Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (63 page)

He said nothing. The moon moved.

"Adam—it's the Matriarch's duty. No sleep tonight, no sleep for me. Just the Lady at her darkest and coldest." She laughed, but the laugh was a movement of air, and a quiet, uncomfortable silence followed. "Do you remember the stories?"

He nodded.

"Do you think they're true?"

He shrugged. Raised his face to the night sky. Lowered it. She wondered what had passed between his silent profile and the Lady's icy bright silver. Silver, she thought; the color of so many ills. Coin. Steel. Age.

This was her vigil. This, the blood of strangers, the cold of the desert night. In stories, in the stories of the old lineage, women died waiting for the Lady's favor or permission. They were unmourned, passed by, their rule given over to their sisters—or cousins. There was no mercy granted to the women who would be Matriarch. Not here. Not at the edge of the Sea of Sorrows.

"Adam?"

He nodded.

"Did Momma ever tell you about the City?"

He turned to her then, his eyes wide and unblinking, the darkness in them kin to the night sky above. "You were the Matriarch's daughter. Not me."

Answer enough.

"Did she tell you what she had to do? Did she tell you anything at all?"

"'Gret," he said, more softly, "maybe it's better not to speak. The Lady listens."

He was right. She insulted her mother's memory by even suggesting that her mother might have confided in anyone else. Ever. But she added, "She didn't tell you anything?"

His smile was brief. "You never, ever give up. Had I been a girl, had I been the oldest, I would have stepped aside for you. You
are
Momma's daughter."

"You can't stay."

When he spoke, though, his words were not the ones she'd expected. His face was in profile, his fingers, shaking slightly, still hovered above what she had labored for hours on: the sigils of Arkosa.

"She's really gone, isn't she?"

Margret set the spoon down. She looked, truly looked, at her brother's face, and she saw the tears that he had wiped from hers glistening in the moonlight the Lady cast across his own dark skin.

She nodded. She couldn't speak. He didn't expect her to. She couldn't reach out to touch him either.

But when he opened his arms, she opened hers, and they clung a moment, offering and asking for comfort in the mixed way that children do.

Evallen's children.

"You can't stay," she told him later. "I know."

The moon moved. She was aware of its shift in position. "You can't stay."

"I know, 'Gret."

She tightened her arms, the movement brief and fierce. "You can't stay."

He laughed. "Say a thing three times and it's true?"

"Or dream it. Or do it. Adam—" She let him go. He let her go. The inside of her arms and the front of her chest felt the cold as a sudden shock when he stepped back. All of life was like that. You could get too used to the warmth and it left you unprepared.

But without warmth, what was the point?

"You know what happens if I don't pass this test."

He rose. "I know. It's weird, 'Gret. You aren't old enough or mean enough to be Matriarch."

"I'll work on the mean."

He laughed. "And time will take care of the old. 'Gret—"

"Go
away
, Adam."

"I'll see you in the morning."

"You'll be sleeping in the morning. I'll probably see you first and throw you off the bedroll."

He laughed again. She wanted him to go on laughing. She loved the sound. But if she were honest, she'd probably love any sound that wasn't her own voice.

And that would be bad.

She watched him leave—no rules against that—thinking that he wasn't as young as he used to be. Wondering how the years would twist him, how the wind would scour him with its voice of sand.

How the wind would scour her.

All the voices were silent; even the sound of his steps died into stillness. She was alone.

And it was
so cold
.

Ramdan approached. He placed a cloak, a heavy rough cloak, colors mercifully hidden in the night, around her shoulders; it was warm. She wondered if it had come from his own shoulders, but she did not ask—she never asked. His role was to serve; hers was to accept. They had taken a fierce pride in their ability to live up to the expectations that the Serra Teresa had of them. The Serra's flight from her own duties could not deprive them of that pride.

The light had died; the stillness and the darkness reigned. The Serra listened for a long, long time, her hands frozen to her lap, her body absorbing the warmth of the body of this most trusted seraf.

