Battle: The House War: Book Five

by Michelle West

  “Jay,” Teller said, rising. “Tell us. Tell us what you saw.”

  “Three men,” she whispered. “Three. They might have been gods. They had swords of blue fire. They spoke a language I don’t understand, but I didn’t need to understand it. I was home. We were all home. They called air, they called earth, they called water—and gods, gods, the water—” She shook her head. “They couldn’t destroy Terafin, but the rest of the city? It was a slaughter. It was like stepping on an anthill—but worse.

  “And then they came here.” She closed her eyes. “They came here. There were things in my forest that I’ve never seen; there were people I’ve met only once, in a dream. Here, they were my army. They were my defenders. And they were forced to fight.

  “But we weren’t a match for them, not that way. If these lands weren’t mine—”

  “Jay—”

  “And I knew. In the dream, I knew. I have to speak to the Oracle. I have to walk the Oracle’s path—whatever or wherever it is—and survive it. I don’t know when it was. In my dream, I mean. I don’t know when—but it’s soon. It’s summer air. I don’t know if it’s months from now, or the summer after—but it’s soon. It’s too soon.” She lifted her chin. “Adam,” she said.

  He met her gaze, held it. He was quiet, and reminded her absurdly of young Teller. “I am to go with you,” he said.

  She blinked. Nodded slowly.

  “Why him?” Shadow cut in. “He’s scrawny and stupid. He’s a kitten.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “When?” Finch finally asked. She asked without surprise. As if she knew. Jewel glanced at Teller; he looked exhausted.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know the exact date. I’ll know when it’s time to leave. I don’t know how much warning I’ll have, other than that. Enough time, I hope, to pack rations for overland travel. And no, I have no idea how long we’ll be forced to travel. But being Terafin where I’m going isn’t going get me free food.” She tried for a smile.

  “Angel’s going with you,” Teller said.

  She glanced at Angel. “Yes.”

  “Good. What do you need us to do?”

  “Survive.” She grimaced. “No, I need you to do better than that. I need you to hold the House. I need Finch to become regent, if a regent is demanded.”

  Teller and Finch exchanged a glance.

  “Will it matter?” Jester asked.

  Finch frowned. “What?”

  “Will it matter? If we’re looking at the destruction of an entire city, will all the politicking among the powerful amount to anything?”

  * * *

  “It will matter.” To the den’s surprise—Jewel’s included—it was Avandar who answered. Avandar was not a man the den interrupted under normal circumstances; they were silent, waiting for the rest of his reply.

  Shadow, however, snorted. “Of course it matters,” he said; he could not let Avandar have the final word while he was in the room. Not on matters about which he had any stray knowledge.

  “She lives here. It is easy for her to get lost. She can get lost in her dreams. She can get lost in her forest. She can get lost in the high wilderness. Mortals are stupid. They get lost anywhere.

  “But she is not as stupid. She is tangled up in you. In all of you. She is tied down by this house. She needs you to be here. She needs the House. Without it all, she will not be right. In the head,” he added. “And if she is not right in the head, she will make monsters and nightmares. She will make a city that is broken like she is.” He snorted again, and stamped his front paws.

  “Tell them,” he said, nudging Jewel hard enough that she almost lost her footing. “Tell them.”

  Jewel, having found her footing, let her hands slide to her hips. She glared at the cat. The cat, undaunted, glared back, hissing.

  “She is afraid to be broken,” he said, still returning her glare. “She is afraid to be alone. She is afraid she won’t know what is real, and then she will break everything. So, yes, stupid boy, it matters.”

  “Thank you, Shadow,” Teller said, as the cat drew another breath. “I think we understand what’s at stake, now.”

  Jewel met Finch’s gaze. “I’d transfer the House to you. I’d declare you my heir. But we both know how well that worked last time it was tried in this House.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice; she didn’t even try. “In theory, I’ll be traveling to the Menorans. There will be some significant difficulty with the trade route and the Royal Commission, and it will require my presence.

