Skirmish: A House War Novel

by West, Michelle

“Yes. But the desire to protect the fragile is strong.”

  “I admit that I have never fully understood why you would work so hard, and so thanklessly, to give to others what you yourself will never have.”

  She nodded. “I desire power, Meralonne, because it gives me the illusion that I have the ability to protect others.”

  “It is not entirely illusion.”

  “No, perhaps not. But it is not absolute; even were I a god, I would face failure, at least from time to time.”

  “And yet you continue.”

  She lifted her chin and gazed for a moment at the moons. It was easier, sometimes, to speak to him when she could not see his face. “Yes. I am not what I was. Nor am I Kialli. My memory is not perfect. My rage is not eternal. Even pain that I swore I would never forget has dimmed with time. One failure is not enough—although I admit it comes close when the days are dark—to become all that I see or know.

  “It is what the young forget: one failure does not render all past success—or future success—meaningless. It is only if we surrender to despair that we fail in perpetuity, because we cease to try at all.”

  “And is all of your life to be that struggle?”

  “Has not all of yours been?”

  He was utterly silent for a full minute; she could not even hear the sound of his breath. The wind was gone.

  She waited, as she had waited a handful of times before, and was rewarded by the sound of a brief, dry chuckle. Her own expression did not change as she turned to face him.

  There he stood: his familiar robes dusty with travel, his hair once again a straight fall down his back, his sword absent. “Sigurne, you are a marvel. It is a growing wonder to me that men can look at you and see only your age.”

  “And not a young girl’s heart, APhaniel? Not my inner beauty?” She winced.

  “You have never had a young girl’s heart; it is the lack that makes you so luminescent.” He bowed. “I will tell you this, for I must return to the generals and the army; they will harry me if I am absent for too long, and I am less inclined to be either patient or subservient these days. Guard Jewel Markess. Guard her well. She has a role to play in this that I cannot clearly see, and if the situation in the South were not so dire, I would take leave of the Order to watch over her myself.”

  “You will not stay for the Council meeting?”

  He grimaced. “I see little point. Among other things, I seem to have left my pipe in the encampment in the distant South, and I could not endure such a trivial meeting without it.”

  She let him go. She wanted him at her side, but knew what the possible cost of that decision would be. “Meralonne.”

  He nodded.

  “Win this war. I do not, at this distance, care what decisions you undertake to guarantee that victory.”

  “Do not labor under the illusion that this battle is the whole of the war.”

  “If we lose, I fear it will be.”

  Chapter One

  26th of Corvil, 427 A.A.

  Terafin Manse, Averalaan Aramarelas

  WHEN THE KINGS RETREATED from the Council Hall, noise and movement returned to the men and woman granted the rings of governance. Arann, injured, leaned against the closest wall; Finch clutched Teller’s arms, her face as white as her knuckles. Celleriant sheathed his sword; the demon dissolved, the menace and size of his form sinking into a soft, gray ash that could not maintain a shape. Rymark clutched the document he had declared the legal will and intent of The Terafin; Haerrad, bleeding in the doorway, had barely moved when the Kings left the room, so intent was he on Rymark.

  Gabriel was the color of demon ash; the silence was profound.

  No. The silence of the woman who had ruled and guided this house for years was profound. The color of her blood. The vacant, unblinking stare of eyes that sought ceiling only because of the way she had collapsed.

  Gabriel spoke. The Chosen moved. Everything was strained, everything was wrong.

  This is what Jewel remembered as she strode down the gallery—and against the tide of people running without purpose, although they didn’t know that yet—toward home: the West Wing. She had longed for home for months—at times she had been certain she wouldn’t survive to return to its comfort—and now that she was here, she could barely see it at all, although it surrounded her as she moved.

  * * *

  Jewel did not immediately head to the kitchen, although she had called the meeting there. Instead, she went to the room in which Morretz now lay. His eyes were closed, his face ashen; his chest neither rose, nor fell. His body was stiff with death.

  Ellerson entered the room in silence. He tendered Jewel a perfect, silent bow; as she now knelt by the side of Morretz, she had nothing but silence to offer in return. There were questions, of course. There would always be questions. The den had answered most of the urgent ones. They had answered them, and then they had let her go without answering any of theirs in return—because Morretz was here, Morretz was dead.

  Gabriel had the Chosen to guard and tend the body of The Terafin. Alowan had not been called; Jewel thought it an understandable oversight, given demons, Kings, and mages. She had therefore walked in haste to the wall upon which lay the simple magic that would alert the healerie—and Alowan—of the need for his presence.

  Finch had stopped her. Finch had caught her hand. Finch had told her that Alowan was no longer in the healerie.

  And why? Gods.

