City of Night

by Michelle West

He draped the cloak around her shoulders, and she let him, moving her hands at last; feeling her fingers tingle as she stretched them and lifted them to the clasp at the cloak’s neck. There, in raised relief, she felt the solitary H of Handernesse.

  In its day, this had been a truly fine cloak, and only one man had worn it; only one man would ever wear it.

  But she gathered its folds around her now, seeking comfort from them.

  “Terafin—”

  “Jewel Markess will join me after the middle dinner hour.”

  He did not ask her if she would eat. He had brought her grandfather’s cloak, and she wore it. He understood what that meant.

  She did not order him to leave her; he did not require the command. He knew that she would stay some time yet in this room, and perhaps he even understood why.

  But she waited until he left her; she heard the click of the door at her back. She knew he would wait just beyond those closed doors until the moment she chose to vacate this room. And she would.

  First, however, she walked, encircled by the cloak the lion of Handernesse had worn when she had been his adored granddaughter and the hope of his House. She reached the ruined center of the room. The flesh and the skin, the scorched hair, the small, blunt teeth, remained where they had been discarded.

  She was not sentimental or foolish enough to attempt to gather them. Instead, she knelt, and among these things, she found the one glimmer of light. She bent, and her fingers closed over the stretched, soft gold of a ring’s back. Turning it, she saw the crest of Handernesse, and she lifted it, for a moment, to her lips.

  More than that, she could not in safety do. She was The Terafin, and she had given up the luxury of tears and open grief when she had taken that title. She had given up more.

  She regretted both, briefly and fiercely, here, where it was safe to do so.

  Chapter Seventeen

  22nd of Scaral, 410 AA Order of Knowledge, Averalaan Aramarelas

  SIGURNE MELLIFAS STOOD ALONE in her Tower room, her hands on drawn curtains, her eyes avoiding the reflection the night cast back at her. Meralonne APhaniel had sent word, but it was brief; he was to join her in her Tower. She waited. Decades, she had honed the art of waiting—and it was an art, one driven by necessity—but sometimes the ability failed her, like any hard-won skill. She let the curtains fall, and stepped away from the window, blind for the moment to what occurred in the distant streets below. It was dark, yes, but in Scaral, on this night, the darkness fell early.

  She could not, of course, command Meralonne to tender an immediate report. So much of their work was shadowed and hidden, which was its own bitter irony. Even had he used magic this day—and he must have—no writ of exemption would be necessary unless The Terafin herself demanded it.

  Amarais.

  When the knock came, she walked to the door and opened it quietly. Meralonne APhaniel stood in the door’s frame, wearing an ancient emerald robe and holding a guttered pipe. She stepped aside in silence, and he entered the same way.

  “Well?” she asked him.

  “Sit, Sigurne. I cannot sit if you do not, and I am weary.”

  She did not wish to be confined by the arms of a chair and the bulk of weathered desk. But she did not say this; instead, she sat upon the corner of that desk, and waited.

  He frowned, but understood what she did not say; he was not a man who liked to be confined. And yet, she thought, staring at his shadowed gray eyes, he was. He was confined in the Order, and in his study, and in his role as Magi. He was confined by the First Circle, by the edicts of the Order, and by the Kings’ Laws concerning the use of open magery in the streets of the City. He was confined by their need for secrecy, and their need for subtlety. He bore it, and he endured.

  She did not tell him not to smoke; the friendly bickering and her genuine distaste for the smell of burning tobacco belonged in a different space, a different meeting. It would have been easier to demand he not bleed or breathe, and that thought made her smile, although the smile was slight and grim.

  He sat; he filled, slowly and methodically, the bowl of his pipe. She did not hurry him, because she was tired enough, old enough, to want to delay his words, even for a few minutes. There was comfort in the familiarity of his actions; comfort in the ghost of the irritation they often produced.

  What did she know of this man?

  He aged little.

