Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (31 page)

Kiriel, silent until then, stepped forward. "They haven't. Or if they have, he lives elsewhere."

"In one of these holdings?" Jewel said, indicating the map's penciled positions.

She nodded grimly.

"Your call," Jewel said to Devon.

"We've a watch on the Southern contestants already," he replied.

"And?"

"No."

"No what?"

"No, they don't leave the fifteenth holding—and when they do, they travel in groups of no less than six." He fell silent a moment, and then added, "a group of six men is hard to miss."

"'Maybe." Angel said, "They're the killers. From what I've heard—"

Jewel lifted her hand; he subsided at once. "Where?"

"In the Common."

"That means—"

"Yeah," Jester said, speaking for the first time. "Everyone in the city knows it. Or thinks it, at any rate."

"Doesn't make any sense," Angel added. "If I were going to kidnap and kill, I'd make damned sure the bodies were dumped in another holding."

"Maybe someone did." Meralonne said softly. His eyes met Devon's across the bent heads of Jewel's den.

"Everyone in The Ten Houses has heard tell of the demon that killed the priests in the Great Hall." Finch offered helpfully. "It was trying to kill the rightful king of Annagar."

"The Tyr'agar," Kiriel said softly.

"Whatever. The point is that the demons are already known to be working for, or with, the Dominion." <

Devon and Meralonne frowned, and Jewel was struck by their similarity of expression; something at once focused, intent, and cold.

"What?" she demanded, speaking to Meralonne.

"I think that whoever it is who is killing in so obvious a fashion either knows the city well—or has been commanded by someone who does. We cannot have the Southerners killed in this city by an angry mob—"

"Seems like it would solve a lot of problems," Angel said, shrugging.

No surprise that Meralonne continued as if uninterrupted. "—and it may be that our efforts to protect Valedan—and our own—will be severely tried in the next several days; we'll be forced to split our forces to defend the very people sent to be a threat to him." He reached for his pipe, avoiding the sudden narrowing of Jewel's eyes. Stuffed it with leaf, too—but didn't quite go so far as to light it. "To put us in the position of protecting his probable would-be killers takes a… certain frame of mind. I would say that the girl is right: the demon will not be found among the Annagarians."

"They can take care of themselves," Angel said.

"They can be left to take care of themselves," Devon agreed, rather affably. "But if they die, they become another symbol; they are here under a peaceful flag. Valedan's cause will be hurt by their deaths, if we ever make it as far as the Southern borders— because they'll be Southern deaths at Northern hands during a trial of prowess; a statement that the only way Valedan can win the trials the Kings set is by killing the only 'true' challengers.

"You're right, Magi," he said. "Someone understands the city well. And if it's a demon…"

Kiriel di'Ashaf looked up across the table, at Jewel, as if she were a tossed ship and the den leader a momentary anchor. Her face, Jewel thought, was perfectly white, her eyes obsidian; the shadows surrounding her grew until Jewel could not breathe for fear of what they presaged.

And Kiriel said, "He is."

They left two hours later.

Devon armed them, although both Meralonne and Kiriel fastidiously refused the weapons he offered. There was about the group a silence of purpose; it descended and it would not be lifted, Jewel thought, no matter what words were spoken within its hush.

She was torn between leaving Finch and taking her, and in the end, she chose to leave her, praying to Kalliaris for a smile, just a smile. Haerrad was here, after all, and in some ways worse than a demon. He was on the inside.

Angel and Jester came; Arann stayed, but Carver joined them before they'd left the gated grounds. They walked three abreast, ahead of her, as they'd often done, and she felt more at home, watching their backs, than she had in months. Years, possibly.

Kiriel walked beside her to the right, Avandar to the left; Devon ATerafin and Meralonne APhaniel behind. They walked with a light step, an easy confidence, that suggested they might be going to the Common, and no more. But Meralonne at least was known in the high city, and what passersby there were stepped well out of the way of any group that he accompanied.

So it began.

