Before she could answer, the door to the outer hall flew open; Angel and Carver stood abreast in the wide frame. Lamplight was at their back, held aloft by a slender, strong arm: Finch’s, she thought. She smiled as she saw the light glinting off steel too short to be sword. It was her first smile.
“Jay?” Teller’s voice. He sidled around Carver, shoving his forelocks out of his eyes and squinting into the shadows. In the darkness, she was sixteen again; so were they. There were instincts, she thought, that they’d never lose because more than half their life had gone into the making.
“It’s—safe,” she said, swinging shaking legs free of blankets and planting her feet almost delicately against the nubbly cotton rug.
“You were dreaming.” Not a question.
“Yeah.”
“Bad.”
“Yeah.”
“Kitchen?”
She laughed. It was a wobbly sound. “Yeah.”
The lamp helped. It sat on the table in its customary place at her left elbow, flickering with warmth and orange light. Her elbows, propped against the smooth, hard surface of sturdy, unornamented wood, were like a silent commandment; only when she lowered her hands from her chin and shook herself would anyone speak. And she wouldn’t do either of these things until her gaze was focused on them, and the present.
She could barely see them at all. She wanted to, but the reality of them deflected the edge of the dreaming as if both were blades. She felt Avandar settle into his customary position to the left of her, back to the wall. Almost told him to sit. She hated the feel of his shadowy presence where she couldn’t—quite—see it.
But she opened her lips and said instead, “Terafin is burning. The fire is black, but the heat—the heat is white.” She swallowed. “There’s sand on my clothing, in my hands, my mouth; I’m dry and hot and I can barely move. Someone calls my name. I turn toward the voice.
“Behind me, there’s a woman. She’s my age—” She stopped, absorbing the words, realizing how untrue they were. It had been a long time since she’d returned to that age in the dreamscape. The age, for Jewel Markess, of demons, of fire, of magic. “She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. She’s sixteen, seventeen—and her eyes are filled with fire; she kneels, as if she’s supplicant, but she’s wearing a thin crown, and a bloodied sword is staining the silks she wears.
“She tells me—that I cannot turn back.” Hard, to speak those words here. Jewel swallowed. Continued. The vision’s hooks were things of fear, of terror—but although the emotions would sustain themselves, the vision itself would pass into memory, and memory was imperfect.
“The Chosen are scattered. I can only find Torvan; the rest are dead or blind or deaf. He says, ‘Why did you have to leave?’ and I feel it, the weight of those words, and he grabs my hand and drags me to The Terafin’s Council chambers.
“She’s dead. There are three knives in her body and she lies across the Council table. Gabriel looks up when I enter the room; there is fighting, of course, the war for succession. He is aloof from it, but bleeding anyway. And he says, ‘You. You left her to die.”’ She pushed unruly brown curls from the edge of her forehead so that she might better see the light, feel its distant heat across her cold, cold skin.
“Where,” said the only person in the room who refused to learn better than to interrupt her, “is Morretz in this vision?”
Morretz, The Terafin’s domicis. Jewel frowned, bit her lip to stop the sharper words from leaving her mouth, and then shook her head. “I don’t—I didn’t—see him.”
“Strange. Go on.”
It was so hard, with Avandar, not to snap. “Why, thank you,” she said, grinding her teeth. Losing her clarity. It took her a moment to find it again.
“The Terafin sits up. Her eyes are dead eyes. Her wounds don’t bleed. And her voice—it’s not her voice. Her head rolls awkwardly on her shoulders as she turns in my direction. She says, ‘Another lesson. The hardest lesson. There will be blood on your hands no matter what you choose.’
“The color returns to her face; the knives fall out; she shakes her hair down and stands. She’s not dead, and she’s not undead; she’s alive. She keeps speaking, with the same voice, as if life or death doesn’t matter to what she has to say. ‘There will always be blood on your hands. Glory in it, or weep at it, as you choose—but when you choose who must die, choose wisely.’
“And before I can answer, before I can ask a question, she gestures and the—and the—city rises.”
“The Shining City.” Avandar’s voice. Avandar’s unwelcome, solid voice. No shadow in it; no shadow would dare.
“Yes. And the screaming starts.” She shuddered, then, and her arms relaxed, hands falling almost nervelessly across the table-top. “I remember the baby—”
“Jay.” Teller rose at once. The shadow of Henden in the year 410 fell across their faces like the blow of a drunk parent across a captive child’s; they flinched, and hid from it, as they could. But it was there. Always there. Finch glanced furtively at Carver, but Carver was staring at the tabletop, at the diffusion of light across the wood grain.
“Did you recognize the voice?” Avandar asked, speaking almost gently. For Avandar. Which meant slowly, and without that slight clenching of jaw that accompanied many of his questions.
“The voice?”
“The voice she spoke with. Jewel, you said The Terafin spoke with a voice not her own.”
“No,” Jewel said. And of all her den—yes, dammit, her den—gathered at this large table, the only person who knew she was lying was, as always, Teller. He raised a brow, his expression shifting, and then shifting again, so quickly that she was certain only she had caught it at all.
Finch stopped writing. “Anything else?”
