“Stop it? Oh. No, dear; if there were anything on earth that could have done that, it would be finished by now. They’re here to keep the peace. Such as it is.”
“But from what?”
“From us,” was the quiet reply. “People are stupid when they’re frightened. Stupid people forget consequences and costs; they’re so caught up in their fear they can’t think about the future.” She hesitated and then said, “One of the Southern Offices was set on fire during the night. No one was there,” she added, “so no one died. The Kings’ Swords are here to make sure there’s no repeat in any other office while people can die. Go back to the desk, dear. There’s nothing to see here.”
Here.
But what about the rest of the holdings? What about the twenty-fifth? Finch started to ask, but she stopped, because she thought she already knew the answer. Jay was the angry one, had always been the angry one—but Finch felt some of Jay’s anger now. Maybe because she had someplace warm to sleep and enough food to eat. She shook herself and returned to the desk.
At the desk, she picked up her quill, centered the paper on which she was to write something. Anything. A report. She wrote the date and stopped. Henden. Of course it was Henden. The eleventh, yes; it was not yet a return to the six dark days that marked the end of the year.
That had marked the end of the year so long ago it had never felt real, although she, like any child born in Averalaan, had observed the Six Days. In the Common during the Six Days, business slowed to a trickle; it never completely halted. The foreigners continued their trade, and some of the ambitious merchants would hire them to work. But for most of the city, the banners and shrouds came out; the food became simple and sparse. Not that it wasn’t usually simple and sparse in Finch’s experience, or her previous experience. She hadn’t thought about what it would be like, those six days, in House Terafin. Would the food stop?
If the screaming stopped, Finch thought, on the edge of a prayer, she would find a way to live without the food. It was the eleventh, not the twenty-third. If the Dark Days hadn’t even arrived, how much worse would they be this year? The city would be consumed by them. The Kings’ Swords couldn’t stop fear from spreading; they would add to it, yes—becoming just another thing to fear.
“Lucille?”
Lucille was by her side like a looming shadow—but it was a shadow, conversely, made of light and warmth and solidity. Finch, like Jewel, didn’t like to be touched or held, not by people she didn’t absolutely trust. But she almost turned and threw herself into this woman’s arms. Didn’t, because she was in the office, and she had work to do.
“Yes, Finch. I’m here.”
“The Dark Days.” Finch looked up.
“Yes. Almost upon us, not that there’s been much preparation for the celebration at their end.” Lucille shook her head. “But they did end. Remember that, if you can. The darkness, the fear, the terror that gripped this poor city—it ended when Veralaan returned.”
Veralaan had been the only heir to the Blood Baron who ruled the country that had not—quite—been an Empire. The Baron was mage-born, Finch recalled, although some stories placed him as the scion of demons. He’d died, and left one living child as heir. Every noble in the Barony had circled her like carrion creatures, demanding her hand—and through it, control of the Barony itself. But Veralaan had disappeared for one night, and when she returned, she brought two sons, two fifteen-year-old sons, and she had resigned her claim to the throne in their favor. And one look at either child might explain much: They had eyes of gold. God-born, both, and Veralaan greatly aged in her single night’s absence.
The sons of her body, the first Twin Kings of the Empire, did not inherit in peace; they fought battle after battle to hold their mother’s birthright. The first Wisdom-born King. The first Justice-born King. Cormalyn. Reymalyn. Sons of gods, they vowed to rule the Empire wisely and justly.
“There’s no Veralaan now,” Finch whispered.
“No. Maybe there never was; old stories are strange that way. But . . . the Kings are still god-born, and they still rule. While they live and rule, they fulfill their fathers’ mandate. It isn’t over, yet, Finch. It’s dark, yes.” Lucille turned her face away for a moment, but Finch saw the tightening of her mouth and the lines around the corners of her eyes; she swallowed her pain.