  Alowan was also dead. Dead days ago. The flowers that lined the halls, the small portraits, the keepsakes and mementos offered as a sign of affection, respect, and loss were still in evidence in every corner of the galleries and the courtyard; they lined the walls of the great hall, and no servant had sought to remove them. They had tidied the more egregious of the wilted petals; that was all.

  But they would be removed now. They would be replaced. Alowan had been loved, yes. But The Terafin had been the heart of the House; word of her death had spread. Word, weeping, the silence that comes when no words can convey horror, loss, shock. Jewel knew; she had been there to witness the death of Amarais Handernesse Terafin, and she had experienced all of them.

  “ATerafin.” Ellerson walked past Jewel, to the head of the bed in which Morretz now lay in his false repose.

  She looked up at him in bitter silence.

  “Allow me to tend to Morretz.”

  “He’s dead,” was her flat reply.

  “Yes. And he has no family within Averalaan. Nor does he have any living relatives that we are aware of in the Empire. His contract has been carried out with honor; his Lord is dead.” When she failed to reply, he gentled the stiff perfection from his voice. “He is a domicis of the guildhall, and it is to us he returns. We will see to his funeral and his burial.”

  She still stared. At Morretz. At his silent face, at his hair, now gray and lank. She had heard him speak only a handful of times in all of the years she had known him. But in silence, he had been Amarais Handernesse Terafin’s living shadow. He had become as necessary to The Terafin’s life as it was possible for any other person to be. He had lived to serve her.

  He had died to serve her.

  “ATerafin,” Ellerson said quietly. “He cannot be buried with her.”

  “Why not?” The words escaped her before she could catch them and bind them. They were too raw, too choked, and even speaking them, her eyes teared.

  “You know well why. She is—she was—The Terafin, and in the eyes of the patriciate, Morretz was a servant. He was not even a servant granted the House Name.”

  “He couldn’t take it. He was—”

  “Yes. Domicis, and proud to be so. To take the name she offered—and if it eases you at all, she did offer it—he would have had to compromise the principles of the guildhall. To be ATerafin is to have an interest in affairs of the House.”

  “She was his life, and the House was hers—of course he had an interest in the House!”

  “There is a subtle difference. He devoted
his life to her life. He was not beholden in any way to anyone but The Terafin. Being ATerafin, however, implies a connection, a responsibility, to the House.”

  She shook her head. “She was the House, Ellerson. She was the House.”

  “No, Jewel—although it might anger you to hear it, she was not. House Terafin still stands. Its merchant concerns, its responsibilities to the Crowns, still exist, as does its seat in the Hall of The Ten. She shaped, guided, and ruled the House—but the House, like a kingdom, continues beyond her. That has always been the case, and she knew it well.

  “There is only one hope for continuity,” he added quietly. “And Morretz gave his life to achieve it.”

  She was silent. Numb. But she would not move from Morretz’ side.

  Ellerson did not leave. When he spoke, it was not to reiterate his request, not immediately.

  “ATerafin, do you know how I came to serve in this manse sixteen years ago?”

  She shook her head. She knew—very, very well—how he had come to leave that service. Was surprised at how it still stung, given how much she had lost today.

  “Morretz came to me in the guildhall. I had taken leave of active service and intended to spend the rest of my productive years teaching. I taught Morretz,” he added. “Before he came to serve The Terafin, he was my student. It was I who judged him capable of that service. When Morretz first arrived at the guildhall, he was angry, confused, and in search of a cause to which he could devote his life. If the cause were a worthy one, he could then forget that he had ever had a life of his own.

  “I will not trouble you with all of the reasons this is a poorly conceived desire; it is a common desire, and it leads many to our doors. Almost all of those who do arrive to petition the guildhall for entrance for this reason do not, in fact, remain.”

  In spite of herself, Jewel looked up. “Why?”

  “Because they are looking for some form of service that will allow them to avoid making any decisions of their own. They are looking for service as justification for their existence. They come to us empty, and they ask us to fill that emptiness.”

  She nodded.

  “You have seen the Chosen. You are held in esteem by the captains, and I believe you hold them in high esteem in return. Is this not the case?”

  “It is.”

  “They have devoted their lives to the life of The Terafin.”

  She nodded again.

  “Could they have done so if they were unformed and desperate young men? The willingness to lay down a life is not enough if they themselves consider that life to be almost without value. The Chosen are tasked with making choices and decisions in the absence of their Lord. She trusts them implicitly and explicitly. She trusted her domicis in the same fashion.”

  No, Jewel thought, glancing at Morretz’s lifeless face. She had trusted him more.

  “He offered advice and counsel. That advice and counsel did not come from an empty place. I was proud of him. As a student, he was one of my most challenging—and one of my most successful.” Ellerson smiled; it was a bitter smile. “I have no children. Perhaps, in the end, this was not a wise decision on my part, but to have a family, I would have had to leave the service entirely. Morretz, inasmuch as a man can be whose life was devoted to another, was as close to kin as my chosen vocation permitted.

