Battle: The House War: Book Five

by Michelle West

“Yes,” Meralonne said, before she could speak. “I believe I know where he is. I am not entirely certain; the image contains very little in the way of either geography or architecture.”

  “You—you know where he is.”

  “I am not certain, Jewel. It is entirely possible that I am mistaken. If he—”

  Shadow roared. It was both deafening and bracing. He inserted himself between Jewel and Meralonne, and then lifted his wings and nudged them farther apart.

  “Shadow,” she said, exasperated, “he is unlikely to harm me.”

  Shadow hissed.

  “He knows where Carver is. I need to know.”

  Shadow flexed his wings, forcing Meralonne to step back or fall into Avandar. To Jewel’s surprise, he chose to step back. Shadow was not shy about shouldering the domicis out of the way, either. He was tall enough to look down at the book. “I should eat this,” he told her, growling.

  “Do not even think it, Shadow.”

  “Why is he so important?”

  “He’s Carver,” she replied, throat tight. When the cat asked again, she said, “Because he’s one of mine.”

  “But—but you don’t need him. You have us.”

  “He is not as dangerous as you are,” Jewel replied, gritting her teeth but forcing her voice into something resembling reasonable calm. “But he was there for me when I needed him. He needs me now. I have to find him and bring him back.”

  “Why did you let him leave, if he was so important?”

  “I didn’t know that he was leaving. He went to the closet to find Ellerson, and he didn’t come back. I sent your brothers to find him. They haven’t come back either.”

  “Oh, them.” Shadow snorted. “They can’t find their tails. You can’t expect them to find anything lost.”

  “You could have said this earlier, Shadow.”

  Shadow, however, did not reply. He was sniffing the page and snorting. It was the cat version of subverbal muttering. He hissed. He glared at Meralonne—which required some work, before he turned back to the book. “Is he very important?”

  “Very.” She hesitated. “The Winter King is looking for him.”

  “He won’t find him.”

  “Will Snow or Night?”

  “No.”

  “Could you?”

  Shadow hissed.

  “No,” Meralonne said. “What he means to tell you is no.”

  “Meralonne, could you reach him?”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  MERALONNE WAS SILENT. Silent, tall, distant: a living sculpture. “There is a danger,” he finally said. It was not an answer—but it was. “If I understand the events in Avantari correctly, there is a path you must walk, and your time grows short. To go to where your compatriot must be is not a small undertaking; it is not even an undertaking you are guaranteed to survive.

  “The Oracle lives at the heart of the wilderness, although you will not perhaps perceive it that way.”

  “How will I perceive it?”

  “I cannot say. No invitation to one such as I has ever been extended.”

  “You haven’t seen it.”

  “I did not say that. I said merely that I was not present as a guest. The Oracle’s path is not the road that will lead to your lost kin—but any hope you have of walking that road requires vision, sight: it requires your ability to control and focus the wild talent to which you were born.

  “Yet if you focus thus, you may be gone for months—or years—while your House waits and the city grows less and less stable; time does not pass reliably or predictably in any lands save the lands mortals call their own. If you abandon your home in the hour of its greatest need, I am not certain the city will remain; you have not yet built all that must be built because you do not understand how. And before you ask, Jewel, I do not understand it, either. Nor will I. Perhaps the Summer Queen might—but she is gone from the land.

  “I fear she will never return.”

  * * *

  In silence, Jewel considered the mage—and only the mage. “You did not answer my question. Could you lead me to Carver?”

  “Yes.”

  Avandar stiffened, which caused the mage to smile. It was a bitter expression.

  “But they will be aware of me the moment I set foot upon that ground; they will be aware, Terafin. If you wish them to sleep—and you do—you will not ask me to lead you to your Carver. Nor will you ask me to accompany you.”

  “If I asked you to go on your own?”

  A pale brow rose. “The risk is the same,” he finally said. “I am not in danger should I choose to do what you’ve asked; it is not my life that will be forfeit.” He gestured at the open book. “It is his. He will pay dearly for his trespass should they become aware of it.”

