Firstborn

by Michelle West

  Terafin Manse, Averalaan Aramarelas

  FINCH ENTERED THE WEST Wing in a rush of skirts, Adam to the left, Shadow to the front and right. Arrendas preceded her into the manse, his presence signaling her early return from the Merchant Authority. As regent, she was entitled to the protection of the Chosen. She had tried to argue against it, pointing out that Teller was the right-kin, and in greater need.

  Teller accepted the Chosen without complaint, which meant Finch had very little choice in the matter. She hated to divert resources, but she was comfortable with the Chosen, especially their captains.

  The cat muttered and cursed and sulked from the foyer at which the carriage had let them off to the residential rooms. It would have been useful if the cats were capable of making themselves invisible, but at least in these halls the servants had become accustomed to them.

  And the servants would gossip; gossip would spread like fire across dry kindling. Rumors would circulate: The Terafin had returned. Adam was here. Shadow was here. She could almost see relief and hope, yet she hated to raise either without cause.

  Especially when she herself found that hope its own special agony.

  They found Jester in his room; they found Ariel in hers, and she let out a shriek of almost unintelligible Torra when Shadow and Adam stepped through her door—of the denizens of the Wing, she was closest to, most trusting of, them.

  “I’m sorry,” she told the girl, in her own gentle Torra, “they can’t stay. Jay is waiting for them.” But she hated to tear them away immediately, and after a brief pause, said, “I’ll try to find food.”

  “I’m not—”

  “I want to see if you can take something back with you.”

  “I have no idea how to get back.”

  “We’ll work on that. But—visit with Ariel. I think Shadow should stay with you, but I don’t have to. I’ll be back soon.”

  • • •

  Arrendas had clearly sent Arann to the West Wing; he was there when Finch left Jester’s empty room. It was early for Jester to be so awake; he’d been out the previous evening, in company not noted for its sobriety.

  “Adam and Shadow are back,” she told Arann, before he could ask. She saw the subtle shift in the line of his shoulders, and signed, she’s safe.

  “Arrendas said you’re to accept escort in the manse, unless Shadow is with you.”

  “Given his mood this morning, the person who’ll need protection is Shadow. I can’t believe I actually miss the cats when they’re not here.” Haval’s room was empty as well. Finch said, “Is Teller in his office?”

  Arann nodded.

  “I don’t suppose you could run to his office and tell him to meet me at The Terafin’s chambers?”

  “Not if I don’t want to commit ritual suicide, no.” No other member of the Chosen would say this. In general, when presented with a request that directly interfered with their duties, they said a lot of nothing. But Arann was allowed a certain amount of leeway in his formalities: he lived in the West Wing when he wasn’t on duty. He was The Terafin’s brother in all but blood.

  “Fine. We’re taking a detour to the right-kin’s office, where I will no doubt annoy poor Barston.”

  “Why?”

  “I need the House Mage. I want Jester and Birgide. I’ll accept Haval.”

  “We’re going outside, then.”

  “Yes. After we find the House Mage, who’s usually in Jay’s rooms. Or above them fighting winged monsters.”

  • • •

  Finch didn’t answer Teller’s questions. Hope had become a fear, and she wanted to hoard that fear; to keep it to herself where it wouldn’t cause injury to people she loved when they could do nothing about it, either.

  But that was unfair. She knew it. She wondered if all protective impulses were as unfair, as diminishing, as this one. “Adam was with Jay,” she told Teller. “He arrived here—somehow, I’m not sure even he understands how—while trying to wake her up. He’s afraid he can’t go back.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “No. I don’t think he’ll be able to stay. I’ve left him and Shadow with Ariel while I find Meralonne.”

  Teller rose. He tidied his desk and then headed out to inform Barston that he would be missing meetings for the next two hours. Barston was annoyed but glanced at the regent; whatever he saw in Finch’s face calmed him somewhat. He didn’t ask her if everything was well. But he never asked that. She inclined her head.

