Skirmish: A House War Novel

by West, Michelle

  “That won’t be necessary,” Sigurne replied. “However, I do have a favor to ask.”

  “The stones?”

  “Indeed.”

  Ellerson looked down at the cupped palms of her hands. “If you are willing to leave this task with me, I will place them around the wing. ATerafin?”

  Jewel nodded, granting permission.

  “Will you see to their activation?”

  “I already have.”

  Ellerson’s left brow rose.

  “They are within the confines of acceptable legal magic, Ellerson. I give you my personal word that they will not record any conversation held by the den; they are merely here to dampen and possibly to alert those who live within the wing. If your master would feel more comfortable, you may seek Gabriel ATerafin’s permission first.”

  “I am certain that will not be necessary,” was Ellerson’s smooth reply. He bowed, his hands now full of stones that weren’t all that small to begin with. “Guildmaster.”

  Jewel watched with interest as Sigurne entered her rooms. They were larger than Jewel’s, but not as large as some of the rooms used for visiting dignitaries elsewhere in the manse. “Can I help with anything?”

  “No. As you can see, the magi are not outfitted in a fashion the patriciate would otherwise expect of men and women of power; we wear our robes. I have robes designed for state funerals, and one extra robe for emergencies; I have no jewelry that is not part of my uniform, and no particular need to use combs and clips in my hair.”

  Matteos began to unpack his unwieldy bag. As Sigurne had said, she had two robes; one was remarkably fine, even in this waning light.

  “Will you have lamps or—”

  “Magelight is best. I have, of course, brought my own.” The mage smiled, glancing around the room. “This is much finer than many of the rooms I’ve stayed in as a member of the Order. I assure you that I am content.”

  “It’s not you I’m worried about,” Jewel replied under her breath.

  “Good.”

  “Will you take tea?”

  “I would love tea. I’ve heard that the domicis—”

  “I’ll ask Ellerson.” Jewel turned to leave and Sigurne lifted a hand; it was finely veined but entirely steady, remarkably so in a woman of her age. “Is Lord Celleriant in the wing?”

  Jewel hesitated. “Yes.”

  “He is recovering.”

  “Yes—and I don’t think he’s happy about it either.”

  Sigurne smiled almost fondly, as if Jewel’s tone had evoked a very pleasant memory. “It makes me nostalgic, Jewel. Very well. I will not ask if he is accepting visitors, but I will ask you to make clear that I am, and at his leisure, should he be so inclined to grace an old woman with his presence.”

  Ellerson was waiting not far from the closed doors when Jewel left Sigurne to find him. It was awkward. Shorn of Angel and Avandar, she met the older domicis in halls that felt more his than hers. And why wouldn’t they? He took care of them; she didn’t. Her Oma had always felt that your home was the place you cleaned and cooked in. The idea that strangers could be responsible for such a task would have irked the old woman no end.

  Jewel had never been a good cook. She could flatter herself by admitting she was a bad one—because that meant she’d tried. Scrounging for food in the holdings made food, period, the most important part of the day; how it was prepared came a very distant second. Somehow, cooking had never become part of her daily routine in the Terafin manse. Neither had cleaning. This man had done both upon their arrival—admittedly with the help of dozens of servants of various levels of seniority—and she had trusted him as much as she’d ever trusted an outsider.

  And he’d left her.

  He’d left her. He’d come back for everyone else. She wanted to be happy for them. She was. But it cut anyway, and she found it hard to be around him for any length of time.

  Because he was Ellerson, he knew. “ATerafin.”

  “The guildmaster would like some tea.”

  “For two or three?”

  “Three would be best, although I doubt Matteos will drink any of it.”

  “Very well.” He bowed.

  “Ellerson.”

  He rose just as easily, his expression neutral, shuttered.

  “Who do you serve, now? Who’s your contract with? Is it with the House?”

  “It is with the den, in aggregate.”

  “What, they all signed it?”

  He nodded gravely.

  “And what if one of them dies?”

  “Jewel, if, when I serve a master, he loses a limb, and my contract is not defined by length of time, my work is not yet done.” He fell silent. She turned from him then, but was drawn back by the sound of his voice. “Let me ask you a question if you will answer it honestly.”

  Back still toward him, she nodded.

  “Would you have survived had I been your domicis? You disappeared months ago, in the Common. Demons were sighted there, and extensive damage was done. Had it been I, and not Avandar, at your side, would you be here at all?”

  She was silent.

  “And what of your chances now? You will wage war for the House. If I am the man who is by your side, what have I to offer except advice? I cannot wield a sword, and my skill at unarmed combat is lamentable. I have no arcane powers and little arcane knowledge. When you are attacked by a demon—or a small army—how am I to preserve your life?”

