Battle: The House War: Book Five (96 page)

“Will you go back to the store, or will you be resident in the manor?”

“I will retain rooms in the manse for my use; I will, however, require some time to tend to my business. I have taken a select handful of commissions during my stay in House Terafin, and I must tend to them. It will also ease Hannerle’s mind.” He lifted his own glass and studied its contents.

“Keep them safe,” she told him abruptly. “Don’t treat this as another lesson, Haval. You know me. You’ve known me for my entire adult life. You know what’s important to me. You know why it’s important. I won’t
be
here. You
will
. Be what I can’t be. See what I can’t see.
Keep them safe
. Do whatever you have to do.”

“You are aware that what I might consider necessary and what you yourself would deem acceptable are not always consistent.” He set his glass down. “I am not you. You have, by dint of birth and talent, survived in an environment that most men of power would consider lax. You are likely to continue to do that. Finch, however, is without many of your advantages.

“What limits will you place upon me?”

“You want me to say ‘none.’”

He failed to acknowledge the statement.

“But I won’t. It’s true, you’re not me. It’s true I won’t be here. But, Haval—
they
will. You told me I needed to trust them. You were right. I do. I trust them to make those decisions in my absence. Do what Finch will accept. Don’t do more.”

“Very well.” He rose. “Terafin. Hannerle will be fit to travel in two days’ time, in Adam’s estimation. If you are to be present for those two days, I will content myself with waiting on my wife.”

He paused at the door. “I will make one further request.”

Jewel tensed but nodded. “And that?”

“One member of your den is not, in any obvious way, meaningfully employed. I wish to change that.”

She frowned. “Jester?”

“Indeed. He is an interesting young man; he has mastered the art of invisibility in one of the more difficult ways.”

“Jester’s hardly invisible.”

“Exactly.”

“Jester doesn’t care for the patriciate. He’s fine with Terafin, because it’s ours.”

“It is
yours
,” Haval replied.

“If he’s willing,” Jewel finally said. “Then, yes. I won’t order him to obey you.”

“No, of course not.”

C
hapter Twenty-nine

‘‘A
NDREI, YOU’VE BEEN positively morose all evening,” Hectore said to his servant when the Araven carriage at last rolled away from the Terafin manse. “Was the Terafin dining hall so difficult?”

“I’m sure your food was excellent,” was Andrei’s sour reply. He did not, of course, join Hectore for the meal, although food was offered in the servants’ mess. Andrei seldom joined a gathering of such servants; he had surprised Hectore by accepting the obligatory invitation.

“The company was fascinating,” was Hectore’s genial reply.

“I’m sure it was. The company in the back kitchen was likewise fascinating. I now live in fear that I will come to the attention of the infamous Master of the Household Staff.”

“I should hope not!” Hectore was willing to cede some of Andrei’s time and service to Terafin, but he had standards; Andrei was not under the auspices of any
other
Household Staff.

“You are determined, given the active presence of not only Jarven ATerafin but Haval Arwood, to continue in your present course?”

“Does that question even require an answer, Andrei? Finch is a civil and pleasant young woman; if I am not involved, Jarven will likely corrupt the poor girl.”

“Hectore, please,” Andrei replied, pinching the bridge of his nose. “The girl, as you call her, is well aware of Jarven’s various foibles; I cannot understand how she holds him in such great affection.”

“But she clearly does. Perhaps he has mellowed.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“Why not? I certainly have.”

“You were never the man Jarven was.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Come, Andrei. What exactly did you see in your inspection that caused such a souring?”

Andrei exhaled. “The Terafin kitchens are appallingly lax in their security. The House Guard and its hiring practices are suspect. It is my belief that it wouldn’t be much harder to infiltrate the House through the time-honored practice of servants than it would be to walk in through the front foyer.

“Some precautions will be required where food is involved.”

“Surely we’ve seen that already.”

“The Merchant Authority is not the manse,” was his stiff reply. “The Terafin Chosen are good. I’ll give them that. If the guards in your employ could be expected to serve at that standard, you would complain less about them. It is Teller who concerns me. Finch will be less at risk for a variety of reasons; the right-kin will not. Security around the right-kin is, and has been, tighter, but I am not certain he is yet at Gabriel’s level of competence.” He glanced, almost rigidly, out the window.

“Things will change,” he said. “And we’ll have little control in the end over their eventual shape.”

“We’ll have the control we always did,” Hectore replied. “As long as we continue to be moving targets. Who hired the assassin? Was it Rymark?”

“No. If eyewitness reports—suspiciously
convenient
reports—are to be believed, Rymark did indeed meet the woman before the attempt; he was not, however, responsible for her presence.”

“Who, Andrei?”

“I am not yet certain. The necessity for certainty, given your continued commitment, is now high. I will also have words with Avram on the morrow. Hectore, expect things to become unpleasant.”

“How unpleasant?”

“If we are lucky, we will avoid the darkness of the Henden of 410.”

Hectore fell silent and remained that way for the duration of the carriage ride home.

* * *

The kitchen that night was crowded. Jewel had slipped into clothing suitable for her early years in the West Wing, to Avandar’s disapproval, and she had commandeered a chair at the head of the table. Angel sat to her left; Teller, to her right. Beside Teller, in clothing far more casual than Jewel’s, sat Finch. Arann had taken the chair beside Angel; Jester sat beside Arann. Daine and Adam filled in the empty seats. Shadow wedged himself between Angel and Jewel’s chair, and dropped his chin onto the table’s surface.

