Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (11 page)

"And she would leave you with the care of the clan—" Silence. Again silence. Tamara was known for her quiet temper, but she was also known for the sharp edge of her observation. She was no one's fool. Aye, the Lord had stained her, and the winds had made furrows in her flesh that grew deeper and more distinct with time—but nothing could reach the wit that lay hidden beneath simple flesh.

In the darkness, her aunt paled.

"The heart—"

"Yes," Margret said grimly. "You understand. You understand why I could not speak of it."

"Where is the heart?"

"It is—it is safe, I think." She paused. "That is what the clans-woman came to tell me. Where it is, and that it is safe. But I don't think even she knew what would happen this Moonlight."

She had turned from her aunt, in the darkness; turned to the wall and the window. The familiar arms of the older woman enfolded her shoulders again.

"Margret," she said quietly. "You are free now."

"Free?" Bitter word; it choked her, to say it. "Free in the Tor, when the clansmen have started to hunt us? Free in the Tor, when the Lord of Night has finally shown his hand again? I have no
heart
, Tamara."

"You have your own," her aunt said gently, "and it has borne the weight of grief far too long in silence. Grief drives a man mad," she added quietly, "when it is contained. It must be shared. It must be spread. It must be carried by the family. Grief is our measure, it is our strength, it is our community." She pulled her niece to her, and Margret resisted for a fraction of a second, no more.

"But she's dead. Grief won't change that. I have the responsibility—"

"Not even Evallen would have taken that responsibility. Come. She was your mother, but she was
our
Matriarch. We have the right, and you—"

Margret began to weep. She turned, blind, seeking comfort, and she found it. Only later would she remember that she had offered none in return to her mother's sister, her mother's much loved, and much loving, younger sister. Tamara offered, and Margret took what she could, although it wasn't quite all that she needed.

"We will have our vengeance," Tamara said, over the storm. "Remember, chia, remember what is said:
Only the living can give meaning to a death
. We will give this death meaning, all right. They will pay."

The Widan Sendari di'Marano felt the chill of wind in the stillness of a room that might have been at home in the iciest remove of the Northern Wastes. Twice now he had gone to the wastes, and he had discovered this about himself: that he would rather face the heat and the parched, dry death of desert sand than the ice and the wind of the North.

But these two men, his mentors in endeavors of power, felt otherwise. He watched them uneasily; the man who now ruled the Dominion and the man who ruled the much less wieldy Sword of Knowledge. The sun had darkened Alesso's skin, but the wind had not worn it much; he was unbowed in line by the burden he had chosen to heft. Shoulders straight from right to left, he stood, his hands behind his back—and as far away from the exposed hilts of his swords as they could go. He was not given to finery on occasions of war—and he wore
no
finery here; a statement.

A statement that was not lost upon the Sword's Edge. Cortano di'Alexes wore robes that were deceptively simple; they were expensive indeed if one knew how to look for the signs, but they did not draw the eye to their wearer. Dark and gray, with hints of gold that somehow never quite came to light, they draped from shoulder to foot. Evening wear.

Not for the first time, Sendari found much about these two men that was similar.

"I tell you now," Alesso was saying for the third time, "the kai el'Sol will
not
cooperate. Whatever has led you to believe otherwise is illusory."

The words were not heated; they were cool. But they were incautious enough to hint at the depths of Alesso's anger.

Unfortunately, they were spoken to the Sword's Edge, a man known for the implacability of both his temper and his pride. Cortano's pale hands stroked his beard rhythmically, as if it were an instrument. There was a faint crackle of magic around the edge of his fingertips; Sendari suspected that it was not entirely a conscious use of the power that the Sword's Edge commanded.
That
would be a challenge too great for Alesso to ignore.

"He has cooperated with us in the past, Tyr'agar," the Widan replied mildly.

"Indeed. But we have never used the phrase 'Lord of Night' in our public dealings. I tell you, Cortano, it is
too soon
."

"And will you then return to Lord Isladar and Lord Ishavriel and tell them of our change in plan? Will you face the Shining Court? Will you face the Lord of Night?"

Alesso shrugged expansively. "If they wish to succeed, they will accede. If they wish to fail…" He shrugged. "Let them find another pawn."

"And the Voyani?"

"They have caused us trouble in their time," Alesso replied, speaking slowly. "But I foresee a greater difficulty. I had hoped to make use of them in the war against the Northerners; they bear them no great love."

"They bear us less."

Alesso shrugged again. "Yes. I will give the kin the Voyani if they so desire them. But the Consort
must
wait."

Evening.

