Weapon Read online

  THE WEAPON

  by Michelle West

  Rosdan Press, 2011

  Toronto, Ontario

  Canada

  SMASHWORDS EDITION: 978-1-927094-07-5

  Copyright 2011 by Michelle Sagara

  All rights reserved

  Cover design by Anneli West.

  Four Corners Communication

  The Weapon copyright 2005 by Michelle Sagara; first appeared in In the Shadow of Evil edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Novels by Michelle West

  The Sacred Hunt

  Hunter's Oath

  Hunter's Death

  The Sun Sword

  The Broken Crown

  The Uncrowned King

  The Shining Court

  The Sea of Sorrows

  The Riven Shield

  The Sun Sword

  The House War

  The Hidden City

  City of Night

  House Name

  Skirmish*

  War**

  *Forthcoming January 2012

  **Forthcoming in 2013

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  The Weapon

  Other Stories by the Author

  Introduction

  I wrote this story for John Helfers, for his anthology, In The Shadow of Evil.

  Interestingly enough, the cover painting for the anthology was the original concept sketch for the anthology Summoned to Destiny—a concept sketch based on my story in that anthology, The Colors of Augustine. The artwork was deemed too dark for Summoned to Destiny, which was supposed to be a YA anthology, and the artist actually asked me if he could use the painting for John Helfer’s anthology. Which was very considerate of him, but entirely unnecessary.

  Most of the novels that take place in Essalieyan also take place in Averalaan. Since the premise of the anthology was to write about a milieu in which evil had the prominent position, I thought I would write about Veralaan, the woman after whom the city was named. The first day or advent rites that occur on the first of Veral are a celebration of the choices she made in the very confined circumstances she was in. Those choices lead to the style of rule and governance that the Empire now enjoys.

  The Weapon referred to in the title is Veralaan, herself. She is the Baron’s only daughter, and because his rule is much contested, he leaves her in the Mother’s cathedral on the Isle. His is a reign of terror and fear, and while the Mother’s many priestesses and servants adhere to worship of the Mother, they’ve all felt his shadow, and they all bear the scars.

  What would you do if you were given the daughter of the man who had murdered your family? How would you feel about her? Given the oaths sworn to The Mother, what would happen to that child within the cathedral?

  The Weapon takes place during the period of the Blood Barons, as they were affectionately called. In The Hidden City, and actually in at least one of the Sun Sword novels, mention is made of the first day rites, and of the festival of The Ten. The Weapon is the story behind the first day rites.

  The Weapon

  I.

  IN THE QUIET of isolation and a long-nursed pain, a woman knelt, praying to her god to give her a child. Because she was golden-eyed, she could be certain that her pleas were heard, for she was Daughter to the Mother—and because she was certain she was heard, she was also certain that Mother rejected her supplication. As a child, growing up in the certainty of knowing that the Mother could hear her, she had often pitied those who would live their lives in uncertainty. Time had eroded pity, or worse, begun to turn it inward.

  The gift of god-born children was rare indeed in the small and fractious Baronies, for the Barons rooted them out without mercy, often destroying whole family lines in an attempt to destroy those who could willingly, inexplicably, consort with gods whose offspring might challenge their rule.

  Only in the temple of the Mother, where healing was offered—and controlled—were such slaughters avoided. But even in these temples, the god-born were rare.

  A miracle, denied those who lived in the shadow of the Baron’s rule. After all, what parent willingly offered a babe to death?

  Mother, she thought, rising. Grant us your child. I am no longer young, and I must raise my successor. Grant us a child.

  But the Mother was silent.

  * * *

  The Mother’s Daughter seldom summoned her Priests and Priestesses to this room, this hall. But when she did, she did so for a reason: blood did not cling easily to marble.

  “Amalyn,” the Mother’s Daughter said, to the youngest of her attendants, “I want you to go to the Novitiates.”

  “But—”

  “Now. The Novitiates will know, when the Baronial carriage empties into the Courtyard, which member of the family our visitor is. I do not want them to panic.”

  “But—”

  “Amalyn. You are barely out of their ranks; they know you, and will trust your reassurances.”

  “And if I have none to give?”

  “Find them.”

  Amalyn’s eyes closed. It was a type of surrender. She backed her way out of the nave, toward the door that led to the rooms that housed the novices who served the Mother. They were crowded now. Every person that the temple could save, they had—and proof of it could be found in the cramped quarters the Priests and the Novitiates shared.

  “You wouldn’t be the only Daughter of the Mother that the Blood Baron has killed—”

  “You will not use that title,” she said, her voice as cold and severe as any autocratic noble’s. “If it is my time, it is my time.”

  “We can’t afford to lose you—” Her words died as Amalyn struggled not to say what they all knew: There was no other god-born child in the temple.

