But he shook his head slightly. “The god.”
“Why?”
His smile, like his expression, was dangerous and bright.
“Moorelas fell in Vexusa,” Sigurne told him softly. “Armed—and armored, if legend is to be believed—”
“It is not.”
“—with a sword that could kill the gods themselves. He perished.”
“The sword could kill gods. But it was never a guarantee; it was possibility, no more. Come, Sigurne. Gods, in their day, killed gods. Bredan walks the plane, and if he is diminished, and he is—he is still a god. We have no champion, and we have no sword, but where gods walk, none are needed.
“I will speak with the Exalted.” Meralonne rose.
“What will you say?”
“They will bespeak their parents.” He turned toward the door, and then back. “But if they do not have the information we seek, we will not bring the Hunter God to the Lord of the Hells in time.”
“We cannot enter Vexusa.”
“That,” he said softly, “is my suspicion. It is also my only fear.”
11th of Corvil, 410 A.A.
The Hall of Wise Counsel, Avantari
The Terafin, accompanied by six of the Chosen, entered the Hall of Wise Counsel in silence, Morretz to her left. To her right walked Gabriel ATERAFIN. He, like the Chosen, wore House colors and arms, and if a sword on Gabriel looked strange to her, she had not asked him to set it aside; it was his right to bear the weapon.
She herself did not. Justice, the House Sword, lay in its case at the heart of her personal chambers, and she carried no other. She was aware that if she were required to wield a sword in her own defense, she would likely die. A weapon as stark and simple as a sword was not her strength; it was not where her power lay. Nor did she find comfort in wearing one.
Morretz did not fuss. He did not speak. His silence in the carriage that had brought them to Avantari, the palace of Kings was the loud silence of a man who was forcing himself to say nothing. It was not, however, a resentful silence. He had asked only that The Terafin consider a delay of a week in which to recover from her brush with death.
As she had desired to act immediately, she considered the days she had given him—the two—to be a compromise. He had pointed out that the two days, in which she had written letters without pause from dawn to dusk, were hardly days spent recovering; to force a meeting of The Ten on a simple two days’ notice required cunning, guile, and force of both will and word.
But beyond that?
Amarais glanced at his shuttered expression. Beyond that, he had fallen silent. Not even Morretz could demand that she ignore what had occurred in the foyer of her House. Nor could he pretend that they had the luxury of time.
The Terafin House runners, the messengers who could cross the Isle from morning to night without pause, had earned their keep and deepened the respect granted them; they took her sealed scrolls, and they traveled with speed, returning to her hand scrolls of a similar nature from different Houses.
She had broken many seals that day.
Nor had her letters traveled strictly between House Terafin and the rest of The Ten; they had gone out to Meralonne APhaniel in the Order of Knowledge and to Sioban Glassen, the Bardmaster of Senniel college; they had crossed the footbridge that led from the Isle to the hundred holdings, touching Merchant Houses of some renown and power along their way; they had also visited the temples of the gods, seeking counsel from the god-born, the children upon whom the gods themselves depended for their deeper knowledge of the affairs of the mortal realm. They had traveled, as well, to Avantari and even now sat in possession of the Queens Siodonay and Marieyan.
To the Kings, she had sent one letter.
But it was the letters from The Ten that were to be her chief concern on the ninth and tenth of Corvil. She intended to survive whatever was to follow the attack upon her House, and if the House did survive, she did not wish to weaken it. She was willing to take that risk, now—but she was Amarais; she would do her best to lessen the risk as much as she could.
Within The Ten, various Houses formed shifting alliances in order to broker influence and power; they might vote—in the unlikely event that a vote was called—in blocks. The Terafin, as the first among equals, had forged her own alliances, but they were tenuous at best; it was Terafin, after all, that had farthest to fall and least to gain; any other House might rise in influence if they could pick over the political remains of a divided House.