He walked away; she heard his steps retreat. But she knew he would not leave. She had not yet retired for the evening; he could not retire before her. He was, she thought idly, old now. He had a handful of years left before he was too bent, too tired, to perform as perfectly as he did this night—or any other.

But she did not rise; did not grant him the mercy of her sleep. Not tonight. She simply watched the black sky in a numb silence until he came again.

He brought her samisen. She knew she should not play it; knew that she should not have brought it here, where the air was so dry, the sun so hot, the night so cold. The strings had already shown a tendency to lose the truth of their notes, and she spent much time coaxing them into tune. She knew that she would not take this instrument into the desert with her. She would send it North, with the handful of men who now waited the Matriarch's command to return to the children.

She hesitated for just a moment, and. then, fingers aching with bitter cold, she began to play.

Not since she was three years old, a child in the shadow of her accomplished aunt, had she struggled with the movement of her fingers. The cold made them stiff and slow.

She almost gave up; the sound of the mistimed notes was unpleasant. But this, too, was her farewell, and she understood that what she did not take from this moment of privacy, she would not have again.

She tried three different songs, but the cold had numbed her hands sufficiently that she could not play them. She chose, at last, simplicity.

A cradle song.

The sun has gone down, has gone down, my child…

Margret heard the music.

As she struggled to hold on to wakefulness, she was offered the blessed, the familiar, comfort of sleep; the promise of as watchful an eye as the Lady allowed.

She did not recognize the voice—if the voice was not a phantasm born of exhaustion and cold—but it was as beautiful as the lights had been, perhaps more so because it was a thing outside of herself; she could be aware of it, could listen passively, could find the places in the pause between word and note into which she could fit her own memories. She did not want the song to end, although she knew how it ended. And in the end, she did not hear the last attenuated note.

6th of Misteral, 427 AA

Sea of Sorrows

For someone who had grown up in a city ringed with the white beaches of the Empire, the desert was only nominally composed of sand; it stretched out in a cracked, dusted layer as far as the eye could see; it had none of the soft give that rock and wave had forced upon the shores of the ocean.

The horizon was blurred and indistinct although the sky was clear. The shadows cast against the foot of the desert were long and slender, no matter the shape of the caster; Jewel noted these things in passing, aware as always of contrasts.

The Sea of Sorrows waited.

"Jewel?"

"Hmmm?"

Avandar's frown was brief. Familiar.

"Sorry. I wasn't listening."

She adjusted the heavy cloth that ringed her face in two pieces, one hanging from forehead to just past her brows and the other, from either side of the long cowl that came to the edge of cheekbones, to cover nose and mouth. She had been told that it was necessary to protect the face from the sudden gusts of wind that, in the Sea of Sorrows, were broken by nothing: no buildings, no shelter, no trees, few hills. Dry open tunnels, the corpses of riverbeds in which water and all its forms of life had once run, were occasionally used by the Voyani as shelter—but only when the storms themselves were composed of wind and sand. They spoke of those storms, in this place, the way people of a certain age spoke of demons in the hundred holdings.

Demons. The hundred holdings. Home. She was likely to see only one of these things in the desert.

"Jewel," Avandar said again.

And rain?

When it rained, when the storms were strong beyond the harbor, the squalls unpredictable and sudden, men died in any sea. Even this one.

Her fingers were itching, as was her chin; she felt uncomfortably caged by her clothing. But she was willing to acknowledge the practical. She forced her hands to her sides. Were it not for her height—which the addition of sturdy boots and funny headgear did nothing to change—she would have looked like any of the other Voyani; the differences between gender were lost to fabric in almost every case. Where the woman in question was tall—like Elena— she could stand beside the men and be counted one of them; the women wore long daggers or swords just as easily as the men.

