Sun Sword - The Riven Shield Part 65

"Do not-"

"Kiriel." He corrected himself with far too much ease; it was as if he no longer had interest in the facade of power. "He does not speak with enmity. He speaks pragmatically."

"Ah. And as the first of my lieges, what would you advise?"

"My destruction."

She was shocked into stillness. His expression was an expression, but she hadn't the tools to interpret it. Still, she had no intention of destroying Lord Telakar. "I am not . . . as my compatriots are. You have given me advice as I have commanded; do not trouble me with it again."

He hesitated a moment, and again, his face wore an open expression that made no sense to her. But he bowed.

"The ring binds me," she said quietly. "And if that was a part of this Myrddion's plan, then he must have seen me at the head of my-of the Lord's armies."

Meralonne said nothing.

"But of late, the ring is not as strong as it was; there are times when I can almost hear the voice of the Lord in the North; I can see the towers. I can feel the ice of Northern wind. And when that happens, I can see as I once saw, feel as I once felt. Only then. It's how I saw you.

"Otherwise, I see as mortals see. If there are Kialli present, I do not hear their names."

"That," Meralonne said softly, "is why I chose to be sent to the South. And I will tell you now, Kiriel, that there is indeed such a presence, such a name, upon the plateau. But it is newly come."

"Whose?"

"I am not so familiar with the Kialli as it might appear," he said cautiously, "but I believe that we are visited, at some distance, by the Lord Ishavriel."

Shrouded in the darkness of city streets too poor to own any light but moon, Lord Ishavriel gazed toward the Callestan palace. Word had come to him; he had received it and departed the camp of the human Tyr in haste, and without permission. The word simmered uneasily in thoughts that already grew wild with leashed anger.

Silabras was gone. Lord Ishavriel had called him, in the softest of the voices he possessed, and his liege had failed to answer the summons. That failure was death; only death would prevent obedience.

And the death of Silabras was significant.

Isladar, he thought, and forced himself to be still, listening to the wind, to what the wind carried. But the wind carried no hint of Lord Isladar's presence.

He hesitated. Although he had been fully apprised of the intent of the Lord's Fist, he had not been present, and he knew-incompetence, utter failure-that Lord Isladar had escaped the trap set for him by Etridian, a.s.sarak, and Nugratz. He had been injured in the battle; few indeed were the kinlords who might have escaped, once so engaged, uninjured.

But Lord Isladar was unique. Incomprehensible. The s.h.i.+ning City no longer contained him. And the plans he had made-in silence, in the millennia of existence in the h.e.l.ls-were not plans that Ishavriel was privy to. Did they include this treachery?

Silabras had not been blood-bound. His role in the heart of Callesta had been one that required subtlety and cooperation; it required initiative, the ability to wait. He had been given permission to feed only upon the grief that the mortals might offer their dead, and he was capable of gaining sustenance from that pain.

He was gone.

How? Ishavriel drifted toward the plateau. He took care to mask himself from the eyes of the strays that lingered in the streets of the city. The mortal, Alesso di'Marente, chosen as puppet and figurehead, claimed to have his spies among the Callestans-but it galled Ishavriel to rely upon them. Their words would be slow to travel, unadorned by magic; they would cross the valleys and rivers, the plains and forests, in days. And they might come to him if he waited like a patient beast of burden, a lowly soldier, at the whim of a man who defined himself on a mortal field of battle.

It was not to his liking.

He had failed in the desert, and that was costly; Etridian's servants had failed him again, on the desert's edge. This third failure was more than he could willingly bear. And had Silabras been given leave to operate without constraints, had he been allowed to walk, uncloaked, in Callesta, that third failure might never have accrued. The edges of shadow frayed about the Kialli lord. He gathered them carelessly.

Lord Telakar raised his head, listening. After a moment he met Meralonne APhaniel's gaze. Kiriel watched them both with ill-concealed hunger. What they had, she had once possessed. It had been months since she had missed it.

