Skirmish: A House War Novel

by West, Michelle

  She snorted. It was a graceless, foolish sound. “Does it matter?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Does it matter how costly it’ll be? You dropped it. I caught it before it hit ice.”

  “You do not understand the nature of that sword.”

  “No. But I understand what would have happened to you if I hadn’t. Do you?”

  He looked around at the bitter, broken landscape. After a pause, he said, “Yes. I…did not understand the nature of the danger.”

  And she had.

  For just a moment he saw her as the scion—the diminished and undignified scion—of the ancient seers of the long dead Cities of Man. It was seldom that he chose to remember either their significance or their power; he did so now. She had been called seer-born by Viandaran, but this was the first time Celleriant had ever been convinced that she was—that she could be—a power in her own right.

  In her bumbling way, she had been honest; her hand was bleeding. Her blood trailed down her wrist and across her sleeves; it also trailed down the hilt of the sword to the blade itself, where it evaporated.

  She could hold his sword. She could not wield it, of course, but Celleriant doubted that she was capable of wielding any sword that was not wrought for imbeciles. Yet mortal men had died for daring to simply touch the hilt of his blade in the past. His own kin could not approach the blade as she had—although perhaps they were unwilling to pay its price.

  “Yes, ATerafin. I give you my word that I will hold on to the sword. I will not let it drop here. I will never,” he added softly, “be parted from it again.”

  She exhaled, losing color, but also losing the exaggerated posture of human anger. She pried her fingers from the sword’s hilt; he saw that her knuckles had whitened and her skin was almost blue. He took the sword with care and frowned as he examined only its edge; in the gleaming light of this false Winter, its color had shifted almost imperceptibly. No one but Celleriant would notice; no one save perhaps Ariane herself.

  “That is not the way,” he told her coldly, “to blood this blade.”

  “You’re welcome.” She started to say more—she never seemed to be short of the babble that mortals so prized—but stopped herself. “So…do you know where we are?”

  “I have some idea, yes.”

  “Good. Can you get us out of here?”

  He stared at her as if she’d just asked him to cut off his own arm—or worse. It was an expression with which she was regrettably familiar, but not on his face. She laughed; she couldn’t help herself. Her laughter didn’t noticeably improve his mood.

  “Do you mean to imply that you came here without any knowledge of where we now are?”

  “Imply? No. If you want, I’ll say it outright: I have no idea where we are.”

  “How did you arrive here?”

  “On the back of the Winter King, if you must know. If it makes you feel any better, Ariane didn’t specifically tell you to keep me alive.”

  “I cannot discharge the duties I was charged with if you are dead,” he replied.

  “Or if you are?”

  He raised a pale brow. “My death would be considered an acceptable reason for failure.”

  She snorted. “Do none of your people have any sense of humor?”

  His smile was slender and very cold. “We do.”

  “You win. Tell me where we are?”

  “In a dream.”

  “A nightmare?”

  “If you prefer.”

  “Do we have any control over the shape the dream takes?”

  “Dreams are not my specialty, ATerafin. Do you normally exert that control over your own?”

  “No. But mine can’t kill me.” She glanced down at her injured hand. “And I’m betting when we get out of this one, I’m still going to be bleeding.”

  He nodded as if the blood was inconsequential. “Come. Follow. Follow closely.”

  “Why?”

  “The heart of the dream is waking.”

  Jewel looked at the mostly frozen water; from there, she looked up to where the growth of vines overhung what was apparently a small basin. “I came that way,” she finally said, pointing.

  He frowned. “Through the vines?”

  “There wasn’t any other way to reach you. I can’t fly.”

  “No more can I, now.” He began to walk, and his steps were apparently heavy enough to fracture the ice’s surface. “Mortal dreams, like most mortal power, are echoes of the truth. Mortals can conceive of greatness, but seldom achieve it. Your dreams are different. You touch what is there—but not, if Viandaran’s comments are true—deliberately. You stumble; you are mostly, but not entirely, blind.

  “Nonetheless, you could travel here.”

  Jewel hesitated, and then lifted her wrist. Around it, the strands of Ariane’s hair had thickened into a distinctive bracelet. Artisans might have crafted it.

  Celleriant glanced at its twining strands. He even lifted a hand to touch them, but stopped short and pulled back. “I see. I will not even say that you do not understand the magnitude of her gift, ATerafin—but rather, that you are beginning to understand it.” He shook his head and a smile—one that was neither cold nor cruel—touched the corners of his mouth and his perfect, gray eyes. “It is because of her gift that you walk here now, but it is not because of her gift that you are capable, in the end, of doing so.”

  “If this is a dream, can we wake up?”

