House War 03 - House Name

by Michelle West

  “Yes.”

  “Then come, Angel. If you will not accept the House Name, you will not accept it. But she intends to make her oath to the House, and if you can’t support her by joining Terafin, support her as you can.”

  Angel glanced at the floor for a moment, and then he straightened his shoulders. “She won’t leave it at that,” he warned Torvan.

  “Oh, probably not. She is who she is. But you, as well, are who you are. You’ll both have to learn to accept it.”

  He nodded, and Torvan began to lead.

  The last time Angel had seen the Terafin shrine, it had been surrounded by people of all ages, all stations. He almost didn’t recognize it as he and Torvan approached. It was small, although well lit, and it was surrounded by rather bruised and flattened grass. But on the steps were the people he had come to think of, slowly, as family.

  Arann was uniformed as a House Guard, and everyone else was also finely dressed; Finch looked almost uncomfortable in a deep, deep purple drape of cloth; she kept lifting her skirts so the hems didn’t touch anything. But in less brilliant colors, Jester, Teller, and Carver looked about as comfortable as she did; they just didn’t have anything to fidget with. Jay was wearing white and black and gold. The gold was a statement of a sort; mourning in the Empire among the patriciate had slightly different rules than mourning for anyone else.

  She had accepted the House Name and, with it, the burden of rank; she made a statement.

  Gabriel ATerafin was present, as were The Terafin and Morretz. The only Chosen, however, was Torvan himself, and he made his presence known simply by approaching the den—and his lord. He saluted The Terafin sharply; it was also loud, given how silent everyone was.

  Jay looked at Angel. She was angry but also confused; the two blended across her features and formed something like apprehension. It made him feel guilty.

  She stepped down from the side of the altar and made her way—quickly—toward him. He knew she wanted to put as much distance as possible between them and The Terafin, who seemed content to wait. He let her approach. Her dress was long and fine, and it made her seem for a moment like a younger version of the woman who ruled the House. But strands of her hair had escaped their bindings and crowded her eyes in curls; she shoved them back and up, dislodging more.

  He lifted a hand as she opened her mouth. “I’m sorry I missed the dinner,” he told her. “I should have been there.” Her expression shifted, and he grimaced. “I couldn’t because I would have spoiled everything. I want to be happy for you. I want to be happy for them. I know you wanted this, and I know you worked for it. But don’t want it for me. I don’t.”

  “But why?”

  He struggled with anger and glanced at Carver. It wasn’t just the fact that Jay was ATerafin that bothered him. It was that they all wanted it. They were all willing to move, to leave her, although that’s not the way any of them saw it.

  But Angel had seen her face the night that Arann had come to the kitchen to tell them all—to tell her—that he wanted to be a House Guard. Being a House Guard would compromise him. Angel had understood exactly what she’d felt—both parts: the desire to hold on to her den, especially Arann, and the desire to let them go, to let them find things that might be bigger, and more important, than she could be.

  Jay didn’t understand, had never understood, how important she was to them. She thought of herself as the person who could be there in emergencies, the person you could come to when things were tough. She never envisioned herself as the person you’d come to when things were flush and people were happy. They could come to her starving. They could come to her surrounded by six members of Carmenta’s den. They could come beside their mother’s snow-covered corpse; they could come fleeing for their lives, with death on their heels.

  They could come to her, Angel thought, when they had nothing and knew it. Because Jay knew she was better than nothing; she didn’t trust herself to be better than something good. So Arann had become a House Guard, and she had swallowed and accepted it. And now everyone—everyone but Angel—had chosen to become not den but ATerafin, part of the most powerful House in the Empire.

  He wanted to tell her all of these things, but it wouldn’t have helped.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Angel—”

  Angel exhaled. Again. He was willing to do almost anything that Jay asked. That had been true from the moment he’d laid eyes on her. Nothing that had happened since then—nothing—had changed that. Nothing could.

