Jay said, “The Artisan is like the cats.”
“Meaning you will not exercise control or authority over him.”
“Meaning that I can’t without somehow demanding that they alter their base nature.”
“The Artisans are of incalculable value. The cats—”
Snow growled.
“Don’t think that has any effect on me,” Calliastra snapped. “She might tolerate your disrespect. I won’t.”
Jay’s expression pinched further, and the pinching seemed to squeeze out the remnants of the frightening dislocation, the otherness that separated her from the rest of the den. She was smart enough not to add to her problems by remonstrating with either the cat or Calliastra, but Finch could see the difficulty of that balancing act, and it would likely increase in the future.
• • •
Avandar, who had disappeared with Jay and had reappeared by her side, remained by it. But he was silent, unobtrusive. He disappeared for perhaps five minutes, reappearing in clothing more suited to his station within the manse. Jay, however, hadn’t ditched her traveling clothing, and they made a very odd pair. Then again, they always had. Avandar, unlike Ellerson, rarely faded into invisibility.
Ellerson. Finch exhaled.
The captains of the Chosen, after a short, almost inaudible discussion, had reached some command decision, and Torvan accompanied The Terafin. Arrendas disappeared, but Marave stepped into the place he should have occupied.
The Chosen were not invisible; if they did not speak, the sound of their armor spoke for them. But they were so much a part of daily life in the Terafin manse Finch only registered their presence when they spoke. They spoke when something was wrong. When they were silent, it was easy to forget they were there. It was easy to forget that Avandar was present. They were like shadows; their presence depended on Jay’s.
The Chosen at the door saluted smartly as Jay approached. They stood straighter, taller, and Finch understood why. They were her Chosen. She had returned. In her absence, they had had to shepherd and guard Teller and Finch, but that was neither their calling nor the reason for their choice.
They did not welcome her home; they did not ask if she would be staying. They asked nothing at all, but did not impede her progress to the doors, did not demand to know her business. She was the only person who could expect that.
The doors rolled open.
They followed Jay into the wilderness of amethyst sky and trees that grew shelves. Or they should have.
• • •
The first thing Finch heard was the drawing of swords.
The second was the roaring of water. It was not the wave of ocean, not the steady lap that became so much a part of the background noise of the city it was almost inaudible. This roar was the sound made by falling water.
Jay’s back was stiff, still, and at her side, no longer clasping her hand, Calliastra lifted her head, as if in surprise or wonder. Avandar had raised a hand, and it had fallen to Jay’s shoulder; he released her when it became clear that she would not move without word from the Chosen. That word did not come immediately.
Mist and water rose, and if Jay did not move, they would soon be drenched. It was not the water of rainfall. Someplace ahead and beneath their feet was a waterfall.
Finch had read of these, but she had not pursued life in a merchant caravan the way Jay had. She, like Teller, had been tied to the office to which she had been sent as an apprentice half a lifetime ago. She had seen paintings, often as Jarven’s escort to various functions of import to the House, or of interest to the wily, bored merchant.
Torvan’s all clear drifted back, and they began to move.
There was a path beneath their feet; it was made, not worn there by the passage of many people. The stone itself was not all of a piece; it was like patterned tile work, in unpolished pale marble. Cracks existed, but those cracks were also part of the art of the creation; they glittered gold, or blue, or black, not a sign of age or wear, but rather the deliberate presentation of color, of highlight.
“Have you noticed a change in my chambers recently?” Jay asked, her voice drifting back, her hands stiff by her sides. She hadn’t curled them into fists, as she often did when surprised—as if surprise by its very nature was conflict.
“No, I’m sorry,” Finch replied. “We are not often here. We would have warned you, otherwise.”
“Can you see the river?”
“The branches where I’m standing are too thick; I can see white between them.”
Jay began to walk again. The branches did not immediately thin out, but as Finch approached the spot at which Jay had first stopped, she could see a river. It was not calm, not still. On the far banks, she could see people, or what she assumed, at first glance, were people. They did not wear livery, of course, and the river was wide enough that they were not instantly familiar.
Neither, however, was the sky. The deep and constant clarity of amethyst had given way to a blue that occasionally graced the skies of Averalaan. That blue, unlike this, was tempered by scudding cloud, by different saturation of color, by position of sun. This was like the ideal of a clear perfect day—or might have been without the water.
“It is an interesting choice,” Calliastra said to Jay. “But a little pastoral, I think.”
Jay said nothing.
“Is that your residence ahead?”
Since it was the only building immediately visible, Finch assumed that it was. But in the past incarnation of the personal chambers, there had been both library and private dining room, the latter in a tiny building with a very crude, but somehow charming, fence.
There was no library here. She could practically hear Teller’s wail of shock and distress. The lack of a small room meant for more intimate dinners had probably failed to register in the wake of the greater disaster.
“The books!” he said, his whisper almost a shout, it was so textured with pain.
“They’re here,” Jay replied. “Somewhere less damp.”
He didn’t ask if she were certain. Calliastra, however, said, “Books?”
