The Lions of Al-Rassan

"What's happened in the peninsula?" Alvar shouted up. He spoke in Esperanan. Heads turned towards him.

"You don't know?" the captain cried.

"You're the first Esperanan ship here in a month."

"Then I can be tale teller!" the captain said, visibly pleased. He brought his two hands together above his eyes, making the sign of the god's disk. "Belmonte took Cartada and Aljais this summer, and then Tudesca surrendered to him! Ramiro the Great has ridden his black horse into the sea at the mouth of the Guadiara. Jad has reconquered Al-Rassan! The peninsula belongs to Esperana again!"

There was a babble of noise along the harbor. The news would be all over Sorenica by the time Alvar got home if he didn't hurry.

He began moving quickly, almost ru

He needed that himself, in truth.

Even as he hurried back through the market, Alvar was remembering a long-ago night north of Fezana, when King Ramiro had told him and Ser Rodrigo of his firm intent to ride into the seas surrounding Al-Rassan and claim all the lands that touched them for his own.

He'd done it now. Ramiro the Great. Nearly twenty years after, but he'd done it. He was king of Esperana. Of Valledo, Ruenda, Jalofia. Of Al-Rassan, though that name would be gone now. From this summer forward, that name was a word for poets and historians.

Clutching the letter, Alvar broke into a run. People looked at him curiously, but there were other ru

Alvar was aware that he would need to weep before this day was done. He wouldn't be the only one.

The outer doors of the house were open. He walked in. No one to be seen. They would all be in the courtyard, waiting for him. He paused before the looking glass, startled by his reflection. A brown-haired man, unfashionably bearded, begi

He heard sounds from the kitchen and turned that way. In the doorway he stopped. His wife was there, still dressed for work, checking on the small cakes and pies the girls had been making. Even now, even with what had just happened to him, Alvar offered his prayer of thanksgiving to the god and the moons that he had been vouchsafed this gift of love, so unexpectedly, so profoundly undeserved.

He cleared his throat. She turned to look at him.

"You're late," she said lightly. "Dina, your darling little girl, has been threatening to—" She stopped. "What has happened?"

How did one say this?

"Al-Rassan has fallen." He heard himself speaking the words as in a place that echoed, like the valley of the Emin ha'Nazar. "This summer. All of the peninsula is Jaddite now."

His wife leaned back, her hands behind her, against the table by the hearth. Then, pushing herself forward, she took three steps across the stone floor and wrapped her arms around him, her head against his chest.

"Oh, my love," she said. "Oh, Alvar, this must be so hard for you. What can I say?"

"Is everyone here?"

"Almost. Oh, my dear," said Marisa bet Rezzoni, his wife, his colleague and Jehane's, daughter of his teacher, mother of his children, light of his days and nights. "Oh, Alvar, how are you going to tell them?"

"Tell them what?" Jehane asked, coming into the kitchen. "What is it? One of the children?"

"No. No, not that," Alvar said, and fell silent.

He looked at the first woman he had ever loved. He knew he would love her and in more than a way of speaking until he died. She was still, with silver in her hair and a softening to her features now, the same astonishing, courageous woman with whom he had ridden across the Serrana Range to King Badir's Ragosa all those years ago.

Another known footfall in the hallway outside. "We're in here," Alvar said, lifting his voice. "In the kitchen." In a way it was better like this.

Ammar, hardly using his stick today, paused in the doorway and then came to stand beside his wife. He looked at Jehane, at Marisa, at Alvar. He laid a hand on Jehane's shoulder and said, in his beautiful voice, "Alvar has had the same tidings I have. He is trying to think of how to shelter us. Me, mostly, I suppose."

"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 Yona

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.