Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (3 page)

They both knew, because it was a truth as old as the Voyani's homeless wandering, that the Voyani preyed upon lesser clansmen, and smaller caravans.

"If I may be bold, Ser Karras," she replied, "I would tell your young cerdan that this is not the place to earn—or to attempt to earn—the Lord's respect."

His smile was a thin-edged flash of teeth, gone at once; she felt the respect offered in the salute that he almost, but did not quite, give.

She liked Karras, and hoped that he followed her advice, for no cerdan would be likely to escape the wrath of the Arkosa Voyani who traveled in such great numbers should they attempt to exert their authority.

Margret
, she thought, staring into the open sky.

Knowing that she had news to offer that would cause a far greater wound to the young Voyani woman than any cerdan's sword. And knowing, after that wound, she must then ask a favor that she could not afford to have refused.

Margret of the Arkosa Voyani was not a woman like her mother. She was a little too young, and the edges about her were sharper, harsher; it was just such a woman who made the greatest—or the worst—of rulers. To come to the clan as Matriarch, unblemished by the winds, unblunted and unscarred, physically, by the test of the sands, was an omen, and it was considered as such by both the Serra Teresa and the Arkosa Voyani.

Or it would be. It would be soon.

She did not wait upon the appointed hour; she did not need to. There was too much steel gathered here, beneath the Lord's sight, for the van to ignore. The Voyani did not often use horses as beasts for single riders; it was an expensive proposition, and one much resented by those who could not afford the luxury. They had, these wanderers, their pride, and much of their pride was a ferocity of fellow feeling with those they claimed as kin. In this case, the Arkosa Voyani. But a rider came out, on horse. The horse was Lambertan-bred; she wondered how dearly they had paid.

She thought the beast fine, and was certain that it would be kept only until a likely buyer was found for it.

Her cerdan stepped forward at the command of Karras di'Marano, barring the rider's way. He stopped short of them—just— and in a way that showed that he ill-loved riding as a form of approaching an uncertain situation. The horse, of course, could sense this, and she could tell by the tensing line of the shoulders of her guards that they could sense it as well. Young horse, and too newly broken to take kindly to the scent of any rider's fear.

Or too poorly broken, which was perhaps the reason he was let go at all. The Voyani rider stopped the horse, but at a lesser distance than any of them, save perhaps the horse, would have liked. A poor start.

Poorer still, he did not dismount, although privately the Serra thought it wise.

"Ho, travelers!" he said, lifting his voice. A normal greeting would have involved the lifting of an arm, a hand, some gesture that touched the open sky. A toss of the head was offered in its place; both hands gripped and held the reins a little too tightly. She wondered if the horse would throw the boy.

For she could tell, from the timbre of his voice, if not his build, that he was a boy. On the edge of manhood, to be sure, and with only a little time needed to push him over, but nonetheless, a boy.

It explained much.

Serra Teresa and Ser Karras exchanged a brief glance.

Karras stepped forward. "We are passing through Raverra to Mancorvo."

"You fly the colors of the clan Marano."

The cerdan nodded, neither well-pleased nor ill, although the Voyani did not always attend to the colors of the clans well enough to know them. Certainly not the Arkosans. The Havallans, perhaps.

"My sister sent me to offer you the hospitality of our wagons and our family," the boy continued.

Serra Teresa froze a moment as she studied the lines of the boy's face, seeing them as if for the first time, although she missed little.

"Your sister is?"

"Margret," the boy replied, with just a touch of pride. "Margret, daughter of Evallen, Matriarch of Arkosa."

Teresa closed her eyes then; it was a momentary reflex, and the pain passed quickly beneath the heat of the Lord's regard. Ser Karras, however, had turned to seek her permission, whether desirous of acceptance or flat refusal, she could not—quite— tell; she met his eyes as hers blinked open.

"Tell your sister Margret that the Serra Teresa di'Marano would indeed be honored to accept the offered hospitality. Tell her—tell her that the Serra is well aware of the honor offered."

