He swallowed it, and it almost devoured him.

Almost. But he was the kai Callesta, his father's son, his son's father. He swept out of the temple and across the grounds trampled so thoroughly beneath the feet of clumsy men.

Only when he left the path that marked the temple's bounds did he pause. The darkness behind the lids of his eyes was welcome; a darkness that had nothing to do with the Lord or the Lady; a night of his own choosing.

He shared it with his son, with the memories of his son; rage did not respond to his hollow call.

Instead, he saw the combat; saw the fire of the Lord of Night, so similar in color and texture to the weaker fires of the Radann. He saw the small, slender form of Kiriel di'Ashaf; saw her move as the wind moves; saw the impossible speed that was matched only by the Northern Osprey that served the kai Leonne. The Radann had lifted swords; the Radann had been scattered.

She had laid his son to rest.

He would not forget this debt, but he would not dwell on it. Instead, he looked across the grounds, the flowers now as dark as the trunks of trees, the night leaves; gla.s.s lay among them, broken shards a delicate echo of the temple's floor.

He trod carefully, but with purpose.

In the city of Callesta, Ser Ramiro kai di'Callesta was known, with pride, as the Lord's man. His presence commanded the respect of cerdan across the length and breadth of Averda, invoking the glory of old wars, old battles.

But even upon the grounds of his home, he honored what must be honored: the Lady's hour. The Lady's time. Hidden among the trees that trailed blossoms so artfully into the pa.s.sing stream were the standing stones and the small, stone altar, that could be found upon the grounds of any clansman of wealth. No stones marked the path that led to it; no fire burned at its heart. Any light that was given it was given at the Lady's blessing-and her light, this eve, was bright.

He found the offering bowls in the lee of the altar's southern edge, and he knelt before them, shifting the weight of his cloak to the side and revealing a burden that simple burial would never relieve him of.

There, his knees against the moss by the small stream's edge, he offered the Lady his prayers and his pleas; he begged her indulgence and her forgiveness-but as men do. Silently.

In the first bowl, wine, cooled by the evening and not yet soured. In the second, sweet water, come from the pa.s.sing stream. And in the third? Nothing. Nothing yet. He lifted Bloodhame; on his knees, he found the sword ungainly. But it had been drawn; it demanded its due with the single-minded purpose of steel. Willingly, he drew it across his exposed arm. Blood fell, adorning stone, the one hot, the other cool.

Lady, he thought. Bless this, my son. He died defending your right to rule the Southern night.

He reached into the bowls. Wine, water, blood: these were the ablutions by which he cleansed his son of the taint of the Lord of Night.

These, and one other, his head bowed, his son's dead cheek inches from his face.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

12th of Corvil, 427 AA Terrean of Mancorvo THE Serra Donna en'Lamberto took the message that was handed her by the young seraf. He was not a seraf of the domis, but rather of the stables; through his hands pa.s.sed saddle and rein. And through his hands pa.s.sed other things.

He bowed, but the bow was awkward; had he been a girl, she might have been moved to correct him in some fashion. Now, however, she held her peace; the letter bore a seal. It was a seal she recognized, although she saw it seldom.

Two letters, she thought, rising only when the screens had been closed upon the clumsy, loud step of the seraf. The one, from the General Alesso di'Marente. The other, from the Serra Amara en'Callesta.

She could not say which of the two harbored the greater danger. But these were women's words, and the edge they contained was blunted. For now.

She did not call her husband. She did not bespeak her wives. She listened a moment for the sound of children; heard them in the distance, and chose to retreat to chambers that might not be so easily breached.

When she closed the screens to the smallest of her chambers, she knelt, and removing the scroll, she broke its seal. Out of habit, she was careful to catch all traces of wax; to leave nothing that might attract the watchful eye as evidence. If women did not war, they played a different game of politics; if what the letter contained was not to her liking, it would go no farther than the brazier in which incense was burned.

Ah, she had so little time.

She gazed at the muted shadows of sun through the thinnest of screens, and saw where they fell. Guests of import would arrive soon, and they could not be put off.