It should have taken time. There should have been investigations, conversations, bribery (because, alas, there were always magisterial guards who could be wheedled into parting with information that didn't threaten the guards themselves) and threats. There should have been a retreat then, a planning session, something official, intellectual, something that showed they had control.

But it happened quickly; quickly enough that Jewel felt as if all steps taken, from the moment of her nightmare to the crossing of the bridge between
Averalaan Aramarelas
and Averalaan proper, had traveled a single, fine edge. It cut her now.

Kind's head rose, her eyes widened. She lifted a hand, staring into a clear day's sky as if the clarity itself were a disguise, something that her god-born eyes could pierce, with work. She worked.

Jewel began to ask her a question, and Kiriel di'Ashaf lifted a hand in command; it was all Jay could do not to take a step backward. She did not stifle the small cry that escaped her lips as the darkness suddenly imposed itself upon her vision.

Nothing escaped the Astari's notice; Devon was no exception. She felt, rather than saw, his presence at her elbow. She knew it couldn't be Avandar; there was something about Avandar that was unmistakable, some unseen, but much felt familiarity that the years had built between them in place of affection and respect.

Kiriel lowered her arm.

Meralonne said, "
Kialli. "
It was not a question.

The younger woman nodded, shadowed, and Jewel knew then,
knew
then, that she was more of a danger than any demon could ever be.

"We will follow, Kiriel. I only ask that you take care to remember who runs behind."

Her smile was grim, but genuine, dark, but warm. "I'm half what they are, APhaniel."

And if that means you've got more in common with us than with him
. Jewel thought, and let the thought wander off; she wasn't certain where it had been going. What she was certain of was this: Kiriel di'Ashaf took to the streets of the city at a measured run; Meralonne paced her. Behind these two. Jewel's den ran, and the bustling crowd of midmorning merchants and workers alike were carried to either side in their wake.

The past grew a shadow that was longer and darker than Kiriel's receding shroud. Jewel knew how to navigate the city streets. And she knew more than most people in the city of Averalaan should ever have to know about the kin. It was the combination of these, kin and running, that drew her back across years.

Almost involuntarily she looked to the side, and saw that Devon had dropped into Kiriel's place beside her. He drew a pained smile from her by offering one in return. Fear was a taint that pulled their lips down, but it gave them the strength that running requires, and they made use of it.

After all, it wasn't as if fear was something that she wasn't going to have to get used to, one way or another. The House War.

The Southern War. And now this: Demons in the hundred holdings. It was as if time was twisting backward, and a doorway into a past that she never wanted to return to had opened to swallow all her pretensions of wisdom and experience, to strip them clean away and leave her as lean and hungry as she had ever been.

She
knew
that if they ran very quickly, they might just be in time. But she didn't know in time for what.

The fear bit her, and she bit it back with a fierce, brief grin. Bravado, but what the hell; you took what you could get at times like these.

This was the first time she'd ever run
toward
a demon.

She didn't know where they were running to until they came across the crowd. It did not, at first glimpse, seem so very different from the crowds that they had slipped through as they traveled— but it became clear, and quickly, that the difference was significant: This crowd was angry, anticipatory—and it was knotted and dense as thick undergrowth. It did not part for their passage.

"What's going on?" she called to Angel, who was taller than either she or Carver.

It was Avandar who answered. "I believe we've found a mob."

She started to say something sarcastic—at least sarcasm was the gloss that she would have put over the words—but a crackle of blue light and black fire caught her attention.

It caught everyone's. The crowd's intent shifted around the edges that contained Jewel Markess. Problem was, although she had no idea where the fireworks had come from, she had a bad feeling—and if she was right, the writ wasn't going to be a lot of use.

The humans standing in a bunch, like tightly penned cattle bound for slaughter—which Kiriel had watched with fascination as a child, beginning to end—did not move. Did not, in fact seem interested in moving. It angered her, and she reined the anger in, but she did not want to hold it. Because she knew that these people formed a ring, a protective wall of curiosity and savagery and flesh, in the center of which hid one of the kin.

