Firstborn

by Michelle West

  “I keep most of it at arm’s length.”

  “—I cannot see what you find so objectionable in him. I consider Jarven ATerafin to be the greater danger, if peace and prosperity is your desire. I am not sure why he chose to relinquish his temporary control—but I do not believe the Araven patris desired the responsibility.”

  Eva frowned. “What are you not telling me?”

  And that, as always, was the difficulty with the cunning and the observant. “I see Duvari has arrived.”

  Eva frowned, trying to place the name. She was not one of nature’s politicians; she was one of nature’s pure forces. “Astari?” she finally asked.

  “Yes.”

  “The Astari are involved?”

  “I told you, the Kings are concerned.”

  Eva bit back an intemperate reply. She did not harangue her friends—if that was not too much presumption on Sigurne’s part—in front of powerful strangers.

  “Guildmaster,” Duvari said, as he approached. If Eva was capable of a certain consideration, the Lord of the Compact was not. The lack was not, as many assumed, due to the fact he was so certain of his power, so assured of his position. His focus was ferocious, his sense of duty so all-encompassing, he did not deign to bend to lesser considerations.

  Sigurne Mellifas was seldom thought of as a lesser consideration. She had chosen to find it refreshing, but on some days, that equanimity did not come naturally.

  “Lord of the Compact.”

  “I’ll catch up with you later,” Eva murmured, withdrawing.

  “Eva.”

  “Guildmaster?”

  “I have a task for you.”

  “Of course you do.” Eva shook her head. “And I have to be patronized by a wealthy old man and his cronies. If we both survive the next few hours, I’ll come up to the Tower.”

  Matteos Corvel, utterly silent until that moment, muttered something beneath his breath. Sigurne did not actually catch the words; she was certain that Eva, farther from him, had not.

  “Guildmaster,” Duvari said, drawing her attention away from Eva’s retreating back.

  “My apologies. I am currently host to the Merchants’ Guild.”

  “And Eva Juwal is a merchant, yes. It is not of Eva that I wished to speak—although I would hear what task you intend for her to accomplish.”

  “I’m certain you would,” was her benign reply. It was not followed by the requested information, however. Duvari could come and go as he pleased in any of the guildhalls of Averalaan—but he was not master. Not yet. “You have come, no doubt, with a matter of pressing concern.”

  “I wish to speak with Hectore of Araven.”

  “He will be present.”

  “And his servant?”

  Ah. “You no doubt have information on and about Hectore; I will leave you to draw your own conclusions.”

  “Where is Jarven?”

  She found the question almost astonishing, and allowed this to show. “Duvari, age has perhaps addled me.”

  He waited.

  “I do not understand your question. No, let me amend that. I do not understand why you ask that question of me. I am not The Terafin; I am not ATerafin. I am not, and have never been, a merchant, of either greater or lesser repute. I do not deal with the Merchant Authority directly in any way. Jarven ATerafin’s path does not cross mine often.”

  “No. It has, however, crossed yours recently.”

  “Jarven is not my servant; he is not my operative. If you refer to the daggers that he used to moderate effect on the night of the disaster, yes. As you suspect, they came from me. Jarven has the appropriate writs and permissions to carry them. He has also made the appropriate reports.”

  “I have read the reports he made of their use.”

  “And?”

  “They are remarkably free of information.”

  “I have read them myself; your claim is a gross exaggeration. He can, and frequently does, ramble when the mood strikes him—but on the use of the dagger, and on the dagger’s effect, he was clear, even concise.”

  “You have heard that he has handed interim governance of the guild to Hectore of Araven?”

  “I have. Hectore thought to inform me, purely as a courtesy.”

  “Is there a reason that he no longer wishes to subject himself to the Order of Knowledge’s oversight?”

  Sigurne considered the question with growing unease. “He did not offer reasons for his withdrawal. If you have conversed at any length with Jarven, you cannot expect that he would.”

  “No. I wish to be informed when he next visits.”

  • • •

  “Interesting,” Jarven said to his golden-furred companion.

  “The Terafin does not care for Duvari.”

  “No. She is breathing.”

  “But you do not dislike him.”

  “The Terafin does not like many people, in case this has escaped your notice. She has certainly never warmed to me.”

  “She likes the old woman.”

  “She has a particular weakness where strong old women are concerned, yes.”

  “Should we kill him?”

  “The Terafin would be beyond angry if you did it and she became aware of it.”

  “Ah. He is powerful?”

  “He is powerful. He is mortal.” Jarven continued to listen to the conversation that Sigurne was attempting to end. He had been drawn from the forest byways by a soft, faint light, and had chosen to follow that glimpse to its terminal point.

  Its terminal point appeared, at first glance, to be Sigurne Mellifas, the dour Matteos Corvel by her side. First glances were often superficial. If she was the source of that strange light, it was only because she was wearing it.

  It was an odd illumination; it did not grow stronger or brighter as Jarven walked toward it, and he had at first assumed that he was in pursuit. He was not. The guildmaster was wearing a ring. It was a simple band, but Jarven could see that words, written across its slightly rounded surface, blazed. He could not read the words, not because he could not see them at this distance; he could and did. They were not written in a language that had any meaning to him. Yet.

