Firstborn

by Michelle West

  One gray brow rose. “I am not concerned with appearances, except as they suit me. Appearing to be the best is not enough. I will be the best.”

  As if she had spoken out loud. She would speak with the fox. She would ask him what he had done to Jarven, or for him; she felt she needed to have a clearer understanding. Her instinctive reaction provided confirmation, but not information she could use moving forward. Shadow, however, had made clear that the fox was not allowed in the manse. Jewel blinked, shaking her head as if to clear it. She was certain Shadow had made this clear, yet she could not precisely remember when or how. The fox did not treat the cats with the contempt Calliastra did.

  “Shadow.”

  “I’m busy.” He was. She had sent him with Adam. But his voice was a rumble beneath her feet. She felt the ground list, saw Jarven’s expression shift, and saw Haval’s remain flat, neutral, and entirely unsurprised.

  It was Angel who caught her, Jester who helped; it was Finch’s arm around her back and beneath an armpit; there was sound and noise, light and shadow, familiar scents of both kitchen and forest, the taste of blood in her mouth.

  “Shadow!” Finch’s voice.

  “Why can’t someone else do it?”

  Calliastra’s hand was cold in hers, and it tightened. But as Jewel’s free hand found the center of her own chest, the firstborn said, “Do not. Do not do that here. If you can, do not do it ever.”

  Do what?

  “It does not show you what is. It shows you what will be, what might be, what has been. It does not give you clarity, only a different way of slicing through chaos. And no,” she continued, her voice shifting, walls of distance snapping into place around the words, “do not send for the healer, if that was your intent. He cannot help her, but he will be close enough that he might, if not very, very careful, be lost as well.”

  She had no intention of sending for the healer. The thought had not occurred to her.

  Jewel whispered something but could not then or later say what.

  Calliastra said, “I told you, I have some experience with the Sen. You are not yet what they were.” The hand that Jewel had offered had been taken, and that hand was solid, real, singular. It was here and in this moment. Even thinking it, she rebelled; Finch was here. Angel. Jester. Her den, her Chosen.

  But their voices blurred and even their touch came at a remove. Calliastra’s did not.

  “I think I understand,” the godchild said, “why you need me.”

  “I need—”

  “You don’t need death,” she replied. She pulled Jewel by the hand. “Or rather, you don’t need me to cause it.”

  “She has ussssss.”

  “Oh, please. You can’t even guard one exhausted man-child without practically abandoning your master.”

  “She is not our master!”

  Shadow’s voice, like Calliastra’s hand, was solid, real; it had no fuzziness around the edges. It was, however, loud, and the odd, growly humor that often informed it was bleeding into nothing. She did not want the cat and the firstborn to clash in this room. Or this hall. Or this manor.

  “Clearly, she is not a competent master if you can behave as disgracefully as you normally do. However. You are perfectly capable of stealth and silence should you so choose, and you are easily capable of disposing of her enemies. She has Lord Celleriant. She has Viandaran. While none of her servitors are my equal individually, in aggregate they are impressive.

  “I have little to add to that mass. I did not understand,” she added, her tone shifting, her voice developing something that sounded like cracks, small fissures across the surface. “But I—I do, now.” Her voice wasn’t gentle. Jewel didn’t think that Calliastra had that in her. But it was—in its own way—as astonishing. It was clear, and it was whole, while implying all the broken things that lay beneath it.

  “If you step on my foot again, I will cut off your wings.”

  “Try.”

  Jewel’s hand tightened on Calliastra’s almost involuntarily; there was no command in it.

  “I will. Later.”

  • • •

  Angel signed. Jester signed. They watched Jewel. She was exhausted enough that they didn’t bother to hide their concern. Why would they? Angel was home. He was finally home. His intimidating Northern friend—who seemed to have stepped out of childhood stories of barbarian invasions—spoke to him, but in Rendish. Finch understood a smattering of that language, but not enough to catch the gist of what was said; it was too quiet, and too quick.

  She turned to Angel, signed sleep.

