House War 03 - House Name

by Michelle West

“For anything, Teller. Duster died so the rest of us could live. Let’s make it count.”

  “You sound like Jay.”

  “There are worse things to sound like.” They both smiled, and she turned then and left the room, pausing for a moment to dip her fingers into ripples of moon-dappled water in the arboretum’s fountain.

  She would have gotten lost on the way to the West Wing, but a servant was lingering in the halls when she pushed the heavy door open and stepped outside of Alowan’s domain. He bowed once and then smiled at her slightly rounded eyes.

  “Burton ATerafin,” he told her, with just the hint of pride.

  “ATerafin?”

  He nodded. “I led Teller to the healerie, and I thought you might want to return to your wing.” He carried a small lamp in one hand; it swayed as he stood.

  “Do you know your way around the entire manse?” she asked as she fell into step beside him. He was much taller than she was, and he was also older—although not as old as Torvan ATerafin, and not quite so intimidating.

  He nodded, his smile deepening. It was not an unkind smile; it had the faint air of pride but none of its edge. “I got lost a lot for the first two weeks, though.”

  She gazed at the height of the ceilings as they turned into one of the large galleries. “I think it will take us a lot longer than two weeks not to get lost,” she admitted quietly. And then, because he seemed friendly and the prospect of Terafin was so daunting, she asked, “Is there anywhere in the House we shouldn’t go?”

  “Probably not the kitchen; the cook is a bit of a bear.”

  “Which kitchen?”

  He smiled. “You can, of course, do whatever what you want in the kitchen in your wing; I spoke of the main kitchen, in which The Terafin’s meals—and the meals of the rest of the House—are prepared.”

  “Anywhere else?”

  “You can go anywhere you want. If there’s an area you shouldn’t be in, someone will tell you.”

  “I’d like not to offend whoever that someone is.”

  “They won’t take offense. You’re new here, and everyone pretty much knows it.”

  The idea that the den was being talked about by this nebulous “everyone” didn’t bring much comfort. “What else do they know?”

  He laughed. She liked the sound of it, realizing that in the past few days, or weeks, they’d laughed so very little at home. “They know your names and your general descriptions. They know that a domicis was hired for the West Wing and its guests. They know that The Terafin opened up the West Wing for your personal use.”

  “That doesn’t happen often?”

  He raised a brow. It was an orange bronze in the lamplight and the softer, nocturnal glow of magelights. She could almost pretend she was walking in a street—but the facades of buildings had been replaced by shadowed paintings and tapestries, and the round, hard cobbles, often cracked, by the flat slats of finely oiled and waxed wood. And rugs.

  “It hasn’t happened in the years I’ve served the house.”

  “Oh.”

  He laughed again. “They know that your den leader—that’s what you call her, isn’t it?” He waited until she nodded before continuing, “ . . . saved The Terafin’s life. Believe that that has made her very popular.”

  “But—but how—”

  “If she didn’t tell you, I shouldn’t,” he said. But he didn’t seem terribly afraid of doing so.

  “But how did you hear?”

  “Servants have ears,” he replied with a grin. “Just the way walls do in this place. You see one of the Chosen marching down the halls at speed, and word carries; people watch where he’s going and with whom.

  “But be that as it may, your den leader went and got the Chosen, and the Chosen summoned the mage. We didn’t know why until later—but apparently there was a mage of some sort who meant to assassinate The Terafin; if not for the summoning, he would have succeeded. The Terafin is loved in this House, and your Jewel Markess has done us all a service, whether she knew it at the time or not.

  “She cares about you,” he added, the smile dropping away from all but the corners of his lips. “And she knows damn well you’re all out of place here. What we can do to make your stay easier, we will do.

  “So get out of the West Wing when you can, and wander about the House; look at it, meet people. Most of them will be friendly.” He paused and then added, “I’ll try to send a rough floor plan to your domicis. I’ll mark the rooms of the House Council and the members of the House who are a little on the frosty side; you can avoid those.”

