Skirmish: A House War Novel (2 page)

27th of Corvil, 427 A.A.
The Common, Averalaan Aramarelas

H
ANNERLE LOVED WINDOWS. She loved, especially, the long, low bay or bow windows that were so expensive to have built. She didn’t like full panes of flat glass; those, she had said, with decided lines etched a moment in both corners of her lips, reminded her too much of the storefront. It wasn’t that she disliked the store; the store had been built, and its custom grown, by the dint of her organization and will. If Haval was, in his own modest opinion, the genius who created the dresses by which they earned a comfortable living, Hannerle was the foundation that allowed that genius to flourish. The store had been her idea. But the windows that girded either side of the doors were meant to display and to sell; to offer a pleasing and enticing view to the men and women on the outside.

So it was in their bedroom that the most glorious of the windows above the shop resided. The bed, which sat, headboard to the wall, in the center of the room, couldn’t be seen from the street; nor could someone sitting or lying in that bed see those streets. They could see the sun; they could see the tops of buildings that sat opposite them; they could see the azure of sky on a clear day.

Hannerle was not a woman who understood what the word “relaxation” meant. She was up at dawn, in the kitchen or the store tidying, cleaning, cooking—and, if Haval were being honest, complaining; complaints
were, in the opinion of his wife, the luxury one earned by doing the work. Although she professed to love windows and light, she seldom took the time to look at either.

Her husband entered the bedroom and walked directly to the windows. He paused to examine the curtains; they were older now, their color faded. They would have to be replaced. He opened them with fastidious care, anchored them by the tassels that hung concealed by their fall for just this purpose, and let the light in. The sky was an astonishing shade of blue, which wasn’t unusual at this time of year. The air was cool, but the glass shut it out. Unlike his wife, who disliked the view of the streets, Haval looked down; the streets at this time of day were full. People in various shades of color and in differing cuts of cloth walked past the window heading toward their destinations, heads often bent slightly into the wind. They carried baskets or bags, most of which had yet to be filled judging by the easy way they moved.

He expected no custom today. A sign now hung in both windows and across the closed—and locked—doors of the store apologizing for his unexpected and unannounced absence. He bowed his head a moment. He had no need to school his expression; his reflection made clear that he had none. His face was a mask. His posture was neither slumped nor upright as he turned, at last, toward the room’s other occupant: Hannerle.

She lay beneath sheet, blanket, and comforter; the counterpane had been neatly folded and lay across only her feet above the footboard. She slept.

She had done nothing but sleep for three days now. He had tried, several times, to rouse her; nothing worked: No sound, no movement, no amount of shaking or pleading. She could, with effort, be moved into an upright position, and she swallowed liquid if it was dribbled slowly and evenly into her mouth. But she did not wake.

Doctors—for Haval had money—had come and gone in slowly dwindling succession. Healers, however, had not; the healer-born were beseiged at the moment and the Houses of Healing closed to all who did not come bearing a writ from
Avantari
, the Kings’ Palace. It mattered little; the doctors had been clear. His beloved, curmudgeonly wife was suffering from the sleeping sickness. They had no official name for it, yet, not that the naming of things much concerned Haval; some in the streets called it the dreaming plague.

“Is it contagious?” Haval had asked, in a very subdued voice appropriate to a man of his age.

“Clearly,” the oldest of the doctors had said. “But we aren’t certain how. Proximity to the affected doesn’t seem to matter.”

“And I am, therefore, unlikely to catch it from her?”

“You’re as likely to catch it from someone in the Port Authority,” was the crisp reply. “But it’s best, if you’ve sons or daughters, to have them check in on you every day, or at least every other day. You’re caring for your wife; if you fall prey to the illness...”

“Understood.” Haval had no sons or daughters. “When will she wake?” he had asked, although he knew the answer.

The doctor hesitated for just a moment, and then said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know if she will.”

“Have any of the others?” He knew the answer to this question as well. He wasn’t even certain why he’d asked.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor repeated.

Haval thanked him for his time. And paid him.

