The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 (43 page)

But her legs were shaky; her feet, stiff. His pace was even; he did not deign to notice the geography of Averda as it passed beneath his feet. Did not seem to be inconvenienced in any way by the fall of the ground, or its rise.

She stumbled.

Felt his frown.

“We will not arrive in the city before dawn if you walk at this pace.”

Struggled to keep up.

He stopped. “You are so frail,” he said at last. “In the time when the Cities of Man held the heartlands, you would have perished.”

She was hungry, tired. Hot. He approached her, and she stopped herself from flinching.

“Come,” he said again, and before she could speak, he lifted her in the cradle of his arms. As if she were a child.

“I can walk.”

“Yes. But I cannot wait.”

“Then leave me here.”

He smiled. “Elena, you are safe.”

She laughed. She could not keep the hysteria out of the sound, and she hated herself for it. “How can I be safe, with you? Don’t you know what you are?”

“Oh, yes, I know.” He crested the ridge and stopped for a moment.

She could see the lights of the city of Callesta in the distance.

“Do you know what you are?”

“Elena,” she whispered. “Elena of the Arkosa Voyani.”

“That is barely a name,” he replied.

She said nothing.

Felt his chest beneath her cheek as if it were the cool low winds that swept down from the mountains.

“Is my cousin safe?”

“Your cousin? Ah, the Matriarch. Yes. Inasmuch as she resides within Tor Arkosa, she is safe. Only upon the Isle of the god-born would she be safer. I do not understand how the City came to rise; I would never have been trusted with such information.” His smile deepened. “Nor, it seems, would you, and you are of that City.”

“My other cousin?”

“Who?”

“Nicu.”

He frowned. Closed his eyes. Eyes closed, he looked almost human. “I do not know,” he said quietly. “Why do you ask?”

“I want to know.”

“Is he not the man who stood at the side of Lord Ishavriel? Is he not the man who intended to deliver Arkosa into the hands of her ancient enemies?”

She said nothing.

He laughed. “Were you another person, Elena Tamaraan—or were I—I would do you the grace of pretending to believe that you asked out of a desire for either justice or vengeance.”

Lies came easily to her lips, but they did not pass them. “He’s family,” she said at last.

“And that is so important?”

“It’s all we have, on the
Voyanne
.”

“It is all you
had
. But if I am not mistaken, Elena of Arkosa, it cannot be all that remains if you are to claim what was stewarded for you by the wild earth.”

She was quiet for a long time.

“Telakar?”

“Yes?”

“What is a demon?” Her voice was hushed.

“A name, not unlike the name Elena.”

“What do you call yourself?”

“Among the kinlords, we are rarely required to call ourselves anything. What are you told about demons?”

“They serve the Lord of Night.”

“Ah.”

“We don’t.”

“No, you don’t.”

She was
so
tired. “Why did you challenge Lord Ishavriel? Aren’t you on the same side?”

He laughed. “You are quaint, a child. Not one of the kinlords serves any master but himself and his own interests.”

“But the Lord of Night—”

“And we are all interested in our own survival.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

Silence. Then, “You are a very clever child.” But he did not answer the question.

She woke again at the gates of Callesta.

Had anyone told her that she would have slept, she would have cursed them for a liar. But she did not remember the passage from the ridge to the walls. Could not remember the exact moment when she had given up on wakefulness, retreating into the luxury of a sleep that depended upon another person’s arms, another’s motion.

But she remembered the last thing she’d heard: his description of the trees in the far, far North, in a land that she had rarely heard of and never visited.

“Elena.”

She struggled; he set her down.

“I have need of you here. There are guards at the gates, and for the moment, I am content not to kill them. They will not allow me to pass without questioning, and I am not so well versed in the etiquette of these lands that that questioning would go smoothly.”

I am content not to kill them
.

“I . . .”

“Elena.”

It was night. The Lady’s face was clear and bright. Elena met her silver gaze beneath a sky that went on forever. “Have the skies changed?” she asked him softly.

“Perhaps. It has been an hour. Two.”

“Since . . . the last time you walked these lands.”

“Ah. Yes, they have changed. But not so much that they are not recognizable.”

Lady’s face. She hesitated. There were, as he said, guards at the gates, and she knew that they would soon draw swords.

“Why are we here?”

He did not reply. He watched her.

She whispered something softly.

He heard it anyway. “A dangerous vow.”

We will live as free men, and we will fight as free men; not for power, nor for love, will we again serve the Lord of Night
.

She drew her shoulders back, lifting her chin. Not for power, not for love.

But for fear? For fear’s sake?

Not for fear. Lady, not for fear.

“We should have come in the Lord’s time,” she told him quietly.

“We are here now.”

“I won’t help you.”

He shrugged. “You do not aid me, Elena,” he said gravely. The sound of steel leaving sheath punctuated the quiet sentence. “You aid them. If you do not choose to obey me, it is of little concern. As I said, this city is remarkable for its poverty, its powerlessness. I am content not to kill.

“But only barely. Decide. But be aware that it is not your life that is at risk.”

The life, she thought, of clansmen. Of cerdan.

Not for the lives of men such as these would she be forsworn.

There were two men. They wore the symmetrical lines of neatly kept beards; clansmen, both. Free.

