The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 (26 page)

She looked at them critically, but all commentary was silent.

To the West, a set of sliding doors, paper opaque but thin enough to suggest external light, lay. Beyond them a seraf crouched in the stillness of born servitude. All of her formative years had been spent with such living shadows. But they felt strange to her now.

And why should they? Servants in number had attended the Southern hostages in the Arannan Halls. They had come from the South, as gifts from the families that had been forced to surrender their kin; at the border, they had been granted their freedom in a land that made no more sense to them than the language it claimed as its own. It was a formality; she had known it; they had known it. Only serafs of worth had ever been given leave to attend the families of the ruling Tyr’agnati.

But formality or no, over the decade subtle changes had been wrought; they had been slow in coming, slow to take root. For the most part, they had been beneath notice; the former serafs served, as perfectly and obediently, as they had always served.

But there was a difference.

She acknowledged it now.

How could there not be? In the North, no death waited disobedience. More: no hunting parties went in search of those serafs who disappeared. If they chose to serve—and all but a handful did—they
chose
.

But in the North, Mirialyn ACormaris was among the Kings’ most trusted advisers, and when difficulty arose, it was the Princess who often mounted horse and rode through the streets of Averalaan, attended by soldiers, but clearly in command.

In the North, it was Mirialyn who had given Valedan his earliest martial lessons, first with sword and then with bow. In the North, the Queens slept with their husband’s fathers, and were revered for doing so. And in the North, the golden-eyed ruled the Isles.

Anyone who had met them, these men who would have been exposed at birth across the South, discovered the first of many lies: for no one, seeing them, could believe them to be demonic. And no one, hearing them, could fail to believe that they carried the blood of the gods in their veins, for they commanded more than simple attention, and they saw truths, in a glance, that were so deeply buried they might well have been dead.

The Serras were slow to adapt to these new surroundings; they had children they hoped to return to their home in the Dominion, and they feared that the contamination of the North would forever separate them from the people they were born to preside over.

All save the Serra Alina di’Lamberto. Considered too difficult to be a dutiful Serra—and therefore no asset to the clan Lamberto—she had never been offered as wife to any of the men who might have been of suitable rank; she had never left the confines of her father’s, and later her brother’s, harem. She had attended her mother, and after the death of her father, had also attended the Serra Donna en’Lamberto, Mareo’s very proper, very dutiful wife. If they had been friends, it would have been easier, but Alina was sharp of tongue within the harem’s confines—too sharp to be a comfortable companion to the Serra.

Her brother had sent her, as insult, to the court of the Northern Kings, and in that court, she had found a freedom that she, unlike the serafs, had not been promised when she had crossed the border, that invisible line between trees and rock that somehow bore the ideology of nations.

She had thought to feel at home in the South.

Proof, if it were needed, that one’s knowledge of oneself did not keep step with one’s life.

The sun was setting. She faced the prospect of sleep as if it were an executioner, for in the dark, the clean, spare lines of the table and its decorations, the color of the hanging, the squares of paper in the screen door, could not distract her from the sight of the dead assassins; the men who had killed Ser Ramiro kai di’Callesta’s oldest son.

She knew those men.

Even in death, she knew them. They were older; they wore their years with far less grace than she bore her own—but they were unmistakably her brother’s men.

Mareo
, she thought, clenching hands.

The hanging shifted in place, folds of cloth gathering shadow and reflecting light as it rose. She forced her hands to open and knelt carefully, placing them palms down in the silk of her lap.

Valedan kai di’Leonne entered the room. She lowered her head to the ground; felt the spill of her hair on either side of her face. From this posture, her back curved, her hands hidden, she listened.

He approached; she heard no other footsteps but his.

“Alina.”

She rose when she was certain that no one else had accompanied him.

He was staring at her. “I . . . am sorry. It must be very difficult for you here.”

It was not what she had expected to hear; not in the South. Not from a man. She waited.

“Must I give you permission to speak?”

She nodded.

He closed his eyes, and the line of his shoulders shifted subtly. “Then speak. Speak freely.”

“Valedan, what have I taught you of the South?” She cast a glance toward the closed screen doors, and spoke quietly. He followed her glance; acknowledged the still form of the seraf who knelt without, waiting a signal—any signal—that his presence was required.

“That there is no freedom of speech.”

She was silent.

He approached; humbled her by kneeling, by diminishing the distance between them.

Waited for her, as if he knew the question she longed to ask.

He was young; he was too young to be wise. But when she met his gaze, she knew that that was exactly what he waited for. “Kai Leonne.” Formality rested in the syllables of that title; a formality that put a physical distance between them.

He ignored it.

“Serra Alina.”

“Why?”

“Why?” He waited, and when he realized that she would not continue, he offered her mercy, of a kind. “Why did I make my vow to the Tyr’agnate of Callesta?”

She nodded. “You asked me to identify the . . . assassins. You know that I recognized them.”

He nodded.

“Perhaps you came to the North too young. Perhaps you spent time observing the High Court of the Isles; spent too much time in the company of those who share a family name without blood to bind their loyalty and their service.”

“The Ten,” he agreed.

“The Ten would not rule here. Could not. Their existence is . . . anathema . . . to the South. They leave their families, they disavow their history, they break ties with the parents who bore them, nurtured them, raised them; they leave brothers without a backward glance to join the Houses that rule at a distance.