  She smiled at him, hesitantly, and then said, “Thank you, Burton.” Extending a hand, she added, “I’m Finch.”

  He hesitated for just a moment and then grinned again, accepting the offered hand.

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Technically, yes. Ask your domicis. I’m sure he’ll tell you.”

  “I’d rather not.” She grimaced. “I think he’s nice enough, but he’s got so many rules.”

  “We all have rules; I’ve just broken at least three of them.” He shrugged. “But some of the rules come into conflict, and then we’re left with a choice.”

  “And shaking my hand was bad?”

  “Technically,” he repeated. “I know your name, of course; I have to. I’ve been assigned to keep an eye on the West Wing. But you’re not here as a servant. I’m supposed to be invisible.”

  He was rather tall and rather well dressed for an invisible man. “Why?”

  “Good servants always are. We keep the place clean. Impeccably clean,” he added, with a mock severity that indicated he was mimicking someone. “It’s hard, however, to be an invisible guide. You’ll see less of me as the days go by—and if you don’t, I’d ask that you at least pretend to see less of me.” His grin was broad.

  She stared at him. “You know that you’re better dressed than I’ve ever been, until now?”

  He nodded. “We know you’re from the old holdings. They don’t generally have dens in the new ones.”

  “And it doesn’t bother you to be told to serve the likes of us?”

  “I told you, Finch—your den leader saved The Terafin. Obviously The Terafin had some inkling of her abilities, or she would never have opened that wing. We don’t question.” His smile gentled. “I like what I do. I know it’s not what people daydream of doing with their lives—but I like the order, the tidiness, the sense of purpose.

  “I’m never going to lead. I never want to lead. I want to do what I’m doing now, for as long as House Terafin stands. One day, I’ll train men and women to do as I’m doing. That’s the whole of my ambition.” He glanced at her.

  “I don’t know what I want,” she confessed. “Mostly, not to starve.”

  “Your leader’s earned that, at least. But you should think about it. What you want defines what you do, at least in this life. And the Houses—The Ten—prove that it’s not just birth that counts. I wasn’t born to a family that served a grand House like this one, but I’m here.”

  She nodded and smiled again, following Burton ATerafin to her den.

  There was a small commotion in the wing when it came time to bed down. Jay came out of her room and started a frenzied search of the dining room and the kitchen, looking for “nothing,” as she very curtly put it. Five minutes of intense and testy questioning reduced “nothing” to “magestone.” They were all silently horrified, and they all joined her in her fruitless search.

  Finch almost sent Jester to relieve Teller, because Teller was good at finding things. Angel stopped her and shook his head, gesturing in den-sign while Jay was crawling under the table for the fifteenth time. Finch responded in kind, but den-sign wasn’t designed for difficult conversations, and by the time they’d negotiated their way through half of this one, Jay emerged on her hands and knees, flyaway strands of her hair hanging, as usual, across her eyes.

  An hour later, she shoved that hair out of her eyes and glanced out the windows. The windo
ws here were glassed, and although they could be opened—and not simply with warped shutters you had to tie to keep closed—they were shut and barred; it was Scaral. It was also, by the rise of the bright moon, late.

  Jay’s shoulders sagged as she turned to the wall. She punched it. Hard.

  Finch thought she heard bones crack, and she winced in sympathy. She knew why Jay had searched for so long. They all did. But they were silent, and they let her retreat to her cavernous room. Only when the door slammed—and it did—did Angel slump against a wall, pausing to kick Carver on the way down.

  Carver, who had not quite given up, threw something at Angel’s head, and Angel’s spire of hair caught it. Jester leaned up against the wall to one side of the large window, folding his arms across his slender chest.

  “Mage’ll be here in the morning,” he said.

  “Yeah. And Jay’ll meet him on next to no sleep.”

  They shared another glance. Jay never went to sleep without light. If Carver and Duster were out, they took the stone, and Jay worked in the kitchen until they were back, burning candles until there were no more candles to burn.

