Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (17 page)

"And it isn't just the gauntlet. He must swim from
Averalaan
to
Averalaan Aramarelas
and back. There are dangers, Alina."

"He knows them," was her cool reply.

"He is a
boy
. You are not."

She realized her hands were balled into tight fists when the nails of her fingers pierced her flesh. This woman, this highborn, respected Princess, was not unlike herself: a woman with no place. Here, in this Empire, the golden-eyed ruled, and the Princess had been born like a mortal, to a mortal. The blood of gods ran in her veins, but it was not purified by the shadowy covenant made between the Queens and the fathers of their husbands.

Years, Alina had lived in the Northern clime, and the one thing that she had never understood—and never would, she was certain— was the way whole powerful Houses could disavow their kin in favor of some artificial ideal.

Yes, Mirialyn had no place in the North.

But had she been born in the South, there would have been no place for her either.

We are not so unalike
, Alina thought, not for the first time. Not for the last.

"He must take the Challenge," she said. "Miri."

The light gleamed off her hair, brass frosted with a patina of pale white. "Why?"

"Because you think he is a boy."

"Taking the Challenge won't change what he is."

"Winning the Challenge will."

"You think he'll win?"

"I think he has a good chance of doing so."

Again, the Princess was silent as she accepted Alina's words, the truth of them. "It's not worth the risk."

"It wouldn't be worth the risk if he had been raised in the Dominion," Alina replied, the edge creeping back into her voice. "He wasn't. There isn't a clansman south of the border who won't think him just another pawn in the game between empires if he doesn't make his name known. Even you must see this."

"I see it. I see the risk as being greater."

"Because you think that word will travel. Because you think that the clansmen will cleave to the blood of Leonne."

"The General Baredan di'Navarre chose to do so."

"It is the only way he might save his life: he was marked for death, and rightly, by the General Alesso di'Marente."

"Ser Kyro—"

"You still do not understand us. Leonne was slaughtered in a
night
. There was no fight, no struggle, no
question
. We are not the North—what softness we have is devoured by sun and wind. Do you think the men will much care about the deaths of women and children? The only thing that matters—that matters at all—is that Leonne put up no fight, made no resistance; he sat in idle splendor and was slaughtered just as if he had been one of his wives. The clansmen will not follow a weak leader—and Alesso di'Marente has proved himself strong.

"No word of Valedan will travel in the Terreans except Alesso's word." She paused. "Unless Valedan makes his mark here. This is the only place he will have a chance to do it, Miri. He will stand in the sight of clansmen—and when they make their trek back to the Dominion, they
will
carry word of his deeds and his exploits.

"If we had another choice, I would counsel him against the Challenge."

"And if he loses?"

"He loses. He will do well enough that they will understand that he is not a mere boy, and not a mere pawn."

Miri's smile was cool. "You don't believe that any more than I." She drew a breath and held it a moment, understanding that the years of living in the North hadn't softened her so much as she had once feared they might. It was hard to show fear; hard to be vulnerable. She had never faced that difficulty with Mirialyn ACormaris before, because the past and the present had always been foreign countries: she realized with a pang that they would never be so again. "No, I don't. If he loses, it will cost—but not so much as invisibility will cost. These are clansmen, Miri," she added bitterly, "and I understand the clans."

"And you will return to them." Not a question.

"For his sake. For the sake of the Dominion. Do you think I desire the Dominion? Do you think that I desire that life, with no true name of my own, no true title, no power to which I can turn, and upon which I can rely? Only counsel me," Alina said, lifting a hand to touch her friend's shoulder. "Counsel me otherwise, and I will heed you. We will continue to teach each other our language, our history, our philosophy.

"But look well at what he faces. Remember the carnage that you saw with your eyes, and that I saw only through Valedan's. Tell me that there is another whom he can trust, another wise enough to dance the dance the clansmen will force upon him. Only tell me any of these things, and I will stay, because if you say them, I will have no choice but to believe."

"Now you speak like an Essalieyanese."