“No. Yes.”
“Which is it?”
“Yes. Can you arrange a meeting with The Terafin?”
Jester frowned. “Jay, you might’ve forgotten that you’re to spend half of tomorrow with the Flight.”
“With,” Avandar said quietly, “the three Commanders.”
“Yeah. Eagle, Hawk, and Kestrel.” Jester smiled, his teeth a flash in the lamplight.
“Jewel—”
“Jester.”
“Fine.” He held out his hands and surrendered with about as much grace as she expected. Sadly that was about three times less grace than Avandar considered acceptable. “But that’s what everyone else calls ’em.”
“If you call them that, I’ll pick it up. If I call them that, I’ll kill you.”
Angel laughed. It was nervous laughter. He scraped his chair along the kitchen floor as he rose. “Jay?”
“What?”
“Are we going South or staying?”
She loved these men and women. Everything was obvious, and nothing had to be spoken in more words than were needed to get the point across.
That fact that she rose, turned, and left the room without an answer was lost on no one. Especially not on Jewel herself.
She went to the shrine, of course.
Not immediately; at first she returned to the dubious comfort of her bed and pulled the comforter up to just under her chin, burying every part of her body beneath its folds. She even closed her eyes, willing her hands to relax the firm grip they had on the thick, dry linen. She’d become an optimist over the last decade.
Or an idiot.
With something that was decidedly less quiet than a sigh but more heartfelt, she pushed the comforter to one side and then groped around on the floor for her shoes. She thought of changing from bedclothing to real clothing, and decided, practically, that no one was going to see her anyway; she took a large cloak as a compromise, intending to drape it across her shoulders until she’d cleared the wing and the halls of the manse itself.
Someho
w it never quite came off her arms, which was unfortunate, because it made her look not unlike a servant woken for some household emergency at a late hour.
And at a late hour, at such an obvious disadvantage, was not how she would have chosen to meet Rymark ATerafin.
Of the Terafin Council, he was the man she least trusted—possibly because he was, in Finch’s estimation, the prettiest, and Jewel had never been one to trust a pretty face. She almost managed to avoid him, but the cloak was heavy and more cumbersome than anything else she normally carried from one end of Terafin to the other, and it didn’t fit into the convenient alcove beneath the torch rings that separated the wing that had been her home for fifteen years from the main hall. That hall, wider from side to side than the small tenement in which she and her den had once lived, was well lit, with silvered glass and towering windows at even intervals from end to end.
If you didn’t want to be seen, the great hall was not the place to be. Unfortunately, it was also the fastest way to get out to The Terafin’s private grounds, and the four shrines that it harbored.
She knew that he’d seen her when she saw him approaching her. And she knew who he was because he had a distinctively graceful way of walking; he was almost as catlike as Devon ATerafin could be. And a helluvalot less pleasant.
“Why, Jewel—what a pleasant surprise. I’d hoped to be able to speak with you before the next Council meeting.” He crossed his chest with his hand in a civil greeting that lacked nothing. He even bent his head, granting her a measure of respect that she could only dream he’d show her in an actual Council meeting. Lamplight made the sheen of his greying auburn hair look like warm, contained flame.
Fire. She shuddered in spite of herself and rather too obviously; his face took a chill expression for a moment. But only a moment. He stepped closer, smoothing his thin-lipped silence into a friendly one. “Have I . . . interrupted an assignation of some nature?”
“Yes.”
The curt, short word stopped him cold; it was not the way people with rank or station often responded to innuendo. If she were honest with herself, it wasn’t the way Jewel usually responded either. But she wasn’t a sixteen-year-old girl in the first blush of youth anymore; she was over thirty, and she wasn’t to be thrown off-balance by anyone, let alone this particular ATerafin.
But she took a step back, into the wall, as she thought it. Rymark was one of three ATerafin that she knew wore not only the House symbol but also the symbol of the Order of Knowledge: the three phases of the moon, with the full moon quartered by elemental symbols. That platinum medallion reflected the burning flame as he bent to speak to her; he was a tall man, and made the most of the difference between their heights. “I see. I assure you that this will only take a moment of your time. I have no desire to interfere with affairs that are not of my concern.”
Mages always made her nervous. The only mage that she halfway liked was Sigurne Mellifas, and that because there was something about her that reminded Jewel of a grandmother who was almost—but not quite—made gentle and perfect by memory.
It was not Sigurne she faced, but Rymark.
She sighed and resisted the urge to massage her forehead, a gesture that she often used when either bored or irritated. Instead, she shoved her curls out of her eyes. “What, exactly, did you want to speak to me about, and can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
He shrugged.
“This is not a discussion you want to make an appointment for.”
“Perceptive, Jewel. But then again, I would expect that of you.”
She had always been given a choice of two behaviors in response to her talent: awe or nervous humor. Rymark added a variant that she didn’t particularly like: Possessive humor. “What do you want?” The words came out shorter than she would have liked, too clipped by far, given how close he was.
His eyes narrowed, changing the contours of his face ever so slightly. “I want,” he said coolly, “what at least four members of the Council—or members of the House who are not yet privileged with a position upon the Council—will want before this is over.”