  “But I don’t expect that to stand for long, because the Chosen won’t be coming with me.”

  Teller inhaled, and Jewel held up a hand, forestalling him. “I want them here for you. They know the House. They know the guards. They know that in serving you, they best serve my interests. I expect Torvan and I will have the crowning glory of a fight about this, but it doesn’t matter. I want them here, and in the end, they take their orders from me. While I’m gone, they’ll take their orders from Finch. And you, Teller, if you’ve a mind to give orders.

  “I might come back quickly. I don’t know how time passes, where we’ll be going. I might come back months from now. There’s nothing I can plan for. All I can give you is the time before my departure. Haval will stay in the West Wing,” she added. “At least part time.

  “In my absence, my rooms will be closed. No one except Meralonne is to be granted access to them under any circumstance; Meralonne will reside within the suite.”

  “He’s going to be living here?” Finch asked, brows rising.

  “Yes. He’ll perform the necessary duties of a House Mage in a crisis. If he gives you strange instructions about the doors in the manse, listen to him. Obey him where it won’t cause bloodshed.”

  She resumed her seat. For a brief moment, she lowered her face into her hands, and sat in silence. Then she lifted her head and said, “Carver is still alive.”

  * * *

  The silence broke with questions, with exclamations, with the beginning of a frenzied kind of hope that could be mistaken, at a distance, for joy. But Jewel’s silence quenched it.

  “He’s alive. Shadow says no one will find him; not Snow or Night, not the Winter King. I believe I have some chance of finding him—but I won’t, if I don’t undergo the Oracle’s test. The Kings won’t care about Carver. I’m not sure The Ten will either—not in comparison to the fate of the rest of the city.

  “But Carver is somewhere the Sleepers know. Meralonne thinks the doors that opened into unexpected places opened because the Sleepers are restless; they’re almost awake. Carver is somewhere they know.

  “Meralonne can’t go. Celleriant can’t. But Meralonne thinks I’m insignificant enough that I might be able to do it safely.”

  “What’s unsafe entail?” Jester asked.

  “The Sleepers will become aware enough of me that they’ll wake.”

  He whistled. “That’s unsafe. You’re not going to mention Carver to the Kings.”

  “Not unless they physically torture me, no.” She was silent for a full beat.

  Jester’s smile was a very strange one; it rested on his face like a wound. “If you’re looking for arguments from me, don’t. I could care less if most of the city burned in hell. Get Carver back.”

  “You’ll be in the city if it burns in hell,” she pointed out dryly.

  He didn’t even blink. “Bring him back.”

  “We’re all in agreement?” she asked softly.

  Silence. She held up her right hand and placed it on the table, palm down. Jester’s followed almost instantly. Angel’s was third. Shadow, who did not notably use den-sign, having among other things no hands, hit the table with both paws. And claws. Jewel ground her teeth.

  Adam looked at the table, and the hands. He looked at Daine. Daine looked troubled, but took the time to explain that this was, in essence, a vote.

  “Jay’s not bound by the vote, but if she’s asking for one, it’ll have real weight
.”

  “And we are voting on the risk? On taking the risk?”

  Daine nodded.

  Adam looked mildly confused. Troubled. He looked up and met Jewel’s clear gaze. In Torra he said, “This is a decision made by Matriarchs. Such decisions are made all the time. It is a burden placed on the leader of our people: to make the hard decisions so the rest of us aren’t torn apart by guilt and the blood-demands of kin.”

  In the same language, Jewel asked, “What would your mother have done?”

  “She would grieve,” he replied, without hesitance. “But she would never risk the whole of her clan for the sake of one of its members—unless that member were her heir, and only daughter. If she asked for a vote to be taken, there could only be one outcome: we would vote to save our kin.

  “We would vote, because the loss of kin is a known evil, a painful one, and the loss of everything is inconceivable. There is only one way this vote can go.” He did not lay a hand on the table.

  Jewel felt a brief stab of anger.

  Adam said, “This is not the only time you will be faced with decisions like this one. I’m sorry. I will never be Matriarch. It’s never something I’ve had to face.”