  “Will the cats pose the same risk?”

  “No.”

  Shadow hissed.

  “May I ask why?”

  “They are what they are. There is no place they cannot enter, unseen, should they so choose. You would not, of course, believe it, given the manner of their appearance and their speech in your House—but you should. You wear a pendant that was procured from a treasury that not even my brethren could reach. Their difficulty will not lie in entry, but in finding that entrance.”

  If not for the sight of Carver, Jewel would have been chilled by the words. She heard them. They registered. But while the book was open, she could see Carver—and only Carver. She inhaled. Exhaled. “What of Avandar?”

  Meralonne considered the question for a few seconds; she might have been asking about the weather. “I am not certain. His power was considered significant among my kin; even the White Lady respected it. He is not now what he was—but it remains within him. Were I you, I would not risk it. But were I you, I would have no choice.

  “What lives upon the hidden paths is not what lurks in the darker corners of this city. I have no doubt that you have seen shadows here. But they are the streets you know; Viandaran has some experience with things vastly less mundane.” He glanced once more at the book, and then turned to fully face her.

  “Call back your hunter, Terafin. Summon your cats. Summon the Winter King. They search to no purpose; they will not find what you have commanded them to seek.”

  “Can you—can you preserve his life? Can you do something to help him until I can reach him?”

  “I have told you,” he said, in a more severe voice, “that seeking him is folly. He is one life, Terafin. One of tens of thousands. Of more. Tarry, and you risk everything.”

  “Can you,” she repeated, adding a staccato beat between each word to prevent her voice from rising in fury, “offer. Him. Aid.”

  Avandar said, “No.” The tone of his voice made clear to Jewel that the answer was probably yes, and that it would be costly.

  “Jewel,” Haval said, and she startled. She had forgotten that Haval had followed her; forgotten, until the moment he spoke, that he occupied the same space as the rest of this conversation. She hid her guilty start and turned to face him. He stood to one side of the Chosen, his hands behind his back, his expression at its most inscrutable.

  “Come away. You have much to think about and much to discuss. Member APhaniel will offer nothing that he has not already offered.”

  “But Carver—”

  “Now. You must see to my wife, and I am no longer content to wait. If you will play games of risk, play them—but play them after my wife is safe.” When she failed to move, he held out an imperious arm.

  “A moment,” Meralonne said. Haval did not appear to have heard him. Jewel, twisting on hooks of bitter hope, turned immediately. She met silver eyes, and held them. “You spoke, when last we spoke of such affairs, of Summer.”

  She nodded, wary now.

  “I cannot walk the roads you will now walk, although I offered to do that; I did not see, clearly, what those roads were and where they would lead. I can offer warnings—and I will, should you instruct your household to heed them. I am not, as you have always u
nderstood, mortal.

  “But if I feel no particular attachment to mortals as a concept, or mortality as a condition, it is my desire to hold this city while Sigurne lives. I can, as you suspect, offer aid to your kin; there is, as Viandaran suspects, a danger. But I am more subtle than the Sleepers, and I am awake.

  “The action is not without cost to me. Were I to accompany you on your journey, I might see and know the truth of your offer; I will not. Bring me some proof that your intent is not the daydream of a foolish girl, and I will do everything within my power to preserve this one, mortal life.”

  “I need you to do it now,” she said, voice low. “I can’t wait—”

  “You can. You have little choice in the matter. You do not trust me, and in this, you are to be commended. I, likewise, do not trust you. I trust your intent. I believe you to be Sen in the most ancient of ways known to man. But these lands are not likewise ancient, and you are not what man was when the Cities of Man ruled the vast majority of your kind.

  “I will remain in residence in your library in your absence. I may spend some time patrolling your forests, if that is also acceptable. I believe there have been some mundane difficulties within the House and its environs, and I will make myself available should the right-kin require advice or the services it is legal for members of the Order to render.

