Battle: The House War: Book Five (92 page)

“Thank you, Marave.” Jewel turned once again to Meralonne. “The Winter Queen is not The Terafin.”

“No,” was his grave reply. “She seldom forgives. Her orders are not to be questioned; her commands are absolute. I understood the choice they made, and I have never been certain that my own choice was not an act of cowardice, in the end.”

Jewel was silent at the magnitude of his confession. It made him seem human, a fact she was certain he would never appreciate. “But you have not returned to the host.”

“No, Terafin. There is no return for me, save by her leave; she has never given it.
Allasakar
did not perish at the end of the long war. He was gravely injured, and he was contained—as the Sleepers were contained—by the combined efforts of the gods. A seal was set upon them, and the Hells were given to
Allasakar
.

“He was therefore beyond the White Lady’s reach.”

“Until now.”

“Until now.” His smile was bitter. “And so the lost Princes will be given a chance to redeem themselves in her eyes. She has fallen, as we feared, but she is still the White Lady, and as the bindings that hold the hidden ways separate from the mortal realms fray, you will see some echo of her ancient glory.

“I have waited against hope for that day. I have waited for my brothers to finally wake.” He bowed. It was a low, graceful gesture of respect, none of it feigned. “It is not yet their time.”

“Will you know?” she asked softly. “Will you know when it is? Or will the time be decided in its entirety by
Allasakar
?”

“The roads of the future were never mine to traverse,” he replied. “But, yes, I believe I will know. There is one event that must occur before we have any hope of returning to the side of our Lady.”

“And that?”

His smile was cool. “We must at the side of a mortal ride against the god, as we once did, under Moorelas’ shadow.”

* * *

The silence seemed to stretch and lengthen. Meralonne’s lips framed a sharp, cutting smile; he knew what those words meant to the people in this city. To fall under Moorelas’ shadow was death; even the adults who minded their children in the lee of the great statue avoided the shadows the stone figure cast.

Duster had emerged from the undercity into that shadow. Duster was dead.

She shook her head to clear it, but the image clung anyway. Duster. Duster as she was, as Jewel had last seen her. She had not aged with time, but memory did not make, of Duster, a young girl. A child.

“The sword,” she whispered.

“It is said that the sword could not be destroyed except by the combined will of the gods. That act will never occur upon this plane.”

“It is said?”

“The sword could not be destroyed,” he replied. “Attempts were made. They failed. The best the gods could do was to bind it, bury it, and keep it hidden from all mortal knowledge. That was done, in a fashion, but without their knowledge. No god can tell you what became of the blade. But if the gods choose to answer directly, they will admit that they do not know its fate.”

“And you?”

“Not I,” he replied softly. “Were I to find it, I could not wield it. It was meant for mortal hands. Nor could I find and enslave a mortal to wield the sword at my bidding. I told you: the sword tests. The sword judges. The
Kialli
have been searching since their Lord took his place upon the throne in the frozen wastes—but they have not found it.

“There is some hope that the blade itself might fail if it achieves its goal: it was meant to end
Allasakar’s
life. But, Jewel,” he added, forgetting himself, and forgetting a title he must viscerally consider irrelevant, “it was a blade meant to kill a god.

“It is our belief that it could be wielded against any god.”

“It can’t be wielded against any god that is not on the plane.”

“No. But there are two who are.” And one of the two, she thought, he hated. The Winter Queen had given no command in regard to that god.

What must it be like to demand the utter and absolute obedience of men like Meralonne?

You do
, Avandar replied.
Or you would if you desired it. Lord Celleriant has bound himself
to you.

She knew. She
knew
. When Mordanant had come to take her life, she had not even flinched. Celleriant was not by her side when the cats had attacked his brother, but she had felt no fear. She had known on some instinctive level that Celleriant would arrive at need.

He was a match for his brother. He was possibly more than a match. Jewel frowned. “Meralonne, how are the
Arianni
born?”

Platinum brows rose in shock; she might have asked him the intimate details of his sex life to far lesser effect.

“I’ve never seen an
Arianni
woman before.”

“You have.”

“I haven’t. I’ve seen the Winter Queen . . .”

“Yes.”

“Mordanant came for his brother. He called Celleriant his kin.”

“So do you call Teller and Finch yours.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Is it not? There is only Ariane. There is no other. We are not mortal, Jewel. We are not born as you are born; we do not age as you age. Nor do we die. We do not perform acts of glory for the faint hope of a random woman’s love; we do not—as your kind does—marry and bear young. We are the
Arianni
. We serve no other.”

“Celleriant serves me.”

Meralonne did not reply. After a pause in which he obviously discarded her comment as unworthy of note, he asked, “What will you do with the book?”

Jewel exhaled. “I’ll read it, of course.”

His eyes rounded. She almost laughed; she hadn’t seen that particular expression since the early months of her life in the manse. “Viandaran.”

“I counsel, of course, that the book be disarmed or destroyed, but she is The Terafin. She is the master I have chosen to serve.”

“She is little more than a mortal child. Had Sigurne been a tenth as foolish in her youth, she would not now be the guildmaster; she would be a footnote, if that, in the annals of the Order’s history.”

