Battle: The House War: Book Five (18 page)

Haval raised a brow, considered it, and nodded. “I concur. If we are done, I must return to Hannerle, and I believe you must return to your office.” He rose, lost for a moment in thought as he considered Jarven clearly. The situation troubled him. Jarven delighted in being an annoyance—especially to Haval; he always had. But the House Council? That was more than just a stage for annoyance.

What game, he thought, as he left both tea and the great room. What game are you playing, Jarven? He sensed a web, a net, something that Jarven was spinning in his deplorably gleeful way, and he could not tell if it was the acceptance or the refusal that would trigger its fall. Jewel saw the House, of course, and she did not trust Jarven—showing an unusually canny perception, for Jewel. But Haval was not certain that Jarven now aimed for the House.

He did not desire to play a game of chess with Jarven when he himself had the lesser familiarity with the board and its pieces.

And that, he thought, his hand on the door that led to Hannerle’s room, was a half-truth. Or half a lie, and only a fool lied to himself. Some part of his mind was waking after decades of forced sleep, and the prospect of facing Jarven, and emerging triumphant, was compelling.

Chap
ter Five

W
HEN JEWEL EMERGED from the great room, she ran into Angel, and staggered backward. Angel, arms folded, didn’t move. He looked down at her for a long moment, his spire of hair tilted in the direction of her face.

Finch sidestepped them both, which took dexterity given they were almost standing in the door’s frame. She signed both hello and good-bye to Angel; he dipped chin in acknowledgment as she brushed past and headed out of the Wing.

“I’m alive,” Jewel told Angel.

He nodded. “The demon?”

“Come with me. I have to go back to the office, or Teller will be lynched.”

He looked at her, his brows creasing. “Teller?”

“Long story. Well, short story, long explanation.”

He fell in to her right, stopped as he realized that nothing large, winged, and spiteful was attempting to trip him, shoulder him into a lesser position, or crush his toes, and asked, “Where’s Snow?”

“Gods alone know. I’ll fill you in on that part, too.”

* * *

The first thing they saw as they drew close to the office was Rymark ATerafin.

He was waiting outside of the office doors, which was unusual. Members of the House who lived in the manse—and all of the House Council had that right—generally retreated to their own quarters when required to wait to speak with The Terafin. There were no chairs in the hall; there were chairs in the waiting room, and Rymark clearly hadn’t chosen to avail himself of any of them. This simple fact made clear to Jewel that the waiting room itself would be heavily occupied.

She did not want to speak with Rymark in the open acoustics of the hall. If she were honest, she didn’t want to speak to him at all. Avandar, to her left, tensed slightly; the Chosen moved to stand between Rymark and their Lord. They were not required to be subtle, and today, they were not.

“Rymark,” she said, offering him a stiff nod. She was certain—they were all certain—that Rymark ATerafin was responsible for at least one of the assassins; Jewel privately thought he was responsible for the fake House Guards as well. She was also certain that he had cost her the guidance and the company of Gabriel—and as that loss was immediate and fresh, her anger—at Rymark, at the games she was forced to play to preserve the House, was visceral. It was
not
a good time to be ambushed in the halls; not by Rymark.

“Terafin,” he replied. His usual arrogance was, for the moment, hidden; he was pale, his expression tight.

She lifted her chin, schooling her expression, and remembering—of all things—some of Haval’s earliest advice. She was angry at losing—at having to lose—Gabriel. And it hurt her. She drew on that, allowing it to fill her expression. She wasn’t certain what Rymark saw, but she didn’t care. “You’ve spoken with Gabriel,” she said quietly.

“I spoke only briefly with the former right-kin.” Not his father, of course. The former right-kin. “I had hoped, of course, to speak with you in some privacy; the events of today seem to have destroyed that possibility.”

“Given the events that occurred in the Common, I see little hope of that in the next few days. Please accept my apologies in advance. The Ten meet in
Avantari
on the morrow, and the office of the right-kin is in transition. If I were not certain to receive both messages and visitors that the House cannot safely dismiss, I would retreat from the office and call upon the House Council. That luxury at the moment is not given to any member of this House.”