  “Matters of the Houses—and even the Kings—have no bearing, for the moment on this book, the statuary in Avantari, or the whole of your library. I am therefore at liberty to pursue the continued survival of your House in a manner that will offer no cause for complaint.”

  She stared at him. Carver. “ . . . Is there anything you require? If you wish to move your belongings from the Order—”

  He waved a hand. “I will, of course, move belongings of significance to me. I do not require Terafin baggage handling—or babysitting.”

  “Jewel,” Haval said, lifting his arm.

  This time, she bit back anger and pain and hope, and she accepted the wordless command.

  * * *

  Haval did not speak a word as they walked through the public galleries. He did pause once or twice to glance at a painting, as he walked in the slow, stately way an elderly man of patrician bearing would. Jewel was forced to match his pace; to stop when he stopped and to walk when he continued to move.

  She found it frustrating, and was certain he knew it. Shadow found it boring. Haval acknowledged his boredom with a smile and a grave nod, neither of which ruffled the cat’s feathers. She had originally asked Shadow to remain with Meralonne; Shadow practiced selective deafness. He failed to hear the request.

  She failed to make it a command. There was very little Meralonne could do in the library that would threaten her House. Or rather, very little that he would. The time might come—would come, she feared—when that would no longer be the case.

  Haval led her to the West Wing, and she was almost ashamed to find his presence a necessary comfort. She could not stop her hand from shaking.

  She was a coward. She did not want to go to her den, to call kitchen, and to tell them what she had seen. She did not want them to face the days—the weeks—of waiting. They had done this before, in the darkest of the shadows of her past: they had lost Lefty, lost Fisher. In House Terafin, they had been safe from those disappearances, those shadowy losses.

  She had brought them back.

  “Jewel,” Haval said softly.

  She nodded; she didn’t meet his gaze. She took deep, even breaths, forced her shoulders to fall, and lifted her chin. She was The Terafin, until she reached the West Wing. She was Jay when the doors closed at her back—but not until then. Nor did Haval otherwise admonish her. He served as an anchor as she returned to the West Wing.

  * * *

  When the doors opened, Jewel froze beneath their frame. Shadow, bored, nearly knocked her over as he pushed her to the side. “Why are you standing there?” he asked, as he sauntered over to the only other person in the hall: Angel.

  For a moment, she hadn’t recognized him. She had seen his face daily for over half her life, and he now looked like a stranger. His hair—his platinum hair, so similar to Meralonne’s in color, so different in texture—was plaited in a single long braid.

  She started to say kitchen, stopped as she remembered why Haval had brought her here. She stared. Just stared.

  “Terrick is here,” he said, into the silence of this unfathomable change. “He’s in one of the guest rooms.”

  “Terrick?”

  “My father’s friend.”

  She nodded, gathering herself. But she flashed quick den-sign, a question.

  Need to speak, Angel replied, in the same language.

  Kitchen?

  No.

  “I have business with Haval. Since you’re here, can you knock on Adam’s door and ask him to join me in Hannerle’s room?”

  Shadow hissed. “I’ll get him,” he said. “Or we’ll be standing here all day.”

  “Angel—when Finch comes home, tell her we’re to meet after dinner in the kitchen.”

  “Teller?”

  “Teller knows. He has a guest who will take dinner in the dining room this eve.”

  * * *

  Adam came instantly, but as he wasn’t running, Shadow pushed him from behind. Literally. Ariel had not joined them, but she seldom left her room. Jewel often wondered if she would have been happier remaining with the Voyani. But the Voyani in reach was Yollana, and the lands in which Yollana was situated were about to become a battlefield. Jewel had felt she had no choice but to bring the child home.

  Yet home was not home for Ariel.

  “I’m sorry to drag you away,” Jewel said, in Torra. “But . . . Hannerle didn’t wake with the rest of the sleepers and we need to wake her now.”

