“I think we should take them,” Carver continued. “We don’t know if they’re special, by the standards of the wild and ancient. But we also don’t know if we’ll need to trade or barter with whatever we meet on the open road—if it doesn’t try to kill us first.” He took the leaf that Ellerson handed him, and carefully returned it to its place between shirt and chest.
“We do not even know where we are going.”
“Home,” Carver replied. “And now that you’re here, I think we have a chance of reaching it.”
• • •
The first thing Carver discovered was that the ruins had boundaries. They were boundaries that he’d never crossed. Ellerson had explained that the people whose spears had injured him weren’t real; the Oracle had called them memories or echoes. Memories could—and often did—cause pain; even Carver acknowledged that. But not like this.
Perhaps because Ellerson was with him, and perhaps because he carried the strange single leaf that Jay had handed him, he did not hear the hunting horns. He didn’t hear the clopping of multiple hooves. He saw ruins that spoke of age and destruction, open air reminders of the hidden city.
He was not sorry to leave them.
Ellerson chose a direction. He had a compass, a small, pocket instrument that was clearly brought from home, not the enchanted basement. It was completely useless. Whatever made it point in some true direction in Averalaan had remained in Averalaan when the two of them had been swallowed by a wardrobe and spit out here.
• • •
There was sunlight, or what appeared to be sunlight. Ellerson chose to use that light as a rougher, less certain compass. It didn’t work. Or perhaps it did—but only if they chose to travel toward that unseen sun. It made no difference to Carver, but Ellerson didn’t like it. He set a course away from that light, and the landscape shifted.
The light was the center of this place, and all things must move toward the center, as if it were the bottom of a vast, slow whirlpool.
The cold, however, was not a problem. The cloaks that had seemed such meager winter wear were warm, in a fashion. When donned, the cold did not touch them at all. It might have been high spring or early summer. The boots were likewise warm—but better; they did not slip or slide. Ice beneath the snow was not a hazard, and snow that hid deeper dells or drops did not break. The boots conformed perfectly to the feet that were in them; they did not appear to be made in a specific size.
Ellerson was unwilling to test the rings that Carver had found.
They had found no tents, no tenting, and no bedrolls in the underground rooms. “They would not be required,” he told Carver, “by the people who lived in that long-ago city.”
“No?”
“I believe they were kin to Lord Celleriant.”
Carver’s grimace was genuine.
“Tell me, have you ever seen Lord Celleriant sleep?”
“. . . No.”
“He does not, except when injured—and even then, not for long. I believe he considers the need for sleep a besetting weakness.”
“He probably considers the need to breathe a major weakness, as well.”
Ellerson nodded. “How often have you see him eat?”
“He never ate with us.”
Ellerson nodded again. “I think the food left will keep us for some time, but we will have to make do with the blankets; I do not think they required, or pitched, tents that were not decorative or celebratory in nature.”
But, as it happened, the blankets—which Carver had considered far too colorful and bright—served a different function. A better one. They were—like everything else in this godsforsaken place—magical in nature. When laid against the ground, they functioned as the cloaks did. Snow, wind, and cold did not touch them.
No, Carver thought, it was more than that. Where they were set down, something else touched the snow and the cold. He thought, at first, it was a barrier of some kind—something to keep the weather out. This made some sense. Even if you didn’t need sleep, you probably didn’t enjoy a faceful of rain or icy wind while you were eating.
But Ellerson pointed out that the trees, where their branches crossed the perimeter of the loudly colorful boundaries defined by the edge of blanket, changed. The branches lost snow and the buds that had wintered—possibly for millennia—blossomed. Their blankets were not the only color in this wilderness. Wherever they were set down, leaves and blossoms, grass and wildflowers, bloomed.
The blankets appeared to bring summer to the winter landscape.
Carver’s awe was silent; it was tinged with unspoken wonder.
Ellerson’s silence was not; it was laden with worry. Carver tried not to resent it, and almost failed. But he wasn’t sixteen, and Ellerson was no longer responsible for his manners, his bearing, his education. They were in this together.