Rymark bowed. Before Jewel could pass him—and it would have been hard, as the Chosen hadn’t budged an inch—he rose. “I wish to speak with you at your earliest convenience, Terafin. I have much to say.”

If he offered to turn evidence against his father in the House Council, Jewel would kill him herself. Or, worse—far worse in some ways—she would allow him to be killed. She would allow it to be arranged. She’d even ask that it be done. The grief at losing Gabriel faltered at the sudden incandescence of her rage; her hands, hanging loosely by her sides, stiffened. For a full three breaths, she found no reply to tender, because speaking—at all—would have alerted any occupants of the waiting room behind the closed doors of her utter loss of control.

“Make an appointment,” she finally managed to say.

He stepped back. “The information,” he said, his voice still soft, his posture still shorn of the edge of arrogance, “involves the Shining Court.”

Before she could reply, he turned and left, and she let him go because the enormity of his statement left no room for thought. When thought returned, she was once again in a hall that was empty of anyone save herself, her domicis, and the Chosen. And Angel, who had watched Rymark’s back until a corner carried it completely out of sight.

Avandar, he said the Shining Court, didn’t he?

He did.

Her hands curled in fists, she approached the office doors. Avandar opened them for her, and she entered.

* * *

The waiting room was not as crowded as she had expected, given Rymark’s appearance in the hall. It was not, however, empty. Three Priests, in the robes worn by the most senior members of the Cathedral of the Triumvirate on the Isle, were seated. They had no attendants, and given the colors of their robes, this was unusual. Two men and one woman rose as she entered. She offered them a deep bow. They had eyes of brown—brown and blue. They were not god-born. But they served the Exalted directly.

Torvan had said that among the casualties inflicted by the
Kialli
before his sudden flight, there had been Priests. She therefore approached the Priests seated in waiting with quiet, but obvious respect. She didn’t really love the Priests, and she didn’t understand the varied layers of the hierarchies of the Cathedrals on the Isle—or off the Isle, if it came to that—but in this case, that understanding wasn’t necessary. If Priests had been injured—if Priests had, as Torvan reported, died at the hands of the demon lord—they suffered the loss of a colleague, and quite likely a friend.

It was a loss she understood, but could not directly address, not yet. She bowed, instead. A bow was not a strict necessity, but she made it serve in the place of the words she could not, without a formal report, utter. The Priests rose as she did. They did not wear robes of uniform color; nor did they wear the usual dress robes seen on the customary official visits. One wore robes of earthen brown, one wore robes of neutral gray, and one wore robes the color of rust.

It was the man in earthen brown who spoke. “Terafin.” He bowed, just as she had done. He was not a young man; she thought him perhaps Gabriel’s age. The symbol of the Mother hung from a thick chain around his neck, falling across the robes just beneath his collarbones. There, in gold, wheat lay across two open palms. They were the same open palms that, empty, designated the bearer a member of the Houses of Healing, a reminder of the Mother’s mercy. “I have been sent at the behest of the Exalted of the Mother.”

Jewel nodded. “Will you join me in my office?”

“It is not necessary, Terafin. I am to convey a message, and I am to wait for your reply.”

She glanced at the silent Priests who stood behind him now, like points of a triangle. “Do you also carry messages from the Exalted?” They nodded. “The same message?”

“Yes, Terafin. Your presence is requested in the Hall of Wise Counsel on the morrow.”

“After the meeting with The Ten in the Hall of The Ten?”

“Yes.”

She felt the tension ease from her shoulders. “I am not certain how long the Council meeting will last. There is much indeed to be discussed there, and I imagine many questions to at least be asked. Perhaps the day after?”

Silence, which she’d expected. She had no objections at all to the request, and none to the day; if the meeting of the Council proved too fractious—and at this point, she couldn’t see how it wouldn’t—the Exalted provided a respectable excuse to vacate the premises if she felt a need to retreat. But she chose to be careful about conveying any gratitude to what was, in essence, a demand.

“Very well. I cannot vouchsafe the hour of my arrival, but if that is acceptable to the Exalted, I will meet with them at their request on their chosen day. Will the Kings also be in attendance?”

“They will.”

She bowed again, and the three weary Priests immediately retreated.

