House War 03 - House Name

by Michelle West

  “What I fear, Jewel, is the coming of a god. You cannot imagine what a god upon the plane will do, but a city as simple and devoid of power as this one will not stand long against him.

  “And this city,” he added grimly, “is the only city they fear; can you imagine the fate of the others?”

  As he’d just said she couldn’t, she bit back a retort and waited. Ellerson took this moment to slide a plate between her stiff chin and the table. He said nothing; he didn’t even throw her the usual warning glance.

  “You—and your den—spent some months or years combing dark tunnels beneath this city. You personally spent six weeks failing to find any of them, and we well understand why.” He hesitated and then said, “It is, however, imperative, Jewel, that you find something.”

  “But—” she hesitated. “You’ve been to Cordufar’s mansion?”

  He nodded. “We have.”

  “And you’ve searched?”

  Silence.

  “You have searched?”

  “We have done some preliminary investigation. The manse—as you will see—is not, perhaps, as it once was. We have discovered—and triggered—some handful of traps; we have lost three in the process.”

  She swallowed.

  “It is my suspicion that you will not likewise be lost. We have touched nothing,” he added, “otherwise. Devon will accompany you to the manse; I will, with Sigurne’s permission, meet you there. Search where you can,” he added. “Find what you can. We have no time now, and anything of import, any hint of how we might reach this undercity in which you searched, we need.”

  He rose and headed toward the door, but he paused there while her untouched food cooled. He didn’t turn back, but he did speak. “You are not a warrior,” he said softly. “You are not a mage. You are not, in my opinion, a competent thief. You can lead children, and you have led as many as you can to the dubious safety of this House.

  “We do not require you to face gods, Jewel. We in fact require the opposite. If there is to be a battle—and we hope for just that, because if there is no battle, it will be slaughter, pure and simple—there is no role for you in it.

  “Your role, such as it is, is to give us that opportunity, no more and no less. Do you understand?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Because she didn’t, he continued. “If there is danger, flee it. If there is fighting, let Devon ATerafin handle it. Stay alive. Your only role—and it is, I believe, necessary—is to give us enough information that we can carry the fight to where the Kialli now dwell. Do that, and you will have earned any respect and any honor that the House, or the Kings, can possibly convey.”

  His tone of voice, however, made clear that he thought she would find little. “This is your task,” he finally said, as if to belie that.

  And so she went. Devon ATerafin was, as promised, waiting for her in the first chamber of the wing. He was seated, and he rose when she entered. His expression was completely shuttered, and he moved with a tense, bottled grace. He was armed; she saw that.

  Saw, as well, what form the arms took: daggers, ornate and useless for throwing. Useless, as well, for any real cutting or stabbing. They would only offer harm to one thing.

  He saw the direction of her gaze and shrugged. “You’re ready?” he asked.

  She nodded. Ellerson had chosen clothing for her and then set it aside, allowing her free run of her massive closet. She had chosen—as she did when she was going to be crawling through dirt and debris—clothing as close to the old holding clothing as she now owned.

  If she really owned anything in House Terafin.

  Devon handed her a dagger. After a brief hesitation, he handed her a second. He didn’t tell her when to use them; he didn’t tell her to handle them with care. She wondered if he would speak at all.

  But he led her from the wing, and she followed. He took a route that didn’t lead to the foyer; those doors and that entrance were still closed, and she had no desire to revisit—even in daylight—the wreckage.

  But she wasn’t used to this much silence. “Devon?”

  He glanced back at her.

  “Have you spoken with The Terafin?”

  He nodded.

  “Have you talked about anything other than the Cordufar estates?”

  At that, he paused. He didn’t stop, not exactly, but he did slow. “How so?”

  It was her turn to hesitate, and she did. But it didn’t last. “What is she going to do with Torvan?”

  His expression did change, but it was a fleeting change; she understood it well enough to know that he wouldn’t answer.

  People in this part of the hundred holdings—which would be the wealthy damn part—had no brains, in Jewel’s decided opinion. Most of that decision was based on the crowd that had gathered in front of the Cordufar mansion’s very closed gates. They weren’t poor, judging by their clothing. Then again, she thought with a grimace, neither was she.

  But she could see smoke and a very distinct ragged hole in the upper level of the manse visible over the fence, and she knew that had this occurred anywhere in the twenty-fifth, people would have been taking alternate streets just to avoid coming anywhere close. Here they were gawking and gossiping in the open streets; they might as well have been holding mugs of steaming tea.

  Devon made headway through the crowd, but it took time; he was unfailingly polite but spoke very few words. Jewel, had she spoken any at all, would have been rude; she let him do the talking. But she followed closely behind before the crowd could close the gap it so grudgingly made to allow Devon passage.

  The gates were guarded, and the men who guarded it wore armor and swords that had definitely seen use. They also wore tabards, but she didn’t recognize the colors; they were gray. As they approached Devon, she could see that they sported a rod crossed over a sword, and she understood belatedly that these were the Kings’ Swords. Devon didn’t even blink.

