Skirmish: A House War Novel (69 page)

“Jewel—”

“I dreamed of her.” She slid beneath the counterpane and the heavy down comforter; Shadow condescended to lift his bulk for as long as it took her to pull both out from under his weight. Her head sank into her pillows; her hair drifted into her eyes.

“A true dream?”

“I dreamed,” she continued, staring open eyed at the darkened ceiling above her, “that she took this sword and this ring to that fountain. She and Morretz. Not even the Chosen were there.”

“When?”

“I don’t know, Avandar. After my departure, but before her death. More than that, I can’t say. She meant them for me,” she added, her voice finally beginning to crack. “She meant me to find them. I
saw
her.”

“Did she speak at all?”

“Yes—but not to me. I wasn’t with her, in my dream; I was observing her. I couldn’t touch her. I couldn’t say any of the things I wanted to say.” He was kind enough not to ask her what those were. Her hand closed in a fist around the ring—a fist that would have annoyed Rath endlessly because thumbs-on-the-inside were just asking for broken thumbs in a fight.

“You saw the past,” he finally said.

“I saw the past. Before you ask, no, I didn’t get to choose what I saw. It was a dream—I’m used to just following those to their end. But I knew what I saw was real. I knew it had happened.” She closed her eyes, and then opened them again, turning her head to see Shadow’s, unblinking, in the darkness. She reached out to touch his fur, felt it, solid and warm, beneath her hand, and closed her eyes again.

“I was there,” Shadow said. She opened her eyes; he was looking at Avandar, his wings folded, his tail twitching.

“Pardon?”

“I was
there
with her. I saw what
she
saw.”

Avandar was silent for a long moment. “Jewel—”

“I know. But he’s a cat. They go where they want. I couldn’t keep him out of my dreams if I tried.”

“You need to learn,” Shadow told her. “Your dreams will not be safe until you do.”

“You could just stay out of them.”

He hissed. “If I stay out,
stupid
girl, who will
protect
you from the others? Who will stop you from getting
lost
? Your dreams are real, now. They can kill you.”

“Why do you care?”

“It’s less boring,” he replied. “Now go to sleep.”

“Will I dream again?”

He opened one eye. “I will
eat
your dreams. But only for tonight. I don’t
like
the way they taste.”

“ATerafin,” Avandar said softly, “you must speak with the Oracle, soon.”

She knew it was true. “Speak to me in four days,” she told him. “In four days, I’ll be ready to think about anything.”

He fell silent.

“Tonight,” she told him, surprising them both, “I only want to think about her. She left me Rath’s sword. She left me the ring. They weren’t for the House—they were for
me
. I’ll never be able to talk to her again, and I
want to
, Avandar. I want to ask her all the questions I should have asked and didn’t, because I was afraid to take the House. I want to ask her about Gabriel, about the Chosen, about the shrine; I want to ask her about Rymark.

“I want to tell her—” She stopped for a moment, took control of her voice, and spoke again. “I want to tell her that she was my family and I was her den-kin.”

“She knew.”

But Jewel had seen The Terafin’s face on that moonlit eve in which she had given over the last of Rath’s items—the last things that bound her, as sister, to the man who had found, and saved, Jewel. There was no one, now, who loved Rath the way Jewel had, and Amarais had hesitated until the last moment, as if in surrendering these private, apolitical items, she was at last surrendering to the inevitability of her own death.

And that was unfair: The Terafin had never surrendered. She had always planned for both failure and success, had always balanced the well-being of her House between the two. She had fought, playing every variant of the game she could see; she couldn’t see the demon that had killed her in the end. No one had; had they, there would be no funeral.

She closed her eyes.

“Sleep, Jewel,” Avandar said. “I will watch.”

“No, don’t. Shadow doesn’t need sleep; you do. I don’t know what you and Celleriant have been doing—and I should, and you’ll tell me—but you need sleep at least as much as I do.”

“My dreams will not kill me.”

“Avandar, I’ve seen your dreams. If I die in mine, I’d still consider myself better off.” She heard his steps, tensed as he approached the bedside. But he stopped there, gazing down at her.

Will you end it
? he asked.

She couldn’t answer. She knew what he wanted. She even understood why. But she also understood that if he succeeded, he would be gone. She had lived with his arrogance, his irritation, his anger, and his very occasional approval for half her life; she would have sworn, had anyone asked, that she’d be happy to be rid of him. And she would.

But not that way. She was so tired of death and loss.

4th of Henden, 427 A.A.
Terafin Manse, Averalaan Aramarelas

T
HE WEST WING was a hive of activity beyond Jewel’s closed doors; she could hear moving discussions, shouting—that would be Carver—and the frantic knocking at her door. She ignored it for as long as she could, because she’d slept, and it had been so mercifully dreamless, she didn’t want to wake.

When the knocking transformed itself into a snarling roar, however, she rolled bleary-eyed out of bed.

“It’s just Snow,” Shadow said with a sniff.

Avandar was sleeping in a chair. Guilt therefore made getting out of bed a necessity, and it all but demanded best behavior. She walked quietly past him, slightly alarmed that the noise hadn’t jarred him out of sleep.

Shadow had been entirely correct; Snow was bristling in the doorway by the time she had it open. Two of the Chosen were on guard, but it was a different two; they looked distinctly uncomfortable about Snow’s presence. Their hands were on the hilts of their swords, but as no one else in the wing—and at the moment, that included Angel and Teller—were reacting much, they hadn’t drawn them.

“You two,” she said, probably breaking half a dozen etiquette rules, “don’t you need to dress?”

They were demonstrably dressed, but they exchanged a brief glance.
“We’ll have the chance when the captains relieve us,” Gordon told her. “Don’t worry.”

