Sun Sword - The Riven Shield Part 54

"Now, yes." He waited. The man's hands touched the stranger's face and held it, as Telakar had held it, but without drawing blood. "But I was not always . . . as diminished . . . as I appear to have become."

She heard the anger in the words; he revealed that much.

"We knew life," he said softly. "We were your distant kin."

"You were never part of-of-"

"Us?" Mockery there, the edge of it cutting. "Do you number yourself among the cattle, you who were born to-"

"Enough. Enough, Telakar."

"You expose too much." His eyes were lidded now, serpent eyes.

She had no time to frame an answer; there had only ever been one among the Kialli who had cared to criticize her for her weaknesses.

In the silence, Auralis moved. When he did, she realized that he had stood by her side, utterly still, his hand upon the hilt of his great sword.

"Kiriel," he said quietly, "we have a problem."

She laughed. "Only one?"

His shrug was most of his answer. "When it's this big, we only need one."

She turned from Telakar then.

Saw the ring of drawn swords held by the Tyran of Callesta; saw the bright blade in the hands of the sole man who served Valedan kai di'Leonne.

Beyond him, the Ospreys stood: Alexis, with two daggers, Fiara with a sword, and Duarte, hands stretched wide, his weapon more subtle and therefore more dangerous. She had not seen Duarte arrive.

Only the Tyrs were motionless.

Telakar's laugh was rich and dark; she felt it run the length of her spine; felt the hair on the back of her neck rise, and with it, anger.

It was the anger she struggled with now.

Struggled with, and won, if victory could be measured in such a complex thing as simple obeisance.

She sank, in front of the Tyran, the Tyr'agnate, and the Ospreys, to her knees. "Tyr'agar," she said.

"I have accepted the rules that govern the Ospreys," he said quietly. "I accept them now. Your past is your past, Kiriel di'Ashaf,"

She lifted her head; met the brown of his unblinking eyes in the bob and sway of lantern light.

"I have lost count of the number of times you have saved my life; I am in your debt, and I acknowledge it in the hearing of the most trusted men of Callesta." He spoke in Torra now, and there was no hesitation, no crack or break, in his voice. Just youth, but the youth was buried beneath the midnight sky.

"But you have named this man our enemy. If you will not destroy him-and it is clear to me, although the tongue you spoke was foreign, that you have reached some understanding, you injure our cause immeasurably."

"Tyr'agar," Auralis began.

Ser Andaro was between the Tyr'agar and the Osprey in that instant.

"Decarus," Duarte said, his word a clipped, cold command. "You will be silent."

He almost always was. Funny, that.

Kiriel did not rise. The hair that had unfolded about her like a shroud or a great pair of wings fell slowly toward her shoulders; her face lost the ice and the white of winter, the paleness of the dead. She lifted it again. "In the Court of the Tyr'agar who was a.s.sa.s.sinated," she said quietly, "were all men of one thought, one mind? Were their goals so similar?"

Valedan kai di'Leonne lifted his arms; drew them across his chest. "I am not so old that I remember clearly the maneuverings of the High Court of Raverra. Tyr'agnate?"

"I would say that the death of the Tyr'agar Markaso kai di'Leonne is answer enough." Was there a faint hint of amus.e.m.e.nt in the words?

Kiriel could not be certain.

"Very well, Kiriel. You have your answer."

She bowed her head. "The High Court of Raverra has much in common with the s.h.i.+ning Court."

She heard Auralis' breath; it was heavy, a rush of air. But he did not choose to speak again. She wondered dispa.s.sionately if Duarte would kill him otherwise. Was certain that he would try.

"The greater kin vie for power in their own right. They play games, and if the games are not familiar to those of us who fight against them, they are motivated, in the end, by the desire for power.

"The proof of power," she added softly, "being the ability to hold it. Only that."

"And this . . . man?"

"I believe that he has come to offer warning, as he said" she told them all.

"And you would vouch for this belief with your life?"

Silence. And in it, the beginnings of a new respect for the man who would be Tyr.

"Yes."

Telakar said nothing.

"Good. Because nothing less would be acceptable. What warning does he offer?"

"He can lead you to the demons the city of Callesta now harbors."

Valedan kai di'Leonne nodded. He turned to the waiting Tyr'agnate. "Kai Callesta."

Ramiro di'Callesta nodded coldly. "We must join the armies," he said softly. "And we must join them soon. It ill behooves us to allow our enemy to prey upon those we must leave behind." Without turning, he spoke a name. "Ser Fillipo."

"Tyr'agnate." The Captain of the oathguard bowed, sword unsheathed.

"Are there, among the men gathered here, any who are not Tyran?"

"None, Tyr'agnate."

