Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King by The Uncrowned King Read Free Book Online Page B

quite the same.
    But because it was Ser Anton di'Guivera and not just any old man who asked, he answered. "Because, Ser Anton, I don't think I'll ever see anyone as—as perfect as he is again."
    "He is far from perfect," the old man said, his eye the more critical, the more intelligent, his experience the more telling.
    "Look at his eyes," Aidan replied. "Look at his face. The sword—it's so much a part of him, I don't even think he knows that the sword is there."
    Ser Anton said nothing; they watched together, in a silence born of awe on Aidan's part, and of something else on the old man's. Another voice spoke—in the Southern tongue—and in it, Aidan heard a hint of what he himself felt.
    The old man's reply was sharp. No one spoke again.
    They watched; they waited.
    In the end, the judges intervened; they called the halt. Commander Sivari heard them immediately, but Aidan wasn't so certain that the young man did. He stopped only when Sivari stepped across the thin stone circle that had contained them both within the fighting ground.
    The old man's words were Southern, foreign, and soft.
    At once, as if that were a signal, the men at his back began to speak, their words clashing and colliding in a cacophony of tones.
    "Do you know who he is?" Aidan asked. "That banner—it's Southern."
    The old man's laugh was a brief, angry bark. "I know well whose it is," he said curtly. He started to say something else and then became completely still. He was angry; that much was clear to Aidan: perhaps this young man and his own students were somehow rivals.
    "He is—not what I thought he would be." The old man reached out with both hands, dwarfing the railing in them. It was only then that Aidan realized that the old man was actually very large. "I came to the Empire to make his acquaintance. He is Valedan kai di'Leonne, the last living member of the clan that once ruled the Dominion of Annagar." He spoke again, something soft, and raised his face to the sun.
    "What are you saying?" Aidan asked quietly.
    "I? I am telling the Lord," the old man replied, "that a worthy enemy is not always a warrior's blessing. Now come; we have seen what we were intended to see, and we are required to ready ourselves for the judges."
    He turned, the old man, in a quiet that wasn't quiet, and spoke in a tongue that Aidan was grateful, just this once, that he couldn't understand. Ser Anton di'Guivera and his students began to walk away, but Aidan turned to watch the man that the old man had called
Valedan kai di 'Leonne
. The distance between them was larger than the length of the crowded coliseum; it was vast as the distance between the harbor and the merchant ships at the farthest edge of the horizon on the days when he watched for the sea winds.
    And as he watched, this man, this Valedan kai di'Leonne, turned to look into the empty seats that surrounded the fighting ground.
    Their eyes met; Aidan felt a shock of something that he couldn't even name. They stood staring in silence until two men came to break their regard: Ser Anton di'Guivera and Commander Sivari.
    Aidan watched the old man's—
Ser Anton, you idiot
—students as they performed for the trial judges. They were uniformly better than he had ever seen them, and he thought he knew why; they had seen a rival, and they knew that they had to live up to his performance. Not for the sake of the judges—even Aidan wouldn't have been that stupid—but for the sake of the man who taught them. But there was a self-consciousness about them all that day, and he knew that he could watch the entire trial, and he wouldn't see Valedan kai di'Leonne again.
    And he wanted to.
    Not much
, he thought, as he felt the familiar refrain that was the prayer to Kalliaris start up in the back of his mind.
I wouldn't have to see much—just a little. A bit. Let him ride past me on the way to the isle. Just that much
.
    He promised himself that he would find a spot by the road that the challengers would travel; he