She seemed almost hesitant to sit, but room was made; Adam chose the chair closest to her. Her brief glance at his exhausted but open expression was filled with suspicion: did Adam pity her? Did he dare to pity her? And that, Finch thought, was an echo of older, sparer meals. But Adam was practically falling into his soup in exhaustion. Jay demanded that he eat, and he obeyed, but even eating, he seemed to be going through motions that only barely made sense.
Finch was happy when Snow and Night joined Shadow in the dining room. She was less happy when she realized they were very angry—at each other—because the dining set had only just recently been replaced, and the entire West Wing would be in considerable disgrace should a new replacement be immediately necessary.
But she was flat out surprised—and not inclined to hide it—when Jewel told Shadow to go with Adam. “Make sure he gets safely to his room,” she said. “I think Ariel is already there. With his permission,” she added.
Jay looked refreshed and well rested in comparison to Adam, which said more about Adam than Jay. He had slept, but the sleep had clearly not been enough.
Shadow hissed. “Why me?”
“You know why. But if your brothers can stop hissing and spitting at each other, and you can talk them into doing at least as good a job as you could do—”
“They could never do that!”
Finch winced. Teller winced. Jester rolled his eyes.
Calliastra shook her head, her own eyes wide with wonder—and disgust. “You do let them run wild. Even in the heart of your own manse.”
All three cats gave her the side-eye.
Finch had to admire her courage. It did, however, resolve the argument between the white and black cats. Calliastra did not seem concerned with the cats at all.
Jay, however, said, “Shadow.”
“But I don’t like him.”
“Yes, but he seems to like you, regardless. I want him safe. If you can’t do it, I’ll have to ask Meralonne.”
This caused an entirely different ruckus, but in the end, when Adam had stopped his forehead from hitting the table for the third time, Shadow knocked him off his chair and headbutted him toward the door nearest his room.
“Do bruises count?” the cat demanded.
Jay didn’t answer, but it was pretty clear Shadow didn’t expect one.
“I do not understand what you see in those creatures. You have the eldest who are rooted in the lands you have claimed, and I assure you they would be vastly more respectful, vastly less fractious, vastly more obedient.”
Finch glanced at her hand; the cut had closed. “I’m not so certain about that,” she said softly.
• • •
The West Wing was not small; a room was made ready for Calliastra’s use. To Finch’s surprise, Jay shook her head. “I want her with me,” she said. There was no suspicion, no implication of distrust, in the words—and had there been, Calliastra would have ferreted them out.
“Jay—”
“I need Shadow with Adam. And I need—”
When Avandar cleared his throat everyone turned toward him. Everyone but Jay.
Finch signed; Jay caught the motion of hands and looked up. She lifted her hands, but lowered them again, as if their weight was too much for her. “I don’t know.”
Watching her, Finch knew she was afraid. It wasn’t an immediate, visceral fear; it wasn’t the sight, with its attendant certainty. The shadows beneath her eyes seemed longer, darker; it took them time to bleed into the rest of her pallor.
“I have the House,” Finch said. “I promise. I have it, I’ll hold it against all comers until—until you’re home again.” As she said it, she knew that Jay wasn’t truly home. Jay’s smile was wan, wrong, but there was gratitude in it. She pushed herself up from her chair. Avandar stayed where he was. So did Haval.
It was Teller who rose, Teller who came to her side; not even Angel moved.
“I did something,” Jay said, voice so soft it was almost inaudible. “I did something I think I shouldn’t have done.”
No one asked.
“Carver’s alive.”
“Jay,” Teller said. “Stay here. Stay with us.”
Haval cleared his throat, and Jay met his hooded gaze. “I do not believe that is wise.”
“None of this is wise,” Jay said. “None of it.”
His expression softened. His eyes, however, did not.
Frowning, Finch turned toward the far doors; they had not opened. But she recognized the voice that seemed to come from them. “Wisdom, in my opinion, is often too highly prized.” And Jarven ATerafin materialized, his back to those closed doors.
• • •
Finch rose at once, as if she were Lucille, and walked briskly across both carpet and hardwood to reach the Terafin merchant’s side. He was bleeding; his jacket and shirt were rent, the wounds beneath them running in three parallel lines that implied claws.
He looked down his nose at her, eyes as cold, as hard, as Haval Arwood’s. As she had done with Haval, she ignored them.
“Finch, please.”
She ignored that as well.
The temperature in the room seemed to plummet as if warmth had been dropped off a very high cliff. Without meeting his eyes, she examined the jacket, the blood, the edge of wounds that were only slightly sticky.
“Come, Jarven,” Haval said. “If you claim that wisdom is too highly prized, you cannot then demand that your apprentice show any.”
“You will forgive me if I fail to play your games of consistency. Wisdom is necessary when power is uneven; it is power that rules.”
“And it is not,” Finch said quietly, “your power that rules here.” She frowned. “You should visit the healerie.”
“I will not. Have you clothing here?”
Haval said, “Given what you have done with the clothing you are wearing, I am uncertain that I should answer that question. This is unlike you,” he added.
