But if it was, she did not appreciate the gift; did not, in fact, appear to notice it at all. “Lander’s gone. Lefty. Fisher. Duster. They’re dead,” she added, staring into the space past his left shoulder as if he were no longer in the room. “Don’t tell me I didn’t fail them. Rath chose what he chose. I can accept that—because I tried, Haval. I tried, with him. He wouldn’t listen.
“Rath was a friend. I trusted him. But he was never one of mine.
“The others were. Even Duster. They were all mine. The only choice they made was to follow me.” She looked at him then, her eyes dry, her voice flat and hard. She offered him no excuses, and he knew it was because she’d tried them all, and they offered her nothing. “I almost lost Arann,” she continued, when he failed to speak. “I almost lost him. He was dying. He was so far gone—” and at this, she did stop, her eyes closed, and she lost words.
He would not have been surprised had she left in silence after this. But she struggled with breath, forcing it from its uneven thinness to something steadier. “The Terafin saved him. Because The Terafin could. I promised I’d work for her, if she gave him back to me. It was the only thing I wanted.
“That was then. Yesterday.” She spoke the last word as if it were a year. “But House Terafin has everything. Money. Guards. Mages. It has everything, Haval. And I’m living there, right now.”
“In the manse?” he asked softly.
She nodded. “They’ve got a lot of room. I think most of the manse must be empty. We have a—a domicis. I think that’s what he’s called. And servants, apparently. I don’t know for how long.” She looked straight at him, then. “I don’t know for how long.
“But I think—if I work things right—I can make it as long as we need.”
He said nothing. He did not tell her that it was very, very unusual for her den to be given rooms within the manse itself; that The Terafin had hired a domicis for her was unheard of. Most members of House Terafin itself did not reside upon the Isle, and many, many men and women would have paid much for the privilege. That that privilege had been, however temporarily, given to an orphan from the poorer holdings would be noted by anyone who had not been given similar privileges in the past—but it would also be marked and noted by anyone who had, and this, in Haval’s opinion, was worse.
He watched her bleak, desperate expression, and he almost told her to moderate it; to hide it. But that was not what she had come for, in the end, and she was likely to misinterpret the criticism. Aie, Jewel. And then, Did you expect this, Ararath? Did you expect that Amarais would give this child what you yourself could never guarantee?
And did you expect that she would return to me, now of all times? Do you think that your death will mark me enough that I will give her the lessons she needs, that I will support her in this?
“I can’t—I can’t bring anyone else back. I can’t even go out and find their bodies. If I weren’t with Meralonne APhaniel, I don’t think I would have dared to come here at all.” She stood. “But I won’t fail them again. I won’t lose another person. Whatever I need to do here, I’ll do.”
“You intend to remain in House Terafin?”
“I intend,” she said quietly and grimly, “to be ATerafin.” She ran a rough hand over her eyes; it smeared dirt across her face, but there were no mirrors here in which she might have seen it.
He saw it. He saw the set of her pale jaw, the dark circles that dirt didn’t explain beneath the width of her eyes, the way her feet were planted against the floor as if she expected to be hit, and was willing to stand her ground anyway. He heard the anger in her voice, understood that it was aimed, almost in its entirety, at herself, and he let it be. She was Jewel Markess, and he had taken her measure years ago.
He nodded, his face still expressionless. “Many women, and many men, desire the imprimatur of a great House. They will work years, even decades, for the privilege, and in many cases, their motivations and yours will not be entirely dissimilar.”
She did not disappoint him; she did not look crestfallen. There was no give in her at all, and he understood, watching the hard, harsh lines of her youthful face, that the whole of her life was defined by what she had chosen to serve—to serve, to protect, and in her fashion, to love. For herself, she might experience fear and the usual insecurities that plagued the youthful, but those fears were dwarfed by the realities of the failures she had already faced. Haval himself had not been immune to either the fear—or the costs.