He took a seat beside the bed in silence, his wife’s right hand caught between both of his. Hers was limp, but warm; she slept. What he now knew about the disease was fragmented but reliably accurate. It had started perhaps three weeks ago, near the beginning of Corvil; it had gone undetected for the first week because its spread was not concentrated in one area, and because it was only in the second week that older children and otherwise healthy adults in their prime had been affected by it. The victims were spread across the economic spectrum; they were also spread across gender. There were
no
reliable symptoms to indicate that one had caught the disease. There was no accompanying fever, no rash, no coughing—nothing. Prior physical exhaustion wasn’t a requirement either.

No, people simply went to sleep…and failed to wake.

Just as Hannerle had failed to wake.

“Hannerle,” he said quietly, bending his head toward not her ears, but that hand, “I’ve heard word.” He wasn’t particular proud of this fact, because the information he imparted had required no finesse, no investigation, none of the subtle contacts which were his quiet pride. No, this word was impossible for any but the sleeping or the dead to miss; it had
spread through the Common and the High Market like fire in the dry season.

“The Terafin is dead.”

It was not the first time Hannerle had been ill, of course. It
was
the first time she had been both ill and utterly silent. Like any man whose wife’s chief luxury was the volume of her complaints, he would have sworn that silent was the preferred state. But over the years, sharp and clever humor had worked its roots deep into the heart of her complaints; they amused him; the silence was bitter and cold.

He fed her water slowly and with painstaking care; he checked the fire burning in her grate; he changed her clothing. Although it was Hannerle’s job to fill the silence with her frequent chatter, he spoke. He couldn’t be certain that she wasn’t listening, that some part of her wasn’t somehow awake and trapped inside a body that couldn’t respond. He kept her company, and although he could have done so while he worked, she had once made him promise to leave his work behind when he crossed the threshold of what was nominally “their” bedroom. He left his work behind.

But in the late afternoon he rose, because some idiot had taken to ringing the bell on what was clearly the wrong side of locked doors which prominently told all visitors that he was
not here
. He was not, therefore, in the best of moods when he made his way down the stairs and into the storefront, where his cloth, his threads, and his various beads lay strewn across the counter. On the other hand, he was perfectly capable of feigning almost obsequious delight on the very slim chance that such delight be, by the social status of the idiot, required. The fact that said idiot clearly failed to heed what was written did not, in fact, imply that they couldn’t read; Haval often found the opposite to be true. But there was nothing that Haval was incapable of feigning, except perhaps youth.

He understood better why his signs had been ignored when he saw who waited at the door: a young man—young enough that the use of the word man dignified his age—who wore the livery of the Merchant Authority. He carried a letter with the air of the determined and faintly terrified, and it was clear—by his persistent worrying of the bell pull—that he was tasked with making
certain
that this official document was delivered to its intended victim. Only tax collectors and the very earnest were capable of this level of persistence.

He therefore opened the locked door.

The young man bowed. He didn’t introduce himself, but to be fair, Haval didn’t ask; messengers served a function that required different manners.

“You are the proprietor of the store?” the visitor asked, his voice high enough that Haval privately downgraded “young man” to simply “young.”

“I am,” Haval replied, holding out one hand.

“This is for you,” the young man said, although it was already obvious.

Haval glanced at the back of the envelope and frowned. “I’m not expecting any correspondence,” he began. The slight rounding of the young man’s eyes made him reconsider. “Are you to wait for a response?”

“No, sir. But I am to obtain a signature of receipt.”

“I…see. Very well, come in. May I ask who sent the letter?”

The boy nodded vigorously. His answer explained his anxiety. “Lucille ATerafin.”

In spite of the solemn silence of the preceding three days, the two words, huddled side by side and spoken in such a fashion, piqued Haval’s curiosity. He signed a statement acknowledging receipt of the letter and let the boy hurry—at a brisk jog—away from his store before he returned to Hannerle’s room. He only broke the seal once he was ensconced in the chair closest to the bedside.

