Shianne, too, was caught in the momentum of spell—Jewel had no other word to describe it—as still, as frozen, as Angel.
She turned, last, to Calliastra, and froze again. But she was more prepared this time.
Calliastra was not a single woman. She was like—very like—the gods in the Between, but more limited in scope. In the face of a god, if one chose to look for long, expressions were carried by a limitless, unending shift of faces, some old, some young, some male, some female; nothing remained unchanging for long. When gods spoke, or rather, when mortals could hear them, they spoke in a chorus of all possible faces, all possible voices.
Calliastra, as still as Angel, could not speak. But silent, those multiple presences still overlapped, shifting and changing as Jewel watched. Shifting, changing, and yet, somehow each static as it came to the surface and retreated, like a tide.
Daughter of darkness, Jewel thought, as the god-born child’s eyes narrowed, enlarged, became, for a moment, all of night and shadow, with none of its peace or tranquility.
What would it be like, to love and know for certain that love—any love given, any love accepted—was a death sentence? What did that leave? Hatred?
Yes, Jewel thought. Hatred—but mostly, and always, of oneself. If Jewel were Calliastra, she would eschew company, friends, family. Any family but the Lord of the Hells, the only being she would be certain she could not destroy. And there was no love to be found there.
But no, she thought. Calliastra needed to feed. The hunger that drove her was nothing like the hunger that had driven Jewel or her den-kin in the leanest of years, but the inability to eat would have the same results: she would starve. She would die.
Caught between these imperatives, where could she go? What could she do? What were the limits of sustenance for a child of gods?
If Jewel were Calliastra, the isolation alone would have driven her, broken her. The long, empty afternoons of a childhood in Rath’s apartment had been so difficult. She had wanted, needed, family. She had built that. It meant as much to her as family had meant to her Oma.
She’s not you.
No. But some part of Calliastra was that bruised, terrified, self-loathing child Jewel had glimpsed briefly in the tangle. And had that child been able to love, to be loved, in any safety, this godchild would not exist. What she needed was a different form of sustenance. What she needed was the ability to interact with the living, the mortal, without destroying them.
I’ll accept what you are, Jewel thought. But I’ll judge what you do. And what you do in this house has to be different.
And she thought—of course she thought—of Duster. Duster, who had been broken and had survived, as so many of the broken do. Duster, who wanted what Calliastra wanted, and who was also certain she deserved none of it.
Sometimes, her Oma said, we get what we don’t deserve.
And that cut both ways. Always had.
She reached out for Calliastra. She touched her cheek with the dry palm of her hand. She said, “Your father is not welcome here. He will never be welcome here. But you are not your father. You are not your mother. The forces that drive you are stronger than the forces that drive me because they are so absolute, and so eternal—but you are not simply the one or the other.”
Calliastra did not, could not, respond.
“What you’ve done in the past doesn’t matter to me. What you do in the future will. You don’t have to stay. I’m not building a prison. I’m building a home.” She exhaled; her breath, as it left her lips, felt warm. “No one in my home is perfect because no one is capable of perfection. Not me, not any of my den. Will it be harder for you? Yes. Yes, absolutely. But they’ll accept you. They’ll trust you.”
She brought her other hand to the still, cold cheek. “Will you stay?”
Calliastra blinked. Shifting faces stilled, hardened, forming a single image—a single, familiar image. Her eyes were obsidian, and the shadow of great wings rose. Jewel was certain that she meant to pull away, but she did not tighten her grip; she was aware that she should never have touched her at all.
The shadows pooling in those eyes grew; the wings developed color, texture. Calliastra was angry.
But even thinking it, Jewel knew this was not precisely right. It wasn’t Calliastra.
She said, voice soft and far, far colder than she intended, “You are not welcome here.” And even as she spoke, the darkness receded, as if suddenly confronted with harsh light.
Calliastra’s face did not change; this appearance was the one she had chosen, the one with which Jewel was most familiar. It wasn’t Duster’s face. It wasn’t the face of a young woman, broken on the shoals of her coming of age. It was the face of someone who had seen life and understood how very bitter life could be.
And it was that woman who said, “I will stay.” She met and held Jewel’s gaze as if waiting.
Jewel didn’t know for what. But no, even as she thought that, she knew she was wrong. Calliastra was waiting for oaths, for oathbinding. For an act of blood or an act of divinity that would take all choice except this one out of her hands. It was not something that Jewel could do. Or, perhaps, in this strange half-world created by the dint of Adam’s power and Adam’s will, it was something she simply didn’t want to do.
“I don’t understand you,” Calliastra said, when Jewel failed to offer—or demand—what she expected.
Jewel said, “We all build home in our own way. Even were I a god, I could not demand what gods demand. It would change the nature of home; it would break everything I’ve tried to build.” And that, too, was true. “But here,” she continued, words falling out of her mouth before she could choose them carefully, “you will not feed. You won’t go hungry. You might hate it here—gods know Celleriant does.”
“My hunger—”
“Not here,” Jewel said again. “It is not welcome here. You are. Do you understand? The hunger is not all of you. When you are in my home, it will not destroy you.”