  In theory, it was Barston’s responsibility to arrange Finch’s schedule. In practice, as Finch had not forsaken the Merchant Authority, it was Lucille’s. Barston accepted this with the good grace one would assume of a territorial traditionalist, but he did accept it. He was not of a mind to trust Jarven and felt that Finch’s exodus from that office would require exactly that trust.

  • • •

  Teller and Finch were met at The Terafin’s chambers by the two captains of the Chosen. They joined Arann and Marave, releasing the two Chosen who had accompanied Teller back to their duties.

  Torvan generally did the talking for the captains when they had something to say, but as he was on guard duty, he was silent. Arrendas had, apparently, filled him in on the basics, because he did ask after Adam and Shadow.

  No one attempted to keep Finch from The Terafin’s chambers; nor did they question Teller’s presence. The doors were opened swiftly. Finch wondered if the library that could be seen from this side of the open doors existed anymore. It had been one of Jay’s favorite rooms until the changes had occurred.

  She stepped into it, and arrived in the room that had replaced it, if it could be called a room at all, as it lacked a ceiling or obvious walls. Teller followed. None of the den were precisely comfortable in The Terafin’s personal chambers, too aware that it was here that Ellerson and Carver had been lost.

  But the sky was a steady amethyst; there were no visible clouds overhead, and there was no flash of lightning in the distance—the surest sign that Meralonne had located an enemy. “Where is the House Mage?” Finch asked Torvan.

  “Here, somewhere.”

  “How do you summon him when his presence is required?”

  “There is no place his presence is required more,” was Torvan’s grave reply.

  “So . . . you don’t summon him.”

  “No, Regent.”

  “I should have inquired before we came here,” she told him. “I think we are working to deadline, and I’m not certain we have the time required to locate the mage, if there is no formal procedure in place.”

  “That deadline?”

  “I don’t know.” She lifted her face into the passing breeze; it was gentle and cool. “I want news,” she told Torvan, her voice dropping in volume. “I want it so badly I’m afraid to hope. And I don’t want to frighten Adam.”

  “Adam is not easily shaken.”

  “You didn’t see him in the Merchant Authority offices,” she said, with a slender grin, “when he realized that I was not a figment of dream or daydream.”

  The breeze grew stronger, tugging at the hair she kept pinned and oiled and confined. She closed her eyes, inhaled, and opened them again. Meralonne was aware of their presence.

  • • •

  She found him unsettling, but she always had. He was mage-born and, moreover, barely leashed; she was convinced that he was malleable only because of his great respect for Sigurne Mellifas, and not because Sigurne wielded any significant power over him should he step out of line. But he had become, in the passage of weeks, stranger and more wild.

  He was always beautiful now. She had seen glimpses of a cold and harsh perfection in him when they had first met—but only, and always, when he fought the demons. Now, it was there almost all the time. The querulous man who smoked his pipe as an act of lazy aggression had all but vanished.

  She found herself missing that man. But that man, she thought, could not do what this man had undertaken: defend The Terafin’s lands from the incursion of de
mons and monsters.

  And what will defend these lands against him? She shook the thought away as unprofitable and stopped herself from bowing. Here, now, the bow was unnecessary, and she felt instinctively that granting him visible signs of respect that rank did not demand was no longer completely safe. It had been . . . once.

  He seemed to read her thoughts from his perch of air; he came toward the floor without ever once condescending to touch it with his feet. His eyes were silver, bright, his hair a platinum cloak. He sheathed his sword—which meant, in his case, that the sword vanished.

  He did bow.

  Finch inclined her head, but it took effort to limit herself to that. She wished that Jarven were here, caught herself mid-wish, and almost shook her head. Jarven was not regent. Meralonne was one of the things that she would have to be capable of confronting on her own, even if she never became comfortable doing so.

  Teller, however, did bow. “APhaniel,” he said gravely. “We continue grateful.”

  “You did not come to offer me gratitude, surely?”

  “No,” he said. “Nor pipe weed, either.”

  “Ah. You’ve been speaking with the Master of the Household Staff.”

