Skirmish: A House War Novel (89 page)

“I have very little at risk.”

When Haval lifted a brow, Jarven added, “I have lived a long and eventful life, Haval. I have few years left to me, and I admit an absurd level of gratitude that those remaining will not be inconsequential and
dull. I do not, I admit, have much of an opportunity to observe her directly; it’s almost as if young Finch doesn’t trust me.”

“That is possibly the highest praise you could give the girl.”

Jarven’s jovial smile suddenly vanished; no trace of it remained. “What will she do?”

“You will discover that Jewel ATerafin is remarkably straightforward. I consider it both her chief failing and the characteristic that just might preserve her life in the months to come. If she can navigate those with unfailing care, she may survive beyond that. Duvari will, of course, counsel otherwise. I am uncertain what the guildmaster will suggest, and I am equally uncertain what the gods themselves will have to say; if the gods counsel her destruction, it will be…tricky.”

“Is she even aware it’s a possibility?”

Haval, hands behind his back, watched Jewel intently. “In my considered opinion, no. But she will be.”

Jarven nodded. “Can you have her do anything about those cats?”

“Sadly, no.”

Jewel wanted, desperately, to go back to her room and stay there until the magi sent word. It wasn’t the first time she would so badly want something she could no longer have, and the bitter disappointments and grinding fears of an entire lifetime now provided the foundations on which she could—and must—stand. She went—Snow, Angel, and Avandar at her side—to Gabriel.

To Gabriel, in full view of the Exalted, the Kings, and anyone else who was keeping score, she bowed. She held the bow until he cleared his throat, and then rose. What she saw in his face made her regret that. He was tired. He looked, to her eyes, worn—even old. “Jewel.”

She nodded.

“The Council will convene the day after the last rites are offered.”

She nodded again.

“If the Kings call you on that day, what will you do?”

“I will attend the meeting of the House Council—”

“It is a meeting, in full, of the Council.”

She kept the flinch from her expression, or hoped she had. “And then I will travel to
Avantari
and allow the Lord of the Compact to interrogate me for the hours he no doubt intends.”

A trace of a smile shifted the lines of Gabriel’s face. “And if he demands otherwise?”

“The Laws of Exemption allow my absence at this time.”

“Yes. But wisdom and the Laws of Exemption are often in conflict.”

“In this case, I cannot afford to be absent from the Council meeting. They’ll understand why. Duvari will never be pleased with any choice I make, so he may as well get used to it.”

“That really is a very lovely dress.”

“A very lovely, suspiciously dry dress?”

He did chuckle then. “Yes, to both. This is not what I envisaged for today. Let us hope that the rest of the funeral will pass without further incident.”

Sigurne returned almost a full half hour later. Although she was bent and fragile to the eye, room was instantly made in the crowded gallery for her passage; she reached the side of the Kings in a handful of minutes. Matteos Corvel was at her elbow, looking wet, bedraggled, and determined.

She executed a perfect obeisance to the Kings, the Exalted—and the regent of House Terafin. To Duvari, she granted the nod of an equal. “Your Majesties, the grounds are now deemed safe. We have fortified the shields; the warrior-magi are now in attendance. If there is difficulty in the rest of the City, however, we will be hard-pressed to respond in any timely fashion.”

“Understood, Guildmaster,” the Lord of the Compact replied. The rest of the City, as Sigurne had so neatly called it, was not his concern. To Gabriel, he said, “The Kings and the Exalted will depart from the gallery; they will follow the route we discussed. The galleries are to be cleared now.”

Gabriel nodded. He gestured to the waiting House Council, and they approached, leaving their attendants behind. “I must attend the Kings until the Lord of the Compact is satisfied,” he told them; it was not a surprise. “Return to the Council seats; lead the guests by example.”

Gabriel seldom gave orders; only Haerrad bridled, discerning the source of those orders correctly. But Haerrad was not a man noted for his grace; the political acumen for which he was—in some circles—admired had little to do with elegant maneuvering and much to do with raw power.

“Where is Councillor Rymark?” he asked, his broad, deep voice traveling the length of the hall.