“It will get darker, gods know how. But the darkness ends, every Advent. We celebrate Veralaan’s return. Hells, the city bears her name, and she was just as human, and just as talentless, as most of us. You, me. It’s hard to hope,” she added, lowering her voice. “And it hurts. But without it? We have riots, and we kill each other in terror and anger.”
Finch tried a smile. It shattered on a sob—not hers, but the faceless sob of a dying man. Or a dying boy—it was hard to tell. He was screaming for his mother.
“It’s hard to wait,” Lucille added. “It’s harder than anything I’ve ever done. Look at me. I’m used to getting things done, Finch. Just to stand back, to wait with the helpless as if I’m one of them—” She shook her head.
And for just a moment, Finch could see a familiar face, a familiar expression, in the lines of the older, stouter woman: Jay’s face.
“Waiting is always hard. I sometimes think the fighting—and the dying that comes with it—would be easier because I’d be doing something. But I’ve learned how to wait. Hardest thing I’ve learned. How to wait, with grace. How to know when I can make a difference, and when I have to trust someone else—someone I can’t see or damn well speak to or at—to make that difference for me.”
“I want you to meet Jay,” Finch said.
Lucille raised a brow.
“She could say that. What you said. I mean, she couldn’t—but—” she shook her head. “But I think she needs to learn what you’ve learned. I think you could teach her.”
Lucille surprised Finch with the gift of her open laughter. It played out against the shattered and shattering sobs. “That’s not a lesson you can teach,” she told Finch. “If the girl’s anything at all like I was, she’d probably stab me for trying.”
Finch looked shocked—because she was—and Lucille laughed harder. If there was an edge of hysteria to the laughter, it didn’t matter; it had been so damn long since Lucille had laughed, and Finch wanted the anchor of that sound. “But I’ve a mind to meet this Jay of yours anyway. Not to give her advice she’d spit at, mind, but to thank her. She kept you safe, girl. And this office would be pretty bloody unbearable without you, at the moment.”
Pain swallowed mirth, and the warmth guttered. The problem with the office was that there was hardly any business-as-usual; they were waiting here, in the safety of the Authority, with the guards lining the stairs in such numbers a normal merchant would be hard pressed to make his or her way through the thicket of their arms.
And all the while the man, or the boy pain had turned him into, begged and cried and screamed.
There was no silence coming; not for an hour or more. There was work, but Lucille called it make-work, which had seemed so odd to Finch in her first week but made so much sense now. But to work seemed almost an act of trivialization, to both of them, even though Lucille said sharply, “There’s nothing we can do. At all. We might as well do something.”
No wonder people were slowly going mad all across the hundred holdings. Finch, at the desk, might go mad if she had to endure another day of a stranger’s untouchable pain.
But she swallowed. She thought that every day. And she came back every day. Because Lucille was counting on her. Because Jarven was happy to take tea with her and discuss the minutiae of the office in so much detail even Lucille couldn’t keep up a polite facade—not that she was all that good at that anyway.
“Finch.” Lucille bent and removed something from Finch’s hand; it was the paper on which she’d been making notes. They were silent for a moment, facing each other, and then Lucille very carefully pulled Finch into her arms. Finch didn’t even stiffen.
; She let herself be held by this bear of a woman, this woman who terrified even the House Guard, and she bit her lip until it bled because it had been days and days and days and the voices were getting louder and there was no end in sight and any of those people, any one of them, could be her own kin: Lefty, Fisher, Lander. Gone to the undercity.
Jay hadn’t said it. It didn’t need to be said. They all knew it. All of them. There was no hope for any of the people who had obviously died so horribly below their damn feet. There was no—
Hope.
Finch heard it first, but not by much; she felt Lucille’s arms stiffen and then fall way. “Lucille?”
“Aye,” the older woman said. “I heard it, too.”
And in case they didn’t, it came again: The clear—the absolutely unmistakable—sound of horns being winded. It cut through the screaming for just a moment; it cut through the terror. It wasn’t music; it was a call to arms, a call to war. But it was nonetheless possibly the most powerful single note that Finch had ever heard in her life, and she would remember it that way for as long as she lived.
