Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (37 page)

"She was proud of you. Proud enough, certain enough, that she took the risk of leaving you in shadow while she stepped into the Lord's light."

Margret turned slowly to face her, to face this woman who gave a grandmother's advice. "Matriarch," she said at last, her anger muted. "If she trusted me so well, why did she tell you? She must have hoped you would watch out for me, and step in when I faltered."

"Would you have me betray her confidence?"

"Yes."

Yollana chuckled. "Spoken," she said wryly, "like a daughter."

"You aren't going to tell me." It wasn't a question.

"No. Because while she would forgive me the betrayal, in the end,
I
would not. She is dead; respect is the only thing she has now." The smile was there in the lines that framed her eyes and lips, even when it left her face. "But we have things to discuss before the fires burn low enough that others might hear us.

"The sword, Margret."

"It is—"

"Yes."

Her power was so impressive. She had not pulled the pendant from the chain or otherwise called its power and knowledge, and

she
knew
the sword. Margret herself felt uneasy when the weapon cast shadow over her hands, but Yollana's shadows were the darkness of knowledge.

"Yollana?"

"I have seen such a sword as this," Yollana said, bitterly. "I have touched it, with these hands. It burned, and I bear the scars." Her eyes were darker than the paling night sky. "You are Matriarch in title, and it is your blood-right and your responsibility, Margret. I diminish none of that when I say this: You are not Matriarch in fact until you have crossed the sands as the heart of Arkosa. There are things that I cannot speak of with you until you are tested."

"Tested?" She bridled. "By whom? You? The other Matriarchs?" Her voice rose; it grated as it climbed and she forced it down as if it were Ona Donatella's worst healing brew.

"By Arkosa," Yollana said softly. "But it is my personal experiences that I cannot yet speak of; I am old and I wander."

Margret snorted, but she could no longer deny Yollana- her right to claim age as a refuge.

"The sword was not fashioned by smiths; it was fashioned by magic, in forges that were old when the cities were built, and older still when they fell. It is said that they grant the gift of ability to a warrior, but never without cost. They were a gift to such warriors in times past."

"They are… demonic?"

"No. They were meant to be wielded by men."

"Yollana—"

"You will know it all, Margret. All."

"But not now."

"Now," she said softly, "we have a larger problem. There is only one place that I have ever seen such a sword; only one place where
you
will, in your time. Not a single one of those swords have been taken from either Havalla or Arkosa—I would bet my family's life, and yours, on it.

"That leaves us with a problem. Either Corrona or Lyserra have weakened, which is problematic at best, or—" and she turned her eyes to the fire's heart as she spoke, "the time has come when the forges that first created the ancient weapons have been refired, and we will see war."

"I'm about ready to see war," Margret said grimly.

"That," Yollana replied, "is because you have never crossed the desert as Matriarch." She lifted a hand to forestall Margret's reply. "Yes, you've crossed the desert, but you've crossed it as her daughter. The secrets that we
can
teach our own, we teach. This is not one of them.

"Keep the sword, Matriarch. Keep it in the hands of either yourself or your heir. And be aware that the hand that has held the blade and blooded it is a hand that will seek the weapon."

/
gave him an order
, Margret thought; she said nothing. Because she couldn't be certain that that order meant anything to the Arkosan cousin of whom she was so fond.

"What do you do," she asked quietly, "when your kin won't follow your orders?"

"When the orders are serious?"

Margret raised a brow. "All of my mother's orders were serious; she didn't waste breath otherwise."

"Fair enough; I natter when I'm thinking; I order them about. Soothes my nerves. Of course, some of them are stupid enough to listen to every word I say when I'm nattering. But that's their problem, and it's an easy question. The most important thing to the family is the family. The Matriarch embodies that."

"Yes, but I—"

"I kill them."

It would have helped Margret if she could have believed—for even a moment—that Yollana of the Havalla Voyani was lying.

As if she could hear that thought, the older woman said, bleakly, "It's a test we all face, daughter of a Matriarch. And we pass it, or our daughters or sisters rule in our stead. Do you understand?"

