He showed his teeth in a smile which contained no humor at all, and Toralk winced. Unlike Harshu, he'd actually met the senior Sharonian officers at Fort Salby. There wasn't much question in his mind about how the Ternathian Empire, at least, was going to respond.
He looked across the table at Mayrkos Harshu and wondered if he looked as sick as he felt.
Rof chan Skrithik stood stiffly to attention as the haunting bugle notes of Sunset, the call the Ternathian Empire's military had used to close the day for almost three thousand years, floated out under the smoldering embers of a spectacular sunset.
It was a beautiful bugle call, with a sweet, clear purity that no soldier ever forgot. And it was also, by a tradition so ancient no one even knew when it had begun, the call used at military funerals.
The last sweet notes flared out, and chan Skrithik inhaled deeply, gazing out across the neat rows of graves. At least a third of them were marked with the triangular memorial symbol of the Triad. Others showed the horsetails of Arpathia, or the many-spired star of Aruncas of the Sword.
And out there, in the midst of the men who had died to hold Fort Salby, was the young man who had died to save Fort Salby.
Chan Skrithik reached up, gently stroking the falcon on his right shoulder. For millennia, since the death of Emperor Halian, the House of Calirath's tradition had been that when one of its own died in battle, he was buried where he fell. Buried with the battle companions who had fallen at his side, and with his enemies. Chan Skrithik would have preferred to send Janaki home to his mother. To let him sleep where he had earned the right to sleep, beside Erthain the Great. But like Halian nimself, Janaki chan Calirath would rest where he had fallen, further away from Estafel and Tajvana than any other Calirath.
And where he slept would be Ternathian soil forever.
"It doesn't seem right, Sir."
Chan Skrithik turned. Chief-Armsman chan Braikal stood beside him, looking out across the same cemetery.
"What doesn't seem right, Chief?"
"It doesn't seem right that he's not here, Sir." Grief clouded the chief-armsman's voice. "None of us would be here without him, and—"
Chan Braikal broke off, and chan Skrithik reached out and touched him lightly on the shoulder.
"It was his choice, Chief. Remember that. He chose to die for the rest of us. Never let anyone forget that."
"No, Sir. I won't." Chan Braikal's wounded voice hardened. "And none of us will be forgetting how he died, either."
Chan Skrithik only nodded.
Division-Captain chan Geraith's entire First Brigade had marched past Janaki's body. Every surviving man of the fort's PAAF garrison had done the same, and Sunlord Markan had personally led his surviving Uromathian cavalry troopers past the bier in total silence, helmets removed, weapons reversed, while the mounted drummers kept slow, mournful time.
Janaki chan Calirath's death had done more than save Fort Salby. Rof chan Skrithik already understood that. Janaki had been added to the legend of the Caliraths, and the fighting men of Sharona would never forget that the attack which had killed him had been launched in time of peace by the very nation which had asked for the negotiations in the first place.
He wasn't the only victim of their treachery. In fact, chan Skrithik never doubted that Janaki would have been dismayed—even angry—if anyone had suggested anything of the sort. Yet it was inevitable that the young man who would one day have been Emperor of all Sharona should be the focal point for all the grief, all the rage—all the hate—Arcana had fanned into a roaring furnace.
"I stand between," chan Skrithik thought. Well, you did, Janaki. You stood between all of us and Arcana.
And you stood between me and the gryphon that killed you. It's a hard thing, knowing a legend died for you. But that's what Caliraths do, isn't it? They make legends. They become legends, and, gods, the price they pay for it!
Taleena made a soft sound on his shoulder, and he reached up and stroked her wings once again.
"I know, My Lady," he said gently. "I know. I miss him, too."
Taleena touched the back of his hand very gently with her razor-sharp beak, and chan Skrithik looked across at chan Braikal once more.
"His horses and his sword are going home, Chief," he said. "And you and his platoon are taking them."
"Yes, Sir." Chan Braikal's voice was husky again.
"Tell them for us, Chief." Chan Skrithik looked into the Marine's eyes. "Tell them all. This fort, the cemetery, it's ours. He bought it for us, and no one and nothing will ever take it away from us again."
Andrin Calirath sat on her bedroom window seat, staring out into the moon-soaked gardens of Calirath Palace, and wept.
Her tears were nearly silent, and she sat very still, watching the moonlight waver through them. She wept for the brother she would never see again. She wept for her parents, who would never again see their son. She wept for all the other mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and daughters who would never see their loved ones again.
And she wept for herself.
In the cold, still hours of the night, it was hard. She was only seventeen, and knowing that what she must do would save thousands, possibly even millions of lives—even agreeing to do what she must do—was cold and bitter compensation for the destruction of her own life. She was frightened, and despite her youth, she had few illusions about what sort of marriage Chava Busar and his sons had in mind for her.
She knew her strengths, knew the strength of her parents' love, how fiercely they would strive to protect her. Yet in the end, no one could protect her from the cold, merciless demands of the Calirath destiny. At best, it would be a marriage without love, without tenderness. And at worst—
She folded her arms, trying to wrap them around herself, not because she was physically cold, but because of the chill deep inside.
She was going to spend her entire life married to the son of her father's worst enemy. Her children would be the grandchildren of her family's most deadly foe. She could already feel the ice closing in, already sense the way the years to come would wound and maim her spirit, and she wished—wished with all her heart—that there could be some escape. That Shalana could somehow find that single, small scrap of mercy for her. Could let her somehow evade this last, bitter measure of duty and responsibility.
But Shalana wouldn't. She couldn't. "I stand between." How many Caliraths had given themselves to that simple, three-word promise over the millennia? Janaki had given his life to that promise, and Andrin could do no less than sacrifice her life to it, as well.
"Sho warak, Janaki," she whispered. "Sho warak. Sleep, Janaki. Sleep until we all wake once more. I love you."
She put her head down on the back of the padded window seat and let her tears soak into the upholstery.
She never knew how long she wept into the window seat's satin before, with absolutely no warning, her bedroom door opened, spilling lamplight into the darkened room. She jerked upright, spinning towards the brightness, but her angry rebuke for whoever had dared to intrude upon her died unspoken.
Lady Merissa Vankhal stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the light. There was a chair just outside the door behind her, one which hadn't been there when Andrin went to bed, with a blanket tossed untidily across it, and Lady Merissa herself was clad in a silken sleep robe over her night dress, devoid of the least trace of make-up, her hair all awry. Andrin had never seen—never imagined—her fussy, propriety-obsessed chief lady-in-waiting in such disarray, and she wondered what fresh cosmic disaster could have driven Lady Merissa to her bedroom in such a state.
Yet before she could even start to frame the question, Lady Merissa crossed the bedroom to her and, to her utter astonishment, Andrin found herself enfolded in a tight embrace.
"Oh, my love," Merissa whispered in her ear. "Oh, my poor love. I didn't hear you—I didn't know."
Andrin felt herself beginning to crumble in that totally unexpected, immensely comforting embrace.
Lady Merissa sat down on the window seat beside her, and a corner of Andrin's brain wondered just how ridiculous they looked. She was a foot taller than Lady Merissa, yet Merissa cradled her as if she were a child, and Andrin abandoned herself to the comfort of that touch.