Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (60 page)

Aidan had never realized just how loud, how uncomfortably loud, so much silence could be. He was miserable. He wished, although he wasn't stupid enough to say it, that he had been ordered back to the guesthouse. He hadn't, and everyone was so damned busy he was afraid to interrupt them and ask them the only question that really ate at him.

That scream. Had it come from Sam's room?

He wasn't stupid enough to think he could've made any difference. Hells, he'd seen what had happened to the ATerafin. But he hated that he'd run to safety when he'd heard the scream, because he thought—he was pretty sure—that it had come from her.

He looked up, met the unnerving, and unblinking, gaze of the Member of the Order of Knowledge, and looked down at his feet again. They were all tense with waiting, all of them. But the Member of the Order of Knowledge had been the only person here to insist that Aidan be sent away.

Valedan had refused the request.

Problem was, it didn't sound like much of a request to Aidan, and he knew better than to trust a mage. Especially after last night.

Valedan turned to look out the window. The sky across the whole of the visible ocean was purple-pink.

"You don't have much time," the ACormaris said quietly.

"No."

"Your presence here is not, strictly speaking, necessary."

"It is not," the Member of the Order of Knowledge broke in, "necessary at all."

Her eyes were narrowed slightly as they met his. She said nothing, and he shut up. It surprised Aidan, that the mage would shut up like that; the ACormaris didn't look particularly dangerous. Maybe rank counted for something.

"I feel that the responsibility is partly mine. Unless you specifically request otherwise, I will wait."

"And the Challenge?"

Valedan said nothing. Aidan's glance bounced between them until he realized that that
was
his answer.

The sky grew paler, and paler still.

Commander Sivari found them. "You're popular," he said, but only after delivering a very correct, very formal bow. "I didn't think they were going to let
me
in, and it's career-limiting to refuse a Commander of the Kings' Swords entry into any portion of
Avantari
. ACormaris," he added, bowing.

She smiled. "Commander."

"We're… almost ready."

They both looked at Valedan. Valedan stared at the door.

Beyond the door was Devon ATerafin, with another gods-cursed mage. The master bard was with him as well.

"Ser Valedan," Commander Sivari said, "this is admirable. And you must decide, now, whether or not being admirable to a handful of Northerners is what you hoped to achieve at this Challenge."

Silence.

"I will be required to give notice to the adjudicatory body if you choose to forgo the test of the river." He waited. Frowned. "But if you forgo the test of the river, then your enemy, in failing, has still found some measure of success." His frown deepened, and after a moment, he bowed. Left, his steps mincing and loud in the huge room.

Aidan looked past him to the ACormaris, and she met his eyes. She smiled, but it wasn't a happy smile.

He sidled up to her, taking care to stay as far away from the mage as possible. "How long is it going to take?"

"I don't know," she said softly. "What you saw—what he underwent—we have no history of it here. The effect of the dagger makes clear the nature of the attacker, but the nature of the attack itself is of concern."

He dropped his voice as much as it could possibly be dropped and still be heard. "Why won't Valedan leave?"

"You must ask him that."

"I already did."

"And?"

"He didn't answer."

"Then I should not." She smiled gently, "but I will. It is not his answer, and it is not perhaps the answer he would give; remember that." She drew closer to him, and he thought—he thought her incredibly beautiful. As beautiful as he had once thought his mother was, when she had been his whole world. "Valedan is going to be King in the South. The word for King is 'Tyr'agar,' but either word—King or Tyr'agar—is just that, a word. He is not old."

He seemed old enough to Aidan, but Aidan didn't choose to correct her, and besides, the way she said it, it sounded true.

"He chose you as witness."

Aidan nodded; she seemed to expect that.

"And were it not for his choice, your life would have been in no danger. He wishes to keep you at his side because there, he feels you will be safe. And if not, he will be there to fight a battle he believes to be his own." She looked over the top of Aidan's head. "He also wishes to know that… no permanent harm was done to the ATerafin. Or if there was, the method by which it was done; it will be used against him again, and the knowledge is as much a weapon as his sword."

