Battle: The House War: Book Five (44 page)

Jewel turned immediately to see the white hair and grim expression of the Master of the Household Staff. She was, to Jewel’s surprise, seated, although she rose the minute Jewel caught sight of her. She instantly regretted the absence of Duvari, the Exalted, or any other crisis, because nothing stood between them. The Master of the Household Staff performed as exquisite a bow as “a woman of her advanced years”—a phrase which struck terror in the heart of anyone
else
who lived in the manse when she used it—could.

“Terafin,” she said, in clipped, very formal syllables.

“Master of the Household Staff.” Jewel had once—only once—responded “ATerafin.” “Has there been some difficulty which requires my immediate attention?”

“There has apparently been some difficulty which required mine,” was the even chillier response. “The Household Staff was, of course, informed of your change of residence within the manse.”

Jewel froze. Of all the difficulties she anticipated would be caused by the severe transformation of The Terafin’s personal quarters, this one had entirely escaped her.

“It is customary to inform me of extensive renovations or reconstruction undertaken in the manse. Given your unexpected illness, it is possible you overlooked this responsibility.”

She had. She considered it now. The servants’ halls and passages, used for discreet attention to the various chambers in which the business of the manse was conducted, were present throughout the manse itself. They were—had been—present within The Terafin’s chambers, although only Carver knew the exact layout; access to those halls required a seniority that most of the servants would never achieve.

“The renovations, as you have noted, were extensive. They were also almost immediate. Please extend my apologies to the Household Staff.”

This was not, clearly, enough. It was, on the other hand, more than enough for Barston, who had never particularly cared for the Master of the Household Staff, although he made haste to grant her all due respect.

“The full extent of those alterations is not yet known.”

This august woman raised a gray brow. Only her brows retained any color at all. “Was the House Mage involved in this endeavor?”

It was not a question she had a right to ask. “I am not at liberty to say,” Jewel replied. “But I will make haste to offer instructions and a floor plan, where one exists, within the next week. Until then, it is entirely understood if the Household Staff cannot navigate my rooms at all. My domicis—”

“You are to meet with the Kings and The Ten on the morrow,” was the even chillier response. “Your domicis is not, I feel, up to the task of your personal care with regards to that meeting. If you will request Ellerson’s intervention at this time, I will excuse your personal attendants from their duties without prejudice for . . . the week.”

“Thank you. Please make an appointment with Barston for a week hence, where we will discuss the changes in the duties of my personal attendants.”

The Master of the Household Staff did not slam the doors on her way out. Jewel was surprised they didn’t shatter anyway.

Teller emerged from his office almost immediately, a sure sign that some of the magic in the interior office allowed him a glimpse of the contents of the exterior one. He signed, grimacing; Jewel shrugged in response.

“On the bright side, if the Kings do demand my execution, that’s one thing I’ll be spared.”

Barston coughed.

* * *

Ellerson was not Avandar. He didn’t even blink when he entered what had once been the library. He had Carver by his side, and Carver was carrying—with exaggerated care—the official wardrobe for the following morning.

“You could just stay in our Wing,” he pointed out.

“I would—but as I didn’t deliberately cause
these
changes, I don’t want to inadvertently change the West Wing.” She hesitated, and then less flippantly added, “I can’t be seen to be afraid of the changes that
have
been made.”

“Why not? Everyone else is.”

“How bad is it in the back halls?”

“You’ve managed to upend the absolute upper echelons of the Household Staff. There is no higher rank, among servants, than to be assigned to the personal detail of The Terafin herself. If you don’t consider disenfranchising the oldest and most elite members of your staff—”

She raised a hand in surrender.

“I am certain,” Ellerson said, “That she had larger worries to contend with.”

“So was I,” Jewel admitted. “I’m rethinking that, now.”

“You spoke with the Master of the Household Staff.”

“She spoke with me.”

Carver cringed—but he cringed carefully, under Ellerson’s watchful eye. Unlike Ellerson, he had no reason to treat the library as if it were still somehow just a library; he stared at everything, and whistled a couple of times.

“How bad are the back halls? Carver?”

“Sorry. Do you mean the servants or the halls themselves?”

“The physical halls.”

“If you’re speaking of the rest of the manse, they haven’t changed at all, as far as I could tell. It wasn’t as easy to cut through them though. The dragon was actually there.”

“Master Carver.”

“Sorry. She’s reduced a third of the staff to stammering wrecks, though.”

“That is not The Terafin’s concern,” was Ellerson’s stiff reply.

“Merry?” Jewel asked, ignoring Ellerson’s comment.

“Not one of them, but she’s not in the senior tier, and her duties could be accomplished with very little interruption.”

“Can you get into the back halls from here?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you asked me that question two days ago, I would have said no.” He glanced at the Chosen.

“You would have been lying.”

He grinned. “Well, yes. But today? I’m not even sure there
are
back halls anymore. No one is.”

“By no one—”

“No one. The Master of the Household Staff has relieved her most senior servants from their duties for a week. No one’s dared to ask her about the fate of the upper halls because anyone with a shred of luck has managed to avoid her.”

“Rumors?”

“They’re gone.”

Jewel nodded. She walked across the much expanded library, toward the doubled set of doors on the wall at the far end. They seemed to be where she remembered leaving them in the morning, which was a relief. Ellerson followed, as did the Chosen; Carver lagged behind a bit. “I’m guessing the back halls are definitely gone,” he said, as Avandar opened the doors.

“That is now my biggest nightmare,” Jewel replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Master of the Household Staff so angry, and I can’t afford to have her resign in fury. I know just barely enough to know how much of a nightmare it would be to attempt to replace her with someone of half her competence.”