  He signed Jay.

  She shook her head. Me. I’ll watch.

  And he was willing—they were all willing—to have Finch as regent. As if relieved to be momentarily quit of his duty, he turned toward his own room, his own door.

  Jester waited until Angel was gone and lifted his hands again.

  They had no den-sign for outsiders; Finch did not therefore sign. “Find Birgide.”

  “I don’t understand why she wasn’t there.”

  “I don’t think she needs to be,” Finch replied softly. “And she’s very reserved. She perhaps wanted to give us . . .” She shrugged. “But find her.”

  “And you?”

  “We’ll take Jay to her room. I think—I think she needs more sleep.”

  Haval’s face was blank, neutral. Jarven’s was not. His eyes were like lightning: bright, flashing, and so alive. Age—his own—seemed almost a lie, he wore it so poorly. “And what would you have of us, Regent?”

  “You are not under my oversight,” Finch replied.

  “You are regent.”

  “Yes. When The Terafin is absent, I am regent. But she’s here now.”

  Haval nodded as if he agreed with her spoken statement, and simply waited. Finch shifted Jay’s weight; Jay was too hot to the touch. Where Jarven’s eyes were bright with excitement, Jay’s were bright with something else. Finch liked neither.

  But she had grown to accept necessity when it fell on her, figuratively or literally. “I would have you both speak with Birgide. Find out where the attack took place, if it is possible. I highly doubt it was a lone, wild beast—but I admit I am out of my depth when it comes to the forests and the wilderness. I will see The Terafin to her room and her much deserved rest.

  “Birgide will also have to see to the needs of the guests who remain in the forest itself. They are very like Lord Celleriant, if I am not mistaken—but they are mercenaries to his soldier. The Terafin would not have allowed them entry if she thought they could not be contained or controlled. But she is exhausted. It is in Birgide’s hands at the moment. They are not to leave the forest until The Terafin wakes.”

  No one spoke for one long beat, not even the Chosen. Finch then turned the whole of her attention to the only thing that now mattered.

  “Teller, help me.”

  • • •

  Finch wanted to cling to Jay, to hold her in a grip so tight she wouldn’t be able to leave. The visceral urge surprised and even dismayed her because it was so familiar. She had clung just so to her mother the last time she had seen her.

  She had never gone back. She had never done the groundwork that would allow her to find the parents who had abandoned her. No, worse, who had sold her. She understood, in an intellectual way, why they had done it. She could even, when feeling charitable, believe that they believed it was necessary; could see how threats and cajoling could be combined when the burden of debt might lead to injury, death. But she did not forgive.

  And on that day, she had been afraid. Too afraid to acknowledge the truth that was, even then, unfolding and undeniable.

  She bit her lip and then, falling back onto years of studied practice, smoothed the worry and fear from her expression. Jay had nothing in common with Finch’s parents except Finch’s own fear—and she would not let that be a binding. Jay had no intention of selling them out, no intention of abandoning them.

  Without thought, as instinctive in
the motion as she had been in her desire to cling, she glanced at Teller, at Teller’s color, sallow, strained. He had looked into the Oracle’s crystal ball, the thing Jay called her heart. The Oracle had allowed it. He had spoken very little about what he’d seen, and although they’d all wanted to know—and still wanted to know—they had shied away from asking more than a handful of times. Each time he had offered small glimpses, contained and shaped only by words. The words were chilling enough.

  “It’s not the future,” he’d said, expression fierce and defiant. But it was a ferocity born of fear, not certainty; fear and hope. “It’s one future. We’ve faced dark futures before.”

  But she remembered: Angel’s hair. And that, at least, had come to pass. He wore it in Northern braids. The complicated spire that had been the one identifying trait easily seen at a distance was gone. The heart of his attachment to Jay remained; it had grown stronger, if Finch was any judge. He had finally taken the Terafin name as his own.

  But Teller had seen his hair in the Oracle’s crystal.

  Teller had seen more.

  Teller, she thought, had seen this, or something that led to this.

