The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 (76 page)

The voice was silent a moment. She had no illusions; it would start up again, and soon.

Jewel ATerafin, Jewel Markess, Jay.

Three women, one woman. She had never lifted dagger in anger, although she’d certainly lifted hand—or pot, or whatever else happened to be in easy range. She had never played the games that the House Council immersed themselves in. Prided herself on that, but in silence, especially when Avandar was around.

But she
had
, just once, killed. She had given a demon the location of Carmenta’s den. And she had
known
, when the words left her lips, what that would mean.

No, she had known before they left. She had taken their lives in payment for Lander’s. Her den-kin. Carmenta’s gang had chased him into the labyrinth that lay beneath the sprawl of the hundred holdings in Averalaan. The maze had swallowed him whole, and she knew now that the death he suffered had been slow and terrible. They had never found his body.

“Yes,” she said again, but quietly. “I killed you.”

There was no triumph in the words.

She felt the Winter King beneath her stiff legs; he had stilled.

Not in self-defense
.

No
, she told him flatly.
Revenge
.

Ah
. He was surprised. She took no pleasure from it. It had been many, many years since she had taken pleasure from the death.

But not none. Not none. She closed her eyes; the voice grew sharper.

I didn’t kill your den-kin
, it said. And it spoke inside her, the words contained, as the Winter King’s words were, but made of ice.

She could have argued. Even wanted to. When she had been sixteen, she would have. And what would she have said?
Yes. Yes, you did. You killed him. You forced him into the maze. You sent him straight to the kin
.

It was true.

You wouldn’t shed any tears if you’d killed me, you bastard
.

That was true, too.

But sometime between the then of lean streets, terrible cold, and fear of starvation, and now—even the ridiculous now of being seated upon the back of a creature that hadn’t even been one of
her
childhood stories—she had lost the ability to make that argument stick.

Because it made her Carmenta.

It was the only thing that she had ever done that made of her life something akin to his.

“Yes,” she said again, into the dark that was suddenly too familiar. “I killed you.”

He came out of the shadows then, her acknowledgment giving him form and shape. His face—aiee, what was left of his face—was twisted and broken.

Rage she could have accepted; it would have given her something to fight against. But all she saw was his fear and his torment. She had killed him. She had brought him to this.

“They killed us all,” he said, the words coming from broken lips. “Do you know how?”

“No.”

But it was a lie. She
did
know. She had, through the auspices of House Terafin, requested the reports of the magisterial guards. She had read them, their cold, precise language understating the horror of those deaths. Two bodies were beyond identification. None of the bodies were in one piece.

“We never hurt you,” he said.

“You did,” she snapped back. But it was hard. Her memories of Carmenta had been of a large, brutish giant with an ugly face, an ugly laugh, the scars of old fights adorning his jaw.

This—this Carmenta—was a child. Not a small child, never that, but a boy.

Jewel
. The Winter King’s voice was deep and deceptively gentle.

What
?

Do not do this
.

Can you see him
?

No
.

Can you see anything
?

The Winter King was silent. She thought he would remain silent. Didn’t want him to.

And he heard that desire.
I was the mount of the Winter Queen
, he said softly.
And I have seen much, much worse in the Deepings. But I am some part of them now. They do not speak to me with human voices
.

She turned then, stiffly, and looked ahead. Celleriant’s hair was like a sheen of winter snow. By his side, Kallandras of Senniel College walked. His steps were light, quick, elegant; his legs did not shake and his feet did not hesitate.

“Kallandras,” she whispered.

He turned. His eyes were wide, unblinking in the mask of his face. “ATerafin?”

She wanted to ask him. If he could see anything. Hear anything. But what could he hear? What did a master bard know of death?

Unbidden, another memory returned. Henden.

The song of the bards of Senniel College.

What had Kallandras of Senniel offered to the dying? What had he offered to the victims whose tortured cries were slowly destroying the morale and the spirit of
Averalaan
?

Death.

Simple. Merciful. Quick. But death, nonetheless.

Had she forgotten that? How?

Yet he did not seem tormented. He did not seem to be caught in conversation, to be speaking to ghosts. No; maybe they were hers. Maybe that was how the forest spoke to her.

The Winter King said nothing.

“It’s . . . nothing,” she said lamely. But before her attention left him, she saw that Lord Celleriant had reached out to catch the bard by the arm; that a slender, perfect hand, a long arm, had wrapped itself around the bard’s shoulders.

The boy had come to her side, and although his feet left no mark upon the ground, neither did hers; he kept pace with the stag. He spoke.

She wanted to lift her hands to her ears; to stop the words from reaching them. Wanted to cry out or snarl in fury because fury was easier than anything else.

But she didn’t.

“Yes,” she heard herself saying. “Yes. Tell me how you died.”

Hating him. Hating him, but not as much as she hated herself. This had been her only act of willful murder. This was the death that she could have prevented by the simple expediency of silence. But she had been so angry that she had wanted the justice of his death. An eye for an eye. Lander had been worth a hundred Carmentas, and she had never been able to face the fact that she could not protect her own. Not then.

Not now.

A hundred things came between her and this ghost.

I only did it once
.

We were already at war
.