  Instead, he handed them a sealed scroll and waited while they broke it open. The man who had done so read it all; it wasn’t a cursory examination. When he looked up, his eyes glanced off Devon’s face and found Jewel’s a few inches down. His brows rose, and he turned back to the scroll, reading it again as if he were looking for some way to deny Jewel entry.

  Devon said, “She is the appointed representative of House Terafin. Her name is Jewel Markess.” He waited. “House Terafin is aware that there may be some present danger in this investigation, and all responsibility for any injuries sustained at the behest of House Terafin will, of course, be ours.”

  The Kings’ Sword returned the scroll to Devon without comment. “ATerafin,” he said. “You will find the magi on the grounds.”

  “They’re expecting me?”

  “I was told to inform you where they might be found.”

  Devon nodded as the Swords parted the gates to let them through.

  The Cordufar manse, seen from the right side of the gates—or, Jewel thought, the wrong side, depending on your definition—was breathtaking. Literally.

  She stopped on the path and stared, openmouthed, at the ruin. Not even the sloping, old buildings in the poor holdings, with their partial roofs and walls, compared to this. There were no windows; there were spaces where windows should have been—but even those were now bent or broken enough that the shape of the windows couldn’t be seen. The glass that had once been in those windows glittered in the open, cold sun—but it glittered in shards all across the grounds around the building. So, too, did twisted brass knobs and frames, and things that looked like sconces. There were no doors.

  If the attack on House Terafin had come, in the end, from Cordufar, they’d paid in kind.

  Devon had glanced at the manse. He approached it, but he stopped when he’d passed the trees and shrubs that marked the midpoint of the front grounds. On the Isle, grounds were short because land was scarce; on the mainland, this wasn’t an issue. Or so he’d said. It was, and would always be, an issue for people born where Jewel and the r
est of her den had been born; she’d struggled not to say as much.

  “Here,” he said, pointing at shards of glittering glass. “This seems to be the outer circumference of the damage.” He slid gloves out of his pockets and put them on.

  “You’re going to pick through glass?”

  “Jewel, even Arann couldn’t break a window with enough force to send glass flying this distance. This was not the result of an armed military action.”

  She remembered what Meralonne had told her and fell silent for a moment. “Should we go and find the magi?”

  He straightened. “Yes.”

  Sigurne Mellifas was waiting at a remove from the debris. Another four or five robed men and women were doing something nearby; Jewel couldn’t tell what, and she didn’t ask. She trailed after Devon in silence. Meralonne was not present. Not yet.

  “ATerafin,” Guildmaster Mellifas said, offering Devon a curt and businesslike nod.

  “Guildmaster,” he replied, in kind. “May I introduce Jewel Markess? The Terafin felt that she would be of some aid in the investigation.”

  “Member APhaniel said as much,” the older woman replied. Her gaze, as it fell briefly upon Jewel’s face, was not unkind, but it lingered in silence for a little too long. Jewel had been raised by an old woman, and she knew steel when she saw it. “Where did he go?” She raised her voice, and one of the robed men came to stand by her side. “Matteos,” she said, “Find Meralonne.”

  “He is by the east side of the manse,” Matteos replied. He waited for a moment, and then shrugged into Sigurne’s perfect silence.

  Ten minutes later, he returned, Meralonne APhaniel by his side. Notably absent was Meralonne’s pipe. He didn’t bother to offer Sigurne a polite gesture of respect; he looked weary.

  “Come,” he told Jewel, as if they were once again embarking on a fruitless search of dirty basements throughout the holdings. She shoved her hands into her pockets and trailed after him.

  They didn’t approach what had once been front doors. “The floor there is of dubious structural integrity,” he told her when she glanced at it. “The floor on the upper level is likewise unencumbered by reliable joists. Where we can, the magi are picking through the rooms and the contents that might have survived the inferno; several of our number can support their own weight when the flooring is tenuous. It is not the floors that have caused the difficulty,” he added, as if it needed to be said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the east, the trade entrance.”

  Even around back, at an entrance that no one of any import would be expected to use, let alone see, there was evidence of damage. The small, high windows, like the large and impressive ones, had lost all their glass, and the small bars that held the panes had, mostly, gone with them. The door—and to her surprise, there was one—was half off its hinges and clung to the last of them like an injured child might cling to a dead parent.

  “What happened here?” she asked him as she slid around the gaping door and peered in. The floor here looked solid enough. It was covered in fine dust, but most of that dust wasn’t black. She took a step in. Waited. The floors here were wooden. After a few seconds she walked farther in, and away from the light at her back.

  “A great deal of magic. It is not inconceivable that several First Circle magi working in concert could achieve the same effect—but it would take some time.”

  “We need light,” she told him. Light appeared at her back. She’d gotten used to this in the weeks she’d worked at his side—or under his feet—but she still felt the lack of a magestone bitterly. If the floors were wood, the wood was superficial. The walls were solid stone. The sconces on those walls were mostly in place, but they held no torches; Jewel could see where torches had fallen; the floor was black. It was not charred.

  She knelt.

  “It was almost instant, from our initial reports. Those who would be more intimately acquainted had no report to make, and Sigurne is against summoning the Judgment-born to bespeak them.”

