House War 03 - House Name

by Michelle West

  She looked up at him.

  “You don’t have to lose him, you know.” He turned doorward.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Many, many are those who dream of joining a great House. How many truly dream of leading one?” He left her then.

  8th of Corvil, 410 A. A.

  Terafin Manse, Averalaan Aramarelas

  The day did not start as it ended. It didn’t start like any other day for Teller, either; he was up for early breakfast, and his eyes were so bleary he couldn’t quite tell whether it was dark because the sun had yet to clear the horizon or because he just couldn’t open his eyes enough to really see light. Ellerson apologized for the state of his clothing and said within a week it would be “seen to,” a prospect that didn’t fill Teller’s heart with joy.

  Even less joyful, however, was the quiet reminder that Teller was there to represent the den—and the den’s future—and in such a role, must consider himself an ambassador. He said nothing while Ellerson spoke, and to be fair, Ellerson didn’t speak all that much—but he chose his words with the usual deliberation before delivering them.

  He also made damn sure that Teller showed up in front of Gabriel ATERAFIN’S office doors on time—where on time was, at Teller’s best guess, a quarter hour early. The Chosen at the outer doors didn’t really acknowledge his presence, but he was getting used to that. They also didn’t stop him from entering the room.

  Barston was seated at his desk. Teller wondered if the man ever left the office, or if there were a couple of large rooms, hidden behind a modest door, into which Barston retired at the end of the day.

  Barston, unaware of this quiet musing, looked up at the sound of the doors. He actually smiled, although it was a stiff, mannered smile. “Very good, Teller. I am happy to note that at least on your first day here you practice some punctuality.”

  Teller nodded.

  “We have yet to take delivery of any correspondence. You will find,” Barston added, “over the course of the next few weeks, that this is the only truly quiet time of the day. Any work, any sorting, and any task that is not time-sensitive will be accomplished now.” He rose. “I have a desk for you; it is not in sight of the doors. Many other applicants considered this lack of visibility a slight on their character and their aspirations.” He raised a pale brow.

  Teller tried not to look too openly confused; whatever he managed seemed to satisfy Barston.

  “You are not very interested in visibility, are you?” Barston asked, as he led Teller around a corner and straight into a looming wall of shelves. Of many, many shelves. Some contained boxes, and some contained books; some contained stacks of open paper, all of which appeared to be letters, or at least written documents of some sort. He looked up, and up again, and then he looked in; he saw ladders, on bearings, leaning against some of those shelves.

  “This is where we keep most of the House correspondence,” Barston told him. He grimaced at the open piles. “We are, sadly, somewhat behind in the filing. That will be one of your jobs, if you prove yourself capable of handling it. The correspondence must be filed in a way that makes it accessible to those who come after you.”

  He led Teller past this. “The desk,” he said, “is just behind these shelves. Anyone who needs to find you will, of course, have no problem.”

  Even Teller could understand that “anyone” meant Barston himself.

  “Do you know how to handle a magelight?”

  Teller nodded.

  “Good. The desk is in view of windows; it was put in the back for that reason. But the light is not always good enough to work by. Certainly not at this time of year. There is, of course, an inkstand; there are quills, should you be required to annotate. If you should find that the case, you will use the blue ink. I do not need to tell you,” he added, in a more severe tone, “to be careful. You are not to obscure any of the original writing, in any case—but the blue inks are the most expensive of the inks the House procures for our use. Keep it capped,” he added.

  Teller started toward the desk, and Barston cleared his throat. “You have nothing to do there, yet.”

  Teller nodded. It was going to be a long day.

  “The first thing you do in this office,” Lucille told Finch firmly, “is stop apologizing. I’ve half a mind to dock your pay for every incidence. Except in your case, I’m not sure it would be effective.”

  Finch bit her lip, and Lucille grimaced. “You were about to apologize to me, weren’t you?”

  Since there was no point in lying, Finch chose to say nothing. It was safest, but only by a small margin; for someone who liked to talk as much as Lucille did, she was surprisingly unwilling to accept someone else’s silence.

  She hadn’t bothered to show Finch her desk—if Finch was to have one—and instead had insisted Finch pull up a chair behind hers. Which was the big bastion that greeted open doors. Finch might have felt too exposed there, but in the end it was hard to feel exposed when you were standing—or sitting—in Lucille’s shadow. After the first three seconds, anyone coming through that door politely ignored Finch anyway.

  One person was stupid enough to rudely ignore her. And, Finch had to admit, she took a little bit of pleasure in the severity of Lucille’s response.

  “People will treat you like some sort of servant if you let them,” Lucille told her. “Look at the way they treat me.”

  “Abject fear?” Finch asked, before thought could shut her mouth.

  Lucille raised a brow and then laughed. Which caused everyone in the office to glance toward them, but not with suspicion or even fear.

  “Aye, well, there’s probably truth in that. But that’s now. When I first started to work here, people thought they could walk all over me. I think they thought intimidating me might somehow get their paperwork done more quickly.