  But she slept with the light when it returned, taking it from Carver’s palm and walking it into the bedroom she shared with Duster, Finch, and Teller. There, she’d drop it into the pedestal Rath had given her, and she’d tuck in, in any weather; Jay hated to sleep exposed. Even in the grim humidity of the worst summer nights, she covered herself with blankets and sweated a lot.

  The light was gone.

  “It’s not just that,” Finch said softly, trying to be fair. “Rath gave her the magestone. It was one of the first things he gave her.”

  Angel nodded.

  “Maybe it won’t be so bad,” Jester said. “There are guards all over the damn place. Maybe she’ll be able to sleep without it.”

  Finch glanced at Carver. Carver shrugged. She sighed and headed toward the kitchen. After a moment, the others picked themselves up off the floor and followed her.

  Ellerson watched in silence. He watched from the back corner of the dining room until the last of the den—Angel—disappeared from view, and then he stepped lightly and briskly across the expanse of rug toward the kitchen’s swinging double doors. Before he reached them, he heard the clatter of dishes—pots and pans, by the sound, and not very carefully handled.

  He did not rush in but waited for the din to cease. When it did, he pushed the doors open a crack and slid between them. Not all of the domicis chose this sort of subtlety in their approach to their masters; one chose the methods that worked, after all.

  The den was now seated around the large, wood-block table that was meant for food preparation. They had removed some of the hanging pots and pans that overlooked the table’s surface, and Ellerson surmised that this was because neither Carver nor Angel could stand without hitting them.

  They had pulled stools and chairs from beneath counters also situated for kitchen work, and they had arrayed these around the table. He made a mental note to ask for suitable chairs; this type of untidiness, if the den sought to make use of the kitchen as a meeting space, was unacceptable to Ellerson’s organized soul.

  Finch was speaking. Her voice was low and, to Ellerson’s ear, gentle; she and Teller had this in common. “No, Arann’s fine. The healer didn’t hurt him.”

  “He healed him. Why won’t they let him come back to us?” Carver was leaning precariously back on the rear legs of his chair.

  “I don’t really understand all of what happened,” she replied carefully, “but he’s safe in the healerie for now. Teller’s with him. You’re up next,” she added to Carver. “Because Teller needs to get some sleep.”

  Carver nodded.

  “And we need to figure out what we do while Jay is with the mage.”

  “It’s only going to be a day.”

  But Angel shook his head. “You were eating, not listening, idiot. She said The Terafin sent men to Rath’s, and they couldn’t find the maze. Jay’s not going to be a day. If she’s damn lucky, she’ll only be a week.”

  Finch nodded. “We’re not going with her. We’ll be here. But we don’t have to do nothing while we’re here.”

  “What can we do here?”

  Finch shrugged. “Learn.”

  “Learn?”

  “Learn how the House operates. Learn who’s in charge of what. Learn who thinks they’re in charge of everything else. Just—learn. We can keep an ear to the ground here. She has to prove she’s worthy to The Terafin, but she won’t be here—she’ll be with the mage. We’ll be here. We’ll learn what she can’t, and we’ll tell her about it.”

  Angel nodded. “I hate that she can’t take any of us with her,” he added. It was perhaps the fiftieth time he had said it. “Even Carver would be better than nothing.”

  “Hey!”

  But Ellerson nodded quietly, watching them. Listening to them. Gone were the discussions about what might be stolen and secreted from the manse.

  “Let’s just hope she sleeps,” Carver said quietly.

  “She can do without much sleep for a week or two,” Angel replied. “And even at her pay, we can’t afford to replace that stone anytime soon.”

  There was a moment of silence, but it was a silence filled with the daydreams of the hopeful; Ellerson was certain that each and every one of this den was thinking of ways in which they might find—or replace—what Jewel had lost. They were surprising, these children.

