Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (39 page)

He was there, and his face was devoid of the triumph she expected to see; she let instinct take her body—if she survived, she'd pay—and bled again for the momentary hesitation. But worse than that: the dagger skittered out of her slashed wrist.

It only works once
. Devon had said it. After that, it had to be cleansed, be reconsecrated. Something.

She leaped.

Carver started down the street, started out at a run. His mouth was dry. Jay was all right. She
had
to be all right. She'd never walked into a trap before.

He wanted to believe it, but he'd seen Avandar's face. Heard his voice. Carver wasn't a grand patrician; he was a part of Terafin, but he hadn't been born and bred to it. He knew fear, he'd felt it so often; he knew gut-deep visceral fear when he heard it.

Avandar's voice held about as much fear as a man's voice could. And he'd never heard Avandar afraid.

Get Meralonne.

No. Carver stopped dead. Jay wasn't the only one who operated on instinct.

Stay alive
, he thought, as he suddenly twisted round, knocking two soon-to-be-angry women over. Their curses were a comfort.

Who did you turn to, after all? Who did you turn to when one of your own had been caught by the magisterians, or worse, angry merchants and their guards? You didn't run to authorities; they'd be piss useless.

You gathered your own.

"Jester!" And then, louder, as if his life depended on it, "KIRIEL!"

Why doesn't he just finish it?

She was bleeding from a dozen small cuts; the girl was bleeding from fewer. But while the girl was frozen with fear, as easy a victim as one could ask for. Jewel was in motion, constantly in motion. And it cost her. She couldn't draw breath unless it were noisy, and it hurt now.

"Why," she said, bracing herself against the wall, "don't you just finish it?"

"My apologies," was his soft reply. "I had no intention of prolonging either your misery or my stay."

She would have snorted, but she heard truth in the words.

"The injury you inflicted is the cause of your less convenient death. You have cost me much here. Jewel ATerafin; more, in fact, than any of my brethren, who have both power and time to plan, have done in millennia. To kill you quickly, it seems, requires a magic that I can no longer afford to expend.

"Let me compliment you on your reflexes," he continued, as he moved slowly to close the distance she'd put between them. "I had thought to kill you quickly regardless." A smile turned his lips up. "If you wish an end, perhaps you would oblige me?"

"I'd love to, but you know how it is."

"Sadly, yes." He reached back then, casually; the child screamed.

Jewel had no weapon, or she would have attacked then. Probably would have died, but she couldn't do it; she couldn't ignore him. He had two weapons: the child and the fact that he did not tire.

And gods, she was tiring.

Devon ATerafin watched Avandar's progress. He was not mage-born, not mage-trained, and his sensitivity to magic was more instinctive than real, a thing of imagination that was strong enough, on rare occasion, to cross the boundary of reality.

This was not one of those occasions. He could see, clearly, that Avandar was struggling with something that was almost physical in nature—but with what, and how, he kept to himself, as he kept most things. His fear was strong, but focused, and this, as his magic, he kept to himself.

In at least that much, they were alike.

He waited as patiently as he could. He could feel the sun against damp skin, but at a distance; he was chilled with the need for action. Something caught the periphery of his vision, and he glanced up.

Haloed by sun's brightness, he could see a slender figure whose hair traced an upward spike: Angel had reached the building's narrow height. He lifted an arm, hand palm out, fingers splayed wide. The shout behind Devon's pursed lips died into the hiss and shout of a crowd of people all desperate to make good during the Challenge season.

Angel, not ATerafin, bunched up, shoulders blades deforming his back the way a cat's might have had he been feline, and chose that moment to disappear.

He was through.

The building was not so tall, and the ground not so far, that he paused for more than a moment to think about what he was doing, or how. He looked down from the heights, he saw Jay, and he saw someone who was stalking her; that was enough. He pulled his dagger, positioned himself as silently as possible, and jumped.

It was that simple.

