“Oh, tush,” Jarven said, lifting the cup she’d set before him. “You’ve no doubt heard some of the opinions firsthand.”
“They all say Lucille is very . . . direct.”
“They should also say that Finch is very tactful.”
She reddened.
“But Lucille is also very protective. She disapproves of today’s tea.”
“I know,” was the quiet response.
“She doesn’t feel I have any business involving you in Council matters. Not at ‘your age.’ ” He set the cup down again. Finch noted he hadn’t bothered to drink anything. “She has the misfortune, on occasion, of seeing with her heart. You are, of course, young. Young to be here, in this office. Young to be involved in matters of the House. But you are involved,” he added softly.
“Not in any way that matters,” she replied, without thinking.
He raised a pale brow and then rose. Which was bad. But he wandered as far as his fine shelves and began to peruse the spines of the books that were just above him. His hands were behind his back as he did.
“You understand, by this time, that my job requires a certain amount of information,” he said, his back toward her, his robes rippling as he walked, slowly, across the floor for the length of the shelf. “The gathering of information is a bit of a hobby of mine; I find it endlessly amusing. Like all hobbies, it requires some care and some ability to cultivate people. Many of those people—like you, yourself—will be young and overlooked. Most will not remain that way.”
She said nothing; there wasn’t much to say.
“You might also understand that within House Terafin there are always competitions. Among the merchants, among the Council members. We are united only when seen from the outside. And let me warn you, young Finch, that that semblance of unity to outsiders is important.
“But within the House? We quarrel. We compete. We aid others as it suits our purposes or our whims. I am considered old by the House Council. Which is fair. I am. I am generally considered harmless, or toothless.” He grinned. “Which is less fair, but it suits me. Among the old or the harmless, things slip that might not otherwise slip.
“What has your Jewel seen that has so disturbed her?” He turned, then.
“I can’t talk about it,” she replied.
“No?”
She shook her head.
To her surprise, he smiled. “Information,” he told her, as he made his way back to his chair, no book in hand, “is like any other coin. I offer you this: I will explain—in terms that perhaps would elude Lucille—who the merchants of significance in House Terafin currently are. I will also offer you some guidance about future members of note, about people I feel are prominent, or will become so, on the House Council. In return for this, you will offer me some temporary refuge from my deplorable ignorance.”
“How long do I have to think about this?”
He raised one brow, and then, to her surprise, he laughed. “Lucille,” he said, when he finished, “would be proud of you, child. Take a day. Take—at most—two. Return to me, and give me your answer then.”
She nodded. Hesitated. “Can I ask a question?”
“Any question you like.”
“What can you tell me about Rymark ATerafin?”
“That,” he replied, after a signifcant pause, “is beyond the purview of what I have offered.”
She nodded again.
“Why do you ask?”
“No one will talk much about him.”
“You’ve asked others?”
“The servants. The Chosen.”
“They are wise. Do not—”
“But it’s questions like that that you’ll need to answer for me.”
He nodded slowly. Thoughtfully. “Take your day,” he said again. And then he smiled.
Chapter Fourteen
FINCH WAS CURLED UP QUIETLY in a chair in the corner of the large sitting room when Ellerson walked in. He glanced about the room, and she expected him to leave, but his white brows rose slightly at the sight of her, and he made his way toward her chair. He was carrying, of all things, a tray—but instead of food or dishes, it contained rags and something that smelled like oil. He set them down on a side table before he approached her. “You haven’t eaten,” he said.
He made the mild words sound like a serious accusation. It was a trick that she thought it would be useful to learn. But she didn’t have it in her today. “No. I’m waiting for Jay. And Teller.”
“Jewel has not yet returned?”
Finch shook her head. “Teller?”
“No. But he has been working late in the office of the right-kin these past few days; I do not expect to see him before the end of the late dinner hour.”
She grimaced and drew her legs up toward her chest, resting her chin on the tops of her knees. Ellerson frowned, but she let him. She was too tired to attempt to find manners; they were work. She waited for him to leave. He didn’t.
When she realized he had no intention of leaving, she relented, unfolding her legs and shifting her position so that she looked like she was actually sitting. This did not, however, have the desired effect; he didn’t retrieve his tray, and he didn’t continue on his way to wherever he’d been going.
“Finch,” he said quietly, surprising her. He took the chair closest to the one she occupied.
“Do I look so bad?” she asked, with a rueful smile.
“You appear to be worried. Is your work at the Merchant Authority not going well?”
“No, it’s—it’s going well. At least I think it is.”
“Lucille ATerafin has, by all accounts, a formidable disposition, and she is prone to be somewhat demanding and judgmental.”
“Lucille is fine,” Finch replied, with just a little heat. Ellerson raised a brow. “No, she is. She does tend to shout a lot—but never at me. Mostly at the members of the House who visit and forget their manners. Which seems to be about half of them on any given day. It’s not Lucille.” She hesitated and then said, “How did you know it was work?”
He smiled. “I made an educated guess. If it is not Lucille, is it Jarven?”