One man carried a lamp with him, and he raised it. Light lined the exposed folds of her desert robes; shadows darkened its valleys. She was aware of both because she looked down, to her feet, to the path beneath it.

Steel was much brighter when it caught light; there was nothing pleasant about that light’s glint. She had no weapon to draw in return.

“The gates of Callesta are closed,” the older of the two men said.

She nodded, silent, and then shrugged her arms and her shoulders free of the robes. Beneath them, she wore the colorful clothing of the open road.

The cerdan’s brows rose. He said a single word to the man who waited, lamp in hand.

She heard it.

“Yes,” she said, speaking slowly and reluctantly. “Voyani. I am of Arkosa.”

“You . . . wear desert robes.”

“Yes.” But not for long. They were conspicuous, these heavy folds of clothing that had served Arkosa for generations. Margret had once worn this robe. Elena, remembering this, removed it, folded it with care and handed it to Telakar.

As if he were, in truth, Arkosan.

Beneath the desert garb, she looked like a wanderer. The dyes of the clothing that she had literally owned for years had faded with exposure to sun, to sand, to wind; it marked her.

“You travel alone?” the older man asked.

“Not alone,” she replied. “My cousin travels with me, and he is known for his prowess with blade. But he will not draw it here, at the gates of Callesta.”

The man nodded.

He stood seconds away from his death, unaware of it, his sword steady but not—yet—raised in a way that offered obvious threat.

She heard the guardhouse doors open; saw two men join the two who had come to speak. Four. Four men, now. She had entered through the gates of Callesta before. During harvest season they were always open, and the guardhouse itself was laid bare to the inspection of those who passed by.

But the planting had only barely begun across the Terrean; harvest was months away. Months of sun, months of rain, months of careful tending. And between that time and this one, the guardhouse was emptied.

The men—the younger men—were often called to the fields by their families, to oversee the work that would, in the end, feed Callesta.

“We heard rumor,” the oldest man said.

“Rumor?”

“That the Voyani Matriarchs were being hunted by the man who styles himself Tyr’agar.”

No
, she thought.
No, I will not do this
.

But the thought was curiously detached.

“Rumors seldom contain that much truth.” She lifted a hand. “But what you have heard
is
true.”

“And you have come with word?”

“I have,” she replied gravely. She hesitated again. The High Clans had little love of—or use for—the Voyani of
any
family. But the low clans often traded with the Arkosans for salves and potions, charms and wards, and the hint of the future that awaited them. The low clans, she thought, with a trace of bitterness, and the women.

And the High Clans did not guard city gates.

Two more joined the men who had first come. Six. Six now. She looked at them in the lamp’s flicker, and wondered if six such men could kill Lord Telakar. He had been injured in his fight with the other demon. Surely that injury might count in their favor.

Moonlight. Lamplight.

Lady
.

“Are there Arkosans gathered within the walls?” Her voice. Traitor’s voice.

“None that we know of.”

Which meant simply that none had come with the caravans that marked the Voyani. It was more or less the answer she had expected; the Arkosans seldom came to Callesta. This close to the Tyr’agnate, the clans showed their disdain and their suspicion openly.

“Elena,” Lord Telakar said quietly.

The lamplight shifted as the cerdan who held it lifted it, drawing Telakar out of anonymity and shadow.

“Forgive us,” he said, “for the hour of our arrival. But we desire an audience with the Tyr’agnate of Averda.”

The cerdan’s brows rose. Elena’s did not, through sheer dint of will.

“We have word,” he continued, speaking for Arkosa in a soft, even voice, “that we believe will be of value. And we come with an offer.”

“An offer?”

“The man who styles himself Tyr’agar has proved himself no friend to the Voyani. Of any family.”

“He’s proved himself no friend to Callesta,” the cerdan replied cautiously. “But the Voyani are known for their inability to choose sides in a war.”

“The Arkosan Voyani,” Elena replied, taking the conversation out of Lord Telakar’s hands, “will fight a war when a war is declared against us.”

The words were so
wrong
. She’d thought she’d been afraid before; she knew now that she was mistaken. “I cannot claim to speak for any other family,” she added, and the words were steady, calm, another woman’s words. “But I am of Arkosa.

“Grant us entry, or deny us entry; our time passes quickly and we are expected elsewhere.”

“Entry such as you have requested,” the cerdan said gravely, “is not so simple a matter. We must ask you to wait here.”

She turned. Telakar stepped forward.

“We will wait,” he said.

Dinner had not, in the Serra Amara’s considered opinion, been a success; the food itself had been eaten as if it were simple sustenance, and the Commanders had given the meal short shrift. They spoke in the Northern tongue, their words passing above her meager comprehension as if it were thunder or lightning; the storm’s voice.

She was grateful. She understood Weston; could read it almost as well as a native. But such reading demanded time, and the Commanders left little of that.

She gazed at her husband’s face; he was absorbed in their conversation, and occasionally chose to join it, offering a scant word or two in return for the many they sent his way.

His words, she understood. She wondered if that understanding were an artifact of the years they had spent together in the harem’s heart; wondered if Ramiro could speak any language that would not, in the end, sound familiar.

The Serra Alina did not choose to speak at all; her gaze remained fixed upon the table, upon the hands of the men who commanded the Northern armies. She had withdrawn into the posture, pleasing and utterly devoid of motion, that the Serras adopted when they were forced to keep company with men of power.