Battle: The House War: Book Five

by Michelle West

  I would not need to kill them, he said, if I were free. There would be enough, could I but touch all dreamers. There will be enough, he added, voice shifting again, if I have yours.

  “But then I won’t wake.”

  Silence.

  “And if I don’t wake, the House descends into war.”

  Then take them, take them and make these lands unassailable.

  She shook her head.

  Do the Kings not raise armies? he asked, his tone shifting. Do they raise armies assuming each and every soldier will survive?

  “No.”

  Without armies to defend them from their enemies, will they not fall? This is not different. You will never rule well, if you do not understand the choices a ruler must make.

  Anger was a texture. The gray of the landscape shifted by slow degree. Splotches of color without distinct shape or boundary began to grow. Was he wrong? Right? She started to tell him that people who joined the army had a choice. But had her den stayed in the streets of the twenty-fifth holding, it would be one of the only options left to those who were healthy and physically whole.

  Choice was never black and white. It was informed by context, by fear, by hope, or by desperation.

  The butterflies were motionless as they rested on her arm. Some of their light trailed in dust across her skin, as if they were shedding it simply by proximity. She slowly pulled her arm out of the small patch of sky, and the butterflies came with it. She let the sky go and closed her eyes.

  * * *

  Bread was baking. She could smell it; the scent was so sudden and so strong she could almost taste it. It was the bread her Oma would sometimes buy when she was being extravagant. Because that wasn’t often, it had been special, and Jewel remembered it that way.

  She heard splashing, felt water strike her cheeks and her eyelids. She didn’t open them. She knew this sound, and knew it better, in some ways. It was fountain water. Someone was laughing—someone young—and as she laughed, other children laughed as well, the sound high and sharp. There was no malice in it, although there was plenty of mischief; Jewel knew which fountain they were playing in. The summer sun fell hot against her face and her arms; her feet were bare because shoes were expensive and water wasn’t good for them, or at least that’s what her mother said.

  She could hear the sound of the magisterial guard that patrolled the Common; could hear the shrieks of running children who were not to play in the water—but who always did. You couldn’t put water like that in easy reach of children and expect them to keep their hands dry.

  Last, she could feel heat: not sun, but fire. She could hear its sharp, harsh crackle and above its constant din, louder cracking. Ah. Screams, screams of terror. Jewel knew what fire did to the old buildings in the hundred. She had seen an entire building consumed in flame. Although the fire had been magical, the effects were similar.

  On a windy day, fire was more of a threat than dark gods.

  It was to the fire that Jewel turned first, and when she opened her eyes, she could see it. She flinched; the smoke was black and thick, and the building’s roof was ablaze. Wind? Yes, there was wind, and it tore parts of the burning roof away, carrying fire to other buildings—and spectators. There were buckets in a line, there were people with blankets and water and wet towels. There were men and women lying on the ground, chests heaving, eyes wild.

  She didn’t recognize the street—but she only knew three holdings like the back of her hand, and in dreams, all reality shifted and contorted to enfold the dreamer. It didn’t matter what holding contained the dream, after all. It only mattered that someone was dreaming.

  Jewel wondered, as she began to walk toward the fire, if this dreamer had been caught in the same dream since they had fallen asleep. Did dreams shift and change, the way they naturally did?

  She didn’t know. Adam had made clear to her that the sleepers he woke had no memory at all of their dreams; as far as they were concerned, they hadn’t had any. Only during her flight up the side of the dream-twisted tree, and her defense of her new forest against a demon lord, did they remember their dreams. They also remembered the dreams, in fragmented, fractured images, of the first day of The Terafin’s funeral.

  Jewel looked at her arms; there were no butterflies here.

  Only fire, fear, the streets of the holding looming large and impersonal in the face of impending loss. It was a fear she understood so well her mouth went dry. Love opened you up, always, to the possibility of loss.

  The inevitability of loss.

