Adam said, “If she is physically here, how can I wake her?”
“That would be my question as well,” Haval replied, in the mildest of voices. He turned to Birgide and said, “Tell me, where is Jewel now?”
• • •
“Councillor,” a new voice said, “that is not a fair question, as you well know.” A small, golden fox entered the clearing. By his side was a man Adam recognized: Jarven ATerafin.
He tensed—almost everyone did, even Finch, to whom he was almost an Ono. Jarven, however, was staring at Shadow. And Adam. His lips turned up in the smile that the Matriarch liked least. One glance at Haval made it clear that he agreed with the Matriarch, at least in this.
Haval, however, accepted the interruption—and the correction—in stride. “I am uncertain why, Eldest.”
“Because the Warden will not, of course, be able to answer. She will sense what we all sense: our Lord’s presence. But we sense it regardless. She is of these lands; these lands are of her. Ask us instead which part of the forest she does not inhabit.”
“Which part, then, Eldest?”
“None. There is no part of the forest that she does not inhabit.”
“And the city, then?”
“Where it overlaps the forest? She is omnipresent.”
“Then she cannot yet—”
“She can. She is of both worlds. She is Sen.”
It was Haval who said to the den, without further preamble, “We will start in the twenty-fifth holding.”
• • •
Neither Finch nor Teller had the time to search through the entire city looking for a figment of Jay made somehow disturbingly real. Jarven, who had not, in theory, been present for most of the discussion, said, “I will go to the Authority offices for the afternoon—or at least until you have abandoned or fulfilled your quest.”
That left Teller with a glacially annoyed Barston. “I will only go as far as the twenty-fifth holding,” he said quietly.
“You need not be apologetic,” Haval told him, almost gently. “It is my belief that Adam will not be able to do what is necessary without your presence.”
22nd day of Morel, 428 A.A.
Twenty-fifth Holding, Averalaan
Haval knew where they had once lived.
“Of course,” he said, voice fully neutral.
“Why ‘of course’?” Jester looked up to see shutters—some open, some closed, most warped. They were not dressed for the twenty-fifth holding in any way. Jester appreciated the irony. He also appreciated the guards. Meralonne had not elected to accompany them. Nor, in the end, had Birgide. Only the absence of the latter made him uneasy.
“I was hired to teach her. I was not certain that it was wise, and I did some very minor research.”
“Meaning you sent some poor apprentice—”
“Sadly, no. You are the first assistant I have had since I began to fashion clothing for the patriciate. The research was done by me. That, I believe, was one of two windows into the apartment you once called home.”
Jester looked up. The building had not changed much since they had fled, leaving almost everything they owned—not that it had ever been much—behind. Leaving, he thought, Duster as well. He had seldom looked at their home from the vantage of the street; he felt no prickling nostalgia as he nodded. He glanced at Teller and Finch. Teller lifted a hand in quick den-sign.
Yes.
“Why did you want to start here?” Teller asked the tailor.
“A hunch,” Haval replied. “I am not possessed of The Terafin’s instincts. That aside, I trust mine.”
“We’ve been ATerafin for over half our lives.”
“And you lived in this place for three years. Maybe four.”
Teller nodded.
“But it was here, Teller, that Jewel made her home and finished building her family. It was here that she dreamed—of safety, of security, of a place where her den might live in peace. It was here that she truly began to build.”
Finch glanced at Haval. “Angel came to us here. But the rest of us, she already had.”
“True. But Ararath is dead.”
• • •
The stairs were as narrow and rickety—as noisy—as they had always been. They seemed flimsy now, too small; the ceilings were low and the hall poorly lit. Jester remembered his life in the holdings. He remembered, as he walked here, how much like wealth it had seemed, how much like freedom. Life itself made changes, but he had never been sentimental.
What Jay had built, he had chosen—albeit more slowly—to love as well, inasmuch as he was capable of that emotion. He hadn’t tested her. Even if he’d desired to do so, he’d’ve had to wait in line. It was a short line consisting of one: Duster.
She pushed. She pushed constantly. She trusted nothing. She couldn’t trust Jay. And yet she had.
“Why,” he asked Finch, “did you trust Jay?”
Finch said, “She saved my life. She saved me from literal demons.”
“She saved Duster as well.”
“Not the same way.” But Finch understood the question Jester hadn’t quite asked. “I prayed,” she said. “The way even you pray when things have gone south. I was cold, I was barefoot, I was in a night shift designed for—” she shook her head. “I was scrawny. I knew how to scrap a bit, but I didn’t know how to fight. Duster? She knew how to fight.” The shadow of a smile touched her lips as she mounted familiar stairs.
“I expected to die. I didn’t expect Jay. And Carver.” She turned to look down a step at Adam, whose hand she still held. “This is where we lived.”
He nodded. “Will the stairs hold Shadow?”
“Shadow could walk across stretched gauze without tearing or breaking it—if he wanted.”
Adam looked highly dubious. “He’s heavy.”
“I can,” Shadow said.
“You’re too heavy—”
“Am not.”