Lucille drew her to the windows that overlooked the street as Jarven uncharacteristically came out of his office to join them.
“Who is it?” Finch asked. “Is it the Kings? Have the Kings come?”
Jarven’s smile was gentle and rueful, which meant she was wrong.
“Listen. The horns draw closer. If I am not mistaken, Finch, you will see whose horns are being winded because you will see the standard carried.” He frowned slightly and then added, “You are being taught to recognize the standards of the Houses—not just The Ten—as well as those of Avantari?”
When she looked at him with marked hesitation, he turned to Lucille and said, “That will not do. She will have to learn those as well; we cannot have her cause an incident because she failed to recognize the significance of the nobles she might deal with.”
“As opposed to you, who cause incidents with full and total knowledge?”
“Lucille,” he said, looking hurt. And then, “Ah. My eyes are not what they once were, Finch. Look, if you can, out the right bay—can you see them now?”
She glanced at Lucille, who said, “He’s in charge. If he tells you to climb up into the window and press your face against the panes, I am not in a position to countermand his orders.” She hesitated and then said, “Here, let me help.”
To Finch’s surprise, she did, and Lucille was strong enough to bear her weight as if it were nothing. She started to say something and stopped, because she could see them now: horsed riders, armor glinting in the cold winter sun. A banner flew; the wind in the city wasn’t high, and it hung straight, the emblem of the rod and the sword gleaming in the sunlight like gold against a field of blue. Above the crossed symbols of the Justice-born King and the Wisdom-born King was a silver crown with three peaks, the largest of which contained what looked to Finch like a diamond, or like a diamond should look if the stories were true. The leader of the group—for there was one, even if she rode behind the banners—rode a large horse, and it was she who carried the horn, for she stopped in the center of the large semicircle over which the Merchant Authority ruled, and she winded it.
Her armor was like the armor in stories. It was perfect, perfectly shaped; it reflected light, and it seemed to bear writing that glowed, faintly, across its chest. The legs and the arms were in jointed pieces trimmed in gilt; the gauntlets seemed gold, although they couldn’t be.
When she lifted her helm, she handed it to someone, and she shook her hair loose; it fell in white-gold plaits, and Finch knew, then, who this must be: Queen Siodonay the Fair, wife to King Reymalyn. The Queen lifted the horn to her lips, and when it sounded, it was the only thing that could be heard in the office. Finch wanted the note to go on forever.
Jarven said, “The Queen Siodonay.”
Finch said nothing.
A smaller banner came to rest beside the Queen’s banner; it was similar in color and in design, but instead of the Queen’s crown, it bore a narrow circlet that glittered in the sun.
“Finch?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah. The Princess Royale. The only child not god-born to be granted the Kings in this generation. Nevertheless, it is said she favors her grandfather, Cormaris, Lord of Wisdom. I would not be surprised in the end if this was her idea.”
Last came a man in armor, astride a dark horse, who wore not a helmet but a . . . wreath. A golden wreath. No banner was brought for him, so she couldn’t be expected to recognize him by his colors, but in this case, she didn’t need them. No one who had lived in any part of Averalaan for all his or her life could fail to recognize the wreath. Even if they were so poor they never got to see any of the competitions that led to that wreath, they could line the streets at the height of summer to watch the victors on parade.
Finch said, pointing, “That man—he’s won the Kings’ Crown!”
“Aye,” Lucille said, in an oddly quiet voice, “that he has. And twice. Jarven?”
Finch looked back. Jarven was studying the streets through the window; he appeared to be watching the Queen, but she could see the way his gaze flickered over the gathering crowd.
“Sivari is his name. Verrus Sivari,” Jarven told her, without looking away from the streets. “What is the Princess Royale doing?”
Finch looked. She appeared to be standing to the right of the Queen Siodonay.
“Ah,” he said softly. “They will speak, Finch. Would you care to accompany me?”