“I don’t require your permission or approval,” Jewel told him firmly. “Either of you. If you’re materially afraid of the outcome of such a reading, I suggest you return to the manse; you will be unlikely to feel any ill effects at that distance. If what I understand about my personal library is true, I’m the one person in the manse the book
can’t
affect without permission. To me, the script is Weston. It’s a familiar Weston, at that; it’s not stiff and it’s not formal.”

“The risk is yours to take,” Meralonne replied.

She nodded. She considered sending the Chosen away, but grimaced and accepted the risk to their safety; they wouldn’t leave her. Not when Meralonne had already drawn a sword; not when he had implied that this book and its inexplicable contents were a threat.

Reaching out, she touched the page. It felt like dry paper; dry and slightly brittle. It looked new. Her hand shook as she turned the page. It froze in the act of turning, the page on which Adam was painted curled but not yet flattened. Beneath the leaf which contained his image was another painted figure.

Carver.

Just Carver.

Avandar was by her side before she could move. She heard two words leave his lips; she understood neither. They were a curse in a dialect that she had never heard him speak. Nor did she ask.

Carver crouched, back against a wall, his face slightly lifted. He was gaunt, and she could see a small trail of blood from the corner of lips that looked cracked. His eyes were ringed with darkness, although she could only see one; his hair covered the other. His hands were streaked red, and in one, he held a dagger.

It was not a familiar dagger. It was not a Terafin dagger.

Beyond the edge of the wall she could see white, some hint of snow—but the wall implied city; it looked like an exterior wall.

“Carver.” The word was barely a whisper. She had drawn no breath to utter it, and she choked as she tried to say more—or tried to stop herself from saying more. She was The Terafin; she could not lose control here.

But she didn’t know how to
keep it
. She wanted to scream at the book. To scream at the person who had delivered it. She wanted to scream at Teller for hiding it in his study for six weeks, because she had no idea
when
this had happened.

Breathe
. Breathe. She had no idea
if
this had happened. It was a painting of Carver. Carver, with his patrician nose, its line less perfect than it had been the first night she’d laid eyes on it. His hair was still a drape across one eye. He didn’t look any older to Jewel than he had the last time she’d seen him; he looked exhausted.

But he would be. He was nowhere near any of the homes he had known. Were there streets, where he crouched, hidden? Was there food? She whispered his name again, and this time, as the page trembled in her nerveless fingers, the image shifted. Carver
looked up
. He looked up, out of the page, and his eyes rounded as they met hers.

She was transfixed. She saw nothing, heard nothing, beneath the amethyst skies; not Avandar, not Meralonne, not the Chosen. She reached out to touch him and felt paper. Paper. Her hand could not dip below the surface to reach Carver.

But Carver could see her gesture. He didn’t speak. He didn’t try. Instead, he lifted a hand in den-sign, his lips curved in a tired, steady smile. He forced exhaustion from his face as he met and held her gaze.

Can’t speak
, he signed.
Need silence
.

She lifted her hands. She didn’t know if he could hear a word she spoke, but he could see her.
Where are you? How long?

He shrugged.
Two hours. Maybe
. Two hours. It had been four days, here. She needed no further proof that Carver was lost on the wild roads.

They had no gesture in den-sign that meant Ellerson. They had small signs for each other, but none for the domicis. She wanted to ask. She mouthed the old man’s name
.

Carver shook his head. She couldn’t read his expression—but she tried. She tried harder than she’d ever tried to read written language.
Where are you
?

Don’t know
.

You’re lying.

He grimaced.
Jay, don’t come. Don’t follow.

She bent the whole of her will, the whole of her desire, toward her den-kin. It had been more than a decade since she had tried to deliberately invoke her stubborn, intermittent gift. She tried now. She tried, straining against every failure she’d ever had before. It didn’t help. She did not
know
where Carver was, and she could not
see
it.

But she knew it was Carver. She
knew
. He was still alive. He was somewhere cold, somewhere dangerous; he was in the shadows and on the run—but he was
alive
. She wanted to know where he was. She wanted to find him. He was, in that moment, the only thing she cared about.

She reached. She reached with both of her hands, letting the picture of Adam fall flat, face down, to one side. Carver’s eyes widened in utter silence. He gestured in frantic den-sign, but she couldn’t read it, couldn’t take it in. He was
right there
, and that was where she wanted to be.

And then the book fell away, as did the table; the ground moved—or her feet did. She heard a snarling hiss of outraged fury as Shadow literally knocked her off her feet by landing on her.

“What are you
doing
? Stupid,
stupid
girl!”

She had landed on her side; Shadow’s paws were flat against her skirt. She turned to rise, but found it difficult to move. “Get off me,” she told him, voice low. It was almost as feral as the cat’s.

Shadow hissed. “You are
foolish
. Why are you
reading
that book? What are you
doing
? You will wake
them
if you make that much
noise
.” Without waiting for a response, he turned his massive head and said, “What were
you
doing?”

Avandar did not deign to reply.

“And
you
, what were you
thinking
?”

Meralonne raised a brow. Instead of answering the cat, he walked to the table and bent over the open book. Shadow moved, allowing Jewel to scrabble gracelessly to her feet. There was gray fur down the length of her skirt; she left it. She’d never particularly cared for this dress anyway. She approached the mage. Avandar was on his other side.

“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.”