The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 (48 page)

“Tyr’ agar—behind me!”

Those two voices, haunting, distinct, an overlay of syllables that didn’t match, and urgency that did, were clear as birdsong in the morning valleys. Clear, and welcome. They drew swords, and although the lights in the garden had wobbled, some falling and some finding their balance, there was enough to lend an orange-yellow glow to the flats of their blades, the height of their cheekbones, the line of their foreheads.

She was certain death waited in the approaching shadows, the approaching swords; she felt the shadow as keenly as she had in the stark, stark brilliance of the open desert, when she had stood between Lord Telakar and Lord Ishavriel.

She was shocked when the Tyr’agar’s voice rang out, clean as steel.

“Hold!”

Everyone froze.

Everyone but Telakar. He closed the distance of a careful, casual walk in the instant of stillness the Tyr’agar’s voice created, placing his hands gently on both of her shoulders and holding her forward like a shield.

The Tyr’agnate stepped into the line of Elena’s peripheral vision. His brother stepped in front of him, lifting Jus arm in warning: Stand back.

She saw a ripple of annoyance spread across the Tyr’agnate’s neutral expression. In this, without his direct order to the contrary, the Tyran was correct.

He gave no such order.

Nor did he draw his sword; instead, he waited. She wondered why; could not believe that he could face a threat without arming himself; there were very, very few of his men in the garden. Two, she thought. Two more.

But the Tyr’agar snapped out the order that caused his Tyran to step to the side; the Tyr’agar drew his blade.

There were men on the garden paths that led from darkness into this well of traveled light. No; four men. Two women.

Women. With swords. They were scarred; the oldest was darkened by sun. She stood like a Voyani Matriarch, or at least a Matriarch’s Daughter, and if it were not for one simple detail, Elena would have assumed that that’s what she was—Matriarch’s Daughter. But the detail was large. Armor.

She turned to stare at the Tyr of Callesta, her jaw slack.
Northerners. Here
.

“Decarus,” the kai Leonne said, speaking to a tall man with hair the color of bronze as he stepped onto the path hidden by the fronds of leaves and the shadows of night. “Decarus,” he said again, nodding to the older woman. She could not catch the rest of his words; they were spoken too quickly, and they were not spoken in Trade, the universal tongue that had been cobbled together by the men who crossed borders in search of new ways to enrich themselves.

It was frustrating, to be trapped in this ignorance. Elena knew the traders’ tongue at least as well as she knew her mother tongue. She knew some of the tongue of the old thieves in the Tor Leonne as well.

But the Northern words she understood were not up to the fluency of the Tyr’agar.

What did she know about this boy? This boy whose claim to legitimacy must come from the strength of Ramiro di’Callesta? Nothing. Nothing that the Arkosans did not know: the rumors of the Sun Sword. Not even the Voyani could fail to be moved by the story of the kai el’Sol’s death.

And she knew that this boy would face that death, and fail if the Sword did not know his blood. It was enough.

“What are you doing here?” Valedan did not raise his voice. Perhaps because he had spent his life around a mother who did nothing except raise hers. Had he, the entire city of Callesta would have heard the words that he wisely chose to speak in Weston.

Alexis said nothing. But she turned her hawkish profile—as if it were a dagger, and at that, a thrown one—toward Auralis AKalakar. She had lowered her sword, but she had not sheathed it, a fact not lost upon Valedan.

He
knew
why they were there; knew why they had walked with such thundering, clumsy steps through the Serra Amara’s night gardens, shattering glass and light as if to mark their trail. He had seen just such certainty of motion in the Arannan Halls, in another life, in
Averalaan Aramarelas
.

What he did not see was the demon that they were hunting.

And here, in the foreign city of Callesta, surrounded by the people they had once slaughtered, they could
not
run freely.

Auralis stared straight ahead; his gaze, unlike Alexis’, did not waver.

And because Auralis was no dress guard, because his gaze was so deliberately fixed, Valedan knew that he was protecting someone. Auralis protected no one. That was a truth that the Ospreys acknowledged, and took some pride in.

But it was a broken truth, a half-truth, a thing in the process of being rewritten or unmade. Valedan, keen-eyed and silent, had watched the progress of the unpredicted, unpredictable friendship that had grown between Auralis and the Osprey’s almost-outcast, and he turned immediately to meet the gaze of Kiriel di’Ashaf.

And took a step back, the first.

“Kiriel,” he said softly, in a voice that was heavy with respect. With caution.

Her eyes were golden. It was the only thing about her face that suggested light; the pale white of her skin seemed a thing of death; the length of her hair had escaped from the workaday braid that bound it, and it spread, unfurling like great wings, terrible wings, across the night sky.

Stars were lost to it. Vision.

He had seen this woman before, but never like this. Not even in the Arena of the Kings had he encountered this darkness, although he had been told, much later, that it had existed.

He would have taken another step, but he was now braced for the difficulty. He stood his ground.

Ser Andaro was at his side, blade drawn.

“Kiriel,” Valedan said again. “Why are you here?”

She looked at him, and then past him.

“Telakar,” she said, her voice as cold as Northern Winter. As clean.

Lord Telakar looked up. His fingers grew thin and long; Elena felt them as claws against the mesh of Voyani cotton, around the curve of collarbone and the thin skin that covered it.

The girl stepped forward.

The Tyr’agar said a single word. “Kiriel.”

Her name, Elena thought. She heard each of three syllables as if they were spoken beneath the domed ceilings of the Merchant Court in the Tor Leonne; they passed through her as if she were insignificant, out of place.

In comparison, the voice of the man who had spoken seemed thin, youthful, foolish.