“You—you know Jarven?”
“I know of Jarven ATerafin. He is nominally in charge of the Terafin operations within the Authority, and he is also nominally in charge of the merchanting concerns that are not entirely internal. He is not a young man, but in his youth, he was highly . . . respected.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I consider it part of my duties to be informed about the various members of a House. My information is not particularly deep,” he added quietly, “but depth is not required in this instance.”
“Would it be in another?”
“Do you think that Morretz has a superficial understanding of the House Council and the members that are powerful within the House?”
It hadn’t occurred to Finch to wonder at all. She did so now. “I guess he can’t. He knows what The Terafin knows; I think he’s always with her.”
“He is, as his duty dictates, almost always by her side. And yes, he will observe what she observes. But he will also utilize other sources of information, and he will advise her when appropriate and when advice is requested.”
“But—but she’s The Terafin.”
“Yes.”
“And he’s a—”
“Domicis. It is not, as is often suspected, a fancier term for servant, Finch. To serve a woman of power requires more from a domicis than mere housekeeping. It requires knowledge, cunning, a deep understanding of the political arena; it also requires other skills that might aid the domicis in preserving his master’s life. It is not merely a job that requires passive obedience; it is a calling, and it carries with it a large responsibility.”
She was silent for some time, digesting this. “So . . . even if he isn’t ATerafin, he has to know these things?”
Ellerson nodded.
“And if I’m not, should I know them as well?”
At this, he smiled. His smile confirmed what she half suspected: He knew. “I think,” he told her gently, “that you already know the answer to the question. Information,” he added, “is like coin. It can be spent, and it can be hoarded. It is useful in an emergency. The difficulty with information is that you cannot always tell which knowledge will be useful beforehand, and there is much that can be learned that will seem, for years, to be a waste of your time.”
But she held on to the certainty that he knew, and she shifted position again, leaning forward, her palms beneath her thighs. “You . . . expected that Jarven would say something to me, didn’t you?”
“I suspected he might. He is not a man who likes to be on the outside, although he is not one who has schemed heavily to remain on the inside. What did he ask?”
“He wants to know what Jay’s up to.”
“And in return?”
“He’ll tell me what other people are up to, more or less.”
Ellerson nodded gravely.
“But I can’t just tell him what Jay’s doing. We’re not allowed—”
Ellerson lifted a hand. It was a gentle gesture. “No,” he said quietly. “And that, I must leave to your discretion. But, Finch, I ask you to think about one thing.”
“What?”
“The Terafin arranged for you to work with Lucille ATerafin in the Merchant Authority. The Terafin is not a fool, and she is not a poor judge of character; she would know, before she made the request, that you would come into contact with Jarven—a man who is genial and unintimidating when he chooses to be.”
“You think she wants us to—”
“I think she wishes you to learn how the House operates. Teller is now working in the office of the right-kin. Gabriel is not Jarven; he knows much more about external affairs than Jarven will know, and he knows, as well, that any question he has—any question at all—The Terafin will answer. He will not barter with Teller as if he were a merchant; that is not his job, and it is not his character.
“But Teller has already learned quite a bit from the daily correspondence filtered through Gabriel’s office, if I am not mistaken. He knows—or would know, if he bothered to think about it—who, externally, is considered a friend and who is considered a threat. He knows which of the Council members seek advice from Gabriel and which appear in his office during times of crisis, secure enough in their power that they can dispense with ‘manners’ as Lucille calls them. Yes, he knows more, and separating the useful information from the useless takes work and familiarity.
“I feel that neither your placement nor Teller’s was accidental. Make of that what you will.”
Jay came home before the end of the late dinner hour, but she wouldn’t eat. Ellerson asked her if she would take dinner, and she stared at him as if he were momentarily speaking a language other than Weston, and she couldn’t understand a word of it. Finch rose instantly; Teller had still not returned.
But Angel intercepted Ellerson before Finch could reach Jay. Angel was like that; she had hardly been aware he was in the room, but he made his presence felt now. Jay glanced at him, the blank expression on her face clearing as if with great effort. “Kitchen,” she told him, curtly.
He looked at Finch, who nodded and slipped out of the room to round up everyone else. When she had sent them all on their way, she hesitated for a moment at the closed double doors of the wing, and then, making a decision, she opened them and marched off into the halls.
Barston looked up. Because he did, Teller did the same; they had been reviewing some of the correspondence that Teller was not entirely certain about. Teller rose before Barston did, because the person who had caught Barston’s attention was Finch.
“May I help you?” Barston said, in his usual less-than-friendly voice.
Finch froze for just a second and then cleared her throat. “No, actually,” she replied, without apology. “I’m here to see Teller.”
Barton’s frown could have frozen water. Teller cringed, but he made his way out from behind the almost monolithic desk, its surface covered with various piles that were striving for tidy and failing badly. The magelights were bright enough that the office was well lit, but the lack of sunlight made the light seem dingy.
“What happened?” he asked, as he approached Finch.