  She started to argue with the disembodied voice—but stopped herself because she was no longer certain that it was the Warden of Dreams who was speaking. Her mother was dead. Her Oma. Her father—and her father’s future had shadowed her days with a terrible fear and certainty until the accident she’d foreseen had come to pass. Lefty was dead. Lefty, Fisher, Lander. Duster. Rath—gone. Alowan. Even Amarais, their shield and their savior.

  You build, but it breaks. That is the nature of the world of your birth; it is a land of mortals, it is a land of death. Build where mortality does not reign if you wish to build eternity.

  “It’s not mortality,” she whispered, her words cracked and broken by the roar of the fire.

  It is.

  She shook her head. She walked easily through the crowd, lifting her hand and exposing the signet that signified her position as The Terafin. The gesture was instinctive; it was a sweep of hand that was, wordless, a command. A command and a promise. When had she learned that? Why did it work?

  The crowd parted, although she took care to avoid the line of men hefting buckets against the roar of flame. It was like making an argument in whispers when your opponent was roaring like the very dragons of legend; it made no difference at all. Yet they tried, in this dreamscape.

  They tried, she thought, when they were awake. She squared her shoulders. She couldn’t douse this fire in reality. She could douse it in the dreaming.

  No, you cannot. Unless you are willing to take her dream and make it your own, the flames will not respond to you—they are hers.

  Would that be so much worse? Jewel, who’d known the fear that had created the whole of this landscape—who had known, worse, the end of that fear, and the truth of that death, wanted to say, No. No, it wouldn’t be worse. This was a nightmare that plagued her conscious, waking moments; to live it for—for however long this dreamer had been trapped here—

  But no. No. This was how it would start. This is often how things did start. Good dream or bad, it didn’t matter. This was all dream, and it wasn’t—couldn’t be—hers. She reached the side of the dreamer, and knew—without knowing quite how or why—that this woman, small, stout, her face and hands lined with labor and lack of sleep, anchored this dream. Her face was red with exertion, wet with tears, her body bent with the burden of fear and the pain of hope when hope was so scant.

  “Hold on,” she told the woman, lifting hand, letting her see the Terafin crest on its heavy band of gold; the gems that studded it were altered in color by the hues of fire. She had seen those colors—those exact colors—before. They were hers. They were the heart of the first tree she had planted in a forest that existed in the shadows of the Terafin grounds.

  The woman blinked, and then dashed tears away with the blackened backs of her blistered hands. “Terafin,” she said, her knees buckling, her hands rising.

  Jewel nodded. “The magi are on the way. They will be here soon.”

  Symbols had power, even here. Or perhaps especially here. Jewel couldn’t see herself the way the dreamer saw her, but she felt strengthened by the woman’s gaze—and burdened by the hope in it. Jewel was The Terafin. The Terafin was one of The Ten. If The Ten summoned the magi, the magi would come.

  It wasn’t the way it worked in waking life, not really. But this wasn’t life; it was the detritus of life, stripped of reason. In this case, the lack of reason worked in both their favors; the magi did, indeed, arrive. They arrived in a cloud of r
obes, taller than life, broader of chest and grimmer of expression; they were, to a man, bearded, and those beards were white and long—yet no other encumbrance of age hindered them.

  “Terafin,” they said, as one.

  She wanted to laugh. The magi could barely stand still in a room in groups of larger than one; they argued more frequently than they drew breath. If the real magi had come at her command, they’d be jostling for position in the streets, and arguing about the most effective way to put out the fire; the building would probably be ash by the time they finished. But her expression when she replied was the definition of gravitas. “Matteos. Send one of your men for the healer. Have the rest douse these flames—and quickly. There is a—” she glanced at the woman’s face, “—a child, inside.”

  One man left at her command; the others converged.

  It was interesting to see the magi as this woman saw them in her dreams: they acted in concert. They acted, Jewel thought, like gods. No natural force of fire could defy their will; their arms moved, and their voices rose in clear, heavy, intonation. The syllables made no sense, but the gravity and strength of each utterance lent them weight, force, will. What fire could stand against the combined force of such men?