“If you bite the table,” she told him, “I’m going to be angry. Scratching counts.”

He sniffed. “Tables don’t
bleed
.” He eyed Avandar rather malevolently.

There was an empty chair that Carver would have occupied, to one side of Jester. Jewel looked at it once, but couldn’t bring herself to tell people to shuffle over. She understood why it had been left empty. It spoke of the hope—the increasingly painful hope—that he would walk through the kitchen door and take his place in their councils.

“So, what happened to your hair?” Jester asked, before Jewel could bring the meeting to a start. Since he’d asked what was probably the most pressing question in everyone’s mind, she didn’t speak; she looked, instead, to Angel.

Angel, predictably, shrugged. “It was time,” he said, as if his hair had not been his defining characteristic for as long as they’d known him. “It was a gesture of respect for my father.” He started to say more, stopped, and signed,
I’m done
.

It was understood, among the den. You shared what you wanted to share. You shared what you
could
. When you couldn’t, people mostly left you alone. And some days, that was hard.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called kitchen in the last few weeks,” Jewel said. “Because if I’d been living here, I would have. None of you would have gotten any sleep.”

Teller hesitated.

“You don’t need to write it down,” she told him. “I close my eyes and I can see it. I’m not going to forget—and if I did, I wouldn’t want reminders.

“You all know—you’ve always known—that I’m talent-born. I’m seer-born. It’s been useful, sometimes. I don’t know if you remember Evayne, but she’s seer-born as well. And she can look and see what she needs to see. I think. I’ve never asked her directly.

“What I did in the grounds—with the trees, what I did in
Avantari
and here, for the terrace, it’s
part
of that somehow. I don’t understand how, or why. Changing the shape of a garden or a palace doesn’t seem to have much to do with random glimpses of the future.

“So is the library—or what the library became. The sleeping sickness wasn’t my fault, but I woke the afflicted.” She hesitated again, and then said, “Those sleepers aren’t the only ones we have to worry about. In any real sense, we didn’t have to worry about them at all.”

“They would have died,” Adam said quietly.

“Yes. And we saved them. But asleep they wouldn’t kill. And awakened, they couldn’t destroy a city. You all know the phrase ‘When the Sleepers wake,’ right?”

Nods, one or two murmurs. Silence that held understanding.

“Yes. Those Sleepers. They’re here. They’re here, beneath Moorelas’ Sanctum. The gods worked to put them to sleep—to force them to sleep—until some unspecified appointed hour. No, I don’t know what that hour is. I just know that they sleep.

“We’ve all assumed that the demons—that the god—avoids the Empire because of the Twin Kings and the magi and the makers. We’ve assumed that we’re somehow a threat to the god and his demons. He’ll send them in ones and twos, but he’s never come down here with an army—and we
know
he can field one.

“The Kings’ armies faced such an army in the South. So, that part’s not guesswork. But we felt confident that he wouldn’t bring them here. And we were right—but not for the right reasons. He doesn’t want the Sleepers to wake.

“And bringing a large army of demons to the city might be the thing that wakes them. I think the god doesn’t care about
us
. He cares about them.”

“What are they?” Finch asked quietly.

“The most powerful servants of the Winter Queen. The most powerful hunters of the Wild Hunt. They don’t care about us, and we’re living on top of them. Meralonne thinks it likely that they’ll take our existence as an affront, and they’ll destroy us for the presumption of playing in their bedchamber, so to speak, while they slept.

“And
they will
.”

They all watched Jewel now, arrested. She swallowed and nodded. “Three dreams,” she said quietly. “Three long, horrible dreams.” She looked at their familiar,
living
faces as if they were anchors that could hold her in place while the storm raged around her. And they were. They always had been.

“They’re beautiful,” she whispered, staring into the lamp’s fire. “Beautiful, flawless, and entirely without mercy. We’re like rats. No, we’re like cockroaches. It’s
that
bad. Nothing the god-born can say will
matter
. Nothing anyone can say will matter.”

“How do we stop them from waking?”

She hesitated again. “Right now? Kill me.” She exhaled. “But that only works for now. It doesn’t work soon. I don’t know why. They take orders from one person, and one alone. Ariane. The Winter Queen. But had they obeyed her orders, they would never have been imprisoned in their long sleep. They’re wild. They can’t be fully tamed.

“And these are
not
their lands.”

Teller said, “You can do something.”

She closed her eyes. “Yes.”

“Jay?”

She rose. She rose and walked away from the table, to pace at its head, her hands behind her back, her head bent. She hated fear, but she had not lied to Haval: she was always afraid. As long as fear didn’t stop her from moving forward, she accepted it. “What I did to the manse, I might be able to do to the city. But if I don’t learn
how
, I’ll destroy it. I won’t
mean
to destroy it,” she whispered. “But—I’ll be like a god. I’ll be able to do anything I want. Do you know how I changed the palace?” She stopped and turned to face them. “I told the earth to clean up after itself before it left.

“Just that. I didn’t tell the earth what to build, or how. I didn’t tell the earth to wake the wild stone that was part of
Avantari’s
foundation. I told it to
clean up
. No one was killed by the earth; the demons killed dozens.” She spread her hands out. “I don’t want to go that route. I don’t want it. I don’t know what I’ll be. I don’t even know who.”

“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
.