The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 (27 page)

She did not cry.

It pained him.

“Men who die,” she whispered.

“Women die in war as well.”

“As do serafs. It is not of their deaths that tales are written; not for their deaths that poets find words.”

“No?” He looked away; looked at the flowers that she had arranged, with her own hands. They were white, the blossoms; white, with ribbons of blue and gold. She would mourn forever if he allowed it.

“We traveled from the North with Ser Anton di’Guivera. There is not a man—or a boy—in the Dominion who does not know the tale of his dead: His Serra, his son. I have seen him. What poets make of his life is true.”

Gently rebuked, she bowed her head.

“Amara,” he said, daring to approach her, but still careful to touch nothing, “do you think I feel no loss?”

She looked up. “You have the war. I have . . . an empty harem.”

“You have a son,” he replied. “We have a son.”

“And will he be sacrificed as well?”

“No.”

“Will you keep him from battle?”

“Battle is everywhere.”

“Even in the heart of Callesta.”

“Even so.” He moved closer. “Carelo was my kai.”

“He was my child.”

“Will you allow his loss to divide us?” He was not a particularly gentle man, although until he had traveled with the kai Leonne, he had never clearly understood this. Strange that; the boy was so young. “Will you allow our mutual grief to be used in a way that nothing else could be?”

“You have your other wives.”

It was a blow.

He understood what lay beneath the words; willed himself not to respond with the heat of the momentary fury he felt. “Amara, I have taken no wife that you have not chosen. They are mine, yes, but they are yours first. If I desired them—and I am a man—I have treated them as if they were what they appear to be: delicate, ephemeral.

“You are the only woman—the only person—that I have ever treated as an equal.”

She hesitated a moment, and he felt a brief hope, but the light flickered and dimmed as if it were a seraf’s candle in a strong wind.

“What would you have me say? I am here. You are here. And the body of my son lies beneath Callesta for the sake of this war.”

He closed his eyes. “Very well, Amara. Very well.” He rose. “I will retire. On the morrow, the Northern Commanders arrive.”

The doors opened as he approached them, gliding smoothly in wooden tracks, the seraf responsible for their movement almost invisible, as any wise person would be.

Ellora hated the South.

From the moment she set foot upon this foreign soil, memory stirred, and memory was unkind. She was not Devran; not Bruce; although she was by nature an expert at the game of war, she counted the losses personally. The men and women who had followed her here would fight and die. No matter what she did, she could not prevent it, and she was pragmatic enough to accept it as truth.

Years of peace had not gentled her, but it had given her the opportunity to indulge the ferocity of her pride and her affection. The Kalakar House Guard would be winnowed by this war; many would face the mirror of life and death for the first time.

And for what? The sake of a boy who claimed rulership of the Dominion of Annagar?

No.
Be fair
.

She had seen the demons in the Hall of the Kings. She understood that this was a battle that the North could not afford to lose—and such a battle was best fought on foreign soil.

But she had seen whole villages razed, the people in them slaughtered like cattle by their own. The South was a land of death.

She wondered how well Valedan understood this. Having spoken with him briefly, having observed him at a distance, judging him and finding a grudging respect for his raw ability, she wasn’t certain.

Her horse was restive. She let him destroy the undergrowth in a prancing circle, shifting her weight in silence; it was her way of apologizing for the sea voyage. In all other aspects, he was the perfect mount; intelligent, inquisitive, and obedient by turns. But he had the sea legs of a sick cat. He was going to be put out with her for a few more days yet, and when he was put out, he was an impressive sight; he was not a small horse.

The Berriliya favored black; it was a stately color. And although it pained her to admit that Devran was not a vain man, he was pragmatic; he knew that his rank demanded attention. He was careful to preserve distance, to preserve the illusion of infallibility; House Berriliya—and its small cadre of House Guards—was to be represented by a man who understood the value of a regal, severe bearing.

But her horse, Merrin, was a shade of brown gold; his mane was dark, his tail dark, and his flashings white. He had good ears, a good, solid build, but his eyes were considered too small to be, strictly speaking, beautiful.

He was, nonetheless, beautiful.

Verrus Korama AKalakar kept a respectful distance from that beauty. His own horse was a gray mare, perhaps a hand shorter than Merrin, and infinitely more docile. Her eyes were the size of a child’s gathered fist, her lashes long, her mane perfectly plaited; she accepted sea squalor and confinement with the same steady bearing that her master did.

“Ellora,” he said, when Merrin had paused for a moment to survey what was left of the ground, “we’re ready.”

She nodded.

Korama paused, his silence a search for words, not an end to them.

“Duarte will be there.”

She nodded again. Merrin began his mincing step, and she wondered, briefly, if it was always to be the wild things that she loved best.

Callesta was large.

It lay across the width of the valley like a declaration, and the Commanders paused at the height of the sloped track to gaze upon it, reading between the lines of buildings, fields, walls.

Ellora’s men were restless.

More than a decade ago they had approached Averda, seeking entrance into the city. They had never reached it, although they had come close enough to end a war; to drive men whose venue for conflict was political to the tables and halls where their power resided.

Vernon Loris had not chosen to accompany The Kalakar, and she had refrained from making an order of the offer. He stayed with her troops, overseeing the logistic machine that kept her army fed and sheltered in a way that did not demand more than the terrain would bear.

If the war was long, that would change.