  Teller’s wince was visible, obvious.

  “I have, however, tobacco of my own,” the mage replied. And speaking thus, he retrieved his pipe from the folds of his robe and sank, at last, to the ground.

  • • •

  Jester, Haval, and Birgide were waiting for them at the edge of the forest. To Finch’s mild surprise, so were Adam and Shadow. Jester signed to Adam, who hesitated before signing back; Finch thought it was because he was still uncertain of how to use den-sign quickly. Haval frowned.

  Birgide, however, was staring at Shadow, her brows creased.

  Meralonne nodded to the gray cat. “Eldest,” he said, and then, after a pause, “Shadow.”

  “Yesssssss?”

  “You have left The Terafin’s side.”

  Shadow hissed. “It’s not my fault.” He glared at Adam, who actually flushed.

  “Adam?” Jester said.

  But Finch said, “I wish to go to the tree of fire before we have this conversation.” To her surprise, Haval concurred.

  • • •

  And there, they gathered, as if the tree were a great bonfire. The forest gloom was lifted in that light, but the light implied burning, not dawn or day. It was not comfortable. Adam stayed beside Finch for most of the walk, which would have been silent were it not for Shadow. Shadow was not bored, not exactly, but he was offended by the ignorance of the rest of his companions, and as always, felt compelled to share. It was strangely comforting.

  Finch offered Adam a hand, and he took it without thought. But he was aware that this was not a Weston custom, except where children were involved. At the moment, in this unnatural forest, Weston custom did not concern him.

  He told them about the Matriarch’s predicament. It felt almost wrong to do so, but these were her closest kin; he knew that were she here, it would be the Chosen who would remain by her side at all times; it would be Finch and Teller who would tend her. It would be the den to whom she would come for counsel.

  Haval was staring at him. “You accepted the Oracle’s help, you touched the Oracle’s version of a crystal ball, and you came here.” It was not a question so much as a repetition of facts.

  Adam nodded. “With Shadow.”

  “Who did not touch the Oracle’s crystal.”

  Shadow hissed.

  Meralonne exhaled. Smoke traveled from his lips in wreaths. “Adam, do you understand that the Oracle is the first child of the gods? She was born when the gods you now worship were a distant possibility, although in name, they could be said to exist. She was born when the wild gods had only barely sunk roots into this world.”

  “Why did she not leave when the gods left?” It was Finch who asked.

  “She could not,” Meralonne replied. “She was born to this plane. She is of it in a way that the gods were not. Do not ask me,” he added, affecting a boredom that only the cats could achieve without effort, “why the gods were not; it is complicated theology and, frankly, it is irrelevant.”

  “If she is the child of gods, does she have the powers of her parents?”

  “Some, certainly. And she has abilities that are unique; those abilities have none of her parents in them.”

  “But it’s said the gods could remake the continents—or destroy them—without much effort.”

  “Destroy, perhaps. Creation was always more difficult. If you wonder why Adam is here, however, you fail to understand what the Oracle is.” His eyes—eyes that had always seemed disconcertingly cold to Adam—narrowed. “You said that The Terafin chose to take the Oracle’s test. You implied that she had passed it.”

  Adam hesitated. Finch’s hand tightened briefly around his, as if she intended to transmit some of her strength to him by simple touch alone.

  Shadow, however, said, “She did not die. She is not insane. But she has not finished.”

  “Why does she not wake?” the mage asked—of the cat.

  Shadow hissed. He didn’t answer, which meant he didn’t know.

  “How long has she slept?”

  “Two days, perhaps? It is hard to gauge time in the wilderness.”

  “For you,” Shadow muttered. He began to clean his paws.

  “Why did the Oracle feel that you could wake The Terafin?” the mage continued, ignoring the cat. He had never liked them, Adam recalled.

  “I think . . .”

  “Because you’ve woken her once when she couldn’t wake on her own.” It was Jester who spoke.