She stopped speaking, looked up and past him, and then looked back down. "He must learn, for himself, the difference between personal responsibility and power. If he is to take a country, he will have to sacrifice parts of it; there is no way that this war will not be won—or lost—without the deaths of thousands."

"But he
knows
that. There's going to be a
war
."

"Ah, yes. Of course." She smiled again, sadly. "But you know— we all know—that our parents will die. It's fact, but we weep when the truth of it cannot be escaped."

She might have said something else, but the doors opened again.

Commander Sivari stood between them.

And at his side, the dark-haired, veiled woman. She stepped over the threshold, and fell at once to her knees, lowering her head into the stone. It made Aidan nervous, because there was something about her that just didn't look like it should be on the floor.

He heard the ACormaris mutter something under her breath. He'd've paid money to hear what it was, but she'd gone too quiet.

"Serra Alina," Valedan said. "Please, rise."

She did so at once. As if he was the one in command. "Ser Valedan."

"Why have you come?"

"I would speak, if you would permit it, in private."

"I will not."

He couldn't see all her face, but he could see her eyes. They narrowed a minute like sharp blades. "Very well."

"Speak freely," Valedan said, clearly annoyed. It had the feel of an old discussion—a sour one.

"You have ten minutes to join the Challenge. I have come to remind you of this fact."

"I will join the Challenge when I know the extent of the damage—"

"You will damage yourself, and doom both the General and the Tyr'agnate over a matter of pretty principle." She was still, and her voice was as cold as the Northern wind. "I do not understand what you hope to gain by waiting here, by
insisting
on waiting here, but I will tell you what you accomplish in the eyes of the men you
must
impress. They will assume that you are weak, or frightened, by a single attempt on the life of a seraf."

"He is not—"

"It does not matter what he
is;
it matters only what they think he is."

"Alina—I'm in large part responsible for what happened—"

"And you fulfill this sense of responsibility by waiting?"

"I—" he fell silent, and Aidan recognized the silence for what it was. A wall. A decision.

So did she. And she wasn't going to accept it the way the others had. The way Aidan himself had. "Then give up, Valedan. Give up the title, forsake clan Leonne, give up the claim to the Tor Leonne and the lake within it. Because I tell you now that to hold that throne, even were it given to you in a joyous time of peace—" her words made it clear exactly how likely she thought that was, "—will cost lives. And if you are not willing to spend them, you cannot take the reins of power; leave it to men who understand what the costs are."

"There has to be—"

"A better way?" Ice. Near silence. "I think," she said softly, "that it is best that I… excuse myself. Kai Leonne." She knelt again, the stiffness of her body wholly at odds with the posture it adopted.

Everyone was looking at a different corner of wall. Everyone but Aidan himself.

"That's it, then?" Valedan asked, bitterly.

She was silent for a long while, but in the end, she relented. "Yes. Do you think the Northern Kings wait here, in a room, for news of their trusted servants? They rule. They prepare for a day in the open sun. A day in which they will be under the scrutiny of men and women over whom they hold the power of life and death. They will dress well. They will speak perfectly, regally. They will accept that the most important thing that subjects such as the ATerafin
can
do is protect them, and they will be above public worry over the fate of a single such guard."

"But they have to be worthy of that protection."

"Do you think them otherwise?"

He was uncomfortably silent. When he spoke at last, his voice was muted. "No."

"Then," she said, and her voice had quieted, softened, "learn from them. Wisdom, Valedan. Justice." She lifted her gaze. "Boy," she said.

"Aidan," Valedan corrected her.

"Aidan, then. Come, and come quickly. You have your duties, and he has his, and we have very, very little time in which to complete them gracefully."

For the first time in Aidan's life, being a king suddenly didn't look like it would be a lot of fun.

The Ospreys were angry. Not that they'd cared much about the stray boy that Valedan had chosen as his witness, but an attack carried out for the purpose of somehow harming him—and through him, Valedan—reminded them of old actions.

