Sword (25 page)

"I have something for you," he said, his voice gone rough, and bent to retrieve a leather-wrapped bundle that clattered. "You might find it useful."

Kyali stared at his face, then at the bundle. Without taking it from him, she pulled a corner of the wrappings back gingerly, as though it might bite. Inside were a tunic and trousers of plain black leather, folded carefully, and armor:
beautiful
armor, shining silver and black, engravings running all over the steel. It was in the old style instead of a full, heavy suit: brigandine and segmented pieces buckled together, leaving far more of the wearer exposed—but leaving, also, far more freedom to move. Kyali stepped away from it. Her eyes had that disturbing light in them again.

"I have no time for this," she said, and indeed, they could hear Taireasa's voice echoing outside, speaking about loyalty and honor. A man's voice replied, not politely.

"You do if you want to answer that," Arlen said.

The look she gave him could have frozen water at a hundred paces. Kinsey squelched an impulse to step back, away from whatever was between these two. Beside him, Annan moved closer in silent curiosity.

"Do I have a choice?" Kyali asked.

"No more than I do, girl. I would have spared you this if I did."

Her hands knotted into fists. For a long moment, she stared at the ground, expressionless yet shuddering with tension, and then she set her jaw and drew the bundle of armor into her arms. She walked off without another word.

Kinsey eyed the Clan leader, getting as much information from that as he might have from staring at a tree. He wondered irritably if he would be spending the rest of his life trying to comprehend the currents between his new allies. Kyali reappeared several moments later clad in silver and black, looking like something out of a faery tale. A sword rose over her shoulder. Long daggers rode low on her hips. She spared none of them a single glance, only marched past them and out of the tent.

Annan grabbed his arm. Kinsey frowned at his lieutenant, then realized he'd turned to follow Kyali without a second thought. "You shouldn't go out there," Annan said, for once without a shred of irony or reproach coloring his voice.

"No, I shouldn't," Kinsey agreed. "But I'm going to."

"Of course you are," Annan said calmly, and drew his sword.

They emerged into a sunset like a brushfire. The army had left their tents and come to mass at the pavilion, more than a thousand men crowding close, craning to see. He could see his own, much smaller company at the edges, trying to get to him, but there was no hope of that in this crush. Taireasa stood at the edge of a space the soldiers had cleared away from, facing a stranger. The man wore a soldier's rough armor, but with the red-and-silver dragon shield of the House of Corwynall blazing on his shoulder.

That must be Feldan, the ambitious cousin.

"That she is unbound does not mean she is not eligible for the throne!" he was saying, evidently about Kyali. Devin had his sister's discarded locket in his fist, brandishing it high above his head. "You left us for your music, cousin. House Corwynall deserves a say in these matters! And do we not all deserve a queen strong enough to take our kingdom back?"

At his back stood two men with the same winged eyebrows and dark eyes as Devin and Kyali, clearly family. They were not rallying to Feldan, precisely, but they didn't leave him, either. And it was clear from the shouts behind him that Feldan had found some support in the army for this challenge.

"Cousin, you know nothing at all if you can doubt that of Taireasa," Devin shouted back.

"Then someone must teach me," Feldan declared, his face going red. "No more talking. Challenge, I say! I will fight whatever champion she chooses, and prove whose House is the stronger."

Taireasa's mouth made a hard line, but she didn't flinch. "So be it," she said, cutting off Devin's outraged objection.

Kyali pushed her way through to stand next to Taireasa. There was a sudden, shocked silence as the soldiers took in her shining armor, the sword over her shoulder.

"Are you quite done speaking for me?" she said coolly.

Feldan's chin lifted. "You know I'm right, little cousin."

"What I know is that you've put your ambition over your oaths, Feldan Corwynall." She stepped into the empty space in the center of the circle and reached up over her shoulder to draw her sword. "I know you've challenged," she said, and a rising wave of shock and worry echoed through the army. "And I know I will answer.
Cousin
."