But it was The Ten, at the foundation of the Empire, who had ridden at the command of the first of the Twin Kings; they could rise, she thought, to the occasion when—and if—it could be proved necessary. She held this thought firmly in mind as she left the confines of her carriage and waited for the Chosen to join her. When they did, she proceeded through the inner gates of the courtyard in which carriages and horses were met and from there toward the grand hall that almost defined the outer castle. Beyond, in a garden that ringed the inner castle, she paused for a moment.
“Terafin?” Morretz said quietly.
She shook her head.
The dead were not here; the graves were not here. Nor were the charred ruins of large swathes of her own House gardens; instead, there were patches of indigo flowers, sheltering beneath the lazy but artful bend of willows. The breeze that came down from the height of the walls on either side carried, in its moving folds, the scent of roses, of lilac, of rowan.
But she had seen the newly turned earth into which the House Guard and almost a third of her Chosen had been laid. She had summoned the Exalted to House Terafin—and they had come—to bless and cleanse the dead of the taint of shadow; they had also performed the funeral rites, the last respects, over the fallen, while their attendants, full priests in their own right, had held braziers in which incense burned.
The presence of the god-born comforted the families in some small way, for the Exalted did not attend simple funerals or simple weddings; they seldom left their grand and glorious cathedrals at all. But for Amarais herself, there was no peace to be found in their presence.
Instead, she found anger, and she balanced between its ice and its fire as she stood beneath the shadow of willows in the lee of the palace of Kings. She had taken the oaths of the Chosen personally; they were hers. Hers to command, to lead. Hers to lose, to mourn, and to avenge.
“Terafin,” Morretz said, speaking her title as if it were her name, the question shorn off its edge. “It is almost time.”
She nodded. “Come,” she told him quietly. “It is time to meet my peers.”
The Hall of Wise Counsel was not empty when she arrived. It contained servants and the still figures, against the walls, of the Kings’ Swords. She frowned a moment when she saw them, but she did not speak. It was seldom that the Kings’ Swords were stationed within the Hall of Wise Counsel, but their presence was, in the end, a signal that even within Avantari, the Kings were now on alert.
Sweet water lay on a sideboard, near the table; there was no wine.
“Terafin.”
She glanced at the Council seats and saw The Morriset rise.
“Morriset.” She extended a hand as he approached, and he took it briefly. It was his wont to be informal in even the most formal of circumstances. She smiled as he bowed and held that smile as he rose. He was as far from imposing as a man of power could be: middle-aged, of middling height, his brown hair streaked with unruly silver, his beard a little ragged at the edges. He wore very fine cloth but in a way that suggested his tailor’s measurements had somehow failed to keep up with the unfortunate passage of time.
She had always been cautious around a man who clearly made so much effort to appear harmless and ineffective. The latter, at least, was a lie; under his guidance, Morriset’s fortunes had grown. To underscore this, he had arrived with Zandros AMorriset, the equivalent of the Terafin right-kin. Zandros, unlike The Morriset, was an imposing figure. His age and The Morriset’s were not far apart, but he wore
age as if it were power. His hair was dark and his build almost military. He bowed, briefly, to The Terafin, but he did not otherwise approach her.
“We are, it appears, early,” The Morriset said.
She nodded. The fact that he, like she, had chosen to arrive early was gratifying; it was a signal of support.
“The Tamalyn is also present. In Avantari,” he added. “He arrived, I am told, some two hours past but repaired immediately to the court of Queen Marieyan.”
“Did he arrive alone?”
“Ah, no. He arrived in the presence of the formidable and somewhat dour Michi ATamalyn; he arrived, however, without House Guards.”
At least, Amarais thought, she would get him here on time. If any leader of a House could be said to be entirely unsuited to the governance of one, it was the current Tamalyn. His interests better suited the more esoteric branches of the Order of Knowledge; how he’d managed to take control of a House Council was beyond The Terafin’s ken.
