Skirmish: A House War Novel

by West, Michelle

  Sigurne glanced at Jewel again. She did not like the cast of the younger woman’s features. “Very well,” she said to the domicis.

  Duvari, however, raised a hand.

  “Lord of the Compact?”

  “Guildmaster. You are aware that any magic covered by my writ is for defensive purposes only.”

  “Well aware.”

  “You also understand—”

  “That those who are covered by your writ are under your purview while in the manse, yes.”

  His smile was thin. “And you are willing to be one such servitor?”

  “I am not. I am however willing to come to your aid—at your spoken request—should security matters within the House require it. I fail, however, to see how an interview with the regent falls under that category.”

  “I, however, do not. I formally ask you, as the head of the Astari, to accommodate Jewel ATerafin’s request.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. His smile both deepened and cooled as she considered the various angles of approach his game—and it never occurred to her that this was not another of his dangerous games—might take, and how it might damage the Order’s power. She could think of only two, and one involved the likelihood that his spoken request was not enough.

  Jewel said, “He’s telling the truth, Sigurne.”

  “And you are now also bard-born, with a gift for hearing what lies beneath a man’s words?”

  “No. Just seer-born, as usual.”

  “What do you see, then?”

  “Nothing. But—I’m uneasy. I don’t want to go into that room, not on my own.”

  “You will have Avandar—”

  “I don’t know if Avandar can do what—what you can do.”

  Avandar raised a brow.

  “Very well. I accede to your request, Lord of the Compact, with the fervent hope that the writ will not require execution.”

  Duvari nodded. “Shall we?”

  Sigurne almost sighed. She didn’t. “You will accompany us?”

  “Of course.”

  That was an unaccounted for third option.

  Jewel’s hands were dry. Her mouth was dry. The halls remained crowded, but the light that shone in from the wide, long windows seemed gray and harsh on this third passage. She took a deep breath, exhaling slowly as she walked. It didn’t help.

  When she approached Gabriel’s office, the same four Chosen were on guard at the doors, and the room looked, if anything, more packed. She could barely make out Barston’s desk, and probably wouldn’t have been able to had she not already known where it was. She looked, but didn’t see Teller in the crowd, which wasn’t surprising; when there was actual work to do, he usually shuffled off, as quickly as politely possible, into his small office.

  On a day like today, with a crowd this size—and why in the Hells were all these people here anyway?—the small office would seem like a defensible fortress. She squared her shoulders, looking at the small gap between her side of the door and the office, and then marshaled her polite “excuse-me, pardon-me” phrases and stepped in.

  She made it, by dint of those words, and the discreet application of delicate elbows, to the front of Barston’s besieged desk. By the time she reached that desk, she understood that half of the people in the room were from the various quarters of the manse itself: people sent from the kitchens, people sent from the grounds, people sent from the stables. They were all here because of last-minute emergencies of one level or another.

  The other half, however, were better dressed, and she recognized at least one of them. It did not offer any comfort. Rymark.

  “ATerafin,” Barston said. Out of deference for his unfortunate adherence to gestures of hierarchy, she lifted the signet ring of the House Council. He didn’t technically need to see it; he knew the House Council members—and all of their various aides—on sight. But he did nod, as if her gesture were official.

  “This is not the time to speak to the regent,” he told her, his voice hovering between stiff and apologetic. “Unless this is another emergency.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I said—”

  “I heard you. A messenger arrived at the—” Her eyes widened and she suddenly did what for Barston was utterly unthinkable. She levered herself onto his desk, and threw herself over it, landing in a tumbling crash somewhere behind and to the left of his chair. She rolled to her feet, cursing skirts as she spun.

  Barston didn’t even shout at her, because he could see—clearly—why she’d leaped; there was a long, slender dagger driven into the desk’s far edge. Had she still been on the other side of it, the dagger would have passed through her.

  Silence eddied slowly from that dagger outward, before crumbling into a storm of sound.

  Jewel, however, was already on the move; she dodged as a second knife—this one apparently weighted and shaped for flight—took wing. It impaled the frame of the painting that had briefly been at her back, and that did make Barston cry out in panic. He found his voice and shouted for the guards—which, in a room full of people, was not the best option.

  A third dagger; this one winged her shoulder, splitting the fabric of the indoor jacket and the stupid sleeves of her dress. She didn’t think it had struck skin, and couldn’t stop to check; she knew this dance; she’d done it before. She couldn’t quite see who was throwing the knives, and that was bad, but she also knew that whoever it was, they were about to run out of opportunity.

  She hoped it happened before she ran out of space, because the space was so damn confined. She could hear the Chosen ordering people to leave the room now, and she wondered if her putative assassin would be one of them. Given the press of bodies, she was willing to see him escape.

  She opened her mouth to say as much, but what came out was something entirely different. “Duvari! Avandar! Get Gabriel now!” And then she ducked and rolled.

