Skirmish: A House War Novel

by West, Michelle

  But had she, she wouldn’t have missed what followed: The Terafin took a step up, and the air held her. She took another step, lifted the folds of her simple skirts to take the third; she now stood above the fountain’s low and very simple basin. Morretz held his hands out, palm up, as if he were carrying the whole of her weight.

  “Thank you,” she said. She didn’t look back, or down, to see him. Instead, she walked across air, as if a floor of glass had been erected beneath her feet. Jewel frowned. There was a small statuary at the center of the fountain, with three deliberately featureless women, hands joined, facing outward in a very small circle. Their fingers were not distinct, and their hair was an incline of stone that seemed to drift in one mass down their equally indistinct shoulders. They were of a height, and at least in this light, of a color; in the brighter light of day, there were variances in the stone itself. Jewel had never loved this fountain, but many of the visitors did.

  The Terafin reached the first of these figures; she stood, feet at the height of their knees. “Morretz?”

  He nodded; Jewel saw his grimace; The Terafin did not. She rose, this time discarding the artifice of steps; only when she had cleared the shoulders of these stone women did she halt. Her cloak and her skirts trailed over their faces, the representation of their hair, veiling them until she was clear. When she stood in their center—and it was not a large space—she called to Morretz again, and this time, she descended.

  She still carried the sword, but not for much longer; she set it down, tip first, as if even now she would change her mind. But that was not The Terafin that Jewel knew, and no matter how diminished she might be or become, Amarais Handernesse ATerafin would never be that woman; she had made her decision.

  Her breath was sharp, singular, but she released the sword. It stood, on point, at the very center of the fountain; it didn’t fall. When her hands were free and clear, she began to rise again as Morretz gestured. But she commanded him to stop when she was once again at the height of the statues’ shoulders, and when she did she knelt, her knees touching air and stone as she lifted her hands—shaking hands—to her neck. In the moonlight, she lifted something over her head—a chain, or something similarly slender and weighted. She draped this, knotting its links, around the hilt of the abandoned sword, and then she lowered her face for a long, long moment.

  When she rose, she turned toward Morretz, for she’d knelt with her back to him. Even now, Jewel thought, she guarded all expression of pain or sorrow. But Morretz knew. The Chosen knew. And Jewel, watching, knew as well. It was possible to think of, to acknowledge the fact of, The Terafin’s loss, her sorrow—but it was almost always an entirely intellectual exercise. It was impossible to think of her as frightened.

  Nor was she as she walked across air toward the man who supported the whole of her weight. She began to descend as she reached him, her fingers shifting the cloak’s clasp.

  “It is done,” she told her domicis.

  He said nothing; there was usually nothing one could say to The Terafin when she was like this. She asked for no comfort, accepted no advice, looked for no dream of hope with which she could deny reality. And yet, when she was like this, Jewel wanted to give her all these things.

  Wanted, Jewel thought, remembering. The Terafin would never be like this again. She was gone, now. The floor of Mandaros’ Hall was beneath her feet. Mandaros was god of Judgment, not Justice, and the gods had always said that the dead who waited could choose the moment they approached his throne, bowed head, and surrendered themselves to that judgment.

  Duster would take forever, if she ever approached that throne; she might linger on the banks of the river on death’s side of the bridge, watching and waiting for her den-kin to join her.

  But not The Terafin. For The Terafin, all decisions were action, even the decision to remain inactive. Jewel couldn’t imagine that she would sit idle, by those banks, watching for the dead. Maybe, she thought, Rath was waiting there. Maybe The Terafin would finally—finally—be reconciled with the brother she had abandoned.

  Or perhaps she had nothing left to wait for; Morretz was also dead. Morretz, whose hands, trembling with the effort of his silent spell, now readjusted the fall of her cloak before he let those hands fall away. He then walked to the fountain, where the sword waited. This time, his spell was more complicated; the colors of the light that left his hands in slender, binding threads varied in brightness and depth of hue.

  Jewel watched as the sword grew slowly translucent, becoming a ghost of itself, as insubstantial as the rest of the ghosts that had, and would always, haunt her.

  She reached out—for what, she wasn’t certain—as the blade vanished, and Morretz’s oddly graceful motions of hand and light through air came to a close. His arms dropped; they were trembling. Neither he nor the Lord he served appeared to notice. He bowed to her; she inclined her head, regal as a Queen. A weary, heartbroken Queen, who had at last acknowledged what was lost to her. She had never been young in Jewel’s eyes—but she had been young once, and the only physical links to that youth had been broken here. Jewel knew it not because she was seer-born, although that was both her gift and her curse, but because she could see it so clearly in The Terafin’s face.

  “Amarais,” she said, voice breaking between the second and third syllables. The Terafin didn’t turn, didn’t glance toward her.

  “Why are you crying?” Shadow whispered.