“We will wait, I think,” The Terafin said dryly.
“And you will discuss nothing of the matters that drove you to summon a full Council meeting before the meeting is in session?”
“I would, but they are long and detailed.” She glanced at Gabriel, who nodded briskly. He watched the doors, his glance straying to the Kings’ Swords without comment.
Five minutes. Ten. When the doors opened, they opened to one of the youngest of The Ten: The Kalakar. She had taken the House Seat at the age of thirty-two, and she had held it for four years in her frequently mailed fist. She was tall for a woman, and her shoulders were broad; her hair was a pale yellow, her eyes a gray-blue. She had a wide, strong jaw, and she walked with none of the deliberate and stately elegance that Amarais had spent so much of her young life learning to achieve; nor did she require it.
She had made a name for herself in the skirmishes in the South, in the Kings’ armies. There had been some fear that she would carry her military expertise into the council chambers in Kalakar; her advisers were frequently men who had served her in the army. She had certainly put her stamp upon the Kalakar House Guard—but she had done little else to interfere with the smooth running of the rest of the House’s concerns.
She was, in all, a formidable and worthy rival; Amarais respected her greatly. There was nothing forced in the greeting she offered The Kalakar, and nothing perfunctory about The Kalakar’s brief bow.
“Terafin,” she said, rising, her expression grave. “I have had some word of events that occurred on the eighth of Corvil.”
The Terafin nodded, unsurprised. She expected that eight of The Ten were aware, at least in part, of the events that had pushed her toward this meeting.
“I’m aware that there is always some element of competition among The Ten,” the woman whose personal name was Ellora said. “But we all stand to lose much if that competition becomes open warfare in the streets of the Isle.” Her gaze, as she met The Terafin’s, was speculative. “You’re not speaking,” she said at last. “There’s more to this.”
“There always is,” The Terafin replied, with a rare smile. “But when the Council is in full session—”
The doors opened, and The Berrilya entered the long hall.
If Darias was one of Terafin’s natural rivals, The Berrilya was Kalakar’s. But his concerns were not, as Darias or Terafin, political or economic in nature. Older and more severe than The Kalakar, The Berrilya had made his life the Kings’ army. He was a man who not only abided by tradition but held it almost in reverence; he was also a man to whom responsibility came naturally, even if he took it reluctantly. That Ellora was young was not an issue; many of the men under his command were. But she was flexible in ways that he was not, and those under her command showed a loyalty that had nothing, in the end, to do with tradition.
Nor could she be safely ignored: she was one of The Ten. Women comprised a small percentage of the Kings’ forces, but they did fight, and Devran accepted this. Fighting and command, however, were two different things; she could not, with the importance of her political position, be relegated to a minor role.
He had attempted, through argument and guile, to have her retired. She had responded with heat, more argument, and no guile whatsoever. She had won that battle. But The Terafin thought the war was not, by any means, over.
Two of The Ten, Amarais thought, were still actively engaged with, and in, the army; she was not aware of another historical period in which this could be said. The Kings allowed it without open hesitation; she was not certain, in their position, she would have.
But both were said to be good at what they did, and perhaps the Kings, in their wisdom, did not wish to deprive themselves of either. The situation in the South had always been delicate.
She nodded to The Berrilya, and he returned her nod. “Terafin,” he said. After a longer—and more significant—pause, he nodded to The Kalakar. “Kalakar.”
“Berrilya.”
“We were not due to meet again until Advent; I am aware that the situation is almost inexplicable, but I have matters to which I must personally attend.”
“We will begin in all haste when the Council is fully present,” Amarais replied serenely.
Devran’s frown could have frozen water. “Are we not, now, due to start?”
“We are. But the palace itself is in a heightened state of security; it is possible that the others have been delayed at the gates.”
It was, of course, almost entirely impossible, but The Berrilya understood the value of polite fiction. He did not, however, extend that understanding to the value of equally polite social interaction; he and his adjutant removed themselves from the floor as he took his seat in the Hall and settled in stiffly to wait.