“You do not understand. My father once again walks the world. He is not distant. I feel his power. I am some part of it. What he was, he gave to me.”
Jewel nodded.
“Mortals are not so bound. You cannot understand—”
“I understand,” Jewel said, cutting her off because she was heading down a path that was much, much harder to follow, “that the Arianni were created as echoes of, shadows of, Ariane. And I also understand that there are three sleeping Princes beneath my home. They didn’t do what they knew she wanted. They didn’t do what she herself would have done.
“Is it harder for you? Yes. Yes, it bloody well is. I can’t offhand think of a harder life, a more terrifying existence. But it’s all you’ve got. When you’re with me, when you’re in my lands, the hunger will not destroy you.”
“Am I to starve, then?”
It was a good question. A fair question.
Jewel felt the edge of an answer take shape; it was visceral. It cut. “No.” And she offered Calliastra her hand, red with drying blood, and sticky with it. “But if it is my decision to shelter you, the consequences are likewise mine. I will feed you. I will sustain you.”
Jewel. Avandar’s voice. And cutting into the two syllables, the voice of the Winter King. They had returned.
And Jewel said, We need her.
The Winter King understood the value of, the power of, the firstborn. It was Avandar who said, We, Jewel? She is not what you once lost. She is, inevitably, death. Understand what she is. See her clearly, if you hope to survive her.
He understood that no argument would sway her. And he understood, as the Winter King did not, that it was not simply about power.
The difference, Jewel, is that I have observed you for most of your adult life. And I have observed the Sen. I believe that you can, now, survive the decision you have made because the wilderness is—finally—waking. It shakes itself free of the shackles imposed by the gods in concert, the gods who abandoned the world.
; I’m not a god.
No? Tell me where you are.
She looked down at Adam’s bent and slightly trembling back. She frowned. In the palms of her hands she could feel the cool skin of the godchild. But Calliastra stood, some distance away, surrounded by the Arianni who considered her the greatest threat to their well-being.
She lifted her head to meet her domicis’ eyes. “Home,” she whispered.
Almost, yes. There is no other place you could do what you have just done. Can you not see her, Jewel? Can you not see your hand in her features?
But Jewel looked at Calliastra and saw many things. Too many. She had created none of them, had saved none of them, had killed none of them.
“Home.”
4th day of Lattan, 428 A.A.
Merchant Authority
Finch was at her desk in the Merchant Authority when the ledger to her left flew open on its own. There were windows, of course, but they did not open to the streets—or the sky. There were only two ways this book could open. She glanced at it, frowning, and set aside the draft of a contract on which she’d been working.
Tea was cooling in the cup to her right, and food sat untouched. She glanced at it with some guilt; if she didn’t eat, Lucille worried. Lucille, at the moment, did nothing but worry. As she could not rationally argue against worry or fear, Finch did what she could to soothe the worries within her grasp—but Lucille was not truly worried for Finch.
No, she was worried for Jarven. And worried about him. Both existed in balance, and always had. It was, to some, odd that a person could both love and fear the same man, but it felt almost natural to Finch; she’d lived with Duster, after all. Duster would stop any other gang from murdering members of her den, but she was always a hair’s breadth away from stabbing them herself in her frequent bouts of rage.
Jarven did not rage.
He did not seem to give in to anger; she had seen him angry only a handful of times and was never completely certain that the anger was genuine. Emotions and states were just one part of his perpetual disguise; he adopted them where it suited his purpose and shed them where it did not.
She reached for the ledger, drew it closer, and after pursing her lips, set it atop the contracts she had been reading. Jarven would have chuckled; if there was an actual threat, she instinctively attempted to protect hours and weeks of work.
Lucille would have shouted at her. The thought drew a smile from some hidden well—and it had to be so well hidden it was not immediately obvious even to its owner; very little made Finch smile these days.
She lifted her cup, as if drinking, focused her gaze on the page—the two pages—that had been revealed, and set the cup down.
Jarven had acquired these books. He had claimed they had come with the office, but Finch did not believe him. Could not, in fact, imagine that someone could be as bloody-mindedly thorough as Jarven when it came to matters of security. Some of his odd protections would never have occurred to Finch—and Finch had seen ancient, wild magics. She had seen a living god.
She had not seen Jarven for almost a week.
She knew—through Terafin channels—that Hectore of Araven had also been “convalescing” within his impressive estate; Birgide had made clear that convalescing was a euphemism. The Kings were concerned by the absence of both men. Lucille was not yet frantic; apparently, in a distant youth, Jarven had frequently disappeared for weeks at a time—and always, in the end, to the detriment of his enemies.
Finch believed it, but she did not believe it of Hectore.
There was a knock at the door. Finch said carefully, “I am occupied, Lucille. A matter of pressing importance has come to my attention.” Her words were taken by the weft of the room’s magic; Lucille would hear them. No one else, in theory, would. She had tested some of the magics laid across the whole of this room, but not all of them.
The door did not open. Lucille did not reply. Finch wondered absently if she were even now walking past her desk to the doors the Chosen guarded. She would not have been completely surprised had Jarven materialized in the room, to one side of his desk. He did not.
