Oracle: The House War: Book Six

by Michelle West

  Jewel nodded. She was dreaming, and she was not dreaming. Dreams had their own, internal reality—but she couldn’t quite fit herself into them here. Her Oma was dead. Her Oma was, no doubt, terrifying people in Mandaros’ Hall.

  “Was I really all that terrifying?”

  “Yes. Always.”

  “Well. Well, then. That’s probably why I’m here.” She coughed again. “What are you wasting your time on, girl? Wandering around in a daze with those great, noisy creatures of yours?” She turned and pointed, with the pipe’s stem, at Shadow.

  Shadow sniffed.

  “What have you promised?” she continued. “And have you failed yet?”

  Jewel was silent.

  “You understand what you’ve seen. You understand what it means. You can’t pretend it’s opaque or confusing. You’re not an idiot. Well, not mostly an idiot. I didn’t want this for you. When your mother came home with the story about the dog—I didn’t want it. You understand that?”

  Jewel swallowed. Nodded.

  “But it’s never mattered what I want. And it doesn’t matter what you want, either. You are what you are. You became a power because you wanted to keep your family safe. Well, fine. We all want to keep our family safe. I’ll give you yours. You didn’t have any other choice, and it’s better than nothing.”

  Jewel bridled, now, but managed to keep her silence. It was surprisingly difficult, and not made easier when Shadow hissed laughter.

  “And you, shut up. If she’d listened to me, you wouldn’t be here, either. Cats are a useless lot of parasites.”

  Shadow growled.

  So did Jewel’s Oma. “You can kill me if you want,” the old woman told him. “All you’ll do is traumatize her. Nothing you can do—nothing at all—can hurt me now.” She turned back to Jewel. “All you want now is to hide from the choices you’ve made. It would be nice if life worked that way; it doesn’t. Never has. You’re Matriarch, now.”

  “We don’t have Matriarchs! We’re not Voyani!”

  But her Oma shook her head. “Don’t you recognize this place, girl? This is death. It’s what will be if you do nothing.”

  “I’m not doing nothing—”

  “As good as makes no difference. We all die. It’s what we do. But we build as well. If no one stepped in to continue the building and the repairs, this is all your Common would be: ruins. And trees. You always liked the trees,” she added, her voice softening inasmuch as it ever did. “Had no one succeeded the first of the Twin Kings, the same. Had no one stepped in to fight during the Henden of 410, this is what you would have—or maybe worse.

  “You are Matriarch. Understand what Matriarchs are, and what they do. No one can make the choices you will have to make for you. No one can absolve you of them.”

  “If I make a mistake—”

  “Yes. Large choices have large consequences. This is what power is. Oh, you can argue that power is force or violence, and I won’t disagree. But it’s not your power. I shouldn’t be here,” she added. “I didn’t raise an idiot. You know what you need to do.”

  “I—”

  “You don’t want this, is that what you mean to tell me?” Her Oma spit to the side. “You should have thought of that sooner. But you’ll think of it now,” she added, turning again toward the gates that led out of the Common. “Because he’s coming.”

  • • •

  Shadow roared. He hit earth with his forepaws, and the ground beneath Jewel’s feet shook. Stones, loosened by time and disaster, fell in the distance. Jewel heard them, felt them strike ground, wished—for one long, silent moment—that they could strike her, instead.

  Or that lightning strike. Or that dragon breathe. Or that earth break and swallow her. Anything, anything, but what she knew would follow.

  And of course, nothing killed her. Nothing struck her. Nothing removed her from this nightmare that was, in the end, of her own making. She had been so careless, and it was not—it was never—she who would pay the price.

  Breath deserted her as she stood, wreathed for a moment in pipe smoke and the lingering growl of shadow cat.

  Carver came down what was left of the main west road of the Common.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  HE WAS PALE. His hair hung over one eye—that hadn’t changed. But his clothing was dirty and torn in at least one place, and it was brown where blood had dried; brown and stiff. Exhaustion made his desperate run a series of stumbles and backward glances; he was being pursued, but his pursuers were far enough behind that Jewel couldn’t see them.