  But he could work with them. What they brought to the table—even as inappropriate a table as this one—he could not have supplied. The finishes, however, he could, and if it was not to be easy, and in Ellerson’s opinion, their age and their set ways would be very difficult to overcome, that was acceptable; he dealt not in easy but in possible.

  23rd of Scaral, 410 A.A.

  Twenty-fifth Holding, Averalaan

  “This,” Meralonne APhaniel said, with the rise of a single brow, “is where he lived?”

  Jewel, standing by his side in Rath’s admittedly dingy basement rooms, nodded. They were not, obviously, the first people to come through the apartment, although they were possibly the only people who had the keys. “It wasn’t usually this messy,” she added.

  Which was true. The contents of his room had been scattered across the floor; even the ancient trunk he had tucked away beneath the bed had been removed and opened, its contents upended.

  Whoever had done this was clearly not in need of money; a sword in an old scabbard lay half-buried by Rath’s many jackets and shirts. “Is it all right to touch things now?” she asked as she knelt.

  Meralonne nodded absently. “You can hardly,” he said, “do any more harm.”

  Thanks. She managed to keep the sarcasm—and the word—behind tightly closed lips. It had been a single day since she had last set foot in these rooms. It felt like weeks. Or months.

  The pedestal that held Rath’s magestone was on his desk. The magestone, however, was not. Jewel stopped for a moment in front of the table across which the maps she had once rescued—or stolen, depending on your viewpoint—from an illegal brothel usually lay. It was bare.

  Meralonne could be the world’s most irritating man. “What,” he asked, although she had said nothing, and hadn’t moved, “is the problem now?”

  You need him, she reminded herself. It was funny just how hard it was to cling to that reminder; she’d only been partnered with him for all of a very damn long morning. He even managed to make smoking a pipe irritating, and Jewel generally found the familiarity of the smoke’s smell a comfort. You need his good opinion, because The Terafin is going to listen to him.

  She took a deep breath and turned to face the mage, with his disconcerting gray eyes and his habitual irritation. “Something’s missing,” she told him flatly.

  “I gathered that. What, exactly, is missing?”

  “Maps.”

  He crossed the room, by some minor miracle not stepping on anything that lay strewn across the floor. It mus
t have been a miracle, because he sure as hell didn’t look as if he cared enough to avoid anything. “Maps of what?”

  She took another breath, held it, and exhaled. “Maps,” she said quietly, “of the undercity.”

  He stared at her as if she were speaking in Torra, or at least in a language he didn’t understand.

  “Ararath made maps?”

  “No, Rath didn’t make these. He didn’t need maps,” she added, “and as he’d no intention of ever letting anyone else know about the maze, he didn’t want to make it easier for anyone who might steal things.”

  “Jewel, I realize you’ve had little sleep, and you’ve had a long day. I also realize that you are not well taught. I am therefore being as patient as I can, but my patience is limited. If Ararath did not devise these maps, who did?”

  “I don’t know. We found them,” she added. “We saved them from a—from a house fire.”

  He stared at her for a long moment and then drew his pipe from his sleeve. “Jewel,” he said, as he lined the bowl, “Ararath is dead. If he had any plans for you, he fulfilled those when he sent you to House Terafin. There is nothing you can say or do that will protect his memory. I do not know what he told you,” he added, as the leaves burst into sudden flame, “but at this point, it is imperative that you tell us what you know.”

  What she knew was that the entrance to the maze was gone. She had believed The Terafin when The Terafin had told her that no trace of the entrance could be found, of course—but it was still a shock to see the landscape so utterly changed. “They were magical maps,” she finally told the mage.

  He raised a pale brow. “Magical?”

  “They had writing on them—and yes, I know that writing doesn’t make them magical—that neither Rath nor I could read.”

  He didn’t think much of her ability to read, but the fact that Rath couldn’t seemed somehow significant. “Did he recognize the tongue?”

  “No. It wasn’t Old Weston, and it wasn’t any form of Torra.”

  Meralonne frowned. “Continue.”