Her hands shook.

What do you want, Donna? She asked the question without rancor and without panic. She had asked it a hundred times an hour since the letter from the General had arrived in her harem, borne by the man she best loved in the Dominion.

Her dead son was the wind's voice.

But Lamberto was her life. Could she surrender the one without losing the other? Mareo trusted the General's offer, and he was not a man easily lied to. But trusting it, he had yet to make his decision, and because he had not, she could not. Yes, Na'donna, I believe he will honor the offer he makes in his letter.

Then why do you hesitate?

Grim-faced, tired, he had turned to her. "The Voyani," he said quietly. "The letter contained truth, yes, but not the whole of the truth."

But enough of it, surely?

"I do not offer you counsel," she had said, which was true; she could not. He had not asked. "But there is no way to avoid war now. All that is left is to choose which war we will fight; the cost is ours to bear, regardless."

"And if you could spare the Terrean the hardship entirely, would you forgo the battle?"

She had not answered. Answer enough.

But now, she thought, the edges of other truths might stand revealed. In this letter.

She unrolled it with hands that shook. She could not be perfect while she held it; it was for this reason that she sought solitude. What no one witnessed could be ignored in safety.

Serra Donna en'Lamberto, the letter began. She recognized the script; it was perfect, if perhaps a little too bold.

I received your graceful letter, and I apologize for my delay in response; the gravity of its contents were such that I desired to offer a response in every way as perfect.

But events have conspired to rob me-to rob us both-of time. And where there is little time, there is oft little grace; please accept my humble apologies for the haste with which this is written.

You spoke of your gardens, of your husband, of your city-and it has been long indeed since I have been privileged to see any of these things; I was grateful for the glimpse of your Court. But it is of the last thing that you wrote that I can now speak. The death of your kai.

She stopped reading for a moment, and felt old anger rise, as if it were the first fruit of a bitter planting.

My own kai was killed by a.s.sa.s.sins shortly after your letter arrived, before my husband returned to Callesta.

And just as quickly, the anger was gone; buried. She felt instead a pang of sorrow, a kindling of sympathy.

I do not know if this brings us any closer to understanding one another; if it does, this understanding has come at too high a price, and I beseech the Lady daily for some sign that I live in the folds of her nightmare. But I have not yet wakened.

I will not insult you now. It was my intent to write a letter that was, like the letters of Serras, graceful, gracious, an attempt to bridge the distance between the two men who have always ruled the North.

But the events have transpired in a way that may prevent this; I write now in haste.

The last of the clan Leonne dwells within Callesta. He has come at the side of Ser Anton di'Guivera; I a.s.sume that word of this has reached you, in Amar. I a.s.sume that other words have reached you as well, but they are a matter for men; they are a matter of war.

What perhaps has failed to reach your ears, is this: the Serra Alina di'Lamberto also travels with Ser Valedan kai di'Leonne. She came from the Northern Court; they have released the hostages there to the keeping of the young kai Leonne.

When the Tyr'agnate returned, he asked to see my son. And he asked, as well, to see the bodies of the men who caused his death. This was done, as all things are, at the command of the Tyr'agnate.

What was done at the command of the Tyr'agar was different: he bid your husband's sister come to identify the a.s.sa.s.sins.

And, Serra Donna, she did.

She identified them as the oathguards of Ser Mareo kai di'Lamberto: His Tyran.

I would not have thought her bold enough to speak with me after she had done so, but she serves the kai Leonne, and she came to me. I thought she would attempt to speak on behalf of the Tyr'agnate-and knowing the freshness of my loss, and the ferocity of my grief, you can imagine how I welcomed her, for she came to my harem.

But she offered me solace and wisdom, and she offered me this as well: She said that if I asked Ser Mareo kai di'Lamberto if his was the hand behind the sword that killed my son, he would answer truthfully, no matter what that answer might be.

I have never understood your husband. I mean no disrespect by this; I have no doubt that you would say the same, if asked about mine. But lack of understanding and lack of respect are not the same. We have guarded our borders against his raiders; you have guarded your borders against my husband's. Serafs have died, and cerdan, in those skirmishes-it has been a long decade.