But she couldn't answer, not easily; she was caught on the edge of a childhood's slender memory, and it cut.

Yollana faded into a grim silence; their eyes met.

"Evallen trained you well, but you're still very young, Margret. And now, right now, youth will kill you. Do you understand that? It will kill you, and expose the heart of Arkosa to anyone who seeks to injure it."

She nodded.

"You're thinking of your first death."

"An uncle," she said quietly. "Just that. An uncle. I don't remember him well." A lie. She remembered three things clearly: first, that he had stolen fragments of the festive cake for her four-year-old mouth, although it had been strictly forbidden, and had perched her on his lap while she babbled with pleasure at the gift. Second, that he had struggled and screamed and pleaded six months later, two days after her fifth birthday, when the Matriarch's men had come to take him away. He had run for her, his face wild and white and his eyes wider than any adult eyes she had. ever seen that had still had lids.

Oh, that had angered Uncle Stavos. One of her mother's men. One of her most trusted cousins. Who had she been, at five? Someone who could believe that her Uncle Rogos, favored uncle with the handsome face, all his teeth, and the most generous satchel in the entire Arkosan caravan, could run for her, run
at
her, and mean her no harm, although the threat of death hung over him like a rare, heavy cloud.

Uncle Stavos tackled him; they fell together in a tangle of heavy arms and legs, three inches short of her feet. The shadows of the night were brighter somehow than the shadows Uncle Stavos cast over Uncle Rogos' heaving back.

"Don't let them do this, don't let them do this, child. Tell your mother—ask your mother—not to do this. Please.
Please
." The last word, spoken in the valley his body made of wild grass and tall, flowering weed, still had the power to immobilize her. She stood, the heart's fire dying in front of her eyes, the third memory at the edge of her vision.

"First death," she whispered.

They both meant more than just death, of course: Margret had seen many before she was five; too many to count. But the deaths that scarred were always the ones that happened between family. Arkosans killed other Voyani when the families went to war; they killed clansmen; rarely, although it had happened, they killed serafs. But each other? Almost never.

"How old were you?"

"Five," Margret said, although she seldom spoke of it. "Five years old and two days. It was the first time I realized that there were things I couldn't ask of my mother."

"She spoiled you, then." Not a question.

Margret remained unruffled. "Yes. In her fashion. I felt the back of her hand more often than most of the kids my age." She shrugged. "But she was smaller than most of their mothers."

Yollana grinned.

"No. That day was different. I think it was the first time I'd ever hurt her, and I didn't know it, then. I barely understand it now. She had cause to kill—to execute—one of my favorite uncles. Uncle Rogos. I thought if I asked her for his life, she'd change her mind. I thought if she
knew
what it would mean to me—"

"And you asked her this when?"

Margret laughed, but the laugh was just this side of a cry. "When the blade was in her hand, Matriarch. When it was in her perfectly steady hand."

"You were her only daughter, obviously."

The humor helped. "I want to kill them, sometimes. I want that. But to actually do it—"

"Breaks a family, or it can. That's why it's in the hands of the Matriarch. And those hands are always steady." Yollana looked down at her own, weathered and wrinkled by sun's poor grace. "I'm old, Margret. Old and feeble. I need my rest."

But they both looked, as one, to the Tor Leonne upon the high plateau, and Margret knew that neither of them would sleep much before the dawn.

He planned ahead.

The sun's heat could not be denied, but it could be lessened. A breeze could be called. Water brought. Fans hefted by serafs. Should one desire privacy, an awning might be constructed, poles wedged into dirt that was, at the height of the moon's season, soft enough to accept them. He made the latter choice, instructing the serafs to build and then
leave
.

The free seldom disobeyed his commands; the serafs, never. He contemplated their work and wondered why it was that they, with so little to lose, could work so quietly and so well; they were like shadows, cast but not noticed. Much like his own shadow would be in a scant few hours. The sun had not yet fully risen. If there was work to be done, it was best done now.