  “And Margret?”

  “Margret avoided making this decision. From what you’ve said, it cost Arkosa Elena. I do not think she will make the same mistake again.”

  You don’t understand, she wanted to tell him. You didn’t live with Carver. He’s not kin to you. But the words wouldn’t leave her mouth, because she remembered Margret. She remembered Yollana. What Yollana had done in preparation for a future that only Yollana could clearly see, Jewel could not have done: She had sacrificed—murdered—three of her clansmen in order to keep the tiniest part of the hidden pathway open against future need. And yet, it was that, and only that, that had allowed them to elude capture by the Kialli and the human forces who served their purposes.

  She swallowed. She noted that there were only three hands on the table. Arann, Finch, and Teller had not responded. And she struggled with the sense of bitter betrayal that gripped her as she looked at the lack of their hands.

  Teller’s hand came, palm down, as she thought this. “I’ll trust you,” he said evenly. “I’ll trust you to know what risks are worth taking; we won’t be there. We won’t see.”

  As his words filled the silence, Arann’s hand joined theirs, and Finch’s.

  Before Daine could vote, Jewel lifted her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Adam is right.”

  “He’s not,” Finch said. “He asks you to take the entire burden onto your own shoulders, one way or the other. You’re not Voyani. You’re not—as you always tell him—Matriarch. You’re Jay. Jewel Markess ATerafin. Teller’s right, of course. We trust you. But we’re aware of what the risk means. If we vote against, if we all vote against, or if enough of us do—it spares you the pain of making that decision on your own.”

  Jewel shook her head. Her eyes stung. “No, it really doesn’t.” She rose. “I’m exhausted. If we’re done, I’m going to try to sleep.”

  * * *

  They weren’t done. Or at least Jewel wasn’t. When she left the kitchen, Angel followed, signing briefly. She signed in return and turned to the Chosen.

  “We’re going to visit the House shrine.”

  If they were surprised, they kept it to themselves; they had kept the entirety of the kitchen conversation to themselves as well. The den had come to accept the Chosen as almost literal shadows; they spoke freely in their presence. They were still wary of the House Guard, but that made sense.

  Angel returned from his room with two things he’d failed to bring to the kitchen: the first, a sword. The second, a companion. The companion looked only vaguely familiar to Jewel. He was tall, wide, bearded; his hair was pulled back from his face in what she presumed was a Northern braid; he had the look of Arrend about his jaw and eyes. He carried an ax, on the other hand; it was a sizable and impressive weapon, and it did nothing to make him seem harmless.

  “With your permission,” Angel said, in Weston that sounded far too formal, “Terrick will accompany us to the shrine, and then, to the library.” His smile folded into an awkward expression. “That ax came from the armory that used to be an office. He won’t use it until he sees where it came from.”

  Jewel nodded, made awkward and stilted by the presence of a stranger. Angel wasn’t likewise encumbered. But Terrick walked behind, with the Chosen; Angel walked by her side. Shadow, she sent off to Ariel’s room, because she knew the girl would desperately miss the cat when they left.

  She just didn’t consider it wise to leave the cats behind if she wasn’t present.

  * * *

  The walk to the House shrine involved walking past the three shrines erected to the Triumvirate: the shrine to Cormaris, lord of Wisdom, Reymaris, lord of Justice, and the Mother. Tonight, Jewel stopped to say a brief prayer at each, although she knew that the words she spoke wouldn’t reach the gods. Angel waited, but did not offer like prayers. He looked slightly nervous but also determined.

  She wondered what it was about.

  But when she climbed the stairs to the altar at the heart of the small House shrine, she knew. He removed his scabbarded sword from his belt beneath the well-tended lamps that provided light, and he laid it upon the altar.

  “My hair,” he said, “marked me as a retainer of Weyrdon. My father was Weyrdon’s man. He was sent into the Empire to fulfill a quest that Weyrdon himself didn’t fully understand, and I—I was meant to take it up when he died before he had completed it.

  “And I did. And I have.”

