Sun Sword - The Riven Shield Part 12

But those words would not reach their destination before judgment was made.

Darran di'Sambali and his wife, now adorned with a veil that hid her face from the open view of sun and man, were pushed forward by the oldest of the women present; they stood beneath a hastily constructed canopy. Marakas desired nothing more than to object; from prior experience, he knew that Darran should be resting as far away from the man who had healed him as it was possible to be.

But the kai el'Sol had spoken.

Jevri attended them, boy and girl; Jevri made clear-to the wife, not the husband-that the boy's welfare and sanity depended upon her ability to keep him still. Jevri was wise, and although Marakas had acknowledged that fact from the first day they had met, he found it a surprise and a blessing to be so often reacquainted with the knowledge.

As for himself, he was given leave to draw his sword.

Jevri's expression, when the metal cleared the scabbard, was as dire a criticism as the finely-mannered servitor was capable of offering. "If it were not for the gravity of the situation, Radann, I would insist that you use mine. But it must be your sword."

Marakas nodded, shamed for the first time by the quality of the blade itself. "Will it be enough?"

"It is not by the blade that you will be judged. It is by your actions. And you will weather that judgment. You have chosen."

"I . . . do not know, Jevri. I know only that I-that I wish to see Fredero kai el'Sol's vision of justice."

"It is not as witness that you stand," Jevri replied quietly. "That robe . . . that crest . . . did you embroider it yourself?"

Marakas' frown was a quick thing, there and gone like the flash of light in summer storm. "I was not taught the arts of embroidery," he replied stiffly.

"No," the old man answered, "of course not. Forgive me; it is not a skill taught to free men." The frown deepened as he added, "As the evidence shows. Go now; he is waiting."

As if, Marakas thought, he never doubted what my decision would be.

He turned again to Jevri. "He understands my gift," he said softly. "Does he seek to use it?"

"What man would not seek to use the shield that is offered him? He is no fool; of course he seeks to use it. But think on this while you stand beneath the open sky: He takes little that is offered, for he understands the burden of debt. If he receives a service from you, he must be prepared to offer in return a service of no lesser merit."

"He is kai el'Sol. I am merely Radann."

"For now, Marakas. For now."

"I have no ambition."

"You have," the old man said, "but it is not an ambition that lesser men would understand. He is waiting."

Marakas swallowed. Nodded, and bowed gravely. The sword was heavier in his hands than he had thought possible; if he were called upon to wield the blade this day, if lives depended on it, they would be lost.

But he set his lips, straightened his shoulders, lifted his chin, and strode forward.

Fredero acknowledged his presence-his decision-with the simplest of nods. "Kai di'Manelo." He bowed.

The kai di'Manelo returned that bow, gracefully, fluidly. They were, Marakas realized, of a kind; men raised to the privilege and grace of the High Court; men to whom hunger was no enemy, to whom drought was a stranger. At their word, a village such as this could be consumed in flame, destroyed by sword.

They exchanged no pleasantries. They bowed again, and when they rose, their blades readied, they seemed kin, to Marakas' eye. He could not imagine that such a combat could end in anything but the mildest of injury. He could not imagine that the so-called crime this lordling had committed could in truth be considered a crime; after all, who was the injured man? Who had heard of the clan Sambali? Who cared for the fate of a beautiful peasant, a girl one step from seraf, if women were ever truly born free?

He cared.

He had cared when Amelia lived, for she had been like this girl. He had cared fiercely, with a panicked, quickening pride, when his son had been pulled from her arms and given over to his, and had let his displeasure in this change of arrangements be known.

But he had learned that the Lord did not care, and he had never forgotten the brutality of that lesson.

And so he watched, almost numb, as if the events unfolding were a courtly dance, a simple maneuver, a political exercise.

And when the young kai di'Manelo paid for his excesses with his life-at the single, quick stroke of the kai el'Sol's blade, he felt-surely he felt-what every villager present must have felt: shock. Fear. A terrible certainty that someone would pay for that death.