"I believe you are correct, although I would not have sensed it were I not alerted," he said at last.

Kiriel drew her blade.

And Meralonne raised a hand. It was a polite gesture, but it was an imperious one. "I do not understand your place within the s.h.i.+ning Court," he told her, his voice gentle, his eyes, steel. "But I believe that if you have not been revealed to Lord Ishavriel's sight, now is not the time." He threw back his mage's cloak. Beneath it, glittering with absorbed and h.o.a.rded light, he wore chain, a thin, thin mail that conformed to the lines of his body as if it were silk.

"But my place within the Court is quite clear," he continued.

Telakar's shadows grew deeper.

Again, Meralonne APhaniel raised a hand. Shook his head, the pale skein of his hair falling wild around his shoulders, an ivory mantle. No Osprey would have been allowed the vanity of hair as unfettered as his; no soldier, if Kiriel understood the dictates of the Kings' armies well enough.

"Not you," Meralonne said. "Do not draw attention that you will be unable to escape. Not yet."

"You intend to hunt him alone?"

"I intend to see the streets of Callesta by moonlight," the mage replied. "But the streets of the South are not as tame and tended as the streets of my Northern home, and I may require the weapons I have long carried."

He waited; Telakar's silence was grudging.

"Tyr'agar?" the mage said softly.

Kiriel started; she had forgotten, for a moment, that Valedan, his Ospreys, and his Commanders, now waited.

"Callesta is not my city, but inasmuch as it is within the boundaries of my country, you have my permission."

Meralonne bowed. "I will return," he said quietly.

"Hold."

They turned at once, the Tyr'agar, the Ospreys, the Commanders.

Ramiro di'Callesta stood in the moonlight beneath the forked branches of perfect trees. His weapon was unsheathed and unblooded in the pale light. He stood alone.

Ser Fillipo par di'Callesta and Ser Miko di'Callesta approached him; the Tyr'agnate sent them back with the simple gesture of a raised hand.

"Tyr'agnate," Meralonne APhaniel said, bowing with a perfect respect that he never offered Northern Commanders.

"I will travel with you."

"I would not advise it. If we find what we seek-"

"I do not require your advice. I certainly do not require your permission." Cold, that voice. "Ser Fillipo."

The Captain of the oathguards knelt at once, knees crus.h.i.+ng gra.s.s, Serra Amara's gra.s.s.

"Remain. If I do not return, Alfredo is in your keeping. Serve him as you have served me."

Ser Fillipo said nothing; his head fell toward his knees, exposing the back of his neck.

What the Captain of the oathguards offered, the oath-guards themselves need match. They gave the Tyr'agnate the gift of their silence. Obedience.

But more, Kiriel thought. More than that. She was diminished, yes, but she could sense the terrible anger that guided, that demanded, their silence. No Northern faces had contained anger so perfectly, hidden it so well; the Southerners understood weakness and strength, and they offered their lord only strength.

Meralonne APhaniel waited. If he was ill-pleased, he did not show it. "Tyr'agnate, our time is short."

Ramiro di'Callesta nodded curtly. "Lead."

"As you command."

Only when they had gone were words free to fly in the clearing. Duarte's magic could not contain them; Kiriel wondered that half the palace was not now alive with the movement of serafs, of cerdan, of the rest of the Ospreys who had not yet been called to active duty by the end of the quarter s.h.i.+ft.

The Commanders spoke in Weston, and only Weston, and they spoke quickly, as if speed would rob their words of sense to the Tyran who slowly gained their feet.

"Primus, take the Sentrus. Take both of them." Commander Ellora AKalakar frowned. "Where's Sanderton?"

"Off duty."

"Get him."

Sanderton was the best of the Osprey bowmen. It was his single pride, and the Ospreys encouraged him in it, for he was one of the few who had been allowed entry into the Osprey ranks after the slaughter in the Averdan valleys. No one had been willing to tell Kiriel why, and after a few months with the Ospreys, she understood that she shouldn't have asked in the first place.