  “Yes,” the Mother’s Daughter replied quietly. “We can. But we cannot afford to lose the cathedral; we cannot afford to have the name of the Mother silenced across the lands.” She hesitated and then added, in a more gentle voice, “We serve those who have no other hope. And because we have obeyed the rule of our Baron, Lord Halloran Breton, we are the only church that has not been destroyed or driven underground. Our responsibilities are to those who have no value to the Baron. And because we can heal, child, we have value.”

  “Our oaths,” Amalyn whispered.

  “Oh, yes. If the Baron kills any of those who serve the Mother at my command, I will close the healerie to his entire clan. But if that happens,” she added, with just a hint of fear, “you must be ready to flee; if we serve no purpose, we will become as the others.”

  “But you could flee now—”

  “Hush, child. The Baron sent word that he wished an audience; it is not his way to be so tactful when he desires a death. I am content to wait upon his command.” Amalyn left. Only when the door swung shut behind her did the oldest of the Priests bow.

  “Iain,” the Mother’s Daughter said, granting permission to speak.

  “Why has your agreement with the Baron never extended to your own life?” He said this with quiet respect—and managed to imply several decades’ worth of reproach in the almost uninflected statement. He was good at that.

  She shrugged. “It’s enough to protect those who serve.” And then she exhaled. “Not even the Baron can be offered affront without exacting a public price, and what
better victim as balm to his pride than the Mother’s Daughter herself?

  “Let the temple stand,” she added softly.

  No one was certain whether or not it was a prayer.

  * * *

  Baron Halloran Breton was, in these times, a man to be respected. Of the Barons, he alone had managed to subdue his neighbors, binding them in ways that she did not care to imagine to his cause. And his cause?

  He had not yet named himself King. But even casual analysis of the geography of his campaigns made clear that he desired a kingdom; he was first among equals, if he held any man to be his equal.

  He was not a handsome man. This much was a known fact. But he might have been, had the cast of his expression been less forbidding. He was tall, and he wore his height as if it were a mantle. Age had not lessened him; it had broadened his shoulders and crafted lines across his face that made clear he was a man of little humor.

  He traveled with four guards.

  It was one third of even the most minimal number that she had seen him use before, and this gave the Mother’s Daughter pause. But not so much pause that she did not bow. The Priests and Priestesses who served her chose the more expedient gesture of obeisance; it was certainly the one with which he was most familiar. They adorned the floor, the robes across their supine backs a spill of thick cloth. A cloth not so fine as his, and not so stained by travel.

  “Is this hall secure?” he asked as she rose.

  “We have not the soldiery you have at your disposal,” she replied quietly. “Nor the wizards. But inasmuch as it can be, Lord Breton, it is.”

  His eyes were already roving the vaulted ceilings; torchlight flickered a moment across the dark of his eyes, reflected there. Caught there, she thought, as if he had swallowed it in his youth. She knew the Mother’s pity then, but was wise enough to hide it; his father, the previous—and very dead—Lord Breton, had been a famously cruel man.

  And Lord Breton had decided, in the end, to abide by the life his father had chosen for him. He had learned fear first, and when he had passed beyond it, he had never forgotten the price fear exacted. Fear was the tribute he desired; fear gave him a measure of power.

  But no peace, no security.

  He turned to the guards at his back; they were perfect in every way. Silent, grim, obedient, they responded to this slight gesture, and turned from the hall. He met her gaze, and his own flickered across the exposed backs of the most trusted of her servants.

  She understood the command in his glance.

  “Leave us,” she said quietly.

  They rose, not as perfect in their discipline as the soldiers of the Baron. But they offered no argument. When they were gone, he turned to her. “Mother’s Daughter,” he said coldly. “I have granted you willingly what few Barons have chosen to grant even greater temples than yours. I have seen the worship of your goddess spread across my cities and my towns, and I have done little indeed to stop it, although I, as the rest of the Barons, have little use for the gods.”

  She said nothing.

  His smile was thin. “You are in the prime of your power. I have seen it before. I have also seen the decline of such power. Age, in the end, will leave you bereft; will you pass willingly from the halls that you rule?” Before she could answer, he lifted a hand. “They are words,” he said, “no more.” He stepped toward her, and she saw the mud leave the soles of his boots. “I do not understand you. I believe that you feel you understand me. And perhaps you do. I have let you spend your life upon my people in return for services that the mages cannot render me, and I am satisfied with our bargain. I have given you those who have chosen to break my edict; I have killed them, in your stead, so that your hands might remain bloodless. I have seen your servants,” he added, “and they do not all bear the blood of your Mother; there are those who would raise hand against killers; those who would rise up to the status of executioner.

  “But you keep them contained, and they are protected while they serve in your name.”

  “In the name of the Mother,” she said at last.

  “Oh, indeed.” He paused; his hands slid behind his back and he stood there, staring at her, the harsh lines of his face tightening. “I am not certain that you will be a suitable guardian,” he said a last.

