Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (40 page)

Isladar.

He waited. Waiting was simple, although to fill the time with the disguise of human motion was not. Mortals did not stand and wait; they did not observe for any length of time. They lived by the night and the day, in their short, short hours. It was almost a curiosity to mimic them, but curiosity in the end was Isladar's curse, not Ishavriel's.

Isladar, who had bred the half-human godling and lost her for reasons not a single one of the Generals understood. Only Ishavriel made the attempt, and only because of the five he was the most suspicious.

For millennia, Lord Isladar, truly
Kialli
, had graced the side of the Lord's throne like an ornament, like a human thing of precious metal and jewelry. He had no demesne, no lieutenants, none of the unnamed; he took part in none of the duels that had shaped, scarred and defined the changing face of Allasakar's domain since its beginning. Of all of the
Kialli
to serve the Lord so closely, only Isladar had survived. Only he.

Why?

To watch him as he was now made him a creature almost beneath contempt. He dressed as the least of the blood-bound kin did, and performed a service—or so it seemed—that the blood-bound might be too good for: spying on a captive girl.

Lord Ishavriel knew it for fact: He had ordered the girl watched. But not by a kinlord.

The girl stiffened a moment; Isladar bowed with a subservient human's perfect posture. Then the other woman, the enspelled human, came to life. When she did, he walked away, skirting the water's edge.

Across the water, the eyes of the
Kialli
met.

"I did not expect to see you here," Ishavriel said, twisting his words into the wind and forcing the element to carry them clearly.

"I came," he replied, "to deliver a message and to satisfy my curiosity."

"At my expense?"

"It costs nothing," he answered softly, "and may yet serve your purpose."

Ishavriel waited. The shadows lengthened. But waiting served them both ill within these lands, beside these waters; the sun was setting, and their stillness would be marked. It angered him, to speak first.

"What message do you choose to deliver?"

"Just this: Anya a'Cooper has moved her throne."

"Impossible."

"Indeed, that is what we would have said. She is exhausted, and only through my intervention did she survive the… rearrangement. She is not popular among the
Kialli
."

"Your intervention? Then I am in your debt."

Isladar's smile was dark and sharp; they both knew the value of the words when no blood had been spilled to bind them. "She suffers the fevers."

"In the Shining Palace?"

"No. I did not think it wise to leave her there; I was not in a position to protect her."

"Because of your curiosity."

"Indeed."

Silence. Ishavriel mastered his fury with effort, none of it visible.

"There is more."

"More?"

"She moved her throne," he said, "because she was tired of standing."

He felt certain that he would not like what followed. He was absolutely certain that Isladar found it amusing, although he kept all trace of it from voice or face. Rare, that, in the face of a rival's discomfort. He expected to hear at least a cold chuckle, a quiet laugh; open scorn was more common but unlike Isladar.

"Where is the throne?"

"It is at the head of the pentagram."

"The—" the kinlords did not pale; that was a trait left to mortals, a trick of their blood and their weakness. No; the kinlords lost all movement; they became as still as the stone out of which the Lord had carved his Great Hall.

"The—not the ground upon which the mages channel their power at the Lord's behest?"

"Indeed," Isladar said, his voice a whisper, a sinuous motion of air within air. "She has broken the gate's containment. For the last mortal day, not a single one of the kin has been summoned from across the rift.

"He is not pleased."

Without another word, Ishavriel turned into the shadows the sun cast and vanished.

Only when his shadows were gone did Isladar offer what every other kinlord would have given openly: A smile.

Had he seen it, Ishavriel would have acknowledged that it was
perfect
.

9th
of Scaral, 427 AA

Evereve

She did not leave her room.

Not because she was no longer curious; the curiosity was strong enough that it forced her to rise, time and again, and walk to the closed door that led to the rest of the dungeon of wonders. But each time, through dint of a will and patience that she would never have had as the young girl who had first come in through Terafin's front gates, she returned to the desk that she occupied.