  The golden fox was staring at it, in a round-eyed silence that spoke of surprise. The forest denizens were frustratingly unlike the humans Jarven had made his life’s study. They did not often lie, except by omission—but omission was critical.

  Jarven could walk the forest. He had walked through miles of forested land in his ambitious youth; none of those experiences were relevant now. He could not understand how he could be this close to the guildmaster and Duvari without their awareness. It both pleased and discomfited him.

  “Why?” the fox asked.

  “Sigurne Mellifas is observant to a fault. She is also cautious—to a fault. If I am here, and neither she nor Duvari have any inkling of my presence, it puts the concept of security and its resultant safety to question.”

  “Do you wish to be seen?” the fox asked.

  “Not at the moment, no.”

  “Then I fail to understand your concern.”

  Had he been a mortal mentor, that would have been a lie, edged as it was with condescension and the implication that Jarven’s concerns were beneath regard. Jarven found this frustrating. He was old, and took advantage of that fact, much as Sigurne Mellifas did, and to much the same effect.

  But with age and experience had come a kind of power. His physical age was no longer the limiting factor it had once been. The fox heavily implied that his appearance could be altered, with some effort on either Jarven’s part or the eldest’s; Jarven was not sure which.

  He could not, however, allow this without losing what he had spent decades building. He had considered the loss with care, but in the end felt it would greatly inconvenience him if he intended to live largely as he had once lived.

  He had not, however, realized how very little his former life and his personal consequence would mean to the forest. How very little they all meant. Only
The Terafin was significant; every other mortal of import was important only if The Terafin valued them.

  It was a humbling thought, and humility did not suit Jarven—not when it was genuine. “Why does the ring surprise you?” he asked the golden fox.

  “Do you not recognize it?”

  “No. I have never seen it before.”

  “Then pay attention now, little mortal. You are not what you were; you have the power, now, to give offense to the powerful if you move without caution. That old woman,” the fox continued, gazing at her for the first time as if she was of interest, “has been claimed; she is under the protection of a powerful Lord.”

  “If she dies?”

  “If she dies, Jarven ATerafin, it will not be by your hand. Or by ours. And The Terafin, as I have said, likes her.”

  “If The Terafin disliked her, if The Terafin did desire her death, would we be likewise moved to stay our hand?”

  “Yes. If she commanded it, we would of course obey—but the Councillor she has chosen would argue against it in our stead, and we believe she would listen to him if our words failed.” The fox was silent for a long, long beat. “You do not recognize what you see.”

  “It is in a language I have not studied.”

  “Then listen and listen well. The Terafin retains the services of a mage.”

  Jarven nodded.

  “She could, because he is sleeping. He is not imprisoned, as his brothers are; he was not disobedient to his Lord’s command, as his brothers were. He was left freedom of movement—but not the freedom of power, of self. He had failed her,” the fox added softly. “He had failed us all.”

  “You were never his master.”

  “No, of course not. But in times of great need and great danger, the denizens of the high wilderness can come together for common cause, and thus it was. Even the gods played their part. But he and his brothers failed. They failed because they could not do what they had been commanded to do.

  “What was done was enough. Meralonne APhaniel, as he is styled, has been sleeping for centuries. Longer, perhaps. He remembers the old days, the old ways; he remembers the beauty of old glories.”

  “By sleep, you mean he is without power?”

  “Essentially, yes.”

  “He is not, by mortal measure, powerless.”

  “No. And by the measure of the wilderness, he is not powerless. But measured against what he once was? He is as a mortal infant to a powerful man in his prime.” The fox was silent for a beat. “Humans get lost in nightmare because while they dream, they believe the world they are in is real. Do you understand? The nightmare has terror because they believe in it. But when they wake, the nightmare recedes; it is gone.

  “Meralonne sleeps in that fashion. He lives in the mortal world. He has the power that cannot be riven from him, and shards of his true light shine when he is pushed to battle. He has chosen—without choice—to believe in the truth of his sleeping perceptions.

  “But he is close to waking, Jarven. And he knows it. He understands that the waking might well destroy everything he has built while asleep—and because he is not yet awake, he does not desire this.”

  “You believe that will change.”

  “Yes. But I have seen him as he is; I have seen him awake. That ring is a symbol of his waking self. Perhaps he hopes that if he sees it, it will stay his hand, or perhaps he hopes that it will stay the hand of his brothers—for they are waking as well; we can feel it. And they have not had the paltry freedom that he has had; they have no experience of, and no regard for, the mortal, except as quarry or prey. You see the words; memorize their shape.

  “It would give every ancient being pause if their intent was Sigurne’s destruction. Only the powerful would ignore that pause—because if Sigurne is destroyed, Illaraphaniel will be honor bound to hunt down and kill the one who committed this crime against him.”

  • • •

  Jarven frowned. Duvari was everything he had always assumed he would be. Duvari suspected—on no grounds and with no experience whatsoever—that Jarven had done something to himself that he did not wish exposed to the guildmaster.