  He laughed then. The sound made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end; it was like lightning strike, and it was so close. “Perhaps you have always been sleeping; perhaps it is now that you truly begin to wake.” He lifted an arm, and his hair began to move in the sudden breeze. “Witness, Jewel. The children of the gods are waking, and you have touched the edge of a single such child’s power. It has touched you.

  “The gods have always been transformative.” He held out a hand and she stared at it until he said, “Yes, I mean for you to take it.”

  And, oh, it was cold when she did. It was like ice.

  “Yes,” he said, divining her thoughts. “It is like the ice here. The ice is mine. Emblem of Winter and the cost of Winter. Come, ATerafin. I begin to understand.”

  “Good. Explain it to me.”

  “We regret Winter when it is long past its season, and only then. There has been no Summer for centuries. It should be Summer now, for the Hunt was called and the Winter Queen rode. Yet we are still trapped in Winter, still frozen in time.”

  She waited to hear more, or tried; his grip on her hand didn’t allow her to stand still. He began to drag her in the direction she’d pointed out, and the desire to preserve some dignity meant that she ran to keep up.

  Celleriant had no difficulty climbing the side of the basin. Jewel might have, but he had her clamber up onto his armor-plated back and cling, arms twined around his neck. It should have been awkward, and maybe for her it was; he didn’t appear to notice her weight. Nor did he have difficulty with the ice- and snow-covered vines. He drew his sword. Not for Lord Celleriant the indignity of crawling over, under, and around anything that stood in his way. But this time, the vines withered, defenseless; this time they sprouted no leaves, and drew no blood.

  “They’re not—not attacking you.”

  “No.”

  “Why? Why is it different this time?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Winter reigns here.”

  “But—”

  “Even dreams have their own rationale. It was to drive me—to drive us—here that the tree so distorted itself; it succeeded. But that tree and these vines are no longer one. Come.”

  She glanced through the passage he’d cut, at the exposed and sharp edges his sword had left. He built a bower of sorts as they walked, and Jewel frowned.

  “I don’t think it took me this long to reach you,” she finally said.

  “How would you know? Time passes differently here, if it can be said to pass at all.”

  “Then where ar
e we going?”

  “To the Winter King. If he carried you here, Jewel, he can carry you out. I do not guarantee that it will be entirely safe—but safety could not have been your first concern if you commanded him to bring you here at all.”

  “And you?”

  One silver brow rose. “ATerafin, you surprise me.”

  “Maybe more mortals would if you paid attention.”

  “Perhaps. But in the Winter Court one pays attention to the things that can kill one.”

  “That’s not true of everyone.”

  “No, ATerafin. It is not. But it has always been true of me.” He cut through the last of the twisting vines. A pathway now opened up across snow imprinted by a single set of footprints; they were hers. “Go.”

  “Come with me.”

  “I will not ride the Winter King while I still breathe.”

  “…why?”

  “He will not carry me.” He turned to glance at the fractured vines. “The dream is broken, ATerafin. I will emerge on my own. But I have some work left to do.”

  “Wait.”

  “One would think that it is you who are the immortal, given the time you waste. For what would you have me wait?”

  “You’re injured. In our world.”

  “Ah.”

  “You’ve taken wounds to your upper arms, and to at least your left thigh; I think there’s also a wound in your chest.”

  He lifted a mailed hand and flattened his palm across that chest. Then he nodded. “You are correct.”

  “Celleriant—”

  “They are not insignificant, but they are no longer my master. I have work to do here, and it will not wait, unless you desire the dreamscape to enfold The Terafin’s funeral.”

  Still she hesitated, torn.

  “This is not the first time you have left your kin in order to further your own goals.” Celleriant had swallowed Winter. The fact of ice, the fact of cold that killed, adorned his voice and his words. She saw herself in them, hated what she heard. Truth was like that, some days.

  “No. It’s not.” Turning, she began to sprint down the path her footsteps traced. The snow impeded her flight, but not by much, because she hadn’t been struggling for all that long before the Winter King appeared. He knelt on his forelegs. Angel still sat astride his back, his arms shaking even at this distance, his hands around the King’s tines.

  Jewel.

  “I got him. But he won’t follow.”

  No.

  “How do you know?”

  It is still Winter here. We must away before the Winter ends; the path will go with it, and I am not winged.

  She clambered up his back, between Angel and his neck; he rose. She tried to grip his horns and felt nothing at all in her palms except the bitter, biting cold. Her teeth began to chatter.

  “Angel.”

  “I’m here.”

  “Aren’t you freezing?”

  She felt his shrug against her shoulder blade; she couldn’t turn to look. “I’m cold,” he said. “But I’ve got Rendish blood and I can’t disgrace it by complaining about a little snow that I can’t see.”