But the girl hesitated, lowering her blade.

“Kiriel,” the Tyr’agar said again:

Her skin was as pale as the skin of women harem-born and confined; her hair was darker than Lady’s Night, her eyes wide and large, her cheekbones high. She might have been lovely.

She was not.

“Telakar,” Elena whispered, “who is she?”

“If you are very unlucky,” Lord Telakar replied, “you will have an answer to that question.” He shook her, as if by doing so, he could shake free any further stupidity.

“She knows,” Elena told him.

He chuckled. It was not the sound Elena expected. She could not have summoned mirth in this cold night, in the face of this unknown woman.

Kiriel stepped forward.

The Tyr’agar lifted a hand.

Interesting, to watch her hesitation, the muddle of her changing expression.

“Kiriel. Do you recognize this man?”

“Yes.”

“Is his presence the reason you have destroyed some part of the garden in your haste to arrive?”

He was speaking in Torra now. Elena wondered why.

“Yes.”

“Is he
Kialli
?”

The hesitation was profound.

Answer enough. But the question was repeated.

“Yes.”

“Is he bound? Is he contained? Does the woman he travels with hold his name?”

“No.”

Elena closed her eyes.

Cacophony.

Not a single sword remained in its sheath. Voices were raised in alarm, some in Torra, and some in the Imperial tongue. Men moved, forming walls that were far too sparse to keep Telakar from his goal.

Whatever that was.

He did not move.

He did not lift hands from her shoulders, and she knew that if she attempted to evade them, he would draw blood.
Knew
it.

“My apologies,” Lord Telakar said, in a voice that was preternaturally loud.

Everyone froze in that instant; everyone except the pale, dark girl. She stepped forward, unhindered a moment by the command of a petty Tyr. No light glinted off her blade; Elena could see it as moving shadow. Slowly moving.

“Why are you here?” she asked. Desert night, in the words.

Elena could not see Telakar’s face. She wanted to. In just that moment, she wanted to—because she knew that he would be judged by his expression; knew that she faced the same death, the same judgment. She could not turn.

“Do you mean to ask if Lord Isladar sent me?”

The girl froze. Her eyes narrowed. Golden light fled, and it was the only light in her.

“Did he?”

“No. No, Kiriel, daughter of—”

“I am called di’Ashaf now.” Her blade rose.

Elena’s breath stopped. Without intent, without plan, she retreated in the only direction available: Telakar’s chest.

He laughed. “You see well, for an ignorant mortal. But you are safe. For now. Very well,” he continued. “Kiriel di’Ashaf. I was sent to the South.”

“Ordered?”

“Only the Lord may command me, and not without cost. As you should well know, now.”

Again, the sword drifted up. “And?”

“He is concerned with greater issues than a single
Kialli
lord.”

“He is unaware of your presence here.”

“Indeed.”

“And Isladar?”

“He is unaware, as well. And if I am not mistaken, he will continue to be unaware. Some rumor has come from the Shining City.”

“What rumor?”

“It appears that he has . . . fled the towers. And in haste. He took injury, but the source of that injury was unclear. The Lord’s Fist sensed the weakness. They used it.”

“You lie.”

Telakar was very, very still. The sudden absence of all motion was remarkable. Frightening. But after a moment, he spoke. “We all do.” His voice was as close to neutrality as Elena had yet heard; stripped of amusement, of almost all shadow. Not mortal, but close. “I have not returned to the North to ascertain the truth of those rumors. Nor,” he added softly, “is that my intent.”

“You cannot evade the Lord,” Kiriel replied.

“I can, and for some time yet. But not in the Northern Wastes.”

“And you choose to abandon them?”

“You have forgotten,” he replied quietly. “My tenure was seldom in the North. I came for the ceremonies that required my presence. I came,” he added coolly, “as we all did, to witness the investiture. That last time, I chose to stay, but the North is not my home.

“You, of all the inhabitants of the Shining City, should well understand that; did you not make a similar choice? Are you not here, among
these
?”

A man who had until now been a tall, broad statue, stepped forward in that instant, edging past the woman to whom Telakar spoke with such care.

His blade was bright as he swung it.

It clattered off hers. “Auralis.”

“Kiriel, he talks too much.” The words were almost a hiss. As if, Elena thought, this man sought to protect Kiriel. Which was odd; he didn’t have the look of a fool about him. More the look of a killer. His sword, deflected with ease—with impossible ease, given the difference in their size—fell slowly, slowly groundward in the lee of shadows cast by lamps they had not managed to dislodge.

Kiriel nodded. “He does.” She did not consider this stranger, this pale-haired Northerner, a threat; her eyes had not left Telakar’s face. “I have never heard him speak so much.”

The man she had called Auralis glanced at her profile; it was all she offered him.

Her gaze shifted. Elena met it squarely, without flinching. Realized that she was actually, of the two, the taller.

“I am Kiriel di’Ashaf,” she said. “You?”

“Elena Tamaraan.”

“Tamaraan—you are Voyani?”

“Arkosan.”

For the first time since the strangers had come crashing through the Serra’s garden, the Tyr’agnate of Callesta spoke. “She is the second most powerful woman in the clan Arkosa.” His voice was the coldest thing Elena had heard this eve. “If indeed she is what she claims to be.”

“She is mortal,” Kiriel told him quietly. “If that is what you meant. I was told that the Voyani served the Lady, and not the Lord. Certainly not the Lord of Night.”

“You were told the truth,” Elena said, struggling not to sound as defensive, as pathetic, as she felt.

“You keep odd company.”

Elena smiled almost bitterly. “We are not always fortunate enough to choose the company we keep.”