  He had come upon her in the Tower of the Ice Mage, and he alone among the Magi had urged that she be adopted, rather than destroyed, for her part in the forbidden arts practiced in the cold of the distant North. The Order of Knowledge had acceded to his request—and at the time, it had seemed very much a request, and at that, a quiet one. But she had not taken his full measure. Not then; she had been young, and hollow with the death of both her childhood and the master she had willingly betrayed. She had expected to die.

  Instead, she had been accepted, slowly, into the Order of Knowledge, her talent as mage- born acknowledged. Meralonne, among others, had seen to her teaching, and she had impressed the more suspicious members of the Order with her focus, her dedication. She had grown. At some point, growth became age. But Meralonne?

  She shook her head.

  “Sigurne?”

  “I am feeling my age.”

  “And not mine?” His eyes were clear, his expression remote. Fire found the bowl of his pipe without so much as a flicker of his eye.

  “No, Master APhaniel, not yours.” She clasped her hands loosely in her lap. More than this, she did not—had never openly—said. “What news?” she asked softly, as a thin stream of smoke at last left his lips.

  “You were fond of Ararath,” was the quiet reply.

  “I am.” Ah. “Yes. I was.” She was silent for a moment. “Tell me,” she finally said. She thought the better of her refusal to sit in her chair; the armrests, if confining, were also supporting. So much was.

  “What he saw, Sigurne, he saw clearly. The game he played, he won.”

  And this, she thought bitterly, was victory. She felt the emptiness of his absence, but if it was sharp, it was, like many jagged wounds, one that would be slow to heal.

  She glanced up at the almost invisible wards that rested above her doors; they were nascent. Often, in the last few months, they would color, briefly, as if on fire, and she would rise and make her way to the more formal meeting rooms at her disposal as the Order’s titular head. There, Rath would remove the dull, flat blades of consecrated daggers, returning them, by that silent gesture, to her keeping. She would tend his injuries, when he would allow it—which was seldom—and she would keep her own counsel. Only twice had she attempted to dissuade him from his chosen course, and in the end, she had done it to still her own uneasy conscience, for she knew he would not be moved.

  But in truth, had she thought to have success, would she have tried? For she needed him to be where he was, to return the information he returned, and to leave as he left. She needed his fire, and she saw his hatred as the tool it was. Familiar tool; had it not driven her in all of her decades in the Order?

  Her silence continued.

  What might Ararath have achieved, had he turned that burning, focused ambition upon the fortunes of the House to which he’d been born? Handernesse might once again have risen on the shoulders of its son.

  Pipe smoke eddied in the air between them, in a growing cloud of wisp and scent. “I was summoned, as you are aware, to House Terafin this afternoon. I was summoned in haste, and the contingencies that were laid against such a summoning were used. I am not certain that I will have the liberty to cast such spells again; they were costly, and I will be watched now.”

  “You were watched, regardless.”

  He shrugged.

  “Why were you called, Meralonne?”

  “The Terafin was in danger.” He ran a hand over his eyes. It was a very rare gesture of fatigue. “She had received a visitor.”

  “Through irregular channels.”

  “No. The
visitor came, as per House customs to the right-kin, and he was conveyed—in some haste—into the presence of The Terafin. He was conveyed alone,” the mage added. “She had divested herself of all of her guards, and even her domicis was not in attendance.”

  “So she had some reason to trust the visitor.”

  “I think it not quite that simple. The visitor, of course, was Ararath.”

  “Ararath in the flesh, or illusion?”

  “There is enough contingency magic in the room that the substantial magic required to sustain an illusion would likely set off some of the more visible alarms. Although the most cunning of those was destroyed. No. He was present, in the flesh.”

  Sigurne paled. This, this is what she had feared.

  Meralonne lifted his pipe; smoke eddied, following the rise of his hand in a thin, downward stream that spread. “If you can, be comforted, Sigurne.

