House War 03 - House Name

by Michelle West

  Angel nodded, losing at last the hesitance that had marred all of his questions.

  “I have never desired to serve the powerful,” Ellerson replied. “Not all of the powerful make a difference in this world. I have been content to serve those who need what I offer, and this will always be the case. Men of power—women of power—require a knowledge and a state of mind that is not mine; I do not protect in the ways that a domicis who serves such a lord must be able to.

  “Power doesn’t define worthiness,” he added softly. “Or rather, it is not the only definition that counts; perhaps it counts for the young. Perhaps. There are those among my peers who have served rulers all of their lives.”

  “But—but why did you decide—”

  Ellerson smiled. It was a worn smile. “I observed,” he said quietly. “And for me? It is the street musician’s song that speaks more strongly than the orchestra.” His answer made little sense to the boy; he saw that.

  “You must understand what it is that you admire,” he told Angel quietly. “You must also understand what it is that you require of a leader or a ruler.”

  “And if I’m wrong?”

  “There is no wrong, or rather, no wrong that is not the product of deceit.”

  It was not the answer that the boy wanted. And the boy was not entirely his charge, but in spite of this, he gentled his voice and tried again.

  “What you trust, what you respect, and what you consider worthy will define your service—but it is tied to what you know and what you understand. Service and worship are not, in the end, the same thing; you can offer your service to something you respect and even love—but you offer much less to something you worship and hold in awe. Worship is a burden,” Ellerson added softly, “and in the end, it is a burden that men are not capable of shouldering well, or for long, no matter how much they might think they desire otherwise.

  “You ask me why I don’t serve a lord of power? Why don’t you?”

  The lights that flickered in sconces at the shrine never seemed to gutter or dim; they weren’t magical. They were tended. Jewel half expected to see the person who maintained them, but there were no gardeners in the night garden; nothing but the breeze seemed to move the grass. Even the birds were all but silent.

  It was the silence that she found difficult at times. In the holdings, there wasn’t much of it. Certainly not at home; several people sleeping almost on top of each other still made noise. Arann especially. But in the early morning, even before the den made its way out of the front doors, there’d been movement and noise in the streets below.

  People needed to eat, after all, and food didn’t grow on their counters.

  Here? It might as well have. It appeared on their table as if by magic, and there was so damn much of it, they didn’t really need more than one meal a day. Ellerson, however, insisted.

  Most of the den had stopped their packrat habits; they’d had weeks to get used to things. But Finch often squirreled away the leftovers, and Ellerson overlooked this. Loudly.

  Jewel touched the altar with her palm.

  Torvan, however, failed to emerge, and after a moment, she dropped to her knees and rested her head against the cool stone. She was awake, yes, but she was so damn tired. Not sleepy; sleep had been riven from her, and she didn’t yet wish to return to it. But she wanted company, even his.

  Talk to your den, idiot.

  I can’t. I can’t talk about anything I’m doing. I can’t talk about my fear and my guilt; it’s not like they don’t have enough of their own.

  She closed her eyes and saw only darkness behind her lids.

  Please, she thought, resting there. Please. Don’t take them away from me. Don’t let me lose anyone else.

  But the undercity, its passages closing one by one, now loomed large in her thoughts and fears. It was there they’d lost Lefty, Fisher, and Lander, and she knew that whatever had taken them had been nothing as simple and merciful as a fall. She would have to tell the others that, and she couldn’t face them now.

  What would she say, after all? I’m sorry. Yes. Just that. And maybe she’d wait there for their forgiveness. It was almost too much.

  She was unprepared for the sound of footsteps here. They were wrong for Ellerson, and they were definitely far too quiet for Torvan, whose feet fell like steel thunder wherever he walked.

  Maybe, she thought, as she turned, it was the unseen servants who tended the shrine. She took a breath, struggling with her sense of invaded privacy because she was aware that she had no right to it.

  But it wasn’t a servant.

  “T-Terafin.”