  It was, in fact, one reason he had chosen to withdraw from the position of interim guildmaster—the other being tedium. Birgide Viranyi was Astari. It was possible that the information Duvari now possessed had come from her.

  “She was concerned,” the fox said.

  Jarven said, “I will ask you not to respond to things I have not said or asked aloud, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Ah. Why?”

  “Because mortals spend years or decades learning what to say out loud, and how—and I have been considered a past master of that art. All of my given talents will atrophy if they become essentially useless.”

  “As you wish. We are not as you are.”

  “Can all of the denizens of the wilderness hear my thoughts?”

  The fox looked almost aghast at the ignorance of the question. It had been too many years since Jarven had been an apprentice of any kind. “Jarven,” the fox’s eyes narrowed, “you are ignorant, and we accept that—but there is a depth of ignorance that will be tantamount to suicide, and that, we will not. It has been many, many years—beyond your ken—since I have last chosen to impart some trace element of myself and my power to one who is merely mortal.”

  “I would counter that it would be safest to gift the merely mortal with power; they are unlikely to cause harm to you in its use.”

  “Were I to bestow the same largesse on the wild and the immortal, they, too, would be unlikely to cause harm to me.” The fox’s smile was edged, sharp; it was predatory. “But that is beside the point; you understood, from the start, that any gift granted is also obligation or burden; that nothing is truly given between people like us. I am not The Terafin.”

  “I am not comfortable with charity.”

  “No? You are not comfortable requiring it, it is true. I do not think it has troubled you one way or the other until now, and even now, you consider the cost acceptable. But you have interrupted me. Some element of you is of me, now. Were you to put your own mind to it—and some small effort—you would be aware of me and my intent in the way we are aware of The Terafin’s. It is not because you are in or of the forest; it is because you are mine.

  “In turn, you are my responsibility. Your misbehavior, such as it is, would be laid at my feet; restitution for it would be made—should it be required—by me. I assure you that this has happened in the past.”

  “And did your apprentices survive?”

  The fox tsked. “Of course not. I do not know why you persist in asking questions to which you know the answer.”

  “Perhaps I like the sound of your voice.”

  “You are bold.”

  “Yes. But were I not bold, Eldest, I would not be here.” He shook his head in admiration. “She is managing Duvari almost perfectly.”

  “Is she? He has not left, and she wishes him to be gone.”

  “That is entirely in Duvari’s nature. She has given him nothing. She,” he added, “does not particularly approve of me; she is quite fond of Hectore.”

  “As are you.”

  “As am I. I am always fond of men who have managed to surprise me—even at cost to myself. And it happened in the distant past.”

  “And his servant?” the fox asked, with studied care.

  “I have been comforted to discover that the paragon of service is not, in fact, mortal.”

  The fox studied him. “You are not afraid of him?”

  Jarven was honestly surprised by the question. “Are you?”

  “He is dangerous,” the fox replied, which was both an evasion and an answer.

  “The Terafin does not believe he is.”

  “The Terafin does not understand what she sees. Or perhaps it is better to say, she does not see everything. She does not know his history; did she, she would not have given him free run of all her lands.”

  “You fail to understan
d the woman at the heart of this forest,” Jarven said quietly. “You understand her imperfectly because you are not mortal. She is appallingly straightforward, and entirely predictable; were it not for her talent, she would be dead a hundred assassination attempts ago. She does not know his history. Even did she, she would do as she has done because the history that carries the most weight with her is the history she has personally observed.

  “Andrei serves Hectore. The whole of his life in the time I have known him has been devoted to Araven, and to its master. Hectore, in turn, values Andrei more highly than he values anyone but his grandchildren. He considered—seriously—having Birgide Viranyi killed.”

  “He would have failed utterly.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. It is significant to me that Andrei has chosen to serve Hectore. And, Eldest, he has chosen; the service is his life. I have always envied Hectore his Andrei. If you harm Andrei—if anyone who in theory owes allegiance to The Terafin harms him without cause—she will be very, very angry.”

  “Yes, we understand that,” the fox replied, as if Jarven was observing that water was a liquid. “We merely assume that her attachment is a form of mortal ignorance.”

  “It is not. Oh, she has a plethora of mortal ignorances and beliefs, but not this one.”

  “You like him.”

  “I do not particularly like anyone.”

  “Why do you say that? It is not true.”

  “It is, Eldest. I can, for instance, say I like Hectore, but it signifies little. If he stood between me and my goal, I would push him off a cliff without a third thought; I might be troubled by second thoughts, but they would not stay my hand. But you know this about me; it is true of you, as well.”

  “It is, yes. I believe your Duvari is leaving.”

  “He will return.”

  “Will you follow him?”

  “No. I have seen enough for the moment. I wish to visit some of the rooms in the Order.”

  • • •

  “Jarven.” Finch’s arms were folded, her eyes narrowed. Had she not been forced to utter syllables—in this case, his name—her lips would have been compressed as well. It was not, in Jarven’s opinion, a particularly attractive look; it suited Lucille, but Finch was not Lucille.