“Jay’s back,” she replied. She hesitated, glancing over his shoulder at Barston, whose expression he could well imagine. “She’s called kitchen.”
He turned to get a good look at the familiar expression and then nodded. “Give me a minute,” he told her. “But wait outside; we can run back together.”
They were the last two to reach the kitchen, but they’d had a longer distance to travel. Jay was sitting quietly on the edge of a stool; she hadn’t bothered to pull up one of the chairs with actual arms. Finch glanced at the table; there was a lamp—two—that flickered orange; there were no magelights. More significantly, no slates. Teller noticed the lack and turned back toward the swinging doors they’d entered, but Jay barked his name and he stopped.
“No slates,” she told him. “I wasn’t dreaming.”
He froze for just a second before he came back to the table—but Finch almost missed it. They all had. Jay’s voice was just . . . wrong. They glanced at each other, but no one spoke. Kitchen councils were familiar and oddly comforting most of the time. This one wasn’t going to be. They all knew it.
Even Ellerson, who now stood to one side of the doors by the wall, a third lamp hanging loosely from one hand.
Chairs scraping floor were the only noises in the room for a good five minutes. But even that died; they listened to the sound of flames enclosed by glass and watched the odd shapes of shadows lamplight threw.
“Today,” Jay said, her voice rough.
Teller watched her face closely; Finch knew, because she watched Teller’s. In council, such as this was, he was the den’s weathervane. In crisis—which for months had meant Carmenta and his den—Angel was better, but there were no drawn knives here, no physical danger. And Teller, Finch thought, was now afraid.
“I was at the Cordufar manse. With the magi. And Devon.” She glanced at Ellerson, and in the poor light, the shadows beneath her eyes were almost black. Those eyes were wide; she was staring straight ahead. But she lifted her hands, briefly, as if to cover her ears, and as she did, her eyes closed tightly.
“Breathe,” Teller whispered. He reached out, covered the back of one of her hands with the palms of his, pulling it gently toward the tabletop. She didn’t even shrug him off. But he didn’t ask her anything. He waited. Because he did, they all did, although Arann was now tense and pale.
“It—we were digging. They were digging,” she added. “The magi can lift the damn dirt and most of the stones without touching anything.” She tried to smile. It was sickly. “They’d been at it for most of the day.” Her voice dropped slowly, syllable by syllable, until it was barely audible.
“That’s when it started.” She closed her eyes again. Opened them. Finch thought she might leave her chair and begin to pace—but she lowered her hands and gripped the rounded edges tightly instead. “We can hear—we could hear—voices. We thought—we thought they were there. Trapped in the manse. So they started using real magic.” She paused, looking around the table.
This time, Teller did speak. “Did they find them?”
She looked away, but she didn’t snap at him, didn’t raise either voice or hand as she often did when she was afraid or worried. “They’re not in the manse. They’re not in the basement.”
“Jay—”
“We think—we’re not sure—but we think they’re in the undercity.”
Silence.
“How loud were the voices?”
“Not loud. Not loud at all. But—too damn loud to be heard from the undercity.”
It was Angel who looked up as she said that. “Magic?” he asked quietly.
“They think so. They weren’t talking to me,” she added. “They were talking
to each other. I might have missed something. I—” she glanced at Ellerson again. Swallowed. “I have to go back tomorrow. I think they’re bringing in more of the Order and some people from the Kings’ Court.”
“Jay,” Teller said.
She looked at him.
“These people—”
“Are dying,” she replied. She stared at her hands. “Devon said they’re not real voices. He thinks it’s some sort of attack.”
No one asked Jay whether or not she believed him. They already knew the answer.
Jay slept badly.
Teller wouldn’t have known, but anxiety over his desertion of the desk from which Barston ruled, combined with the kitchen meeting, had destroyed even the faint hope of sleep. It did not, unfortunately, alleviate exhaustion. He had eaten—they had all eaten—a sparse meal that Ellerson himself prepared in the kitchen after Jay had left, and the food now sat like cold rocks in the pit of his stomach. He wore the sleeping gown he’d been given and, over it, a heavier wrap; he lay with his head dead center in the depths of a huge pillow, staring at the ceiling in the darkness.
Because he was awake, he heard Jay’s scream, and he was out of bed almost before he was aware that he was moving. He managed to catch himself before he threw the door open, and it opened silently into the muted lights of the hall. A moment later, another door opened; he saw Finch peering around the crack of darkness that led from her room.
They didn’t speak; instead, they waited.
When they heard Jay again, they nodded and began to move; only when they reached her closed door did they hesitate.
“Ellerson’s there,” Finch said quietly.
Teller nodded.
Neither of them retreated. Jay was still screaming, and they couldn’t force themselves to go back to their rooms. Teller grimaced and then opened the door. Its hinges, like the hinges of all the doors in this huge suite of overfurnished rooms, were well oiled; the movement was almost silent.
But the doors were thick; the voice that reached out for them from the lamplit room was much, much louder than the voice that had drawn them from their separate darknesses.
House War 03 - House Name Page 39