Her lip was no longer swollen.

Her temper was no longer heated. Unfortunately, it hadn't cooled; it had chilled.

You seduce my wife
—well, that's what he had thought—
and I rape your daughter. Gods, I hate men
. Be fair, she added silently— the whole conversation was silent, which was uncharacteristic—he
had
taken out what was left of his anger on Aristos himself.

She counted to ten.

Well, that was enough fairness.

Unfortunately, nothing happened to take her mind off her anger; she blunted it slightly by throwing a few very heavy things—what exactly they were supposed to be wasn't clear—at the door.

They were, surprise, surprise, gold. They didn't break. She had never detested gold so much in her life; had, in fact, never dreamed she could. Gold, after all, was an important source of power.

Well, so was liver if you listened to her grandmother. She was sharply aware that she probably hadn't. Not enough. But then again, she'd been a child when her grandmother had gone to Mandaros' Halls, and what child listens well? She'd heard mystery, and danger, and adventure, all in the safety and warmth of her grandmother's arms and lap.

The smell of cinnamon and sweat came back to her; she stood a moment, eyes closed, thinking about old stories. During the day, she'd play them out: She, the wily hero, the brave mage, the healer, the bardic wonder, and the shadows her enemies, her forest of wonders, her ancient, twisting passages at the heart of which her enemy waited for the final confrontation. But at night, at night, without the control of her grandmother's stories to bind them, those shadows had come to her, jumped between the thin barding of make believe, laughing at the ill-fitting guise of hero or healer as they pushed it aside.

Five years old, maybe four, she had huddled, trying to work her voice up to a scream so that someone would wake her. A smarter person would probably have taken the nightmares as a hint and stopped playing at the heroics night's terror so thoroughly disgraced. But the night couldn't rob the day of strength. She had still played at being the hero.

She wondered if it were night now; there was no window to oblige her by offering her a glimpse and an answer. Her stomach, however, ever helpful, growled.

And she'd be damned before she went down to the hall for dinner. The one thing about years on the street: Hunger was a known evil, and she knew how much of it her body could take before it was dangerous.

Perhaps the room knew. She had an uneasy sense that it was alive and watching her, preparing a report to take back to its master, Avandar. Or whatever it was he was called here.

Kalliaris
, she thought, the word more of a mantra than a prayer. She turned away from the door and trudged back to the bed. Sat, letting the weight of her chin drag her head down. Down. Down. Her lids were kind of heavy, too. Lashes brushed cheeks before she forced them open.

Prayer stopped. Anger, for a moment, let go.

Across from the bed, a section of particularly garish wall had been usurped. By a door.

It was a very, very strange door, and she stared at it for fifteen minutes before she understood what was wrong with it: It was hers. One of hers. Her grandmother's voice hadn't been so strong since childhood, but it whispered in her ear now, repeating every Voyani warning she had ever been offered, Torran words lighting the corners in which shadows, like fears, waited.

Oh, Oma
, she thought.
I wish the Lady had never taken you
. What would you do now if you were me? To that, there was no answer. Jewel ATerafin walked to the door and opened it.

Beyond the door, her rooms shimmered beneath a gauzy veil of light. She wanted them so very badly she almost let herself believe they were real. "And what," she said aloud, "happens if I walk through those doors?"

The doors that were not her doors opened at her back; she heard their smooth glide across fine carpet and turned.

The man who stood between them flinched slightly as he met her eyes. That was to be his only acknowledgment of what he had done. Avandar said, not unkindly, "I do not know."

She had been so angry moments before she could not quite allow the anger to slip from her grasp. But it was harder to hold than she had thought it would be, with her lip still sore.

He didn't seem to realize she was angry. Or perhaps he didn't know how to acknowledge it; he had rarely chosen to acknowledge any temper that had no outward expression. Of course, if she were honest, those had been few. Usually he had done the dance with the rest of them as they made their way through—and out of—the kitchen doors, avoiding any loose pot lid, any pan that wasn't too heavy, any spare utensil. The clatter of metal against stone had a much more satisfying voice than the one she'd been born with.