Which left only a handful of people in the waiting room. One of them was Haerrad. She wondered, idly, what he had said to Teller to be granted the audience Teller had so clearly denied Rymark. The thought set her teeth on edge, but Haerrad was not a proponent of friendly or accessible rulers, and hostility—if it was veiled—was unlikely to cause him any difficulty at all.

“Haerrad,” she said, inclining her head. She turned toward her office, and he rose to follow her. Avandar interposed himself between Haerrad and Jewel’s back, an action which was unlikely to be lost on the House Councillor Jewel most wanted to see as a corpse. It was, however, unlikely to be resented. Haerrad appeared to
like
the fact that most people thought he was a murderous bastard. Their fear—expressed as caution—made him feel secure in his position.

She walked immediately to her desk, Avandar by her side; she allowed him to pull out the chair so that she could sit in it, the large desk between her and her visitor as much of a barrier as such a meeting allowed.

Haerrad glanced casually around the room, making it seem smaller by the action. He noticed the lack of Snow, but made no comment; Haerrad always noticed anything that resembled a vulnerability in an opponent’s defense. Age had tinged Haerrad’s dark hair gray; it was the color of steel now. The scars that were his medals from the early, rough years on contested roads had faded with time, blending into the etched lines around his mouth. But the prominence of an obviously broken nose still ruled the terrain of his face, and his eyes were dark enough in the magelights that they were almost black.

“Terafin.”

She inclined her chin and waited, folding her hands in a steeple beneath it. She had, with Haval’s help, learned to school her expression, and she channeled the natural suspicion Haerrad evoked simply by breathing into something that looked like attention.

“You’ve dismissed Gabriel,” Haerrad said.

“Gabriel chose to retire.”

Haerrad’s eyes narrowed. “And you, of course, begged him to remain.”

“Of course. His experience and his expertise in his role have been of great value to Terafin, and such experience is not lightly surrendered.” She kept her voice smooth and even, and was rewarded by his smile. It was not a pretty reward; it was a wolf’s smile. Or, she thought, trying to be fair to wolves, a rabid dog’s. He assumed she lied.

It was a neat trick. It was, of course, Haval’s trick.

“And his replacement?”

“You are here, Haerrad. You have obviously seen his replacement.”

“Very well.” His smile continued to adorn his face, and he seemed to relax into his chair. “I have a report to tender. It will be of some interest to you, Terafin.”

She waited; he did not speak. Instead, he handed her a slender set of papers. “I am now aware that your information sources are surprisingly good,” he said, as she accepted them, “but I think you will find mine are also formidable.”

She didn’t even glance at them, although that took effort.

“They will, of course, be of lesser import to the day’s events.” He paused again, his eyes still narrow, but more watchful. He was Haerrad. He went straight for the figurative throat. “The demon was there for you.”

“That has yet to be determined.”

“By who? The magi? The Exalted? The
Astari
?” He almost spit at the last word.

She forced a sharp, slender smile to her lips. “Indeed. To all of them. I am sure their sources of information are at least as good as our own; let them discuss and dissect. I will, of course, point out that the Kings were present in the Common, and the Kings are a far more likely target.”

“The Kings have not faced demons.”

“Ah. Your information sources are not, perhaps, as complete as you suppose, Councillor.”

A brow, bisected by the fading line of a scar, rose. He did not, however, look annoyed—or rather, not more than he naturally did. “Oh?”

She smiled again. “I thank you for your report. If I am not mistaken, the magi have arrived in the outer office.”

“Do not be so quick to placate them, Terafin.”

“Placate them?” Her brows rose in feigned shock.

Feign less,
Avandar said dryly.
You are not one hundredth the actor that Haval is.

“At the moment, Councillor, I have no need to do so. You will no doubt hear, when the House Council again convenes—”

“I suggest that sooner rather than late.”

“Indeed, given the unexpected departure of Gabriel ATerafin, it is necessary.”

“In two days?”

She shook her head. “Tomorrow I will spend a full day in
Avantari
. If the outcomes of the meetings there require it, I will call Council in two days—but I suspect if I do, Duvari will be present within the manse, and possibly within the Council Hall in some fashion.”