A familiar figure did. A small, golden fox. He glanced around the room as Finch rose instantly from her chair and made her way to him. Sunlight gleamed off his fur and silvered his whiskers. She knelt immediately although she did not attempt to touch him or to offer him any aid that he did not demand.
He nodded with august approval. “Finch.”
She made no mention of the book, no mention of defense. She wasn’t entirely certain that the spell was a defense. Clearly, it was meant to indicate the appearance of something unnatural, but she highly doubted it was meant to reveal demons. Or perhaps it was, but in that case there was more involved.
“If you are looking for Jarven,” she began.
His whiskers twitched. He looked pointedly at her lap, and she immediately held her arms out. He was an almost negligible weight as he leaped into them; she had held small cats that were heavier. And she knew this could change on a whim. “I am not looking for Jarven.”
“Apologies, Eldest. My service to The Terafin does not include the wilderness or your forest; I do not completely understand what you seek.”
He snorted, and warm breath touched her cheek as she rose, still holding the gold-furred creature in her arms. “Even were your service to include that wilderness, you would not. You are mortal. To turn the whole of your life to such an understanding would avail you little, in the end. You simply do not have long enough. I have come,” he added, “for you.”
“I have duties here—”
“Yes, yes,” he replied, with some irritation. He grew heavier, as if weight were punctuation. “But you are wanted now.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“And have you orders?”
“Orders? No.” Again, whiskers twitched. “Can you not hear the forest, Finch? Can you not sense it?”
She looked around the walls—four walls—of her shared office. “No, Eldest. I am not of the forest. I cannot sense it at all. Perhaps you want the Warden?”
“If I wanted the Warden, I would be with the Warden. Tell me, are all mortals so stupid?”
Finch had been called worse in her life, with the same degree of accuracy. “Almost all of us, yes.”
At this, the fox chuckled. “I can see his hand in your responses, you know. Jewel wouldn’t like that.”
“She doesn’t like it much, no. But she doesn’t trust Jarven.”
“Because she is not, at base, stupid. But oddly, Finch, I don’t think you trust him, either.”
“I trust him to be Jarven,” she replied.
“Yes, yes. You are wanted. You must come.”
“What has happened?” She shifted the fox’s weight carefully enough that she could touch the door. Lucille was there before the door was fully opened, and yes: so were the Chosen. Torvan and Marave. They all blinked as they saw Finch, unharmed. Their eyes fell in unison to the fox in her arms.
They could see him now. They could see the fox clearly.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Lucille. “I did have a very important visitor.”
“Is that a fox?”
“It is the fox,” Finch replied, just a touch of warning in her voice. “And he has come with word. I am, apparently, wanted at the Terafin manse.”
Torvan stiffened. Marave said nothing. Lucille turned toward the outer office as if they were no longer present. Finch was safe, and her visitor was a small golden animal. The former was of great concern to Lucille, and the latter was none of her business, in her own determined estimation. “We have received no word from the right-kin,” Torvan said.
“No. I imagine that someone has carried word to Teller, though.”
“The Warden,” the fox agreed.
Lucille stiffened and paused, but Torvan and Marave might have spent their casual, waking hours in the company of talking animals for all the reaction they offered. Torvan, however, had seen this fox befo
re. Neither demanded an explanation from either Finch or the fox.
Lucille, however, folded her arms, all but planting herself in the doorway through which Finch would have to walk. Finch’s arms formed a cradle for the fox, or they would have tightened—but she would have let them do so at her sides, where the tension would not be immediately obvious to observers.
As if he could understand the vein of her worry, the fox said, “I will not harm her. Jewel likes her and considers her necessary. And Jarven is fond of her.”
This did nothing to still Finch’s worry, and the fox knew it. The corners of his wide, round eyes shifted. “Yes,” he said, to the unspoken fear. “Everything that can be used should be preserved against possible future need.” To Lucille, however, he said, “The Terafin has returned.”
• • •
Nothing would have been guaranteed to get Finch out of the Merchant Authority office as quickly, but she remained silent until they were in the crowded city streets. Since she was not leaving at the arranged time, there was no carriage, and while a message could be sent—quickly—to the manse to arrange one, Finch was not of a mind to do so.
“If you will leave your guards behind,” the fox said, “we can travel by foot much more quickly.”
“No, thank you. The Terafin will know where I am; she will know how much time it will take to disentangle myself and arrive.” The fox nodded, as if he had expected no better. Finch, who learned early to appreciate the condescension that made her invisible to Jarven’s many rivals, was not upset. “Do you know where Jarven is?”
“Yes.” He lifted his head.
“Is he with The Terafin?”
“Not quite yet, no. He is a reckless young man.”
Jarven was not young by any stretch of the imagination, but reckless was, if harsh, accurate.
“Do you understand why I wished to own him?”
“No. The immortals I’ve met—and I have not had The Terafin’s experience—don’t think like the rest of us do. If you were mortal, the word would not be ‘own.’ It might be ‘employ’ or ‘hire.’ Ownership implies a distinct lack of choice; among mortals it would be called slavery.”
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