Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (38 page)

"You have it," the kinlord said, tolerating the fire whose sole purpose was to gain his attention.

"You are not at Court."

"No. I have been sent here for a different purpose."

"You will not divulge it."

"No. But I will say this, Widan Cortano di'Alexes: I am intrigued by mortality. The
Kialli
make no friends, and their allies and alliances are often short-lived, although perhaps not by mortal standards; I will therefore not insult your intelligence by offering friendship where none is possible.

"But if we cannot share friendship, we share enemies, another time-honored
Kialli
tradition. Where I can, I will aid you and give you information.

"I have watched; I am aware that the masks are a problem."

"Are you aware of their nature?"

"I am aware of the purpose to which they must be put—but were you to gain that information with no other obvious source, it would be my destruction. I have lived longer than any who has served the Lord so closely; I have learned what may, and what may not, be offered in the games between His lieges." He bowed, and then of all things, smiled. "There will be an interruption, I believe, in the Shining City; it will delay those who seek to control the events of the Tor more closely."

"And that interruption?"

"Rest assured, Widan. Your curiosity will be satisfied. Now I must go."

He vanished almost at once, with an ease that spoke of power. Power that Cortano himself barely possessed.
What is your game, Lord Isladar
? He wanted to ask the question, but knew it was pointless. A better question would be,
And will
we
survive playing it
?

Deprived of powders and oils, of creams and the heavy black kohl that was only slowly falling out of favor in the Imperial court, forbidden the adornment of Lake's jewels, the lilies that had been her preferred flower, the Serra Diora should have been just another woman, one of the countless number who came and went, in the moment of youth's zenith, through the gates of the Tor Leonne. But her skin was naturally pale, her hair thick and long, her eyes wide and round and dark in a way age would not diminish. And the grace that she exhibited in all things was a grace that only death or crippling would deprive her of.

Serra Fiona en'Marano acknowledged all this with private pain, for the Serra Diora had been—perhaps still was, it was so hard to tell—the chief rival for her husband's affection. His favored daughter. The only woman alive who, having publicly humiliated Sendari, could nonetheless be guaranteed survival.

She was clever.

Serra Fiona envied that, and feared it. But there were things she feared more, much more.

Sendari
, she thought, as she offered his daughter the most graceful of all possible obeisances,
you have driven us to this
. The shade cast by a bower of almost unnatural leaves protected them both from the sun; nothing at all protected them from the prying ears of the Widan, and the Serra Fiona was certain that the Widan would listen: she spoke with the Serra Diora.

Diora, whom Alesso di'Marente now called the most dangerous woman in the Dominion. And still desired.

And would I? Would I desire you if I were a man
? The wind brought the question, laughing as it left the words to abrade her peace. In an anger that she was not quite controlled enough to school, but intelligent enough to hide, she turned to the seraf she had chosen—in pettiness, she now acknowledged—to bring.

"Bring sweet water. And another fan."

He bowed effortlessly, his body bending at knee and waist as if his joints were liquid. She did not immediately recognize him, but his manner of movement, his perfect silence, his immediate attentiveness—these spoke of Teresa's hand. No seraf in the Dominion could measure up to the best of the Serra Teresa's, and more than once, Marano had made a gift of serafs to the harems and the high pavilions of the Tyr'agar, at the request of the Tyr's wife. Serafs—their purchase and their training—were far beneath the concerns of men. But the men knew value and quality when they saw it, and by look or gesture might indicate success or failure.

Diora, of course, had been granted no serafs in the harshness of her captivity; had indeed been forced to dress herself with her own hands, a reminder of how little power and how little dignity any woman truly had when she did not find favor—or worse, lost it—with the man who ruled her life. Fiona had promised herself she would never be so disgraced. It was a fear of hers, loss of the little power that she had managed, with beauty and cleverness, to find.

And yet she had arranged to speak with the Serra Diora. To risk her husband's wrath—her newly important husband, adviser and friend to the Tyr'agar—by pleading with him after an act of love rare enough these days that she wondered if she was too old, and too worn, to please—for Diora's company.

He was suspicious; she, even she, his not so clever Fiona, had foreseen this. She'd covered his lips with the palm of her hand, gently pressing her well-oiled, scented skin against a beard-framed mouth that was dry and worn in the corners by the wind's work.

"She has always been the Flower of the Dominion," Fiona told him, knowing that she stood upon the sword's edge: his temper. "I have always been the wife that she barely deigned to notice. Don't—Na'Sendar, it
is
true. She's always been what I'm not, she's always had what I've wanted."

His eyes were sharp as steel, bright and hard. "And what, little Fiona, do you desire?"

"The respect of your wives," she replied.