  Not this dreamer’s.

  It was not yet over. The woman was grateful, but gratitude was stifled by fear; the building was so damaged. The fire had burned for so long. Hope was harsh, and it cut—but Jewel had clung to scanter, in her time. What this woman was doing to herself, Jewel had also done. And she knew, if she woke, they would both do it, time and again; take the sharp, sharp edge of bitter hope, because none seemed the worse alternative.

  You are foolish, still. Mortality is death.

  “It’s not about mortality,” she whispered, as the woman turned wide eyes upon her. “Yes,” Jewel told her, as the magi lowered their arms and the streets fell silent in the wake of guttered flame. “It’s safe now. Shall we go?”

  The woman swallowed. Jewel shook her head. “What is your name?”

  “Leila.”

  “Come, Leila. Let’s find your child.”

  And when she finds his corpse, what then?

  What then, Jewel? The young Terafin ruler shook her head, and Leila stumbled into the house, shouting a name over and over. “Then,” she said, as she followed, “she’ll continue. It’s all we can do. It’s all we ever do. You don’t understand,” she added, as she stepped into the blackened remains of a sitting room and headed—as Leila had headed—toward stairs.

  “It’s not about mortality. You can’t see that—maybe you can’t die. I don’t know what kills dreams. But it’s not about the mortality. People die in the streets of this city all the time. They die in their bedrooms on the Isle. They die in the snows of Arrend, and they die in the sands of Annagar. Those deaths don’t define me, and they don’t break me.

  “It’s not about the deaths, Warden.” She heard the woman scream, and she flinched, and her eyes teared instantly, the sound was so damn raw. “It’s about love.”

  You could make it better. You have already—

  “No. I didn’t do any of that—she did. But even the power of symbols have limits.” She bowed her head. “This is hers. This is what she sees. This is what she fears, or feared to face—I don’t actually know. But good—or bad,” and this was undeniably the latter, “it’s hers. I don’t have the right to decide it for her, one way or the other.” She entered the building. “I don’t know what led to this. I don’t even know if she has a child.”

  The stairs were scorched and scored; Jewel climbed them anyway, avoiding the rail. As she did, she heard footsteps at her back; she turned.

  Adam was standing at the foot of the stairs. His eyes widened as they met hers. “Matriarch!” he said.

  The ground beneath her feet shifted, keeping time with Leila’s low, broken cries. “Matriarch?”

  He frowned. Seeing Jewel had apparently been natural and even expected; seeing the burned and blackened ruins of a small, strange house had only just begun to register. “Where are we?”

  “I—” She walked back down the stairs, grabbed his hand, and pulled him up. He was solid. He looked exactly like Adam, and she knew—she knew—as she met his rounded, brown eyes, that he was. Somehow, Adam was in the dreaming with her.

  She felt the world darken subtly, the way it sometimes did when dreams shifted into nightmare and every visual detail became vaguely and inexplicably threatening. No, she thought, clenching her jaw. This is not my dream. “Come with me,” she said, forcing her grip on his hand to ease.

  The stairs creaked in a dangerous way beneath both of their weights.

  * * *

  Geography was never fixed in dreams. Halls elongated or shortened, ceilings changed height, texture and color, rooms widened or narrowed. In dreams, nothing was fixed, but in her own dreams, the shifting landscape felt natural and unremarkable. Walking through Leila’s dream was therefore unnerving. Had it not been for the visceral sounds of almost animal grief, it would have been easy to get lost trying to find her. Her voice, however, was so primal it was like the bottom of a cliff—when one had just jumped, or had been thrown off, its height. It drew Jewel inexorably toward where the heart of the dream waited.

  The ceilings, by this point, were short enough that Jewel had to duck through what was otherwise a door’s frame, dragging Adam with her. She was afraid to lose him here. Adam didn’t seem to suffer from the fear of being lost; he was focused on the sound of Leila’s pain. It was their guide, in the end.

