it took to heed her.

But he saw clearly.

The Widan Sendari di'Sendari was at his feet, a second from death, his Widan's fire split, like a wall made of kindling, by the use of the sword that had been the clan Garrardi's since the founding.
Ventera
hovered a moment as he weighed his options.

As he weighed them and found Sendari's death wanting.

If he killed the Widan, he would be declaring himself for the North. Politically, Alesso was astute—but the entire Dominion knew of his almost legendary friendship with the Widan, and a smaller circle of men knew of his desire for the Widan's daughter. Sendari's death would be all the excuse he required.

And the war?

To go to war, the Tyr'agar would turn his forces first South, to Oerta, and then North. There was no doubt in Eduardo's mind that Jarrani would support Alesso in this. The Sword's Edge would support Alesso. For aid—should he choose to ask it—he would be reduced to seeking alliance with either Mareo di'Lamberto or Ramiro di'Callesta. As it was Callestan lands that he sought for his part in the war, it was a poor exchange.

On the other hand, Ramiro di'Callesta had
never
dared to strike him with anything more careless than a duplicitous word.

He wanted to kill the Widan.

He wanted the Widan's daughter.

He knew that, having already shown how seriously she took the duty to husband—what man could now doubt that, after hearing the depth of conviction in her speech on the last day of the Festival of the Sun?—she would be no less the dutiful daughter.

And if he was her father's killer, husband or no, he would be forced to kill her.

All these things occurred to him in a rush of thought and clarity as he stood above the prone form of Sendari di'Sendari. All of them.

Such clarity, at such a moment, could only be the Lord's vision, the Lord's gift. Almost before the sound of the Serra Diora's voice had faded into nothing, the Tyr'agnate, Eduardo kai di'Garrardi, lowered his sword.

But he offered no apology for his transgression; he was clearly the victor, after all. For his own reasons, he granted the older man his life. But it was clear to Eduardo, indeed, it must be clear to them all, that that life was also his to take.

"I can be patient," he said, sheathing
Ventera
, "when I so choose. On the morning after the night of the Festival Moon, Widan." He turned to the Flower of the Dominion. "He has his life because of my high regard for you, Serra Diora."

She bowed her head, hiding her face from view. The desire to pull that face up by the chin and force her to meet his eyes was strong, but so were other desires. Better, at the moment, to wait.

He was not completely certain that he would survive the Widan's fire so easily a second time.

He knew what she had done.

He did not know why.

Speaking at all took effort. But he might have read whole treatises flawlessly, argued with Alesso for weeks, brought the Sword of Knowledge to order less painfully than he spoke a single word.
Na 'dio
. Almost, he said it. But he could not expose himself to her in that fashion.

He chose, instead, her given name. Her adult name. It was, after all, as an adult that she had become inscrutable. Perfection had destroyed the delicate, trusting child as surely as it did all Serras of highborn clans. It had turned her from daughter to wife almost before he could turn to witness the transformation.