“He is toward the eastern end of the gallery,” Gabriel replied curtly. “Before you continue to ask questions that are appropriate for the Council Hall—and only that hall—let me inform you that his disposition was entirely at the request of the Lord of the Compact; he would have been here, otherwise.”

Haerrad’s brow rose, as did the corners of his lips. The brief contortion could not be dignified with the word smile. “There is much to discuss in the Council Hall when the Council convenes.”

“Of that,” was Gabriel’s dry reply, “I have no doubt whatsoever.”

The servants were a moving army across the whole of the green; the Master Gardener’s tabard adorned several who now worked at edging the newly turned grass. Murmurs, muted, traveled between these men and women like a living, irregular wave: they had expected a disaster. It was true that the benches were damaged by their fall, but they had not been crushed or destroyed beyond possibility of use; nor had all of the intricate tenting that adorned the pavilions, although the tables had to be—quickly—replaced.

But guiding them, watching them, were the first things that had been retrieved and reinstated: the poles that bore the banners and colors of House Terafin. The coffin itself had not been touched or harmed; it was not wet, it was not scratched, and no trace of dirt adorned it. That also caused whispers to spread, but they were muted and hushed; even the newest of the servants to the Terafin manse knew the story of Jewel Markess ATerafin’s humble beginnings, and only a handful had failed to recognize her voice.

It should have terrified them; it didn’t. No more had The Terafin herself, when she had ruled these grand, forbidding halls. The only thing that caused them to quake in their boots—or shoes—was the Master of the Household Staff, and as that august and terrifying woman was present, the murmurs never broke a hurried whisper. Nor would they, in any case, when guests—outsiders, all—were present in such large numbers. Many of the servants were ATerafin, and they had received the offer of formal adoption from The Terafin herself. If she had been so far above them they could not ordinarily approach her, she had nonetheless recognized their service, the value of their dedication.

This, then, they could do for her.

The seats were rapidly filled; the desultory greetings and political
wrangling that any such occasion demanded had already occurred, and no one was yet in a mood to repeat them. What, after all, could be said? If the strangers and visitors did not recognize the history of Jewel Markess ATerafin—or even the name—they would, in time; they understood for now that they had been in danger, and that that danger had been very, very real. They approached, and resumed, their seats with care; the political zeal for the best seating had quieted, although there were one or two among the patriciate who would cease their jostling for position only at death, if then.

The House Council arrived first; they took their seats in a proud but subdued silence. Last to arrive, and last to sit, was Jewel Markess ATerafin, and the servants—and onlookers—could be forgiven for noticing no one else. It wasn’t just her dress—which had weathered an elemental storm without the bother of actually getting wet—or her companion; the servants who worked in the West Wing had spread tales of the sauciness and impertinence of the talking cats as far as such stories could reach, and they were now held in far less fear than they had been. It was her carriage, her bearing, and the way she paused beneath the banner of Terafin and bowed her head.

Her carriage, her bearing, the quality of her silence, reminded all who worked that this was, at its heart, a funeral: that these people—Kings, Exalted, and guildmasters—were here for no other reason.

The House Guard was now out in force, although at the moment, little evidence of their presence could be seen anywhere but along the path that the Kings and the Exalted would walk. That path was silent and deserted, but as the chime sounded, it began to fill, first with the
Astari
and the Kings’ Swords, second with the Queens Marieyan the Wise and Siodonay the Fair. Their thrones—and thrones had been commissioned and provided—stood empty as the Queens approached, flanked by their guards. The guards assumed positions to the right and left of those thrones, for the Queens sat side by side.

This was a signal, and the servants now vanished as only servants can, attending to their remaining tasks almost invisibly. The Kings arrived next, and as they entered the clearing, people rose, led by the House Council. They stood in respectful silence until the Kings were likewise seated; the Kings required the presence of more guards and the vigilance of the Astari, but the necessary space had been provided.