Jester kept a grin off his lips. “Shadow,” he told the gray cat, “We’re too heavy, and we’re probably a third of your weight.”
Shadow was incensed. Loudly. But Jester noted that the stairs no longer creaked beneath the cat’s feet—only theirs.
• • •
When Haval reached the door, there was a small tussle for position; the halls would not easily accommodate them all unless they stood in a line. The twenty-fifth holding was not as dangerous as the thirty-second, but it wasn’t precisely safe, either. People knew when to mind their own business and did so with alacrity.
For reasons that were not clear, Haval suggested that Adam open the door. Adam, however, shook his head. He turned to Teller. “If she is somehow here,” he said quietly, “she will expect you. Or Finch. Or Jester.” He glanced to the back of the hall. “Arann?”
Arann, on duty, hadn’t spoken a word. He conferred briefly with the Chosen present, then nodded. Normally, the Chosen would open the door. Arann was both Chosen and den, the only person who was.
“What do you expect to find?” Adam asked Haval.
“I do not expect to find anything,” Haval replied. “Ah, no, that is imprecise. I expect to find young Jewel. But if I do not, and we have walked into someone else’s life and home, I will accept this as information, and we will continue. There is no ego involved. That is the important thing that many people your age forget. They are afraid of mistakes, of making mistakes; they are afraid of feeling—or being—stupid. Mistakes, however, are our finest teachers.”
“If we survive them,” Jester said, voice sour.
“Indeed. It is the only time in which the mistakes of others can still prove instructive.”
“And you won’t feel guilty if you’ve ordered someone else to make mistakes in your stead.” It wasn’t a question. Adam didn’t understand why Jester disliked Haval. Then again, Jester disliked everyone who wasn’t den-kin, he was just usually much better at hiding it.
“No, Jester. You are correct. There is no profit in guilt.”
“With
out it, there’s no responsibility either.”
“Is that how you see responsibility?”
Arann had reached the door. Shadow was standing on one of his feet.
“Do you want to open it?” he asked the cat, without heat.
It occurred to Adam that Shadow rarely tormented Arann. Arann was physically large—the largest of the den—but Shadow had fought demons with glee and invective; his decision to more-or-less leave Arann alone had nothing to do with size, prowess, or training on Arann’s part.
Adam privately thought it had more to do with Arann’s steadiness. He accepted Shadow standing on his foot without irritation or comment. The cats really were like children.
This one hissed. “He’s right,” he said, glaring at Haval.
This confused Adam. It did not appear to confuse anyone else. Arann rapped on the door. It wasn’t knocking, not precisely, and it wasn’t a single tap. It was a series of taps.
Finch was smiling, except it didn’t quite look like a smile. Teller was still. Jester was grinning. Adam felt very much the outsider here. This was a part of their life he had never seen and had only rarely heard about. They had been young, here. They had been the age Adam was now.
Matriarch business, he told himself. He let the pang fade.
The door opened.
• • •
Arann froze in the doorway. Shadow hissed. The sound seemed to bounce off ceiling and walls, growing in volume.
“Arann?” It was Finch. Of course it was Finch.
He didn’t answer. And as he stepped over the threshold, through the doorway, it became clear that he wouldn’t. His armor melted away, as if it were a thin sheet of pretty, Northern ice; what remained was the clothing he had worn beneath it.
Except it wasn’t that clothing. No one in the Terafin manse dressed like this. If it weren’t for his coloring, Arann might have been Voyani. He wore too-large clothing, of mismatched color. The stitching that held the parts together was good, though.
Finch froze. Jester froze. Teller closed his eyes.
“You took your time,” someone said, from inside the apartment. “We’re almost out of food.”
It was Arann who said “Angel.”
“What?” And it was Angel’s voice.
“Who let Angel start eating?”
“Duster,” an unfamiliar voice replied.
Silence. A silence that robbed everyone still standing in the hall of breath, of motion. The voice was clearly unfamiliar only to Adam. And possibly to Shadow, but no one was asking the cat. No one cared enough to ask him. Finch reached out to touch Arann, possibly to grab his shoulder, but it had taken her too long to shake herself free of whatever shock held her.
Arann headed into the apartment.
• • •
“You three coming?”
“Depends,” Jester said—from the hall. “Did you let Carver cook?”
“Does it look like the place is on fire?”
“That only happened once!” Carver said.
Adam felt a peculiar knot in his throat, in his chest.
Jester walked through the door. And Jester, the most fastidious of the den, the most careful with his appearance, changed just as Arann had done. His hands were lifted and flying in den-sign too complicated for Adam to read. But someone in the room laughed. Someone else threatened to remove his hands. Unfamiliar voice, again.
But that voice sent a ripple through Finch, a kind of odd shudder. She looked at Teller. Teller was staring. Staring with something like fear and something like yearning.
“Go in,” Finch told him gently. “For us, I think it’s safe.”
“But it’s not—”
“Go.”
“You?”
“I’ll be—I’ll follow.”
Teller walked into the apartment.