  They found her crouched over a small body; judging by its size—and at this age, size was often a poor indicator—Jewel thought the child no more than five, but possibly younger. His eyes—and he was a boy, that was the narrative of the dream—were closed. The fire that had damaged the room had not likewise damaged him, although his clothing was blackened by what appeared to be soot.

  Adam started forward, and Jewel tightened her grip on his arm, pulling him back.

  “This is a dream,” she told him, when he turned to face her, his eyes narrowed in a younger man’s anger. “The rules of healing don’t apply here.”

  He swallowed, glanced around at the walls, the short, cramped ceilings, the very oddly shaped bed. Oh, Jewel thought, as his eyes widened; they had noticed the bed at the same time. It was long and narrow, and instead of a mattress, it held a wooden coffin. The coffin was the only thing in this room that had not been harmed by the fire—and why would it be, in the end? It was so much worse than the fact of the fire itself.

  So, she thought. She released Adam’s arm and approached Leila’s curved back. Her shoulders were hunched as she gathered the body of her son into her arms and her lap, howling, words denied her.

  “Leila,” she said, touching the rough cloth of the woman’s shirt. She wasn’t surprised when Leila didn’t react. Adam, free from restraint, made room for himself on the floor, opposite the grieving mother. His face was pale, but he was not afraid—not for her, and not of what she carried.

  “Leila,” he said. This time he placed a hand on one of her shaking arms.

  Her low, animal moan stopped as she looked up. “Adam?”

  He smiled. It was a slight smile, and it was—as Adam himself was—enormously gentle. He nodded. “Will you let me see your son?”

  “Why are you here? It’s too late—”

  “The Terafin sent for me.”

  “You serve The Terafin?” As Jewel moved to stand behind Adam, she could see the woman’s eyes. They were round with surprise.

  Adam nodded.

  “But—but—”

  “Yes?”

  “You woke me.”

  He nodded gently.

  “How could you wake me if you serve her?”

  “The Terafin cares for many people, Leila, not just her own.”

  “There is no other healer I could summon,” Jewel said, quite truthfully. “Give him your son for a moment, Leila.”

  The woman’s arms tightened instin
ctively around her burden. Jewel waited. She understood that her authority as The Terafin was grounded in the daily life of a citizen of Averalaan who lived and worked in the hundred holdings. But Adam’s authority as healer was different; it wasn’t symbolic; it was mystical. And neither of these was resident in Jewel or Adam; they were part of how Leila saw, and understood, her life.

  You can change that.

  She was getting really, really tired of the Warden of Dreams. But she’d had a decade or more as a member of the House Council in which to grit her teeth and ignore the truly tiresome; she put it into practice now almost instinctively. It was harder than it often was—but the House Council was composed of men—and women—not the scion of long-dead gods.

  They are not dead.

  “In your dreams,” she replied, under her breath.

  She heard the sound of his wild, harsh laughter as Leila let Adam lift her child into his own lap; he curled around the body in a posture very similar to the boy’s mother’s, bending his head over the boy’s face. Jewel knew that healing required only the barest of physical contact; this is not what Adam now offered. But when Adam had woken Leila from a sleep that might otherwise be endless, she hadn’t seen him at work; she had responded to his talent and the imperative of his gift.

  This, then, was the physical representation of how that gift had felt to Leila. Jewel’s actions and words had not been confined by Leila’s belief in The Ten, its rulers, or its authority; she had moved, worked, and acted, in a fashion that felt natural to her. She wondered if Adam was doing the same, or if his actions here were pressed and burdened by the weight of Leila’s expectations. If they were, he didn’t seem to notice them.

  He sat, while Leila held her breath, for what felt like an hour. When he lifted his face, his eyes were red. “Leila,” he said, “I’m sorry. He’s crossed the bridge. He can’t come back.” Sorrow made his face look so much younger.

  “You can see him?” Leila asked, her voice raw and shaky.

  Adam nodded. “I can. He’s in no pain. He will never be in pain in this life again. He’s playing,” he added. “He’s throwing stones into the river that runs beneath the bridge.”