“Arann—”
Arann lifted his hand, and Torvan stopped speaking. “I failed him.”
“Could fighting—could knowing how to fight—have prevented that?”
“I don’t know.” Arann closed his eyes. “Part of me thinks no. Part of me isn’t sure. But all of me is sure of one thing: He’s gone. I didn’t kill him. It’s not my fault he’s dead. But I didn’t save him, either, and he trusted me.
“I want to be able to protect the people I care about. All of them. I don’t want to hide from the fighting anymore. Look at me. I’m big. I’ve always been big. It’s the only thing anyone ever notices. My size. My strength. But it didn’t do any good, back then. And I want to be able to do something now. If this is what I have, I want to be able to use it.
“And I thought maybe a guard—a House Guard, even—did that. Protected people.”
His words trailed off into his more familiar silence.
Torvan said, “It’s at the heart of what the House Guards do. Let me tell you a bit about them.”
“So this is how you work?”
The maid shrieked. In the narrow, windowless servants’ halls, the sound bounced. Carver covered his ears in mock pain.
“Carver,” the girl hissed, “you shouldn’t be here.”
He shrugged, and leaned up against the wall, which should have looked ridiculous. “I wanted to see where you worked.”
“Why? You know where I work. At the moment, my duties are in the West Wing. So,” she added, tilting her head to the side, “are yours.”
He had to admit that he liked that particular tilting expression. She wasn’t skinny the way Finch was, but something about her reminded him of Finch. Except for her hair, which reminded him of Jay’s, except that the curls were darker and fuller. Everything about her was.
“I never see you leave the wing, and I never—almost never—see you arrive,” he added.
“You’re not supposed to see me,” she hissed. “And if anyone sees you, I’ll be in trouble.”
“How much trouble?”
“Have you met the Master of the Household staff?”
“What, the white-haired, grouchy old woman?”
Merry looked shocked. She probably was. She smacked his chest, dead center, and not lightly either. “She’s not old.”
He shrugged. “I notice you didn’t argue about the grouchy part.”
“She will be beyond something as petty as grouchy if she sees you here. These halls aren’t used by anyone but the servants. And for good damn reason,” she added. “The servants who serve in the main house—The Terafin’s manse—are mostly ATerafin. I’m new,” she added. “And young for it. And I don’t want them to strip me of the name—my parents are over the moon, and my aunt brags about it every chance she gets. I swear she talks about it more than she breathes.
“They’d be heartbroken, and I’d be out of the best job I’m ever going to find. Do you understand?”
He nodded. He did not, however, leave. “So,” he said, looking around the narrow hall, “these halls—how far in do they go?”
“They’re between the outer and inner walls of most of the manse’s residential rooms. The large state rooms don’t have them; when they’re open, the servants are expected to be visible. Silent, perfectly mannered, and visible.”
“So, no swearing.”
She had the grace to redden. “No. No swearing.” She heaved a sigh, which was an entirely physical act, and then grimaced. “We were told your wing was an exceptional case, and we were to tread with care.”
“On what?”
She stepped somewhat heavily on his toes, which made him laugh, a sound that also bounced off the walls. He was not particularly fond of the sound of his own laughter; it reminded him too much of Jester.
“Come on. If we don’t get out of here soon, we’ll cause a traffic jam, and then I really will be in trouble.”
“You’re going back to the West Wing?”
“What do you think?”
“I think playing dumb around you is suicidal.”
“Smart boy. I am just finished cleaning—and I have to say, we all thought there’d be a lot more mess—and I have forty-five minutes of break. I’m heading to lunch,” she added.
“Can I join you?”
“Not if you’re going to eat.”
He laughed.
She looked up at him for a moment and then shook her head. “You’re impossible,” she told him, with just a glimpse of dimple to soften the tone. She did not, however, step on him again, and he followed her.
The halls, as Merry implied, did seem to go everywhere. There were stairs and the occasional cross hall, all of which were precisely cut, and all of which were narrow. The floors were, for the most part, stone, as were the low ceilings, but here and there, small doors could be glimpsed. They were the size of the closet doors in the West Wing, if that. They certainly weren’t the large, peaked doors or the doubled doors that fronted many of the rooms.
“Carver, did I mention you’re not supposed to be here?”
“About a dozen times.”
“And did I mention that only the servants are supposed to use these halls?”
“About the same number.”
“Then why do you keep asking me questions every time we turn a corner or pass a door?”
“Because I want to know where they go? I mean, if you’re supposed to slip into—and out of—a room without being seen, they can’t all enter into rooms.”
“Some of them enter into the supply rooms,” she replied. “Some of them enter into the attendants’ chambers.”
“The what?”
“The nobles who lived here, at one point in time, surrounded themselves with nobles of lesser stature—daughters and sons of other nobles, for instance—and they were called attendants. They were considered the right sort of company, and they waited on—not served—the ruler of the House.”
“But you don’t have those anymore.”
“No, but the rooms are still there. They’re used,” she added. “But not the same way. In your wing, Ellerson occupies the attendant’s room for most of the day. He has quarters in which he sleeps and changes, but for the most part, the attendant’s room is his. It’s where he works.”