“Jarven,” Lucille said sharply.
“It will be a long time before she has another opportunity to hear a Queen speak,” he replied with gravity. “And on no other occasion—gods bless us—will the need be so grave. These are the Dark Days,” he told her quietly, “upon us, early. And that—that is the face, and the fact, of hope. She is wife to King Reymalyn. And it was King Reymalyn and King Coramlyn who delivered us from the Blood Barons, and who built the Empire so that, wise and just, it could withstand its many enemies.
“Come. Siodonay was a warrior before she was a Queen, and you don’t get to be called that if you aren’t canny and strong-willed.” He held out his arm, his elbow toward Finch, and she stared at it for a long moment before she flushed and placed her hand on it.
Lucille said, “I’ll mind the office.”
“Lucille—”
“I hate crowds, you know that. I’ll open the window a sliver; I’ll hear anything important. But Jarven—let anything bad happen to her—”
“Yes, yes,” he said, but under his breath.
There were, of course, Kings’ Swords. They lined the streets, and they watched as people began to gather, drawn at first by the only sound they could hear that was not pain and death, and held by the presence of the Queen and her two companions. Queen Siodonay was tall and fair; she wasn’t young, but no one young could have been the Queen she was that day. Finch at once loved her and feared to disappoint her, and Jarven smiled as she slowed.
It was a brief smile.
Queen Siodonay had come, not to give orders, but to begin—early— the recitation of the Dark Days, the rituals of which had not yet begun. But she did not speak immediately, for beneath the feet of the crowd, imprisoned by earth, stone, and magic, an unseen boy was dying. She didn’t pretend he wasn’t; she didn’t ignore his pain. But she didn’t quaver or weep or draw back; that was not why she had come.
As if pain and guilt were a storm, she stood in its center, and she bowed her head slightly, that was all. Her hands fell to her sides, one on the hilt of her sword, and she waited, with a grim and perfect patience that suggested respect for the dying. But if she did not cry out, as so many did, cringing or covering their ears, she did cry; the tears fell freely down her still face.
They were the tears of a Queen; they offered sorrow shorn of terror. People wept to see them, but their terror ebbed. At her side, the Princess Royale remained, head bowed. Her helm was in the crook of one arm; the othe
r rested against the hilt of sheathed sword as if she, too, were ready for battle.
As if this dying, this terrible death, was the battleground.
Only when death offered silence did the Queen raise her horn again, and this time, the notes she blew were different. But Verrus Sivari fell to one knee, and so did the Princess Royale, as those notes played out. They remained kneeling as the Queen’s voice rose in the silence. No one knew how long it would last, and this uncertainty made it easier to cling to the harsh clarity of her voice. Siodonay of the North. Siodonay the Fair.
She spoke of the Dark Days.
It was fitting.
The Common had not yet donned the black and white of Imperial Mourning, nor had it divested itself of the flags and the standing boards of the merchants who made it a second home—even if most of those merchants had failed to keep their regular hours for the past week or more. This year, it hardly seemed to matter; paying respects to the victims of past terrors, when the victims of the unknown enemies here and now were so much more real, was first in no one’s mind.
But . . . when she spoke of the Dark Days, she made them these days. This terror, this fear of certain death, of armies of mages and bloody rains of fire, earth, and ice—these were the Dark Days. No cloth was necessary to mark it; no self-imposed privations were necessary to remind one of what the past might have been like. It had stepped forward to greet them, showing them the starkness of their fear.
She didn’t ask them to embrace it. She asked them, instead, to accept it for what it was: the only way their unseen and undeclared enemy could attack them.
Murmurs filled the street around her words; she left pauses for them and picked up her speech again when they had traveled far enough. Her hand never once left the hilt of her sword.
“The heart and soul of man has always been the battleground of our enemies,” she said, lifting her voice as if it were the horn that hung by her side. “They cannot storm the streets of our city; they don’t have the power. But they can do the work of armies if you surrender to them.
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