The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 Read online

  “The kai di’Manelo demanded the right to my wife. I refused him. She had no desire to accept his offer, and had she—”

  She tensed beneath the curve of his arm and his eyes involuntarily traced the side of her face. His hand tightened, his expression, for a moment, was youth defined.

  “I said no.”

  “And?”

  “He ordered his men to kill me. He said a widow with no family had no business tending farm without escort; that she was simply inviting her own . . .” His wife reached up and caught the hand that trembled against her shoulder. She said nothing; now that her husband was at her side, it was not her place to speak. But Marakas knew that the gesture was an offer of strength, comfort, and pride, and that Darran would draw from it all of these things.

  He felt Amelia’s absence more viscerally than he had for two years.

  “Enough,” the kai el’Sol said, but not unkindly.

  “Will you take the word of this . . . this village worker . . . over the kai of the Tor’ agnate?”

  “He is not seraf,” the kai el’Sol replied, “and his words have the advantage of containing truth.”

  “He lies.”

  “Does he?”

  “Beneath the open sky, I swear it. He lies.”

  “Then you will have the opportunity to prove your claim,” Fredero told him quietly. “By right of combat; by test of sword.”

  The smile on the young man’s face was thin, sharp, and dangerous.

  It vanished when Fredero continued. “But as it is I who am judge, and I who have accused you, however mildly, of lying, it is I who you will face.” He did not turn, but the Radann Paolo now sheathed his sword and joined the kai el’Sol. “Tell the villagers to gather. Tell them to gather and bear witness.”

  Paolo bowed.

  “Kai di’Manelo, we will convene again in the village center, when the Lord has passed the height. Choose your Toran; choose the man who will guard and second you. Marakas,” Fredero added, “will you be my Sol’dan?”

  26th of Misteral, 427 AA

  Sea of Sorrows

  The Radann Marakas par el’Sol now paused in his solitary voyage. The dawn had come; dusk slipped past as the minutes changed the color and the texture of the light that filled the sky. The Lord, he thought, had come, and the Lord would soon reign.

  He had not yet eaten. Water had passed his lips, wetting his throat, but he felt no desire for food. He therefore chose to continue the reverie of his journey, step by step, a balm against the day’s growing heat.

  Sol’dan.

  “What does it mean, Jevri?”

  Jevri el’Sol brought water, food, and shade to the younger Radann. “It means many things,” he said, as he unrolled the bamboo mats upon ground he had carefully flattened with the balls of his feet.

  “Do not . . . serve me.” Marakas spoke carefully. He had come to respect this man, and the fact that he had once been owned disquieted him. In the Radann, there was freedom. That, at least, proved true.

  “I serve merely myself,” the old Radann replied, voice serene, eyes cast toward the food that he was arranging so artfully. He frowned, shifted the balls of rice perhaps an inch or two, and nodded. “If you choose to join me, I will be honored, but I do not require company.”

  “But this—”

  “This?”

  “This service . . . it is . . .”

  “Unseemly?”

  Marakas shook his head. “It seems so much more than the Lord demands. Only a seraf . . .”

  “Yes.” Jevri el’Sol gave no sign of offense. “Only one raised as a seraf in the High Courts. You must have lived on the plains,” he added, “among the free clansmen. The Courts would consider such work as this beneath notice, beneath contempt.”

  “You are free of the . . . duties . . . of the High Court.”

  “Indeed. And of that contempt.”

  “Then why bother at all?”

  “I find comfort in it. It gives me something to do with my hands—other than wring them, or fight.” He met Marakas’ gaze, and to Marakas’ surprise, a smile tugged at the corner of lips and eyes; humor. He had not expected to find it, not here.

  “We all find comfort in the rituals of our childhood, and food, our manner of taking sustenance, is among the earliest of our learned rituals, our pleasures and our hungers. I do not like to eat as if I were a wild creature, or worse, a boorish cerdan.

  “I was raised to serve. It was not clear, not immediately, what form that service would take, and I was watched carefully and tested for many things. I was not a large boy; I did not grow into my size; I was therefore not considered suitable for the kai Lamberto. But I had an eye for arrangement—flowers, food, fabric—that led me, in the end, to the service of the Serra. In the harem, all life starts, all paths begin.

  “I watched Fredero as a child. I watch him now. And he does not deny me the simple pleasures of a life lived with order, with decorum, with simplicity. He does, however, deny me the right to impose that life on any of the Radann save himself.” Jevri el’Sol smiled again. “But I am stubborn. I educate those who are able to learn.

  “And that, of course, is not what you asked me.”

  Marakas was bewildered.

  “You wear your heart upon your face,” Jevri said, with mild disapproval. “It is a habit you would do best to lose. Masks are your only freedom, Radann el’Sol; learn to wear them with grace and subtlety. The Lady will offer you what privacy you choose to take; the Lady’s Festival will offer you more. Use these wisely.

  “Very well. You have asked what Sol’dan is, and I should not be surprised. You have been with the Radann for a very brief time.”

  “I have been with the Radann for the better part of a year. And I have learned how to wield a sword, that is all.”

  “Be grateful. When I joined, I was taught how to better wield a broom; the Lord suffers no slaves to serve him, but the cleaning must still be done. I digress.