  “Yes,” her Oma said quietly. “Do you understand? You have no time, Na’Jay. You have no time.”

  She could not speak a word. She couldn’t raise voice, let alone arms; she couldn’t feel the ground beneath her feet, couldn’t feel her feet themselves. She was frozen between one breath and the next. Everything she had ever feared was contained in this moment. Gods and demons and firstborn had haunted her dreams and her nightmares, and none, in the end, could hurt her as this one did.

  And would.

  He looked up as she stood, immobile. He looked up, and across the distance she could see his visible eye widen. He stopped. He stumbled. She moved. She moved without will or thought, her slow single step breaking into many, all of her decision—her choice, the only choice—forgotten in the visceral need to be there to catch him.

  Her arms were open, and then, closed; she felt his ribs, the slight weight of him, the brush of his falling hair over her own as he lowered his head into the crook of her neck. He shook.

  Or perhaps she did. They were silent and inseparable for the space of several breaths.

  It was Carver who pulled away first. That was the only mercy she was given. He drew back, placing both of his shaking, cold hands on her shoulders; she could see hints of the eye that was almost always covered as he looked down at her.

  “Jay. Jay. Why are you here? I told you not to come.”

  She had to look away. She had to look away because she was afraid to close her eyes. Her throat was too swollen for words. Any words. She knew this was a nightmare. It was only a nightmare. But clearly she knew Carver well enough that there was no difference between the waking and sleeping versions.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. And then, because she couldn’t speak, she lowered her head into his chest. “I’m sorry, Carver. I’m sorry.”

  “Jay, stop.” His hands tightened. “Stop.”

  Because she stood in the ruins of a city, and not in the Council Chambers of Avantari or the House she ruled by name, she shook her head. She wanted to weep, but fought it; if she started, she would never stop.

  “What’s happened? Is everyone else safe?”

  She almost laughed. But it, too, would have been on the edge of tears, and it would have pushed her over.

  “No one else is safe,” Shadow said. Jewel had forgotten the gray cat in her rush across the ruins of the Common. “Not you, not any of her kin.”

  “Then why are you here?” he demanded, ignoring both the interruption and its source.

  “She is here because you’re here. She is as stupid as you.”

  Carver exhaled. “We have to leave,” he said. “I don’t know how you got here—but I hope you’ve got an escape route planned. We’re not going to have much time.” He pulled her, shifted his grip, started to head out the other side of the market circle.

  She stopped him.

  “Jay—I mean it—”

  “I know.” She closed her eyes. “I know. I thought—I really thought—I could find you and save you. I thought I could make a path that led straight to where you landed, and I could bring you home.” She looked at her hands; she had left the Terafin seal in Avantari. But the weight of the title was never, had never been, about simple golden seals. She swallowed. “I agreed to walk the Oracle’s path. I agreed to take h
er test. I knew that unless I passed it I couldn’t. Find you. Find a way to reach you.

  “That’s where I am, now. In a bloody winter forest in the middle of nowhere. This is a dream.”

  Carver had stilled.

  “It’s a dream. A nightmare. Carver—”

  He lifted his hands, then. He released her and stepped back. As if he couldn’t trust his voice, he signed. He signed go now. And she couldn’t. She couldn’t wake. She couldn’t stop speaking.

  “The Sleepers are waking. That’s why the closet opened somewhere else. That’s why I’m actually here. I need to be able to find the only living being they might—just might—obey. And I need to do it yesterday, because they’ve been sleeping under our city. Under the hundred holdings. And when they wake—” She glanced around at the ruin of the Common.

  Carver clearly didn’t see the ruins as she did. She wondered if he even saw the trees. Without thought, she handed him a single leaf, the one she’d retrieved. Hands shaking, as silent now as he was, he opened his hand and took it.