"You have that, surely."

"I have it in small measure; it has always been given first to the Serra Teresa and second to the Serra Diora. I have been given what dogs are given: scraps and leavings and the occasional kick when I come too close."

His brows, the peppered and familiar frame to eyes that she both loved and feared, rose. "You are… truthful, this day."

"I am the wife," she replied sweetly, "of the second most powerful man in the Dominion. I am Fiona en'Sendari."

And he, he was Widan, not husband. The indulgence had been burned out of him by the grace of the Lord and the command of the Tyr'agar. She had always admired Alesso di'Marente; she had cause to regret it now, and thought, feared, that her regrets in a future she could not see clearly for shifting sands would be harsher and far more enduring.

"Fiona en'Sendari, Serra Fiona, you presume. It is… unpleasant." He rose from the silks, tossing them aside. She arranged them artfully almost without thought before rising. Before approaching the back that he had turned to her; his attention was upon the screen doors that hid the view of the lake from their eyes.

"Forgive me," she whispered, as she approached his back without—quite—touching him. "I speak a truth that has hurt me to a husband that has more to do with his time than notice such a petty thing. I would not have spoken at all, but you asked, and I always do, in all things, as you ask."

"Yes," he said, his voice still distant, his back still turned. "You have always done so."

"I want—"

"To humiliate my daughter."

She was silent. He still did not turn; she weighed the risk she took by the stillness of his back and the neutrality of his voice. Neutrality was always the worst; it was the steel that was never far from Sendari's eyes—or orders.

And yet she continued to take the risk, rather than cringing from the sword's shadow or the fear of its fall as she had always done when she recognized what the bitter shadow meant. "To show her, rather, what a
dutiful
wife is due. To show her that love and loyalty are rewarded.

"I have been loyal. I have spent my life in your service. I have wanted only what you want, what is best for your clan. She is your
daughter
, Sendari. Of all women, she should—"

"Enough!" He turned, his hand raised.

She could not avoid it; she did not try. Instead, her face absorbed the blow; the slap, the resounding echo of it, was both order and reply. She wavered; the tears that came to her eyes were only partial pretense. But she had learned at her mother's side: be like the Lady's element. Water can be struck, but the hand passes through it, and when the two are parted—water and attacker—it is the latter that bears the mark.

But not, the Serra Fiona thought bitterly, the scar. She had been a foolish girl; she was, she acknowledged, an often foolish woman.

She waited until he had seen her face, and had seen the wide roundness of her eyes. Timing, now, was everything. A breath. Two breaths.

She fell to the ground before the third had left his lips, pressing knees and arms and face into the perfect mats at his feet, huddling there as if she were child, not wife.

Will this be the day
? she thought; she had thought it before. Although it was rarely spoken of, even when the Lady was ascendant, every wife knew that death by a husband's hand was common. Sendari had not yet killed a wife. But never and not yet were separated only by the thin edge of a man's anger. She saw his feet more clearly than anything else, and watched them as he turned, almost on heel, away from her.

"Very well, Serra Fiona. You have… earned the right to your… request. See the daughter whose love for me should have been as unswerving as your own. Prove your point."

She was no fool, although of his wives, she was the least wise. She did not rise.

"But, Fiona," he continued, after a slight pause in which she might have reignited the Widan's flame—his anger, her injury, "
do not ask again. "

It was almost a pleasure to speak with the Serra Fiona. Diora acknowledged it as truth, and she was shamed by it, but both acknowledgment and shame were buried beneath the perfect facade of her unadorned face. The sun on her skin had been warm when she walked by the Serra Fiona's side, exposed to wind and sky for the first time since the end of the Festival of the Sun.

To talk about nothing, shaded from open sky and the harsh, harsh glare of the Lord, in the pleasant way that women have who must speak when the walls of the harem do not shelter or protect them, had never been a freedom before; it was a privilege now. A privilege although she had heard, in the Serra Fiona's voice, a fear so strong it was almost terror. When the seraf had departed, Diora gazed out at the surface of the Lake.

"Do you miss it?" Fiona asked softly.

It was an intimate question, a question that not even the wives of her mother would have asked. Diora turned away from the waters to the woman who had never been her friend. She knew they were being listened to. She wondered if Fiona understood this.

"I miss," she replied, "my husband. My wives." There. Truth in that, if one knew how to listen. Only one man did, and he would never expose her. A delicate hand rose from a perfectly folded lap, and fell again; she had forgotten. No fan here, not for Diora; no veil.

The Serra Fiona was silent.

"Your seraf is very fine."

"Thank you. I believe, however, that he must have been trained by the Serra Teresa. We will have to ask her, when she arrives."