  Duvari didn’t even hesitate. The domicis did. Sigurne watched their backs disappear into the office as people in the various uniforms of House Terafin surged out. She stood her ground, and they passed around her in a babbling stream. One of the House Guard—Chosen, she thought, by insignia, raced down the hall; the other three entered Gabriel’s office in the wake of Duvari and Avandar.

  Sigurne cast a warding spell without lifting a hand or speaking a word. But she also cast a very different type of protection, and that did require speech; it was an old, old spell, and it had been taught to her by the most unreliable of teachers. She had no notes, and very little opportunity to practice—and if she could do one thing to right the world before her death, she would change that very little to exactly none.

  But the world was what it was, and Jewel ATerafin had leaped clear across a desk in mid-sentence. Yet she hadn’t shouted for help; she had directed two men—one of them in no way hers to command—toward the regent’s office instead.

  Sigurne stepped into the room. Not all of the men and women waiting upon Gabriel’s decision had yet deserted the office, but it was visibly far less crowded. The House Guard had raced toward the regent’s office—all save one man, who had drawn his sword and was now heading toward the desk. There, to the right, and toward its drawer side, paced a young man in the uniform of the Terafin gardeners. By the far walls, the men and women in the room had gathered and Sigurne recognized two of them instantly: one was Rymark ATerafin, a member of her Order, and a man she did not trust. The other, to her surprise, was Brialle, another member of the Order of Knowledge; she stood closest to Rymark, and she wore civilian clothing, not the robes of the guild.

  I will kill them myself if they interfere with me, she thought, and meant it; she was viscerally disturbed by their presence. Neither seemed inclined to interfere at all at the moment; they were watching the assassin as he paced toward Jewel, knife in hand.

  The Chosen reached him. He offered no warning at all; he simply drew the sword back and swung it.

  And he was dead before he hit the ground, the stranger in gardener’s
clothing moved so quickly.

  Jewel, you wanted me here, Sigurne thought, as if it were a prayer. She did not cast a spell at the moving man, who had replaced the dagger that was now buried to the hilt in the left eye of the House Guard, not yet; she knew she would have one chance and only one. If she missed, if she used the wrong spell, he would turn the dagger he carried on her just as efficiently as he had upon the House Guard. If the daggers were somehow enchanted, or if her shields did not hold, she would be as dead as the Terafin Chosen, now fallen.

  But it was hard, because Jewel couldn’t move as quickly as the lone figure that pursued her. He leaped to grab her—and the distance he cleared increased Sigurne’s suspicion; Jewel had already moved—barely—out of his path. She survived because she moved just before he did, every time. This, Sigurne thought, was the gift of the seer-born writ small.

  How much did Sigurne trust it? How much could she trust it?

  She heard the crack of something—lightning, she thought; it was followed by the sound of shattering wood. Shards flew from the direction of the regent’s office. Sigurne’s hands flew as well. She spoke three sharp, harsh words; the air blurred before her, and the light in the room changed in color and texture.

  The assassin wheeled to face her, his eyes widening, his movements significantly slowed.

  The air warmed; the light that had seemed so harsh and gray in the context of Jewel’s uncertainty turned golden. A warm wind swept through the room; she could feel it, and she could almost hear the sound of leaves rustling high overhead. She reached down, pulled up the hem of her much detested skirt, and withdrew a single dagger from its uncomfortable sheath.

  But the assassin was no longer hunting her; he’d turned. He’d turned, slowly, toward the woman who now stood in the doorway, her wrinkled, pale hands lifted. They were golden. She was golden, in Jewel’s vision.

  The assassin spoke; his voice was like thunder in the small room. Jewel smiled. She’d had almost no time to actually look at him while dodging; he just moved too damn fast and she’d had to let instinct take over her body in order to survive him. Now she could clearly see his profile, and she could just as clearly see his eyes. He looked human; she thought he must have been human once, but his eyes were all wrong.

  He raised an arm; she saw the dagger in his hand. He even managed to throw it as Jewel approached; it bounced off the air six inches from Sigurne’s face. He didn’t draw another; instead, he roared and bent to spring.

  Sigurne saw him tense and bend into his knees; she knew what was coming, but held her ground, and held him. The power she used was both hers and foreign to her; it was not, and had never been, a comfortable magic to cast. He roared again, and she heard every word the magic did not allow him to say.

  He turned, struggling, toward where the two mages—and the rest of the suddenly silent room—stood watching. Then one of the two cast. Fire blossomed around the assassin’s heavy gardening boots. Rymark, Sigurne thought. Not Brialle.

  The fire scorched leather, clothing, and even skin; it did not, however, devour the man. He snarled. “The Shining Court will curse you for your—”

  Fire struck again, harsher, and Sigurne shouted Rymark’s name in a tone of voice that only the old and powerful could comfortably use. “Cease at once, or the room will burn!”

