But Jay said quietly, “She’s dead.” Just that. It was enough. He closed his eyes.
“Here it is.” The carriage slowed. The streets on the Isle were smooth, the stones large and flat; the journey from the bridge on had been less jarring and far less uncomfortable than the wild, careening ride that had led to it. “Home of The Terafin. You want me to wait?” Angel couldn’t see the driver’s expression, but he knew curiosity when he heard it. He could sympathize.
“No. We’ll be fine from here,” Jay told him curtly. She’d opened the door, and now stepped out, her knees folding slightly at the unexpected boon of solid ground beneath her feet. She took a breath, held it for a moment, and then looked across at the manse.
Coming to House Terafin had been no part of their morning’s plan. No part of their life’s plan, if it came to that. But the den looked up, now, to the gates that surrounded the property. Those gates were thick brass, the ends ornamented with tines that rose like solid spears into the heights. There was a guardhouse, of the type that existed in stories, and it was manned.
The den gazed at the building beyond these gates, at the small front grounds and the road that bisected the lawns, surrounded on either side by rows of flowers that Angel couldn’t name; they would never have grown them in the Free Towns.
Angel looked at the manse for different reasons than the rest of the den, emerging as they had into the streets, sunlight, and the lack of moving wheels. His father, Garroc, had served The Kalakar, one of The Ten. He had found distinction in service to the House, but in the end, he had left it, seeking the freedom and the quiet of the Free Towns in which to live out the remainder of his life. Short life, Angel thought, with a momentary bitterness, a clean resentment.
Angel now stood in the lee of the Terafin manse, before the guards who served the most powerful woman in the patriciate. Possibly one of the most powerful in the Empire. Here, so close to her presence, he could not help think of Terrick, of Weyrdon, and of his father’s isolated quest.
He glanced at Carver, and from there, to Jay. Jay was looking toward the carriage. She cursed, and Angel let go of the remnants of his old life in time to turn and see Arann, slumped partway out of the cabin. Caught, facedown, in the doors.
“Shit,” Carver said. “Angel, get off your backside and help me move him.” Carver went for Arann’s left; Angel crossed over and reached for his shoulder on the right. Arann was damn big, and he was unconscious. Moving him without killing him was going to take more than the two of them.
Finch and Teller moved in to try to help as well.
But Jay watched, her face graying in the bright sunlight.
“What’s wrong with him, Jay? Why are you looking like that?” Carver grunted as they managed to heave Arann into an upright position. He and Angel immediately slid under his shoulders before he could fall forward again, while Teller and Finch tried to brace him. They did their best not to touch his ribs, not to add any weight to them.
“It’s nothing.”
“Jay?” Teller looked at Arann’s face. It was gray. It was the color that Jay’s was slowly shading. After a pause in which no one spoke, Teller said, in the same quiet voice, “He’s dying, isn’t he?”
“Shut up, Teller.”
Angel and Carver exchanged one glance. Jay told them to shut up frequently. It was a daily occurrence. But Teller? Almost never. Never, in fact, that Angel could at this moment recall. “Just shut up.”
This is what Angel knew: You don’t get miracles. You can pray for them. You can wait for them. If you wait, life passes you by. You don’t get miracles. If you’re lucky, you get your life.
But only, he thought, looking grimly back at Arann, your life. He glanced at Jay, but it was hard to look at her face. She had banked her life on being a miracle, and for a while, it had worked. Now? Fisher, Lefty, Lander, and Duster were gone; Arann teetered on the edge of joining them.
He looked at Arann, thinking over the last few weeks. Wondering if it wouldn’t, in the end, be a kindness. After all, the dead waited by the bridge that led to Mandaros, and Lefty was certain to be there, hovering nervously, and looking for Arann’s shadow to stand in when he at last approached the Lord of Judgment.
But Jay didn’t want to let him go. She wouldn’t—he saw this as clearly as he had ever seen it—let any of them go without a fight. Arann—unlike Fisher, Lefty, Lander, or Duster—she had some hope of holding on to, and it was a fool’s hope. An act of desperation. Her face was white with it. And open, for a moment, with the fear of, the certainty of, failure.