  It took Jewel a few minutes to catch up with what Meralonne was implying. When she did, she straightened. “I’m going first?” she asked him softly.

  “I can lead, if you’d prefer.”

  She shook her head. The stonework at the trade entrance, as he’d called it, was not nearly as ornamental as the work that had been destroyed at the front of the manse. “Your mages didn’t come in through here, did they?”

  “No. I do not think it occurred to them. They were not fools,” he added. “They took precautions. But the nature of their precautions did not require stealth.”

  There were two things that were immediately visible as they walked farther into the manse. One, a hall that led into the manse itself, and the other, an open door that contained darkness. “Cellar?”

  “Possibly. There are old plans of the Cordufar manse in existence; the magi have at least two. The manse, however, was modified—several times—after its initial construction; we do not expect the maps to remain exact.”

  “Or even close.”

  “Or,” he replied with a nod, “even close.” He glanced at the darkened door, which did, as Jewel suggested, descend.

  As she descended in the glow of his magical light, she frowned. Reaching out, she steadied herself on a wall that was cool and slightly damp. “Meralonne,” she told him, the frown deepening, “douse the light.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation and the sound of drawn breath that usually preceded argument. But argument, if it waited, was now carefully hoarded; he did as she asked. The light went out. All that illuminated the stairs now was the open door at their back, and that light receded as Jewel inched her way down the stairs.

  She counted steps as she made her way down in darkness. It wasn’t a comfortable way to move; everything was hesitant and strained. Every movement of foot, the transfer of hand from wall; she moved sideways, so that one hand was always touching it.

  Above her, she heard the play of his shifting robes; it was a comfort.

  “You couldn’t sense the magic?” she asked, as she moved.

  “Apparently not.”

  “Why?”

  “There are concealing spells,” he said after a pause.

  “Most of those should throw off magic. I know the magestones do.”

  “The magestones, yes. And the privacy stones as well, if one knows what to look for. But one has to be looking.”

  “But if the magic was powerful enough to do this, how hard would you have to be looking?”

  “Not hard,” he conceded. “But if it was instant, or almost instant, it wouldn’t matter.” He was silent for a few steps and then added, “The magic of the Allasakari is not well-known; if, as I suspect, the god’s power was invoked, we would have done better to send the god-born. The Exalted.”

  They hadn’t.

  “The light?” he asked her, and she could hear his impatience in the two words.

  She shook her head. He couldn’t see it, and she said, “They don’t need to see. Or they don’t need light to see, not in this kind of darkness. If something could trigger a trap—a magical trap—it could be something as simple as light.”

  “Jewel,” he told her, “I’m almost impressed.”

  “Don’t be.”

  As she said it, she felt her throat tighten. She didn’t dwell on darkness when she had anything else to think about. She absolutely didn’t dwell on the run through the tunnels beneath the Merchant Authority. Then, Devon had been at her back or by her side, guiding her, his silence growing weighty and more urgent as they moved.

  “Here,” she said.

  Meralonne moved past her. He didn’t step on her feet, and he wasn’t as slow as she was. But his hands passed over hers, and he felt what she felt; the stone had given way to wood. The wood had not done as well as the stone; whatever had shaken the manse had caused it to crack and splinter. “Yes,” he said, after a pause. “There is a door.”

  “I can’t find a handle.”<
br />
  “There isn’t one.”

  “How can you even tell—”

  “It’s the only thing that’s left standing; it’s the only panel that wasn’t cracked or broken.”

  He whispered a single word, and Jewel raised her voice in a wordless shout, raising her hands and her arms to cover her face. Nothing covered her ears, though, and the sound of wood exploding almost deafened her.

  But the debris itself—and there must have been debris—didn’t strike her or touch her; she came out of it without so much as a splinter.

  “My apologies,” Meralonne said, in the darkness. “But you were, essentially, correct. There is a door here.”

  When the door had nothing left to hold onto, it fell backward. This might be because Meralonne had pushed it; it was hard to tell. But it clattered against stone. “May I chance light now?”

  She started to say no but said yes instead; his light was bright enough that she had to squint to see past it. The door had struck a wall. The wall wasn’t of interest. But to the left of the wall, descending just as the stairs she had already taken descended, were more stairs.

  “It was not meant to kill us,” he told her softly.

  “It wasn’t meant to kill someone like you,” she replied sharply. “It would have killed me or any of mine.”

  He raised a pale brow, then nodded. “Perhaps. It was not like the traps that lay in wait for those of my Order.”

  “Why?”

  “I would guess that there are things below ground that the former Lord Cordufar did not wish to chance destroying. It is promising,” he added softly.

  Promising. She’d remember that, later.

  She didn’t want to lead. She hovered at the small landing, and even with Meralonne’s light at her back, she had a visceral urge to turn and leave. But she mastered it. He had already somehow protected her from flying splinters and wood debris, and he wouldn’t be far behind.

  “Jewel?”

  She shook her head. “It’s nothing,” she finally said.

  “You’re not afraid of the dark?”