He brightened, this boy, and she added—because she could not help but add it, "And who is her brother?"

His cheeks shifted slightly in color, although with the Voyani's sun-harsh skin it was often hard to tell, and he smiled; his face lit, side to side, with the undamaged and unfettered charm of a child who has not yet been broken or yoked. "I'm Adam," he said. "Adam, Evallen's son."

She bowed—it was acceptable etiquette when the only mats beneath her were formed of earth and dust—and then nodded to the captain.

It was clear that he did not trust the Voyani; he was not paid, after all, to trust. He chose three men—more than that, and the lack of trust would be an open insult—and accompanied them himself.

Serra Teresa began the descent from the roadside to the small curve of grass that a desert dweller would call a valley and an Averdan would hardly deign to notice. Where the land lay lowest, there was some hesitant greenery; if the rains came, she thought the golden dryness of the sun's reign would be cast off by undergrowth like so much ceremonial clothing.

She admired the Voyani their ability to maneuver, and keep, their wagons, and as she approached the wagon ring, she saw, standing above them as if it were a palace at the heart of a wheeled city, a wagon that she knew, if not well, then well enough to never mistake.

This was no merchant wagon, no van meant to carry creature comforts from one end of the Dominion to the other; it was a home, or as much of a home as the Voyani were allowed to make. Canvas was supported in two places by carved lintels that were oiled and tended; the canvas itself was not the only protection the wagon dweller was offered, for the sides of the wagon were built up with a fine wood, and broken on either side by panes of clear, thick glass, and bars of lead. Cloth twined and fell to either side, ribbons of decorative color, and the wheels themselves were jointed in such a way that they absorbed some of the rigors of wagon travel well.

Many a merchant would have paid the Voyani for the secret of this construction, but the Voyani and the merchants were not often friendly; death and time had given suspicion a hold that goodwill did not dissolve. And that, she thought grimly, was for the best, for goodwill rarely stood the test of the wind.

The Voyani had no manners, or so it was said, and for the most part, it was true. They were a lazy people with regard to the niceties of formal interaction. As if to prove her thoughts true, several of the older men who attended the Matriarch appeared to either side of the Matriarch's large wagon; they took up their places by crossing their arms in front of their chests and lounging against the wagon's side, staring at the cerdan who accompanied the Serra, measuring them.

Sunlight aged them, as did the wind. They wore no armor, or little of it, and three of the eight carried swords; they all carried daggers, and Serra Teresa was certain that half of them were of the throwing variety; the Voyani did not often like to close in a fight with strangers, although amongst themselves the thrown dagger was considered an act of cowardice that stained the honor of the family.

Such as it was.

Some of the men shaved, although they retained either beard or mustache; a smooth face was considered a boy's face by Voyani men. Serra Teresa did not understand the rank that Voyani men actually held, and wasn't certain if she wanted to dignify Voyani pecking order with the word. It was the women she came to, after all, and the women who entertained outsiders such as she stood apart from their kin, if not above.

Margret of the Arkosa Voyani had not yet reached the age where she knew how to maintain that distance. She did not understand the use of mystery, the use of silence, the use of sparing truths. But she understood death; they all did, clansmen and Wanderers alike. These were the Lord's lands, and the Lady's, and perhaps life was not such a mercy that it should be mandated, and guaranteed.

Serra Teresa waited outside the large wagon for a full five minutes before she realized that Evallen would not emerge to greet her. Oh, she'd known it, of course; it was partly to convey word of that woman's death that she had come into this dell. But knowledge of death and acceptance of it are often separated by time and experience, and she had had little time since the death itself had become known to her.

She lifted her head slightly.

"The Matriarch?"

"Is not with the caravan, as you should well know," a clear, strong voice said.

The Serra Teresa froze. And then, without another word, she turned. "Captain," she said quietly.

"No."

"Ser Karras—"

"I will not leave you with these," he replied, his tone low, his meaning unmistakable.

She hesitated a moment, afraid for him and now, because of this single sentence spoken by a woman who was always a little bit too obviously angry, afraid
of
him. But she did not choose to use the voice upon him, to force him away.