But beneath that, for he was aware that much of that emotion, much of that certainty, was Darran di'Sambali's, he felt something within him break.

The kai el'Sol wiped his blade, sheathed his sword, and turned to the slack-jawed men who had not had time to ready their weapons. "I will wait," he said evenly, "upon the Tor'agnate. We will raise tents in the South field-with the permission of the clan Sambali-and when he arrives, please offer him our apologies for the humility of our lodgings-but send him to us."

A man's son is his son.

Marakas, his own lost as a child just able to walk, had barely begun to understand what motivated men to allow sons whose criminality was certain to live; he did not, however, expect that the Tor'agnate would accept this turn of events with grace.

And why should he? This village was his, and within his territories, and had the girl not been married, his kai might have lifted her from servitude in the fields beneath the damaging gaze of the Lord, the withering voice of the wind, and placed her within the confines of his harem, as concubine.

The fact that she was married might have been of note had she been the wife of a man of rank, or a man whose merchant ties gave him the less impeccable credentials of wealth, but Darran was clearly neither; he was one step from seraf.

And for these, the kai di'Manelo had died.

The Radann had lifted the dead man's body with care, and with much honor; they had lifted his unblooded blade and arranged it studiously beneath the kai's crossed and bloodied arms, and they had traversed the village and returned with funereal poles across which they might drape white fabric. This would be the last resting place of the kai di'Manelo.

Of the men who had served the kai so poorly, only one had chosen to stand his ground; only one had remained by the side of the fallen. He was a young man, his face slender, his eyes large, dark. When the Radann approached the body, he had drawn sword a moment, but he had not lifted that sword against them.

The kai el'Sol's expression was as dark as this stranger's eyes, but older, wiser. He said nothing, but he lingered, waiting for the man to speak.

Nor was his wait in vain.

"Kai el'Sol," the young man said, surprising Marakas with the depth of his bow.

The kai el'Sol said, simply, "Ser Alessandro." He turned to Marakas, and added, "Radann Marakas el'Sol, may I present Ser Alessandro par di'Clemente."

Marakas bowed stiffly. He did not-at that time-recognize the clan. But the fact that Fredero did, and more, recognized the man, said something.

"There will be a price to pay," Ser Alessandro said, gazing down upon the body of the kai di'Manelo. "For this day's work, there will be a price."

"Did you think to tell him that, before he embarked upon it?" Fredero asked.

"Very clever, kai el'Sol. I do not judge. I do not threaten. I merely observe. He was impulsive. He was-as many men are-attracted to beauty. He was powerful, in a fashion, competent with a sword, deadly when it was necessary." He knelt by the man he spoke so softly of. Very gently, he brushed strands of dark hair from a face that death had made n.o.ble. The Radann had chosen to close eyes left wide by the surprise of a death unforeseen at the start of an ordinary, unremarkable day. He did not touch them.

Instead, he reached for the sword held below the awkward repose of crossed arms. The kai el'Sol did not see fit to stop him; Marakas therefore said nothing.

But he was surprised when Ser Alessandro rolled back his sleeve until he had exposed his arm from wrist to elbow. Shocked when the par Clemente laid his arm against the blade's edge, its outer curve, and, tightening fist, drawing sharp breath, cut himself. The blade was a fine one; sharp and true; the wound itself would only sting after the blood began to flow. Ser Alessandro waited until blood pooled visibly in the runnels along the sword's edge; it didn't take long. The cut was deep.

Radann Paolo el'Sol offered him a long, pale cloth. As that cloth pa.s.sed from sun-darkened hands to pale ones, Paolo also bowed; there was nothing in the gesture that spoke of falsity. Alessandro raised his head, for he still knelt and he had to look up to meet the Radann's dark eyes. Something pa.s.sed, wordless, between them before he chose to tend to the wound. He asked for no aid, and Marakas knew that he was warrior born; he would ask for none. Accept none.