  But this, he couldn’t do.

  He looked past the tense and down-turned shoulders of his den leader, and he saw her den. His den. Yes, Duster was gone; Lefty, Lander, and Fisher were gone. What was left was all the home he had, and it didn’t matter where they actually lived, in the end. But they could do this. They could do this because to them, it was the same as obeying any of her other commands: Go to the Common. Go to the well. Run. Hide.

  It wasn’t a matter of trust; he trusted Jay, same as the rest. But, he thought, taking a deep breath, she had to trust him, as well. She had to trust him to do more than just follow.

  “Why do you want me to take the House Name? It’s not my name. It’s never been my name. I’d wear it, and I’d wear it badly, because it’s not me.” He lifted an arm, pointing to the den, who still stood at a distance. “They’ll take it because they think it’ll change nothing. But you know that’s not true. You knew it when Arann joined the House Guard, and that meant less than the name.

  “You don’t care what it costs you. You don’t want to be selfish; you don’t want to hold on to us if something better happens to come along. Something better than you. You’re willing to take that risk, Jay, because you think it’s the right thing, the only right thing, to do. But you’re afraid of it.” He stopped speaking for a moment, gathering words, and he stopped pacing—when had he started?—to look at his den leader. To really look at her.

  The grounds this far from the shrine were dark, but the moon was clear, and her face was the gray of night; her expression was one that he didn’t actually want to name, not even in the privacy of thought. She wasn’t crying. Jay didn’t.

  “I get all that,” he said, softening his voice and his words, trying to bleed the heat from them. “I understand what you want it to mean and what you think, in the end, it will mean. But I’m not willing to be ATERAFIN. Not just to make you feel better. I don’t need—I don’t want—the opportunities we’ll have because of the House Name. I’m not going to leave you. I’m not going to change—and I might be the only person here who won’t.

  “I don’t have those dreams, Jay. Never did. I don’t daydream that I’m a lord or a King or a Commander. I don’t wish I’d been talent-born. I never have.”

  Carver had come down the stairs, and Angel winced; his eye was almost swollen shut. He hadn’t meant to hit Carver so hard. Finch trailed behind him like shadow, the purple of her skirts seeping out into the greater darkness. Teller remained by Gabriel ATerafin’s side, watching without apparent worry. Jester had come down the steps behind Finch; Arann had come as far as Torvan, but Torvan’s lifted hand had stopped him dead.

  Torvan’s. Not Jay’s.

  They didn’t see it, or maybe they just didn’t understand what they saw. Even if they had, they wouldn’t have cared much.

  “What do you want?” Jay asked, her voice low.

  He shrugged. “What I have. I’ll need work. I won’t have the House behind me. But if you leave the House, I’m leaving with you. I won’t be bound by an oath I didn’t want to take and don’t mean.”

  She didn’t speak for a long moment; he thought she was done—for now. Jay was never completely done; she just regrouped and started over. He knew that. Watching her shove hair out of her eyes—and there wasn’t much there—he could see by the way her brows furrowed he’d been wrong.

  He lifted a hand.

  “There’s only one way I’ll ever be ATerafin,” he told her.

  She w
as Jay. He was about to give her a problem; she was good with those. Not always happy with them, but if she understood what the problem was, she could sort it out. She waited.

  He straightened up to his full height, letting—forcing—his shoulder blades to slide down his back. He lifted his chin and, with it, the rise of his hair: Weyrdon’s mark. His father’s burden. “You become The Terafin. You become the leader of the House, and I’ll take the name—because it’ll be your name, Jay.”

  Her eyes widened. Her lips, however, thinned. The hands that had been half-curved now bunched into familiar fists. She could use them when she was angry; they all knew it. Angel wouldn’t have cared if she’d taken a swing at him—but The Terafin would.

