Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (30 page)

"Ah. Well, if that were a fear, you need not fear it; as you suspect, it was not an ability that was left me." He stepped toward her. She stood her ground.

Or she would have, if instinct hadn't suddenly kicked the edge of her spine with a resounding thud that made her legs
move
.

"But he was no fool." Stone hands, shot through with lovely, smoky marble, were raised in the well-lit hall. Fingers curled into fists, and with a casual gesture, Aristos smashed the brightest of the magelights into fine, thin leaf over shards of crystal. The light went
out
. "He did not assume that my time in captivity would sit well with me." He took another step; she took another. His eyes did not leave her face as he extinguished another light, following the trail the lamps made as they followed her. "He therefore bound my behavior in regard to his wife quite, quite thoroughly. I might speak freely—speech, after all, was acceptable, and any accusation, any lover's quarrel, any
pleas
, were all to his amusement."

Crash.

"But I literally could not act against her, or any item of value that she owned. I could not crush the stem of a leaf; I could not bruise the petal of a flower. I could not drop a stray dish when I stood by her and she ate from it."

Crash.

"I have had a long time to become used to this form of captivity. She took great pleasure in it. He, on the other hand, the author of my misfortune, took none. At least that satisfaction was mine."

Crash.

She had a sudden, very bad feeling that she was running out of hall. It wasn't a guess. It was a certainty. Enough of one that she didn't waste much time looking over her shoulder.

"As far as breaking things go, you, ummm, don't seem to have that problem at the moment."

"No, oddly enough. I don't. It's been a long time since I've bothered to test it, my dear, because it's been a
very
long time since I've been awakened. That was his one act of kindness. Theophan has been aware for every year of his entrapment; he is quite, quite mad."

You aren't winning any sanity prizes
, she thought, but she didn't bother to say it. Two stone fists beat zero weapons any time. She wondered how much being made of stone would slow him down if she broke into an out-and-out run.

"You are obviously part of the enchantment that allowed her to be sent here and live."

"She didn't always live here?"

Crash.

He smiled lazily, and she knew he knew she was buying time. But clearly the company—any company—was worth prolonging. Gods, if she got out of this in one uncrushed piece, she was going to
kill
Avandar.

"My dear, no one lived here. He built it as his personal citadel, a way of defending those he cared for. His own life has never been in danger—but the life of his wife, and his children, should there have been any—a different story entirely.

"Those born here might enter and leave freely. Those who bore the mark of his consort: the Serpent mark. His oldest name. You bear that mark, but it is clear you have neither his blood nor his blessing. I… was not a man of little power. I had more than a passing acquaintance with the magical arts, and I had his trust, for what it was worth, for some time. But had I not been entirely enslaved as a magical construct, I would never have survived transit to
Evereve
. No one would. That was the entire purpose."

Crash.

"But here you are. You are obviously not dead; I may be stone, but I am still a purveyor of the flesh. And to accomplish
that
he must have unraveled a great deal of what was wrought."

Crash. Crash. Two, for punctuation.

"And now, my dear, I am going to draw this little encounter to an unfortunate close. I am going to defile you, eunuch fashion, since the other is beyond me, and then am I going to kill you."

Theophan
, whoever he was, wasn't the only one who was mad. Stone or no, Aristos' face had taken on an ugly rictus that defied any connection with sanity.

"You don't expect me to stand still for any of that, do you?"

"Not at all."

"Good."

The hall opened into a huge gallery of some sort; she
knew
there was a round wall twenty feet from her back that it would be very, very bad to get caught by. The dress was awkward—another thing she'd kill Avandar for later—but she was familiar enough with skirts that she managed to roll while Aristos' fist was flattening thick gold into thin leaf. Very thin leaf.

She was worried.

Not terrified; not that. There was no one else in the hall but her. No one to protect—and worse, much worse, no one to fail. This was survival made as clean and as tidy as it could be. She could
see
, on a level that the word "sight" was too simple to encompass, where he would go, where he would strike, what he would attempt, and she reacted fifteen seconds ahead of each action.

Of course she did wonder about the structural integrity of the hall itself when she saw the first fissure snake its way from mid-wall to ceiling. She also wondered how well he could see; his casual destruction of the lamps he could reach had plunged the hall into twilight.

And what followed twilight?

He was
heavy
. She was light on her feet.

But he was not, as she had so dearly hoped, slow.

"I was made for many things," he said, no break for breath in the smooth flow of the words, "among them defense. If I tire at all, it is not in a way that will help you."

She saved her breath; cursing worked just as well when she didn't let it out.