He tried to think as Ellerson must be thinking. “These—these blankets—were left for us,” he said.
Ellerson nodded. “You thought them ridiculous.”
“I did—snow’s white. Everything here is white. I thought we’d be seen for miles.”
“I think,” Ellerson said softly, “we will. These are not made of the same fabric as the cloaks—and that is what I expected. The cloaks are the color of winter tree bark, winter stone. They are not meant to trumpet our presence. The blankets, however, would do that no matter how drab their base fabric is. Look at the leaves.”
“You don’t want to use them.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Ellerson replied.
“The cloaks are warm,” Carver countered. “I’ve spent a winter or two shivering in alleys so cold I couldn’t open my mouth without biting my own tongue. I survived it. I could survive a damn sight better wrapped in this cloak and sitting up against the trunk of that tree.”
“That specific tree?”
“It’s wide enough. If you’re worried about the attention we’ll draw, we don’t have to use the blankets here.” Carver said it with a genuine pang. There was something about those leaves that filled him with belief that there would be a spring, and a future, beyond this winter world.
Ellerson said softly, “It is a false spring, a false summer. When we leave, the leaves will freeze and die. I, too, find peace and contentment beneath these branches.”
“But you think about the cost.”
“Perhaps. These trees are not our trees.”
But the thought of these branches freezing as sudden warmth was just as suddenly withdrawn was oddly painful. “You win. We don’t need the blankets to survive—and until we do, we’ll keep them packed.”
Ellerson was silent for a full beat. “I think,” he said at last, “the blankets were meant to serve some function. I do not know what the Oracle said to those long-ago denizens of this winter place.”
“You’re worried.” Flat words.
“Perhaps. We are living on borrowed time. We are alive because the Oracle chose—long before even the Empire was born—to intervene.”
Carver was silent.
“I do not believe she chose to intervene without reason. She foresaw a use for us.”
“Use?”
Ellerson nodded. “It is not for our sake that she intervened.”
Carver shrugged uneasily. He had learned early that nothing in life was free; that a deal that looked too good was, always, too good. He closed his eyes. Opened them again. “Did I ever tell you about the first time I met Jay?”
Ellerson shook his head. “No.”
And he smiled, seeing the old man’s face. “But you know.”
“I have heard, yes.”
“She wasn’t looking for me. I wasn’t one of her visions. She’d come to find Finch—to save Finch. I followed her out of an alley entirely unlike this—” he lifted an arm, swept it out, to encompass the white and the bitter cold. “And into Taverson’s. I don’t know what I expected. I can’t remember what I said. Does memory always do that?” he added.
“Do what?”
&n
bsp; “Shift. Change.”
“We look at our memories in retrospect,” Ellerson replied, in his teaching voice. “Our knowledge colors our understanding of them.”
“I don’t remember what I was thinking. I don’t remember what she said. Not exactly. But I remember her expression. We were kids,” he added, gazing at his bent knee. “Kids. And she’d come to rescue someone her own age. She wasn’t ever big, you know? And her hair was always a mess.” He smiled. “I couldn’t see the color of her eyes, in the alley. I knew she was afraid—but that was just smart. She was out, in the streets, past dark; she was alone. She shouldn’t have been,” he added. “And she wouldn’t have been, if not for Finch.
“I had nowhere to go.” His shoulders tightened. “By choice, I had nowhere to go. Nowhere was better than where I had been. I hadn’t thought much about where I was going. It wasn’t cold enough to freeze to death. I thought, if I survived another couple of years, I could join the Kings’ army.”
“Were you expecting trouble?”
“Some. I thought I could take care of myself. I didn’t make much noise. I wasn’t trying to stake a claim. I just wanted away.”
“May I ask why?”
Carver grimaced. “I’d just broken someone’s hand. I mean that. Hand, fingers. It was a test. Of me. I was given orders.”
“You think you failed.”
