Serra Amara en'Callesta was no longer in the flower of youthful beauty; she had borne two strong sons and three beautiful daughters, and at the Lady's mercy, all but one had survived into adulthood. A night thought, that-but evening was fast approaching, and the Pavilion of the Dusk, positioned so that one might feel the solitary wonder of the Lord's decent, made way for such musings. The living could never hurt you as profoundly as the dead. And the dead were legion.

Serafs attended her in silence, and she allowed it; Tyr Ramiro often told her that she was far too patient with their maunderings and their ponderous service. But as wife of the Tyr'agnate, she was allowed her pick of serafs, and chose only those whose company soothed and eased her.

It was said, among the clans, that she had never once suffered a seraf to be put to death, and if that was not precisely true, she did nothing by action to refute it; thus she held claim to the t.i.tle Amara the Gentle-and she held it fiercely.

"Amara?"

She did not need to turn; the voice, soft and pleasing, could only belong to Eliana en'Callesta- the youngest of the concubines in Tyr Ramiro's tightly knit harem. Youngest and, without question, most beautiful. Amara appreciated beauty and grace-but more, she had the uncanny knack for seeing its potential; Eliana had been taken from her family-a serafs family-at the age of eight, with her second teeth barely in. It saved money, to be so perceptive, and while Averda was the richest of the five Terreans, prudent management, where it was possible, was to be valued.

Prudence. She almost sighed. There were times, although only under the Lady's Moon could such things even be thought, when she felt closer to Eliana than she did to any of her sons or daughters -for Eliana would be hers to keep, no matter the whim of any other clansman; she was the property of Ramiro's harem-and the harem was Serra Amara's.

"Eliana. Have you come to keep an old woman company?"

The girl's laugh was musical, bewitching; it wove a spell of pleasure by its utterance that evoked a response as genuine as the girl herself. "I have come," she said, "to keep company with Serra Amara if she will have me."

"And the Tyr'agnate?"

Eliana's full lips turned down in a slight frown. "He is alone again this eve. We thought he might be drawn to the Inner Chamber, but he will not be moved."

"We?"

"Sara, Deana, and I."

"It is this business with the General," Serra Amara said. "Come, Eliana. Sit by me; it is dark and the Lady's fingers are running through my thoughts." It was true, of course, but also untrue. The young girl took her place upon the silks, and rested her head upon the older woman's shoulder. "Tell me," the Serra said.

"The General is like other men, and unlike. I told him that the Tyr'agnate-and his wife, the Serra Amara en'Callesta-had been called away to attend to their kai, and that I would be pleased of his company. He followed me to the Outer Chamber willingly enough."

"And?"

"He was gentle," she said as if it surprised her. "He-" she hung her head a moment, and hair the texture of silk and the color of gold curled around the hollow of her neck. "He did not desire me."

"That I do not believe."

"No?"

"I saw the way he observed you at the meal, Eliana." She sat forward, and a seraf handed her a goblet of sweet water. "But it says enough of his character that he did not accept what was offered." She watched in silence as the nets were drawn across the pavilion's face to keep insects at bay. Serafs, like shadows, were bitten as they worked, yet they never once complained. "He did not mention the incident to Ramiro," she added quietly.

Eliana lifted a shoulder so gracefully it could hardly be called a shrug. "And the Tyr is not angry with my failure?"

"No. But he isn't surprised either; Baredan is one who would speak after loving. He practices caution as he can." She smiled. "Tell me of the General."

"1 think he values loyalty," was the quiet reply. "What he says, he means. Do you know that-" she paused, silent, as Amara waited. The moon was brightening above them.

"Tell me," the Serra said, making of the command a request. "Whatever it is, I will not laugh."

"I took him to the Outer Chamber. He sat upon the bench by the fountain, staring into the water in silence. He wanted no music, no food, no love-but he asked me to talk. Just speak. It was odd, Amara; he is not like Ramiro."

"No."

"I spoke, at first hoping to please him, to rouse him. But he stopped me, and asked me to speak, instead, as I would speak. I didn't know what to say. He asked me questions, and I answered them."

"Questions?"

"About Averda. About my life in the harem. About Serra Amara the Gentle. He did not ask me for any secrets, and perhaps I spoke too freely. I don't know why he wanted to hear me." With such a voice, and such a disposition, Amara would have been unsurprised had the man been anyone but the General. But why? Baredan di'Navarre was a man, no more.

"He spoke of war, Amara-but not the specifics," she added hastily. "He said he had come a long

way. He-" she lowered her face a moment. "He rode his horse to death to reach Mancorvo. It hurts him."

"I did not know."

They were silent a moment, in respect for the loss that would, in almost any other circ.u.mstance,

be considered a grave crime.

"I had very little to say, after he told me. But I spoke of things that please me-no, of things that make me happy. As I did, he looked at me. He said I was beautiful, spoke the way a man will. I thought, then, that he might lay with me-but he did not. Instead, he turned to the fountain, and he said, 'Lady, grant me a sign.' "

"He said this during the dayT Eliana swallowed and nodded. She raised a pale face to the moon's light and accepted the goblet that Amara held. "A b.u.t.terfly landed upon his shoulder."

"A b.u.t.terfly?"

"Yes. And it was black and crimson."

"You have rejected Eliana, Sara, and Deana, Ramiro. And I hear, also, that you have turned aside

Aliane and Maria." Serra Amara en'Callesta stood in the door of the vast chamber, raising her

voice so that it might be heard by the man who sat kneeling in the spa.r.s.ely furnished room. She wore deep, deep blue, a silk to match the color of her eyes; her hair, still dark after the pa.s.sage of so many years, was bound by pearls and sapphires: the handiwork of the women of the harem.