  “A year is a short time, the better part of a year, even shorter. When you have lived this life for a decade, when you have lived it for two, come to me and tell me how long you’ve been at it.”

  “You have not been here for nearly that long.”

  “I see that Fredero has chosen to trust you. No, I have not. But experience is an able teacher. If it were not, you would sit at some other man’s knees and offer him your questions.

  “There are no Tyran among the Radann. No Toran. No cerdan, no serafs. There is the Hand of God, and among the men who comprise that Hand, only one is kai. The four who remain are par. We are men, after all; we have need of our brothers.”

  Marakas met the older man’s eyes and held them, thinking them darker than he remembered, and brighter. The Lady was in them; he had learned the signs among his travels in service to the Voyani.

  And this man knew, as Marakas did, that kinship counted for nothing among serafs. Not in the Lord’s eyes.

  He said, stiffly, a rebuke to the fates that were absent from this conversation, “It is said we are equal in the eyes of God.”

  “It is said. But it is not believed, even among the men who serve that Lord. We make our allies, we make our enemies, we fight our battles. We choose—on rare occasions—to trust, to take the risk of trusting. There is no blood to bind us, no blood to tie us or hinder us. We are men.”

  “And yet you serve.”

  “Yes.” He was silent for a moment. “But it was my choice, if any man can be said to have choice in this life, beneath the gaze of this Lord. All choices of import, in the end, have been out of my hands.

  “But perhaps they are of import because of the lack of choice, the struggle; those things that are easily within our grasp are not things we prize.” He shrugged; his shoulders dipped and lifted, as if he were sloughing weight.

  “What is a Sol’dan?”

  “Sol’dan. It is an honor, but it is not a rank. It is not a title. You cannot claim it as a symbol of power, and if I judge correctly, there is a r
isk of death or injury if you choose to accept. But it is tangible.”

  “Is it service?”

  “It is, in a fashion. But it is different. Is ‘brother’ a form of service? No. But to be one brings the responsibilities and duties all families know.

  “Agree to stand as his Sol’dan, and you agree to serve as only Tyran serve their Tyrs; you agree to defend his cause as if he were your brother. He has chosen challenge beneath the open sky; you must accept that, and abide by the rules of the governance of men. But should the man so challenged seek to gain by treachery what he cannot gain by the grace of the Lord, you are given leave to intervene.”

  “That is . . . that is all?”

  Jevri el’Sol stopped speaking. His hands fell into his lap as he straightened his shoulders. “Yes,” he said quietly. “But you are young, Radann. If you can ask that, you are young.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  27th of Misteral, 427 AA

  Sea of Sorrows

  AT THE height of day, Marakas par el’Sol once again built his shelter. He laid Verragar by his side and removed the mask that protected his face from the winds that swept out of the desert, carrying with it sand, heat, the story of a thousand deaths. The desert was fierce this day.

  An omen.

  He could see where horses had passed before him; their tracks were not shadowed by the heavy ridges of wheels in the dry ground. Alesso di’Marente’s men, and in number. He wondered when they had passed; how long it would be before they passed this way again. The patrol was overlarge to be perfunctory, and that was disquieting; of all places that one watched for danger, the Sea was not one.

  Or perhaps it was not a danger that armies could be threatened by, had they the sense to remain beyond its grasp. Marakas had taken precautions when traversing the shores of the Sea of Sorrows, but they had been perfunctory; had there been battle, or death, within miles, he would have known it by the movement of carrion birds. The sky was bereft of their shadows. Even they chose to shelter when the sun was high.

  And the sun was at its height, its glory a radiant death that disturbed the air, distorted the vision, transformed what was left of unwary sight. The Lord’s dominion was undisputed; if men served him, they served with the full knowledge of his ascendance.

  Men did not make oaths of note to women; the oaths that were offered women were private. No wooden medallions bore the marks of raised and lowered sword; no blood was shed. Even in marriage, the oaths a man made were made to his wife’s fathers and brothers.

  So Marakas had been brought to the desert by an oath that he had not made.

  Evallen of Arkosa had died a terrible death, and the wind’s voice was her voice; he could not escape it. For he alone had known her as the Matriarch of her kin, the mother of her people, and it grieved him to deprive a whole people of the woman whose guidance was crucial at a time of such darkness.

  Thus, the power of the Matriarch.

  Thus, the power of Fredero kai el’Sol.

  Marakas was not a young man. He had not been young when the Radann had accepted his service. But he had been a different man. The winds had etched lines in his face, and in the fires of his enemy, he had been reborn, come new into the world with a sword, hairless as an infant.

  He had seen only one enemy. It was a blessing unlooked for, to possess such perfect clarity of vision; to be free of the conflicts and the conscience of any imperative other than that war.

  But the weeks had curbed and clouded that vision; as each day passed, he felt the weight of humanity, with its incumbent frailty, return. He accepted it.

  With it came memory.

  The kai di’Manelo and his men met Fredero kai el’Sol at the heart of the village. The villagers had been instructed to bear witness, and the command of such men as these could never safely be ignored, but although they were present, they were ill at ease. Words had been offered, between one kai and another; words had been sent on the back of the swiftest horse present.

  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.