They didn’t speak the way the cats did—and could. They didn’t squabble. They didn’t destroy furniture—although she was uneasily aware that they could destroy so much more. What she wanted from the cats—what she wanted from Shadow—they didn’t even understand.
And yet, the cats conformed in some fashion to what she wanted. They always had. She had been afraid to test that, to push it, to stretch those boundaries; had been aware of the ways in which they might break.
But she needed Shadow. She knew it. She needed him only a little less than she needed water. She couldn’t say why; she didn’t examine it. Examination didn’t matter. It was rationalization after the fact, and at the moment, the fact was too large, too unstable, to sustain the words and their structure.
What the Winter King had done was more than simple containment—it was complicated containment. In the tangle, the stone that had once encompassed the cats remained wherever Shadow placed his feet—as if he were somehow shedding it. And when it was gone, he would be something other. He would be what he was meant to be.
Meant to be.
What did that even mean? Was Jewel Terafin because she was meant to be Terafin? Had she been orphaned because she was meant to be orphaned? Had her mother and father died such lonely, mundane deaths because that was their lot?
No.
No.
No.
Shadow was like the Stone Deepings. He was not, quite, like the forests behind the manse, like the wilderness that had become her permanent home. But he was wild in the same way. He could hear, had heard, her voice. He understood what she needed: what would make her, what would break her. He was not old and wise and avuncular in the way of Hectore, but it didn’t matter.
What she needed of Shadow, he had given her.
He had always given her.
Shadow was hers. While she lived, he was hers.
It wasn’t a complicated answer. It wasn’t a difficult one. It was visceral, instinctive, possessive; there was anger in it. It was a familiar anger. She didn’t need to tell Shadow what she meant. The word mine didn’t have a lot of structural underpinnings. It wasn’t a word that could be used in a cultured debate. It wasn’t meant to convince anyone.
It was a fundament on which she could stand—as she’d stood on the roads in the Stone Deepings. She hadn’t asked permission of the Deepings; it hadn’t been required.
That is where you are wrong, Avandar said quietly. But the Stone Deepings heard you, Jewel, just as your forest did.
She nodded, brushing Avandar’s words away.
Shadow was like the Stone Deepings. She didn’t cajole. She didn’t demand. She did not, in any way the House Council would understand, talk to him at all. She needed no answers from the great, gray cat; she asked him no questions. He was not her den, not mortal, not human. She did not ask permission. She made no plea.
She looked at him, his head beneath the open palm of her hand. She saw Shadow. Memories of her time in his company came and went, as if memory were a mortal river. No, she thought, not quite. The riverbed was memory. What flowed through it? Jewel.
The cats were like geography. They spoke, they interacted, they destroyed things; they squabbled like siblings. They suited her, suited her den—and Shadow had, for no reason she could understand, taken Ariel under his literal wing. Only in the presence of the gray cat had the child felt truly safe in the strange confinement of the Terafin manse.
She understood why. She couldn’t put it into words. It didn’t make rational or logical sense. But it was felt, and it was truth.
Shadow hissed. He was neither angry nor amused; it was a quiet sound, an exhalation of held breath. “Do you know what you are doing?”
Hush.
What had driven the Winter King? No, that was the wrong question. How had the Winter King found the cats? How had he met their ferocity and divined that it could somehow be contained? How had he understood that they were like the land itself—or the lands—in some essential way? Jewel had never, until this moment, seen that in them. Had she encountered them in their primal form—had she heard Night and Snow at a distance—she would never have seen it, either. She would have avoided them entirely, keeping as much distance between her party and their angry roars as she possibly could. Death was in their voices, not peace. Pain was implied.
The cats had gone absent before. She had been surprised at just how much she missed their squabbling and complaints; the world had gone quiet in their wake. Until they had arrived, she hadn’t realized that it was the quiet that made the role of Terafin so difficult. She could not speak her mind. She could only say what she thought when she’d shifted through all possible variants of the words she could safely use. She was surrounded, except in the West Wing, by people who saw the House ring; she was Terafin, not Jewel.
Shadow—and Night, and Snow—could not care less about The Terafin. They didn’t treat her with the respect the firstborn all but demanded; they didn’t bow or scrape. There was nothing they wanted from The Terafin. On most days, there was nothing they wanted from Jewel.
No, she thought, and she smiled, that wasn’t true. They wanted attention. They wanted flattery. They wanted to be told they were the best cats ever. They sulked when they didn’t get what they wanted—but even that, at a remove, could be endearing.
She had grown up in the streets of the twenty-fifth holding. She had reached her majority there, but she had not yet developed the self-control, the self-denial, that was required of the woman who held and ruled the House. She had developed those things because they were practical, they were necessary.
But at heart, she was at home only with the den because with the den it wasn’t necessary. She didn’t bear the crushing weight of their disappointment every time she spoke her mind. She didn’t fear their judgment if she picked up the wrong fork or knife, nor did she fear it if she was not dressed in the finery, the trappings demanded of The Terafin.
