House War 03 - House Name

by Michelle West

  He was silent for a moment, staring not at the closed door but at her upturned face; she had to look up. He was tall. “Did you,” he finally asked, his voice as cold as the outside air, “interrogate Ellerson in a like fashion?”

  Her turn to shrug. “No. But he never tried to kill me.”

  Avandar lifted a brow. “Claims were made,” he finally said, “about your abilities. I wished to ascertain their veracity.”

  “And you couldn’t think of a better way?”

  “Not as convenient a way, no. I have had some experience with the seer-born in my time; when they are trained, they are powerful. You, however, have had no training; what you can or cannot do is not as easily determined. If I was not brought here under false pretenses, there was no threat to your life.”

  “And if you had been?”

  He said nothing.

  “How much did they tell you about me? Besides that?”

  “Very little. You are . . . den leader . . . to a small group of people your own age. You are to be schooled in etiquette; your reading and writing, in the two languages you speak, are to be tested, and if they are found wanting—” and his tone of voice made it clear he thought it likely, “your education in both is to be furthered.

  “I am aware, however, that your value to the House is determined by your unusual talent; that your value to the House is a direct threat to the power of any other ambitious House. And I am confident that I can preserve your life. If you heed my warnings.”

  “I don’t see that your warnings are going to be better than mine,” she said, and she looked pointedly at the shoulder that she’d hit with the book. She’d been aiming, on the other hand, for the side of his head.

  His smile was cool. “Very clever.” He looked pointedly at the closed door.

  She grimaced, slid her hands to her hips, and faced him squarely, keeping her voice as low and even as possible. “Everything I value is behind these doors. Everything.”

  He raised a brow. “That is a dangerous admission to make,” he told her softly.

  “Does it matter? It’s true.”

  “Behind these doors, as you call them, is your den?”

  She nodded. “I trust them. I trust them with my life.”

  “Trust,” he continued, in his cool, distant voice, “is a luxury.”

  “No. It’s a necessity. I don’t care what you’re watching out for. I don’t care what you do to protect me—The Terafin might, but I didn’t choose you, so that’s her problem. But these people are mine, Avandar. I’d rather have no domicis and no House Name than lose them, and if you can’t treat them as part of me, I will. That’s my unbreakable rule. Understand? We would never have made it this far without each other.”

  He didn’t speak for a minute; she thought he meant to turn and walk away. It would have been a relief.

  “You are weak,” he finally said. It wasn’t what she expected. But it didn’t sting.

  “Yes,” she replied, shrugging. “I am. I’ve always been weak. So have they, in their own way. It’s what we are together that makes us strong. They’re my friends; they’re all the family I have. They’re not my servants, and they’re not my subordinates; you’re not to interfere with them.”

  “Understood. But Jewel . . . Jay, understand that as you come to prominence, they will become targets. If it is known that they are of such significance, they will be used against you.”

  “How?”

  His brows rose, and then, to her surprise, the slightest of smiles shifted the corners of his lips. “My experience is not, it appears, to be wasted here. Come, let us enter the rooms that will be my home while you live.”

  She hesitated, and then she pushed the doors open.

  2nd of Veral, 411 A.A.

  Terafin Manse, Averalaan Aramarelas

  It was strange to enter the kitchen without Ellerson. Avandar had been introduced to the den; Angel and Carver were still watching him with vague suspicion. Arann was present because he’d been given the night off—but no one had told him why. Jewel had taken a few moments to assure him in the strongest possible terms—and language—that it wasn’t because they weren’t satisfied with his work.

  “I need to tell you all something,” she finally said, when the silence of Ellerson’s absence and the ambivalence of Avandar’s presence had been dispensed with.

  They waited. Everyone but Finch and Teller had slept for most of the day; the First of Veral was, of course, a holiday—but the second, not so much. Teller had spent most of the daylight hours beside Barston; Finch had gone into a blessedly silent Merchant Authority. They were both home now, and they’d been fed.

  “Kitchen,” Jewel told them.

  They rose and filed out of the dining room. Avandar Gallais watched them leave; he waited for Jewel. She waited for as much silence as she was going to get before she turned to him, hating his expression. It was clear he didn’t think much of her den. To be fair—and she wasn’t trying very hard—it was also clear they didn’t think much of him. But this was their home; he was the stranger. Had it been up to Jewel, he would have been last on her list of possible choices.

  “We meet in the kitchen. It’s enclosed. There’s one window; there’s no way anyone can actually get in. Your services are not required in the kitchen.”

  He raised a brow.

  “And you probably want to look around, anyway. To see where everything is. To—I don’t know. Move your stuff in.” It occurred to her that she had never seen Ellerson move his stuff, as she called it, either in—or out.

  Avandar raised a brow. “I will absent myself from this meeting,” he told her. “I will, however, observe.”

  “You will not spy on us.”

  “Then I will be present.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “No, you won’t be.”

  Silence.

