Battle: The House War: Book Five (26 page)

“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 robes, 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 instinctively 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.”

She looked scandalized for just a moment, her expression the expression of a mother who’s caught her child throwing rocks into a fountain in the Common when the magisterial guards are on patrol nearby. “You tell him—” She froze.

“He knows where you are,” Adam continued. “He knows why you can’t come to him yet. But he’s happy. He’s not hungry, he’s not cold, he’s not in pain; nothing—not even a healer—can touch him on that side of the bridge. Only Mandaros.”

Leila said, “but he’ll get lonely waiting—”

“No, Leila, he won’t.” Adam rose, his expression changing; it grew darker, harder, although it was still young. Jewel recognized the judgment that age and experience often lessens—because it was almost a mirror. She had been young in the same way.

And then, she thought with a grimace,
Have I ever been anything else?

“He is not your only child. But he is the only one who no longer needs you, and you have been sleeping and dreaming for far too long.” He rose, still carrying the child’s limp body. When he turned toward the coffin, Jewel almost stopped him. Almost.

But he was right.

Leila didn’t rise. Leila didn’t follow him. She buried her face in her hands and wept, instead. Adam very gently laid the boy’s body into the empty coffin; there was no lid. “You will always remember him,” he said, in a softer voice. “Nothing can take that away. But you are not a child, and it is time. Leave him here.”

Jewel swallowed. “Leila,” she said, her voice as even as Adam’s, but far more autocratic.

Leila lowered her hands. She rose stiffly, glancing about the room as if—as if she were waking from a long, long dream. She saw the coffin; the coffin didn’t change in shape or size. But the room did. The black scoring of fire and the soot of smoke evaporated, and the floors beneath either were solid. They were scuffed; this was a room that was well lived-in.

“It is time,” Jewel said softly.