Marakas looked to Fredero, but the kai el'Sol was watching the stranger closely, his expression impenetrable. At last, stiffly, he said, "You honor the kai Manelo."

Ser Alessandro did not reply, although he chose to speak. "If I am not mistaken, kai el'Sol, there is thunder within the cloudless sky."

Fredero nodded, although Marakas could hear nothing.

"What would you have done, kai el'Sol, if the Tor'agnate had arrived before the Lord's test?"

"What do you think, Ser Alessandro?"

Alessandro smiled, but it was a thin smile. "I think you are Lambertan, kai el'Sol."

"So is the Tyr'agnate."

"Indeed." He had finished binding the wound tightly, and now drew his sleeve across his arm. He had been careful, his cut had been exact, precise. No blood had fallen from blade to sleeve, and if the bandages had been bound tightly enough, none would be immediately obvious for perhaps an hour.

"They come," Ser Alessandro said, rising. "And as you seem to persist in valuing those who barely value themselves, I must make haste to greet them outside of the village. I will bring them, kai el'Sol."

The kai el'Sol said nothing, but he watched Ser Alessandro leave, and Marakas noted that, in the entire time they had been within sword's reach, Fredero kai el'Sol had not once taken his hand from the hilt of his blade.

When he was gone, Fredero said quietly, "There are some lessons that must be learned time and again. There are some that need only be learned once." He raised his hand to his eyes, as if sheltering vision from the glare of the sun over the moving sheen of emerald and gold that comprised the field of the Sambali youth.

"Perhaps, kai el'Sol. But in my experience, in villages such as these, the truth is slanted. We say there are men who learn quickly and easily, and men who are only capable of remembering their own names because they hear them shouted so often."

Fredero's smile was slight. "True enough. And which of these are you, Radann?"

"I? I am a man who learns quickly."

Fredero raised a brow.

"It is truth. I learn so quickly, in fact, that I find myself in the position, often, of being forced to relearn, reexamine, reinterpret. Today is one of those days." He lifted his hands; found to his surprise that they shook and trembled-and that he was willing to expose this weakness to the kai el'Sol, and to the Lord he served. "I thought never to heal again. I thought to abjure what I could not use to save those to whom my greatest duty lay." He bowed. "Had you asked, I would have vowed it; I would have offered you my life as proof of the truth of that vow.

"And yet, today, because of a stranger's wife, a young girl with a pretty face, I have healed. I walked in the darkness, and the light that I see, now that I have returned, is not the light of the sun I left behind." He lowered his hands. "I am Sol'dan," he said quietly. "I understand that you will bring justice to the Dominion, with the Radann in your service, in the name of the Lord."

"Does that concern you?"

He could have pretended to misunderstand the question; he was tempted. "No. I would not have given you the same answer had you asked me that question yesterday.

"I do not care for the Lord. I understand that many a man, driven by perfect n.o.bility, finds clarity, and purity, in a life led as a warrior, but I am not one of those. The Lord is concerned with men of power; you are a man of power. Let me be beneath his notice, beneath either his contempt or his benediction, while you stand in his glare without flinching. You are the shield, kai el'Sol, and I am a man who can make the riven shield whole, time and again, without question, without conflict."

"There will come a day, Radann Marakas el'Sol, when you will find the safe side of such a shield no longer suits your purpose."

"I am no longer certain that I have a purpose."

Fredero's frown was subtle, but it altered the lines of his face. He offered Marakas his silence, and when he chose to break it, he spoke as if Marakas had not. "And when that day comes, I will be waiting."

"For what?"

"An ally. A man who can also be a shield; who can bear the scrutiny of the Lord without once stepping away from the road I have chosen. I do not fear the Lord. I serve him. I desire power, and all power I have gained, both before I joined the Radann, and after, was at the expense of others who sought the same.