  As he met her even gaze, she had a sense of familiarity that had nothing to do with the past; it went forward, into the future. It wasn’t vision, not precisely, but she was utterly certain that this argument was familiar; that sometime in the near—or far—future, she could hold it in her sleep, it would become so ingrained. So, too, the arguments that she and Avandar had not yet had about clothing, carriage, bearing; the arguments about language and the use of language; the arguments about morality and political context, about expedience and the conflicting desire to do the right thing. Half sentences came and fled until she’d almost lost track of what she had just started.

  He would be chilly. Arrogant. Condescending. He would be galling, infuriating, and so pragmatic she would have to combat the useless desire to push him through the nearest high window.

  He would push her and push her and push her, demanding that she become a power. Whatever the hell that meant. She knew this. And . . . he would be there. Beside her. He would save her life, although from what, she couldn’t say. He would remain aloof and distant and in need of nothing until . . .

  Until he didn’t.

  His gaze narrowed as she took a step back, lifting a hand instinctively to ward him off. He remained motionless. She shook her head to clear it.

  “What,” he said softly, “did you see?”

  She shook her head again, for an entirely different reason. “Nothing,” she added, to the immediate and silent lift of one brow. “I have to talk to my den. I don’t want you spying on them. If you have to, do what Ellerson did.”

  “And that?” He clearly didn’t like being compared to the gentle, older man.

  “Stand near the door by the wall; observe if you must, but don’t interfere.” It wasn’t strictly true; in the end, from his vantage by the wall, Ellerson had joined the den. And . . . he’d left it, as well.

  She shook herself, turned, and entered the kitchen’s swinging door, not much caring if Avandar got hit by it as he followed. Maybe she would, when she’d recovered from the destruction of the chair in The Terafin’s library. She didn’t intend to tell any of her den about that part.

 
She took a seat they’d left empty at the head of the table; Teller had even dragged a lamp in, because while it wasn’t dark, if the conversation took a while, it would be by its end. Tonight, they couldn’t afford to go on forever.

  But when she sat, she placed her hands palm down on the table’s surface and stared at her own knuckles for a while.

  “Jay?” Teller said quietly. Teller, always Teller.

  She looked up, then. “I have something to tell you all.”

  They were tense because she was tense—and why in the Hells was she tense? This was good news, wasn’t it? This was the very best thing they could have dreamed of having when they’d first arrived at the forbidding front gates.

  They waited. She left her chair. “The Terafin offered me the House Name.”

  Their silence was colored by confusion.

  “And this is somehow bad?” Carver finally asked.

  “No.”

  “Something we should feel guilty about?”

  “No.”

  “Something you should feel guilty about?”

  She grimaced. “Maybe.”

  Teller said, “How long ago did this happen?” He was Teller, and he could be counted on to understand the singular cloud on a beautiful, clear horizon. It was to Teller she now looked.

  “A month,” she finally said. “Maybe more.”

  “A month?” Even his brows rose. She couldn’t bear more than a glance around the rest of the table.

  “It was on the day I went to Avantari, to speak with the Kings. The . . . man in charge of their . . . bodyguards . . . started to question me, and he asked me something I didn’t want to answer. The Terafin made him stop by invoking House Law.”

  “She told him you were ATerafin?”

  Jewel nodded. “I couldn’t argue. I couldn’t disagree. I thought—I thought she was lying to protect me.”

  Teller said, after a long pause, “Even if she were—and technically, she was—she couldn’t rescind the Name; you could revoke it, but it would embarrass her.”

  Jewel nodded.

  “But—but why didn’t you say anything? Isn’t this what you wanted?” It was Finch who asked, and Jewel pulled her gaze away from Teller.

  “Yes,” she said. It was so quiet it almost sounded like no.

  “Did you think we wouldn’t trust you? Did you think we’d think you’d just leave us behind?”

  “No! I just—everything was so bad, Finch. Everything. People were dying every hour of every damn day. I couldn’t just be happy. Having the House Name—when we could all be dying like that at any minute—didn’t seem so important.” She turned to them, lifting her chin and facing them fully. “I wanted the House,” she said, “so we would be safe. So we’d have a place where there was food, and guards, and protection.” She grimaced. “I think the rebuilding of the foyer is almost finished.”

  They were silent; Henden had passed, but it had left invisible scars, or ghosts; they would feel them, in the darkness and the midnight hours. They’d remember what Jewel remembered: the savage, unapproachable beauty that reigned even in the midst of inexplicable horrors. When they did, they’d be humbled; they’d feel as small and insignificant as they actually were.

  “Coming here saved Arann,” Finch said at last.

  Jewel nodded, and the line of her shoulders relaxed. “It did,” she said softly. “But what about the rest? The people who couldn’t somehow cross the bridge?”

  Teller said, “You brought word. Without that word, it wouldn’t matter where they lived. It wouldn’t matter that we live here. It doesn’t matter why she gave you the House Name—you earned it.”

  “I didn’t do it alone,” she said. “I’ve never done it alone.”

  Teller smiled; it was brief but clear. Jewel felt something unknot, then—although she couldn’t have said for all the money in the world what exactly had been knotted, what she’d been afraid of.

  “And I can’t do this alone.”

  “What’s ‘this?’ ”

  She threw out an arm, encompassing the kitchen, the windows, the door that led to the rest of the wing—and the domicis. “This,” she said.