  She turned then. Her hands were by her sides; her hair was in her eyes. For once, she let it be. Ellerson’s expression was not the expression of the domicis, but it wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. Even at a remove of over a decade, she remembered what he’d looked like when the lamp lit the underside of his chin in the dark of her nightmare room.

  His voice softened at whatever it was he saw in her face. “Jewel. ATerafin. I understood that you would be a member of the House Council. I understood what you had risked and what you had managed, against all odds, to achieve under The Terafin’s command. It has never been my goal in life, not even in the guildhall as a callow youth, to serve the powerful.”

  Jewel was arrested for a moment by the image of Ellerson as a callow youth; she couldn’t quite get her thoughts around it.

  “I would have served you, regardless. You will be a power. You are one now, although you don’t understand what that means well enough to leverage it in pursuit of your goals. But I understood that you were seer‐born, and I understood some small part of what your future would—must—entail. To stay with you—and I believe I said this at the time—would have been a betrayal of my calling. I am not a servant; I am domicis. I knew that what you would need was not what I could provide.” He waited, and after a moment, his voice still soft, he said, “Tell me that I was wrong.”

  She closed her eyes. It was only for a few seconds; she told herself that. “You were wrong,” she whispered. “I trusted you, Ellerson. If it weren’t for you, I don’t think we’d’ve made it. You taught us how to fit in with the House.” She opened her eyes, then. “I mean, fit in as much as we could. We weren’t born to this.”

  “You’ve grown into it.”

  “Or it’s grown around us.”

  His nod was grave. He made no move to leave; he knew she hadn’t finished. He was Ellerson; somehow he’d always understood much of what she hadn’t or couldn’t say. He’d left her. She remembered. She remembered vowing never to trust anyone like him again. Fifteen years ago. Sixteen. She couldn’t remember the exact date; that wasn’t the way she held on to the past.

  So much had changed, since then. So damn much. She could remember the shock and the pain of his departure. She could remember the anger that had followed, quick as an unexpected slap.

  But she could also remember the domicis who, with his pinched, exact expression and his quiet, annunciated demands, had sat tending the lamp’s oil while she slept, afraid of the dark.

  “You were wrong,” she said again, this time more quietly. “But you were right,
as well. No, I wouldn’t have survived in the Common had Avandar not been there. I wouldn’t have survived in the South, either.” She looked up, throat tightening, voice thickening. “Couldn’t you have stayed anyway? What you gave me, he can’t.”

  After a long pause, Ellerson said, “Jewel, you speak now of your needs, of your experience. Understand that I also have desires and needs; they are born out of years as a domicis. My role is to be the ultimate servitor; it is singular. I do not know how to become the lesser servant, the second fiddle.”

  The words were almost shocking, coming as they did from Ellerson. Jewel blinked. “You mean I—I couldn’t give you what you needed?”

  “No. Because what you need, only Avandar can provide.”

  “But you came back—”

  “Yes. Because what they need is twofold. You, first and foremost, for however long it lasts, and me. They need my advice, my sense of order, my sense of the patriciate and the games the patriciate can play; if I never served men of power, believe that I grew to understand them well. I can give your den what they require; I can be that much.” He smiled; it was a sad, strange expression. “I am fond of your Finch and your Teller; I am fond of Arann who is happiest in his silence. I am fond of Angel, even if he wanders like your shadow when you are hundreds of miles away, which is quite awkward. I confess that Carver is still a touch on the rebellious side, and I have difficulty learning much about Jester—arguably the most visible of your den in a crowd.

  “But I am also fond, ATerafin, of you. This is as close as I will ever come to serving as your domicis again—and perhaps I deluded myself, but I felt that if I could watch over and serve your den, I would in the end be doing a service for you that you might value above all others.”

  Jewel’s eyes stung. It was both sudden and unexpected, and she turned her face toward the place where wall met floor beyond the runner’s edge.

  “My apologies, ATerafin, for the inappropriate timing of this conversation.”

  “I started it,” she said.

  “Yes. But I am domicis. We are aware of when—and how—to end inappropriate conversations, and I chose, for entirely selfish reasons, not to do so. I will, however, mollify the reputedly patient guildmaster by preparing a most excellent tea.”

  Jewel took a few minutes after Ellerson had departed to gather herself in the silent and momentarily empty hall. It was a small hall, a slender one with shorter ceilings than the public halls that led to the wing; it was meant to connect rooms, or at least doors, in a way that suggested home, not the wild opulence of the impressive rich. She didn’t give herself more than a few minutes because Sigurne was waiting.

  “Enter,” the mage said, when she knocked on the door. She let herself in.

  “Is everything all right?” Sigurne asked. Jewel had hopes that when she was the age of either Ellerson or Sigurne, she’d be half so perceptive.

  “Yes. It took me a little while to find Ellerson.” Fifteen years, give or take a couple.

  “If you have no objection to chairs, I am fond of sitting.”