  She was very surprised when Snow stepped on her foot. Not because he had never done it, although feet tended to be Shadow’s specialty, but rather, because until she felt the weight of his paw, she had not seen him at all. Just as she had not always seen the fox.

  His eyes were gold. Sometimes they were brown, and sometimes that brown was so dark it was a warm, solid black. Her worry deepened the moment he lifted his foot, when he realized he had her attention. Somehow, squalling, whining cats meant the world was normal. Expensive, but normal. Consideration? That was for funerals, for the dying, for those moments in which the world was so grim, so dire, the loss so imminent, that respect was the only thing that could be offered.

  Her hand drifted to the top of his head, in unconscious mimicry of Jay.

  The great cat purred. His voice so soft it sounded like an entirely different voice, he said, “Cling, Finch. She does not want to leave you. She will need you here when it happens.”

  “When what happens?”

  But Snow had said enough, or more than enough, in his own opinion. “You have eyes,” he sniffed. “What do you use them for? She is mortal. She is weak. She made family, and she needs it. If you are afraid to need her, if you are afraid to ask, how will she know?”

  “We’re not children anymore, Snow.”

  Snow hissed brief laughter. “You are always children.”

  “She doesn’t just have us—she has all of Terafin.”

  Snow spit, and stepped on her foot again, but harder this time. She stumbled, and Jay, leading Calliastra, pulled away.

  And she thought of them at twelve, at thirteen, at fourteen. They had not felt young then. But desperation had given way, in the company of the den, to a strange kind of hope. Not for this, not for Terafin—they hadn’t had shared dreams that big. But for each other. For the people who would have your back when things got tough; for the people who would share their food when food was scarce; for the warmth, at night, when there was no fire, and the only heat came from thin walls, thinner blankets, and adjacent bodies.

  They did not feel young now. The power that had been so far beyond them it wasn’t even a dream was in their hands—but the power came with a responsibility that had also been impossible to understand without actually beginning to carry its weight. The powerful didn’t have to answer to anyone, in that distant, small apartment. The powerful had money. They wouldn’t starve. They wouldn’t freeze. They had no worries.

  “We were children,” she said again, but in a softer voice. “Even you must have been young once.”

  “We were never young as you are young,” Snow replied. “Except Shadow. He was stupid.”

  The roar of the great, gray cat was unmistakable although they had put half the manse between them. Snow hissed laughter. Jay, however, turned back to glare at the white cat. “Now is not the time to fight with your brother,” she said, and she headed down the hall to where Snow stood, at Finch’s side. She released Calliastra’s hand and dropped her palm to the top of the white cat’s head.

  “What are you doing to Finch?” she demanded.

  And her voice was her voice, her expression familiar, contained. Annoyed, yes, but where the cats were concerned, that was normal. She lifted her eyes, met Finch’s. “Don’t let them walk all over you.”

  “How will she stop us?” Snow asked.

  Jay glared at him until he looked away. Given he was a cat, it took a while. He sniffed, turned, and stalked off, clipping Finch with a wing on exit.

  “It was a good question,” Finch said, shrugging.

  “It was a bad question,” Jay answered, lips compressed, arms momentarily folded.

  “If you were willing to exert power or authority over them, it would never have been asked,” Calliastra said. She glanced at—and through—Finch, as if Finch were inconsequential. As Finch was accustomed to this, and often found it pragmatically useful if not pleasant, she accepted it without comment.

  Duster had never quite done that to Finch. She’d done it to almost everyone else. Duster had died to buy enough time for everyone else to escape. Even so, she would have bitten off her own right hand before admitting that she loved them. She flinched, even thinking of the word “love” and “Duster” in such close proximity, knowing—half a lifetime later—how furious Duster would have been.

  How furious, she thought, Calliastra would be in the same circumstance.

  “They’re cats,” Jay replied, shrugging. The shrug seemed to adjust her clothing, even her skin; it seemed to shake them into place, to fix them in the here-and-now. “I’m sorry if my rooms are a mess,” she added.