Carver nodded. “So . . . all of the guest wings have them?”
“I know what you’re doing.”
“Humor me?”
“I am. You’re still breathing, and you’re still following me.”
He grinned. “Sorry,” he told her. It wasn’t perhaps his most sincere apology.
But it stopped her for a moment, and her expression went from mild irritation to serious. He wasn’t certain he liked the change.
“I know this is all hard for you,” she told him quietly.
He shrugged, suddenly ill at ease.
“But you can’t inflict your boredom on all of the servants. You certainly can’t inflict it on all the maids. Most of us know that Jewel Markess did something that saved The Terafin’s life, and that’s your leeway here. But it won’t last, and you can push it too far.”
“Am I?”
“You probably can’t push it too far with me, and I’m going to hate myself in an hour for saying that,” she told him, still serious. “The servants assigned to your wing were chosen for a reason.”
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“The reason.”
“Oh, that. We can carry ourselves as if we’re the scions of the gods’ own servants. We know when to be serious and when to relax. We won’t embarrass the House, and we won’t allow ourselves to be embarrassed. Not easily,” she added, reddening slightly.
“I haven’t stolen anything while I’ve been here.”
“No. And you won’t, either, until you’re told to leave.”
This surprised him, and his obvious discomfort made her laugh. “I am going to starve to death if I don’t get out of these halls. Come on. You can watch me eat.
It can’t,” she added, “be worse than watching your den eat. And don’t repeat that to anyone, or I’ll be scrubbing floors in the main dining hall for six months.”
He didn’t. But he did wheedle information out of her as they walked, which was, he told himself, the entire point of the exercise.
18th of Misteral, 410 A.A.
Port Authority, Averalaan
Angel left The Terafin manse only once in the weeks that Jewel worked alongside the mage. He told Finch he was going out for the morning. She didn’t ask where he was going, and he didn’t volunteer the information.
He did, however, ask Ellerson how to get to the port from the Isle. Ellerson, like Finch, didn’t question him about anything, except for his possible presence, or absence, at lunch and dinner.
Angel made his way down to the Port Authority, abandoning Ellerson’s crisp directions as soon as he had cleared the footbridge to the Isle. He wasn’t required to actually pay the tolls back, Ellerson had informed him. As a guest of House Terafin, those tolls would be covered. Therefore, instead of coin, he had given Angel a letter, which clearly stated—and in almost the exact words—what Ellerson had just said. It had, however, the full Terafin seal beneath the words, which made it a lot more official.
The port wasn’t busy at this time of year, but the heavy rains had yet to fall. It was therefore still open, and it would remain so. The winds were brisk, and when they hit, they were cold, but the air was clear, and it lacked the torpid humidity of high summer. Flags flew along the poles of the dock and atop the Port Authority itself. The Authority’s doors were still jammed open, still guarded, and still traversed by people who were in a hurry. Angel slid out of their way without noticing much else about them.
Terrick was behind his customary wicket when Angel entered the building. He was leafing through the paperwork the Port Authority seemed to specialize in generating, and standing in front of him, shoulders touching, were a man and a woman. They were dressed for cold weather, and their jackets were stained with the salty powder so often seen in travelers.
Angel took his place in the short line and waited. When he finally reached the wicket, Terrick looked up and nodded. It made Angel smile; his father would have noticed Angel the minute he entered the building, and he would have failed to acknowledge his presence in exactly the same way. He could think about his father most days without pain, now.
This wasn’t one of them.
“Lunch is in forty minutes, give or take a few,” Terrick told him, without preamble.
Angel nodded. “I’m not starving at the moment,” he added.
“Good. I’d like to be able to say the same after lunch.” Terrick’s Northern grin was broad and brief.
Angel sat in the back room of Terrick’s office and felt, for a moment, as though he’d never truly left it. The tension eased out of his shoulders and jaw as he watched Terrick break bread and fill mug.
“You’re not eating?” Terrick asked.
“No. I’m expected back for dinner, and I ate everything at breakfast.”
Terrick raised a brow. “I haven’t seen you in a little while.”
Angel shrugged. “There’s not a lot of work at the port in Scaral. Or Misteral.”
“You didn’t get that tunic doing ‘not a lot of work’ And given the living you can make hand to mouth on the streets, you didn’t get it cutting purses, either.”
Angel’s face reddened, but he kept his words firmly behind his lips until the urge to say them passed. He had nothing to reply with, in any case; if he hadn’t cut pursestrings, Carver and Duster certainly had, and he’d lived off what they managed to get away with. As a child, he would have said he would never stoop to theft. Hunger was a harsh teacher, and he’d learned quickly.
Terrick, watching Angel, put his bread down. “What’s happened?” he asked, slipping into Rendish, his smooth, Imperial accent giving way to the harsher, Northern bark.
Angel looked across the table for a long moment and then took out the letter Ellerson had given him for dodging tolls. He placed it on top of the stack of neat papers that occupied the right-hand corner of Terrick’s desk.