“It has been many years since I have been forced to test myself in a simple physical contest—but it has been many years since I have lacked the information to take the measure of my foes. Finch.”
She heard the edge in the word, the command. Lifting her face, she met his grim, cold expression and offered him the sweetest, meekest of smiles.
His anger broke against it, although the roots of it remained. “I will replace Lucille if this is what she has taught you.”
“You know full well that it is not from Lucille that I learned this.”
“Then I will replace the fool who encouraged such inappropriate boldness.”
“Surely,” Jay said, speaking for the first time, “such replacement would be my decision.”
His lips folded in a smile; the rest of him folded in a perfect bow. “Indeed, Terafin. I have come to make my report. If it is not convenient—”
“Convenience is irrelevant at this point.” Jay sat, graceless and heavy. To Haval she said, “The wilderness is too strong here.”
“Yes, Terafin. But the changes wrought in your personal chambers might be as easily wrought in the West Wing should you choose to remain here.”
• • •
He is correct, Avandar said. And you are aware of this. It is, in the end, your risk to take. No one of your den will gainsay your decision. Were demons to pour in from the Hells in number, they would prefer to have you here, even if the influx were entirely due to your presence.
I want Calliastra with us.
Avandar said nothing.
Jewel turned to Jarven, assessing his injuries. She considered commanding him to the healerie and decided against it. The trick to ruling someone like Jarven was to studiously avoid giving him commands he was not inclined to follow. One could—Amarais had, on occasion—but it had to be done judiciously, because one couldn’t afford to have Jarven publicly disobey those commands. It was always a risk.
“The wounds look more severe than they are.” He smiled. “I am not one of your den, Terafin.” A warning. �
�Haval will—at a later time, when it will not bore me to insensibility—explain the weaknesses in your protective impulses. I am an operative. I am a weapon. I am a tool.” He lifted a hand before she could speak. “If you mean to point out that tools are neither sentient nor fractious, I will respectfully disagree. The best tools are often both. Leadership is not merely the giving of orders; it is the giving of the correct orders to the correct recipients.”
She exhaled. “Was it a demon?”
“I cannot be definitive at this time, and I would stake very little on the accuracy of my answer, but no. I do not believe my assailant was demonic in nature.”
“It wasn’t the fox.”
“No, Terafin. The eldest serves you. You understand territoriality. Given your origins, you could hardly do otherwise. That understanding is the root of your ability to handle the occasionally ugly competition between The Ten. The wilderness is different only in degree, not substance. You have claimed these lands, and the wilderness has, for reasons of its own, accepted your claim. Your rule is absolute here, in a way it cannot be—”
“Over you.”
His smile was slender, sharp, his nod slight.
“You think, however, like a mortal. It is not a criticism,” he added, in the mildest of voices. “I think as one as well. It is an advantage.”
Calliastra made a noise that was categorically rude.
Jarven glanced at her, his brows changing shape, his eyes narrowing. “You fail to see advantage in it?”
“I do. But I have spent much of my existence among mortals; I feel I understand your kind too well.”
“You understand desire, certainly. You understand impulse. But impulse, I would argue, is the province of the immortal. You live forever if you are cautious—although caution is not, in the end, a signal strength of the immortals I have met. The choices you make have consequences, but with the long passage of time, the consequences become contextually irrelevant. Unless, of course, they destroy you.”
“Would you not then acknowledge that we have more to lose? If you are foolish, you lose a handful of years. If we are disastrously foolish, we lose eternity.”
“My dear,” he said, in a tone that was dangerously close to patronizing, “In The Terafin’s service is a man who has spent centuries, perhaps millennia, attempting to lose that eternity without success. The only people who appear to value eternity are those who are guaranteed not to witness it.”
Jewel’s face was a mask as she studied Jarven. She glanced once at Haval, who did not appear to notice. She had never discussed Avandar’s past with Jarven. She had discussed it with very few, Haval being one.
“Meaning yourself?”
Jarven’s smile was sharp, his nod precise. “Those who live often desire things they do not possess. It is, in the end, the heart of what I have spent much of my life doing.”
“And now?”
“I spend some of my life in other endeavors.” He turned, once again, to the woman who was his theoretical lord. “There are roads,” he told her softly, “that lead to the boundaries of your lands. They are not subtle. I am uncertain that mortals could find them with any ease; I am completely certain that the predators who lurk in the wilderness could.
“I am not cognizant of how those predators mark territory; I suspect that land, such as it is, is owned as you yourself now own the forests which house your trees of silver, gold, and diamond.”
Before Jewel could speak, Haval said, “Your injuries were not caused by the ruler of those lands.”
“I am not entirely certain those lands have a ruler. There is some element in them that seems nascent, inactive.”
“And you would know this how?” It was Jester who asked.
Haval lifted a hand, the movement of his fingers succinct, brief, and unmistakable. It shouldn’t have surprised Jewel, but it did.
Jester, however, was in his fashion the fiercest guardian of the boundaries of den. He did not appear to notice.