  This caused panicked shouts, because Sigurne was still blocking the door; nor could she easily move from it. But she didn’t have to move. Jewel ATerafin now ran at the demon, dagger in hand.

  The man—the burning man—turned to her. “Do not interfere with us, little seer, or we will raze your beloved House and your—”

  She plunged the dagger into his chest, or tried; her thrust had no strength behind it. But the dagger didn’t require that type of strength to wield, and the strength it did require, she had. The man screamed, as blood seeped from the small wound; he roared as light followed it, leaking in spokes that sprayed across the room.

  * * *

  Jewel didn’t even wait to watch. She turned toward Gabriel’s office, and toward the smoking ruins of what had once been his beautiful, double doors. Barston was standing between the desk and the doors of the office in complete silence; he’d reserved exactly one shout for the damaged frame of the painting, and if he wasn’t calm—and he wasn’t—he was once again in control.

  She ran past him, stopped, and said, “Get everyone out of here. Now.” Then she headed toward the gaping, jagged hole in the door; she almost raced through that opening, but stopped inches short, as if something had caught the back of her dress and pulled, hard.

  Instinct. Vision.

  “Member Mellifas, I think I need your help.”

  The guildmaster said, “Another moment, ATerafin, and I will join you.” It was more than one, and Jewel’s hands were balled in fists, but she waited without further comment. Eventually, Sigurne crossed the room and joined her. She looked at the hole in the door.

  “I see your difficulty, ATerafin.”

  “What do you see?” Jewel asked sharply, wishing bitterly that she’d brought Angel with her.

  “What you do. There is a hole in the door; it leads into the office. The office, however, appears to be empty from this vantage.”

  “Empty without any signs of struggle or damage?”

  “Indeed.”

  “I see a bit more than that,” Jewel told her, still staring at the jagged hole—which, given the radius of splinters, had to be real. “There’s a violet light surrounding the edges of the door.”

  “The door, not the opening?”

  “Yes.”

  Sigurne said nothing for so long, Jewel actually tore her gaze from the door to look at the guildmaster. Her expression was like carved stone. Once or twice in her young life, Jewel had seen a similar expression on her Oma’s face—and that had been a clear sign that Oma was not to be approached. Sigurne, however, was not her ancient grandmother.

  “Member Mellifas?”

  “Prepare yourself for possible difficulty,” Sigurne replied, in a voice that would have frozen water—and shattered it into a million small shards for good measure.

  Jewel didn’t dare to ask how; to have even half an idea she’d have had to ask what the mage meant by “possible difficulty,” and nothing short of—actually, no, nothing, was going to make her do that. This woman—old, maternal, and fragile—was a little like Haval. Age was her cloak and her shield, and she could disarm others simply by donning and exaggerating its effects. She was not, at the moment, concerned with cloaking her power.

  The guildmaster was reputed to be a First Circle mage. Jewel, whose knowledge of the inner workings of the Order of Knowledge was dim at best, nonetheless understood that First Circle implied the highest level of power that the mage-born within the Order could achieve. Sigurne Mellifas was the guildmaster, so it followed that Sigurne Mellifas was powerful. It wasn’t hard to put these facts together.

  Jewel had never done it before, or if she had, she’d buried it so far in memory nothing surfaced now. She stood extremely still and kept her hands by her sides as Sigurne Mellifas stared at the door.

  That’s all she did; she stared. Jewel frowned as she turned her full attention to the wreckage of the door within its frame. The violet light wasn’t dimming—which was what she’d expected; it was brightening. It was also, she realized, changing slowly. Strands of light the color of bright emerald began to wrap themselves around the violet glow—as if either were solid. The strands entwined and thickened as Jewel watched.

  But when a third strand entered the mix she frowned; it was gray. Gray. She kept her eyes fastened to the door and kept her frown intent and focused, although she wanted desperately to look at the mage; she knew that Sigurne’s object was not the door itself, or not the door in isolation.

  She did jump and turn when someone at the far side of the office suddenly cried out in pain and stumbled to the ground clutching the sides of her head. Jewel started toward the stricken woman, but Sigurne reached out a
nd caught her arm. “I believe you will find what you seek now.”

  “But—”

  “Now.”

  Jewel swallowed and turned back to the door as the sounds of combat rolled into the room.

  She almost stopped breathing as she looked for any sign of Gabriel. She could see Duvari, and to her great surprise, the Lord of the Compact was wielding a sword. He hadn’t been, when he’d entered the office; you couldn’t conceal a sword that size. He was fighting one of the House Guards. The Chosen who had entered the office were fighting a different House Guard. Jewel tried to curse; nothing came out. Gabriel’s personal office was large enough that two such fights could take place within its walls.

  She couldn’t see Avandar—and the opening he’d created was large enough that she should have. It was large enough that she could run into the room to check—but not safe enough, in the end. She thought that the men dressed as guards were human; they didn’t set her teeth on edge or fill her with that winter chill that spoke of death.