Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (4 page)

"Then you have brought her home," Margret said formally, the words strange to the Serra's ears.

Teresa looked away again, wondering when the woman's voice had drawn her eyes from the Lord's light. "No," she said at last, knowing from the tone of the words, rather than from their content, that the younger woman spoke not of a corpse. "I have not."

"But—" For the first time, there was a fear about her voice, a loss of certainty. "You
must
have—have done what she asked."

"She did not ask it of me," Serra Teresa replied, coming at last to the second part of her duty. "She asked it of a young woman whom she met in the Tor Leonne. The young woman who—who witnessed her death, who was the only witness."

"You're lying."

She did not smile when she said, "You accuse me of something that you have just said—"

"This is your way, isn't it? This is your way of drawing us into your intrigues and your stupid battles. I
told
her—I told her not to listen to you—"

I
know
, Teresa thought.
You are much like your mother at this age; any plagues or curses we must suffer are our own, and we

are welcome
—
at your pleasure
—
to suffer them with neither cease nor your aid
. But she did not say it.

"What is it, Teresa? What do you want from us? You've taken Evallen—and I have no way of knowing whether or not anything you've told me is true."

"You have the same method your mother had," was Serra Teresa's reply. She was curious, and she was not, for although she had always suspected that the pendant that Diora now held in her possession was a thing of more than just monetary value to the Arkosa Voyani, she also knew the price of sharing their secrets. There were places one did not, one could not, pry.

"Where is this—this other woman?"

"In the Tor Leonne. She cannot travel; even the freedom of daylight is almost prohibited her."

"But you travel. You could have—"

"I could not ask her to break her oath to Evallen of the Arkosa Voyani."

Truth, in that. Margret's sullen silence was acknowledgment enough. "What do you want of us, Teresa?"

"The young woman that she gave this great task to was the Consort of the Lord of the Sun."

"So?"

"Perhaps I betray myself; the court is my home, and has always been. You knew her, I think even you must have known her, by the name she once held: Serra Diora Maria en'Leonne."

Margret sat down, hard.

Into the silence, the sun fell, its shadows lengthening as its rays were broken by objects; tin cups, candle holders, lamps red-brown with rust around handle and base. Margret was white with the things she must leave unsaid; they were many.

Teresa made to rise, and the young woman stirred, restless as a caged beast—and as dangerous, Teresa thought, to a woman who had made the choice to enter its cage. She sat again, unmindful— if a Serra of her stature could be—of the darkness, the meager-ness—of her surroundings. She felt oddly hollow as she watched this child pace; Margret was older than Diora in all things but experience, and loss.

Even this loss.

She had not thought to feel it, because she had felt it so little in the confines of the Tor Leonne, during the heat and the danger of the Festival Sun. She had seen the body; they all had; it was displayed prominently, and over the course of two days, it caught the wind unkindly, gave it the scent of early decay, of blood. They had taken it down as an offense to the grandeur of the grounds on the third day, but she did not know where it was buried; she was certain that no ceremony had attended the corpse.

She knew, as well, that the Voyani did not put much stock in the proper burial rites; bury the dead, by all means, but don't worship the corpse; the spirit, after all, had been freed from the burden of constant wandering, a homelessness decreed by fate, upheld by even the laws of nature.

Evallen.

But she had not thought, after seeing that body, to sit in this wagon, of all wagons. The grand wagon, that she could have brushed aside as easily, as nonchalantly, as serafs did the summer flies. But not here; it was in this wagon that she and Evallen had first met, when Evallen's mother, Violla, had been the Matriarch.

The circle closes
. Yes. Around them all, an ambush.

"Teresa?"

She was embarrassed to be caught out, to be caught with no control, momentarily, of her expression. She knew the lines of her face were neutral because no loss could destroy that mask; it was part of everything she had been raised to be. But she also knew that it was vacant, that expression; she had gone, for a moment, into a past that contained Evallen and Teresa, a young woman who would rule the Arkosa Voyani as mother of them all, and a young woman who would never be a mother, no matter that either woman desired a different destiny.