  “Jewel,” The Terafin replied. She looked at the altar at which Jewel had been kneeling. “We have come here, no doubt, for the same reason—although I confess I’m surprised that you found the shrine so readily.”

  Jewel could think of nothing to say, and sometimes silence—although it was often hard—was best. Her Oma had said that a lot, but then again, her Oma had never been silent.

  “What troubles you, Jewel?”

  Jewel turned back to the altar, bowing her head a moment as if in prayer. And wasn’t she, in the end? She brought her hands briefly up to her face and then let them fall. “I don’t know how you do it,” she said softly. “I don’t know how you can be responsible for so many people. I don’t know how you can choose your Chosen. It’s not their oath—I understand that—it’s that they uphold it at all. Torvan says they die. For you.”

  “They die,” The Terafin said, in a perfect, regal voice, “for Terafin.”

  But it was late, and Jewel was tired. Too tired to be cautious or political. “They die for you.” It was the truth. Anyone with two eyes, or at least one open one, could see that.

  And hadn’t her own died for just the same thing, in the end? Hadn’t Duster died in the open streets, with no chance at all, for some of the same reason Torvan would, if the need arose?

  “We don’t even have the bodies. I mean, not that they’d’ve meant much in the twenty-fifth—but here, here where everything’s decent and we’ve got anything we ever wanted—here, it matters.”

  “Jewel, you cannot continue to think about the dead. Think about the living.”

  “I do,” Jewel told the woman who ruled the House she wanted for her den. For herself, if she were honest. What would it be like, to know that things were in the hands of this powerful, intelligent, and completely confident woman? The Terafin could make the decisions. She already did. She would know what to do, unlike Jewel, who stumbled from mistake to loss and back again. “I think about them all the time. Because if I make a mistake, they might not be alive to regret it.”

  “Then if you have ever desired rulership, remember this.”

  I never desired it, Jewel thought. She glanced at The Terafin, pushing her hair out of her eyes so that they could see each other clearly.

  “How do they haunt you?” The Terafin asked.

  Jewel examined the words for a criticism she did not, in the end, find. Instead, more dangerous than she had ever thought possible, she saw a glimmer of the compassion that comes from understanding.

  “At night. It’s always at night. I haven’t had a single night’s sleep in the last three weeks where I didn’t see them.” Her voice grew that shade of distant that spoke of memory. “They’re dead. They rise out of the ground, out of the stone—they reach for me, and there’s nothing in their eyes but death. They blame me.” She tried to hide pain and fear behind laughter; it worked. Sort of.

  “Are your dreams usually significant?”

  Jewel glanced, again, at the woman who was the master of her fate. There was an edge to the question that spoke of certain knowledge. For a moment she tightened, her body gathering in on itself.

  Best begin as you mean to continue, her Oma said quietly, no softness in the words. It was almost a comfort. It was like permission.

  “If they happen all the time. They aren’t—they aren’t the wyrd, though. These dreams,” she added. “
They’re different enough each time.”

  “Raising the dead in such a fashion is an art long lost,” The Terafin told her quietly, as if it were meant to comfort. The words were unexpected enough that they did. Jewel hadn’t taken the dreams literally. She understood them as the accusation they were, and it was not the first time she had failed the people she loved.

  It would not, she thought, be the last. But . . . she had all but promised them safety.

  “Jewel, how long have you been coming to the shrine?”

  “I don’t know. A week, maybe a little more.” Jewel hesitated, and then asked, “Why?”

  “Who taught you the customs of the Terafin shrine?”

  Her next hesitation was shorter. “Torvan.”

  “Oh?”

  “He was on duty in the gardens the night—the first night—that I came here. He said I wasn’t allowed to touch the altar unless I had something to offer the House. And I do,” she added, forcing herself to speak firmly. “Myself and my service.”