The seal caught Terrick’s eye. He frowned as he lifted it. He read it—once, judging by the speed with which he looked back at Angel—and asked, quietly, “Do you know what this says?”
“More or less. I can read it, it just takes time.”
“You’re a guest of possibly the most powerful woman in the Empire.”
“I’m not.”
“Then you haven’t read the document carefully enough.”
“I’m staying there,” Angel said, frowning. “But not through anything I’ve said or done. I’m ballast. My den leader—my friend—” he added, catching the word just after it left his lips, rather than before, “is the real guest.”
“Den leader.”
Angel grimaced. “Den leader.”
“And he has something of value to offer The Terafin?”
“She, and obviously.”
Terrick lifted a hand. “I mean no criticism of your den leader,” he said quietly, each syllable so heavily pronounced the words sounded like ritual, rather than conversation.
Angel met his gaze and then folded his arms across his chest. “She’s what she is,” he said, his voice as quiet, and exact, as Terrick’s had been. “She is a den leader. She leads a den. I’m part of it.”
“So.”
“When she went to House Terafin, she took us with her. All of us.”
“And The Terafin allowed this.”
Angel glanced pointedly at the paper.
“Who is this den leader?”
“ Jewel. Jewel Markess.” It wasn’t what she liked to be called, but Angel held the den-name back; no one else used it. It belonged to no one else. He realized, then, that Terrick’s quiet disclaimer had even been a necessary one. “I’m the newest of her den. The others, she’s had with her for three years. Maybe a bit more, or a bit less. She found them, rescued them, made them as much of a home as orphans with nothing can have in this city.”
“And she found you.”
Angel nodded. “She does what she has to, to survive. She doesn’t do more.”
“Fair enough. Why did you come here today?”
Angel rose; the chair was suddenly too confining. The chair, he thought, and Terrick’s keen, sharp gaze. Northern steel, there.
“I’m in House Terafin,” he replied. “And if everything works out, Jewel Markess will earn the House Name.”
Terrick, whose views on The Ten, with their strict disavowal of blood ties, Angel knew well, said nothing for a moment. The moment passed, and Terrick picked words gingerly, offering them in the most neutral of tones.
“The Terafin will grant the House Name—a name that many men and women of rank and power would pay to possess—to a girl who commands a handful of orphans in the poor holdings of Averalaan?”
Angel nodded. “If you’d met The Terafin, you’d understand. She could offer us money, and we’d take it in return for the same work. Or the same lack of work.”
“What do you do while you’re there?”
“Nothing,” Angel replied, flatly.
Terrick grimaced. “Pardon. Continue.”
“She could have offered money. She is paying Jewel. But—” He drew breath. “She offered something else instead, and Jewel wants it badly. Not for her own sake. Or not for her own sake alone; she wants it for us.”
“There’s more to this story.”
“There always is.”
“Are you free to tell me, or are you honor bound to withhold?”
“I—” Angel sat again. “We’ve always done what we thought best. Jay—Jewel, I mean—lives with it. Yes. I’m free to tell you.” He hesitated, then asked, “Have you ever heard the word demon before?”
The pause that followed the question was long, profound. It was also entirely Terrick’s. The Northerner watched Angel, in his new and obviously fine tunic, his darker leggings. He
was thinner than he had been when he’d first hit port, but in truth, not by much, and some of that lankiness might be due to the height he’d also gained. At this age, boys grew like weeds.
But slimmer, better dressed—these were illusory things to Terrick. Beneath them, he could see that Garroc’s son was both restless and worried. The desperation, the fury at the universe and its gods, had all but deserted him. It had been hard to watch his decline into wildness, and harder still to wait it out; to wonder, as any parent does in the silence of an empty apartment, whether the boy would find the death on the streets he seemed to be so frantically searching for.
When the boy had entered the Port Authority, Terrick had seen him. He knew Angel was aware of this. He had been both curious and almost content, which was rare.
That contentment now left him in its entirety. What remained was the Weston word at the heart of Angel’s question.
“Aye,” he said at last. “I know the word.”
Angel nodded, as if this had not surprised him. But he hesitated. “Are you going to eat that?”
Terrick snorted. He lifted the bread and cheese, wedged sausage between them, and lifted it all to his mouth, although he knew it would taste like ash.
Angel took the letter back and folded it, putting it carefully into an interior pocket. “I live at House Terafin,” he told Terrick quietly.
Terrick, chewing, nodded.
“I don’t understand all of what happened,” he continued, “but Jewel’s old teacher was The Terafin’s blood brother, before he abandoned Handernesse. They were estranged,” he added, “but in the end? He sent Jewel to The Terafin—with a letter.
“And The Terafin, after reading it, chose to house us all.”
Terrick nodded again.
“I wouldn’t have come just for that,” Angel continued. “But . . . there was a demon. He not only looked like a man, he looked exactly like The Terafin’s brother. He tried to kill The Terafin,” Angel added, “and he failed.” Angel leaned back into his chair, attempting to look relaxed and achieving the opposite effect.
“What Weyrdon said—to me—the day I met him—”
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