"Take bows. Take the weapons that were gifted us by the Churches. Follow them."

"Ellora-"

"Not now, Devran. We cannot afford to lose the Tyr'agnate."

"He travels with Member APhaniel," Commander Allen said sharply.

"One man. A mage, at that."

"Ellora. That is beneath you."

"You know how magi fight."

"I know how Member APhaniel fights," Commander Allen replied softly. "And I have had the advantage of traveling with one of his . . . students."

He paused. Ser Fillipo par di'Callesta had gained his feet, and gained his bearing; he shed silence now, and let hand fall to undrawn sword hilt. "You will wait," he said quietly.

Command, there. Kiriel found it amusing.

The Kalakar Commander found it less so. "We don't have the time to wait-"

"You will wait," Fillipo replied. As he spoke, the other Tyran rose to join him, flanking him, the hands on sword hilts not a simple nicety of form.

"Are you so eager to lose your brother?" she snapped.

The faces of the Tyran were not so expressionless as they had been in the presence of their lord.

Kiriel smiled. The smile had edge.

Women did not give orders to men in the Dominion. Commander Allen stepped quietly between The Kalakar and the Captain of the oathguards. "Your pardon," he said, bowing deeply. "We mean no insult to your lord; we mean to offer no offense."

"None will be offered," Ser Fillipo replied smoothly, "if his request is honored."

"He made no request of us," the Commander replied. "And the will of the Tyr'agnate is subject to the will of the Tyr'agar; to this, I believe, Ser Ramiro kai di'Callesta would offer no argument."

Ser Fillipo was silent.

"Tyr'agar?" Commander Allen said quietly.

"No," Valedan replied.

The Kalakar rolled her eyes. The Berriliya was almost as still as the Callestan Tyran. But Commander Allen turned to Valedan.

"We are here at your behest," he said, with just the hint of anger in the words. "And we are here to win a war that the Dominion-and the Empire-cannot afford to lose. Do you understand what the possible loss of the kai Callesta entails?"

Valedan nodded. "He is irreplaceable. His son, the kai Callesta, is not yet the man his father is."

"Then you see a need for action."

"Yes, Commander."

But his tone called for the opposite.

Turning, he bowed to the Tyran; the bow was shallow, but it was not perfunctory. "These men are sworn to serve the kai Callesta with their lives. There are no others he can trust so completely; no others he would choose to have stand beside him.

"He ordered them to remain. We cannot, in deference to that order, choose to go where they have been forbidden to follow."

"They are his men. We are yours."

Valedan nodded.

"Are you aware of the risk you take?"

Again, Valedan met the eyes of the Callestans, and Kiriel saw that they were now with him, to a man, although the Commanders stood between them.

She had a glimpse, then, of understanding, some glimmer of a wisdom that was not-quite-her own. Valedan was not Callestan, but in refusing what was barely a request, he made himself less Northern in their eyes.

The Serra Alina di'Lamberto, dressed in the armor of the Northern soldiery, came to stand behind him. Although she wore no sari, no veil, bound her hair with no comb, she stood as a Serra might; at his back, to his right, witness to his whim, and servant to it. No armor she wore could rob her of the grace and the habit of a lifetime.

Still, she did not kneel as a Serra would be expected to kneel; she did not disgrace the Northern uniform that she had been commanded to wear. Did not forsake the role that she had been commanded, against her better judgment, to take.

Valedan was aware of her. Aware of the flaws in her Northern facade, and grateful for them. He found himself angered by the Commanders, by their Northern att.i.tudes, by their inability to understand what was at stake.

She touched his shoulder gently, as if she were in truth his wife. Without thinking, he reached up and touched her fingers; she had removed her gloves. They chafed her skin, these things of chain and leather, and he had not the heart to order her to wear them.

To Ser Fillipo, he said, "Forgive us; you have spent time in Averalaan Aramarelas. You know that the intent of the Commanders is honorable. But you know, also, that they come from a land where the bloodlines do not have the import and the significance they do in the South.