  She woke, tears trailing down the sides of her face; they were silent; she could do that much. The ceiling above was familiar; it was her bedroom’s. She rose. Avandar, contours of his face made sharper by the light that shone in his hands, opened his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, and shut it as her expression became clear. He offered her no words, made no attempt to comfort. He had never before reminded her of Morretz; the two could hardly have been more different.

  But in his patient silence this eve, he did. Even Shadow’s habitual whining voice did not break the quiet. She dressed in the partial light, choosing clothing that required no aid to don. Avandar stood and retrieved only her jacket and her cloak. The former, he handed her; the latter, he held up. She turned her back and he slid it over her shoulders, but he didn’t touch the clasp.

  While she fastened it, he opened her bedroom door.

  Torvan and Corrin were standing to either side of its frame. New to the West Wing was the expensive conceit of magelights, which now adorned the walls in even intervals along the hall. Torvan didn’t look at her; nor did he speak. But when she turned and walked down the hall toward the exit, he fell in behind her, as natural as shadow, although admittedly more noisy. The other Shadow allowed the captain this much without comment.

  They picked up Gordon and Marave when they left the den’s rooms. As Torvan, they were silent; their armor made all of the sound they allowed themselves. But where she went, they followed. She didn’t want them, but the burden of arguing with Torvan was too costly this eve.

  They didn’t ask her where she was going. Had they, she might not have gone at all; she might have turned back, crawled under both covers and cat, and attempted to sleep out the night. But they gave her the space she needed, and she came, at last, to the terrace and its famed fountain.

  In the darkness, the statues lost the harsh definition of their building materials, and perhaps this was why their sculptor had given them such soft, ill defined lines: they seemed delicate, almost alive, in the evening. The moons were not quite full, but waning, they shed their distant silver light across everything: across the fountain and its constantly moving water; across the gardens and their towering new trees; across the manse, its gates, and the streets beyond which it stood, remote and unapproachable. Although she couldn’t see them, she knew the hundred holdings, even the poorest, saw the moonlight in the same way; what the moon saw was different. But people, rich and poor, slept; people, rich and poor, dreamed. People, rich and poor, were being born while the moons watched. They were also undoubtedly dying.

>   “ATerafin,” Avandar said, as she walked across the terrace, rather than toward the steps.

  She glanced at him; he was the only man present who spoke, although she was certain the Chosen were equally confused; when she left her rooms at this time of night, it was for the shrine, not the fountain. Shadow glanced at her, and as the Chosen fanned out at her back, he pressed himself into her left side. It was not coincidentally the side that Avandar generally occupied.

  “Are you certain this is wise?” he asked.

  She failed to hear him; at the moment it took almost no effort. The statues were tall enough and tightly enough entwined that she could get to the small space in their center without climbing up and over their shoulders or arms. Their arms were lower, but much thinner, and if she somehow managed to break or damage them, she wouldn’t have to worry about something as inconsequential as a House War; she’d be on the run from the Master Gardener for the rest of her natural life.

  “Allow me,” Avandar said, from her right. She turned to look at him at the exact moment she began to rise. Given almost no warning, she lost her balance and fell flat out in the middle of the air. He caught her. For Avandar, he was even gentle. The Terafin hadn’t lost her balance, and now that Jewel was moving in the same way, she was impressed. Avandar wasn’t making air solid beneath her feet, so it wasn’t as if she was standing on a platform. No—it was as if he’d gripped both of her ankles in either of his hands, and had hoisted her into the air. What grace or balance she managed to achieve was entirely up to her.

  She didn’t manage a lot of it, but it didn’t matter; her audience was Torvan and the Chosen she’d known since her arrival at the manse. They’d certainly seen her with much less dignity. She paused for just a moment, and glanced at the four, wondering if the night had changed things between them—if they now expected that her dignity did matter. They’d never say anything, of course—but their dignity was never, and had never, been in question.

  She would have to live up to the Chosen. Funny, how that hadn’t even been a thought when she stood at the House shrine, demanding their oaths upon the altar.

  She managed to stay upright as Avandar carried her over the heads of the three stone women. She felt the hint of his curiosity, no more. He didn’t know what she sought here, but knew it was of significance to her.

  Yes, Jewel, he said. She startled, windmilled, and managed not to fall again. He seldom used that voice, and never when she wasn’t in danger or he wasn’t annoyed. Shadow, who had the good sense to have wings, pushed himself off the ground; his leap carried him far above her head. To reach her height he had to dive, sweep, and hover.

  Avandar set her down as gently as he could. Jewel frowned as she reached out, and her hand passed through air.

  “Well?” Shadow asked, from a safe distance above her head.

  She shook her head. “It was real,” she told him. “I know it.” But real or no, her hand still passed through air. Closing her eyes, she cursed her memory; it had felt so real, but she could barely recall what she’d seen. Morretz had spoken, yes; his voice had been soft enough that she hadn’t caught the words. Nor did she expect that the syllables themselves would help her here; they were magic foci, and she was not a mage. But…a nimbus of pale light had surrounded his hands: gray, blue, violet.