It was when she took the right turn into the Hall of Statues that she said a single word.
Kalliaris
.

They were waiting for her.

They were waiting for her.

Those forms that had been carved into perfect stone, alabaster, marbled smoky quartz, something green and heavy and shot through with veins of gold, those statues that had their places on pedestals over inscriptions she had no hope of being able to read, now gathered 'round the doors in a half circle.

Unlike Aristos, they were silent; it was not a mercy. She had ten seconds of lead time, and the momentary pause to stare at the faces, mute but no longer expressionless, of the men and women that she imagined had somehow managed to piss Avandar off cost her.

She ran into their midst; stopped ten feet away from the one that stood farthest from the swinging door. Not a good idea to let him touch her, if she could avoid it. That was the problem with having an imagination; she could imagine just how well she'd fare beneath those fists, given what one blow had done to gold.

Cormaris
, she thought,
don't let me snivel
. Not that she had much in the way of dignity, but what she did have was important.

"You must be the young lady that Aristos spoke of," the statue said. It had a voice like thunder's rumble: Heavy and unpleasantly grating. It—he—also looked nothing like Aristos; there was no refinement at all in his features. Heavy cheeks, heavy chin, beard that, even carved in stone, didn't look like it would pass Imperial muster. He was also about twice the width of the more pretty Aristos, and very little of that was fat.

Well, okay, none of it was fat. But in real life—wherever it had managed to run off to, very little of it would have been.

"Well," she said, looking over her shoulder, "I'm the only new person here that I know of, although 'young' or 'lady' is probably stretching it."

Aristos stepped into the room. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. They didn't come down when he smiled. She hated people who used smiles that particular way. Not that her hatred ever made much difference.

She turned back to Big and Burly.

The statue standing in front of her frowned slightly. "True," he said. "The dress doesn't suit you, either."

"Well, thanks. I suppose I won't return the favor and criticize what you're wearing, seeing as you don't have many alternatives."

He laughed, then, and Aristos slowed down. "Sanjos," he said softly. "You've found something of mine. I'm… surprised to see you awake."

"Oh? The way you've been babbling? You talk so much Aristos, if most of it weren't boring, you'd wake the dead."

"Do not interfere in what does not concern you."

"Or you'll turn me to stone?" The larger man's smile was very similar to Aristos' but it wasn't aimed at her.

"We have very little time. Let me finish what I started, and you may do as you please with what remains."

"Judging from your expression, that won't be much."

"Sanjos." His expression stilled, the lines of it smoothing out into something better expressed by stone. "I will already suffer for what has transpired. I have no wish to suffer without due cause."

The larger man shrugged. "Not my problem, really. Come here," he added to Jewel.

She started to obey, but her feet stopped in place. She was too tired to think, but not too tired to react; her feet understood what she knew before it reached the rest of her body. Like, for instance, her brain. Instinct. No safety there, then. No safety anywhere.

"Girl," the second statue said, some of the rumble in his voice turning to jagged edge, "I said,
come here
."

"Funny thing about life," she replied, standing where she was as Aristos—and the line of statues to either side of the one called Sanjos—drew closer. "Even when there's only seconds left of it, no one rushes to throw it away."

Sanjos frowned and stepped forward just as quickly as Aristos had done.

"'Funny thing,'" a familiar voice said, softly enough that she had to strain to catch it, "if I were to illustrate that truth by example,
you
would not be the person I would choose as its proof."

The light came down from the ceiling like rain and even the statues flinched at its coming.

In a brightness that the height of day couldn't match—except for those rare moments when the sea was still enough that it reflected sun in white, rhythmic stretches—stood Avandar Gallais, shorn of crown, shorn of jeweled silk. But it was his voice that was the greatest of comforts: because it
was
his voice. There was no struggle with dialect, no speaking in tongues—as it were—no dull confusion; for the first time, he was completely himself.

She had never thought to be so happy to see him.

Aristos howled in fury; it was all he could do. He lunged for her and his body froze that way, as if a sculptor had taken a fancy to a man in a frenzy, and chiseled him perfectly to reflect that moment of his life and no other. Sanjos did not make the attempt; indeed, the statues that surrounded her became just that: statues. Immobile stone.

"You are," he said softly, "such a foolish girl. What did you think you were doing?"

She stood in their center, almost unwilling to move; they had come close enough to her that she'd have to squeeze between the columns their bodies formed, and she didn't want to touch them, to gift them with the intimacy of either her escape or her relief.

"I was—exploring. This place—"

"It is my home."

"Well, that would explain a lot."