  Adam nodded. “I had tried,” he added, voice lower, gaze turned briefly inward. “I had tried, and she did not wake. But the Oracle felt I was not trying the right thing, that I was somehow doing something different. And it was true. The first time I woke her, I attempted to heal her. I did what I did for those with the sleeping sickness under Levec’s care.”

  “Was it different?”

  Adam’s gaze grazed Shadow, but he understood that nearly dying to the great, gray cat was not, in fact, what the mage meant. Had it been different then?

  No, he thought. Not completely. It had felt different at the time because the Matriarch had always been in control of her dreams; he could not shift them as he had shifted the others. Oh, the dreams had shifted—but she had done that. And she had done that because she had seen Adam and had recognized almost instantly that Adam was not a phantasm of dream.

  Adam had been there.

  It had been easier for Adam. The dreamers did not have multiple incidences of themselves in their dreams; they were at the center of the dream that held them fast. They did not doubt the truth of their dreams, but they did not realize that they could affect their outcomes. The other dreamers accepted that Adam was real because they believed the dreams they were living in were real.

  Jewel had known, the minute she had seen Adam, that the two were different.

  He frowned.

  “I could not reach her dreaming,” he finally said. “Until I touched the Oracle’s heart, I could not reach it.”

  Silence. The crackle of flame, of fire. The movement of branches. Adam startled, looked up, saw that those branches did not move as tree branches did: they moved like snakes, although they retained the appearance of burning wood.

  It was Haval Arwood who said quietly, “It has begun, then.”

  • • •

  Adam was confused for one long moment; it was clear that he had company. Birgide, Jester, and Finch were frowning in a way that implied thought. Teller, however, was not. He did not look to Haval; he did not look to the mage. He looked, instead, to the gray cat. Shadow flicked wings and padded over to Teller’s side, where he sat on the right-kin’s foot.

  “Do you know where she is?” Teller asked Shadow.

  Shadow said nothing.

  Teller exhaled and tried again. “Is she here?”

  Shadow
said more nothing.

  It was Adam who answered. “I think she must be. But I think she could be anywhere in Averalaan.” He hesitated. “She will be her dreaming self.”

  “What exactly does that mean?” Jester demanded.

  “She will be young, like me, or younger, or old like you. She will be powerful, or powerless. She will be rich or poor. She will have a husband and family. She will be a desperate orphan. She will be dreaming.”

  “And she will be here,” Haval said. He looked almost ashen as the words left his mouth.

  “Haval, what is going on?” Jester demanded. “No, don’t ask me questions. Don’t make another lecture or lesson of this—we don’t have the time.”

  “I do not understand it well enough to make a lesson of it,” Haval replied, with brittle dignity. “I do not understand what being Sen means.” He glanced at Meralonne.

  “She is not powerful enough,” the mage said quietly, “to do what must be done. I am sorry.”

  “She is not,” Haval replied, “powerful enough yet.”

  “You assume that she will be.”

  “Yes. You assume she will not. I have always had a great respect for the depth of your knowledge about things ancient.”

  “And not things mortal?”

  “And not,” Haval inclined his head, “mortals.” To Jester, he said, “Her power is centered in this city—all of it. Birgide can map its boundaries because Birgide is aware of all of them. She cannot extend her territory. In my opinion, it will never be larger than it currently is. We know that within the boundaries of these lands, she has the power to alter reality as the rest of us perceive it.”

  Shadow sniffed.

  Jester signed. Teller signed. Finch signed. Adam had difficulty catching the whole of the exchange. They were all so quick, and he had practiced very, very little since leaving the manse. He caught perhaps half of what was signed and had to work to piece it together. Ah. They were speaking of The Terafin’s personal chambers. They did not agree with Haval precisely, but they could not disagree with any conviction.

  Jester swallowed. “How can she be in both places simultaneously?”

  Haval replied with care. “I would not say that she is. The part of her that sleeps is here—somewhere. The part of her that does not is where Adam was when he accepted the Oracle’s aid. I believe—and now I am speculating wildly—that Adam is to find her here, and to wake her, here.”