"Ah. Yes, they have changed. But not so much that they are not recognizable."
Lady"s face. She hesitated. There were, as he said, guards at the gates, and she knew that they would soon draw swords.
"Why are we here?"
He did not reply. He watched her.
She whispered something softly.
He heard it anyway. "A dangerous vow."
We will live as free men, and we will fight as free men; not for power, nor for love, will we again serve the Lord of Night.
She drew her shoulders back, lifting her chin. Not for power, not for love.
But for fear? For fear"s sake?
Not for fear. Lady, not for fear.
"We should have come in the Lord"s time," she told him quietly.
"We are here now."
"I won"t help you."
He shrugged. "You do not aid me, Elena," he said gravely. The sound of steel leaving sheath punctuated the quiet sentence. "You aid them. If you do not choose to obey me, it is of little concern. As I said, this city is remarkable for its poverty, its powerlessness. I am content not to kill.
"But only barely. Decide. But be aware that it is not your life that is at risk."
The life, she thought, of clansmen. Of cerdan.
Not for the lives of men such as these would she be forsworn.
There were two men. They wore the symmetrical lines of neatly kept beards; clansmen, both. Free.
One man carried a lamp with him, and he raised it. Light lined the exposed folds of her desert robes; shadows darkened its valleys. She was aware of both because she looked down, to her feet, to the path beneath it.
Steel was much brighter when it caught light; there was nothing pleasant about that light"s glint. She had no weapon to draw in return.
"The gates of Callesta are closed," the older of the two men said.
She nodded, silent, and then shrugged her arms and her shoulders free of the robes. Beneath them, she wore the colorful clothing of the open road.
The cerdan"s brows rose. He said a single word to the man who waited, lamp in hand.
She heard it.
"Yes," she said, speaking slowly and reluctantly. "Voyani. I am of Arkosa."
"You . . . wear desert robes."
"Yes." But not for long. They were conspicuous, these heavy folds of clothing that had served Arkosa for generations. Margret had once worn this robe. Elena, remembering this, removed it, folded it with care and handed it to Telakar.
As if he were, in truth, Arkosan.
Beneath the desert garb, she looked like a wanderer. The dyes of the clothing that she had literally owned for years had faded with exposure to sun, to sand, to wind; it marked her.
"You travel alone?" the older man asked.
"Not alone," she replied. "My cousin travels with me, and he is known for his prowess with blade. But he will not draw it here, at the gates of Callesta."
The man nodded.
He stood seconds away from his death, unaware of it, his sword steady but not-yet-raised in a way that offered obvious threat.
She heard the guardhouse doors open; saw two men join the two who had come to speak. Four. Four men, now. She had entered through the gates of Callesta before. During harvest season they were always open, and the guardhouse itself was laid bare to the inspection of those who pa.s.sed by.
But the planting had only barely begun across the Terrean; harvest was months away. Months of sun, months of rain, months of careful tending. And between that time and this one, the guardhouse was emptied.
The men-the younger men-were often called to the fields by their families, to oversee the work that would, in the end, feed Callesta.
"We heard rumor," the oldest man said.
"Rumor?"
"That the Voyani Matriarchs were being hunted by the man who styles himself Tyr"agar."
No, she thought. No, I will not do this.
But the thought was curiously detached.
"Rumors seldom contain that much truth." She lifted a hand. "But what you have heard is true."
"And you have come with word?"
"I have," she replied gravely. She hesitated again. The High Clans had little love of-or use for-the Voyani of any family. But the low clans often traded with the Arkosans for salves and potions, charms and wards, and the hint of the future that awaited them. The low clans, she thought, with a trace of bitterness, and the women.
And the High Clans did not guard city gates.
Two more joined the men who had first come. Six. Six now. She looked at them in the lamp"s flicker, and wondered if six such men could kill Lord Telakar. He had been injured in his fight with the other demon. Surely that injury might count in their favor.
Moonlight. Lamplight.
Lady.
"Are there Arkosans gathered within the walls?" Her voice. Traitor"s voice.
"None that we know of."
Which meant simply that none had come with the caravans that marked the Voyani. It was more or less the answer she had expected; the Arkosans seldom came to Callesta. This close to the Tyr"agnate, the clans showed their disdain and their suspicion openly.
"Elena," Lord Telakar said quietly.
The lamplight shifted as the cerdan who held it lifted it, drawing Telakar out of anonymity and shadow.
"Forgive us," he said, "for the hour of our arrival. But we desire an audience with the Tyr"agnate of Averda."
The cerdan"s brows rose. Elena"s did not, through sheer dint of will.