I thought it was necessary. I thought we would be going back. I was protecting my own
.

I’m not as bad as Haerrad
—

Or less. She understood the danger here.

Yes
, she said flatly.
I killed you. I enjoyed it, for a while
.

She curled up on the back of the Winter King, the night so cold she might as well have been in the desert.

The ghost stopped speaking. And smiled.

She wondered if the others might come back to haunt her; none did. No Duster. No Lefty, no Fisher, no Lander. Just Carmenta.

She swallowed, and said out loud, “It’s part of what I am. But I swear that it’s not all that I am. And it will
never
be all that I am. If you came to remind me,” she added softly, staring at the mutilated, oddly peaceful face, “I’ve been reminded. If you came to torment me, you can stand in line.”

“Lady.” Celleriant’s voice, clear as a bell.

She looked across a slender clearing and met the startling clarity of eyes that the darkness should have concealed. He bowed.

“You are . . . more, indeed, than you seem.”

“And less,” she said sadly.

She wondered what Haerrad would see, if he walked these roads.

And wondering, turned.

Avandar
.

She forgot to breathe then.

Avandar Gallais stood at the very edge of her vision. He looked up, as Celleriant had done, but the fire in his eyes was guttered.

“Viandaran has walked roads darker than this,” Celleriant said quietly. But he, too, turned.

“Avandar?”

Silence.

What’s wrong with him
?

The Winter King didn’t answer.

What’s wrong
?

The absence of his voice was frightening.

“Is every single road going to be like this one?” she snarled, to no one in particular. She wrapped her hands around folds of warm fur and then tensed; her legs tightened and she braced herself for a fall.

The ground beneath her feet was harder than it looked from a distance.

The shadow of the Winter King’s great tines fell like a net at her feet; he had turned; she could feel his gaze upon her back. She expected him to try to stop her. Expected some warning, some grave discussion of the danger she faced just standing on the ground.

Nothing.

Squaring her shoulders, she began to walk toward Avandar Gallais. The distance was not great, but she was aware of it because in times of danger, he never stood more than ten feet from her back.

Fair enough; the danger wasn’t hers.

He can’t die
, she thought, knowing that what she was doing was absurd.
He can’t be killed
.

True. All true.

There were other truths, glimpsed in dream and vision, that she didn’t want to approach. But they led to the one question that occupied her as she walked.

What could make a man want to die so badly he was willing to destroy an entire city on the off chance he’d be killed?

Ask him. The ground beneath her feet was uneven; the night was unkind. She stumbled twice, but righted herself before her hands hit the ground.

“ATerafin,” Avandar said. “Go back.”

She nodded politely; it was a habit she had struggled to form over the last few years, and although it was best suited to the Terafin Council Hall, she wasn’t above using it here.

The Winter King still said nothing, and she took that as a good sign. Or as a sign, at any rate.

She walked until she stood two feet away from Avandar, and then she stopped.

His face was about as warm as steel. Luckily, she was used to that. “Avandar,” she said quietly. “Come on.” She held out a hand, palm up.

He stared at it.

Okay; he wasn’t going to make this easy. He almost never made anything easy, though, so it didn’t come as much of a surprise. She reached out and caught his hand—

And cried out, falling back as fire lanced up her arm, consuming the length of her sleeve. Shock held her still for a moment; it was followed by anger.

Bright anger, clear as the night.

She looked up at his face, and the anger died as suddenly as the fire had; his eyes had not changed; the line of his jaw hadn’t shifted. She saw almost nothing there that she recognized.

Just don’t start speaking in tongues
, she thought sharply, not much caring if he could hear her.

She reached out, slow now, and cautious.

Felt something as she once again reached out for his hand. This time, she saw a tremor about his lips as he set them in a narrow line. And this time, there was no fire.

Not that it did much for what was left of her sleeve. She looked down at her arm; that was a mistake. The brand, the hated and unmistakable mark upon her inner wrist, was glowing brightly. Red, red, gold, and silver.

This time it was Avandar’s sleeve that caught fire; Avandar’s sleeve that was consumed by flame.

In the dark of Southern night, she saw for the first time the brand that he, too bore: red, red, gold, and silver. Twin to hers, it seemed smaller as it rested against his skin—but it was the same size, the same shape; it was their arms that were different.

She reached out to touch it, drawn to its strange familiarity. But it was
hot
, and she withdrew her fingers before they suffered what cloth had suffered.

Celleriant’s voice formed no words, but it carried in the stillness, intake of breath that was more than simple breathing.

And she knew that something was wrong.

She touched his hand carefully; it was warm in hers, and she knew that meant hers were cold. “Avandar,” she said, speaking as gently as she knew how to speak.

His eyes flickered. A hint of gold, like dying embers, caught and held her attention. “Jewel.”

Not ATerafin. Not the comfortable formality of the distant House. “What . . . is . . . this mark?”

“It is mine,” he replied.

“It’s the same.”

“Yes.”

“But—”

Silence. He had no intention of helping her.

No; be fair. His gaze was caught by something beyond her. She wondered if he heard his dead. Had no doubt at all they existed.

“Have you ever . . .” She hesitated. Decided that she really didn’t want to know. She lifted a hand—her left hand—and the Winter King walked forward.