Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (23 page)

Ellerson was not a stupid man!

"She's gone."

Morretz had so many questions to ask; he asked none. "Yes."

"And… her domicis?"

"From all reports, they disappeared together."

The older man looked, for a moment, old. "They were in the Common." It was not a question.

"From the scant information we've been able to gather, yes. But their bodies were not among the fallen."
And you know this
. Morretz had personally delivered The Terafin's report to Akalia. She had taken it without comment; no reply had been requested.

For a moment, Avandar's name hung between them, an accusation that had never been given voice. It was Ellerson who looked away, looked down at his hands as if he had been asked to complete a surgeon's most delicate work long after the steadiness of youth had deserted him.

"I will think on it, Morretz."

"Ellerson."

"I said—"

Morretz lifted a hand. "Years ago, I answered your question."

"Which question?"

"You asked me why."

"Why?"

"Hide behind your age with someone who has time and less wit."

"Ah." Ellerson's smile was sharp, brief. "That question. You're wrong, of course. You didn't answer
my
question; you answered your own."

"You asked it."

"Did I?"

"Yes."

"Memory," the old man said softly, "is tricky. I have learned two things from it. One: that without meaningful memories, there is no life. Two: that we are desperate for our lives to make sense, to have meaning—and at a great enough remove, all memory is malleable.

"Perhaps I asked you a question. Perhaps I asked you the question you remember so clearly.

"But perhaps I ask that question every year, day in and day out, looking over the rolls of students who I know, from the moment they enter those doors," he inclined his head toward not the right or the left, but the center, and his lips curved slightly when his gaze returned to Morretz of the Guild of the Domicis, "will fail. Perhaps I ask it, and every student answers it, and that answer has meaning and purpose to them, and them alone.

"Or perhaps to their peers as well. I have taught so many, my memory blurs the boundaries of students from year to year." He began to rise.

And to Morretz' surprise, a hand prevented him from leaving the long chair. His own. His skin was pale; protected, as The Terafin was protected, from the vagaries of sun and wind. It looked odd against the deep, brown-green of Ellerson's attire. He had seen those robes year in and out, but he had never touched them before.

You don't remember
? He felt, for a moment, that part of his life was unraveling, like a tapestry whose story has become merely long, faded thread. He had defined himself in some ways by that moment. "What of you, Ellerson? Why have you chosen to serve?"

A darker hand covered his; lifted the fingers from cloth that should have remained untouched. "I answered that question in my own time, for my own teacher," the older man said sternly. "And there is a reason that I told you, when you chose to answer publicly, that the answer was yours, to give or to conceal."

He rose, unhindered. "You showed courage; I have always been impressed by either your stupidity or your commitment. Perhaps both, Wait here, Morretz, if you can. Wait an hour."

"But I—"

"Wait."

22nd of Scaral 427 AA

Terafin Manse

Finch worked in the kitchen. She worked at the table, the lamp burning, the papers stacked neatly in a row of escalating urgency. The ink blotter was almost unmarked, the quill unsavaged by a too heavy hand, the desk unstained by the spill of a hundred different bottles. In every possible way it was the opposite of Jay's desk.

But it was the only space in the wing that reminded her of Jay; the only place in which Finch felt her presence. If she could have summoned that familiarity from the comfort of her own rooms, she would have; she had chosen, four years ago, a desk that she loved when a carpenter's rich client had declined it because he didn't quite care for the stain he had chosen. This craftsman's masterpiece had places for paper, for quill, for ink; it had three small locked drawers in which she might keep sensitive information; it had a shelf, built with a ridged lip, upon which the few volumes Finch now owned might be carefully placed. Arann and Angel had almost broken their backs carrying the desk into her room; the workmen had offered their help, but she didn't feel comfortable having strangers in the wing. Old habits; she was half afraid they would steal something.

Kalliaris knew that she would have, more than a decade ago.

But it didn't matter; that desk, which was her pride, was in her room, and this table, the table that had always been the center of the war room—the kitchen—was where she had chosen to take up pen; to read agreements, to attempt, in as much as it was even possible, to
be
Jewel ATerafin's aide, not Jay's little urchin.

And Jewel ATerafin's aide sat looking at a lovely invitation from Elonne ATerafin. It had not yet been placed in a pile; it sat in the space between hands placed palm down on the wooden tabletop in an attempt to still their shaking. Elonne's handwriting was so perfect it might have been an act of enchantment and not pen and ink; her paper was fine and smooth, her seal exact. It was almost impossible to believe the seal was the same as the one Finch was entitled to use—
-did
use—it was so perfectly proportioned when it rested in blue wax.

Elonne was one of the House Council. Finch was one of Jay's den. They never talked, except in passing, and there hadn't been much of that; Elonne handled a different part of the House affairs, and she and Jay were about as different as two people could be and still have anything in common. The House. Gender.

You can't say no
, Teller had said.

You can't say yes
, Carver countered.
You know Haerrad's been watching us all like a hawk. He only needs an excuse
.

He didn't need much to have me run down.

Yeah, well, he didn't have you killed. Jay was here. He wouldn't have dared.

They wouldn't be asking any of us for
anything //
Jay were here
.

They want you to sell her
, Angel said at last, a part of the discussion because he was as much a part of the den as Jay herself, but apart
from
it because he'd chosen not to be ATerafin, and he could afford to ignore the politics.

They'd looked at her. She'd wished, then, that she wasn't sitting in Jay's chair. Promised herself she'd never do it again. It was hard to fill that damn chair, and the chair itself was hard on the butt.

She hadn't answered.

They, cowards all, left the decision hanging.

And it still was, the perfect words of the invitation an accusation of either cowardice, incompetence, or both.

