The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 (55 page)

“Why are they not here? Why are they not in Amar?”

“They traveled,” he said quietly.

“To what end?”

“I . . . do not know. They came to ask my leave to depart Amar. I granted it; they have asked little of me, these long years.”

“And were they—”

His eyes snapped shut, and his hand rose. It was not a threat.

But she found threat in it, and he cursed his temper in perfect silence. “How many?” he asked, at last.

“She does not say. She says only that the dead were identified as your oathguards.”

“And more?”

Oh, her hesitation. If anything might wound him, it would be this. He wanted to gather her in his arms. He did not.

“Mareo,” she said, defining his sudden turn of mood, “I do not believe that you ordered this death.” Clear, without a trace of anger or reproach, the words lent her strength. She clung to them; he allowed it. The belief in them was all he needed to hear.

No, that was untrue; it was what he needed to hear
from
her.

“No one could give orders to those men,” he said quietly. “No one but me, or my father before me. They were not young.”

She nodded.

“What did she ask of you, Na’donna?”

“She asked me if yours was the hand behind her son’s death.”

“She does not believe it?”

“She . . . believes it.”

“But?”

Serra Donna closed her eyes. “She is a Serra,” she said at last. “Mareo—she is not what I am. She is fierce and cunning; she plays a different game.”

“But?” he prodded her gently.

“But she desires either peace or alliance; the shadow of the coming war puts our skirmishes to shame. She knows—as I know—the cost the Terreans will bear. Averda lost land in the last war; it will lose everything in this one, without luck and wit.”

“She has asked you if we will stand with Callesta?”

The Serra looked scandalized; it was not an act. He would never, he thought, with just a hint of frustrated amusement, understand women. Never.

“She
is
a Serra,” his wife said, speaking of her as distant cousin, or half sibling, and not as the wife of his greatest enemy. “She could no more ask that than she could challenge me to a duel beneath the Lord’s watchful eye.”

“What, then, does she seek?” It was the right question; he knew it the moment she heard it, because the tension in her face eased, and she sat a moment contemplating the words.

“She seeks,” she said at last, “to inform us of this turn of events. If you are to meet with the Tyr of Averda, you must know this; you must have time to think on it.”

“It is not solely that.”

“No. She seeks the truth. She will accept whatever truth you offer,” she added. “Because you are Lambertan. She knows that you will not stoop to lie.” She spoke these last words with quiet pride.

“So,” he said softly.

“Mareo?”

“Yes,” he replied. “I am angry.”

“She does not mean to insult you.”

“No, and I take no offense; I cannot even read what she has written. Her words were offered to
you
, as Serra to Serra; they have little meaning for me.”

She nodded then, and exposed her back to his gaze.

“But I confess, Na’donna, that I was concerned at your absence; the Havallans wait, and they wait with neither grace nor patience. It may be that your delay is a blessing.”

“A blessing, my husband?”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

She was patient, now. The fear left her slowly, but it did leave. She was in Amar, and in the domis; she was at her husband’s feet. Here, of all places, she should know peace.

“Did she say that there were witnesses to the killing?”

“No, my husband.” She hesitated, and then added, “But I believe there must have been.”

“I believe it as well,” he said softly. “Let me ask you a question.”

She waited.

“If you were the Serra Amara, and the kai that was dead in such a fashion were our son, you would be angered.”

She nodded; it was not a question.

“And if the bodies that were—that must have been—adorned as
my
Tyran were identified by the sister of the man who ruled them, and that sister, no matter how much a serpent she was, was also known as Lambertan, would you then have
any
room for doubt? Would you believe that the assassins were somehow other than they appeared?”

She hesitated, but the hesitation was minute. “No, my husband.” She flushed. “I should have considered this before I came to you.”

“No,” he told her gently. “If you and the Serra Amara have nothing else in common, you are both mothers; if she left room for doubt, she did so for a reason. She is not—as you said—a woman who would sacrifice her son for political gain.”

His wife’s nod told him that she believed
no
woman capable of such an act, and he loved her for it.

“Does she mention any reason for her doubt?”

She shook her head.

“Then she must have some suspicion, some information that we lack. I ask you to go to the Havallans,” he said quietly, “and ask them.”

“Ask them what, my husband?”

“Ask them how this might have been done.”

12th of Corvil, 427 AA

Terrean of Raverra

Kallandras returned before dawn. Jewel noted his absence because she was awake. Sleep, this last week, had not been kind. The child slept in the confines of her small tent, unperturbed by the whimpering cries that marked the worst of Jewel’s nightmares, and Jewel was content to let her sleep; to sneak out of the flaps of the tent into the scant dew of morning. She could not otherwise leave the child; the child found comfort in the presence of no one else. No one but Stavos, and he tended the Matriarch.

But she would sleep when Jewel slept, and this was an improvement; she would ride the great, tined beast as if it were a simple, stupid mule—and at that, a docile one. She would venture a smile at Stavos, from behind the flap of Jewel’s desert robes. She would even take food with the Serra Diora, although she never spoke in her presence.

That, at least, was worth a smile: it was clear the girl worshiped the Serra, seeing in her the Flower of the Dominion, the unattainable perfect beauty for which, the Radann par el’Sol said, the Serra Diora was known.

Yesterday, at dinner, she had inched her way to where the Serra sat, legs folded, knees upon an unrolled mat that was meant to protect her from contact with the earth itself. She could not meet the Serra’s eyes, but she had at last approached closely enough that she could offer a drooping bouquet of river flowers.

The Serra had taken them quietly, and with such stunning, perfect grace, that Jewel herself felt some of the child’s awe.