But Haval had not undertaken the responsibility of building family the way Jewel Markess had. And Haval was not seer-born. He understood where Jewel’s value to the House—to any House of her choice—might lie, and he wondered, briefly, if Ararath had mentioned this to his sister. Or if he had communicated with her at all. Had he been a betting man, he would have bet against it, at any odds.
But Ararath, in his fashion, had made Jewel Markess the only family he cared to own, and for family—for this one girl—he might have. Haval could not clearly say. He measured her, aware of the passage of time, and aware of the patience of Meralonne APhaniel. “If you do not waver, you will find what you need,” he said at last.
She nodded and turned toward the arch that led to the front of the store.
But Haval had not yet finished. He knew he should be done. He knew. “And if you do, indeed, gain what you seek for the good of your den and its future, come to see me. For one, I would appreciate your custom, since you will not be able to function in the manse in the clothing you currently own.” He smiled; she did not. “Jewel. Jay. You see The Terafin. You see the manse. You see the guards and the mage and the obvious wealth she has at her disposal. You see the signs of power, and you think that in power there is safety. It is a thought that many have, but that is the dream of the idle and those who will never attain power.
“Nor do I tell you that power is what you must attain. But to be in Terafin at all, to remain there safely given who and what you are, you will require some understanding of power. You will need to see that, in the end, the play of power among those who are educated, monied, and ambitious is a variant of the same moves used by those who have none of these advantages.
“You understand those, at base. You will need to understand them in future.”
“And you can explain them to me.” No question in the words. She was tired, now.
“I can. It will not greatly please my wife, for reasons that are too boring and too personal to explain, but I can. I do not know how easy it will be for you to visit me; if you require it, I can visit you, although not without obvious pretext.”
She frowned.
“Fittings.” He wanted to say more. But the door to the shop opened; he could hear the bells toll the end of this conversation, the end of more than this conversation.
“Haval—”
“I am not Ararath,” he said gently. “And I will never replace him. But allow it, and I will be what I can. I believe that your companion has now reached the end of his patience. I am surprised that he lasted this long; he is famed for its lack.”
“You know him?”
Haval allowed himself a chuckle; it was genuine. “I know of him, let us just say. Enough of him that I feel it best that we not meet at this time.”
She didn’t ask him why. He wasn’t certain, given the stoop of her shoulders and the sunken line of her neck—both at odds with the set of her jaw—that it had even occurred to her. He let her leave, and waited until he heard the door chime again. He might have waited longer, but Hannerle’s raised voice pronounced the shop empty.
He went to the desk at which he habitually sat, and found his wife waiting. She opened her mouth, but the words bled into silence before she uttered them. “Haval?”
He nodded, and managed a smile. It was an easy smile, because Haval’s expressions always were. Hannerle, however, listened and watched in other ways, in part because she knew how little information his stance or his face would give, and in part because she knew that his use of
either meant he felt the need to hide. Haval was adept at hiding in the open. He watched his wife’s glance; it went to the window, and the faceless, moving crowd, before coming back to rest on him.
“Rath?” she asked quietly. His name had long produced much less quiet.
He nodded.
“She brought word?”
“She did.” He walked past his wife, seated himself on the stool behind the counter, and picked up both his jeweler’s glass and the fabric into which he had been stitching beads.
“Haval.”
He lifted the small lid of the box into which he wove pins before he glanced at his wife. Everything that she did not say hung in the air between them. “We were friends. I was not a terribly good friend, and I was not interested in many of the things that interested Ararath.” He took some of the pins out of the box, considered holding them between his lips as a way of stilling unwanted conversation. “But yes, Hannerle, Rath is dead. He is not the only person Jewel has lost recently; I believe he is only the most recent.”
“How?”
“I am not entirely certain she knows.”
“And does she fail to notice that her current companion is a member of the Order of Knowledge?”