Clearly this wasn't part of Feldan's plan. "I will not harm one of my own—"

"I'm not one of your own now, Feldan Corwynall. Her Majesty needs a champion: I am that. Or you can retract your challenge."

"Kyali, no," Taireasa murmured, but if she heard it, Kyali didn't bother acknowledging. It was, Kinsey had to admit, a neat solution: if she won, Taireasa's claim would be established, and if she lost, House Corwynall would have no one of the direct line on which to pin a claim of their own.

It was truly brutal, though. Kinsey didn't dare look at Devin just then.

"Then I suppose I must fight," Feldan said slowly, drawing his sword from the sheath at his side. "
Cousin.
"

Taireasa reached blindly for Devin's hand, and he took it in a pale grip as Feldan backed farther into the circle and Kyali followed.

"I'll be sorry to kill you, little cousin," Feldan said. It had the sound of a taunt, but his face was grave as they began to circle one another.

Kyali said nothing.

She brought her sword up slanted across her face and placed her feet carefully. Kinsey felt some of the desperate tension around him begin to seep into his own bones. He hoped that this angry young woman was as good as she seemed to think she was. Feldan closed suddenly, feinted left and drove in with a quick, forceful stroke. But even as the crowd was gasping, Kyali had sidestepped it with fluid grace. She twisted her own sword in a complicated blur of movement and metal sang as their blades met.

Feldan staggered backward. He dove in at her again immediately, quick and vicious. This time it was she who stumbled away, a cut appearing on one cheek. Her eyes were a golden smolder. They circled again, both of them warier now.

“Yield or die,” Feldan demanded, eyeing her over the edge of his blade.

“There will be no yielding today,” Kyali hissed—and spun into a startling leap to avoid his sweep at her legs. The soldiers muttered: it was a coward’s strike. But Kyali landed lightly and spun a second time, sword flashing up and around, quicker than Feldan by far. Feldan loosed a cry that seemed to be more frustration than anything else and battered her with a furious set of blows. Kyali staggered again, then seemed to find her footing. She parried each blow with one of her own, perfectly slanted so that her cousin’s sword slid, time and again, from the angle of her blade.

And then she was done defending. She began to strike, faster and faster, until Feldan was backing away, trying to gain enough space to move. But Kyali gave him no quarter. Her sword flashed in patterns almost too quick to follow, leaving a streak of sunset-stained silver afterglow trailing through the twilight. She was faster than anyone Kinsey had ever seen. Beside him, Annan muttered something, sounding uneasy. The air in the circle began to shiver eerily, like the trails of heat above a fire.

Feldan uttered a furious shout, raising his sword overhead for a killing blow, and Kyali’s next, blindingly fast motion brought the point of her sword to his chest.

He turned right into it, and his mouth opened in a choked scream.

Kyali froze. Her gaze fell to the sword that connected them, the blood welling darkly out, and then rose to his face. For a moment, if Feldan had wished it, he could have split her head in two with his half-finished blow.

Instead the sword fell from his fingers. He wrapped a hand around the blade in his chest. He said something to her, too soft for Kinsey to hear, but whatever it was it bled the anger and all the flush of effort from her face. Feldan sank to his knees. Kyali followed, holding the sword in place carefully. He spoke again, blood bubbling from his lips to run down his chin. She nodded once, decisively, and set her hand over his, on the blade.

“Oh, gods, cousin,” Devin murmured.

Kyali pulled the blade out in one quick movement and stood, cradling it in her bloody hands. Feldan sagged backward, hands fluttering helplessly over the wound. Blood pooled around him. He went still.

No one made a sound as Kyali pulled a small square of cloth out of a pocket and cleaned her sword, looking only at that.

"Is there question?" she finally said into the silence.

Clearly not. After a moment, someone shouted "Long live the queen!"—a cry that was taken up immediately, becoming a roar of approval that echoed off cliffs and filled the dusky sky.

Not seeming the least bit moved, Kyali turned to face Taireasa.

"Damn it," Taireasa muttered.

"
Now
, Taireasa," Devin said, never looking at her. "Take her oath. Please. No more bloodshed. It won't stop… you know it won't."