  Finch asked quietly, “Will we be able to stay?”

  Jewel smiled then. “Yes. And not because you’re my den—not just because of that. You’ll be—you’ll all be—ATerafin.”

  Silence.

  “I mean, if you want. If you want it.”

  It was noisy, then. Overlapping noise. Hands flew, some in den-sign and some in excitement. Jester whistled; it was a piercing—and annoying—sound. Carver slapped his back, sending him into the table; he didn’t do it on purpose, and it didn’t matter. The dignity that Ellerson so prized was entirely discarded; they lost years and fear in their chaotic and unplanned celebration.

  All of them except Angel.

  He listened as the noise grew around him, gaining distance by the simple expedient of silence, until he had—sitting still—moved so far away from them that someone noticed.

  “Angel?” Jay said. She said it quietly; he saw it as a familiar movement of lips, the sound of the syllables lost in the noise, because he was watching her so carefully.

  He stood abruptly; his chair teetered and fell. The sound broke the rhythm of celebration in the kitchen, spreading his silence outward until it touched even Jester.

  This time, when Jay said his name, he could hear it. Hear the question in it, and see a shadow of uncertainty drop like a heavy stone into the well of the den’s joy. He wanted to break it and hated himself for doing so at the same time. But it wasn’t about them, not really. He let his hands drop, with effort, to his sides, but he left the chair where it had fallen.

  “Angel?” This time, everyone could hear her.

  Angel swallowed and nodded. He spoke stiffly because it was the only way to wedge the words between his clenched teeth. “The House Name.”

  “For all of us,” she said, not quite divining the reason for his unhappiness.

  “What does it mean?”

  She was confused.

  “To have the House Name. To accept it.”

  Carver was staring at the side of his face so intently Angel could practically feel it. “It means we’ll be ATerafin.”

  “And you’ll still be an idiot,” Angel said quietly, turning to face him. “What does it mean to be ATerafin?”

  “Means we live here.”

  Angel didn’t hit him; it was close. “You think that’s all it means? We live here now; we’re not ATerafin. We don’t have to be ATerafin to live here.”

  “Means we’ve a better chance of staying.”

  “Carver, shut up,” Jay said. To Angel she said, “You know what it means. We give The Terafin our oath to serve Terafin. We protect House Terafin’s interests.” She glanced at Arann. Arann, who was already a House Guard and had already offered an oath of his own in pursuit of the duties he’d accepted. “We don’t half-ass it. We mean it.”

  Angel nodded grimly. “You can all do it without me.” His voice was flat and hard.

  “Angel.”

  “I mean it. I won’t swear an oath to The Terafin.”

  “Angel—”

  He caught her in the middle of a long breath. “I can’t.”

  “Why?” Carver demanded. “What difference does it make?”

  “I can’t serve more than one person,” he replied.

  “So? Don’t. It’s not like she’s going to ask you to leave us.”

  “It’s not about her. It’s about the den.”

  But it wasn’t.

  “It’s not like you’ve sworn an oath to serve anyone else.”

  It was true. And if he agreed, it was also a lie. His breath was shorter, sharper; in spite of himself, he was getting angry. The kitchen felt smaller than any kitchen had ever felt at any time—even at the old apartment in the twenty-fifth, where they were practically sitting in each other’s laps.

  Jewel was pale.

  “We’ve—we’re expected in the
House Dining Hall. Tonight. She’s going to announce it.”

  “And it’s all or nothing?” he asked. He managed to keep his voice even. He didn’t manage to keep it quiet.

  Jewel was clearly off-balance. Part of him wanted to help, to make things easier for her. Part of him was so viscerally angry that he couldn’t even try. “It’s not. It’s you and whoever you bring with you. And I’m not going.” He turned, then, and he left the room, pushing the doors so hard they hit the outer wall before they bounced back.

  Carver said, “I’ll go after him.”

  “Don’t.”

  “The hells.”

  “Carver—” But he was already out the door. The room was now full of mostly awkward silence. Jewel shoved her hair out of her eyes.

  “We’re supposed to go to dinner?”

  She nodded, distracted. “Dinner, yes. Dress for it,” she added, because there was no Ellerson to hound them anymore. Avandar had remained silent throughout, as she’d ordered, and she looked across the room to where he now stood. Like Ellerson, he was still; he didn’t fidget. But unlike Ellerson, he radiated a disapproval that he hadn’t earned the right to feel.

  She ignored him and turned back to what remained of her den. “We might as well start getting ready. Carver’ll be back soon.”

  Finch winced; she’d seen Angel’s expression, and didn’t expect that “soon” and “unbruised” meant the same thing.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  IT WAS DARK, and it was now late enough that the Port Authority would be closed for business, something that wasn’t true in the summer season. Angel hesitated at the foot of the bridge between the Isle and the holdings. He had the necessary identification to cross it—which required none—and come back, which was trickier. The Port, however, held very few flagged ships, and he decided that he would be most likely to find Terrick at home above the blacksmith in the Common; this was perhaps the one time of year in which living over the sweltering heat the blacksmith produced would be welcome; it still wasn’t warm.