And she didn’t fear it from the cats; never had. They were almost like earlier iterations of home, for Jewel. They spoke their minds instantly, unselfconsciously; they did what she could no longer do.
She couldn’t imagine that the Winter King had needed from the cats what she needed. But perhaps what he did need, he saw in them. He was gone, now. Maybe he had become another stag, another mount in the eternity of the Winter Queen’s host. She couldn’t ask him and doubted that she would, if they ever crossed paths again.
He neither needed nor wanted her gratitude. Her gratitude, if it existed at all, was entirely her problem, not his. She looked at the cat, and saw him; around him, above him, beneath him, she saw and understood the shape of her own needs.
She accepted them in their entirety. Were they a weakness? Maybe. But she was human, she was mortal. She was born to weakness and the interdependence of tribe, of family, even if there was no shared blood to bind them. She was born to a small apartment, a cantankerous old woman, and the parents whose faces she could not recall, except in dream.
She had hated the silence of Rath’s home before she had begun to gather her den. These cats were like Avandar. She felt the domicis bristle in annoyance at the comparison, and surprised her companions by laughing out loud, which didn’t improve the bristling much.
They can’t die, she told her domicis. They’re like you in that way.
You don’t fear to lose them.
Not to death, no. And that loss was always a fear. It would always be a fear. Death had shaped her early life, merciless and pitiless.
The stone beneath Shadow’s feet began to melt, losing solidity, shape, texture. What remained in its passage was forest floor. He was not a creature of stone now. “Could you move before?”
He muttered stupid under his breath. Under his breath, however, was relative.
“Could I be bigger?” The gray cat asked.
“You’re too big as it is.”
“But we have to carry them,” he countered, wheedling. His expression was guileless as he added, �
�Could I be bigger than Night or Snow?”
“Shadow.”
“Yesssssssss?”
“Find your brothers.”
• • •
Shadow leaped into the air, and it devoured him.
Chapter Fifteen
28th day of Morel, 428 A.A.
Araven Manse
HECTORE WOKE WITH A start, as he so often did in these latter days. His wife stirred, lifting her head; her eyelids flickered. He smiled. “It was a dream, Nadianne. Nothing more. Go back to sleep.”
“And you?”
“I cannot sleep at the moment, more’s the pity. I am fine.”
“If you go out, take Andrei with you.”
“Of course, dear.”
• • •
It was of Andrei that Hectore had been dreaming. He did not tell his wife this. She was not a politician; she did not terrify or terrorize the patriciate. In most cases, where his wife was absent, men generally ignored her existence. This was as Hectore desired it. Enemies of old—long dead, for the most part—had attempted to draw Hectore’s first wife and child into their small wars.
But not the smarter enemies. Not, for instance, Jarven, now ATerafin. People saw only that Hectore was sentimental; that his great affection for his family could be used as a weapon against him. It had happened to other men in the long and checkered past of the merchants who governed commerce in the Empire, after all.
Hectore had asked Jarven, casually, years after their first few clashes, why he had not chosen that route. To Jarven, any tool could be, and often was, used.
Jarven’s smile was steely, polite; he matched Hectore’s tone, his mimicry of it so exact it was clear that he understood that the Araven merchant’s casual nonchalance covered a trench so deep it could kill a man who fell into it unawares.
“We are both merchants, at heart,” Jarven replied. “And older men. We have seen trade wars. We’ve counted the fallen.”
Hectore nodded; this was general enough that it was true. It was in the details that Jarven became especially slippery.
“You and I have crossed each other before. You have been—you remain—a worthy opponent, a rival.”
Hectore nodded again. He was pleased and let it show; Andrei was sour and likely to be worse before Jarven had finished speaking.
“You have never been an enemy. Many merchants make the mistake of assuming that opponent and enemy are one and the same; they allow the personal to dictate their interactions. I am perfectly happy to have you as an opponent, as you have not been obliging enough to lose. Not often.
“But targeting your wife or your children? That would make me an enemy.”
“Surely that would be true of most men?”
“As I said: most men confuse the two. You do not and have not. And you treat your enemies with a dangerous respect and an utter thoroughness; I note that most of them are no longer with us.”
Hectore did not demur; it was true. Once a man—or woman—had attempted to kidnap or kill his family, he felt no compunction in having their lives ended. The deaths themselves had not been entirely subtle or private affairs, but he wished those who considered the same hostilities, the same approaches, to understand their cost. And there was only one cost.
“I admit the challenge might have been bracing, but in the end, I did not consider it worth the effort.”
“You speak as if you consider it impossible that you would have lost.”
“No, not impossible at all. But not a certainty, either. I am willing to go to war.”
Hectore nodded.
“But even I must have cause I consider worth the expense. I had no like vulnerabilities, no weaknesses. Some of your enemies did, that I recall.” There was a question in the words.
“If I could not countenance the inclusion of innocents—my wife, my children—I would not then stoop to use them myself.”
“No. You did not often consider assassination attempts against you personally outrageous.”