"Good." He turned to his brother. "Wake the Tyran, and only the Tyran. Make clear to them the necessity of silence."

Ser Fillipo bowed.

"Tyr'agar," the Tyr'agnate said, "we will be ready within the hour. If it pleases you, gather those that you trust; what we do must be done in haste."

When the Tyr'agnate was gone, silence went with him.

Duarte contained, by dint of magic, what could not be contained by dint of will.

Words clashed as Auralis and Alexis filled the vacuum of mannered speech with something decidedly less delicate.

Duarte let them. The whole of his attention was focused upon Kiriel di'Ashaf. Not even the creature who stood in the lee of her shadow could command some lesser part of it.

She was young. It was hard to remember, when the power was gathered within her, just how d.a.m.n young she was. Paradoxically, impossible to forget.

"Are you trying to lose the war for us?"

It was not the question she expected. Her brows furrowed. "I am trying," she said, after a long pause, "to make sure Valedan survives it."

"By openly declaring yourself a member of the s.h.i.+ning Court? By allying yourself-however much it might be necessary-with a demon?"

Her frown deepened, and he was almost relieved to see it; it was the frown that spoke of both confusion and contempt-the earliest of the expressions he a.s.sociated with her oddly delicate features. "He is not my ally," she said evenly.

"No?"

"No. He is my va.s.sal."

Auralis slapped himself in the forehead.

Duarte struggled a moment to find words. "Do not," he said, s.p.a.cing the words evenly, "repeat that again in my hearing."

She frowned.

"Do not repeat it at all. Ever. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes."

"Good." He closed his eyes.

"Primus." Valedan spoke quietly. He was the only person in the clearing, besides Kiriel herself, who seemed able to do so.

"We will lose Mareo di'Lamberto," Duarte said coldly. "We will lose him, if word of this evening escapes."

"He is correct," a soft voice said. Soft, perfect in its enunciation, the accent a subtlety of intonation, the p.r.o.nunciation perfect.

Duarte cringed. Cringed, but without surprise. "Serra Alina," he said, without turning.

"My brother is a cunning man, and a powerful one; he is not, however, always practical." She stood in the cloak of the Ospreys, shorn now of the finery of the Southern Court. When she had arrived was anyone's guess; she moved as quietly as the d.a.m.ned Astari when she chose to do so.

"Serra." Valedan turned to her at once.

"Ramiro di'Callesta understands the risk he takes," she told him without preamble, as if the garments she wore now defined her position; as if she were in truth Northern, the dark sister of the Princess Royale upon the Isle. "And he risks much. But it is his people who will be left without protection if the word of such a creature as this can be believed."

"It is not his word," Valedan said quietly, "by which we have chosen to make this decision."

"Oh?"

"It is hers." He turned to Kiriel di'Ashaf. "Rise," he told her quietly.

She rose as bade, her face smooth as steel.

The creature spoke in a language that defied Duarte's studied comprehension. Kiriel did not acknowledge him at all, and by the lack, Duarte understood that she had made a choice. The choice itself was opaque to him, but for no reason he could think of, it brought some measure of comfort.

Kiriel di'Ashaf nodded briefly to the Serra Alina di'Lamberto, a woman whom she had never conversed with. "I am an Osprey here," she said.

"I had been given to understand that that name no longer existed."

Kiriel's smile was cold; Northern ice was warmer and more forgiving. Duarte did not retreat; he had seen the expression before, and experience gave him the ability to rise above its subtle menace.

He wondered what experience had molded the Serra Alina; she, too, stood still in the face of the dark expression, and her stillness was not a rabbit's stillness; it was the wolf's.

"It is a true name," Kiriel told the Serra. "Call them anything that the Northerners desire, and the fact of the name will not change. They bear it," she added, gesturing briefly toward Auralis, Alexis, Fiara-even Duarte himself. "And I . . . have chosen to bear it as well."

"It is not what you are."

"It is not all that I am."

Silence again. Valedan waited between these two women, measuring their silence; matching it with his own.

"And the rest, Kiriel di'Ashaf?"

"I am my mother's daughter," she said.

The creature spoke again, the words sharper, the tone different.

She lifted a hand, as if swatting a mosquito, something that flitted from side to side, seeking purchase and blood. Finding none.

"And these-the people in these lands-were hers."

And then she bowed her head, closed her eyes; her fists tightened. Duarte thought them white beneath the mail of her gloves.

"Kiriel."

She smiled. Turned to Auralis, acknowledging him in a way that she had acknowledged no one else in the broken ma.s.s of branches and crushed petals, the bed of gla.s.s shards. "I believe I was winning."

His brows rose. "Winning?"

Duarte smiled and shook his head. It eased him. "She was, Auralis."