“Yeah.” His shrug was tighter. “I followed ’em. I followed, and I hated it. I couldn’t apologize—wouldn’t’ve changed a damn thing. Words don’t paper over broken bones.” He looked at his own hands. “I’m fine with killing,” he continued. “To survive. I’d knifed men—kids, like me—before. Someone’s at you with a blade, you do what you have to do to make sure you’re not the one on the ground at the end of it.
“I was good with that. I am good with that, even now. But—the hand was different. There was no fight in the guy. I wasn’t stupid. I followed orders. But I knew that I’d be walking away, and I knew how to do it more-or-less safely. None of that involved saying no.”
“You’ve never spoken to Jewel about it.”
Carver shook his head. “Her rules: past doesn’t count. And I didn’t want to live in that past. Now? Now I wouldn’t be under someone who gave orders like that. I’m not a kid. I’ve got other options—and I can see them. Then?” He shook his head. “I had no idea who Jay was.” He looked up then to meet Ellerson’s steady gaze.
“I wasn’t looking for a new boss. I would have said I wasn’t looking for anything. But I saw her. I asked her why she was there. She said she was going to rescue a friend. And you know? She meant it. I thought she’d just get the crap beaten out of her—if she was that lucky.
“But I had nothing to do. Nowhere I had to be. And I wanted—I think I wanted—to see it, you know? To see her try. When I found out that she was trying to rescue a girl she didn’t know, had never even met—” He shook his head.
“She didn’t know how to use what was around her. She didn’t know how to fight.” He smiled then, seeing her. She never looked young in his memories. She always looked like Jay, as if the heart of her, the essence of her, was ageless or unchanging. “I helped where I could. We found Finch. We ran. We made it.
“And there I was. Finch, she’d come to save. Me? She’d stumbled across me, trying to hide in an alley. She’d fed me at the tavern. She had money. To me, she had money. But it wasn’t that. She didn’t ask me why. She didn’t ask me what I wanted. She just—I came in Finch’s wake, and she let me stay.
“And I wanted it,” he said. “I wanted it. I’m not that different from Finch or Teller. Their situations were more extreme. If she hadn’t intervened, they’d’ve died. She saved their lives. Teller’s, in a winter like this—but in our streets, not this forest.
“She saved mine, as well.” He looked up at budding branches across an endless sky. “I couldn’t get the hang of the patricians. Duster called me the patrician when she was in a mood. But I didn’t fit in. Terafin was uncomfortable. It was everything I’d daydreamed about, when I had the time to waste. Teller went to the right-kin’s office. Finch went to the Merchant Authority. Jay went tromping through the streets with Meralonne. Arann joined the House Guard. Angel was as uncomfortable as I was—mostly because Jay wasn’t with us. Jay wasn’t giving us our orders.
“He’d never take orders from anyone else. Me?” Carver shrugged. “She’d never given much in the way of orders before. But before then, I’d been useful. I was muscle. Terafin didn’t need muscle. Jay didn’t need muscle. Arann knew instantly. But I think—” He shook his head again. “He adapted to the House because of the healer. Alowan. Alowan had spent decades as a non-Terafin member of the manse.
“Jester. Me. I started talking to the servants. I think I intended to be one, until I caught my first glimpse of the Master of the Household Staff. And I couldn’t do it. What she wanted from Household Staff was far above me. You taught us,” he added. “How to speak. How to read. How to interact with the servants. You told me—”
“That even if you were qualified, you could not be a servant while living in the West Wing.”
Carver nodded. “I landed on my feet. I did what I could.” He stood.
Ellerson stood as well.
“Merry is ATerafin.” It was the first time he’d spoken her name to the domicis.
Ellerson nodded, as if this was not a surprise. It probably wasn’t.
“She’s a servant.”
He nodded again.
“She’s a servant in the West Wing, among her other duties. We’re not—we don’t care about the hierarchy of the back halls. She knows that. But she knows she has to. She couldn’t live with us and be a servant. What you said of me was true. But it was true of Merry in a different way. No one daydreams about being a servant.”
“That is not true,” Ellerson said quietly, closing his pack and shouldering it beneath the length of his cloak.