  “You have servants, surely?” Calliastra said.

  “I don’t want them to wander around in my personal chambers too much.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’ll see.” She started forward and then turned back, this time to face Teller. She signed; Finch saw her arms move although she didn’t see what she’d said. “I want an appointment to visit Gilafas ADelios tomorrow.”

  He winced. “The guild of the maker-born doesn’t generally consider any emergency its problem. I believe they’ve been known to keep the Kings themselves waiting.”

  “He’ll see me.”

  “If he hears about it.” Teller didn’t ask her why she was so certain; it was Jay. “But the guildmaster doesn’t set his schedule. He has his own small army of Barstons, each more intimidating than the last.”

  “Sic our Barston on them, then.”

  He nodded. Hesitated. She reached out and hugged him. “I’m home,” she said, voice soft.

  For how long? But he didn’t ask and, in the end, neither did Finch, although they were the two people who probably needed, for pragmatic reasons, to know. It wasn’t the pragmatic that drove them.

  “Who is Gilafas ADelios?” Calliastra asked.

  “The Artisan currently known as the guildmaster.”

  Calliastra’s expression changed. “You have an Artisan?”

  “The guild does. He’s not mine.”

  “And you wish him to make for you?”

  “No. He’s done that already. He asked me—” She shook her head, lifted a hand, shoved stray, curled strands out of her eyes, and started again. “I told him that I would take him with me if I ever went to find the Winter Queen.”

  “You did not.” Jay might have said she’d tried to stab him in the left eye to less effect, less shock.

  “Probably not in those exact words, no. But it was what he wanted, and—in the end—no one says no to the maker-born without a seriously good reason.”

  “He will die. You yourself have only survived your sojourn into uncharted wilderness because of the firstborn.” She seemed unwilling to disentangle herself from her growing outrage.

  The outrage made as little sense to Jay as it did to anyone else in the hall who wasn�
��t Calliastra. “He’s not a child. He’s the head of the most powerful guild in the Empire. I am not responsible for his decisions.”

  “He’s an Artisan. You can’t seriously expect that he would make cogent, rational decisions!”

  “He’s an adult, and he is not ATerafin. I have no responsibility for him, but more important, I have no power over him. And he seems, for the most part, a cogent man.” She winced and added, “Most of the time.”

  “You cannot take an Artisan into the wilderness.” Her voice was flat with certainty.

  “Why not?”

  Calliastra’s eyes widened with surprise and, yes, disgust. “Do you not understand the value of an Artisan? Do you not understand the rarity? Only the seer-born were as rare.”

  “And never as valued?”

  Calliastra ignored the mild barb in the question; it was clearly irrelevant. Her hands were fists, her eyes all black. Her wings, however, did not return, even as shadows of their former selves. “They are the only way in which the wilderness has ever manifested itself fully in entirely mortal form.”

  “And the Sen?” Finch asked.

  “That is different.”

  “How?”

  It was Jay who said, “The Sen were actually dangerous; they couldn’t be owned.”

  Calliastra nodded. “The Sen were not considered mortal.”

  Jay froze. It was a brief lack of motion, a visceral reaction, but she suppressed it quickly. She didn’t speak. Finch, however, did. Her tone was neutral, her words far more formal, and far more respectful, than Jay’s.

  “Why were they not considered mortal?”

  Jay lifted a hand in den-sign. Don’t. But oddly, so did Teller.

  Calliastra frowned at their identical motions, but she said nothing. She was accustomed to being an outsider, Finch thought. An outsider whose presence would always be a threat, a risk. If she could not have anything else, she would have the respect of fear.

  It was familiar. Finch attempted to set it aside as unprofitable. Calliastra was not Duster, not even an echo of Duster. She was the child of gods.

  It had never occurred to her to wonder what that meant. The poorest of the citizens of Averalaan had seen the god-born all of their lives. But the god-born children of the Mother were mortal, and the uneasy alliance of mortality with the powers of the gods, however dilute, burned mortality away more quickly, not less. Calliastra had no mortal parents.