  Jewel was ATerafin. Her hands shook, but they stayed where they were. Her eyes—he turned his face away. And then he turned back. “My father was from Arrend,” he said. He hadn’t meant to say it. He didn’t mean to say what he said next, either. “He served Weyrdon, and he came to the Empire on Weyrdon’s mission. He left his lord, and he never returned—he couldn’t until he found what he sought. He died without finding it.

  “I’m what’s left, Jay. I’m all that’s left. But I’m not my father. I could never be my father. In Arrend, in the North, men serve. They’re not like the domicis. They’re like the Chosen.” He turned to where Torvan loitered. Torvan was looking at neither of them, but Angel knew that he was listening.

  “Torvan.”

  The guard turned.

  “You gave your oath to serve The Terafin and only The Terafin.”

  Torvan nodded.

  “What would convince you to offer your oath to any other master?”

  “Nothing.”

  Angel turned back to Jewel, who was staring at him. At his hair. At his face. “I’m not Rendish. And I am. I’ll serve, Jay. But I’ll serve you and only you.”

  Jewel lowered her hands. They were still bunched in fists, but they were loose now—the aftereffects of the anger and confusion that had suddenly deserted her. Angel didn’t blink. His anger, like hers but so different in expression, had also been shed. In its place, determination took root, and with it, peace, as if he’d been struggling with a decision that finally made sense to him, now that he’d spoken it aloud.

  It made no sense to her.

  She stared at him in silence as Carver and Finch came to stand by her side.

  “What if I’m not here?” she finally said, her voice low. “What if something happens to me?”

  “Such as?”

  “I get sick and die. Someone gets lucky and kills me.”

  Angel shrugged.

  “If you have the Name,” she said, in the same low tone, “it won’t matter. They can’t—they won’t—take it from you. You’ll be covered.”

  “I didn’t say I don’t understand why you want them to have the Name.”

  “And you don’t think I want the same thing for you?”

  “Oh, I think you want the same thing for me. But it’s not always about what you want or what you need; sometimes it’s about what I want and what I need.”

  She fell silent, then; he knew her well enough to know it wouldn’t last, and he waited until she found the words she’d been scrambling for. “You were the only one who was stupid enough to go up against six of Carmenta’s den on your own.” Not the words he’d expected, and he didn’t expect the half smile that changed the shape of her mouth, either.

  “It seemed like a good idea, at the time.”

  “So does refusing the House Name.”

  He smiled, then, an echo of hers. Nodded.

  “Then be that stupid,” she said, her voice dropping. “Be that stupid, Angel. I’ll keep you.” She turned and almost ran into Finch, but she managed to stop before they collided. Finch whispered something to her, and she lifted a hand in den-sign. But she turned back.

  “It’s not you I don’t trust,” she told him quietly. “It’s never been you. It’s me. I don’t understand why you want to do this, and I don’t know that I’m worth it. I’m selfish, Angel. I know it. And because I know it, I try to—try to do things that limit the damage I can do.”

  He nodded, because he did understand.

  “But . . . thank you. You’re right. I know things will change. I know it, and sometimes I’m afraid of it. But I also know things always change, sometimes for the better—and if I don’t take the risk, I lose that chance. If you don’t take the risk, you’ll lose it as well.”

  He shook his head. “I understand that I’m taking a different risk,” he said. “But every choice is risky.”

  “You come up with that yourself?”

  He laughed, and it hurt, but it was still a good laugh. “No. My father did. When he was training us in the Free Towns.”

  She hesitated and then said, “Will you come and watch? We’re to swear our oaths to the House at the shrine.”

  “I’ll watch,” he said. He could, now. He joined her; Finch made room for him, looking as concerned as Jay but swallowing the words that Jay could never swallow. Carver hit him once between the shoulder blades, which caused him to stumble, narrowly avoiding the train of Jay’s gown. He also signed, and the sign was curt and rude—but his expression, when Angel drew himself up and turned to face him, wasn’t an angry one. The side of his face made Angel wince.