He winced at his wife’s tone. “I highly doubt, given the member in question, that that’s possible, even for one who has no other experience of the mage-born.”
“Haval.”
He glanced at her again. “She is a child, Hannerle. She is not Ararath, and she is not involved in the things that made Ararath’s life so difficult.”
“What is she involved in, then?”
“Does it matter? Rath is dead, yes. But it cannot have escaped your notice that Jewel Markess is the only person he has ever brought to my store directly; the only one that he has ever walked across my threshold and given into my hands. He did not ask me to do more than teach her what she needed to learn to survive.” This was not entirely true; with Jewel Markess had come Duster, and Hannerle had had opinions about that girl. But it was for Jewel that Rath had come, besides which, embellishment was some part of Haval’s arsenal.
“There is very little that I can now do for Ararath. He was not a man for funerals, and he was not a man for idle gestures of useless respect, that much at least we can agree on. Any grief I might feel or express—” and his wife knew well how little the latter would be “—he would have openly scorned.”
Still, she did not speak. Which was either a good sign or a very bad one. “But this, Hannerle, this I can do. Let me do it.”
“Could I stop you?” was the quiet reply.
He looked up; her expression contained many things: Anger, bitterness, and fear, which he expected. But she was also resigned, and in some part, he saw a glimmer of approval, and the weary affection that she so seldom openly displayed. “With a word.”
“And I am to be the heartless villain, then? I’m the one to tell you to turn your back on an ignorant child?” She snorted. But after a moment, she said, “It won’t bring him back.”
“No, of course not. And yes, if you must hear it, it pains me to lose him. He was both amusing and competent, and he was one of the very few friends I had left. I did not expect to outlive him, and at the moment, while I am grateful for my existence, I also resent it. Thus, the contradictions of life.
“But what I cannot now do for Rath, I can do for his Jewel. And I surprise even myself; I want to do it.”
“Why?”
Haval shrugged.
Ararath.
He had not lied to his wife. Rath, called Old, had been some years younger than Haval when they had first met, and he had been canny and cautious. Haval took pains not to become attached to things he knew he must lose, and he had taken few such pains with Ararath, a man who knew how to watch out for himself. He had admired Rath’s ability to observe what he witnessed; it was, of course, inferior to Haval’s own, but not by so much that it could be disregarded.
He had found Rath’s life colorful, and Rath’s history surprising. That Ararath could be a dangerous man, he had never doubted, and he had witnessed it on occasion, although Rath was cautious. He had some respect for Rath’s formidable godfather, and his equally formidable servant, Andrei; Andrei was, or could have been, either domicis or Astari, in Haval’s opinion. He had no idea how Hectore had found Andrei, and had always been deeply curious about what he paid the man; he, however, had known better than to ask. To Rath, Andrei was as much a part of House Aravan as the man at its head, and he would have been suspicious of any inquiry. They had met precisely once; Haval had no desire to meet Andrei again.
He moved pins in the light that was slowly fading as he worked.
Ararath was dead.
Damn him, anyway. Haval had escaped Ararath’s fate; he had stepped down from the edges and the high places; had given up the excitement, the danger, and the intrigue that all but guaranteed death. He had urged Rath to do the same, and in the end, for selfish reasons. He had become a much more sentimental man as he had aged—something he would have sworn his very valuable life against in his youth.
But so went the plans of the wise and the canny. He sewed; Hannerle, understanding why, had withdrawn, granting him space and a privacy he did not require.
Epilogue
23rd Scaral, 410 AA Terafin manse, Avaralaan Aramarelas
THE MANSE WAS HUGE. The rooms were huge. Even the so-called bedrooms were large enough to fit their entire den, the kitchen, and the larger room in which they’d eaten meals. Finch knew; she was in one. She was alone in one. This much space, the floors thickly carpeted, seemed almost like sleeping in the open streets at the wrong hour, it was so damn empty.