  “Ararath was dead. He must have died last night, and it forced the hands of our enemies; they would not have had much time in which to attempt to contact The Terafin through this particular avenue. I attempted to preserve the body—and the demon that wore it—but I was . . . frustrated in that attempt. What remains is scattered across the room used for official meetings of import in the manse.”

  “So.” She rose. Nor could she take her chair; she paced the room—which, in the end, was not large—like a caged beast. “In all suppositions, Ararath was correct—and at cost.”

  “We have,” he replied, “proof, should The Terafin make the incident public. To attempt either the assassination of The Terafin, in the best possible scenario, or the impersonation, the assumption of her living form, in the most likely one, is not the act of a single rogue mage.”

  “No. We have not recently been operating under that assumption. Had they succeeded—and without your intervention, there is every probability they would have done so, what would the cost to the Empire be? That is the question—the first of many—that must be posed to the Kings.”

  Meralonne was silent, and it was not a silence to Sigurne’s liking.

  “You . . . do not think she will do so.”

  “She was, I think, attached to her brother, even given his abandonment. She was not greatly pleased at my intervention.”

  “Not initially,” Sigurne replied, with a slight smile. There was no answering smile in return.

  “Nor afterward. Pleased is not a word that would describe any part of her reaction; if I looked closely, I might see gratitude, although it would be slight. She is a woman who has wielded the power of a great House for many years, and if I do not trifle with politics, I can understand why she has held it: she was silent. Thoughtful. What she felt, she kept to herself; nor did she appear on the verge of panic. If I were to guess, I would say she was considering many things. The long list of her enemies, and the long list of those who are not actively seeking her destruction, but who would take advantage of any weakness shown. What we desire, what we require for the safety of the Empire, is not—yet—part of her planning.

  “I believe in time she will forgive me for the destruction of her mantel.”

  Sigurne shook herself as the last sentence penetrated the worry all of the previous observations had accreted. “Pardon?”

  “The creature was not a significant one. He did, however, have some amount of the power that might grace a lesser mage, and some . . . damage was done.”

  “Which room was this?”

  “I told you—”

  Sigurne winced, and as this was a more practical matter, which merely involved more money than the Order easily had available for what was only trivial if you were not The Terafin, she once again sat, this time pulling her chair toward the surface of her desk. She selected a thick, bound volume and laid it open, glancing up at Meralonne. “You recognized the maker of that mantel, surely? You are generally more aware of the art of the maker-born than most of our colleagues.”

  “I did not think it was of more value than her life.”

  Sigurne pursed her lips. “You did not think of it at all.”

  He shrugged, restless. “No, to be truthful, I did not; it is a mantel; it holds fripperies and girds fire; it is decorative but not in a way that inspires. The creature wore the ring,” he added.

  “You sensed it.”

  “No. I saw it, but it was a ring, no more.”

  She closed her eyes, her palms across an open page of accounts, the numbers now hidden from view by thin, veined lids.

  “The spell was invoked, Sigurne. If you can, take comfort from that. I do not know how much the demons learned from Ararath before he invoked it, but he chose his death, and his death served his purpose. We have, now, the proof we need, if she can be brought to use it.”

  This, she thought, as she examined the fine veins in still hands, was triumph. This was victory. This hollowness, this loss. There would be no more reports, no more consecrated daggers—not from Ararath. His anger, his guilt, and his determination had, like the fires they were, consumed him. She bowed her head. But Meralonne had not yet finished.

  “I believe I now know who his informant was.”

  “His informant?”

  “Yes. The seer to whom he would never introduce us.”

  Sigurne was watchful. “This informant was at House Terafin?”

  “Oh, yes. And I am certain that the demon had encountered her before; The Terafin, however, was not open to questions. Nor were her Chosen.”

  “How are you so certain?”

  “She was there. She was the reason that the Chosen summoned me, and if not for her intervention, it is my suspicion that we would no longer have this particular Terafin lord at the House.