  “I can’t find her if I can’t pass the Oracle’s test. I’m not certain that finding her will be enough; she’s trapped somewhere. She can’t leave—and I need her to leave. I need her to ride.” She closed her eyes. “But I can’t—I can’t find you. I can’t save you. Carver—” she opened her eyes again, because she was weeping; she was bent with the weight of emotion that tears alone couldn’t shed.

  He looked down at her. He looked down, and then he lifted his hands. He didn’t touch her; he touched, instead, something at the back of his neck. A necklace, Jewel thought. A pendant.

  “Take this,” he told her. “Take this and give it to Merry.”

  Her own hands opened to take what he offered.

  He smiled. There was pain in it. “What will happen to the city if you don’t leave?”

  “They’ll destroy it.”

  He nodded. “Everything I care about is in that city.”

  “Everything I care about isn’t.”

  “Almost everything you care about is. In that city. Teller’s there. Finch. Angel—”

  “Angel’s here. With me. I mean, he’s in the forest where I am when I’m awake.”

  Carver’s smile deepened, losing some of the edge of pain. “You know what you need to do. You told Duster to—”

  She lifted a hand and covered his mouth. “I told Duster to die,” she said.

  He nodded. His hands signed yes. But he added, “She chose, Jay. She chose.” He exhaled. “Tell Merry I’m sorry. I should’ve told her—” he shook his head. “Did you find Ellerson?”

  Jewel blinked. She had almost forgotten. “. . . No.” Before she could say more, she heard hooves in the distance, and she saw Carver pale. He pulled away from her. She couldn’t let him go. Her nerveless, shaking hands opened the pouch she had carried from Avantari’s hidden basement on the wild trek she’d undertaken.

  Leaves, leaves, leaves.

  And beside them in her bag, the one leaf she had been given in a different dream: blue, metallic, like and unlike the Ellariannatte’s leaves. She knew this was not the place it was meant to be. But she knew, as well, that this was all she had to offer the man she intended to abandon.

  He stared at it.

  “Take it.”

  “It’s a leaf—”

  “I know what it is. Take it, Carver. Take it and go.”

  “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  She shook her head. “You’re not awake. No matter what you think, you’re not awake. Take it and find the strength to use it.”

  “And do what?”

  “Plant it. I don’t know. I’m not awake, either.”

  Shadow roared. The rhythm of hoofbeats changed as the sound of his anger died into stillness.

  “Go,” she said again. “I’ll wake. But until I do, let me buy you whatever time I can.” She signed: go now, and he nodded, and he turned. Just as if they were both sixteen again, in the streets of the twenty-fifth.

  She wanted to grab him. She wanted to grab him and hold him. She wanted to follow. And she knew that she could. In this moment, she could walk that path. She would abandon every other person who had followed her to this place, because none of them—not even Avandar—could follow where she led; not yet. But she knew that if she followed Carver here, she would wake where Carver was.

  And she knew, as well, what the cost would be.

  And she couldn’t pay it. That was the truth. She could not bring herself to pay it. Carver was one life. One. And in the balance was the life of every other person she loved, or had loved. In the balance were the Kings and The Ten and the mage-born and the makers and the bards—all save Kallandras himself. At this moment, they didn’t matter to Jewel. Had they been the only losses, she would have suffered them willingly. But in the balance, as well, were Merry and Lucille and Barston. In the balance were all of the children very like Jewel herself had once been: powerless, hungry, and lost. And in the balance, at the very end, the rest of her den: the people who had survived the twenty-fifth and The Terafin’s assassination, and the demons.

  She fell to her knees; Shadow growled.

  But she had fallen for a reason, had allowed her grief to bear her down with purpose; she gathered the fallen leaves of the Ellariannatte, and rose. As she had done once in the gardens of the Terafin manse, she set the leaves free, throwing them, with purpose, into the waiting breeze. And the breeze was waiting, in this dreamscape.