  Sorry.

  Wait for it.

  Idiot.

  They met Arann and joined Teller at the height of the stairs. Throughout the discussion, The Terafin had watched, her expression as neutral as a statue’s. But when Angel came to stand among the den at the shrine, she looked at him. It wasn’t a glance, and she said nothing, but her gaze was even and thoughtful.

  He knew what he would say to her if she asked him to accept the House Name; he knew what he’d say when she asked him why he refused. But she did neither. Instead, she turned to the den as a whole.

  “There is no ceremony to mark your adoption,” she said quietly. “And while an oath is required, it can be entirely personal; there are no wrong words if your intent is sincere. Finch,” she said, inclining her head. “Will you join my House?”

  “Yes.” Angel could hardy hear Finch’s reply.

  “Will you be ATerafin, forsaking the responsibility that comes with blood ties to all other family?”

  The second yes was far more audible and far more definite than the first.

  “And will you obey me, and The Terafin who comes after, for the benefit and the furtherance of House Terafin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then be ATerafin, Finch. We are honored to have you join us.” The Terafin nodded to Gabriel, who had not spoken once, and he took from a satchel at his side one rolled and sealed scroll. This he gave to Finch.

  “ATerafin,” he said gravely.

  Her hands shook, and she curtsied, but she didn’t break the seal.

  The Terafin than turned to Teller and asked exactly the same questions. But Gabriel smiled and added, “Remember that the House contains Barston and his very, very particular scheduling and notions of propriety.”

  Teller looked slightly offended on Barston’s behalf, which deepened Gabriel’s smile.

  “You had best accept; if you were to continue your tutelage under Barston after refusing the honor of the name you’ve been offered, I fear that you would never hear the end of it.”

  At that, Teller smiled, and he also took the scroll that Gabriel handed him.

  To Carver, The Terafin said, “You are not suitably trained to be a servant, however the servants have taken up your cause, and this is no small thing in a House of this size or this nature. You will find that you hear much, much more than the rest of your den; mark it, Carver. Learn to tease the strands of truth from the strands of speculation.”

  One of his eyes was hidden under the fall of his long, distinctive bangs; he brushed them, momentarily, to one side.

  To Arann, The Terafin said, “You have, as expected, done well in the House Guards. Decarus Holloran has set aside
his usual caution when it comes to those newly recruited; he is pleased with your dedication and the seriousness with which you approach your work. It is his wish, however, that you attempt to impress upon the other newer recruits some of your own attitude.” She smiled as she said it.

  Arann, as usual, didn’t say a word. But he looked as if he thought he should. In the end, he simply offered her a perfect bow.

  “What you want for and from the House depends in full measure upon what you can give the House, but I am confident that if you do not feel you are large enough for the Name now, you will grow into it.”

  She paused in front of Jester, and after she had taken his simple answer, she said, “I do not know what you will do in or for House Terafin, Jester, and it is seldom indeed that the House Name is offered in ignorance. You frequently laugh, and your words and gestures invoke laughter in those around you, which is not, in the end, a small thing. But you do not, in turn, join the House; you do not let it touch you. The rest of your kin have made their tentative, hesitant connections with the people who also serve; you stand back, always. You watch.”

  Jester was unusually silent.

  “What do you see when you watch?” she asked.

  He shrugged. He was the only one of the den who’d dared. “People.”

  Gabriel frowned. The Terafin did not. “And what will you do with the knowledge you gain from your observation?”

  He shrugged again; this time, Jay signaled, moving a hand by her side without lifting it. She might as well have kicked him in the shins; The Terafin noticed everything.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know when it’ll be useful.” He shoved his thumbs into the waist of his pants. “Most of what I notice, someone else sees first. I don’t need to look smart. I don’t want—” he shook his head. “If you need more from me—”

  “No. I have chosen to trust that you are necessary to your den and that in a similar way, you will become necessary to my House.”