  “I see.” The Terafin glanced at the altar and then nodded. “And that, in the end, is all any one of us has to offer, no more and no less. Come; if you take comfort from this, then join me. For I, too, have had my nightmares. This force that we are searching for—it is not the province of Terafin alone; I do not have the resources to combat the kin wherever we may find them and to uncover the source of their summoning.”

  “But . . . you’re part of the Kings’ Council. You have the ears of the Kings. You can go to them and tell them and they’ll listen to you.”

  “Yes. But it would be much as if you went to the magisterial guards when you had difficulties with your rivals in the twenty-fifth.”

  Jewel snorted; she couldn’t help herself. The Terafin, who saw so much so clearly, could sometimes be so wrong. The fact was both unsettling and strangely comforting. “No. They’d never listen to me.”

  “Then it’s not the same,” The Terafin replied, accepting Jewel’s assertion without argument. “But there are similarities. The Ten are not like brothers and sisters; they do not serve the same House or the same purpose, although they all serve Essalieyan in their particular ways.

  “Among The Ten, there is a heirarchy, an understood measure of power and influence. Terafin is a seat that holds power. And I will weaken Terafin in the eyes of The Ten if I go to the Kings for aid, no matter how justified that request might be. Among The Ten are two who are our enemy, and they are close enough in rank to take advantage of any sign of weakness.

  “But if I do not go to the Kings, there may be, in the end, a far greater price to pay than momentary political power. I don’t know what form that price will take, but I believe it has already started.” Her lids closed over her eyes, and she bowed her head forward.

  She was silent for a long moment, and that moment was the time it took Jewel to understand that The Terafin was praying.

  We’re not so different, she thought, almost in wonder. We’re afraid of the same things, it’s just that hers are so much bigger. And again, she felt awe for this woman and for what she carried in silence behind the perfectly schooled lines of her expression.

  She started to speak, and then the world shifted as she gazed at this woman’s face. Saw it whiten, go pale and gray, saw it lose the patina of control and power that was so damn compelling.

  Saw, she knew, death.

  She cried out, all words, all attempt at them, momentarily swamped by the sudden, certain knowledge that hit her like a blow to the gut. She fell back, her hands striking the hard, cold marble of gleaming stairs before she managed to catch herself, hold herself in.

  “Jewel!” The Terafin rose, prayer broken, and turned in Jewel’s direction.

  “Don’t do it,” Jewel told her, managing to get her elbows behind her and lever herself off the ground. “Don’t do it or they’ll kill you.”

  It was not the answer that Amarais had come to the Terafin shrine to receive, but she had asked, and she accepted what was given.

  She offered Jewel Markess her hand, and the girl stared at it, as if still seeing death. But Amarais did not withdraw that hand; she simply held it steady in front of the girl’s dark eyes until the peculiar distance in them receded.

  Jewel took the offered help; her hand was shaking. But she did not plead with The Terafin; she did not further add to the stark and certain words.

  “You have offered me an answer.” She rose. “But you, Jewel Markess, what answers did you seek at the House shrine?”

  Jewel realized, then, that she would never understand the powerful. But the vision’s grip loosened, and she shed it as she rose, her elbows aching at the contact with cold marble. She would have brushed the question aside had it been asked for the sake of politeness, for she’d come to understand the casual question that desired no answer that wasn’t a verbal translation of a nod or a wave.

  Instead, she glanced at the altar. It steadied her.

  “I need my den,” she said quietly.

  Any other woman might have chosen to misunderstand the reply; any other woman might have found it confusing, for Jewel’s den was here, in House Terafin, under the watchful and expert eye of both handpicked servants and the Chosen, not to mention Ellerson.

  But . . . this woman was The Terafin. She drew breath, considering the words. “What do you need of them?” she finally asked.

  Jewel exhaled, because she could. “I need them to be what they were.” Shaking her head, she added, “No, they are what they were—but they’re not doing anything. I can’t talk to them,” she added, spreading her hands until her fingers were taut and almost white. “I can’t talk about any of the stuff I do. I don’t know what you talk to your Council about. I don’t know what you say to your Chosen when I’m not with you. Maybe you tell them nothing.