What was not simple: To throw himself clear of the hand that flashed out to meet him, mid-fall; to hold back the single cry of surprise as something that looked like fingers came
this
close to bisecting his chest, and to roll away—all without losing that dagger.

Jay wasn't a killer; he'd known that. And he knew—and learned again, in case he'd forgotten it—that she wasn't an easy target. But she could see a death coming when it was meant for her; he couldn't.

The wound, he knew, was deep; it was not fatal. He thought it wasn't fatal. He didn't have time to think all that much more.

"ANGEL,
left
!"

He rolled with the voice. That much was instinct. Came up on his feet two inches away from the wall that had almost killed Avandar. The dagger, he held in slick hands, his own, where he'd brushed his chest.

There was another person in the alley; he'd been aware of her, but only a bit; it was Jay who'd mattered. She was young, though, by the sound of her voice; she was whimpering.

Take it easy, kid
, he thought.
Jay'll think of something
.

The alley was awfully dark, and getting darker as he watched. Magic? Pain.

Damn.

She did not come through the crowds, although it was through the crowds that he was frantically, clumsily, calling. She came, instead, above them, walking two feet over upturned, suddenly silent, faces. He froze a moment when he saw her. Thought, stupidly,
Jay's going to kill us
. If Meralonne didn't beat her to it.

"Carver." She came at once to where he'd stopped the minute he caught sight of her, sprinting as if she already knew what he'd called her for. There she stopped. Her sword, he saw, was sheathed, and he was grateful for it; if she drew it, he thought—was sure— that there'd be sudden panic and people'd be hurt in the crush.

She didn't bother to descend to his level, and that meant that everyone within easy sight—too many damned people for his liking—was suddenly staring at
him
.

"It's Jay," he told her. He thought he'd have time to explain it, but he didn't have to.

"Where?"

"Over by the old mill building—"

She cursed. "That means nothing to me. Give me your hand. Hurry."

He did as she ordered before he'd time to think about it; put his hand into hers. She didn't wear mail gloves, or any gloves at all; he was wearing half-leathers for grip's sake—but he was the one who felt completely naked as his hand met hers. He would've pulled back, but her hand closed like a trap, and she hauled him to his feet, beside her.

Thank Kalliaris
, he thought,
we're not wearing skirts
.

It was a giddy thought. He took a hesitant step; followed it by another, firmer one. She gave him that much play and no more, and she didn't let go of his hand; he had a feeling that when she did his next step would be a long one, straight down.

For some reason that he couldn't quite explain, he thought of Duster, and his face broke into a grim smile. "This way."

This was not the way she had run, the first time.

She had no one with her, and no one to carry warning to her before it was too late. What she had, that close to the Lord who had birthed her, was a heightened instinct, an awareness of things that brought pain.

She had not called upon power there. In the stone halls of her father, seamless from depths to height, she had not even run; she had heard the screaming with a curiosity and the intense pleasure that was her birthright. Indeed, she heard it heartbeats before the
Kialli
in attendance raised their faces, sniffing at the winds as if they were charnel, as if. indeed, they were in the confinement of their home of millennia.

Why, why had she not run then?

Pride.

Survival. Haste—the obvious need for haste—was a sign of weakness, and she had been trained too well to show it to those who might consider that weakness a sign of their advantage.

In the Hells, after all, all advantage was pressed and tested. And she had grown up in the shadow of her human heritage, the weakness of a form that demanded sleep and food and breath. She had envied the
Kialli
then. She envied them now.

But in this city, in
Averalaan Aramarelas
, it didn't matter who thought her weak. She left off her chosen pursuit when the sound of Carver's voice shattered a concentration that not even the breath of her great beast, Falloran, could, fiery and dangerous though it was.

She was surprised that she recognized him; his voice was not like anything she had ever heard; his fear rode it, but it was a rare fear; there was something vaguely unsatisfying about it.

"What?" Jester had said. "Kiriel, what is it?" He was tense, his dagger—a weapon that she never wished to see employed— wavering dangerously in his hand.