The Darias arrived five minutes later.
All eyes turned to the doors when he entered, and they did not leave; not even the most powerful of men or women were immune to curiosity.
“Terafin,” The Darias said, without preamble. “This had better be good.”
He was older than Amarais, but he wore his age the way Zandros AMorriset did; he was tall, and his build alone was imposing. His hair was dark, and his skin darker as well; he was not a man who feared sun or exposure. Not yet. The russet, brown, and gold of his House did not entirely suit his coloring, but he carried them off with aplomb; he could hardly change them for a meeting of this import. He also wore a long sword.
“I assure you,” The Terafin replied, her voice cool, “that House Terafin does not press a meeting of this nature for trivial reasons.”
“Trivial?” The Darias shrugged, an elegant motion that caused light to pool in the moving folds of his robes. “That, in the end, will be for the Council to decide. But I warn you—”
She lifted a hand. “We are surely not yet at the stage where bald warnings are now offered as veiled threats in Avantari.” Her words were cool, her expression, chill.
It stopped him. “Very well,” he said, after a slight pause. “Let the Council convene.”
“We wait,” she replied, “upon the rest of The Ten. You are not the only person who felt they had the luxury of time.” She felt Gabriel grow tense at her side, but her right-kin did not choose to speak.
Nor did The Darias. He met her gaze and held it, but he did not attempt to otherwise engage; he understood, from the tone of her voice and the implied criticism she had just openly offered, that her anger was not slight.
And so, they gathered: The Ten. The men and women who, among the patriciate of the Empire, claimed some special privilege under the Kings’ laws. They could not be unseated; they could not be deposed. Their names could not be bought or sold. They were not required to conform to the ancient laws that governed heredity; nor were they required to conform to the laws that governed the behavior of the rest of the Empire if their actions did not materially affect outsiders.
Fennesar came next, followed closely by Wayelyn, the least of The Ten in matters both political and monetary. Where The Fennesar wa
s, in effect, similar to The Morriset, The Wayelyn was not: he was of the bard-born. Trained by Senniel, he had traveled much of the Empire in his youth, and his voice could still be used to good effect; it often was, in Council. It was difficult not to like him, and difficult not to trust him, although most of the Houses managed; he was not ambitious in any way that they understood.
His wife, however, the undisputed head of the Wayelyn Council, was cut from different cloth; she was a woman who understood the demands of power. Often frustrated by her husband, her hands held the reins of the House.
Garisar came next. Of the Council members, The Garisar was the elder statesman. He, like The Darias, was physically imposing; unlike The Darias his loyalties were undivided. It was not to his House that he looked, and not for his House that his intellect and his perception were honed: he served the Twin Kings.
Rumor—and rumor was, like any information that came without solid source, to be suspected—had it that he had spent some years working with, and for, the Astari. Amarais believed it. She did not care for The Garisar, and she did not trust his advice—but such advice was seldom offered. She thought, seeing the cast of his face this day, that he would speak, and for once, he would speak in concert with Terafin.
It was a disturbing thought.
The Korisamis came next. He came, as he often did, in the odd robes that Korisamis House Members wore. Silk, they fell from shoulder to ground in a fall interrupted by a sash with a complicated series of knots. Indigo sash, azure robe, gold hem. He looked more in keeping with the foreigners from the Dominion of Annagar than he did with the nobles of the various Courts; his head gleamed in magelight; it was bald. A deliberate baldness. Even his beard was a stylized drop of two graying lines that reached the midpoint of his chest.
He wasn’t the last; that was reserved—with little surprise from the seated members of the Council—for the harried head of House Tamalyn, who managed to slide between the open doors before The Korisamis had fully deserted them. That he did not collide with The Korisamis was proof that Kalliaris smiled when amused. And that trivial things amused her.
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