“She was proud of the House Name. We got it for nothing—all of us but Jay. Merry worked, and worked hard, to earn it. She worked in service. She endured the Master of the Household Staff. I—she was warm. She laughed, and she was warm. She accepted us. She told us the Household Staff was grateful—grateful—because Jay’d saved The Terafin’s life when the demon dressed like Rath came to visit.
“We milked that for all it was worth. It gave us the only edge we were ever going to have.” He exhaled. “She couldn’t live with us and be a servant. And I couldn’t live with her because she was one, and I was Jay’s. Jay was House Council. I didn’t want to break anything. Not the West Wing. Not my life. Not Merry’s.
“And right now? It seems stupid. I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again.”
Ellerson’s voice was gentle. “Is it Merry you’re worried for?”
“Meaning, not Jay?”
Ellerson was quiet, waiting.
“I worry about them both. But Jay is Jay. She’ll land on her feet, even if she doesn’t like where she’s landed. She’s got the cats. Avandar. Celleriant. Merry’s—” he shook his head. “She can’t be den, but she could have been. She’s not talent-born. She’s not valuable to the House the way Jay is.” His smile was almost self-conscious. “Neither am I.”
After a very long pause, Ellerson said, “When we get back, what will you do?”
“When?” Carver’s laugh was brief and bitter. “If?”
“We each have our duties. I will not question how you do yours; I understand, however, what mine entail.”
Carver shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve lived with Jay for over half my life. It’s home. It’s home to me. But for all the reasons I’ve stated, Merry can’t live with us. Maybe . . . maybe we both give up our rooms on the Isle. Maybe we both find a place that belongs to the two of us, away from Terafin.” He looked up, and up again, before he met Ellerson’s eyes. “Tell me I’m wrong.” His voice was low.
“I would, if I could in good conscience do so.” The domicis did not look surprised by anythin
g Carver had said. “You are not wrong. Could you give her the choice?”
Carver said, “What kind of a choice is that? Choose me and walk away from everything you’ve ever wanted and built for yourself?” He shook his head. “It’d be like telling her to choose me over herself. What kind of love is that, in the end? The one where I have to be more important than she is? If it were something trivial, I’d do it. It’s not. And I won’t lie. I’ve wanted to. I’ve wanted to tell her to throw it away, to give it up, to be with me. I’ve given her every chance to do it. She’s never offered. What she does is important to her—if it weren’t, she’d never have been given the House Name.
“And she’s important to me.”
“Yes. Does Jewel know?”
“Jay’s never asked.” He hesitated. “And no, probably not. We’re part of her home, but she’s never expected that home will be all of our lives. She doesn’t ask Jester where he goes—unless the House Council collectively drops on her head because he’s offended someone powerful. She doesn’t ask Arann about the Chosen, unless she needs the information to make decisions. She knows there are things Finch won’t tell her.
“She’s never demanded that our home be our only life. She trusts that if it’s important enough, she’ll hear.” He fell silent. It didn’t last. Carver was not one of nature’s silent people. “Thanks.”
“For?”
“Listening. Pretending to be interested.”
“It was not pretense, Master Carver.”
“Do you ever talk about yourself?”
“Infrequently, yes. And as you suspect, given your expression, only at need.”
“So you’ll listen to me talk, but you won’t talk yourself?”
“Unless it is relevant and necessary, no.”
Carver’s smile was sly. “We’re going to be perfect traveling companions, then.” He stepped off the blanket, glanced at the flowering branches above it, and grimaced. But he rolled it up, shoved it into his own pack, and shouldered it.
• • •
Carver did talk. He never raised his voice, and he paused mid-sentence whenever there was a sharp or loud noise, but he resumed talking the minute Ellerson had ascertained—inasmuch as that was possible in this landscape—that there was no danger. No danger, the domicis thought wryly, beyond the cold and the passing dreams of the Hunt. Although the Oracle had said they were not real, those hunters had weight, solidity, presence. They did not, however, leave tracks in the snow commensurate with the size of their party.
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