“When the former Terafin ruled, this room was her library. Her personal collection rivaled the Kings, or so I’ve been told.”
“Ah. And you?”
“The last time I visited, it was still a library, but with unusual shelves and no ceiling.”
Calliastra’s expression changed, then. “You did not choose this vista.”
“Not consciously, no.”
• • •
Not consciously, no.
The words echoed in the silence that followed Calliastra’s question. Teller was watching Jay; Finch was not.
There were fields between the river and the building which Finch called a castle. She had seen paintings of those as well but disliked them. Jarven had taken some pains to expose her to those he admired—and they were all plain stone edifices meant in some fashion for war. Or to withstand it. He did not consider the Terafin manse to be defensible but accepted that—if an army somehow marched its way to the manse—it was unlikely that something as simple as an admirable architectural plan would save its people.
Finch, however, had been born to, had grown up in, the city. The artistic rendering of a castle had seemed, in the vast green fields and rocks that surrounded it, to be a statement of isolation. It stood alone. If one wished to stand alone, this is where one could safely do it.
There had been no safety in isolation. No safety in being alone. Not in Finch’s childhood. Not in her adulthood—which often felt fraudulent when claimed—either. And yet, Jay had brought them to her home-within-a-home, and it was a castle.
There was a path that led away from the river that ended in a cascading fall of water. How far below, Finch couldn’t tell and didn’t want to know. She had found a strange beauty in the amethyst skies of the previous iteration of these rooms, and danger—which Meralonne insisted was present—existed at a remove. It could; it was not her problem, and even if it were, she
was not its solution.
This sky, its mimicry of the familiar and the expected, made danger inexplicably real. And yet there was nothing that crossed this sky: not even birds. She wondered where the House Mage was.
Calliastra, disgusted by cats and by Jewel’s attitude toward one of the most powerful men in the Empire, was warier now than she had been. On some level, she trusted Jay. If pressed, she would probably say—as Duster would—that it wasn’t a matter of trust: Jay was harmless. Caution wasn’t necessary.
And it would, Finch thought, mean exactly what Duster’s words would have meant. She didn’t need to hear them. Calliastra was not Duster.
Finch understood why Jay had brought Duster home. She was afraid she understood why Jay had brought Calliastra, just as she had once brought Kiriel. Kiriel shared one parent with Calliastra, and yet . . . it had been very, very difficult to even turn one’s back on Kiriel. It had taken will, intent, deliberation. Finch did not have that reaction to this daughter of darkness, and she wondered why.
Wondered because it was a safer question, a more comfortable what if than any other question she might have asked herself.
Snow accompanied her, walking to her left. To her right was Teller, and to his, Jay. Calliastra was on Jay’s other side, as far from Snow as she could be. This didn’t stop her from sending murderous glares the cat’s way. Snow clearly—and loudly—didn’t care.
“Where did you go?” Finch asked the white cat, in an attempt to distract him. It was a mile, perhaps two, to the castle’s gates.
Snow shrugged. “Somewhere boring.”
“Are you bored now?”
“Yesssssss. It is boring here. It is always boring.”
“Will it always be boring?”
Snow sniffed. Glancing at Finch out of the corner of his eyes, he said, “Why do you asssssk? You know.”
Finch smiled. “Because I have hope that you’ll give me a different answer.”
“You want me to lie?”
Her smile deepened. “No,” she said, placing a hand on his head—not because he was misbehaving and the gesture would somehow keep him in check, but because his fur was like small cat fur: soft. Warm.
Snow sighed dramatically. “Why,” he said, although his ears twitched in time with his whiskers, “are you all so stupid?”
“We were born that way,” Teller told the white cat. Teller was seldom called stupid, but to be fair, neither was Finch. Carver—until his disappearance—and Angel had generally been the targets of their petulance. “We didn’t get a choice. No one asked if we wanted to be cats instead. Why are The Terafin’s rooms a castle? What happened to the books?”
“Oh, books,” Snow said, with mild disgust. He paused, and then added, “Is it?”
“Is it what?”
“A castle?”
Teller regrouped. “It’s not what it was.”
“It is.”
“It’s not to us. To us—”
“It is. You aren’t looking properly.” He flicked wings to either side, clipping them both.
They exchanged a glance over his head, and Finch faced forward again, willing herself to see as Snow did. She failed. It was a castle, and they would be at its gates soon.
“The Master of the Household Staff will have my head,” Teller said. “Or Barston will have hers.”
Finch cringed on his behalf. The first . . . shift . . . in the state of The Terafin’s personal chambers had been a point of extreme contention between the Master of the Household Staff and anyone who had no choice but to stand in the line of her ire. Carver had explained why, which didn’t really help.
Carver.
She missed a step. Snow hissed. “So stupid,” he said softly. “What is he worth? What will you pay for him? What will you ask her to pay?”
Finch didn’t answer.
“This is war,” the cat continued. “Do you not understand? You cannot fight a battle and lose nothing, except in your dreams.”
Her dreams had never been that kind.
