Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows Page 6

  Although she had developed an appreciation for finer metals—in her duties as merchant, among other things— she had no skill at working them, and besides, lacked the necessary tools. But the hair thus braided and twined clung as if made of links of chain, circling her wrist three times before ending in a rough knot.

  She had a feeling that nothing would remove it; that the knots she had tied were true knots. Jewel ATerafin was seerborn. She trusted her feelings. So there was no reason whatever to sit in the dark, fingering the handmade bracelet as if to make sure it hadn't somehow vanished into the strange and perfect darkness that had swallowed the Winter Queen.

  But she did. Her fingers stroked the texture of pale, pale braid as if she couldn't believe it was there, as if somehow touch could stop things from vanishing.

  As if. Hadn't she learned better? She could feel, for just a moment, aged skin beneath her fingers; could see the wide-open, unblinking stare that was the end of all stories, the end of all shelter. Her Oma's death. She could hear her father's steps, wide, as he took the stairs two at a time in an effort to spare her this: death, the knowledge of what death looked like, felt like, smelt like.

  And she could see the story of death, like moving, cursive script, as it traveled the length of his face, altering his expression. He struggled to be calm and accepting for her sake, but he grieved for his own. Her Oma was his mother, and Jewel had come to understand, as she had gotten older and had the time and leisure to observe people, that the death of a mother—to a person who remembered having one clearly—always struck some hidden place in the heart, no matter how old the person was when the loss happened.

  Her den, most of it, had lost mothers so long ago that the loss was just a natural part of their lives, like heartbeat or breath. It wasn't something they talked about.

  Funny, that the bracelet could invoke that, here.

  She pulled her hand away from her wrist.

  "Wise," Avandar said softly. His first word that evening. Well, no, realistically it was his tenth.

  "Why?"

  "Because you've done willingly what no man would have done when the Winter Queen was free to wander these lands as she pleased."

  "Oh?"

  "You've marked yourself," he said softly, and when she did not immediately acknowledge his words, stared pointedly at her wrist. The Queen's hair caught light as if it were platinum in fact, and not just poetic fancy.

  Jewel frowned. "And you've marked me. Am I to suppose that what I willingly wear is more dangerous than what I didn't ask for?"

  He fell silent again, and Jewel was almost instantly sorry; he was never a particularly talkative man—unless she'd done something "wrong"—but she could count on one hand—on half a hand—the number of words he'd spoken in the last day and a half.

  "Avandar—"

  "As you say."

  He retreated.

  She pulled the blankets more tightly across her shoulders, and the stag's flank rippled at her back as he curled his neck around until his face was almost touching her shoulder.

  "You have a friend, I think, Jewel of Terafin."

  The most famous bard that Senniel College had ever produced walked into the clearing as if it were a tavern. A crowded tavern.

  "Are they almost finished?" Jewel said.

  "I don't know."

  "You don't?"

  "I cannot hear what they say. The fire that they have spent so much time and effort building protects their words from any listeners."

  "Avandar?"

  "If I could breach the barrier of Voyani heartfire, do you think I would be foolish enough to mention that ability within their encampment?"

  She couldn't keep the smile off her face.

  "I've amused you."

  "Twenty-four," she said, the smile broadening.

  His eyes narrowed, and then his brows rose dismissively. "Twenty-four?" For a moment, he was genuinely confused, and that made her smile wider.

  "I believe, Avandar," Kallandras said with mock gravity, "that your lord is referring to the number of words she has heard you speak today. You've been remarkably… taciturn, even for you."

  "You will never be a leader, ATerafin, if you persist in these trivial games."

  "Thirty-nine." She laughed because she saw the frown deepening as he turned away. "Of course, most of them were critical, so I suppose I should be grateful that you've been quiet."

  "I cannot recall, in my long service," and the word long was stretched in a way that implied centuries, not years, "any display of gratitude on your part."

  "Which probably says more about your service than it does about—"

  The comfortable warmth at her back was gone. The stag leaped up, over her, hooves tearing dirt as he reared. Tines cut air; she could have sworn, although she wouldn't have bet something as substantial as, say, money or life, that she saw the air move, like whirlpools, around them as he tossed his head wildly.

  "What is it?" she shouted, as both Avandar and Lord Celleriant threw themselves out of the stag's way.

  The exiled lord of the Arianni looked up at the stag that had been the Winter Queen's mount. "Apparently," the tone of his voice made the evening air seem warm, "the heartfire, as Viandaran called it, is not proof against the Queen's stag."

  She turned to the stag. "What?" she asked softly. "What is it?"

  We go to the Cities of Man.

  "The Cities of—"

  "ATerafin, be silent."

  The words froze in mid-syllable; she choked on them, as if they were physical objects. It was a shock; her neck snapped round as she turned, wide-eyed, to Kallandras of Senniel. Her lips formed the word "why?"—but even that one couldn't follow the ones he'd stopped.

  Instead, in the clearing that they had chosen to occupy, she heard something worse: the sound of metal against metal. The drawing of blade.

  Lord Celleriant.

