Guy Kay - The Lions of Al-Rassan

"You, mostly," Alvar agreed quietly. "Ammar, I'm so sorry."

"Please!" Jehane said. "What is it?"

Her husband released her and she turned to look at him. "I was going to wait until Alvar's celebration was done, but there is no point now. A ship from Esperana is in, my love. Fernan Belmonte took Cartada, and my own Aljais of the nightingales this summer. Tudesca opened her gates immediately after. They were the last, those three."

Alvar saw that his wife, who alone of the four of them had never even been in that beloved, tormented peninsula, was weeping. Marisa could feel for the pain she saw, could almost take it into herself. It was a part of her physician's gift, and it frightened him sometimes.

Jehane had gone white, much as he himself had appeared in the looking glass. She did not cry. She said, after a moment, "It was going to happen. There was no one to turn the tide back, and Fernan ... "

"Appears to have become something close to what his father was," Ammar finished for her. "It was going to happen, yes." He smiled, the smile they had all come to know and need over the years here in Sorenica. "Have I not been trying to write a history and an elegy for Al-Rassan all this time? Would it not have been a cruel jest upon me, if—"

"Don't!" Jehane said, and stepping forward, put her arms around her husband. Ammar stopped. He closed his eyes.

Alvar swallowed, near to weeping, for reasons too complex for words. The Star-born were not his people. He was Jaddite born, Kindath by choice—even before he'd met and wooed Ser Rezzoni's youngest daughter. He had made that decision, along with a resolve to pursue a doctor's life, by the time he left Esteren, escorting Ishak ben Yonannon and his wife to their daughter on behalf of the king and queen of Valledo.

Jehane had already been in Sorenica, having come with ibn Khairan when the Muwardi tribesmen in Al-Rassan threatened revolt if Ammar continued to lead their armies. Yazir ibn Q'arif had been urged to execute him—a man, the wadjis cried, who had slain a khalif. A man more offensive in Ashar's sight than even the Jaddites were.

Yazir had yielded to the first pressure but resisted the second, surprisingly. He had exiled ibn Khairan but allowed him his life. Partly for what he had achieved as ka'id, but mostly for one evening's single combat as the named, holy, sword arm of Ashar.

Had he not defeated the man no one could defeat? Had he not granted them victory by Silvenes when he killed Rodrigo Belmonte, the Scourge of Al-Rassan?

And more: had he not—above all else—thereby taken blood revenge for Ghalib? Yazir ibn Q'arif, who had travelled the sands for the past twenty years with his brother at his side, would not destroy the man who had done that for him. Ibn Khairan had been permitted to leave, with his Kindath concubine.

"We've a letter from Miranda," Alvar said, clearing his throat.

Jehane looked at ibn Khairan and, reassured by what she saw, let him go. "You've read it?" she asked Alvar.

"I started. Go ahead." He handed her the envelope.

Jehane took it, unfolded the paper and began reading. Alvar walked to a sideboard and poured himself a glass of wine. He glanced at Marisa who shook her head, and at Ammar who nodded. He poured for the other man, his dearest friend in the world, and carried it over, unmixed.

Jehane was reading aloud.

" ...turbulent this summer. Fernan and the king have taken the last three cities of Al-Rassan. I don't know the details, I never ask, but in two of them the slaughter was bad, it seems. I know this can bring you no joy, not even Alvar, and I know it will be a great grief for Ammar. Does he believe I bear him no ill-will, even now? Will he accept that I have an understanding of his sorrow, and that Rodrigo would have understood it as well?

I do not think Fernan does, though Diego might. I'm not sure. I don't see them very much any more, of course. Diego and his wife have had a boy by Jad's grace, my first grandson, and the mother is well. He is named Rodrigo, but you would know that. Diego has been honored by the king with a new title, created for him: he is the first chancellor of united Esperana. The people are saying that Fernan will win our wars and Diego will guide us in peace. I am proud of them both, of course, though could wish, as a mother, for more kindness in Fernan. I suppose we all know where he lost his gentleness, but I may be the only one who remembers when he had it.

I sound old, don't I? I have a grandchild. I am old. Most of the time I don't think I've changed so much, but I probably have. You wouldn't recognize the king, by the way—he's grown enormously fat, like his father.

They moved Rodrigo's bones this spring, before the summer campaign began. I didn't want him to leave the ranch, but both boys and the king thought he ought to be honored in Esteren and I didn't have the heart to fight them all. I used to be better at fighting. I did insist on one thing, and Diego and King Ramiro, to my surprise, agreed. The words above him are from the ones Ammar sent me so long ago.

I thought I would be the only one who felt that was proper but I wasn't. I went there for the ceremony. Esteren is greatly changed, of course—Alvar, you wouldn't know it at all. Rodrigo lies now in a bay to one side of the god disk in the royal chapel. There's a statue, in marble, done by one of Ramiro's new sculptors. It isn't really Rodrigo, of course—the man never knew him. They gave him his father's eagle helm and the whip and a sword. He looks terribly stern. They carved Ammar's words at the base of the statue. In Esperanan, I'm afraid, but the king did the translation himself, so I suppose that counts for something, doesn't it?

He did it like this:

Know, all who see these lines,

That this man, by his appetite for honor,

By his steadfastness,

By his love for his country,

By his courage,

Was one of the miracles of the god.

Jehane stopped reading, struggling visibly. At times Alvar thought she would do better if she let herself cry. Marisa had said the same thing, more than once. Jehane had wept when her father died, and when her third child—her daughter—was stillborn, but Alvar couldn't remember any other times, not since a twilit hill by Silvenes.

Even now she controlled herself, laid the letter aside and said, in a thin voice, "Perhaps I ought to finish this after the celebration?"

As if to reinforce that, a girl's impatient voice was heard calling from the courtyard: "Will you come on! We're all waiting!"

"Let's go," Alvar said, allowing himself to take charge. "Dina's likely to assault me if I make her wait any longer."

They went out to the courtyard. His friends were there—quite a few of them. Eliane bet Danel, Jehane's mother, had come to honor him and he saluted her first of all. His daughters skittered about like a pair of long-legged colts putting everyone in their proper places before they bolted for the kitchen, giggling.

"You are all," said Marisa, as soon as they were out of earshot, "on your oaths not to mention that the cakes are burnt."

There was laughter. Alvar looked for ibn Khairan. He had taken a chair in one corner of the garden where he could stretch out his leg.

Dina and Razel came back, more decorously, bearing their enterprise on silver trays. No one said a word about the cakes. Alvar, who thought his daughters embodied all the graces of both moons, thought they were delicious and said so. Marisa made sure his wine glass was always full.

He was toasted several times, made a few wry jests in the speech they demanded: about being ready to settle by the fire now but not being able to afford to do so until his burdens had been properly married off. The girls made faces at him.