The windows—filled with real glass, and not warped shutters in constant need of tending—had curtains for miles, and at the moment, they were pulled back and held in place by a tassel wound round the whole of the drape and attached to a hook on the wall. She couldn’t actually remember what color they were; it was dark. Dark enough that she had fumbled with those tassels in the shadows, had pulled the curtains back. It was cold, yes—but these windows ignored the chill wind. Or at least the cold it brought; she could hear it as a distant whistle, otherwise.
She had, in this room, more chairs than they’d had in the whole apartment, and it had already come with a bed. The bed was high off the ground, and its thick, sturdy legs didn’t even creak when she sat on one edge. It was framed by wood at the top and the bottom, and the wood was carved at the edges with things that looked like either really strange leaves or really fat feathers. The desk, which sat nearest the window’s light, was closed and locked. Ellerson had given her the key on a chain, and that chain now encircled her neck because she was afraid of losing it.
I don’t have anything to put in a desk, she’d told him gravely.
Not yet, was his equally grave reply. But it is customary to have one in guest chambers, because a guest might desire to write a diary entry or a letter home.
She had nodded, smiled, and said nothing. What could she say to a man like Ellerson? He was old, yes, but he was intimidating, so precise in his use of language, and so proper. Even his clothing fit perfectly, and everything—even his socks—matched. He was a special class of servant, she’d been told—by one of the servants—but even so, he was clearly far better educated, fed, and clothed than any member of the den had ever been. The old people she’d met—Helen, for one—were so unlike him she’d been afraid to talk at all.
Jay had been gone for almost all of the day; Arann was not allowed to join them—although both Carver and Jay said he was “fine.” The food that they’d been offered for dinner—and for which they’d been forced into baths—was more than they’d seen all week, and every single one of them had squirreled some away in pockets or sleeves against the next day’s hunger.
But . . . morning had brought breakfast. Morning had taken Jay away. Lunch hadn’t brought her back either.
Angel fretted. He wanted to be wherever Jay was. So did Carver. F
inch and Teller were both accustomed to staying behind unless there was work to do—because there was work that needed doing: Laundry. Cleaning. Cooking. Water.
But here? There was nothing to do. Nothing at all. There were no books, no slates, no new lessons—or old lessons—to be learned. There was no laundry. Even if they’d wanted to clean up their old clothing—which caused Ellerson to almost pale, the lines on his face deepening into etched, stone grooves—they weren’t to do it in the bathing room, where all the water was. The manse, apparently, had a cistern somewhere, but if laundry was done, it was not done in the West Wing.
Neither was cooking, at least not by the den. Or, apparently, the daily and necessary trip to the Common in order to have something—anything—to cook. Even had that been necessary, they had no money with which to do it—and telling Ellerson that they intended to go out to pick pockets and cut purses off the arms of the careless was not anyone’s idea of smart or useful.
And so, they waited, in a silence of nothing, restless and worried. Relieved, yes, in part because Arann was still alive.
But Duster was not.
Maybe, Finch thought, as she lay back in bed. She sat up, slid down, and pulled the sheets—and the heavy thick comforter that lay atop them—to one side before she tried to fall asleep again. This time, between the sheets, she stared up at the darkened ceiling. Maybe Duster’s alive. Maybe she made it. Maybe she’ll come back to the trough, and we’ll find her. Somehow.
But not even Finch had been able to put this hope into words. It was what they all wanted to believe. It was what none of them could. Arann had been hit, twice, in the side, twice in the head, by fists—and that had almost killed him. They understood that, had Alowan not intervened, it would have. Duster had closed with Arann’s attacker, pulling him away so that everyone else could make it out.
Duster.
She closed her eyes. She had played the game of maybe before. Three times. For Fisher, whose disappearance was so inexplicable, so unexpected, it seemed—and felt—unreal. It had been easy then. Easy to hope. The confusion had been almost stronger than the dread. But days had passed, and hope had thinned, stretching until its break was inevitable.
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