"Yes. So I know, in the end, that you
have
tainted me these past ten years. But I notice, ACormaris, that you do not speak against the decision you know I've already made."

"How can I?" was the other woman's bleak reply. "I'm ACormaris."

"Will you ride with the armies?"

"I? No. I belong to Avantari, and it is in Avantari that I will remain. The Commanders will go to war." She reached up, caught the hand on her shoulder, and pressed it into the line of her collarbone. "Will you?"

"Yes. I will ride with the armies. And you will hear the outraged cries of Baredan di'Navarre and Ramiro di'Callesta no matter where you choose to hide in Avantari when they are informed of this fact."

"You are too strong a woman to waste your life on the South."

"No," Alina replied, freeing her hand. "My problem was that I was never strong enough. But I am not the willful girl that I was; I am a woman, with a woman's sensibilities. When I return, I will be Annagarian in all the ways that I could not be in my indulged youth."

The Princess bowed, her lips pressed into a thin line. She turned to the door, and then stopped. "One more question. Serra."

"Of course. If it is in my power, I will answer it."

"What if we fail to protect him, and the Challenge costs him his life?"

"Then he is dead," the Serra said softly. "But whether or not he faces the challenge, he will face the risk. There is a death here, ACormaris; many thousands of deaths. We cannot prevent a war. we can only seek to win it."

"Was I good enough?"

Sivari smiled. It was a question that Valedan had asked daily— almost hourly—since the Challenge trials. He sparred; he focused on the fight he was offered. But when it was over, it was to the Southern audience that had gathered on the trial day that his thoughts returned, over and over. "You were better than I've ever seen you. I don't know which gods you pray to—ours, or the Lord and the Lady—but they answered."

"You had best hope," the courtyard's other occupant said quietly, "that the wrong god didn't hear you; you know that gods are an expensive proposition."

He sat between them, his first teacher and his second; stone beneath his thighs and calves, the sound of water at his back. This was his haven, this courtyard, one of the few places in which there was no audience beyond the people whose company he chose and the fountain behind him.

Princess Mirialyn ACormaris had never taken the Kings' Challenge. She was a practical woman; in some things, she accepted that she would be inferior, and she was not willing to take the test and run the course if there was no chance whatever that she might complete—and win—it. Valedan knew this not because the Princess herself had ever deigned to speak of it; she did not.

He knew it because of Serra Alina; the Serra and the Princess were as much friends as anyone, Northern or Southern, might be when so much divided them. It had been the Serra Alina's suggestion that he train with the Princess Mirialyn one year after he had arrived in the capital. At the time, he had thought it strange— after all, the Princess was a
woman
—but because it was Alina of the sharp tongue and the easily invoked displeasure, he had agreed. He had also, as had Alina, neglected to tell his mother. Or the clansmen. But Alina knew. Mirialyn knew.

She did not fight like anyone he had ever met. Did not teach like anyone he had ever met either. She spoke, always, of finding his center; of finding his focus; of finding
the place
, and holding to it. It seemed to him, as he got older, that she cared less and less about technique, more and more about this mythical place, this magical
something
.

And because her regard was important to him at that age—it still was, now—and because Alina's regard was inextricably linked with the woman he had grown to call Miri, he struggled. Worked.

"He's not the best swordsman in the Empire," Commander Sivari said to the Princess. "But I believe he is one of the best that has been accepted for the Challenge."

"And the others?"

"There are four Northerners that I would bet on, if I were a betting man and not an Imperial tutor. But there are also two Southerners who had that look to them; they'll be his fiercest rivals there. They have a lot to prove."

"They don't have as much to prove as Valedan does," Miri answered, all humor—and there was little enough of it—gone.

Sivari did not openly reprove her, but his eyes narrowed and flickered off Valedan's still face.

Valedan shrugged. "She's right." He shifted on the flat stone, trying to find a way to be at ease. His sword was safely—-and uncomfortably—sheathed. It was Southern custom to cart one's sword around off the side of one's hip no matter what the occasion. Valedan had always preferred to follow the Northern custom. No more. The days where he was allowed the relative freedom of the Northern court had ended the day he had declared himself in the Great Hall.