  Wind took the leaves and carried them; their flight ended in earth. Where leaf and earth touched, the Ellariannatte flowered. These were not trees of silver, gold, or diamond. They were not trees of blue metal—and she wondered, then, if the leaf she had left Carver could be planted here at all.

  They were the trees that had girded the Common.

  Where disaster had killed or injured those trees, new trees sprouted, reaching up, and up again, as if straining to achieve their full growth in time. What approached those trees—if anything did—she couldn’t see. She didn’t want to see. She wanted to believe that Carver would somehow escape them. That he would live without her aid. That he could somehow buy her time.

  Time to visit the Oracle. Time to find the Winter Queen. Time to save the rest of her home.

  And she didn’t, and couldn’t, believe it. She knew it was a miracle that Carver was still alive. She knew he was. But the only miracles Jewel had ever been able to count on in life were generally the ones best left for nightmare.

  The trees were a small forest in the ruins of what had once been the center of her life. She turned; Carver was gone. So was her Oma. Only Shadow remained, and he watched her with wide, unblinking eyes.

  She failed to move.

  Shadow closed the gap between them. He said nothing. He didn’t even tell her how stupid she was, or had been—and she had, and knew it. There were leaves on the ground, and she bent and retrieved one, as if she were a child again.

  She held it in one palm; in the other, enclosed in the fist her hand had become, was a pendant. To give to Merry.

  She was grateful that she was not resident in the manse. It was the last thing Carver had asked of her. It was one of the only favors he had ever explicitly requested. And she was coward enough that the thought of fulfilling it crushed her.

  But this was a dream. It was a nightmare and it was a dream. Even in the wilderness of her current waking life, she would wake. She would wake and leave as much of it behind as she could.

  “It is time,” Shadow told her.

  Jewel nodded.

  • • •

  She woke to campfire and Calliastra; to Celleriant and the Winter King. She woke surrounded by gray fur and gray wings; the first sound she heard was the hissing of angry cat; it was the closest thing to her ear.

  Waking was awkward. Even Calliastra’s normal hauteur had
broken, and the uneasiness that replaced it looked so foreign on the firstborn face that Jewel almost failed to recognize her. She rose, and as she did, she opened her hands.

  From the right fell something that sparkled in the early morning light. From the left, a leaf that no tree in this forest had shed.

  She stared at them. She stared, and then bent, stiffly and slowly, as if she had aged decades in one night. Her hands trembled as she lifted the pendant from packed snow and dirt; she held it aloft. It caught light. It was a simple thing, really: a locket in the shape of an oval. She had no doubt that if she opened it, at least one half of the two sides would be filled.

  But she didn’t.

  It wasn’t meant for her.

  Nothing, this morning, was. She lifted the chain in trembling hands, and lowered it over her head; it caught in strands of her hair and she tore at them. She would wear this—it was the only way she could be guaranteed to keep it safe.

  • • •

  When Angel woke, he knew something was wrong. He signed—to Adam—and Adam shook his head, his lips thinner than usual, his gentle smile completely absent. No one appeared to have gone missing during a night spent in the admittedly warm but very cramped hole they had dug out of snow that was probably, from the looks of this forest, older than Angel.

  Calliastra was tending the fire. Celleriant was beside her, at a cold but respectful distance. Kallandras was preparing food, with Terrick’s help—or perhaps the reverse. Shianne sat opposite Calliastra; she was the only person present who didn’t seem to be aware of the raven-haired, disturbingly attractive child of—if Jay was right—gods. No; her eyes were on Jay; she was watchful.

  She was, Angel thought, worried.

  Jay was pacing. She stopped when Angel caught her attention—mostly by stepping into the path her feet had crushed into the snow. He froze—it was cold enough for that—when he saw her eyes.

  They were red.

  “Jay?”

  She started to speak, stopped. Three times. And then she inhaled and lifted shaking hands instead. Her hands were mittened—mittens being the piece of Winter clothing she most disliked—and seeing this she bunched those hands into fists instead.