“If she cannot forget him, she will be lost.” He shook his head again.
And Shadow said, “Too late.”
• • •
Finch had not expected to see the gray cat, and in fact, still couldn’t. Jay didn’t react to the sound of his voice at all. Snow did; he hissed in displeasure and flexed his claws. She wondered if Shadow had stepped on his tail. Was he, she thought, like the fox? But no.
“You’re supposed to be with Adam,” she told the invisible gray cat.
Shadow hissed. “I am. Ariel is with him. He sleeps the sleep of the mortal. He has fed her, he has bathed her, he has eaten. He is not Sen. She has accepted him. He will be safe.”
“Then why aren’t you here?”
He hissed. It was a sulky hiss.
“I can hear you,” Jay said.
“He doesn’t need me.” And Shadow appeared, first as a gray, vaguely animal-shaped fog, which hardened into more familiar solidity.
“And I do.” It wasn’t actually a question.
Calliastra turned her nose down as she glared at the gray cat. “You cannot even follow a simple command. You are a disgrace to your Lord.”
“We are not hers,” Shadow replied, stepping on Snow’s foot. “She is ours. And you are stupid. We told you this. We told you the truth.”
“You told it in the tangle, where all truth is slanted because all truth is possible.”
“Because you are stupid, I am telling you now when we are not in the tangle. I will say it again, and again, and again. She is ours.”
Calliastra turned to Jay, the movement an outraged, but wordless, demand.
But Jay said, “Ownership never goes only one way. Not when the living are involved.”
“It is not just the living,” Snow observed. If Calliastra’s obvious outrage displeased him, it didn’t show; his wings remained sleek and unruffled. He did give Shadow the side-eye that indicated possible future trouble, but had decided—today, for this moment—that he was above all that.
“What’s going to happen?” Finch asked Snow.
“If you are very good, I will make you a dress.”
This caused Calliastra’s eyes—and mouth, momentarily and wordlessly—to open.
“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Jay told him.
“I have a lot of dresses,” Finch began.
“I don’t like them. And you will be Lord, here.”
“No, I’ll be regent.”
“It is the same.”
“It’s not the same. Jay will be Terafin, while she lives. But . . . this war that you spoke of requires her time, her attention, her absence. When she is not here, I will make decisions in her stead. But I will make the decisions I think she would have made, had she been present. She is The Terafin. I am Finch.”
As they spoke, they had been closing the distance between the river and the castle. They were damp, but no longer almost drenched. Dry probably wouldn’t occur until a change of clothing.
There were gates. Gates were constructed of wood and metal, walls of metal and stone. But as Finch approached, she revised that. She could not—quite—feel terrified when she was with Jay and Teller. But she could worry—she could always worry, having spent half her life in Lucille’s company.
Calliastra said, “Where did you see this building?” Her voice was soft, almost hushed. Were she any other person, there might have been a hint of reverence in it. But no, Calliastra treated nothing with reverence. Respect, yes, if it was necessary. Buildings did not demand respect.
The gate’s bars were dark. They seemed all of a piece, and they did open—but not on hinges. Instead, as if they were a hard, ebon cloth, they pulled back to either side, their poles silent as they gathered to the left and right. On the other side, an interlocking stone path extended ahead until it reached peaked, stone arches. The central arch was recessed, and its shape seemed to cascade down in a type of stone echo, each iteration less concrete than the last.
�
�I’ve never seen this building,” Jewel replied. “Have you?”
“I have seen one very like it.”
“Where?”
Calliastra did not answer.
• • •
On the other side of the recessed arch, beneath the shadows it cast in the too blue sky, the path opened into a wide circle, circumscribed by shrubbery that had been pruned into odd shapes. It was not silent, however. In the center of the circle was a fountain.
Finch said, “This is the library.”
Teller did not; he was staring at the fountain, recognizing, a beat after Finch had, where he had seen it before. She recalled that they did not see precisely the same thing when they looked at it and wondered if that had changed; what she saw, now, was not what she had seen then. It was an impressive piece of carved stone that would be considered a work of art had there been no fall of water, nothing to imply that it was not the only element of the work itself which should draw the eye.
She lifted her hands in den-sign, but they were slow to form the familiar words.
Is that Jay?
As she asked, she glanced at Teller; he had not seen her hands move; hadn’t seen the way they shook, the way they formed Jay’s name as if it was new to them, to her, as if it was not a common word. Had this statue been in one of the courtyards of Avantari, the palace of the Twin Kings, she would never have asked the question.
No, the question she would have asked, had she cared to reveal her ignorance in an overtly political environment, would have been: which god does this represent?
Teller’s hands were shaking as he lifted them, fumbling over his gestures enough that she couldn’t actually read them. He lowered them, pressing the palms of each flat against his thighs.
Calliastra became bone white, silent. What she saw was not what Finch and Teller saw—if they even saw the same thing. Finch knew this not because Calliastra spoke, but because her head tilted back, and back again, until the line of her jaw was flush with her throat. Her eyes were wide.
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