  “And there is urgency for some of it. You’ll learn to know who to listen to and who to ignore. You’ll even learn when to pay attention to people you usually ignore. That comes, with time, and with a sense of the business. But every single man or woman who comes through that door has an emergency, in his or her own mind, that must be dealt with now. They’re all busy, they’re all overworked—in their own opinions—and they all need things done on their schedule.

  “We, however, need to do things on Terafin’s schedule, and that schedule has to mesh with the Merchant Authority’s.” She turned as the door opened. “Back to work,” she told Finch.

  Finch nodded.

  Although Barston had gone to the trouble of showing him the almost hidden workspace, Teller was tucked in a small corner of the office, away from Barston’s desk, but in easy sight of it. Barston had—with slight hesitation—directed the mail delivery over to where Teller sat. It hadn’t been too bad—a stack of letters a little less intimidating than the pile given him as a test.

  Of course, that was just the first delivery. Letters arrived throughout the day. He opened them with care, read them, and then divided them into piles, which Barston would, of course, check later.

  But, as it happened, one letter gave him pause. He hesitated for long enough that Barston noticed. Barston never looked as though he was watching, but he always did; he was one of those men who naturally had eyes in the back of his head. And probably both sides as well. “What is it, Teller? You’ve been working well—if a little slowly—all morning.” He rose.

  “I think this is—I think it’s personal correspondence,” Teller said.

  “And you opened it?” Barston said, his voice dropping a few degrees.

  “It’s official correspondence from the Order of Knowledge,” Teller began. “But I don’t think—”

  Barston held out his hand, and Teller gratefully deposited the letter into it. Barston read it quickly. He also appeared to read it only once.

  “It is both official and personal,” he told Teller, but the chill in his voice had eased considerably. “And as such, you can be forgiven for opening it. Oh, and that,” he added, lookin
g at the top of the sealed letters Teller had set aside as personal, “is actually official business. It’s from Mordenel, who is somewhat old-fashioned and feels that a personal touch is helpful.” Barston clearly did not appreciate this personal touch, but Teller didn’t mind; he was watching carefully to see where Barston placed the letter he’d been handed.

  Barston frowned, and then, with the slightest of smiles, he put it on the pile of correspondence that required Gabriel’s eventual attention.

  “Master Barston—”

  “Barston, please.”

  “Barston, then. Are you certain that the right-kin shouldn’t see that letter at once?” It was, from what Teller had been able to understand, a request for money for the tuition of his son, Rymark ATerafin, if his son did not wish to put his year in jeopardy.

  Barston frowned and lifted a white brow. “I am certain,” he finally said, “that if it is an issue, I will claim that I made the error. I am also certain that the right-kin personally delivered, to Rymark ATerafin, the sum equivalent to the year’s tuition at the Order. If his tuition is in arrears, it is not through any oversight of the right-kin.”

  Teller still hesitated.

  “What is the difficulty now, Teller?”

  “I don’t think his son will be pleased,” he finally said.

  “In all likelihood, he will not be pleased,” Barston replied. “But if he doesn’t learn that some actions have consequences, he is hardly likely to make the effort to correct them. If he comes to the office, direct him to speak with me. If he fails to take your direction,” Barston added, “the Chosen will interfere.”

  “But—”

  “The right-kin is his father. The office, however, is under my jurisdiction. I have never felt that personal affairs should interfere with the smooth running of the office, except in exceptional circumstances.”

  Teller nodded. It seemed safest.

  “Finish with the rest,” Barston added. “You’ve a few hours of work there yet, if I’m any judge.”

  “What are you doing?” Lucille asked Finch, in a tone of voice reserved in general for angry mothers whose children are embarrassing them in public.

  “Guillarne ATerafin dropped these off. He wants them approved. By Jarven. Jarven told me to read them,” she added, and she looked up at Lucille in despair.

  “Remember what I told you about offering Jarven the respect his service is due?”

  Finch nodded miserably.

  “Forget it.” Lucille grabbed the papers and scanned the first page very briefly. Her brows rose. “Did you understand one word of what you read?”

  “Maybe one in three,” was the equally miserable reply.

  “Guillarne has some small stake in the mining concession granted Terafin by the Kings. This is not official trade business, but it affects some handling of that trade grant. The mines are important to Terafin, but they are not the only mines that Terafin owns. They’re significant,” she added, “because they produce emeralds and a handful of other gems of note.” She flipped a page up. “There has been some questionable handling of gems in the Authority lately,” Lucille added, lowering her voice, “which is under investigation. In the meantime, the mines have failed to produce a suitable quantity of gems.”

  “But what does this mean?” Finch asked, pointing at the documents.

  “It is a trade agreement,” Lucille replied, “between Guillarne, as a representative of Terafin, and a representative of House Cordufar.”

  Finch frowned. She stared at her hands for a long moment.

  “Finch?”

  “You said Cordufar?”

  “I did.” Lucille folded her arms. Her expression, when Finch looked up, was no longer thunderous; it was worse—Finch couldn’t read it at all.

  “What happens if Jarven signs this?” Finch asked.

  “If Jarven signs this—and to my eye, it is urgent, but that’s no excuse for his behavior—Guillarne will adjourn with a representative of Cordufar to have the document countersigned, witnessed, and entered in the Authority annals.”