"Did you also hear," the man kneeling said, without turning to greet his wife, "that I sent Carelo and Alfredo about their business, with little regard for their advice?"

"Oh, indeed, Tyr'agnate, I have. And the kai was most understanding, given what his father was like at that age. Might I enter?"

"And could I stop you if I wished it, Gentle Amara?"

"With but a word."

"That word would not be 'no.' "

"Ramiro, you make me sound like a Voyani shrew."

"A mistake, my love." He rose swiftly, turning with the speed of a hunting cat upon his waiting wife. "And if I am very good, I hope not to suffer its consequences."

She laughed as he swept her into his arms; he was the only person who could make her laugh out loud, unmindful of the social grace her station demanded.

"Why do you send me children at a time like this?"

"Because it is too tiring to come to you myself without exhausting you first. I am not a young woman any more."

His laughter left a smile upon his lips as he touched his wife's cheek, tracing its line to the tip of her chin. She knew him well enough by now to know that it was the first smile that had rested there since his quiet morning walk with Baredan di'Navarre two days past. It was vain, and she knew it, but she took her secret pride in the ability to evoke such a response where no one else, be they youthful, powerful, or beautiful, could.

But she also knew him well enough to know that the smile would dim, and then vanish as if it had never been. "Come," he said quietly. "The serafs have been and gone, and we will have peace within."

"Peace? This, I will see." Her own smile vanished beneath the weight of recent history. "The Festival of the Sun," she said to her husband.

"I know. Baredan di'Navarre believes that Alesso is no friend to Averda-but he will be an enemy in blood if we refuse the call to the Tor Leonne. And Mareo di'Lamberto has so refused." Either Amara or Ramiro could have pointed out that, with no Tyr'agar, there was in truth no call, for only the Tyr'agar had that right, and there was none. But the Radann were already mediating with the Lord of the Sun in ceremonies that were older than the Tor Leonne itself, for it was the Lord of the Sun, centuries past, who had first declared which clan would rule the Dominion. The Radann were the ears and eyes of the Lord, and it was said that Alesso di'Marente was the sword behind their necks. There would be a Tyr'agar, one way or another, at the end of this Festival. And the fact that his power had not been respected beforehand had a cost they both knew well; which of the clansmen, in matters of power, stood on nicety of form?

Serra Amara knew that if Callesta chose the Tor, and the Festival of the Sun, Mareo di'Lamberto would be isolated. And most probably destroyed. "You do not think that you will travel to the Tor Leonne."

"No."

She exhaled heavily, although it was bad form. "Good. If Alesso di'Marente had intended to share his power with you, you would have had word-or invitation-before the fall of clan Leonne."

He laughed. "You trust no one, do you?"

"I trust you."

"You trust me," he replied, "in affairs that do not interest you."

She placed an arm around his waist, and he an arm across her shoulders; they knew each other's bodies well enough to be comfortable walking thus. The large, empty chamber receded, and the small, spa.r.s.ely decorated room opened up. This was Ramiro's heart, this singularly uncolorful room, with its lacquered chests and reliquaries. Here, scrolls and bonds and papers, old as the clan's founding, were placed, and here as well were the rings and the sigils, the shield and the sword, upon which Callestans swore their adult oaths.

Or, in the case of Serra Amara, their marriage oaths. She smiled, but sadly, as she saw these chests -and then the smile dimmed completely as she noted that the last- the black-and-gold chest in which the sword rested, lay open, its red silk reflected like too-bright blood against the blade's curve.

"You've decided," she told her husband, as she left him to kneel before the Callestan sword.

"Have I?"

"Mancorvo has taken the lives of a hundred of our serafs in the past four years. We have ordered

our cerdan across the border, and we have brought back their serafs to replace those lost to us.

We have killed and been killed; the nightfires have burned throughout all but the harvest season. "But not once, Ramiro, except upon the day our kai proved himself, have you considered such actions so bitter that you opened the swordhaven."

"You think you know me so well, gentle wife."

Piqued, she rose and turned, leaving the naked blade at her back. "And am I so wrong?"

"I opened the swordhaven," he told her softly, "because Baredan di'Navarre is not a man I would

dishonor with a dagger or a common blade. He is a man."

She was speechless, and then she turned again to look at the chest, at the sword that waited within, unsheathed. Ungirded. "You have not killed him."

"No."

"I am slow, Ramiro. This game of war-it is no longer my game. Tell me what you are thinking."

She drew close, because he wanted it, and put her arms around him, wrapping herself tightly to

the pillar that he had become.

"That I should kill him. That he will start a war that will destroy Averda, and possibly Annagar, by delivering it into the hands of the Empire; that he will prove to the rest of the clansmen that I am as Mareo di'Lamberto says: a lackey of the bloodless Northerners, with no sense of loyalty or honor."

"The Lady," his wife said softly.

"Yes. It is night-and I have never been comfortable with night decisions."

"This was not a night decision," she said.

He smiled into her hair, bending as if from too tall a height to kiss its darkness. "No; the decision to kill Baredan di'Navarre was made two days ago, after dawn, while the sun rose."

"You admire him." It was not a question.

"Is it so obvious?"

"Not to Baredan, no." Amara pulled herself gently from her husband's embrace. "But to me, now. You could have sent him northward with your Tyran. They could have killed him easily, with no witnesses, and disposed of the problem he poses. Instead, you are here, with the sword of Callesta unblooded." She paused. "And you sent Eliana to him, as a final gift, a last night."

"Yes."

"But he would not take what she offered, because he would not dishonor you."

"Yes, curse him." He turned from his wife to the sword, and she walked quietly to the hard mats at the farthest edge of the ornate circle in which the clan's history lay protected. There she knelt, with a grace that spoke of experience.