  “She is young, Sigurne. She is young.”

  “But seer-born?”

  “I cannot—yet—be certain of that.”

  “Be careful, Meralonne.”

  “I am always careful.”

  “You always survive; it is not the same thing.”

  “If she is a seer, she will also survive.” He rose. “I have been given permission to return to The Terafin, with my report, at the late dinner hour. If you desire it, accompany me.”

  Sigurne was aware that the word permission, when used in this context, was inaccurate. “I . . . am not, tonight, up to such a difficult meeting, Meralonne. I trust that you will curb your tongue and your temper sufficiently that we will not lose the only essential ally that we have at the moment.”

  He shrugged, his hair sliding over his shoulder and down his back as he reached for an ashtray that overhung the edge of one of Sigurne’s many shelves. Tapping the pipe empty, he said, “I am still retained by The House; I have been neither replaced nor relieved. Nor do I expect to be.

  “I will speak with The Terafin, and I will report to you.” He rose then; his eyes were gray and dark; he was restless, and the whole of their conversation had not quieted him at all. He made the door, and then paused there, turning.

  “It is not my way,” he said quietly, as if bowing with great effort to hers, “to mourn as you mourn, Sigurne. Ararath Handernesse saw clearly, and he did what he felt necessary. His life, and his death, were his to choose. Very few can say that, in the end, and I envy it—I do not grieve for it.”

  She nodded. There was nothing else to say. She was not Meralonne. She could send a man to his death; she could, in fact, lift hand to kill one if it was required. In the end, there was no functional difference between the two of them.

  But she yearned for Meralonne’s certainty. She yearned for his lack of sorrow, his lack of guilt, his lack of questions; they did not stop her, but they plagued her nonetheless, demanding their due.

  And what due could she offer? In the end, his death was to be unremarked, and unremarkable; The Terafin would not expose her House in so public a fashion; nor would she subject Handernesse to the gawking and the curiosity of the idle. What remained of Ararath was scattered bits of flesh—or less, given Meralonne’s imprecise description of the magics used and encou
ntered—within one room in the Terafin manse, and given the army of servants that any large House required, those would be cleaned up, disposed of as unnecessary and unwanted detritus.

  That left memory.

  There was no one to share that memory with; there would be no funeral, she thought. She could not suggest it to The Terafin without exposing her own hand in Ararath’s death, and even were she so inclined, she could not expose that without exposing far too much of the Order’s work to a woman who ruled. She rose.

  The human need to share experience to give grief meaning was profound. It was twin to the need to share joy, as if by sharing either, they became real, as if they required more than one person to anchor them. She was long past the age where joy—or sorrow—could be shared in such an unfettered way, but she remembered, standing alone in the Tower she had made her life, the singular joy of one day in the North, in a land of snow made water by fire and flame, made red by blood and black by ash. It came to her, as a ghost and a reminder: the young woman trapped within the form and shape of the older one.

  She lifted hands that were now wrinkled and pale, and as she did, she saw the grim final moments of the man who had taken her from her village, her family, and everything she had ever loved. They had called him the Ice Mage; they might have called him anything else, but it was a simple, declarative description for a stark people. He ruled; they could not bring themselves to call him Lord. Only Sigurne had debased herself enough to do that, and only when she had become a fixture within his abode: his apprentice. There were costs to defiance, and she had not—yet—become so bitter that life was worthless.

  He had summoned the kin. He had trapped them with words and power, as he had trapped her with death and power, enslaving them both. And in her captivity, she had spoken long, and late, with the most significant of her fellow captives, nursing her hatred, her anger; exposing her fear and hiding all else.

  It was forbidden, of course, this speech, this learning, the education she’d been given—the only education she had been allowed. How she had hated it: the books and the slates and the inks and the precise alignment of geometric figures in the unyielding stone. But she had learned. Then, and later, she had learned.