  She laughed; it was wobbly. “I’ve got Torran blood. I can complain when the water isn’t even frozen. Avandar?”

  “He’s here. Almost here. There’s a bunch of ash where there used to be wood, but he avoided torching the height of the tree.”

  “Is he pissed off?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I’m going to ask the Winter King to take us somewhere safe. Like the Winter Court.”

  Angel laughed. It was shaky. “Thanks for coming back in one piece.”

  “More or less one piece?”

  “That, too.”

  The Winter King ran above snow that was painfully bright. His hooves disturbed none of it, but the wind did—and the wind was a blistering howl. Ice stung Jewel’s cheeks. She was certain it would have done the same to her hands, but she couldn’t feel her hands anymore.

  I need to talk to Sigurne, she told the great stag.

  She is waiting. She is as unhappy in her way as the Warlord is, but she is markedly more patient. A moment’s silence, and then he added, She is powerful, Jewel. Were she not old, she would be a danger in the future.

  She’ll never be a danger to me.

  How can you be so certain?

  We want the same things for the people around us. For the City, she amended. For the Kings. For the House. We probably want different things for ourselves. I trust her.

  Unwise.

  Yes. But if I were wise, I wouldn’t be riding you now, and Celleriant would be riding in the host of the Arianni. We are what we are.

  In silence, the Winter King continued to run, and Jewel marked the moment when the snow gave way to the side of a tree, and the ground approached as quickly as if she were actually falling. She closed her eyes. She also held her breath, but that was less voluntary.

  But the ground failed to hit her, and the Winter King failed to drop her, besides which, Angel’s arms were on the outside of her body, hemming her in. The wind died and in the stillness that seemed like sudden—deafening—silence, she heard the quiet voice of the Guildmaster of the Order of Knowledge.

  “ATerafin?”

  She opened her eyes. “Angel,” she said, under her breath, “Help me down. I don’t want to fall on my face in front of the guildmaster.”

  He had his own trouble. The Winter King knelt obligingly. Angel’s legs were shaking as he dismounted. So were his arms. But they would never be shaky enough to deny Jewel the help she’d asked for in such a hurried whisper.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. And then, because it was Angel, “I needed to know what you saw, Angel; I couldn’t see it myself.”

  He nodded, no more, because Sigurne was approaching.

  Jewel managed something like a crude bow.

  “This is not the time to stand on ceremony, ATerafin.”

  “Good. I don’t think I can, for much longer. Stand, that is.” Jewel’s legs collapsed beneath her. “But as long as we’re avoiding formality, can you please call me Jay? Or Jewel?” She hated the latter, but Sigurne was old enough that she was allowed a little formality.

  “Jewel, then,” Sigurne said. “You are injured.”

  It wasn’t a question; Jewel lifted her hands and opened them. Her palms were bleeding.

  “How?”

  “I—I picked up a sword.”

  “By its blade?” Matteos Corvel asked sharply. He was Sigurne’s personal version of Angel. He was never far from her side—when she allowed it.

  “Hush, Matteos. These are not the wounds one receives from mishandling a blade.” Sigurne caught Jewel’s hands in her own and examined them with care. She then frowned. “What is that on your lap, Jewel?”

  Jewel looked down. Snared in the panels of her loose skirt was a single, red leaf. It glittered. “Don’t touch it,” Jewel told the mage. “It’s a leaf.”

  “Is it now a danger?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not attached to the tree anymore.” Jewel took the leaf and shoved it hastily into her pocket.

  “The tree,” Sigurne said, looking up. Her eyes widened slightly, and her mouth opened, but not to offer words.

  “What’s happening?” Jewel’s question was sharper than she’d intended.

  “I believe your Celleriant is now ending the danger—to us.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Matteos, I believe it best that we retreat some little distance. Help me, please. Angel?”

  Angel nodded, and pulled Jewel to her feet. She allowed this in part because it meant she could trust him to take care of things like direction and walking; she looked up. She looked up and her mouth opened on the same silence as Sigurne’s had, but it stayed that way for longer.

  Celleriant’s sword was lightning; his shield must be thunder—he was the storm’s heart. His expression couldn’t be seen, but Jewel could feel it, even at this distance: rage, fury, and e
xaltation. Was he injured? He must be. But injured or no, he was as primal, as elemental, as unleashed fire, as desert storm. She had always thought him beautiful in a cold, sculpted way; that sculpture now moved, breathed, and fought.

  The tree screamed.

  It screamed in a rage not less than Celleriant’s own; it looked at nothing but Celleriant. Neither did Jewel. She was aware of Angel’s arms; aware of when she almost tripped over an exposed root; aware of when she stopped walking at all—but she couldn’t take her eyes off Celleriant. He rose as if winged, and he plunged the same way birds of prey might, his sword before him.