The kin itself was not her concern, not exactly; she struck the master she was certain it served. No more, no less. But she had to strike
quickly
. It was too much, to be surrounded by these, with their taste for violence, their hurt and their anger, their smugness.

their superiority—their savagery ready to be unleashed, barely contained at all—and not feel it herself; the desire to see violence done. To see suffering.

But she was no human to want to hide behind the guise of
justice done
. There was a blackness in them, gray and dark all, a fear and a desire, that she knew well. And she felt at home in it a moment.

She hated that.

She cried out—snarled—a guttural warning, but only three or four of those who crowded there heeded it, and she would not, could not wait; her blood bucked against her, and she rode the impulse, but only barely. She had to unleash it soon or it would devour her, and there was only one safe way to unleash it. She had to reach the kin.

She drew sword.

And Meralonne APhaniel grabbed her left shoulder.

The light flared and traveled; the darkness answered. The storm had started.

The snarl became a roar; she felt it, rather than heard it, a complexity of muscles in the length of her throat, the depth of her chest.
How dare he
? She turned.

And heard the voice.

"KIRIEL! No!"

It stopped her; opened her eyes. She saw white light and gray, felt the welcome horror of disgust and fear, and felt her own disgust and fear reply.

She was what she was.

And she was more.

Ashaf!

She had to be more, or the death meant nothing. She would not allow the death of Ashaf to mean nothing.

Swallowing her rage, choking on it, Kiriel di'Ashaf lowered her blade.

And as the rage released her vision, she realized that Meralonne APhaniel had never drawn his. His face was the color of stone; it had that hardness beneath it that goes from surface to depth without change. But his silver eyes flickered as they met hers, golden now, and glanced off. as much of a strike as either would make.

He turned as Devon reached him, and pulled out two things: the first, a medallion that she recognized: The triple moon, the whole moon quartered by the symbols of the elements, and the second, one that she did not recognize: Crossed swords. Light glinted off them, obscuring them as he raised them into sun's light. As the brilliance passed, she saw that she had been wrong; the medallion's cross was formed by sword and staff or rod. It was bounded by crowns.

"I am Meralonne APhaniel of the Magisterium
and
of the Order of the Magi."

His words did what her sword had not been allowed to; they parted the crowd.

People drew back as if they were curtains, and there, upon the stage, men were fighting for their lives. Blood ran in the cracks between hard dirt and planted stone; there were dead here already, although in what number Jewel could not immediately say. She drew sword, although the sword was not her weapon.

Angel and Carver did likewise; Jester drew long dagger and disappeared. Devon now carried the colors of the Magisterium, and besides that, carried a sword with an ease that spoke of practice, experience, and the casual will to use both. His glance at Jewel burned; his glance at Meralonne she couldn't quite catch. Just as well.

Kiriel and Meralonne vanished into the fight; Devon began to secure the crowd, to disperse it. It was to Devon, in the end, that Angel was sent; Jewel took out the colors of her own House— for she carried them, and made much of the signet ring up on her hand, the ring that denoted her membership upon the House Terafin Council itself. Governing body. It was the first time she had deigned to wear it since Alea's death.

She'd never thought to return to the streets as an authority. And she blessed the privilege, although it took her away from the fight, from Angel and Carver, from Meralonne, and especially from Kiriel.

She'd seen that Kiriel was a killer, but she hadn't seen, until the black and the blue, the light and the storm, how big the game had gotten, how complete. Against her, Duster was nothing, and nothing to control.

Later she'd remember that it was one of the few times that she'd forgotten to worry about whether or not the rest of her den would survive.

She had two goals, only two: the first was to save the lives of the onlookers by scaring them the Hells off the streets. The sec-ond was to stop Kiriel from cutting down everyone who held a sword in the circle the crowd had made.

Devon recognized the livery of the Annagarians the moment the crowd had parted at Meralonne's threatening command. This in spite of the rents therein, the blood that disfigured them. They had arrived, however, in time; they were not all dead, although of the six, he was certain that two would never walk again.