  Finch’s mouth was dry. “No,” she said quietly. Her gaze drifted down to the desk as if it were anchored.

  “No? Finch, what is the problem?”

  Finch heard Lucille leafing, more slowly, through the trade agreement that had made no sense at all to her. “It’s not the agreement,” she said quietly. “I didn’t understand most of it.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “I’m not allowed to talk about it,” was the miserable reply.

  “You are going to need to talk about it,” Lucille said firmly. “Come on.” She touched Finch’s shoulder; her hand was as firm as her words, but it was still gentle; it didn’t cause a flinch.

  “Where?”

  “Jarven,” Lucille replied, with a grimace.

  “He’s going to ask me what the document said.” Finch’s eyes rounded.

  “If he does,” Lucille replied, steering Finch toward the office, “I will personally break both of his legs.”

  Jarven looked up from his desk when the door opened; Lucille had failed to knock. Obviously this wasn’t the first time she’d done it, and just as obviously, the lack of a knock meant something to the older man. He didn’t speak. He waited.

  Lucille propelled Finch toward one of the chairs in front of Jarven’s desk; she avoided taking the other by leaning over the desk and dumping Guillarne ATerafin’s precious set of contracts into Jarven’s hands.

  Jarven raised a brow.

  “There might be trouble,” Lucille told him quietly.

  Frowning, he took the documents he had so casually told Finch to read. Clearly, the tongue-twisting Weston in which they were written gave him no difficulty. He raised a brow only once and glanced up at Lucille. Not, thank the gods, at Finch. “This, for House Cordufar, is a very, very generous set of trade concessions in the current market.

  “Have you started making inquiries?”

  Lucille snorted. “No. I barely had a chance to look them over myself.” She glanced at Finch, and told her, “When an offer that looks too good on paper comes into the office, we generally tend to investigate it; what it usually means is that the man who made the offer is aware of some shift that will soon occur in the market itself. He might even be responsible for it.

  “A very, very good deal can, in the end, be a very bad one.”

  Finch nodded. She could follow this.

  “But,” Lucille added, looking at Jarven again, “that’s not why we’re here.”

  “No? No, I don’t suppose it would be.”

  “Have you heard anything about an upward trend?”

  “Very little. But Cordufar’s gem concerns are large, and he is not a man who is given to idle chatter.”

  “Finch doesn’t think you should sign this.”

  Finch tried very hard not to squirm.

  Jarven looked at her and then frowned. His friendly, if slightly distracted, smile failed utterly to come to his lips; he looked both old and suddenly severe. She glanced at Lucille, who didn’t appear to notice the change in Jarven’s demeanor. So, Finch thought.

  “Finch,” he said quietly, his voice steady and even, his gaze now piercing. “What about this contract has made you so nervous?”

  “It’s not the contract,” she said, struggling not to either grovel or apologize. “I couldn’t understand most of what it said. I didn’t even get to the part that’s a suspiciously good deal.”

  If the confession disappointed or annoyed him, it didn’t show. Finch had a suspicion he’d expected it.

  “If it is not the contents of the contract itself,” he replied, “it is either the man who brought you the contracts—that would be young Guillarne, who is known for both his flashy style and the way his grasp on occasion exceeds his reach—or the House that negotiated it.” He watched her expression carefully.

  When she didn’t answer, he turned to Lucille. “Lucille,” he said quietly. “I would like any relevant information about Ho
use Cordufar brought to my office immediately. If suitable information is not within our files—”

  “I know where to get it,” Lucille replied grimly.

  “Indeed. Do that now; we will assume that the rest of the usual emergencies can wait for an hour or two. Take an extended lunch.”

  Lucille nodded. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it again, and headed toward the door.

  “No, not you, Finch,” he told Finch as she rose to follow. “You are not nearly familiar enough with Lucille’s arcane filing system to find anything in a suitable period of time; if you’re lucky, it will only take you three days. We have less than one. Come. Sit. Wait.”

  Finch returned to her chair. Lucille was no longer standing between her and Jarven, and Finch already missed her.

  Jarven watched her for a moment, and then, to Finch’s surprise, he rose and headed toward the window. His window, unlike the window in the small rooms in which things were stored, shelved, or filed, overlooked street. The large trees that were famed throughout the Empire could be seen as rising trunks beyond his back; he faced Finch.

  “I do not know if Lucille has informed you about my personal situation,” he said quietly. “But I will tell you now that I live in the manse on the Isle.”

  “You live where we live?”

  “Not precisely where you live, and I will add that I do not perhaps live in the same stately rooms. I have no servants who are watching anxiously to compensate for any misstep; at my age, I’m expected to make none.”

  She started to speak, and he raised a hand. “I know only a few things about your den. I know the name of your leader. Jewel Markess. I know that she has been seen in the company of a First Circle mage of some renown and that he treats her—to the great surprise of many—with some deference, and even respect.”

  “Respect?” she blurted out. “They scream at each other all the time!”

  “That,” was his dry reply, “would be a sign of Meralonne APhaniel’s respect. More than that, however, I have not troubled myself to discover. However, one hears things, in a manse the size of House Terafin on the Isle.