• • •
Adam could now see through the open doorway; the door hadn’t slammed in his face. A very short hall opened into a room. There was a small table to one side, and a few chairs—but not enough for the people currently gathered there. They sat on the floor; some sat against the wall between the windows. There were bowls in their laps, and their hands flew as they chatted, some mix of den-sign and Weston.
He recognized Arann, Jester, Teller. He recognized Jewel. Farther in, he saw Carver, and Angel with his very peculiar hair. But there were others, here, that he didn’t know, and he understood why everyone else had frozen.
He turned to Finch.
Haval had turned to her as well.
She was signing, although her eyes didn’t leave the open door. Adam didn’t recognize the words. Not until she signed Angel, Carver, Arann, Jester, Teller did he understand that the first gestures, the early ones, had also been names. Names he had not been taught. The last name she signed was Jay.
These, then, were her dead.
There was noise in that room. An argument. A girl Adam’s age who was cleaning her fingernails with her dagger’s tip, glaring out at the world. A boy who was sitting beside Arann as if he were a happy, living shadow.
“What will you do, Regent?” Haval asked.
“What can I do?” she whispered, as young in that moment as the people in that small space. “It wasn’t easy, living here,” she continued. “I remember. It wasn’t easy. But the good parts were good, Haval. We had food, and we had a roof that wasn’t going to collapse in a strong wind or a heavy rain. We had each other.”
Haval nodded. “Yes. All of this is true. You understand that it is not, however, real.”
“Do I?”
“Do you not?” He turned to Adam. “I am not certain you will be able to enter that room.”
Shadow, however, said, “He can.”
“He was not of the den of that time.”
“He is of it now.”
“And you?” Haval asked the cat.
The cat said, “I cannot enter.”
• • •
Adam blinked, and blinked again. “What do you mean?” he asked in Torra.
“Are you stupid? I said, ‘I cannot enter.’ Which word wasn’t clear enough for you?”
“He meant to ask why,” Finch told the cat, dropping a hand, automatically, to the top of his head.
“Because I am not hers.”
“Interesting,” Haval said.
“She will not let me enter.” He sniffed.
“You are hers, though.” It was Adam who spoke, to Finch. His hand was still laced in hers. “You don’t want me to wake her.”
“I do,” Finch whispered. “I do.” Her eyes were filmed, her voice thick. “But you know, Adam, I don’t remember things. I grieve for the dead, but I don’t remember them. I don’t remember what they looked like. I don’t remember what they sounded like. I remember being here. I remember laughing. I remember feeling almost safe. I remember Duster was dangerous. I remember Lefty was shy and awkward—but so sharp. I remember Fisher—he’s the silent guy with the perfect jaw over there. I remember Lander. He only spoke in den-sign.
“But I don’t remember them like this. I don’t remember, most days, what they really looked like. Even when I try. The only place—the only place—I see them is in dreams. But in that apartment, in that room—that’s what we were like.”
“Yes,” Adam agreed. More gently, he added, “But you can’t live here anymore. They’re not real.”
Finch nodded. It was the truth. But it was not truth enough, Adam realized. Not quite. He said, “What happened to the people who were living here, before Jewel started to dream?”
“Living here?”
“Your city is very crowded. There are people everywhere. The Matriarch is in these apartments now. Do you think there was no one here before?”
Finch closed her eyes.
It was Haval who said, “There were people living here before.”
• • •
Finch listened, for one long minute, to the sounds of conversation. She knew why the laughter and warmth had ended. She knew what had
happened. She knew why this was no longer the den’s home. It had been hollowed out slowly by the disappearances: Lefty, Fisher, Lander. Duster had not died here, but had it not been for Duster, they would never have made it to Terafin.
And before that, before they’d run for their lives, there had been money—or rather, lack of money. There had been hard choices to make, hard things to do. It wasn’t, she had told Haval, easy. But the good parts had been good. That was what this was: a dream of the good parts, before Lefty had disappeared.
Before he had died.
No bodies had ever been found, not even Duster’s.
“How do you wake her?” Finch asked, without looking away. She had not seen that expression on Arann’s face since they’d lost Lefty. Lefty had been his family. Lefty had been his choice. They’d almost lost Arann after they’d lost Lefty.
“I don’t know,” Adam replied. Haval cleared his throat. Finch grimaced at the sound, signing, ignore. “I think she has to see me.” He looked at Finch for one long moment. “Will you go in and speak with your dead?”
Her dead. She wanted it. She wanted it almost as much as Arann clearly did and had. It was a dream. It was a good dream. Jay clearly had some control; she had chosen this.
“Finch?”
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I think if I leave you on the outside, the door will close forever.” And that would be a bad thing. She knew it. But she didn’t feel it the way she felt the yearning and the pain. And it didn’t matter. Jay wasn’t actually here. Finch was regent.
She remembered that she had wanted the regency. It was harder, at the moment, to remember why. To preserve the House for Jay? To preserve the den? She was certain that if she entered that apartment, she would be safe. She would be safe in a way she had not been safe for years, if ever. It was visceral certainty. Nothing in her could deny it. There would be nothing to worry about preserving. Nothing to fight against. No reason to fight at all, except for the usual: food, sleeping space, shoes.
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