  It was not what she expected to hear. It was, in fact, probably the last thing she expected to hear.

  * * *

  When he had first taken power over the corpse of his father—a phrase that was not exactly literal, as there wasn’t enough left of his father to technically be called a corpse—he had come to the temple, bleeding, burned. Twenty years ago, and she remembered it still. She had been a simple novice, albeit golden-eyed.

  The Mother’s Daughter of that time had offered him the respect of obeisance in front of the congregation that had gathered—that still gathered, huddling now in their pews—before the Mother’s altar.

  Skin dark with ash and sweat that he had not bothered to remove, he had gazed at them all, hawk to their rabbit; she had watched, from the doors that led to the nave, thinking that he might destroy the service to demand the healing that was his by right of power. Thinking, if he were not granted it, that he might destroy more. He certainly looked, to her practiced eye, as if he were in need of healing.

  But he had confounded that expectation. Into the spreading, uncertain silence, he had walked as if he owned the temple. “I am the Baron Breton,” he said, and the exultation in his smile did not quite penetrate the quiet dignity of those words.

  The Mother’s Daughter bowed. She rose, but not quickly, and moved to stand by the altar, placing her palms against its surface.

  “You have not flourished in the reign of my father, but you held your own. I respect that, Mother’s Daughter. I desire your company; I will tour my city before the waning of the day.” He paused for a moment, and then his gaze crested the bowed heads of the men, women, and children who were wise enough not to meet it. But Emily Dontal, golden-eyed novice, was not so wise, and she met those dark eyes beneath those singed, bleeding brows, and almost forgot to move.

  “Who is the novice who attends you, Mother’s Daughter?”

  The Mother’s Daughter said nothing; he had expected that, but his lips thinned.

  No, she thought. Seeing him, understanding now that he desired a death to mark the beginning of his reign, to mark his prominence. She had stepped forward, ignoring the gaze of the Mother’s Daughter to who she owed both service and obedience. The latter she forsook for the former.

  “I am Novice Emily Dontal,” she said, bowing. Bowing low. She might have knelt, but she thought if she did she would never rise.

  “You are golden-eyed,” he replied.

  “I am the Mother’s.”

  “Good. You are the first of your kind—with the exception of the Mother’s Daughter—that I have seen in the temple, and I have had occasion to visit during my youth. You will accompany us as well.”

  “Novice.”

  “Mother’s Daughter.”

  “You will stay by my side, and you will not speak.”

  “Mother’s Daughter.”

  * * *

  She had learned much, in traversing those streets.

  The new Baron Breton had come to the temple with a small army. He led the men, the Mother’s Daughter by his side, through the streets, proclaiming his rule. He led them to the heart of the high city, and there, he set them free, for in the high city were the men who had gained great fortune in the service of his father.

  There, she knew, his sole living brother resided. And he, too, was not without his men. She had read of war. It was something that was fought over distant plains, and distant patches of land. This sudden terrible knowledge: this was the Baron’s gift. To her.

  It was a scar she bore still. The soldiers clashed, and this, at least, she could bear in silence. When the first volley of quarrels flew from the distance of buildings, when they pierced armor and men fell with grunts or screams, she flinched, and t
he Mother’s Daughter gripped her shoulder like a vise. But she could witness this, mute and still.

  It was after. It was after the one army had been defeated, and the Baron’s brother beheaded, that the slaughter had started in earnest.

  * * *

  “Emily Dontal,” the Baron said quietly, calling her attention back from the bitter recess of memory although her eyes had not left his face. He was older, and he did not come injured and in triumph to these halls.

  “Yes,” she replied, “that is what I was called.”

  “But it is not, now, what you are. Mother’s Daughter, do you understand the gift I gave you when first we met?”

  She did not, could not, answer. She could still hear the screaming.

  “I have spoken with the Witherall Seer.”

  She kept her face schooled. It was difficult.

  “And she has told me that my blood-line will rule these lands; they will fashion not a Kingdom, but an Empire, and it will stretch farther than even the lands the Barons now hold.” His smile was slight.

  “Why have you come?” she asked, weary now.

  “Ah, that. I am not the man I was when I took the Baronial throne. I have buried three wives,” he added quietly.

  As it was widely rumored that his first wife had attempted to assassinate him, she expected no open show of sorrow.

  “I am in negotiations with Baron Ederett, to the far South. If these are concluded successfully, you may receive an invitation to a wedding.”

  Again, silence was the only response. It seemed, however, to be the incorrect response.

  “My oldest son is much like my brother in his youth. My younger sons are canny.” He shrugged. “It is…surprisingly bitter, to see them arrayed against each other in such a fashion. They are attempting to become adult in the Baronial Court, and if they survive it—they have sacrificed pawns and slaves in their games—they will emerge stronger for their testing.