"Margret," she said softly, and she bowed her head.

The young, dark-haired woman paused, her mouth already half open as if to speak. It was grudging, this pause, a thing that the Serra Teresa was certain she had struggled for. "Come with me."

Karras was not pleased by the tone Margret took; he bristled, but not obviously—he was too well-trained to embarrass or endanger her that way. Although they were better armed than the Voyani, they were also outnumbered, and there was no question of surviving a fight started here, among these people.

He escorted Serra Teresa to the wagon in which Margret and her brother lived. Margret mounted steps whose upper hinge creaked with either age or want of oil, or perhaps both, and then flung open the small, perfect door. Inside, it was both shadowed and empty; the windows that graced the mother's wagon graced the child's as well, but they were smaller and allowed for less light.

"In here," Margret said curtly, "we can speak."

Such rudeness as this, Serra Teresa had witnessed once before in her life, from the mother. For a moment daughter and mother looked so alike that she felt, that she could feel, young again herself, on the brink of a mystery that she didn't—quite—believe in, and a mystery, herself, that Evallen couldn't quite believe in.

Perhaps
, she thought, as she saw Ser Karras' small frown,
you will do well enough
.

* * *

Shadows provided mercy, of a type. Light was often harsh when sorrow intruded; it allowed for no privacy, no illusion of the strength of expression that dignifies either a man or a woman who understands that life ends, that death is inevitable.

"Where is my mother?" Margret said, as she found a seat in the high wagon, and offered the Serra her choice of worn but sturdy pillows.

The Serra was silent.

"She was to leave before the Festival's end, Serra. She was to meet us in Mancorvo."

"She—she told you this?"

It was the Voyani's turn to fall silent. When she spoke, her voice was flat, as inflectionless as the Serra might have preferred. "She told you different."

"Margret, your mother and I knew each other—"

"For longer than I've existed, yes, I've heard it before. But I'm her
kin
." She stood, and the flatness left her voice and her expression.

Evallen
, Teresa thought,
I warned you against this: you have raised a wildness in your family
.

"What, exactly, did she tell you?"

"None of your secrets," Teresa said softly, folding her hands in her lap, taking up a posture that she was certain would both impress and offend the younger woman. "She told me nothing, Margret, that did not pertain to what little privacy a Matriarch is granted."

"What did she tell you?"

Serra Teresa turned her face to the window, lifted the fan that was wrapped, by a golden chain, around her wrist, protection against loss on the road. "She told me," the Serra said, pitching her voice as carefully as she could, "that she had come to the Tor Leonne to die."

The silence, as always, was terrible.

"She—she—" The attempt to speak was worse.

For Serra Teresa di'Marano was gifted and cursed, and where she could lend dignity to another by somehow refusing to see the weakness they could not help but show, she could not refuse to hear it. The voice conveyed a complexity of emotion that a word did not, no matter how good the speaker was at dissembling, at hiding emotion. Margret was not such a one, and oddly enough, that made it easier; she was not the eavesdropper, or worse, the soul's voyeur, she was the bearer of bad tidings to a woman barely more than girl and not schooled enough to hide what she felt.

"I wish you were someone else," Margret said, and it surprised the Serra.

"Why?"

"Because if you were, I'd accuse you of lying." The voice broke three times, as if the words were rocks it could not pass over, but must flow round. Bitterness, there. And beneath it, certainty.

"You suspected."

"Yes." She was tired, was Margret, and angry. "But I didn't have—what my mother did. I couldn't be certain." She began to pace the confines of the wagon, her long stride making it seem small indeed to the woman who was trapped there with her.

At last, she stopped. "How?"

This was harder. "I was not there, Margret."

"Was anyone?"

"Yes."

She fell silent again. "Who—who found the body?"

Teresa closed her eyes. "You are asking me if someone removed something from your mother's corpse. I can answer that question: If they did, it was not a thing of value. She
knew
, Margret; she knew what she must do."