  Before his sword had been raised—and he did raise it— Kallandras of Senniel College had armed himself as well; two blades, to the single long sword.

  "You do not mean to challenge me?" Contempt failed to rob Celleriant's face of beauty. Standing with a sword in his hand, he seemed to illuminate killing in a way that hallowed it, and Jewel ATerafin was suddenly glad that she had witnessed no supernatural hunt, no death.

  What grace, after all, could be retained in the pathos of terror and mortality?

  Kallandras replied softly, so softly the wind didn't carry the word to Jewel's waiting ear. She started forward, and the stag, silent, and as beautiful in his way as the Arianni lord, was suddenly in her path, tines gently pressed against throat and forehead like a caress.

  No, Serra.

  She could hear his voice.

  Just as she had heard Avandar's—in a place where words had never reached, weren't meant to reach.

  But Avandar's words—when he spoke them—made her arm throb, her stomach twist, her mind catch fire with the peculiar heat of fear. The stag's voice…

  No one calls me Serra, she said. I'm called three things I answer to: ATerafin, Jewel and…

  And?

  Two things. Two things. What are you doing?

  There are three here who have the gift of the voice.

  The gift of— She was silent because she had to be; the silence didn't rob her of words. Only privacy. Kallandras.

  Yes. And two others. His is the strongest talent that I have heard in a long time, although I grant I have heard little in the way of human speech these many years.

  He's a bard.

  He is much more than that; he is bound to a god, and he derives some power from the kill. I am… surprised…

  Jewel's eyes left the stag's; she gave him a get-out-of-the-way shove that would have sent anyone but Arann half-flying. She might as well have tried to fell one of the many trees that defined the clearing with her bare hands. Surprised? What do you mean, surprised?

  He is a killer; his scent is death's.

  I told you, he's a bard.

 
With those weapons?

  She was silent. When had she first met Kallandras of Senniel College? He was so much a part of her conscious life she could not objectively say. But the memory that was at the root of all things was as old as her association with Terafin, and she did not willingly go there. Not there.

  He's not a killer, she said firmly. But willing or not, she remembered the screams of the dying beneath a wall of earth so magicked and so deep that there was nothing anyone could do to save the people whose voices had become her most visceral memory. Her most visceral, most avoided memory. It came back, in this faraway clearing.

  Because of all the songs that had been sung that day, she remembered his.

  "You're dangerous," she said, forcing the words to leave her lips. Surprised that she could, now. She needed the distance.

  Yes. I always was.

  "Get out of my way."

  He used his power against you. Will you allow this?

  "What does it look like? Get-out-of-my-way."

  The stag bowed. I am in your service, A Terafin. I will do as you command. But I warn you—

  She was past warning. "The man Lord Celleriant knows as the Warlord is my chosen servant. If I were in any danger at all, he would protect me; he has never failed. But I made it clear years ago that crimes against my dignity were not capital crimes. If they were, I'd be responsible for more deaths than he has been by now. Let it be."

  As you wish.

  Swords clashed.

  She turned and bounced off the chest of the man who had been domicis, and who was something now that she didn't want to think about. That was the problem; she knew that a false step was death, and she was so damn tired she was willing to take no steps, to stand in stillness until the motion of life passed her by.

  "ATerafin?"

  Almost. "Don't bother." She pushed past him in a way that she had not been allowed to push past the stag, and was surprised at how much the familiarity of the action comforted her. But she was also aware, as she hadn't been before, that Avandar allowed her this act of familiarity; that he, in fact, had more in common with stag and Arianni lord than he had ever had with her, her den, and the House that she loved.

  Why did he serve? Why did he serve her?

  No, that wasn't the real question. And she wasn't going to ask the real question right now.

  Lord Celleriant and Kallandras of Senniel had participated in a single conversation, all by the edge of blades; they now circled each other warily. Something about that wary preparation for combat was wrong, but she was tired; it was a minute before Jewel realized what it was. There was no sound.

  Well, fine. She'd make some.

  "Lord Celleriant."

  She thought he would ignore her. He seemed consumed by the pattern of the circle made over fallen leaves, dying grass, waning light. His shadow was as long and slender as he when it came to rest.

  "Kallandras."

  The bard sheathed his weapons. "My pardon, ATerafin."

  "Why? I was obviously about to say something stupid."

  He was silent.

  "And someday you can tell me what it was."

  He smiled slightly. "Some day." The smile, as always, was beautiful, and as always, brief. "Although I think you will understand what it is better than I do now by the end of our journey."

  "Our?"

  "I think we're fated to travel together for some distance." He turned to the Arianni lord. "You are in mortal lands."

  "I have been in mortal lands before." His smile put Kallandras' to shame, but it was thing of ice and death.

  "Indeed. But you will find they are very different when you are forbidden to kill those who dwell within them. My apologies. You will not find a worthier lord than Jewel Markess ATerafin, but she is… spontaneous in all reactions."

  "This means I speak without thinking."

  "Indeed."

  Lord Celleriant turned to face her. "You allow this?"

  "This?"

  "This… easy contempt."