She had seen the end of so many lives, but she felt, suddenly, the Lady's Night was falling, finally; that there would come a night so black that the inevitability of dawn could be struck forever from human memory.

And then she knew why, for she was not a woman given to the darker fancy of the Night's thoughts, especially not during the Lord's tenure. She heard it in a voice.

"I believe," she said, her own voice smooth as the silk that she wore, "you have a visitor, Margret. Or rather, your van does."

Margret turned at once, as if glad of the opportunity for action, or reaction.

Pitching her voice in the manner that she had been taught so long ago by a bard-born man, she said, "Margret—please."

The younger woman turned.

"Caution. Make no promises to him, give him no hint of your intent or your secrets."

"As if," Margret said, with a faint bitterness and angry but muted contempt, "we
ever
give outsiders anything of ourselves."

It was meant as a blow, and because it was meant that way, the Serra found it difficult to be offended. A difference, she mused, between the ghost of her younger self and the woman that she was now. So many differences—surely not all the product of age—but she knew how to do one thing well, at that age, at this one.

She knew how to listen.

In the artificial darkness of the wagon's confines, alone for the first time since the Festival of the Sun itself—for Ramdan's invisible presence
was
a presence, a comfort and a responsibility both—she closed her eyes and let the line of her shoulders dip, ever so slightly, groundward.

She shut out color and shadow and edges of light; shut out, as she could, the scents confined within the still cabin, and listened.

"I have come," this stranger's voice said, "to speak with Evallen, who protects the Arkosa Voyani on their voyage." Inflected slightly, the address was archaic and stilted—but there was, in the words, a respect that was truer than they were.

"She's not here." Margret's voice was thin and reedy when compared with the richness and the depths of this stranger's. Teresa could not help but compare the voices; indeed, the differences seemed to demand no less.

Grandeur, there. Power. Not Margret's.

If
, Serra Teresa thought, folding her fan in the stillness by playing with its familiar edges,
you were a woman, you might even present a small threat. But the Voyani men don't follow men
.

"I… see. I am, perhaps, mistaken about the color of the flag that you fly. I was given to understand that such a flag was flown only in the camp of the Matriarch."

She heard the play of unruly hair against cloth that was the Voyani shrug.

"I assure you that Evallen would find it most—advantageous to speak with me; I do not seek to sell her anything—as you can see, I come with little. But I have word for her, of something she values, perhaps above all else."

"And if she were here, I'm sure she'd be happy," the Voyani daughter replied, in a tone of aggravated boredom; whatever this stranger looked like, it was clear that he had done two things by that appearance: He had impressed Margret with his bearing and confidence, and he radiated a certain authority.

Better to come as a man of earth instead, sweat-stained by labor, but built by it as well. Better to come as a sick man, or a father in fear of the loss of children, better to come as one fleeing from the unjust claims of the Dominion—for it was rumored, and the Serra was only barely able to remain uncertain about the truth of those rumors, that the serafs who fled sometimes found the Voyani before they found death—better, in fact, to come as anything other than a man of power.

For a man of authority and power could only be one thing: of the clans, and important to them. As if to prove the point she had not made, he was silent a long time. But to the surprise of the Serra, his tone, when he spoke, held none of the anger that she felt certain she would hear there. It held, oddly, a dark amusement, a certainty that this was both inevitable and unimportant.

"Tell her only this, then. We have the keys to Arkosa, and we are willing to grant them to its rightful owners."

She rose then, swiftly, urgently—rose with the grace of a lifetime of graceful movement, but without care for it, thought for it—and reached the window in time to see the cloaked hue of a stranger's back.

"Hey, Margret," one of the young men said, "should we stop him?"

She saw the young woman shake her head.

"But what's he mean? Is he threatening Evallen?"

She shook her head again; her hair was a cascade of darkness that still caught and reflected light.

"Why did he say—"

"I
don't know
, Nicu, but if you don't shut up, the answer won't matter to you." To punctuate the sentence, Margret drew a dagger that was slender enough to disappear as she turned it on its edge.