Into the clear, cool air, the filigree trace of the smoke burning incense provided could now be seen. The Exalted had arrived. They were preceded
by priests of the Triumvirate, in robes that had not yet fully dried; the incense, however, was not so damp it would not burn. The gathered mourners had not resumed their seats when the Kings sat; they waited, tendering the Exalted the respect due the god-born—respect equal in all measures to that due the Kings themselves.

Only when the Exalted had taken their thrones—and the procession was longer and slower than that which attended the Kings—did the guests sit. The House Council remained on their feet, waiting upon the regent’s signal, for Gabriel came last to the House Council section. He came without fanfare, without attendants, and without guards; those, he had left with the coffin.

The coffin, however, was now carried—by the Chosen who had served The Terafin with their lives while she lived—into the clearing. A stone bier, faceless and unadorned, had been erected for the occasion, and the Chosen, without so much as a stumble, carried their Lord to that bier and gently laid the coffin upon it. When they stepped back, they stood for a long moment in silence, heads bent. They did not salute her, but brought their hands to chest as if to do so; that pose, they held for one long minute before they retreated.

The bells rang again, and this time, the Son of Cormaris rose. He rose alone. Amarais Handernesse ATerafin had paid respects to each of the gods in the Triumvirate, but it was to Cormaris that she prayed in times of trouble, and to Cormaris that she looked for guidance. The Exalted of Cormaris left his throne—and his attendants, with their braziers, their rods, their scrolls—and walked across the flattened grass until he reached the coffin that had been placed there with such care.

He bowed his head to her, offering her a respect that the Exalted never offered the living by the complicated rules of etiquette that governed the patriciate. Jewel watched. The coffin was closed; it wouldn’t be opened, and she wasn’t certain how she felt about that. She’d seen the dead before: her mother, her Oma. She had been spared her father’s corpse; his employers had dealt with it. There had been no funeral for him, and had there been, it would have been nothing like this one: there would have been no Exalted, no Kings, no rich merchants, no guildmasters. No one of import to the world at large.

Jewel would have been there, and a handful of their neighbors would have joined her.

She swallowed. There had been no funeral for Lefty, for Lander, none for Fisher or Duster; those bodies, she had never seen. Beneath Averalaan, in the sleeping ruins of the undercity, those who had died had been interred without benefit of last rites or burial. She was certain that three of her own were there, somewhere, lost and frozen in time. There was no way to search for them or find them; she’d asked. The entrance to the undercity could be opened only by the Exalted and the Sacred, working in concert, for hours on end.

Even as a member of the House Council of Terafin, she did not have the power to make that request.

But Amarais? She was here. She had built a small Empire within the Kings’ Empire. She had touched thousands of lives, tens of thousands. Even thinking it, Jewel bowed her head. Her father had touched so few lives—but one of them had been
hers
. He had been as important as Amarais to Jewel Markess. He wasn’t The Terafin, would never be The Terafin; had he lived, he would have worked at the docks until work was beyond him.

It seemed unfair to her that he had given the whole of his life to the people he loved, and it counted for so little. She had loved him. In her way, she had loved Amarais. But the Exalted of Cormaris? He had, undoubtedly, respected her. The Chosen revered her. Morretz had loved her, but Morretz was dead, and the only absence Jewel resented was his. This is where he should be, in a coffin very like his Lord’s; this is where he should be buried. He had given his life in her service—and he had died in it as well; Jewel was aware, in a way she wouldn’t have been at sixteen years of age, of the difference between the two.

But he was—had been—a domicis. Not ATerafin, not of House Terafin, he had existed only for her. She wondered if he could see the service as it progressed. Would it please him to hear the familiar words of a funeral service spoken by the Exalted of Cormaris? Did it please her?

No.

She felt curiously empty as she watched. She was exhausted, but it was an exhaustion that left her light-headed; as if all her anger and rage had drained away with the departure of the other wild elements. Amarais was dead. The dead didn’t care. The whole of this service—every detail, every gold coin—was for the sake of those who remained in her wake. Jewel ATerafin was only one of them. She had looked forward on a very narrow path, seeing that coffin on this day, surrounded by these people; she hadn’t looked beyond it. Why?