Even bereft as he was, he was not without wisdom.

Cortano di'Alexes was not a sentimental man. He was, however, a powerful man, and the combination of these two traits meant that he had few friends, and the trusted ones were always those whose associations he had made in his youth.

With a single exception, they lay dead, their bodies arranged in a semblance of peace. What could not be gathered easily— blood and blackened ash—now adorned the floor and beams of the room in which they had made their helpless final stand. Magic still lingered; he could sense it, and could name at least three of the casters. It was the last thing they would share: Power and the knowledge of it, ineffectual though it had been.

One of the Widan had been dispatched to carry word to the families.

The Sword's Edge himself saw to the bodies.

He accepted no Widan's aid; no serafs presence. Here, stripped of the need to
be
the Sword's Edge for the benefit of spectators, he labored as a man labors who has lost something of value: in anger, in pain, in privacy.

No wine, here, not in the growing light. No tears offered to the Lady—or to the Lord. Behind the sliding screens, both Lady and Lord were divested like so much jewelry; there was, after all, so little proof of Their existence they were obviously the province of the sentimental.

Not so the Lord of Night.

In his darker moments, Cortano wondered if the Lord's worship was not descended from the Lord of Night's, for they had this in common: the powerful ruled the less powerful. But such a descent could not have occurred within Leonne's time. Men changed, and their worship altered; this much, study had shown. But they did not change so quickly and leave so little trace.

The history lay somewhere, its answers waiting to be found. By the Widan. By the seekers of knowledge.

By the man who lay dead beneath his hands, his face bisected, his arm missing. Habit kept the anger from his face; habit so strong he could surrender to it and trust his reputation should any fool dare to break his edict by interrupting his work upon the shaded ground.

"My apologies," such a fool said, and the Sword's Edge froze in mid-motion, dirt on his hands, "if I interrupt a ceremony of importance."

"Apologies? How unlike you, Lord Isladar." He rose at once. The dirt on his hands was moist and not easily removed, although that would change with the sun's passage across the open sky. His robes were not fine.

Nor were Isladar's.

All of the
Kialli
were threats, but of them, only Isladar was worthy of Cortano's curiosity. Curiosity was, in and of itself, such a dangerous trait.

"This is not the appointed hour. Am I summoned to the Shining Palace?"

"No." The kinlord looked down upon the shade-covered grass, the shallow rift in the ground, and the bodies that would help to heal it.

"You do not seem surprised."

"I am… not entirely surprised. Word of the evening's events have traveled. The Widan, of course, were not of concern. The loss of the. Voyani woman was." His shrug was slight, but obvious. "Should an event of import occur in the Shining City, I assume word would travel just as quickly."

He assumed, Cortano was certain, no such thing; the advantage was all theirs in this particular case. For their part, the Southern Court's sole advantage seemed to come from the fact that the
Kialli
truly had no understanding of their enemies or their enemies' motivation.

Except, perhaps, for this one. Not for the first time, Cortano di'Alexes wondered if he possessed the power needed to destroy Isladar. He had never doubted that it would be necessary.

"The loss of the Voyani woman?" Cortano said bitterly, the anger near the surface of his words as it so seldom was. His was a cold anger, after all; a thing that bided its time. "You claim no responsibility for her?"

The kinlord did not answer; not directly. That was not his way.

"You are aware," Lord Isladar said softly, "that the Fist of Allasakar does not favor this alliance—or any alliance—with humans."

"Indeed."

"You are also aware, no doubt, that among them, one Lord has chosen to intervene, weaving our Lord's goal and his own so that they are inseparable in execution."

"No, of that we were not aware."

"Be aware, then. I bring you information and warning, although you need neither. Lord Ishavriel is the most subtle of the five, and it is his game you play. Come the night of the Festival Moon, the nature of the Tor Leonne will be unalterably changed. Be prepared."

He turned to leave.

Cortano lifted a hand, and fire enclosed him in a thin, but beautiful, circle. "Lord Isladar, a moment more of your time."