  The gray had been the strongest. Gray was…was teleportation, it was motion, lifting at a distance. Blue was water or air, but both of those were beyond Morretz, beyond the merely mortal; what did blue mean? Vision, she thought. Sight. Violet she knew as the casement of illusion. Had there been other colors?

  She opened her eyes, let her hands drop to her sides, and looked, once again, at the moonlight.

  “It’s too early,” she said quietly. “The moons aren’t at the right height.”

  Too early?

  She nodded. “It’s not far off the right time.”

  She felt Avandar’s sudden surprise; it was followed by chagrin. He gave voice to neither. She was not feeling particularly generous, and did. “You didn’t think he had this in him?”

  “If what you imply is true,” Avandar replied, raising voice instead of enforcing privacy, “I admit I did not. He was seldom concerned with this particular type of almost theoretical magery.”

  “He looked…tired, after he’d finished.”

  “That does not surprise me, ATerafin.” He joined her in the small space, leaping as gracefully and powerfully from the stone terrace as Shadow had, but landing instead. There wasn’t a lot of room, but Jewel attempted to make space for him, pressing up against the cold stone of one statue’s back. He gestured, but it was brief, controlled; in the moonlight, she saw no change at all in his expression. “How long,” he finally asked, “must you wait?”

  She glanced at the moons. “Not long,” she replied.

  “What do you hope to find?”

  She shrugged; the gesture was her shield.

  A quarter of an hour passed. To Jewel, the night sky looked the same; there was a breeze, but no wind, and few clouds to alter or veil the light. But in the narrow space left between her and her domicis, the air began to change.

  “Can you see it?” she asked softly.

  His silence was his answer: No. After a moment, he asked “What do you see, ATerafin?”

  “Light,” was her response. “Light. It’s pale; gray, blue, a hint of violet.”

  His frown was now visible. He passed both hands through the empty air, and light eddied around them as if it were smoke; it didn’t cling. “I am impressed. I do not think that any save you will find what was placed here. Was it significant?”

  “No. The significant things, she left with Arann and me.” As she said it, she loathed the words. What had been left was significant; it just wasn’t political.

  “This was not Morretz’s idea, then.”

  “Does it matter?” she asked, irritation sharpening the edge of her voice.

  It was Avandar’s turn to shrug. “Not, clearly, to either you or the person who placed it here.”

  She might have said more, but the colors in the air suddenly brightened enough that she had to squint or be momentarily blinded. “I’d move your hands if I were you,” she told him.

  He did, but with reluctance—as if he wished to test himself against whatever magics Morretz had set in place. If Carver had done the same, it wouldn’t have surprised her. She apparently expected more from a man who was, to all intents and purposes, immortal.

  He raised a brow, glancing at her; his smile was brief and bitter. “I am a mortal,” he said softly. “My inability to die does not change that fact.”

  “It does, by strict definition.”

  “And you have now become the arbiter of definition?”

  “Of my own, and I hadn’t noticed you were speaking to anyone else at the moment.”

  He chuckled; his hands fell at once to his sides. “Indeed.”

  “He’s dead, Avandar,” she added, in a quieter tone of voice.

  “So, too, is The Terafin—but you are measured against her, regardless.”

  “You were never measured against Morretz.”

  “In my role as domicis, ATerafin, I have never been measured against anyone else in this House.”

  Her brows rose. “And you cared?”

  He chuckled again. “No, ATerafin. No, and yes.”

  He meant it, which surprised her. “What’s the yes part?”

  “I am domicis for a reason. If I succeed in learning whatever this position is meant to teach me, I might at last know a measure of peace.”

  “And if you fail?”

  His smile was once again bitter, but it was less brief. Looking up, for a moment, at the moons’ faces, he replied. “I will live forever.”

  The desire for immortality was often what drove the mage-born into the folly of service to the demon Lords and their god; she wondered if knowledge of Avandar’s experience could change that desire at all. Given the mage-born and their peculiar focus and arrogan
ce, she doubted it. “And Morretz was a success.”

  “As domicis? Yes.”

  “But not as a mage.”

  “In this age, in this diminished, impoverished age, he would perhaps not be considered a failure. As a mage, however, he had nothing at all to teach me; an infant does not teach a man to run.”

  “No—but maybe how to crawl, if it comes to that.”

  “That was my thought.”

  “I know. Morretz deserves better than that.”

  He surprised her. “Perhaps.”

  But she had no more time for surprise, no more time for this conversation—which would continue, she thought, for months or years, unfinished. The light was sharp and harsh, the shape defined: she saw Rath’s sword suspended an inch or less above the ground. It shone, as if it were a vessel for Morretz’s magic; she reached out with both hands and wrapped them around the hilt.