She urged Merrin down the slope, pushing past the men who were, in theory, there to protect her. They were used to this; only Sentrus Brotherton dared to argue the point, and he did so with the pained expression of a man who knew that the argument had never been his to win.

Ellora led her men.

Such an action was the source of many of her conflicts with Devran. Although she was clearly in no danger, his preference was to present a united front to the troops; to exercise caution, and to allow men to perform the duties for which they had been handpicked.

Certainly, for House Berriliya this approach was acceptable. Men adapted to almost any circumstance, and those men he chose to personally serve him wore this signal honor with a gravity that spoke of distance and respect for the rank they served.

Ellora AKalakar had created the Ospreys, coming between them and the gallows and fashioning, out of the men she had saved, a unit under the care of Captain Duarte. Ellora AKalakar earned affection by offering it; earned respect by offering it, especially when it was unlooked for.

Devran’s men were drawn from the sons of the patriciate. His Verruses came from families only slightly less significant than The Ten; they responded as nobles respond to most situations. The hierarchy of the army was preserved both on and off the field.

Korama was the only Verrus that came from such a family.

But he was, of the men who served, the one she most trusted. He was not interested in power; he was interested in
her
power.

She turned when his horse’s nose crossed the line of her peripheral vision. “Stranger things have happened, haven’t they?”

He smiled. “Some. We always vowed that we would bring the army to Callesta.”

“And you always told me to be careful of rash oaths.” She laughed. “Especially my own.”

“You’re looking forward to this.”

“To some of it. I want to see that man’s wife.” There was no mistaking whom she meant by “that man.” In the Empire, it was rare for the Inheritors of the House Seats to marry. Commander Allen, when he stepped off the field, had had no such limitations, no scrutiny of his personal life. On the field, he chose to deprive himself of companions, and it was just as well; Sioban was no soldier.

Korama wondered, briefly, if they would see her on the field. As the bardmaster of Senniel College, her life had been contained, confined by the responsibilities of the Collegium’s many students, and the responsibilities laid upon any bardmaster by the Kings. Upon retirement, she had only the responsibilities she chose.

But retired or no, very few were the men—or women—who could tell her what to do. Or what not to do.

“What are you thinking, Korama?”

He shook his head. “Wives.”

“Wives?”

“You want to see his wives, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Wives, then.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s not a man who tolerates mediocrity where he has the choice.”

Korama nodded quietly, as he did all else. “But if confronted with a mediocrity that he doesn’t have the choice of, he accepts it. He doesn’t have your style,” Korama added, “but I’ve watched his Tyran. They serve
him
.”

“They’ve made their oaths,” she replied.

“So did I.”

Her gaze was sharper; he offered her his profile.

“I didn’t demand your life,” Ellora said at last.

“No. But if you hadn’t been certain that that was what I was offering, you wouldn’t have accepted it. Rough speech or fine, words are easy.”

She laughed. “Tell that to the Ospreys.” And then she stopped, the strange joy at approaching the open gates of Callesta diminished.

“Ellora—”

She lifted a hand. Swatted the words away as if they were insects.

“Words are easy to say,” he told her softly, “and sometimes the saying is easier than the accepting. No one else thinks of Duarte’s men as anything other than what they were. They were the only unit under your command that came together in the South. In a sense, they were born here; this is their home.”

Every aspect of life in the South was a calculated risk.

In the fields, beneath the glare of sun, in a race against weather and the shortness of the season; in the kitchens and dressing rooms of the Court, in a race against the expectations of the High Clans and their need for seemingly effortless perfection; in the taking of a wife, in the bearing of a child; in all of these things, risk.

In halls very much like this one, in the grace of Southern stone, southern screens, open courtyards in which graceful ponds and tall trees hid the egress of men, the Serra Alina di’Lamberto had learned this lesson, first from her mother—while her mother lived—and then from the serafs and the wives of her brother, the kai Lamberto.

She had learned to stand, in silence, a beautiful accoutrement to an otherwise empty room; she had learned to arrange the flowers and the food brought by serafs with an eye to every detail, every droop of leaf, every fallen petal. She had learned to play the samisen, although in truth she hated the instrument because she had never managed to play it well enough to please her own ear; had learned to choose sari fabrics, in texture and color, by which the wealth of her father, and then her brother, might be advertised in a fashion that was considered both seemly and modest. She had learned to sit perfectly still in a room where men spoke and ate and drank; had learned to listen to the tones of their voices when their words were just a few feet beyond her hearing.

She had learned to plan, had learned to improvise—as only a Southern Serra might—had learned how to speak to the men whose duty it was to protect her reputation and her person; had learned how to read the women’s language, and how to lift brush, wet with the darkest of inks, to write it. She had learned to read poetry, to read philosophy, to read the letters of the Court, first to her father and then to her brother until he found a wife who might better serve that function.

And she had learned, as only a Serra might learn, to distinguish friend from foe; to spot, at a distance, a man who might become a worthy ally, or an obedient vassal. That had been her mother’s gift to a sharp-tongued, sharp-eyed daughter.

Had she been indulged?

Yes. By her father. By her grandfather.

But by her brother?

Ah, the old arguments rankled. She had left them behind when she had been traded to the North. She had never thought to return here, and she had therefore taken no care to make certain they had died.

Your son was killed by war, Mareo. He died the Lord’s death
.

My kai was killed by the Northerners
.