We followed you, Angel thought, without recrimination or anger. And we’re still following, Jay. Where have you led us?
Carver tapped her shoulder, and her expression shuttered. Her shoulders were so stiff they didn’t relax, but she schooled everything else, and she turned to face two guards, who watched them without apparent curiosity.
“What’s your business with The Terafin?”
The guards, Angel thought, were good. They asked the question as if it had an answer. Angel leaned in slightly to catch it.
“I’ve been sent to deliver a message.” Jay spoke clearly, but nervously, at least if you knew her; her voice was a little too high. Angel wanted to stand beside her—or at least behind her, and ready—but he and Carver were all that was stopping Arann from plummeting face first into the ground.
The guard glanced at Arann. It was the only sign of inattentiveness toward Jay that he showed. “You can leave it with us; we’ll see that she gets it.”
“I was told to deliver the message to The Terafin herself.”
“You aren’t ATerafin,” the guard said, as if that fact weren’t obvious.
“No,” Jay replied, as if she knew it was. Yes, she was nervous.
“Well, then you probably don’t understand the rules of the House. The Terafin’s day is governed by strict schedule; if your message is a matter of emergency, you may deliver it to her right- kin, and he will see that she receives it.”
Right-kin? Angel glanced at Carver, and Carver shrugged. He didn’t sign, which was their preferred method of speaking about an ongoing discussion in which they weren’t even peripherally involved, but Arann was both heavy and difficult to hold up.
“We can’t. Look—I’ve been told to tell you that the message is from—is from Ararath Handernesse. But I can’t tell you any more than that. You just go and tell her—and see if she won’t see us.”
Angel winced. Carver grimaced. Finch and Teller said nothing; they didn’t move. Even Jester, who never seemed capable of understanding the words “shut up,” was silent.
The guard stared down at her impassively, but his glance flickered again to Arann, and it stayed there for a minute. Something in his expression shifted; whether it was a good shift, or a bad one, Angel couldn’t tell.
But he felt that, in different circumstances, he could trust this man.
As he had trusted Terrick, knowing so little about him.
“I’m afraid,” he told her, as he looked away from Arann and the den- kin who were holding him up, “that the most I can do is carry your message to Gabriel ATerafin. Who did you say sent you?”
“Ararath,” Jay replied. “Ararath Handernesse. Look—if you don’t carry the message to The Terafin, you’ll regret it. She’ll want to hear it, and she’ll be very angry—”
The guard almost winced, it was that bad. Angel wanted to tell her—but said nothing, did nothing. Jay, don’t push him. “What is your name?”
“Jewel,” she said. “Jewel Markess.”
“But everyone calls her Jay,” Finch added, from over her left shoulder, carefully not looking at either Carver or Angel, both of whom were rolling their eyes.
“Jewel, I am Torvan ATerafin. The Terafin personally chooses the guards who answer the gates of her manor on the Isle. She knows me by name, and I have some knowledge of her; she is the lord that I serve.
“If I choose not to deliver this message in the fashion you demand,
it is unlikely to cost me much. There is trust between my lord and me.”
Jay’s shoulders fell, and her head went with them for a moment. Angel could only see her back, but he understood, then, why she was so awkward, so unlike herself. He looked at Arann. Mouthed the word pulse at Carver. Carver grunted, but lifted a hand, listening with the tips of his fingers. He nodded, but it was a brief nod, and it held no hope at all.
Jay still held all the hope they could spare, and it was eating at her.
They had time; Arann had next to none.
But the guard, this Torvan ATerafin who had the House Name, even though he worked here on the outside, looked at Arann as well; he looked at the den. Angel met his gaze and held it. What the guard saw in the den, what he saw in Arann, Angel couldn’t say. But his jaw tightened slightly, and he glanced, for the first time, at the second guard, who had remained silent.
