She could refuse. She was given that gift.
She stepped onto the sand. The Lady turned as each stallion had done in the choosing, inviting a candidate to mount.
Briana hesitated. For an instant Valeria thought she would refuse after all. But then she took the reins in her hand and caught a hank of black mane just at the withers and set her foot in the stirrup. She mounted gracefully—of course she would. She had been riding since before she could walk.
The stallions had danced. The Lady Danced. It was a dance of cadence and of modulated paces, step by step and movement by movement. It carried Briana through the curves and swooping lines of one of the great patterns, the pattern that foretold a certainty.
What that certainty was, the Lady did not say. There were no Augurs there to interpret it. No one had expected the testing of the Called to turn into a Great Dance.
Valeria felt the pattern in the streams of magic that ran through her body. She knew better than to try to impose understanding on it. That would come when it was ready.
The last movement of the Dance, the exuberant coda after the singing power of the trot in place, was a leap higher than a man’s head, body level with the earth she had scorned, and a sudden, flashing kick that made the air gasp. If any man had stood there, his skull would have burst.
Valeria knew that for a clear and terrible truth. She had seen it happen.
There was nothing but air today. This was pure delight, the joy of a god in the living flesh. Briana laughed, a whoop of joy.
The Lady came back to earth again, dancing into stillness, snorting lightly. That was laughter, too. She had changed the world in ways that no mortal was prepared to understand. Her mirth rippled through Valeria’s blood and bones.
It was like a draft of strong wine. Valeria reeled, but she was grinning.
On the Lady’s back, Briana was grinning, too. No one else was. All the men were blank, stunned. None of them understood. It was beyond them.
Briana dismounted as the candidates had, dizzily, clinging for steadiness to the Lady’s neck. The Lady did not seem to mind. Her nostrils fluttered. She was whickering as a mare does to her foal.
The sound was so tender and yet so imperious that Valeria found her eyes stinging with tears. It was meant for her, too, in its way—and for all of them, whether or not they could understand.
Thirteen
The uproar this year was less pronounced than it had been when Valeria, having become champion of the testing, was unmasked as a woman.
Briana had never pretended to be anything but what she was. What exactly that was at the moment, no one knew, but Master Nikos decreed that the matter would be decided tomorrow. Today the Called would celebrate their elevation to rider-candidates. There would be no further distractions.
Master Nikos had learned a great deal in the past year. They all had.
Valeria had spent her own feast of celebration in Kerrec’s study, cleaning and tidying. She had every intention of doing the same again, but Briana insisted that they both go. “I would really rather be in the stable,” she said as they shared a bath and put on festival clothes, “but this is duty. The stable—and the Lady—will be there in the morning.”
“You believe that?” Valeria asked.
Briana nodded. “She promised.”
“Then it is true,” Valeria said.
“All of it,” said Briana. She was standing perfectly straight, not moving except to speak. Her maids had come down from the tower to dress her properly, which looked like a great ordeal.
No doubt she was used to it. Valeria, quickly and comfortably dressed in the grey coat and doeskin breeches of a rider-candidate, perched on a stool and watched. It was fascinating, the transformation of a stablehand into an imperial princess.
Briana’s gown was very simple compared to some Valeria had seen in the emperor’s court, but it was made of silk that shimmered now gold, now scarlet. She wore a collar of gold set with bloodred stones, and a net of gold and rubies confined the coiled mass of her hair.
Valeria sighed faintly. She never had cared for clothes and pretty things the way her sisters did, but there was something about silk.
Her fingers smoothed the wool of her coat. She had earned it with blood and tears. She would never trade it for anything. But she could be tempted—almost—by that beautiful gown.
Briana was still Briana, even in imperial splendor. She refused to mince down the corridors and across the courtyards like a court lady. She strode out with a swish and swirl of skirts, which would probably have given her maids the vapors.
It made for a grand entrance. The dining hall was full, but the diners’ cheer seemed rather subdued. Briana’s arrival changed that. They all stood up without prompting and applauded as she made her way to the front of the room.
The high platform had a long table set up on it, with all the new riders sitting there. The nobles were seated just below and to the right of the head table—across from the riders, whose table ran along the wall to the left. Briana would have gone to the nobles’ table, but the rider-candidates came down in a mob and carried her up to join them.
They carried Valeria, too, over her vigorous protests. She could not stop them. There were too many and too determined.
When they set her on the platform, she finally got the words out. “I don’t belong here! This isn’t my year.”
“You were cheated of it last year,” Lucius said. He was the ringleader and proud of it. “We’re giving it to you now.”
One of the others pressed a cup into her hands. It looked and felt very old, a broad shallow chalice of silver engraved with intertwining figures of men on horses. The same image was carved on the arch of the great gate of the citadel. She wondered, rather distantly, which of them had come first.
There was wine in the cup. “Drink!” the rider-candidates said in chorus. “Drink! Drink! Drink!”
She looked down from the high table at the riders below. None of them had moved to stop this. Kerrec was not even looking at her. His head was bent and his hands wrapped around a cup, as if something fascinating swam inside it.
Her jaw hurt. She was clenching it. She relaxed as much as she could, and made herself stop caring what Kerrec did or thought.
She focused on Master Nikos instead. He had an expression almost of curiosity, as if he was waiting patiently to see how this game played out.
He was not angry. She saluted him with the champion’s cup and drank as deep as she could stand.
The wine went straight to her head. Instead of making her dizzy, it made her wonderfully, marvelously happy. Nothing mattered then—not Kerrec, not the riders, not anything.
She passed the cup to Briana. That met with a roar of approval.
These rider-candidates had none of the rigidity of their elders. They loved a spectacle. If that spectacle shattered the traditions of a thousand years, then so it did. This was a new world. They would make new traditions for it.
Valeria woke with the mother of headaches. She vaguely remembered leaving the hall, late and so full she could barely move, but between the hall and her bed, she had no memory at all.
Slowly she realized that not all the pounding she heard was inside her skull. Someone was beating the door down.
Briana in the servant’s room was much closer to the door—and should have been rocked out of bed by the noise. But the hammering went on and Briana made no move to stop it. Valeria staggered out of bed, cursing the arrogance of imperial princesses, and stumped scowling toward