But I never imagined that I need fear this death from Lamberto, and had I not witnessed the Serra Alina's reactions with my own eyes, I might have been convinced, with difficulty, that this was not tied with the clan Lamberto.

Yet even now, Serra Donna, I am not so certain. The evidence is there.

But other evidence is there as well. It is true that our husbands have not been allies since the end of the war, if indeed it can be said to have ended. But it is also true that the shape of the coming war will define the Dominion for longer years to come; true as well that the North will fall if the Tyrs cannot stand together.

And true, last of all, that the man who commands the larger part of the armies of the South has already resorted to such mean a.s.sa.s.sination and betrayal in order to gain his crown, his Tor and the Lady's Lake.

So I ask you, now, as a mother bereaved to a mother bereaved: Was your husband's hand behind this?

And if, as I hope, your answer is No, I wait your reply.

Ser Mareo kai di'Lamberto was unamused.

He was not-yet-angry, but the day had been long, and the wagon that housed the Voyani now resided in his courtyard beneath the open sky. It was not to his liking.

Less to his liking was the absence of his Serra, for men did not treat with the Voyani; they certainly did not treat with the daughters of their Matriarchs. Too much could be said-and done-in the presence of such women that would harm him; they were without grace and respect.

Wives dealt with them, if anyone did.

And given the coming war, wives were of import.

Yet it was not the Serra Donna en'Lamberto who greeted these most important and undesirable of guests, but rather one of her wives, and the difference in the rank was not lost upon the women who waited with fading patience.

Such as patience was, among the wanderers.

For her part, Ramona was gracious and perfect; she offered sweet water and fruit to the women, and also offered them the excuses of the Serra.

What the women heard there he could not tell; he did not deign to approach the wagons directly, but watched them from the distance of the domis.

It was while watching them that he met his wife.

And when he saw her, the irritation that had moved him was all but forgotten; she was as pale as she might have been had she lost blood. Her hands were shaking, and in them, clutched too tight, he saw parchment.

She knelt before him, and he allowed it; she could not keep her feet with easy grace. But he touched her hair with his hands, gentling the distance between them, the severity of his height.

"The Voyani are here," he said quietly.

"I know it," she said. "And I would meet them, my husband, but . . ."

"Na' donna?"

"But I could not meet them yet; they will see what I have not managed to conceal from even my serafs."

He frowned. "Na' donna, they come to you."

She nodded, but she bowed low, hiding her face. Had she worn the veil, she would have been just as distant.

"What do you carry, Na'donna?" he asked, when it became clear that she could not speak.

"A letter," she said, although this much was clear. "It is only a letter. From a Serra."

"You have received many such letters these past months, and not one has robbed you of composure. Can I guess that the letter you carry bears the seal of the Serra Amara en'Callesta?"

She swallowed and nodded. "Forgive me," she said.

"There is nothing to forgive. You wrote to her?"

Again she bowed her head, but this time a blush lent color to her pallor. "I wrote to her," she said, as if admitting something shameful. "When it became clear that-"

But he knelt before her and touched her lips gently with his fingers. "What pa.s.ses between Serras," he said quietly, "is not the business of their husbands. I trust your discretion, Serra Donna, and I understand that you have always been motivated by a desire for peace. I do not disdain it; I did not marry a warrior."

She lifted her face, then, and met his gaze. "This letter," she said, the last syllable trailing, "this one." And she held it out to him.

He did not touch it. Instead he rose, putting distance between her obvious distress and his acknowledgment of it. "It is women's writing," he said quietly. "And I know little of it; it is seldom taught to men."

She nodded. He lied, of course; she allowed it because she had no other choice.

"What does it say that upsets you?"

"The kai Callesta," she said, "the heir."

"What of him?"

"He is dead, Mareo."

Ser Mareo kai di'Lamberto said nothing. He waited.

And she understood by this that he would not wait forever.

"He is dead. a.s.sa.s.sinated within Callesta."