Taireasa sucked in a deep breath, nostrils flaring. "Not on these terms."

"Then damn it,
make your own terms
, Your Majesty!"

"Fine," Taireasa spat. "Fine. I
will
do that."

She shook Devin's hand from hers and strode out into the circle as the cheers rose and, all over the little valley, men knelt. The moon was rising in the east, piercing through leaves, and the last dying rays of the sun painted the western horizon. In the odd heat-shimmer still hovering over the clearing, thickening around the two young women meeting there, it looked like floating fire. Kinsey felt a shiver twist up his spine.

Kyali knelt, offering her sword up in both hands. She spoke her oath clearly. Taireasa set her hands on the sword, raised it, and spoke the reply as the air snapped and whined around them. Beside him, Devin made a small, surprised noise and went still. Kinsey sent him a worried glance. The Bard grinned at him fiercely.

"Watch
this
," he said. "Nobody gets the best of Taireasa for long."

Taireasa set a hand on Kyali's shoulder, still holding her sword in one hand.

"
Sword shall guide the hands of men
," she said. It was so silent now it was possible to hear the tidal whisper of over a thousand men breathing. Taireasa smiled then, a grim, satisfied expression.

"This day has been one of sorrow and sacrifice," she said clearly. "We have lost as much as we are willing to lose. From this moment onward, we are
one people
, united in our determination to regain our kingdom, and
one army
, united in our defense of Lardan—and of each other. Kyali Corwynall. For your devotion to the rightful crown, for the skill you have acquired in hard years of study, and for the gift of command that we all witnessed when you fought and won our first battle, I name you captain of this army, the Exile's Army…"

She wasn't done speaking, but the cries of the soldiers drowned out her words. Men shouted and clapped and whistled like boys, rising to their feet almost as one. Kinsey swallowed a shout of his own. It was impossible not to be caught in the joy these soldiers gave voice to.

Taireasa waited until the noise had fallen. She handed Kyali her sword, pulling her to her feet. "Rise," she said. "
Captain
Corwynall."

Kyali sheathed her sword in the gathering dark. For an instant, Kinsey was afraid she would refuse. But instead she clenched her hands into fists and squared her shoulders.

"My Lady Queen," she said, and saluted.

Then the soldiers began to chant, rhythmic and jubilant. They could probably hear it all the way down the mountain, where the enemies of these remarkable people sat.

"Lady Captain, Lady Captain,
Lady Captain
!"

B
OOK
T
WO

L
ADY
C
APTAIN

C
HAPTER
15

"
E
xcuse me, m'lord…"

"Yes, of course."

"Oh, m'lord! I'm so sorry—"

"No, it's fine, after you."

Devin ducked and dodged his way through a confusion of soldiers and servants and terrified villagers leading sheep and goats. Between the bleating and the shouting, it sounded like an invasion.

Another invasion.

A new party of refugees had arrived, bearing scant belongings, bad news, and sorely needed supplies from the Eastern barons—who, bless them, held strong in their keeps and sent what they could spare on the backs of newly homeless smallfolk. The grain and livestock were much appreciated, but their band of refugees was rapidly becoming a city. The constant press of people rubbed his already short temper raw.

He made it to a doorway and all but fell over at the sudden cessation of noise. "Gods," he muttered, and wandered down the dark hall without a second thought, just because there was nobody in it but him.

It wasn't getting any easier.

Nearly two months they'd been here, clearing out rooms, building barracks, hunting mountain game, making this place as much a home as an ancient castle at the top of the world could ever hope to be to a horde of melancholy exiles… and every day was as much of a struggle as the first few had been.

He missed his father.

He missed his sister, who was still with him, but didn't behave as though she cared about anything anymore.

It takes time
, Taireasa had said.
We all deal with grief in our own ways.

But Taireasa couldn't meet his eye when she defended Kyali and he knew, through the thread of magic that bound them, that she hurt just as much as he did at that desertion. They had been joined at the hip their whole lives, and suddenly his little sister had nothing but coldness for Taireasa—and for him.