  “What—what quest?”

  “To find, in the Empire, a worthy Lord. A Lord for whom I would lay down my life gladly and without hesitation. When The Terafin offered us all the House Name, I wouldn’t take it. I told you then—”

  “That you wouldn’t become ATerafin until and unless I was The Terafin. I remember.”

  “Yes. Because I’d found the only person I was willing to follow.”

  “Angel—”

  “I know. You know. You’ve always known. But even if I knew, I couldn’t let go of the Weyrdon crown. It defined me. It was part of who I was.”

  “And now?”

  “Nothing of me belongs to Weyrdon. I know I’m not always impressive,” he added, but without self-consciousness, “but I understand you. I know who you are and what you want. I won’t always agree, but blind obedience isn’t part of service.” He dropped to one knee, which Jewel found painfully awkward.

  “Angel, don’t.”

  “I have to,” he said gravely. “Terafin, I, Angel, son of Garroc, offer you my oathsworn service.” He said it without a trace of embarrassment, the gravity of his perfect tone eradicating his unnatural position. Closing his eyes, he took the scabbard and hilt in separate hands and drew the blade.

  It was black.

  Beneath the lamps in the shrine, it reflected no light at all.

  Avandar was not at Jewel’s side, but she felt him stiffen at a distance. “That sword came from the war room.”

  Angel nodded. It didn’t, to his eyes, look like much of a sword at all; it looked like tarnished, neglected silver—but worse. “Until tonight, I’ve been unable to draw it from its scabbard.” He hesitated, and then, without expression, drew the edge of the blade across his palm.

  No matter what the sword looked like, its edge was sharp enough, clean enough, to cut. “I don’t know what the House Name requires,” he said. “But in the North, such an oath is made—and affirmed—in blood.”

  Jewel wasn’t from the North. Neither, in any real sense, was Angel. But Terrick waited at the foot of the shrine, watching, his gaze hooded and nearly unblinking. There was a story in his presence here; Jewel felt that he had come to bear witness.

  And it was not, after all, the first time she had accepted an oath such as this with blood of her own. “You will be ATerafin?”

  “While you live. Only while you
live.”

  She held out her hand. In the light of the shrine, against her palm, she could see the single line that was Celleriant’s oath; white, healed, but part of the geography of her palm. Angel offered her the sword’s hilt; she took it. The hilt was wrapped in leather; it was warm, but simple. She hoped that the sword did not feel the need to cut off her hand; she was far more aware of Meralonne’s opinion of the blade than she had been when she had given Angel almost nonchalant permission to go into the room and find a weapon that suited him.

  She made the cut, and he brought his left hand down upon hers. As their hands joined, the sword began to glow. The black surface of its flat vanished, like shadow destroyed by strong light. It was not Meralonne’s sword; not Celleriant’s. It didn’t look like an impressive, magical blade. But in the instant that Jewel pronounced Angel ATerafin, in some odd blend of Northern custom and House custom, it looked whole, new, perfect.

  “Does it speak to you?” she asked, as she lifted her hand.

  “Not yet,” he replied, as he took the hilt from her. He drew a cloth to wipe the blade’s edge clean, and frowned. There was no blood on the blade.

  There was, Jewel saw, no blood on his hands—and none at all on hers.

  “I am so grateful,” she said, quietly enough that it barely carried to Angel, “that I won’t have to choose one of those damn weapons.”

  * * *

  Terrick said nothing.

  He said nothing when Angel drew the blade he had been, until that moment, unable to draw. He said nothing when Angel cut his palm and extended his bleeding hand. Nor did he speak when The Terafin took his weapon and made a like cut in her own. He might have pointed out to Angel that the customs of the South did not include—and did not privilege—blood; that instead binding oaths were legal documents.

  He didn’t. He listened. He bore witness. He remembered his youth. He remembered standing, as Angel now stood, before Garroc—a man he had detested on first sight; a man he had been so loath to trust. Yet in the end, Garroc had become the center of his life: the man he was willing to follow and to serve.