At one time in his life, such a letter would have constituted the work he had faithfully promised to keep out of the bedroom, but it had been decades since that had been the case. He slid a letter opener into the top upper corner of the closed envelope and cut it cleanly. Then he removed the single piece of paper that had been folded and deposited within. He read it three times before he refolded it and placed it on the bedside table. His wife would have recognized the way he then sat, for fifteen minutes, in silence. She wouldn’t have approved.

“Hannerle,” he finally said. “I appear to have been granted an appointment with Jarven ATerafin.”

Hannerle was, of course, silent. This silence, however, was not glacial.

“No, no, it’s not like that. I realize I
am
getting on in years, but I honestly cannot recall
requesting
such an appointment. Even had I, I assure you I would have politely rescinded that request in the wake of the current Terafin tragedy.”

He paused. Memory, and a deep understanding of his wife’s temper, allowed him to silently fill in her part of the conversation.

“The handwriting is definitely Lucille’s. I’d recognize it anywhere.” He would, on the other hand, recognize hundreds of handwriting samples with ease. “I would hazard a guess that this is entirely Lucille’s doing, and while it is safe enough—for a value of safe which I’m aware isn’t yours—to annoy Jarven, annoying Lucille is trickier.” He rose and headed toward the closets that girded the walls.

“The appointment, however, is for less than an hour from now.”

Haval disliked tardiness. He also disliked being rushed. Curiosity, however, had reared its head, and he fed it because it
could
be fed. He welcomed the distraction. He had chosen to dress as a merchant of middling means; a merchant of humble means was not appropriate for the Terafin offices within the Merchant Authority, and today he had no wish to stand out.

Two guards stood on either side of the double doors that led to the offices; they wore Terafin livery, which was to be expected. He handed them the letter that Lucille had penned, and they examined it in silence before nodding curtly and allowing him to pass.

Lucille waited on the other side of the doors, sitting behind her bastion of a desk. Paperwork was placed in deplorable piles across its visible surface, but she lifted her head the minute he stepped across the threshold and the doors closed at his back.

“Can I help you?” she asked, in exactly the tone of voice one would use if one wished to imply the opposite.

Haval was instantly on his guard. “Yes,” he replied, the single word clipped and cool. “I have an appointment to speak with Jarven ATerafin.”

She raised one brow. It was astonishingly similar to the movement of Hannerle’s brow, and were he another man, he would have lost heart. But he understood that she meant him to play a role here, and if Lucille was temperamental and extraordinarily territorial, she did little without cause.

“Haval Arwood.” He had lifted his chin, lowering his shoulders as he did; he stood at his full height and looked down at her.

She pulled a book that had, until that moment, been standing on end on her desk. She even read it with care, and took a pen to mark something beside what was presumably his name. “Please take a seat,” she said, rising. “I’ll inform Jarven that you’ve arrived.”

Curious, Haval thought, as he took one of a handful of chairs positioned
in front of the desk—and therefore in front of the watchful eyes of the resident dragon. Curious, indeed.

She took five minutes to return, during which time Haval sat. He observed the office itself; it was not, as one would expect, quiet. Paperwork flowed from one desk to another, often accompanied by curt instructions; there were at least eight men and women visible, all of whom looked harried. He recognized four—two women and two men; the others were new to him, although it was true that he seldom attempted to visit the Terafin Merchant Authority offices.

He merited no more than a glance or two from the office workers, which was troubling, as he had adopted a posture that should have been worthy of none. Clearly, Lucille expected his presence to be noticed; she also expected it to be marked. For that reason, she was chilly upon her return, and her instructions, as she led him to the closed door of Jarven’s office, were loud and clear: Jarven was a busy man, and he didn’t have time to waste. Lucille was not, strictly speaking, incapable of being friendly, but it was not the trait for which she was known; she was known, instead, as a veritable dragon, and the Merchant Authority was her hoard. Her clipped, curt orders made of Haval Arwood a man among the multitudes of grasping—and useless—would-be entrepreneurs.