Beyond the double doors, the rooms looked very similar to the rooms The Terafin had occupied for all of Jewel’s life in the manse. “Is the library subject to constant change, or is its geography now dependable?” Ellerson asked. He removed the dresses from Carver’s arms and hung them, with care, in the large closet; he set up the various brushes, combs and clips that were the bane of her morning existence, and made her hate the sight of her own hair.

While he worked Jewel pulled Carver away.

“Exercise caution,” Avandar said. “I wish to ascertain that the room is materially magically unaltered, and that it is . . . predictable.”

“I will exercise as much caution as the current situation allows,” Jewel replied. She turned to Carver, the Chosen almost invisible to her now, although they were present. “Where?”

“There are no direct entrances into the bedchamber,” Carver replied. He gestured in den-sign, and she replied:
take the lead
. As he headed into the hall, she added, “I haven’t examined any of the other rooms, and the former private office was . . . greatly changed.”

“Angel told us. He also showed us the spear. I’m not sure Ellerson approved.”

“I’m sure he didn’t.” She followed as Carver opened the doors that led to the larger room at the end of the hall. It was used for informal meetings—where informal generally meant private, and of a critical nature. Jewel had seen it twice. She held her breath as Carver entered the room, and entered it hesitantly at his back. Or rather, entered hesitantly at Torvan’s back; if he was willing to allow Carver free run of suspect rooms, he did
not
extend the same courtesy to his Lord.

It looked, to her eyes, like the same room. She exhaled.

“Don’t be relieved yet,” Carver said quietly, discerning both her anxiety and the slackening of its grip. “I don’t recognize that door.”

“The very ordinary door to the left?”

“The very ordinary door that wasn’t here the last time I made a pass through these rooms.”

“Carver . . .”

He offered no apology, his expression hardening. “You were going to be Terafin,” he said, as if there had never been any question. “If you survived the South, if you came back to us—you were going to be The Terafin.”

Torvan said nothing, but she expected no interruption from that quarter.

“Access to these rooms from the back halls is severely restricted, so I didn’t come here often.”

“And you didn’t come here with permission. Does Merry know?”

“I’ve never asked her. But that door wasn’t here the last time I was. Captain?”

Torvan said, “It’s new.”

It looked like a nondescript interior door, admittedly in the personal rooms of the ruler of House Terafin; it was dark, fine, the lintel of its frame engraved with the horizontal relief of the House Sword, as the interior doors in these rooms often were. There were wall sconces to either side of the frame, meant to contain magestones, although no stones occupied them at present. The handle was brass.

Jewel approached the door; Torvan stepped in her way. “Captain,” she said softly, “If there is any immediate danger offered me by the door—or by what lies beyond it—
I
will know. If there is danger to you, or to my Chosen, I cannot guarantee that.”

She spoke in very precise Weston; he failed to hear a word of it, although he did nod.

“Torvan—”

“Understand, Terafin,” he said, relenting, “that it is not your gift that defines you. You are The Terafin. We are the Chosen. We are not, as you are, seer-born; it is not considered a grave deficit. The Chosen have existed for centuries without the talent-born among our ranks. If our survival had depended upon the gift of foresight, the House would not have survived to
become
one of The Ten.”

“It seems a needless risk—”

“It is a necessary risk. It is always a necessary risk.”

She swallowed, met his gaze, and nodded, remembering Avandar’s words. The Chosen were not children; they were not orphans and runaways gathered in the holdings. They were shield, defense, and personal army; they were not, and could not be reduced to, retainers, attendants, and men who . . . waited.

Carver seemed to understand this already. He gestured in brief den-sign, and she nodded.
Yes, hard
.

“Was that anywhere near where the servants’ entrance was?”

Carver shook his head.

“Is the servants’ entrance in this room now?”

“No.” He moved away from the wall as Torvan opened the door, and froze in its frame for a few seconds too long. He didn’t enter the room; he didn’t order the Chosen forward. But he didn’t immediately draw sword, and he didn’t speak a word when Jewel walked toward his back. He did, however, enter then.

Jewel followed and stopped at the doorjamb, lifting one hand to the frame to steady herself.

“Jay?”

She laughed. It was an uneven laugh, an expression not of mirth, but surprise. Or shock, or outrage. “Carver, come here.”

“What is it?”

“You tell me. Tell me what you see.”

He came to join her, but didn’t laugh; he swore, instead. Jewel lowered her arm, and Carver moved past her, just as the Chosen had done, walking single file down the hall that led from the door because it wasn’t wide enough for two. It wasn’t wide enough for the swords the Chosen carried, either; it was wide enough for Carver’s daggers. Or Jewel’s, although she was not, at this moment, wearing them.

“Terafin?” Torvan asked, the word drifting back to where she stood.

“It’s the thirty-fifth holding,” she said, forcing strength into the words. “It’s an apartment in the thirty-fifth holding.”

Torvan didn’t argue. Carver, who’d ducked into the tiny kitchen to the right, reappeared and entered the room to the left. She thought she should stop him, because she knew that these rooms, this apartment, could not
possibly
be as they appeared. Instead, she drifted into the hall herself. The door did not slam shut behind them.

Carver came out after a brief moment, met her eyes, and once again moved down the hall. He went to the next door on the left. Jewel herself followed him, but diverged at the door on the right. Torvan and the Chosen had opened all of the doors, even this one, in some confusion. She could well understand why. If they had not expected the sudden, grandiose transformations of the library or the small, personal office, it was of a piece with the sudden appearance of the Common’s fabled trees in their backyard; it meshed with the existence of three voluble, giant, winged cats, a silent white stag, and the demons who had assassinated The Terafin, and had failed—by a hair—to assassinate Jewel.