The exception proved the rule: the Serra Diora di'Marano wore desert robes with an ease and a grace of movement that Jewel was certain she would retain even if she were robbed of mobility by something as cumbersome as a broken limb. She was followed by a perfect, silent shadow, dressed in the same desert robes; he was taller than she, but slender and graceful as well. His presence underscored the differences between the life of his mistress and the life of the Arkosans among whom she found herself, and if she did not acknowledge him in any obvious way, his presence was accusation enough.

Kallandras of Senniel College was the only man present who had elected to reveal his face to the clear sight of the Lord. The roots of his hair had, over the course of five days, become pale as sun on water; he looked like he was molting. The dyes he had used to give himself the appearance of a lowborn Southern clansman were no longer necessary, and the visible transition between the deceptive and the natural did not seem to trouble him at all.

He bowed, and bowed low, when the Serra Diora approached. She, in her turn, offered him the obeisance that a highborn clanswoman might, when she was in a tightly packed room and was not given the space in which to kneel or sit with grace.

But she spoke; he listened. After a moment, he turned from her, and two men, dressed in the shirt and pants of the more forgiving road, appeared. Kallandras spoke at length; the men returned words that were much shorter; their lips hardly moved. The bard smiled, spoke again, matching their brevity. Something about the discussion was familiar, although it took Jewel a moment to realize that they were, in fact, negotiating.

At the edge of the Sea of Sorrows, the Voyani were haggling. It seemed fitting.

In the end, they agreed to whatever it was he offered; no money appeared to change hands, but the Serra Diora, standing apart from the argument until its close, took from her robes a long case. She handed it to the men without even a trace of hesitation, and they carried it away with them.

In ones and twos, the men and women dressed for the open road that would lead to life, rather than the dry, hard barrens of the Sea of Sorrows, were taken by it—or perhaps returned to it. The wagons had already been winnowed to a handful—two, to be precise—but the Arkosan guard was not willing to leave until the Matriarch did, even though it became clear they were going in opposite directions.

All this, Jewel noticed in a series of broken glances. Her attention came back, time and again, to the piercing clarity of sky.

"Where is the Matriarch?"

No one had an answer.

The dawn had come quickly, invoking colors that demanded attention from the newly wakened. Ice gave way to a lovely, cool warmth.

"Enjoy it," Avandar said quietly. "It will not last! That is the key to the desert. Nothing lasts."

"And nothing changes," she said.

"And nothing changes." He stared out at the Sea of Sorrows for a long time. "That is the essence of eternity."

"Sounds like it gets pretty boring."

"It wears on one," he replied softly.

"Only if one was born mortal," another voice said.

Avandar did not so much as raise a brow—or at least not on the side of his face that Jewel could see; his profile had not shifted at all.

Lord Celleriant had moved, in complete silence, to stand beside him.

"Or if one has a tremendous capacity to perform the same act over and over again with minute variations and somehow find it compelling."

"Celleriant," Jewel said softly, "do you
know
how to make noise?"

He stepped around Avandar and turned to face her fully—and she wondered, for perhaps the first time, if his near invisibility was an act of mercy. He was beautiful, enough so that the act of absorbing the impression he made distracted her from simple things. Breath. Breathing. His skin was perfect; he had weathered the days beneath the open sky with a slight contempt for the elements, and they had passed him by; there was no hint of sun or wind across the perfect ivory of his skin.

"I… know how to be heard," he said, reminding her that she had asked a question.

She flushed. Recovered quickly. "You aren't wearing desert robes."

He shrugged. "If you command it, I will wear them—but they are not necessary. It is only heat."

"Avandar—"

"The Warlord does not require the robes; he wears them because he is lazy and he does not wish to be marked as different."

"Thank you, Lord Celleriant," Avandar said dryly. "Had they brought robes for him, I would have counseled their use. They did not—and I would counsel against their request."

"Why?"

"It's the desert," he said, speaking softly again, but with just the hint of an edge to the words. "The only contingencies the Voyani allow for are those that involve life or death. I do not believe that Tamara or Elena think Celleriant requires protection from the Lord, and to waste the time and effort to clothe him—at perhaps the expense of someone else who is not immediately obvious—would be impolitic."