  “I watched him grow. I watched him flourish. I watched him gain the knowledge required to serve a lord of power. I watched him slowly surrender his despair and his pain until it no longer defined him. Did it shape him? Of course it did. But it did not define him, in the end.

  “Give him back to me, and I will take him home.”

  Jewel rose then. “He’s yours,” she said, voice too thick, too heavy, for more words. She turned and left the room.

  The kitchen had never seemed so far away as she trudged toward it, head down.

  The sounds in the wing were wrong. The ceiling was thick and flat; there was no tenting, no wagon cover; there was no sand and no sound of leaves in night wind. There were no stars. There was no sun. The voices she heard—at a distance—spoke Weston, not Torra.

  This was home, yes.

  But The Terafin was dead. Morretz, dead. Alowan—gentle, wise healer—dead as well. She had always considered home to be the place the den lived—but tonight, it felt empty, it felt hollow. She walked the halls and before she reached the dining room that led to the kitchen, she passed Celleriant. He stepped in behind her and began to follow.

  Not now, she thought. She’d grown accustomed to his presence. Accustomed to armor that the Chosen would never wear; accustomed to the sword that no longer occupied his hand. The sight of his platinum hair seemed almost natural. When had that happened? How?

  She had seen the way Finch and Teller watched him. She had answered their brief, signed questions.

  This was home. It would never be the same as the home she had left. Had she stayed—had she stayed, it might have been. Had she been here—but no. No. She swallowed, squared her shoulders, continued to walk.

  Celleriant had not chosen to serve her. He had failed his Queen, and Jewel was his punishment. She could probably order him to leave—but she wouldn’t, and they both knew it. Nor would she now abandon the Winter King, although he had vanished somehow, as he often did.

  “These people are my kin,” she told Celleriant as she faced familiar swinging doors. “I would die before I see them come to any harm.” She didn’t wait for his reaction; instead, she pushed the doors open and walked into the kitchen.

  There was no joy to be had at this homecoming. Not for Jewel. Not for her den. The enormity of two deaths—three—lay between them, around them. The woman who had given them the names that defined all but one of their number was gone.

  Jewel’s den was silent as she walked to her chair; silent as it scraped in its familiar way along the floor. She sat heavily, folding her arms across the table in front of her. By dint of will she didn’t allow her head to sink into them. But her throat felt swollen and thick and she sat there in silence for far too long. Her hands were sun-dark; she knew her sojourn in the South had reddened her hair. She felt as if she had stepped out of the wrong season—the wrong world—and the passage had taken the hope of homecoming from her.

  She glanced at Arann. They had all taken wounds today, but most of those were figurative. Arann’s, as part of the House Guard, were more. No, she thought, numb now. He was not just a House Guard. She recognized the subtle change in insignia; he was Chosen. Somehow, in her absence, he had made his personal vow to The Terafin. What would happen to him now? What would happen to any of the Chosen? They had failed in the only charge they valued; she was dead.

  Arann’s wounds had been tightly bandaged, but blood had seeped through those bandages; in the dim light of the kitchen it seemed a much darker red.

  Celleriant did not take a seat at the table; nor had she expected it. He walked to the wall behind her chair, and stood there in perfect, forbidding silence. She was more aware of his presence in the kitchen than she had been for weeks. She swallowed. She could see brief hand and finger gestures, and realized with a pang that they weren’t meant for her.

  And she was not the only one who had brought newcomers, although newcomers had always come to the den through her. Quietly seated, his shoulders curling toward the ground in almost exquisite embarrassment, was a boy she—to her shock—recognized. Adam. Adam of the Arkosa Voyani. He glanced at her, but when her eyes met his, he looked away instantly, paling. That stung.

  “Adam,” she said, falling into the Torra that now came so effortlessly.

  He looked up instantly. She smiled at him, hoping her smile had no edges; it was a genuine smile. He was alive. He was alive, he seemed healthy, and he was—against all odds and hope—with her den. She wanted to ask him how, or why, but he seemed so nervous she was afraid it would sound as if it were an interrogation.

  “He was at the Houses of Healing,” Finch said quietly—in Weston. “Levec had him there.
It was Adam who told us you were still alive. Levec cares about him,” she added, “but Adam wasn’t comfortable there.” She swallowed and then continued. “He’s staying with us at the moment. It’s been a bit awkward.”

  “Awkward? Why? Is Levec causing trouble?”

  Finch shook her head. “In the last couple of weeks, there’s been a new plague that’s spread through the city.”

  “It’s the wrong season for the Summer sickness.”

  Finch nodded. “It’s not—I don’t think the healers believe it’s entirely natural.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Adam is healer-born. Levec said—” She shook her head. “Adam’s healer-born.”

  “And he let him stay here?”