"I think—I think it's Carver."

"I don't hear anything."

"He's called you. And—and me."

"He's—" Jester's brow puckered, the soft folds of his skin forming deep, lines.

"What is it?"

"What does he sound like?"

"Afraid."

"Is he running from something?"

She'd paused. "No." No.

"
Kalliaris'
frown. It's Jay. Or Angel. It's one of us." He'd turned then, and she felt a surge of fear in him, as unlike the fear he'd carried as he'd hunted by her side as day is to night.
There must
, she thought,
be another word for an emotion that is so different in texture from fear for one's safety, and yet just as visceral, just as paralyzing
.

And she knew that the fear he felt was the fear that Carver felt. Knew it because it suddenly invaded her, as if it had a life of its own, as if it were a human disease, and she only mortal, and already laid low.
Jay
.

She listened; heard Carver's shout grow slowly. Jester had already started to move. The crowd was a maze, and it closed round his back; she couldn't follow where he led because the path disappeared when the arms and shoulders of strange humans touched.

She tried to follow, she almost drew her sword—tout hacking her way through the crowd, as she suddenly desperately desired to do—would not get her to Carver as fast as she felt, suddenly, she needed. So she did what she did not do, in this strange place, with its laws and its ordinances and its meekly accepted penalties: She called her magic, draped herself in its shadow, and took to the air, made of it a solid plateau, made it serve the weight of her feet.

She passed Jester with a grim smile. Even in this, in a mutual goal, she felt pleasure at being first, at being—yes—-more powerful. And then she forgot it: she saw Carver, saw his face.

She ran,
because
she had not run this way in the Shining Palace and she remembered too clearly what it had cost her to walk.

It cost her something, to lake the boy's hand; to take it, feel the small leap of suspicion and fear as he hesitated, and hold on because she needed his help. But she did. She did not know where they were going, how they were to arrive. She only knew what he knew—that they
must
arrive, and soon.

She tried not to snarl at his speed, or what little there was of it. She held onto his hand although she hated the feel of it. She even let him lead without speaking, because she knew that he was struggling with his own reactions. She could taste it, he was so close. The discomfort, the fear. She had gotten used to the peculiar shade of his soul, the odd darkness, the odd light, both so strong, and both so separate. Uneasy alliances there, easily broken.

But they had not been broken yet; she reminded herself of that. Humans were not what they had been in her youth in the Shining City.

"It's there!" he shouted, although shouting wasn't necessary. His breath interrupted his words; he strove for air, and air's weight in his lungs, between his lips.

She let go of his hand, although she hadn't meant to until the moment she turned to follow his shaking finger with her gaze. He fell at once; there was space beneath them, and she heard his surprise grunt as he struck stone and dirt.

She didn't care.

How had he done this?
How
?

She opened her lips and the words wouldn't come; there were too many of them, they were too painful. But pain didn't last for Kiriel di'Ashaf; not here, not in the face of his power. Like lead in the hands of the fabled alchemists, it became something infinitely more valuable, more precious to her: Anger. Fury. "
Isladar
!"

They all heard it.

Jewel, who was clutching her side now, clutching the first deep wound. Angel, who was on the edge of a sleep that held no waking. The child who was insensate, driven by fear beyond fear's reach.

And the demon himself.

Jewel saw his expression shift as he froze, as the sound of the single word seemed to destroy his momentum.

Isladar.

"I see," he said quietly.

She was aware of his movement before he made it, of course. Of every movement toward her, before he made it. Because every single blow he struck was meant to be her death, and her body didn't want to die. But she was tired now, bone tired, dead tired. What her body knew, and what it could do, were two different things. He cut again, and cut deeply; she was out of his way only enough to stop the blow from being fatal.

As if he knew that she was flagging, that he no longer needed to distract her or tire her, he left the child and Angel behind; there was only Jewel. Only Isladar.

Death. Death here.