She had not felt it during their trek into the Sea of Sorrows; had felt none of it at all during the long days when the anger of the Matriarch was as open as the winds that swept the sands from the desert floor. But the absence of the Matriarch had gentled this perfect woman, and the simple, yearning worship of a disfigured child had been met with a quiet, peaceful joy, a radiant smile, that could not be simple facade.

The child had been quick to withdraw her three-fingered hand; to hide it in the folds of clothing too large for her scant frame.

But the Serra Diora caught that hand, held it, speaking in tones so low that no one but Ariel was privileged to hear the words. Then, for the first time since they had left the Tor Arkosa, the Serra had looked up at her faithful shadow, and the man had bowed, departing. He had returned with the samisen, and she had taken it with the same care she had taken the child’s bouquet.

She settled the child to one side of her mat, and taking her hands, had placed them upon the strings, drawing some music from their tightened length.

The child’s skin was as dark as Voyani skin in comparison to the Serra’s, and it was clear that she had come from a family that had no great riches, and no ability to school a daughter in the arts and graces of the courts, low or high. But the differences were invisible to the Serra’s eyes—or so it seemed to Jewel—and she gave the child a simple lesson, disguising it in music.

After she had finished, she sang. Ariel was not so emboldened that she chose to join her voice to the Serra’s; Jewel wouldn’t have either. The disparity between their voices was greater even than the disparity between the shape and color of their hands.

The Serra, as the child, now slept enclosed in the confines of protective tarpaulin. Jewel listened for her; heard no sound that might indicate wakefulness.

She stretched; the night air was brisk, but it was not the chilling death of the desert heart. She wondered what day it was. Realized that had she been at home, she would have just asked Teller; he paid attention to details like that: passing time, the obligations that waited, like a trap, upon each of the days of the month.

And the month?

She frowned.

Henden? It was dark enough, cold enough, bleak enough. But she closed her eyes a moment, forced herself not to be lazy, and counted the days. Corvil. The middle of Corvil.

“ATerafin.”

She looked up. The bard stood beneath a moon’s face partly veiled, but the veil was of moon cycle, not cloud, and the light cast soft shadow at his feet.

Beyond him, in the distant perimeter of the encampment, stood Lord Celleriant. His hair was the color of the Lady’s face, his skin the color of the Winter that she had taken him from, denying him at last the turn of the seasons: the Summer of the Queen’s Court.

If he was angered by the loss, it did not show; he stood, weaponless, a sentinel worthy of The Terafin’s best guards.

She shook herself; Kallandras waited in silence, noting the direction of her stare. He followed it, and the faint hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his lips.

“He never sleeps, does he?”

“He does not appear to require sleep, no.”

“Figures.”

The smile deepened.

“The borders?”

And fell. He nodded. “We were delayed,” he said quietly.

“We noticed. Did you . . .”

“We had no cause to engage the enemy, no. But it was . . . close.”

“They’re at the borders?”

“The army spent time at the border of Raverra.” He paused. “They constructed a stockade there, and they patrol the borders twenty miles in either direction; they have taken the roads as well.”

She shrugged. That wasn’t unexpected. “How many?”

“In the stockade?”

“On the road. Let’s assume we can avoid the stockade.”

“Perhaps a thousand men.”

She whistled. “And the kin?”

“The kin are present. But not, as we feared they might be, in great number. General Alesso di’Marente is a cautious man; the presence of the kin is well disguised.” He glanced at Lord Celleriant. “We feel that they are upon the road, rather than within the main body of the army.”

“What about the army?”

“It has moved North.”

“Averda or Mancorvo?”

“The standard of the General moved into Averda. I do not feel it safe to assume that he has taken the whole of the army with him.”

“No?”

“I wouldn’t. I would send some part of it into the villages and towns closest to the border of Raverra in either Terrean. If I had not yet declared war against Mancorvo, I would not take Mancorvan villages in the Tyr’agar’s name—but the presence of his armies would enforce the respect due the title he has taken.”

“How many men?”

“We were unable to ascertain that without moving farther into Mancorvo, and we did not wish to leave you here for the length of time that would require.”

She nodded again. “We have a decision to make. I’ll wake the Radann; you wake Yollana.”

His brow rose. Yollana of the Havalla Voyani was not pleasant when woken at any hour. She reminded Jewel of her long-dead grandmother that way.

As a council of war, it was a strange one, even to Jewel’s admittedly unorthodox eye. The old woman, pipe in the crook of thin lips, had set about making a fire, snapping in colorful Torra at any foolish enough to offer her help, and snapping in equally colorful Torra at any lazy enough not to. Judging from Stavos’ reaction—a resignation that seemed almost out of character—this was standard behavior for a Matriarch of any line.

The Serra Teresa was, in the end, granted the dubious honor of assisting the Matriarch. Jewel watched them, the younger woman astonishingly graceful given the confines of a desert robe, the older querulous and annoyed. They were odd friends, but they
were
friends. Jewel didn’t envy the Serra that burden.

When the fire itself had started to burn, Yollana used some part of its flame to light the packed bowl of her pipe, and sat, legs folded awkwardly before her. The Serra knelt beside her niece, and the Radann Marakas par el’Sol chose to stand.

Ariel, waking alone, had found comfort in Jewel’s lap, and sat there in silence, eyes half-closed, stumbling across the boundaries between sleep and wakefulness. Jewel herself sat against the wall of the stag’s back, while Avandar stood, arms folded, by their side. He, as the Radann, chose to keep to his feet. Of all gathered, Stavos was the only person who chose to absent himself.