  “Less fond of people who hover?”

  “Very much less.” She smiled as Jewel took the closest chair. The smile failed to reach her eyes. “What purpose do my magi now serve?”

  “They’re here?”

  “They have arrived, yes.”

  “The Winter King—and I mention him because I’ve no doubt your magi will hear rumors—felt that the tree had to be uprooted and destroyed if the funeral rites were to be carried out in relative safety.”

  “He felt the tree still presented a danger to us?”

  “I’m not as clear on that. He felt that what inhabited the tree presented a danger to mortals. I think it’s a danger the city is already familiar with.” The woman in the seat closest to Jewel’s now looked, of a sudden, like the ruler of an Order both arcane and profound.

  “Celleriant was trapped in a dream. Or in the dreaming. It was physical, Sigurne; I saw what he saw. I was where he was.”

  The mage nodded. Jewel would have been more comfortable if she’d remembered to blink.

  “The Winter King feels that mortals can be trapped in the dreaming, but not in the same way that Celleriant was. I think—”

  “You think the sleeping plague has something to do with your tree.”

  “With whatever it was that enchanted or inhabited the tree, yes.”

  Sigurne closed her eyes, which was a relief. When she opened them, she looked distinctly less frightening, but distinctly more unhappy. “I wish that House Terafin were not in the midst of these difficulties. I understand that you are to be embroiled in them—but I feel that it is not in the interests of the Empire at this time.”

  Jewel had no response to offer, which was fine, because Ellerson, armed with tea, saved her. His timing, as always, was impeccable, and he stayed to serve, which was unusual in this wing. Sigurne seemed not to notice him, which implied that it wouldn’t be unusual in most other places. He had, on the other hand, chosen less formal mugs and plates for the service.

  “I will speak with the Exalted,” Sigurne said, a large mug cupped in two hands. The mugs were warm, and the room was not. Fire helped, but the coming night was a Henden night, and the nights had been cold. “I will ask them about the dreaming.”

  “Ask them about the Warden of Dreams instead,” Jewel suggested.

  “Where did you hear that title?”

  “The Winter King.”

  “I see.” Sigurne looked past the top of Jewel’s head for a long moment before she shook herself and offered a rueful smile. “You make me feel like a girl again.” The problem with that version of rueful, in Jewel’s opinion, was that it was calculated.

  “Is that a good thing?” Jewel asked, because feeling like a girl again—at the wrong age—wasn’t a good thing for her.

  “No, regrettably, it is not. You have become more perceptive in your absence,” the mage added.

  “Had to happen sometime. It’s not reliable, if that helps at all.”

  This time, Sigurne’s smile was genuine; it was also tired. “I would have you give me good news, if there is any to be had,” she finally said.

  “Good news isn’t my responsibility.”

  “Is it anyone’s, these days? The tea, by the way, is excellent. I notice you haven’t touched yours; perhaps you’ve become jaded.”

  “I’ve never been much of a tea drinker. Finch is—but I think that’s Jarven’s influence.”

  She stood. “Please fetch Matteos.”

  “Why?”

  “I wish to visit my mages in the garden. It’s not what you think,” she added. “They are powerful, they understand the legal limits of their power, and they understand the physical limits as well. But they tend to become somewhat fractious where unknown magic is involved, and they often require superivison.”

  Jewel thought this through. “You mean they won’t want to destroy the tree if they know anything about it.”

  “Sadly, I mean exactly that. If the tree does attempt to kill them, they will of course do what they can to reduce it to ash. Given your domicis’ attempts—and his very partial success—I would say that they are in concert only barely a match for what they might face.”

  “Do you want company?”

  “I will accept the company of a member of the House Council, yes. I expect, on the other hand, that Gabriel ATerafin will be doing without sleep for much of the evening.”

  Jewel stopped by her own rooms to fetch warmer clothing. Warmer in this case also dispensed with the dress. Although all of her dresses had skirts that were wide and loose enough to run in, they made her feel awkward. The one good thing about travel with the Voyani: no one was expected to wear anything as impractical as the Northern dress. Not even the Matriarch.

  While she was in her room, she stopped in front of her bedside table. Hesitating, she opened the small drawer that held a few of her gathered treasures. She pulled out the old, battered iron box, and lifted its lid. Wrapp
ed in cloth and nestled in the interior of that box were three leaves. She retrieved a fourth: a leaf of ruby. In the lower light of the room it gleamed not like gem, but like liquid.

  She started to put them together and then stopped because her hands were shaking almost uncontrollably. Avandar.

  Jewel?

  Five minutes later—give or take a few—Avandar burst through her door. It was heavy, but he opened it with force. Probably magical, at that. It flew on its hinges, the doorknob clattering against the wood panels. She was seated on the bed, her hands in her lap. “Sorry,” she said, looking up.