“I was at war,” Hectore replied, shrugging. “When at war, one expects that one will face weapons and possible death.”
Andrei had, indeed, been sour and monosyllabic for the whole of that discussion, his dislike of Jarven so strong one could practically cut it with a knife. Jarven found it amusing—or chose to find it amusing.
Hectore had never quite understood Andrei’s animosity toward Jarven. Many were the merchants who considered Hectore’s position a personal prize to reach for, and Andrei might consider them foes, but he accepted them as part of the landscape, something to move around. Or level.
Now? Andrei did not stay long in a room that contained Jarven.
But Jarven had changed, as well.
Hectore did not yet play at age the way Jarven did; he suspected strongly that if he did he would be subject to the worst of Andrei’s temper until he ceased. But he felt his age more keenly than he had even a decade past. Jarven had not been, and was not, young. But there was something in his eye, something in his carriage, that reminded Hectore strongly of the younger man. Not a man to cross, then, unless one had no choice.
He shook himself. Jarven had never been a man to cross, unless one had no choice. And when one had no choice, one stepped carefully. Cautiously. One thought, and planned, and only in the end let instinct have its way.
• • •
Hectore was in the middle of choosing clothing for a day with an abnormally early start when Andrei entered the room. His frown implied outrage, without transforming the rest of his face, and Hectore understood why: it had been a long time since Hectore had been responsible for dressing himself. On the merchant roads, one seldom took one’s servants.
Andrei, of course, was the exception to that rule.
Hectore had been expecting him since he woke. He had drawn the curtains, to let in what light there was; it was meager and gray, although sunrise would change that.
“What has happened?” he asked his most trusted servant.
Andrei was silent. Andrei was often silent, although his silences had obvious texture and tone if one knew how to read them. This one, however, was new. It was measured, constrained, uncertain.
“I should have known,” Andrei replied, after the silence had stretched between them.
“Where are we going?”
This startled Andrei, and Hectore was petty enough to enjoy that. But he had always been a man to take what amusement he could when it was offered in an otherwise grim situation, and he had no illusions. This was grim.
“We are going nowhere,” Andrei replied.
Hectore raised a steel brow and continued to dress. The clothing he had chosen was a type of anonymity; he was dressed for the open road. He was dressed for the caravan.
“Where,” Hectore asked again, as if Andrei had not spoken, “are we going?”
“You are going nowhere,” Andrei told him. It was surrender . . . of a sort. He turned from Hectore, hands clasped behind his back, and began to pace. As he did, he spoke.
“You have given me everything that I asked for. You have given me everything that you promised.”
This, however, was not a promising beginning. Andrei seldom referred to their past in this fashion, although Hectore’s past provided ample opportunity for criticisms should the mood strike.
“No, you have given more. I have been happier in this life than I can remember being in any other.”
“It is not the life that most men dream of, when they dream of happiness.”
“No? But Hectore, I am not a man.”
Very, very unpromising.
“What has happened, Andrei?” Hectore all but demanded.
Andrei said, “She has walked into the tangle.”
• • •
Hectore knew that “she” was The Terafin. Andrei had become aware of Jewel Markess ATerafin in a way he was seldom aware of other people; she drew his attention. He did not consider her a threat, and as threats demanded the bulk of Andrei’s attention, she stood out. Had she
not been Terafin, this would still be true.
But she was.
“You allowed me to be what I wanted to be,” Andrei continued, into Hectore’s thoughtful silence. “You did not care what I was.”
“That is not true.”
“Had I chosen to walk by your side as a great, gray cat—an odious, disrespectful, destructive gray cat—you would have accepted it with as much ease.”
“Not, I think, the destructive part. That would upset my wife.”
Andrei smiled. The addition of a new wife, these many years ago, had been a study in territoriality—on both Nadianne’s and Andrei’s part. But Andrei had, inasmuch as he could, approved of Hectore’s choice. And had he not?
Hectore would have married, anyway. If Hectore accepted Andrei—and he did—Andrei accepted Hectore. Andrei was, perhaps, louder in his complaints about Hectore’s many decisions—but complaints were not unexpected.
“You did not desire to be a gray cat of any size or description.”
“No, Hectore, I did not. What I desired, I have had.”
“You make me uncomfortable. Where are we going?”
“I cannot take you where I am going. I do not think you would survive it.” Hectore opened his mouth and Andrei lifted a hand. “It has been many, many years since I last traversed the tangle. I do not understand why she has entered it now.”
“She must have had her reasons.”
“Yes. I will say that about your Terafin. She has her reasons, even if she cannot clearly express them—or see them for herself.”
“I am not of a mind to let you leave on your own, I’m afraid.”
“Your wife would never, ever forgive me should I take you with me.”
“Oh? She made it very clear that if I was leaving, I was to have you accompany me.”
Andrei’s smile was genuine, but brief. Yes, they had had their territorial issues, but in time, they had come to see that they occupied space in Hectore’s life in entirely different ways—and they both wanted Hectore to survive. And thrive.
Firstborn Page 41