Diora did not often pray; not to anyone. No sane woman prayed to the Lord, but even the Lady's face was often wreathed in darkness; no boon there, no comfort. When she had been younger, she wondered what it would be like to live in the North; to have the comfort of Northern gods; to be able to choose, among them all, a god to pray
to
.

Because she was only taken from her rooms twice a week, she seldom felt the wind; seldom saw the moon; seldom spent time beneath either the Lord or the Lady's face. Tonight would not be such a night; her father was absent.

Her father.

As a young woman in his harem, on a night such as this, she had often been seized by restlessness. It was the plague upon women; men were free—
if
'they were freeborn—to excise it in a variety of ways, most of them energetic, none of them graceful or feminine.

Diora had been different: she had been gifted with a talent for music, and she would hold the wildness and the hunger—rare though either might be—in until her hands touched the strings, Northern or Southern, and her voice was given permission to accompany them. Then, oh, then, she might briefly experience freedom, under the watchful eyes of either Lord or Lady.

Her father had destroyed both the samisen that had been her mother's and the lute. He had forbidden her song, and she had acquiesced, thinking only that he was a fool for not forbidding her breath or life instead.

Thinking it, knowing it, knowing that had she, in fact,
been
the Serra Fiona, Diora di'Marano would be dead. She had wanted that death. It still lingered, like a vision of peace and a return to the warmth of the only home she had ever made for herself. But before that, the penance, the only act that might explain, might excuse, the fact that of all the women she had loved, she alone still lived.

Diora di'Marano did not pray because she did not know how. She did not play the instruments that she had been raised to because they had been taken from her. She did not speak in the darkness of a night that was supposed to—somehow—contain her sleep.

But she sang.

Softly, softly, her voice by some miracle not cracking as she forced it back into her throat so that it might be otherwise inaudible. Her father watched her closely, even when he was not present; he would know.

The silence her voice broke was broken.

"Diora,"
the voice said.
"Where are you?"

She froze a moment, losing her voice as she recognized the distant tones that hinted at a power she had only once seen in full display: the voice of Kallandras of Senniel College.

The winds from the North had unexpectedly swept in beneath the night sky, blending with death and the threat of death and the Lady's neutrality.

She was speechless.

"I am in the Tor Leonne—the city, not the palace proper. If the Serra Teresa is here, she makes no reply. Things are more complicated than I had foreseen. Are you well?"

His Torra was perfect. She wondered what he would look like this time.

"I am well," she said, speaking as he had taught her to speak, unaccountably happy that walls and screens and distance aside, there was no way to separate her from his company, should he choose to offer it.

"There have been rumors that you are not free to travel."

"Rumors often have a grain of truth; this is rare. It
is
true."

She heard his laughter; her own lips turned up in something so foreign she realized it was a smile. How long had it been? Too long, and it would be longer still.

"Ona Teresa is not in the Tor. My father did not see fit to send for her. She attends the Serra Donna en'Lamberto for the Festival celebrations in Amar." She paused. "I believe that she has been summoned, but only recently. I do not know if she will arrive in time for the Festival of the Moon.

"But, Kallandras of Senniel, the situation here is not what it was—and I would advise you strongly against attempting to offer your services to the Tyr'agar."

"Understood," he replied, his voice shifting strangely. "I have come on the winds of war, Diora. I will be honest. You have made yourself so much a part of the war you must know that this is no social visit."

"I do know it," she replied, because she did, and because she did not wish to let either Kallandras or the use of the voice slide away from her. "But I do not much care. Listen. Let me be the wind's voice, if it is war you have come seeking.

"I do not know if rumor has yet reached the street. There has been a change in the celebration of the Festival—or rather, a change has been planned. The Lady's Festival does not have the significance of the Lord's, but it
is
Her Festival.

"First, the masks worn will be masks decreed by the new Tyr. Second, there will be a Consort to the Lady of the Moon. Third, and most important: Yollana of the Havalla Voyani has been taken captive in the Tor Leonne proper; where, I do not yet know."

"And is the third most important?" he asked softly.

"I—" she remembered the ruined, tortured face of Evallen of the Arkosa Voyani, and for a moment, a pendant invisible to the eye— to even the practiced Widan eyes of her father and the Sword's Edge—gained weight and warmth as it hung heavily round her neck. Remembered the servant of the Lord of Night who had looked, first through her, and then
at
her. He would never forget her; she was certain of it. Just as certain as she was that she would never forget him.

"Yes," she said, speaking as softly as he.

"Odd."

"Odd?"

"I would have said, of the three, that the most disturbing thing you have yet told me is the first: the masks. Diora, I am no mage. But I have had experience with the magi. My instincts bid me warn you: beware of the masks."

Silence.

She waited as her heart beat out three minutes.

"Kallandras?"

But if he could hear her at all, he did not answer.