Jarven was amused by her den-kin’s question. Jester’s dislike had always amused him. “When I walk these lands—when I stand in this manse or in my own rooms within it—I hear an echo of The Terafin’s voice.” He frowned as he turned to Jay again. “Voice is not exact. It is the closest approximation, however. The echo contains no actual words, no command, and had I no acquaintance with you, I would not recognize it. But I do. These lands are yours while you can hold them.
“In a like fashion, other lands are held. Were I to walk within Corallonne’s domain again, I would know. Her presence marks the boundaries. But in lands adjacent to your own—if that is a word that has any geographical meaning in the wilderness—I hear similar echoes. Or their utter absence.” His gaze drifted to the wounds he had taken. “The creature that attempted to end my existence did not dwell in lands that were claimed or owned.”
Haval cleared his throat, and Jarven lifted a brow. After a pause, Jarven said, “No, I do not believe I was attacked because I was considered a territorial threat. At this point, I could not claim—or hold—the lands in which the creature dwells.”
“At this point . . . or ever?”
“My inclination is to say ever, but I dislike the finality of that restriction. I will therefore say that I do not understand the paradigm fully enough to exploit it.”
That drew a smile from Haval. It was not a pleasant expression. These two men stood, facing each other, youth cut away from them by the simple passage of time and—with it—softness, even warmth. Like blades honed and sharpened, they had waited for the moment in which they might at last be wielded, as if they existed for no other purpose.
Jarven had always been that man.
Haval had not.
Or perhaps he had, and the slow shift of the hidden world’s many seasons had finally shed light on him in a way that could not be avoided.
Avandar exhaled, shedding his own particular brand of invisibility, the armor of servants. “Never. You will never be able to hold the wilderness. You might trap it, cage it, bind it; you might block all possible paths that lead to it, and claim ownership in that fashion; it has been done. But to be what the Sen is, what the firstborn were? No. No more could the Arianni, save only a handful, and they are immortal.
“Calliastra could, should she so choose.”
Calliastra had paled, except for her eyes, where darkness absorbed all other color. The hands that had looked slender became something other; the wings that had been shadow absorbed light and air for sustenance. Jewel understood. Calliastra had, once, claimed some part of the wilderness as her own. She had, once, attempted to make a home for herself. She did not live there now.
Without thought, Jewel lifted her hand; her fingers rose in a weave, a dance, den-sign and visceral instinct twined. In an instant, the shadows fled Calliastra’s eyes, the wings fading from view.
“Sometimes,” Jewel said softly, “we can’t build what we want. I built a home for my den. And when that didn’t work, I built a better home. And when we all almost died, I came here. And here? Demons, gods, firstborn. Greater threats, all.”
“I have never been as you are.” Condescension and something much rawer fought for dominance in her voice. Calliastra was struggling to hold on to the former, but no surprise there.
Jewel accepted it. Hesitated. Held out a hand. Calliastra stared at it as if it were one of the half-eaten mice Teller’s cat had graciously decided to share. Were that expression on any other face, Jewel would have laughed out loud. But laughter, to Calliastra, was poison; she had not learned how to feel the warmth or the affection inherent in familial mockery. If she were truly like Duster, she never would. Her laughter would draw figurative blood. Given that she was the daughter of gods, it might draw literal blood as well.
Finch said, “I’ll stay in The Terafin’s chambers as well.”
Teller signed. Finch’s hands remained still.
All advice, all caution, all the warring certainties pulled at Jewel. The wilderness was not the home she w
anted. It had never been the home she wanted. But . . . she had a home. Had almost always had one—she could see that now, Calliastra’s tentative hand in her own. Only after her father had failed—permanently—to come home from the docks, when she had faced eviction, and had lived beneath the bridge in the poorest of the holdings, had she been homeless. Rath had found her.
Rath had found her, had held her at a distance, and yet had opened his home to her, had allowed her to be part of it. He had never been father, or father figure. He had been den. He had been hers in the way the den was, but she had been too timid, too frightened, to see that clearly.
She saw it now. He had found her, had taken her home.
And she knew that Calliastra had likewise been found, but not by Rath. Rath was dead. Jewel had not killed him. She was almost certain that whoever had attempted to offer Calliastra a home was likewise dead—but Calliastra was not equally blameless. No, that was wrong. There must have been a time when her intent had been almost the same as Jewel’s. And that hadn’t helped her at all.
“Yes,” she told Finch, surrendering. She wanted Calliastra with her den. But Calliastra could not stay with her den if Jewel wasn’t with them. Avandar was right.
“And that,” Jarven said, with both warmth and a flash of irritation, “is our Finch; ever willing to broker compromise even if the only—”
“Enough,” Jewel said, and meant it. “How close were you to my own lands when you were attacked?”
“At the boundary,” he replied.
“Which boundary?”
His eyes widened slightly, his lips curving. Everything about him reminded her of blades, of blood, of conflict. He did not answer.
“Interior or exterior?”
He stared at her as if he had never seen her before. No, Jewel thought, recognizing some of that expression. He stared at her as if he had always discounted her knowledge, her experience, even her competence, and was now being forced to revise his opinion. Jarven’s chief strength—she saw this now—was that he could. He had always been vain, arrogant, decisive in a fashion. But he was flexible enough to review and alter both plans and opinions when necessary.
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