Duarte, of course, was wise enough not to tell them any of the salient details, and anyway, he wasn't all that certain that he knew them himself. But he'd forgotten about the boy, and they weren't above using children to get at what they needed; they were Ospreys, after all. The boy told them everything they wanted to know in the five minutes before Duarte gave strict orders forbidding such communication. He expected trouble, and hoped, briefly, that it wasn't the type of trouble that would force his hand; they weren't even on the field yet. It was too early to start killing his own.

But to no one's surprise—or rather, none of the Ospreys—the eight men who had been taken captive by the Imperial guards failed to survive to be questioned. The questions they had answered in the brief first interview were the only questions that would be answered.

It was rumored that the Astari were beside themselves with rage at the clumsiness, the carelessness, of the Imperial guards. The guards themselves did not let any chagrin at the loss show; they stood up as bullishly as possible to the Lord of the Compact. The jurisdictional squabble was tense enough to make itself felt. Bad, that.

Worse, Valedan had arrived late—and the late arrival sealed his fate. He was, of the contenders, to jump first.

But he was political enough, Duarte noted, to accept the placing with enough grace that it was clear he felt he deserved the unspoken rebuke. And that always played well with judges who were far enough away from their own youth to frown at a more natural reaction.

It was hot.

Kiriel stared at the sweat that dampened her sleeves as she lowered her forearm from its sweep across her brow. She was
sweating
. In the background, as new to her as the fact of this physical infirmity, the Kings' men were setting up.

Not that there seemed to be all that much
to
set up; the champions had come, with all due respect and ritual, to a wide field, grassy in all places except for the long pits of white sand. While the bards sang, and they
did
sing, their words blending into each other in a harmonic chaos of history and emotion, the judges came forward to speak with the would-be champions—or their trainers.

She knew this because such a judge came to speak with Valedan kai di'Leonne. The heat was ferocious, and she felt it so strongly she almost separated the man's head from his shoulders because he happened to be the only outsider who'd dared to present himself to their over-large group. Unfortunately, Duarte stepped on her foot, and Cook stepped in front of her. and the judge, ill-tempered no doubt because of the same heat that Kiriel faced, was taken to speak with Commander Sivari.

They'd lost the Princess, which was a pity. She was one of the very few women that Kiriel had ever met that she felt almost comfortable around. There was no odd rivalry, no fear, no foolish fixation on beauty as a means of power—although, to Kiriel's growing chagrin, she realized that that fixation was not entirely us foolish as she had once believed—between them: Mirialyn ACormaris simply was.

And Kiriel?

Was simply hot.

"Sentrus," Duarte said, after the judge had passed, "What exactly
is
the problem?"

She'd looked up at him. at the etched lines of his sour expression, and she'd said—before she could stop herself, "I'm sweating."

He stared at her blankly, as if the answer and the question were completely unrelated. Waited, while his shadow grew shorter in the rise of the the midday sun. "You're… what?"

"I—I'm
sweating
." The dampness between her skin and her underpadding was so terrible she wanted to strip herself of its protection entirely.

Alexis and Duarte exchanged a single, long glance. Duarte lifted a hand to his forehead. He did that, Kiriel knew, when confusion kept him from being furious. Almost. "And this is new to you?"

"Yes."

The tenor of their second glance was different.

"Cook," Duarte said.

"Primus." He lifted his hand and belted his chest soundly. Duarte winced; Kiriel wasn't sure why.

"Please keep an eye on the Sentrus. I believe she is feeling… ill."

"Sir."

"I told you," Alexis whispered. If there'd been any sibilants whatever in the short sentence, she would have been hissing loudly enough for venom to have appeared on the flat edge of her teeth. "I told you that sonofabitch wasn't telling us everything."

He sincerely hoped that Auralis, usually quite healthy, had the money stashed away to see a healer after the previous evening's escapade, and more, the wisdom to do so—because no one took Alexis on when she was at full-strength and they were almost dead. "Decarus," he began.