  Jewel closed her eyes. Opened them. The Arianni lord was still there. Kalliaris, she thought. Smile.

  "You have a lot to learn," she told him. "And I'm sorry you have to learn it."

  That evoked a response. "I desire none of your pity." Wasn't the one she wanted, but she'd had worse in her time.

  "Don't earn it, then."

  Take care, a warm voice said. She saw the stag's shadow join hers. Felt his fur beneath her hands and realized she had raised her hand to touch him automatically.

  "ATerafin?" Kallandras had exchanged the swords for the harp.

  "Yes?"

  "Have a care, now. What you built once, you built in desperate circumstances, but you chose the materials well, and you have been rewarded. Here, you have been given no choice." He bowed. "We will enter the desert soon, and it has only one face; Lord's or Lady's. They already speak of you, ATerafin, in the encampment."

  "Great," she said, in a tone that implied anything but. "What are they saying?"

  "That you faced the Winter Queen and won."

  She snorted.

  "That you have a mount that not even the clansmen could claim."

  She snorted again.

  "And that you are served by one of the Lady's warriors. You are becoming legend."

  "Legend is old and musty," she snapped. Then, after a moment, she added, "Help me."

  "I will do what I am able. But my influence extends only so far. If you cannot take the wonder out of the companions fate has chosen for you… your story will travel across the Dominion like brushfire."

  "Thanks."

  "I will withdraw now, to prepare." He smiled again, and his smile was the smile he offered the Queen Marieyan when he flirted as openly as any unmarried man dared with the Queen of the wisdom-born King. She had seen him, swords in hand; had seen the expression on his face—or rather, the lack of expression—as he joined silent battle with an Arianni lord. Kallandras was many, many people— and the tricky part was that in some measure, all of them were genuine. "Have faith in your own ability, ATerafin."

  She laughed. Looked around the clearing. What, Lady, what did she have to work with?

  A lord who had tried to kill her.

  A stag that could speak to her, and whose tines, she knew, were more than decorative mating tools.

  A man that the Winter Queen called Viandaran; that the Oracle had called the Warlord, who had—until he had marked her in a fortress beneath mountains—been a grudgingly trusted domicis.

  She could make a den out of these?

  The silence was long. And into it, mixed with doubt, was a very real homesickness.

  Angel. Arann. Carver. Finch. Jester. Daine. Kiriel. Teller. What are you doing?

  CHAPTER ONE

  7th of Scaral, 427 AA

  Averalaan Aramarelas, House Terafin

  Home was where his mother brought her clients.

  He learned—well before conscious memory started—that those clients were important men. And that many of them didn't want to know that she had a child.

  During those nights, he would hide in the closet, or sometimes in the kitchen if the lights were low, and he would hoard his words, his inexplicable child noises; it was part of hiding. Afterward, his mother would come to him and take him quietly into her bed. He never asked her about the men; she never spoke of them. But sometimes she would go out with him the next day, and buy him something special, fruits or white bread from the bakers.

  He learned to love the day. And to hate the night.

  She was often angry. He remembered that clearly. He learned to fear her anger more than he feared hunger or cold, but he found that silence was the best way to avoid it, and silence became a rule of life, a comfortable law.

  Sometimes she would talk about her childhood. He loved those times. She spoke about her birthday, her mother, always her mother. She never spoke about her father, but that seemed natural to him; he had no father of his own. They lived like that, mother and son, their days
a prelude to her evenings, his silence.

  As he grew older, it was harder; harder to hide.

  As he grew older, and she grew older, her youth fading beneath the glare of sun, heat, hunger, her back bent by the poverty that he understood as part of his life, she would sometimes leave for the evening.

  She would tuck him into bed, and tell him that she would return in the morning, and he would stay awake in the still of the night, staring at the low ceiling, until sleep snuck up on him. But he promised her that he would help her. That one day, she would live in a better place, and she would never have to spend time in the company of her men again.

  He started thieving when he was six.

  He was small for his age, waiflike; he could get close to people because they ignored him. Because he was quiet.

  She was angry about the theft. The first time he had given her money, she went all gray, and instead of being proud of him, as she so seldom was, her anger came up instead, like sunrise. He knew she was angry. But she didn't hit him, and she didn't shout at him.

  Instead, she left their two-room home, while the light of the sun was high.

  She returned before sunset, to change into the gaudy clothing she wore at night, her lips a thin line, the corners of her mouth deep with age.

  "You don't have no call to go thieving," she told him, her words as tight and angry as her expression.

  "But it's money, Mom."

  "It ain't our money, boy."

  "But—but—it's better than the money you get from those men. I can get us money, Mom. You don't have to see them no more."

  She caught him by the shoulders, her fingers sharp as knives. "That's my job, boy."

  "But Peg says you're just selling yourself."

  "And what if I am? I'm selling what's mine. I'm not selling what belongs to anyone else. You understand? It's honest work. I do it because it's all I can do, but I ain't selling anything that belongs to anyone else. Where'd that money come from?"

  He was smart enough not to shrug. "Some man."