  Adam nodded. He didn’t ask her how she intended to do this, which was a pity. She’d had no idea how she intended to wake the others, either, and that had caused a ripple-down panic, because both she and Adam had vanished from the healerie during the process.

  She was certain Levec would eventually forgive her, but equally certain it wouldn’t be soon.

  Avandar drew two chairs to the bedside, one on the right and one on the left. Jewel took the chair farthest from the door; Adam took the empty one. Haval stood at the foot of the bed; he was offered a chair, but declined. He stood like a man of some power, hands loosely clasped behind his back; he stared down at the sleeping face of his wife with no discernible expression.

  Jewel took Hannerle’s slack hand in her own. She was dismayed at how much weight Hannerle had lost; Hannerle had never been a small woman. In repose, she looked fragile. It was wrong; Hannerle had never been wilting or frail. In the shop that had been her home, she had been the center of all the bustle. She nagged, it was true, but she nagged far less than Jewel’s Oma, in the crowded environs of her first home.

  Adam, opposite Jewel, immediately took Hannerle’s other hand. Stretched between them, she formed a human line. I’m sorry, Hannerle, Jewel thought, as she closed her eyes.

  * * *

  “Sorry for what?”

  Jewel opened her eyes immediately. She was no longer in the bedroom that had been Hannerle’s home for many weeks. Nor was Hannerle; they were in the kitchen, in the back of the shop in which Haval had done most of his notable work until The Terafin’s funeral.

  Adam was seated at the table, as was Jewel; Hannerle was busy at the counter. She wore a familiar, faded apron, and the weight she had lost in the waking world girded her firmly in the dreaming one.

  “Have you been letting my pest of a husband bully you again?” She turned and Jewel’s eyes widened. She was ten, maybe twenty, years younger. “You need to assert yourself. He’ll walk all over you if you don’t.” As she spoke, she set her hands on her hips. It was like and unlike the gesture that had defined Jewel’s Oma at her most irritable.

  “I—”

  “Don’t make excuses. I love him, but he’ll take a mile if you give him
an inch.” She frowned. “What, exactly, were you apologizing for?”

  “Haval hasn’t been bullying me.”

  “Hah. He does it all the time. You don’t notice because he doesn’t shout. And don’t think I notice you didn’t answer my question.”

  Jewel glanced at Adam, but no help came from that quarter. Adam was, in some ways, in his element here: he was accompanied by two opinionated women, both of whose age and position gave them easy authority over him. He was expected to make no decisions or choices. Here, the floor was either Jewel’s or Hannerle’s; it would never become his.

  Hannerle frowned. “Adam?”

  He smiled. “You look well, Hannerle.”

  “I do.” She smiled back. It was the smile one gave to a precocious child. “I’m happy to see you. Have you been given a tour of the front?”

  “No.”

  “I should do that, then. Unless you’re still hungry?” She looked pointedly at the empty plates in front of her two guests. They had not been there when Jewel had first opened her eyes, but dreams were like that, and both of the guests accepted their appearance as if this were expected and natural.

  Hannerle headed to the kitchen door and called for her husband.

  Jewel tensed, but no dreaming image of Haval answered her call. Hannerle was silent in the door for a long moment. When she turned to face them again, she had aged into the appearance Jewel was now familiar with. “That’s right,” she said, her voice shorn suddenly of all certainty. “He’s not home.”

  Jewel rose. She rose instantly and closed the distance between that door and the woman who stood framed by it, reaching out with both of her hands to take Hannerle’s into her own. She wanted to apologize again. She wanted to tell Hannerle that her husband would be home—and stay there—the minute she woke.

  But what she said instead was, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Hannerle.”

  Hannerle’s hands tightened. “Why are you apologizing? You’re just a child. Haval is a man; he makes his own decisions. He always has.”

  Jewel shook her head. “Do you know what Haval did before he became a dressmaker?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t. I don’t exactly know. I’ve asked,” she added, “but he’s never answered.”