Something passed between them; it was not den-sign, but they didn’t need it. The other guard nodded in silence, and Torvan turned back to Jay.
“Wait here, Jewel Markess. I’ll return.”
“I’ll wait,” she replied.
He turned, then, and he walked—quickly—toward the manse, looking neither left nor right. The doors swallowed him, and left the den in a tense silence. Arann gurgled again. He wasn’t conscious, not exactly. Angel wondered how much he was aware of, if he was aware at all.
Jay turned at the sound of his voice, and she bit her lip. Lifted a hand to his neck, and let it linger there before she closed her eyes.
“He’s still alive,” Carver told her.
“I can’t find—”
“He’s still alive. Jay.”
She swallowed, and her eyes were a shiny blur, but she didn’t cry. Wouldn’t, Angel knew, even if Arann died right now. He wanted to tell her that this wasn’t her fault; that it wasn’t even her doing. But he knew how much comfort she’d take from the words: none. He didn’t offer them.
The wait was hard.
Jewel kept glancing at the single guard Torvan had left by the gate, as if she wanted to ask him if this was a game. Carver stepped on her foot, and she kept her mouth in the same, thin line that was her silence.
“Jay.” Angel touched her elbow to get her attention; she allowed it. “He’ll come back.”
One dark brow rose, and she grimaced. “That obvious?”
Angel shrugged, falling back on Carver’s most familiar gesture. His father, back in the day, would have smacked him for its constant use, and you had to love a man to miss him, even knowing this.
“We don’t have time,” she whispered.
Angel said, again, “He’ll come back. If he didn’t intend to do something, he would have sent us on our way.”
“You’re so sure?”
“You’re not?”
It was the wrong thing to say, but he couldn’t unsay it. He didn’t try.
“I’m sure of death, right now. Rath’s. Duster’s. Lander, Fisher, Lefty. I’m sure of death, Angel. Anything that’s not death?” She spread her hands, palms out.
“There he is.”
She looked up, then. Torvan ATerafin walked—almost jogged, clanking loudly, his shadow rippling over grass and flower beds—toward the gate. He spoke quickly, in a voice too low to be heard as more than background murmur, and the gates swung open.
“Jewel Markess. The Terafin has requested your presence. Please follow me.”
Jay hesitated. She stared up at the man, who wasn’t small, and her knees locked. She moved just enough to glance at her den; they were, to a person, waiting patiently for her word.
Except for one.
“Arann?”
Carver nodded grimly. Angel grimaced, and braced himself for the forward movement of this much dead weight. They staggered as they began to walk, trying to keep away from his ribs, his sides. There was no way they could move quickly.
The guard watched them, silent. Not impassive, but as if he were assessing the situation. As if the situation meant something to him.
Teller leaned toward Arann’s white face, listened there a moment, and then looked up at Jewel.
“He’s . . . breathing.”
He was dying.
Jay reached out and touched Arann’s face. “Arann?”
There was no answer but the silence of her den. Angel knew, hearing the single word, that had he been Arann, and in any place other than Mandaros’ Hall, he would have walked, danced, and sung just to ease what he heard there. They all would have.
But Arann couldn’t, didn’t, hear, and maybe that was a mercy.
“C’mon, Carver, Angel. Let’s get him in. We can’t leave him here.”
Finch was pale, and she fluttered like her namesake between them all, returning time and again to Arann’s limp head, his slack face. Teller shored up Carver’s side, inasmuch as he could, because Carver was on the side that the stranger hadn’t hit.
Jester walked behind them, and more useful, directly behind Arann’s back. Once or twice, he’d braced himself, holding out both hands to take some of Arann’s weight when either Angel or Carver was overbalanced.
They made maybe ten feet—the distance between their initial huddle and the now open gate—in five minutes. They would have taken the time if it had been five hours, but they knew, because it was so damn clear on Jay’s face you could almost read it word for word, that the time would kill him. It was already killing him, and Angel had a suspicion that their jostling and their handholds weren’t helping either.