"You have already learned how costly it is to be bereft of power."

Marakas closed his eyes.

"You will come in time to understand how costly it is to have power. But without it-without it, Radann-how can we force our will upon others?"

Fredero added quietly, as he looked down at the carefully arranged corpse upon the white sheets, "This is only one death, Healer. There will be others. Many, many others."

Marakas was silent.

"Justice, in these lands, is a sword. A sword." His hand touched the hilt of Balagar as if the gesture were a benediction. "And what, in the end, can we say of swords? Does the Lord make them? Does he temper them? Is it his eye that inspects the ores, his hands that make first the one sword that will be so hard it is brittle, and the other, that will withstand the ravages of water and blood so completely that it cannot hold an edge? No. With almost no exceptions, a sword is made by men, wielded by men. Only men."

"You wear Balagar," Marakas said quietly.

Fredero's glance fell to the scabbard that housed the second most famous blade in the Dominion. "And yet, wield it or no, in the end, it is I who decide what it kills, and when, and why; it is thus with all swords, be they famous or unknown. And by our choices, we who wield these weapons, we are judged."

"By who?"

"By who?"

"Who judges the kai el'Sol?"

Fredero's smile was weary. "A fair question, Radann. A fair question. In the Dominion, it is said that in the end, there is no judgment. The winds take us all; we are trapped in the howl of its voice, and the eternity of its caprice.

"And perhaps that is even true; I cannot say. But if this is to be our only life, should it not be a life in which honor is valued, and justice is preserved? Aye, ask. Who judges the kai el'Sol? I have taken power-and I will keep it-for the purpose of imposing my will, my desire, and my vision upon others."

He knelt then, beside the dead kai Manelo, and placed his hand against the curved skin of his closed eyes.

Jevri, silent until that moment, spoke. "The kai el'Sol will face the harshest of all judges, and the least forgiving," the former seraf to the clan Lamberto said. "He himself."

So many words.

Words were a measure of time, their absence a measure of distance. Fredero was silent. The only words he would speak again would be spoken in memories such as these; there would be no new wisdom, no guidance.

Marakas par el'Sol placed his hand on the hilt of the sword that hung-as no other had before it-so comfortably by his side. Verragar was guide, ally, protector-but in spite of that fact, Marakas admitted privately what many of the Radann seemed incapable of realizing: A sword was not a man.

Fredero, he thought quietly. I have allies. I have a worthy weapon. I have a cause that will define the Dominion-and more-forever. What is this shadow?

But he knew. There had always been a difference between allies and friends.

He continued to walk. The sun began to creep upward, inch by inch, a slow return of warmth and color to the desert landscape.

Memory was a funny thing. Of his rise from the ranks of the Radann, he cared to remember little, and events remained shadowy; where light fell upon them at all, it was moon's light, some brightness cast by the memories of the man he had chosen to follow. In the contrasting harshness of day, they were almost pleasant, but drained of color, as much else was: the sand, the flats, the scrub. Even his arms were now dusted, and his robes gray with the weight of fine grains. He sat in the lee of his tent, and only when water touched cracked lips did he close his eyes.

"I will not serve Peder. If he is responsible for your death-"

The kai el'Sol lifted a hand. "Enough. He is not an a.s.sa.s.sin. He is a man. He cannot be 'responsible' as you so quaintly put it, for my death. To speak in such a fashion does not insult him, par el'Sol. It insults me."

Jevri glanced up from his place at a workbench that spread from one end of the room to the other, its flat, continuous surface broken only by bolts of fabric, containers that held crystal beads, pearls, small decorations of raw silk and linen that were meant to be the minimalist's abstraction of flowers.

The bench was not usually used for storage in this fashion, but the breadth of the tables over which Jevri el'Sol ruled were covered in ivory silks. Marakas had never understood Jevri's devotion to the craft of dressmaking. He tolerated it because Fredero tolerated it, but he found nothing in it to admire.