He shrugged, shoved his hands in the sash across his midriff, leaned back against the wagon. The Serra Teresa would never become accustomed to this; the man honestly did not take offense at the threat. None of the men would, with the exception of her brother, and indeed, had this Nicu—a fine young man with broad shoulders and sun-browned skin—drawn knife in return, the others would have made him regret it. Whether or not he survived that regret was entirely a matter of their affections—or hers—although in truth it was rare that the Voyani killed each other.

Usually, when they did, it was in a fine and black temper, and the memory of it lingered. There was, however, no love lost whatever between the clans; of the four, two were currently involved in almost open warfare. As long as that war did not spread into the villages owned by the Tyrs and the Tors, it was overlooked with some malice.

The young woman came back to her wagon, and as she turned, she shoved the dagger, with more force than such an obviously well-crafted weapon deserved, into its sheath.

But it was her face that told much; the expression on it heightened by a lack of color, a forced neutrality that must be hard indeed for a woman of her temperament to achieve.

The Serra was standing. "I will leave you, Margret. I am sorry to deliver so little news, and all of it bad."

The younger woman's anger was a guttered flame; gone. She looked across at Teresa as if desperate for guidance, even if it was not, and never to be again, her mother's. "Do you know what he said?"

"What who said?"

"That man—"

"Who was the man?"

"I—" She stopped. Flushed. "I didn't ask."

"Was he a clansman?"

"I'm certain of it." Then she stopped again. "I
was
certain of it. Teresa—you—"

"She cannot help you, Margret. But will you speak to an outsider of affairs of the Arkosa? If you will, speak to me, and only to me."

They turned at once at an unfamiliar, a new, voice. The wagon's flap lay almost shut and no one—save Adam, whose home it also was, or Evallen herself—disturbed Margret when those flaps were shut. Not if they didn't want a sound beating.

But Margret of the Arkosa Voyani—Margret, now protector of, and mother to, her clan—drew back as if she saw an apparition. "You," she said softly.

"You remember me."

Margret's face had lost the last of the color that was not granted her by the grace of the sun's harsh touch. "It was
you
," she whispered, the three words raw. "You. My mother—"

"I am not responsible for Evallen's choice," the woman in midnight blue replied. And Serra Teresa di'Marano heard the alloyed uneasiness in her voice that spoke of both truth and lie. "Nor am I responsible for her death. She accepted the responsibility of Arkosa."

"You took her away."

"She asked it, Margret. She asked me for vision."

"It's not your right—it wasn't your right—"

"She had the Sight, but not the clear ability to See."

"And you showed her her death, didn't you?"

"I? No. But I will not lie to you because we will speak again, often, you and I: she saw it."

The Serra wished to leave, because she had never heard a person speak who so clearly spoke with the wind's voice as this stranger did. This woman, this intruder—her voice was the voice of one who has seen enough horror to go completely mad—but who, somehow, barely has the strength to remain true in the face of the incomprehensible.

But the woman who wore a length of midnight blue that went from head to toe, turned at that moment and bowed to her in the Northern fashion. "Serra Teresa," she said.

"You speak," Teresa replied, "with the voice of the winds."

"Yes." Ferocity, in that single word; bitterness. Triumph perhaps, but one so tired there was no joy in it. She returned her attention to the younger woman. "You know what that… man meant to offer."

Margret said, "You will not speak of this in front of the Serra, or I will be forced to kill her."

"Kill her, and your mother will never return to you. Accept it, Margret. You are not a fool. Your mother knew what she was doing, and knows it still. She has given you the guiding hand."

"I never took her charity." Margret dragged the back of her hand across her eyes. "I never asked to be guided."

"No. Perhaps not. But this is not a matter of charity. This is a matter of the Arkosans, of
Arkosa
, and if your own jealousy prevents you from seeing it, if your own pride prevents you from acting, you will have doomed your mother to a pointless death. It is, of course, your choice; only the living can give a death purpose."