“Which is?”
He smiled, leaning over again, leaning into the edge of the boundaries that she defined as personal space. She really didn’t want to take another step back, but by presence alone he almost forced it; the wall hit her hard, made her look even more awkward than she already did in her soft cotton nightdress and soft-soled night shoes.
If he touches me, she thought, I’ll cut his fingers off.
Except that her dagger was in her room, with the rest of her clothing.
“Jewel, play no game. If you will not choose a side intelligently, do not choose sides.”
She knew, then, exactly what he wanted. She’d always known it, but she’d ignored it until now.
“The Terafin,” he said softly, “has . . . begun to speak openly of choosing her heir.”
Not the interpretation she’d have put on it, but she wasn’t the politician. “She’s not likely to die tomorrow,” Jewel snapped, unable to think—although she had given it much thought over the years—of anyone else at the helm of the most powerful House in the Empire. When she’d been younger, she’d thought it might be her. Youth was stupid. Seeing the way it aged The Terafin, understanding what it meant, had taken time. Had offered her a truth she didn’t particularly want to see about a responsibility she no longer dreamed about shouldering, although nightmare once or twice had brought her close.
He smiled, his lips turning up in what seemed an infinitely lazy gesture, a self-indulgence of an expression. “Your loyalty is to be commended. You’ve never been made one of her Chosen, but you’re infected by the same spirit. I admire it, Jewel. I would like very much to be able to count on it in the future.” He lifted a hand, palm up, his fingers slightly curled.
“You can count on my loyalty to The Terafin,” she replied curtly, lifting her chin slightly to avoid the tips of his fingers.
“Jewel, my dear,” he said, and the coolness was suddenly matched in his words by a kind of awful heat, “you cannot always be the girl who says ‘No.’ You are no longer the child, although perhaps in your current attire that would not be so obvious.”
“I told you,” she replied, quelling any heat with the ice of her words, “that I’m already otherwise occupied for the evening.”
“Ah. And if it’s not something as simple as an evening that I desire?”
“Then you can make an appointment, same as anyone else.” She lifted her hands, placed them as quick as she could in the center of his chest and pushed. There were a hundred other things she might’ve done—but they’d all cause damage. She didn’t like Rymark—but for that matter, she thought him better for the House, although it was hard to imagine at this particular point, than at least one of the other four members of the Council to which they were both jointly appointed: Haerrad.
And that meant that she would do her best not to get involved in the type of fight that she knew well at close quarters. Or the type of fight that she now knew at any quarter.
He didn’t make it easy, though, the bastard. He grabbed both her hands by the wrists and pulled her suddenly close, yanking her hard enough that she lost the flat of her feet, and the protection of the wall at her back.
If he tries to kiss me, she thought, although her breathing quickened, I’m going to bite his tongue so badly even Alowan won’t be able to save it. “Rymark, treating me like you treat the household servants is not likely to endear you to me.” Icy, keep it icy.
He only laughed. “The girl who says no to the end. In the North, my dear, they would respect this provincialism. You are not in the North now. Do you think, when the Terafin dies, that you will have no need of support? Or would you see Haerrad raise his little army and slaughter half the House to bring it to heel?”
“Not even Haerrad would be that
stupid.”
“You don’t speak with conviction, Jewel.”
No, because she didn’t have it. Haerrad, gods curse him to the Hells with no further lifetimes of atonement, was, she suspected, much like the ancestral ATerafin it was forbidden to name in his open desire for power and his ruthlessness in his quest to obtain it. That The Terafin had not chosen to have him killed was something that she did not—not quite—understand, legality aside. Instead, to neutralize him, she’d made him part of the Council, and answerable to it. “What do you want?”
“You know it, little seer. I want your support in the Council. When the discussion of the heir is raised—and it will be, for The Terafin believes it is time—I want your vote of confidence. Or I want you to abstain from a vote at all.” His grip on her wrists tightened as he smiled again. ‘But perhaps I am not only interested in the business of politics; there are many more things in this life.”
He bent, again, and she’d had enough. Brought her knee up, suddenly, and found that it was hampered by folds of a too heavy cloak. He laughed, caught the back of her head in one hand, twisting his fingers into her hair. “Lady,” he said, his lips a hair’s breadth from her own.
And then he cried out in pain; his hands were scoured by a brilliant, brief light, a light that burned blue and then orange before his grip was broken. He turned at once, all pretext of charm—and it seemed to Jewel that there was little enough of it—gone. “You!”
Jewel made haste to stumble around him out of the alcove that had proved such a poor choice of hiding place. She had to scrape skin against stone to do it, but she didn’t wait for Rymark to move; he wasn’t likely to just to be convenient. She won free quickly, as if the opportunity was going to be a very, very short one.
And there, arms hanging deceptively free at his sides, was the man she least wanted to see: Avandar. It couldn’t have been anyone else, of course. It had to be him. He did her the grace of not speaking his mind, although she could see it in the momentary narrowing of his eyes; he never criticized her in any company save that of her den, where he, like only one other outsider in the last fifteen years, had made a half-place for himself by his dogged persistence.
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