There was no wind in the room; no sea breeze; no open windows through which air could pass unimpeded.

But she felt it anyway, the movement of air, the hint of water's expanse, the warmth of sun that had burned away all cloud. He came to stand by her side. By her side and a little bit back, as if this were a normal day, as if this present danger was the merely demonic, this mystery the merely magical.

She turned to look back through
her
door; her room was solidifying as she watched, the details becoming less hazy. She stopped a moment. Bunched her hands in open-and-closed fists that seemed timed with necessary things: heartbeat. Breath.

"Jewel," he said quietly.

"Did you let them go?"

"No."

"Why are you here?"

"I… don't know."

Turning, she hit him.

Not hard enough to hurt him, of course; without training, she probably couldn't. But hard enough to test. He did not lift a hand to stop her. "Don't ever," she said, as coldly as she could. "Don't ever ever ever do this again."

They both knew she wasn't talking about the lip.

She didn't look at him. She looked at her rooms.

There, the chair by her bed where she habitually threw her clothing. Beside it, the chest of drawers, and across the room, the desk that she never used. Her bed, unmade, the canopy so simple and tasteful compared to the bed she'd wakened in she promised never to make young-girl cracks about it again. Her closet.

"Can I go there?"

"It's not your room," he replied softly.

"It's my room."

"It's your memory of your room. Wait," he added. He touched her shoulder. Withdrew his hand immediately when she flinched. "When the light dims, it will be as real as it can be in this place."

Disappointment silenced her. But only for a moment; silence was not one of Jewel ATerafin's many gifts. "I thought it might be—I thought we could—"

"Go back?"

Something in his voice made her turn. She caught only his profile; his gaze was there, upon the room whose reality he dismissed.

"Yes," she said at last. "Go back. I've never been so far from home."

"You don't even know where we are."

"I know where we aren't. That's enough for me." She folded her arms across her chest; jewels caught and pulled against each other as they settled into this familiar position.

"No," he said quietly. "There is no way back from here."

"Avandar—"

"You may enter now."

"Is there any point?" But she left him standing outside the doors, the simple wooden doors, when she passed beneath their frame. She walked to her bed, paused a moment in front of her chest of drawers, and moved on to her closet. Her breath was a wild struggle; her chest felt constricted, as if something heavy had been placed against it and was growing in weight with each passing moment.

He had never been denied her rooms. He entered them quietly behind her, reasserting the order that she had come to view as natural. She wondered, briefly, if it would ever be natural again. She'd always known he had power, of course, but she never been forced to confront it. Funny how the little lies of omission were the things that held the safety of her life together.

Within the closet hung the dresses she wore to those meetings Avandar deemed politically important. And beyond them, hidden by this patina of decorum and rank, the clothing that she wore when she worked with her den in her kitchen. None of them fine silks—she found silk just a touch too delicate—but all of them sturdy enough. She'd had the elbows patched, and after Avandar had finished having his fits, had seen to it that the reinforcements were not immediately obvious, although it cost more.

Without thought, she turned her back to her domicis, inviting him by gesture alone to undo whatever it was that nubbled her spine so uncomfortably.

His fingers moved the length of her back as he undid the small catches that held the dress in place. Southern in look, it had. none of the apparent simplicity of the saris she secretly loved; it took time.

"Jewel," he said.

"Don't."

"Don't?"

"Whatever you were about to say, don't bother. We—thanks." She slid out of the dress, keeping her back to him. Gods knew he'd seen her naked before—and not like he'd ever noticed— but she'd never really
felt
naked. Either that or it had been long enough that she'd forgotten the early awkwardness.

Either way, it was there now. She was aware of every particular flaw her body possessed, every out of place hair, every extra bit of weight.