But they had no stretchers, not even the makeshift ones that had been called into service after the raiders had done their grisly work in Evanston. Angel looked at the guard. He wanted to ask if they had such a thing in the manse—but the manse, with its broad, perfect, and forbidding wings, spoke of a station in life that was so far above him he couldn’t even figure out how to approach it.
Throughout it all, Jay walked backward, watching them. Pointing out steps, slight turns, the proximity of the gate. Telling Angel when to adjust his awkward grip.
“Here, Markess,” Torvan ATerafin said gruffly. “Let me help you.”
They all turned to stare at him, surprised that he had spoken. Surprised that when he had, it was to offer aid. Jay didn’t speak. She just stared at him as if his words weren’t Weston—or the Torra she loved to use in a foul mood—and she was still trying to figure out what he’d actually said.
He pushed her firmly to one side, stared down at Teller until the boy got out of his way, and then caught Arann under the arms and legs as the two who had been shouldering his burden stepped away at the quiet directive of their leader.
He strained as he lifted him, but he lifted him.
Torvan ATerafin carried Arann, which in theory freed up the rest of the den to pay attention to the manse through which they walked. Angel did. Carver did. Jester may have been—with Jester it was hard to tell. But Jay? No. And Finch and Teller were walking to either side of her, as if they thought she might need their literal support at any minute.
The place was huge.
The front doors weren’t adorned with House Guards, but a man in clothing so impeccable it might as well have been armor greeted them as they entered. Or he started to; Torvan brushed him aside, with a grunted apology for the lack of time, and the man hesitated for just a moment before nodding and getting the Hells out of the way.
Torvan led. Jay kept pace with him, walking to the right and five feet behind where Arann’s head dangled. She walked through the long, rectangular arch that separated a huge gallery from the main foyer, her feet brushing the colors of discrete rugs, stretched end to end with a break for benches between each, as if she were walking on cobbles.
Against the gallery walls, paintings alternated with long, long tapestries; the stitching in some were so fine, if it weren’t for the fall of the light against cloth, they might have been painted. Nobles were there, in the coalescence of disparate, long threads, but so, too, Kings and gods. Angel recognized them, and won
dered what their import to the House was.
He had no time to ask, and no real time to follow the unfolding story—besides which, given the direction they were walking in, he’d seen the ending first.
Jay didn’t notice them.
Angel felt guilty about doing so when she couldn’t, but took comfort from the fact that Carver was doing the same. Carver, whose lips were pursed, probably to stop a whistle from escaping, was cataloging the things he recognized—the silver, the magestones, the vases—all things that would make life much, much easier in the holdings, once they were palmed and sold.
Fair enough. None of them had any idea why Jay had dragged them here, spending the last of their money on a one-way carriage ride. But they’d all heard her claim to carry a message of import to The Terafin, and frankly, if any of them had been skeptical, they were in now. Maybe she thought The Terafin would reward them somehow for whatever it was Jay meant to tell her.
Because they weren’t eating tomorrow—or most of this week—if she didn’t. And Duster, along with Carver, had been pulling in most of the coins they’d been spending so carefully until today.
But, damn, this hall was long.
Angel glanced at Arann, or at what he could see of Arann from around Torvan ATerafin’s broad back.
If the long hall was unadorned by guards, the smaller halls through which Torvan led them were not. He struggled with Arann’s weight, and when Jay asked him if he could hurry, he failed to hear her. If Arann was heavy—and he was—Torvan ATerafin didn’t pause, and didn’t put him down. He asked for, and took, no rest.
Jay would normally have seen that.
Today was so far from normal she could be forgiven much. Angel winced once or twice, and Finch’s expression rippled with obvious concern. No one else said a word. Jay led, trailing in Torvan’s wake until they reached a set of large, closed doors.
These doors were girded, on either side, by guards in long surcoats and armor that literally gleamed in the magelight. They were rectangular doors, but they were wide and tall, and a symbol, surrounded by a single golden circle, crossed the seams between them.
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