“Oh, it’s not worry,” she replied. “Misery loves company, and
I
have to dress for the occasion.”

“She does,” Teller said gravely. “Haval’s waiting.”

“Haval didn’t even
make
my dress—” she shut up as Snow hissed. “I’ll be there after I’ve—”

“Eaten?”

She nodded.

Ellerson had arranged for breakfast in the breakfast nook; the den were seated in various states of wakefulness around the long, narrow table. Teller, accustomed to the early morning frenzy of Barston post-regency, was wide awake. Finch was wide awake as well; the rest of the den fell into the cracks somewhere between those two and Jewel. Gabriel’s office was, of course, closed for the three days of the rites; the Merchant Authority offices had likewise been shut down for the duration. The House was to assemble in three waves. The first wave contained every nonessential person on staff or Council: Jewel, Finch, Teller, Barston, the people who in theory were Important. The second wave would join the ensemble only after the guests had arrived: the guards, the Chosen—or former Chosen. The third and final wave would be the servants, saving only those few who were utterly necessary for the preparations of the offerings after the rites had begun.

All of this had been drilled into Jewel’s head by Teller, who, of the den, was most familiar with just how many things had to be arranged. What she’d known before his careful, if weary, reporting was that the Kings, the Queens, and The Ten were, upon death, accorded the full funereal rites and blessings of the Triumvirate, and obviously, gods couldn’t be expected to share a day, or anything.

Avandar raised a brow when she ventured this opinion.

“You
are
tired,” Carver added.

“The fact of the three-day rite has very little to do with the Triumvirate,” the domicis now said, in his clipped voice. “No matter how conveniently the numbers work out in this case, it is not fact.”

Jewel grimaced as Carver kicked her—gently—under the table. “Everyone,” she said, rising from a half-eaten dish of something with too few potatoes and too much cheese for a morning as early as this one, “Get
dressed. We’ll meet in the great room. Shadow, would you stay with Ariel and Adam today?”

The cat hissed. “Make
Night
stay.”

“Night is with Gabriel. Snow was
supposed
to be with Gabriel as well,” she added.

“Dress,” Snow said, sounding about as outraged as he did when Shadow stepped on his tail.

“Don’t look at
me
,” Shadow replied. “You
know
she’s not very smart.”

“Obviously not,” Jewel snapped, “since I apparently agreed to let him make it.” She headed toward Haval’s room, fortified now by Finch, Teller, breakfast and some decent, if scant, sleep.

“Snow’s not as scary as Haval,” Finch offered.

“I should hope not; I
chose
Haval.”

If Haval ever forgave her, it would—judging by the pallor of his skin, the circles beneath his eyes, and his very unamused expression—be a miracle. A rather large one.

“I’m please to see you could make it,” he told them all, gesturing now at the featureless mannequins around which were the clothes several consecutive days’ worth of increasingly cranky labor had produced.

“Mine is
better
,” Snow told him; he was practically bouncing. Jewel considered—briefly—telling him he looked far more like a puppy than a cat.

“It is, indeed,” Haval told him. When Haval spoke to the cat, he spoke gravely and with great respect—which at least showed he was capable of it. To be fair, Jewel didn’t doubt that he was; she’d just seen so little of it aimed at her. “Jewel, please—you do
not
have all day, and I’m unable to rest for even an hour if you dawdle here.”

“Pardon?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I will, of course, be in attendance. I have less need for obvious finery, and I believe the clothing I transported here will serve my purposes.”

“Is Hannerle—”

“No. She finds the presence of the Kings and the Exalted intimidating.”

“Who doesn’t?” Jewel muttered.

“Hopefully, ATerafin, you.” He gestured again, and this time she approached the mannequin that was wearing the garment Snow had somehow
created. It was still predominantly white, with edges of black and gold, and it had a train that would sweep floors clean if it were allowed to touch the ground. She grimaced. “Is the long bit at the back necessary? I’m not getting married—”

Snow growled.

“I believe he answered the same way when I asked,” Haval said, while he helped Teller into his long coat.

Jewel hesitated again, and this time, Snow began to bat the side of her leg with the top of his head. “Knocking me over won’t get me dressed any faster,” she told him.

“No, but it won’t make you
any
slower.”

She unbuttoned the dress from the back and slid it, carefully, off the mannequin; she was afraid to touch it not because it was so very fine, but because she was afraid of damaging it somehow. Not even The Terafin would have dared a dress this ostentatious. She glanced uncertainly at Haval, who was now ignoring her in favor of his own work.

Snow hissed an almost strangled command to
hurry
, and Jewel surrendered to the dress.

To her lasting surprise, it was neither tight nor heavy; nor was it too warm. There was a knock at the door as Jewel examined herself in a slender oval mirror that seemed too slight to reflect the whole of the garment; Avandar entered the room. His attire was very fine, although it was mostly black with white trim and gold buttons; his shoes were also dark, and pointed in the fashion of the Court these past two years. Even his hair had been cut or combed in such a way that it revealed the lines of his face; he seemed very patrician, to her eye.

But he was her domicis, and she was accustomed to him. Or so she thought.

He was silent as she turned; silent as he stared. His face lost the look of arrogant disdain she’d grown to find so comfortable, and she wasn’t certain she could even name what replaced it. She stumbled, and Snow hissed in frenzy. Avandar caught her before she could fall—to her knees, as she usually did.

“Avandar.”

“ATerafin.”

“Give me my hands back.”

“Ah, of course. Apologies. Ellerson is waiting.”

She nodded, and carefully gathered the train as she headed for the door and the ministrations of the elder domicis. Snow let her leave the room first, but inserted himself between Jewel and Avandar with another hiss.

“If you
step
on it,” he growled, “I will
rip out
your throat.”