"We have word," he continued, speaking for Arkosa in a soft, even voice, "that we believe will be of value. And we come with an offer."
"An offer?"
"The man who styles himself Tyr"agar has proved himself no friend to the Voyani. Of any family."
"He"s proved himself no friend to Callesta," the cerdan replied cautiously. "But the Voyani are known for their inability to choose sides in a war."
"The Arkosan Voyani," Elena replied, taking the conversation out of Lord Telakar"s hands, "will fight a war when a war is declared against us."
The words were so wrong. She"d thought she"d been afraid before; she knew now that she was mistaken. "I cannot claim to speak for any other family," she added, and the words were steady, calm, another woman"s words. "But I am of Arkosa.
"Grant us entry, or deny us entry; our time pa.s.ses quickly and we are expected elsewhere."
"Entry such as you have requested," the cerdan said gravely, "is not so simple a matter. We must ask you to wait here."
She turned. Telakar stepped forward.
"We will wait," he said.
Dinner had not, in the Serra Amara"s considered opinion, been a success; the food itself had been eaten as if it were simple sustenance, and the Commanders had given the meal short shrift. They spoke in the Northern tongue, their words pa.s.sing above her meager comprehension as if it were thunder or lightning; the storm"s voice.
She was grateful. She understood Weston; could read it almost as well as a native. But such reading demanded time, and the Commanders left little of that.
She gazed at her husband"s face; he was absorbed in their conversation, and occasionally chose to join it, offering a scant word or two in return for the many they sent his way.
His words, she understood. She wondered if that understanding were an artifact of the years they had spent together in the harem"s heart; wondered if Ramiro could speak any language that would not, in the end, sound familiar.
The Serra Alina did not choose to speak at all; her gaze remained fixed upon the table, upon the hands of the men who commanded the Northern armies. She had withdrawn into the posture, pleasing and utterly devoid of motion, that the Serras adopted when they were forced to keep company with men of power.
Amara was intimately acquainted with such posture, such grace; it was almost the one that she had chosen. But she could not keep her gaze upon the table, upon her hands; she wanted to see the faces of the men who would decide much of the course of the war.
Wanted to know, in the end, if the boy who claimed the Tor Leonne-and all that that implied-was merely a puppet in their eyes. Or if he was more.
Because the clan Callesta would suffer for the presence of Northern troops in the Terrean. It was already said, in any Terrean but this one, that Ramiro had sold all sense of Southern honor for the simple expedient of Northern coin.
It stung, of course; such accusations, baseless and empty, still did their damage.
And how much greater would that damage be if they were true?
Kai Leonne, she thought, studying his face with unseemly intensity.
Perhaps because of this, she failed to notice the sudden silence that descended upon the men-and the woman-who spoke so freely in their foreign tongue.
Duarte AKalakar had lifted a single hand, and dropped it gracelessly upon the flat of the table.
The kai Leonne turned, in silence, toward him; Amara lost sight of his face for a moment.
"Someone is standing outside of the doors."
"Standing?" Valedan asked.
"Yes."
She did not ask how he knew this. Instead, she turned toward the doors he indicated. The screens were opaque, but they were not so solid that they denied the pa.s.sage of light. Caught in the large, wide squares made by crossing beams of wood, she saw a shadow against them.
Fillipo rose swiftly. He did not draw blade; did not move in haste or in obvious alarm.
The Northerners did not rise with him. They had not chosen to bring weapons into the hall itself. She wondered if they now regretted this choice.
Fillipo was no seraf. The doors beneath his hands were not noiseless as they slid in the tracks that moored them; nor did he open them fully.
Amara could not see who waited beyond them, but she saw the back of her husband"s most trusted Tyran relax. Relax and then stiffen. He spoke; she heard the cadence of words shorn of content.
He slid the doors shut and turned back to the table.
"Tyr"agnate," he said, executing a formal bow.
Ramiro frowned.
"Apologies, Tyr"agnate. I gave explicit orders that you were not to be disturbed."
"Ah."
Fillipo"s severity eased a moment; a smile pa.s.sed between brothers. "But you are served by the finest of the Tyran in the Dominion. A matter that requires your personal attention has arisen."
He rose.
Amara almost rose with him, but there was, about Fillipo, nothing that spoke of immediate danger. She clapped her hands, and noise must have once again pa.s.sed through the doors and the thin, opaque walls, for her serafs returned their life and grace to the hall.
Ramiro and Fillipo conversed very briefly; she saw her husband"s nod.
"Commander Allen, Commander Berriliya, Commander Kalakar. I offer my apologies, and request your indulgence."
"Of course," Commander Allen said quietly.
"Tyr"agar?"
Valedan looked up.