  “Maybe that’s because there’s nothing they can tell you. But I’m not like that. I—” she struggled again with words, with the certainty of her inadequacy in the face of this woman’s experience and knowledge—and with the uncertainty of what that admission might cost her den. “But my den—they’re not my servants. I don’t pay them. I can’t really tell them what to do.”

  “You lead them.”

  “Yes.” She faced that clearly. “Yes. I lead them. They follow me.” She turned back to the altar, to its gleaming, cool surface, and imagined for a moment that she could lay her forehead against it and find peace. “But I follow them, as well. I’m led by them. What they worry about, what they say—even what they choose not to say—it guides me.

  “Here, in this place, they have nothing to say, nothing to offer me. It makes them feel useless, and it makes me feel blind.”

  She raised her face to meet The Terafin’s. The older woman had said nothing, but that nothing was not in her gaze; Jewel felt measured. She couldn’t tell if she was being found wanting. “What do you need them to know?” The question didn’t give much away.

  But it didn’t matter.

  She faced the woman who ruled the House, letting her fear and anxiety drop away for a moment. It wasn’t gone forever; she knew that. Knew that she would pick it up and shoulder it as the burden it was in probably less than an hour. But she needed to set it aside right now.

  “I want this House for them. I want it,” she added, speaking cleanly and clearly, “for myself. I know I have to earn it. I know the decision to give the House Name is yours in its entirety.

  “But Rath sent me here. And he sent me here, to you, for a reason. I don’t know if it killed him,” she added. “Because I don’t know, in the end, what killed him. I knew he would die. I told him he would die. He chose what he chose. They always do,” she added, with a trace of bitterness.

  “But I’m here now. I’ve seen the House. I’ve seen you. And I trust you enough to give my den to the House. They’re worthy of it,” she added. “I know that now. I’ve seen your servants. Your guards. Even your Chosen. My den are worthy to be numbered among them.” She lifted a hand. “But I know that wh
at I think doesn’t matter. I know they have to prove themselves, as well.

  “But they can’t. Not in silence. Not in ignorance. They huddle in the West Wing because—yes—I tell them to huddle there. But they’ll never know enough to be part of this House if they continue to do that. And I’ll never know enough to be part of this House because I’m almost never in it.”

  “And how much, in the end, do you think you are all required to know?”

  Measured words. Cool words.

  “I don’t know. But it’s not enough to know which halls lead to the healerie and which halls lead to your offices—all of them. It’s not enough to know how to get to the garden or even how to get to this shrine. We don’t know enough about how anything works here. We knew how things worked in the twenty-fifth.”

  “What, then, would you have me to do to alleviate this ignorance?”

  Jewel’s answer was slow in coming. She hadn’t planned this conversation, because she hadn’t foreseen this meeting; that was the problem with her talent. You couldn’t count on it to do anything subtle. Swallowing, she said, “I want Arann to spend some time in the House Guard.”

  It was hard to tell who the words had surprised more. But Jewel’s surprise, she could manage to contain; she’d said them, after all. “I want Teller and Finch to be employed—I mean, to be stationed—with one of the merchants.”

  “They can read and write?”

  “Yes.” The question bit, and Jewel let it. “They can read and write. Teller is our best, but Finch isn’t much worse. They’re not as good yet with numbers, but they’re working on what I know.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m only good enough to keep a roof over our head and food in our stomachs.”

  “Good enough, then. And what, in this theoretical education, would you do with the others?”

  Jewel grimaced. Kick at least one of them in the butt. She did not, however, share this bit of humor. “The others have probably already made a few friends.

  “But . . . I need to be able to talk to them. I don’t have to tell them everything—but I can’t keep telling them nothing. They have nothing to say to me, nothing to offer, if I do. You don’t tell the House Council everything you’re thinking—but if you told them nothing, what would be the point?”