“But you know this. I have said as much. Mirialyn ACormaris has certainly said more.”

He nodded quietly.

“Ramiro di’Callesta will make no peace with my brother. Perhaps you cannot understand this; you are young; you have fathered no children. His
kai
is dead. His voice is the wind’s voice now, and it will drive him. Why did you not leave the dead in peace? Why did you ask me to identify the fallen?

“If you had not—if you had not asked a Lamberto to identify Lambertans—you might have been able to play the political game; Ramiro di’Callesta, of all the Tyr’agnati, is the man most known for his pragmatism. Had you said that the dead wore the clothing of the Lambertan Tyr solely for the purpose of preventing any concord, he may have chosen—in public—to believe you. To at least
allow
for the possibility.

“But through
me
, you have denied him that option.”

“I believed that that option was . . . not an option,” he said, after a pause, his face smooth as Northern glass, but far less clear. “I believed that the dead were, as they appeared, Lambertan.”

“More reason not to summon me. The word of a woman, even a Serra of the high clans, is little valued in the South.”

He shook his head. “It is valued by me,” he said quietly, reaching for her hand. She did not withdraw. “And it is valued, clearly, by Ramiro di’Callesta; his wife is no adornment, no silent, obedient shadow. I asked you to identify the fallen because I had to know.”

“And now you know.”

He smiled. “Yes. Now I know.”

The smile was gentle; she found it, of all things, infuriating. How very Northern of her.

“I know,” he continued, his hand upon hers, his palm warm, “that Mareo di’Lamberto would not stoop to this particular form of assassination.”

She lifted her head sharply, gracelessly. “Did you not understand what I said? Did you not understand what I acknowledged? Those
were
his men. I knew them.”

“I understand that those were his men,” Valedan said gently. “But that was not what I needed. It was you. You are of the South; you choose which expression to offer those who observe you. And the expression you offered there was unguarded; you were shocked.”

She raised a dark brow. The use of the word “shock” was harsh, but it was accurate. That he used it not as criticism, but as simple fact did little to still the sense of humiliation she felt; she had been in the presence of . . . her brother’s enemies. Her smile was brief; bitter. Family it seemed, complicated and full of its own special rage, was something that could neither be denied or avoided.

“You are the judge of character I best trust, Serra Alina. If you have chosen to hide behind the curtained wall of the Southern Serras, it does nothing to change this fact. I know there was little affection between you and a brother who could use you so poorly in his rage at the North—but lack of affection and lack of understanding are not the same.

“You
knew
that your brother would never do such a thing. To be faced with proof of such an act was beyond your ability to imagine. Faced with it, you reacted.

“And it is that reaction that guided me.”

She reached up with her left hand; caught his, held it. “Do you understand what you are saying?”

“I hope so.” His smile deepened, but it was gentle; there was none of the edge she herself might have displayed. “Your brother is not a man known for his ability to lie.”

She laughed, and her laugh was bitter. “Indeed, he is known for the opposite.”

“Ask him, then. Ask him for the truth.”

“And if he denies it? Ramiro will not accept the denial.”

“No, not without proof. But I know it, as you must know it. Your brother did not kill Carelo. And if not your brother, then who? Who would benefit by his death?”

He lifted his head then, and gazed to the South. “I believe that this was meant to forever divide the Northern Terreans.” He rose, freeing his hand.

“And neither Lamberto nor Callesta will benefit from that division. Not now.”

“Valedan—”

“I need you with me,” he told her, the smile bleeding from his face. “I need your advice. I need your wisdom and your knowledge. I understand that you are concerned with my status among the Annagarians; be concerned, if it is wise—but find some way to give me what I require.

“And trust that I will find some way to give you what you require.”

“A Serra requires—”

“Hush, Alina.”

She nodded then, bowing her head to ground in a very real gesture of respect. She heard his steps as he retreated; heard the rustle of cloth as he entered his rooms. Wondered how the Serra Amara would react when she heard of his words.

She had no doubt whatever that the seraf who waited outside her doors would bear them to his mistress.

“It is possible,” Ramiro di’Callesta said, his face devoid of emotion.

The Serra Amara knelt in the center of her rooms. In the heart of the harem, in the privacy between man and wife, such a gesture was seldom required; she used it to advantage.

“Baredan di’Navarre escaped assassination by magical artifice,” he continued. “He hid his true form; Ser Alesso di Marente buried a wooden doll, thinking it the General.”

She said nothing at all.

“Amara.”

The word was a command. As only a proper wife could, she heeded its warning, rising. She met his eyes, her own unblinking and dark.

They had held that darkness, undiminished, since his return. He wondered if she would ever smile again, and he felt the loss of that warmth as keenly as any injury that had ever been inflicted upon him. He would have approached her; but she had made a wall of posture, and he knew better than to breach it.

He stood; she knelt, her back rigid.

“It is possible,” he said again. “Amara. Please.”

She had not looked away; she had not looked at him.

A lesser man might have been angry.

But a lesser man would never have known how to value this woman, this wife.

“I have never gone to war without you.”

She was silent; he thought that she would remain silent. “I have never ridden to war.” The words were stiff. Formal. “It is men who fight battles. It is men who seek glory.”

“Men who die?” he asked her gently. He placed his hands behind his back and stayed his ground. The Serra Amara had always been one of the strongest people he knew; she was also, in her fashion, among the most delicate.