"I have not seen the Serra Alina in the halls today," Miri said quietly, changing the subject.

He heard the question in her voice. Heard it, and didn't know how to answer it. "She—she is preparing," he said at last, lamely.

and knowing that it was. "Ramiro and Baredan have just heard the results. They are—unimpressed."

"Furious, I'd imagine. At least I'd imagine the Tyr'agnate would be. The General I'm not as certain of." Sivari was thoughtful. When he was thoughtful, he often missed the subtlety of expression in Mirialyn's words; he had missed them in the question she put to Valedan, and there was no way to correct him.

Indeed, it was probably best that no one did. What passed between his first Northern teacher and his Southern adviser, not even Valedan truly understood.

And besides, although he felt it. and felt it keenly, much of his life had been honed and sharpened into just a single question.

"Do you think they'll notice me? Do you think it will make them less certain of themselves?"

Sivari laughed.

"We seldom see you display such uncertainty these days," Princess Mirialyn ACormaris said softly.

He was instantly still.

Her smile faded as well. "What are you thinking?"

"That there was a boy," he said, "who watched me fighting. I did not see him until after we were done."

"You didn't see anything," Sivari said.

Valedan ignored him. "And that boy watched me, as I might have watched my father, or Ser Anton di'Guivera himself. I've never seen that expression from the outside before."

They were silent, these two, waiting upon the question that would inevitably follow.

"Why is Ser Anton here, Miri?"

"I don't know," she said, but the pause before the words was long. Significant.

As significant as the fact that he did not ask her why she thought he was here.

The first time Jewel had set eyes on Commander Bruce Allen she knew why they called him the Eagle; knew why, of the Flight, he was considered the leader. It wasn't his uniform, for they wore the same uniform, the Kestrel, the Hawk, and the Eagle; bore the same rank, the full circle above the Kings' crest, the crossed rod and sword. It wasn't his size, or his build; almost any of the Terafin Chosen—never mind that, the Terafin House Guards—were of greater stature. But he had a sharpness of presence that drew the eye and the attention for no reason whatever that she could immediately think of; he was not a particularly flamboyant or imposing man.

And anyone that drew the eye of a half-trained seer for "no reason" deserved, even demanded, the attention she could give him.

He was not unaware of the attention; she was certain of it, but he accepted it as either his due or her poor manners. Later, she would understand that he accepted it because it was as natural a consequence of his presence as breath was to most people.

Seeing him for the third time, the effect was still strong; she had a desire to give the reins of power that she held so poorly to
this
man, because she felt certain that he knew what to do with them.

And that, of course, drew her up, made her suspicious and cautious. The reins she held were Terafin reins, and this Commander was affiliated with no House. He owed his loyalty to the Kings, and she was certain that the Kings received it. Certain that Terafin meant no more, and no less, than any of the soldiers he deployed in that duty.

She thought, suddenly.
How many men died? How many men did you order to their deaths in the war twelve years ago
? But she did not ask it; it was a young girl's question, and it would not be as easily forgiven coming as it did from the lips of a woman past thirty.

"Commander Allen," The Terafin said, bowing slightly. "Commander Berriliya. Commander Kalakar."

"Terafin," The Kalakar said, her lips rounding slightly in a familiar smile, the lines around the corners of blue eyes crinkling. "This is a change of venue."

"And a change of topic, as I suspect our merchant lines are not an issue in this discussion." The Terafin's smile matched The Kalakar's; that they were peers in all things was made clear by the ease of their discourse.

"They weren't entirely at issue in the last discussion," The Kalakar said, but shortly.

The Berriliya's frown was both slight and unmistakable. Jewel had seldom seen a man look so continually sour. Well, if you didn't count Avandar, and she didn't. She looked over her shoulder and saw, without surprise, the center of his chest; he stood closer to her than usual. Her colorful shadow. Protector, of sorts. Domicis, whatever that meant.