"Jay," she said, out loud. "Jay, damn you, damn you damn you. Tell me what to do. I don't know this woman, and she might rule the damn House if we can't be careful enough. If you don't come back. Jay, help me."

"Might I suggest that it would be more constructive if you asked for help from someone who was actually present? Absentee leaders, like gods, rarely offer advice of use."

No
, Finch thought, as she lifted her head.
You're wrong
. The movement was slow, not because her head was particularly heavy, but because she
recognized
that voice; had thought she would never hear it again, and had—just as Jay had done, although Jay would've killed anyone who said it—missed it. A lot. And she didn't want to break the spell of familiarity by seeing who had actually spoken.

But whoever it was, he was in her kitchen—in
Jay's
kitchen—and he wasn't allowed in without permission. She took a deep breath, snapped to attention.

And met the eyes of Ellerson, the domicis.

She had never been a particularly quiet person; that was Teller's job. But she knew when to keep her mouth shut until the words had settled into something intelligible.

"Ellerson?"

He raised a brow, his features as stiff and formal as a perfect suit. "Indeed," he said. His hair was grayer; the lines of his face deeper. But his posture was so perfect she felt like a dull slouch, and she found herself lifting her shoulders into what she hoped was a better line.

"Sometimes the gods do listen."

His smile was shallow, but it was there. "You had best hope that that is not the case; the gods are known to exact a steep price for their intervention, and it is my intent to teach you how to avoid the inevitable results of such poor negotiations."

"Good." She lifted her hands and found that they were, sadly, still shaking. Clutching the invitation in them, she said, "Start with this, okay?"

He stepped to the desk, bowed slightly, and then took what she offered.

"You—why are you—did you talk to Morretz? Did he tell you what—"

"I did, indeed, speak with Morretz."

"What did he say? Did he tell you—"

"He is not your domicis. He is not my servant. Guild law, however, requires that he speak on your behalf should you choose, for some reason, to appoint an agent rather than venturing into the guild itself. He let me know how things have changed in the last sixteen years. And yes, Finch," he added, in a voice that was at once gentle and formal, "I know full well who Elonne ATerafin is.

"You will forgive me," he said at last, "if I choose to see this as an opportunity?"

"Only if you're going instead of me."

The smile deepened and then vanished.

"No. It would be unspeakably rude to send me in your place, an insult. There may be a time in the future in which you wish to offer such an insult—but when doing so, you must offer that insult
deliberately
, you must offer an insult you can survive, and you must make certain that it is the vanguard of a larger political action."

Just that. As if he had never been gone.

And as if he had never been gone, his expression wrinkled into lines of distaste—ones which he reserved for the privacy of quarters, and never offered in public. She remembered that clearly. "Your clothing," he said at last. "I hope that Avandar sees that Jewel does not attire herself in such a… fashion."

She stood, carefully pushing the chair away from the kitchen table. She wanted to hug this man, but she knew she couldn't. Instead, she rushed past him, containing the urge; she burst out into the hall, the kitchen doors swinging wildly, the names of her den-mates passing from her lips in an increasingly loud demand for attention.

Behind the wildly swinging doors, Ellerson of the domicis looked down at the uncreased invitation in his hand, his expression unreadable.

Then he looked up at the sound of the names: Teller, Jester, Carver, Angel, Arann.

He stood alone, in the kitchen, before a table that was both familiar and foreign, while the slanted light of the afternoon grazed his legs.

22nd of Scaral 427 AA

House Kalakar grounds

Colors were a funny thing.

The analytical part of Duarte's mind, the part that had misled him in his youth into believing that the magi were his calling, looked at the unit he had built out of men and women considered gallows fodder. They had seen the slaughter of two thirds of their number without tears, although the wounds they had taken there had never healed.

That was what this new war had been about for the older Ospreys. Time had not gentled them. It had, at most, rounded the edges of corners, as if they were blocks of new-cut stone, stained with salt and the ill use of weather. Not a single one of them, with the exception of Sanderton, had a family they cared to name; they had given their lives to the Ospreys. The Ospreys
defined
them. And The Kalakar, curse her, curse her, curse her,
knew
. But in spite of this, or perhaps because of it, she had chosen to absent herself from address, an absentee patrician. Duarte had never considered her a coward.

He was not entirely certain that her decision had been an act of cowardice now; she understood her soldiers—even the ones under Duarte. Even the Ospreys.

"You have been offered the choice of remaining with the House Guard. Each and every one of you has distinguished yourself with honorable service; the House acknowledges this. No, The Kalakar acknowledges this."

"By retiring our colors?" Fiara shouted, her voice stained with a rage that he was certain also stained her cheeks. Hard to tell; the sky itself was pink and deepening into the purple that would become blue-black; his favorite color. He had chosen the early evening as the time to give the address; the bars and taverns would be open, and the window between knowledge and action for his Ospreys—or whatever it was they would become—as small as possible. He could not therefore see her face clearly without the aid of magical enhancement to his vision.

Ah, and perhaps he had chosen the early evening as the appropriate time for reasons of his own.

"We are a third of our former number," he said, angry at anyone who made this job more difficult than it already was, no matter—no matter—how justified their own anger. "We are, and have been since the war, below the minimum number necessary to maintain a unit within the House Guard."

"She never let us recruit!"

"Fiara—"

Rescue came from an unlooked for place.

"You know why she's doing this." Alexis stood forward, on the raised platform that had been erected in a hurry in the Osprey's training ground.

Duarte would have preferred a medium in which he could control the passage of sound; he expected that things would be said about The Kalakar in this meeting that would not bear repeating. But the trees, tall and tended, lent the soldiery a sweep of shadow; the grass or what remained of it after the singeing of fire and magery that had always been a part of their exercises, gave them a battlefield on which to stand. As Ospreys, one last time.