House War 03 - House Name

by Michelle West

  “If you riot in the streets in your terror, no armies will be needed; you will fight—and kill—each other. They need no better weapon than that.

  “Do not give it to them. Understand that you are the soldiers upon which Averalaan depends—and has always depended. If we are to win this war—and it is a war, make no mistake—it will be because you have frustrated their desire and their ambition to break the city without ever approaching its walls.

  “And you will. They need your fear and your panic; they rely upon them. But your ancestors, your forefathers, faced the darkness, and we remember and honor them every year. This year you will be called upon to do more than honor those memories; you will live up to what they believed and what they hoped for.

  “And when Veral returns—as it returns every year—the shadow will pass, and you will remember that what they fought for and what they believed in is, measure for measure, what you will now fight for and what you will struggle—in the darkness of hours—to believe in.

  “That is what Averalaan is. A city named after a woman who was trained not to sword but to loom and who was expected, because of that lack, to choose a husband who would continue to break and destroy her people.

  “The path she chose none foresaw—least of all those assured of their power and the fear it engendered. We are all her children; we live upon lands that proudly bear her name. War is not always fought upon horseback or in armor, and it is not always won by strength of arms.

  “In less than a fortnight, you will find the banners and flags and curtains that have marked our traditions for centuries, and you will lay them out in the shadow of war; we will do likewise. But we will be here on the mainland, among you; we will wait, and we will fight, as we ask you to wait and fight.

  “Trust yourselves, even when fear is strongest. We do.”

  Verrus Sivari and the Princess Royale rose, and they offered a salute very like the one that Torvan offered The Terafin. But they did not offer it to the Queen; they offered it instead, in respect of her words, to the crowd that watched and listened, to the people who had huddled behind closed doors and shuttered windows for most of the day, pretending to work, the way Finch had done, day in and day out since the voices had first spread to the Common.

  And Finch felt pride in those attempts for the first time. They were more than just make-work; she understood that now. They were making sanity. They were trying to hold on to the motions of everyday life because it mattered. She looked up at Jarven, who placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and nodded as if she had spoken.

  “Yes,” he said, with a smile. It was a weary smile, but it was genuine. He looked back to the Queen, and his smile strengthened. “Yes. Come, Finch.”

  “Back to work?”

  “Back,” he said quietly, “to work. While we can, it is important to do so. And,” he added, as the crowd began to slowly disperse, “I hope that some merciful god did indeed persuade Lucille to open a window and keep an ear out.”

  Finch laughed. “Has she been difficult?”

  “My dear child, you have no idea.” He stopped, and then shook his head. “Or perhaps I fool myself in my old age; it is quite likely that you do. We have a long day ahead of us.”

  She nodded, and they passed what appeared to be a phalanx of Merchant Authority guards to enter an almost palatially empty floor. Finch glanced at the empty wickets. They’d be filled, she thought. People would come.

  And her chair would be filled. Lucille’s desk. Jarven’s. It wasn’t going to win the war—no matter what the Queen implied—but lack of those people wasn’t going to lose it. Finch swore it to herself, and that was the message she took for her den when she at last met Torvan at the front doors.

  Chapter Eighteen

  23rd of Henden, 410 A. A.

  Terafin Manse, Averalaan Aramarelas

  NOT ALL OF THE SERVANTS who worked within the manse itself lived there; many lived on the mainland. The servants’ quarters in the Terafin manse were, for the most part, small, and very few were suited to families. But families now huddled in rooms that were not their own, on mattresses or bedrolls set against the walls; the Master of the Household Staff had chosen to overlook this breach of rules, and while little could make that formidable woman loved, this came close.

  Merry was busy, of course, but most of the servants—on this side of the wall, where the halls were narrow enough to look normal—were used to the sight of Carver; they shooed him away when they were busy and nodded or exchanged a few polite words when they were on break or off shift. Helen, however, taking care of two very bored children, one of whom was almost walking, waved him into one such cramped room. It was normally hers, and her bed had been shoved as far into the corner as it could go without causing structural damage.

  “Come help me,” she said.

  He held up his hands. “I’m not good with kids—”

  “I don’t care. In five more minutes, I won’t be either.”

  He laughed and squeezed himself into the room. Merry came by fifteen minutes later and found him on the floor under the wriggling feet of two children; Helen had retreated to the corner for what passed for privacy in these parts. It was a privacy Carver understood; he’d spent most of his life living with that definition, and the manse, with its vast, empty rooms, seemed cold and silent as a crypt in comparison.

  “What,” Merry said, in a voice that made her name very inappropriate, “are you doing here now?”

  “I was sent to help out,” he replied.

  “Liar.”

  “Well, yes, sometimes,” he said, with a grin. That grin rushed head-on into her thin-lipped frown, and it was the frown that broke first.

  “Help us with what?”

  “Preparations. For the Dark Days.”

  “I’m not sure—” she began, and then, in a louder voice, “Helen, Ivyn’s got the duster, and he’s eating the feathers.”

  Carver laughed as Helen rolled out of bed, and he took that opportunity to end her needed break, sliding an arm around Merry. “Finch said there are banners and shrouds, and dark curtains for the windows.”

  “She knows this how?”

  “I think she—I think she asked the Master of the Household Staff.”

  Merry blanched. You could threaten her with serious injury and she’d take a broom to your face—but the Master of the Household Staff was in a category of her own. Along with Lord of the Hells, Carver thought.

  “We can’t just take—”

  “The groundskeepers have been at work,” he added. “And the flags are down on the poles. I think they mean to do it.”

  “Now?”

  He nodded. “Now. I’ll miss the kitchen staff, though.”

  Merry grimaced. Food—such as it was during the Dark Days—was strictly rationed for anyone over the age of six, and what there was of it was unpleasant. Flat bread. Brown rice. Dried meat and hard cheese—if you were lucky. If you were unlucky? Same old food you always had. Which was often not much.

  “We’re not to do the manse,” he added. “Just the servants’ quarters.”

  “Most of us don’t have windows.”

  He shrugged. “You’re supposed to help us—and bring along anyone who’s on break to do the same.”

  “Us?” she asked, with justifiable suspicion.

  “The West Wing,” he replied. “Ellerson said our choice of decoration is not in the hands of the Household Staff. He also said,” Carver added, deepening his voice and sharpening his annunciation, “You may wish to seek aid in the handling of the drapes and the tapestries, Master Carver.”

  She tried very hard not to laugh and failed miserably. On this side of the wall, she always did. Carver smiled. It had become very hard to make her—or anyone—laugh in the past few weeks; he understood why.

  But being grim changed nothing, and if they were all going to die anyway, they might as well try to enjoy the few days remaining. He caught her hand, squeezed it, let it go.

  “Let me get changed,�
�� she said.

  “Can I help?”

  “No.”

  Ellerson watched the den work. Finch was absent, as was Teller. Arann was present, but as he had been on night patrol, he was sleeping. Jewel was absent, as she had been for many of the days, at The Terafin’s whim. She left the Wing looking pinched and exhausted, and she returned looking more so; her sleep was, to be charitable, poor. She ate little, drank little, and spoke little, but when she thought the den wasn’t watching, she watched them with something that looked like envy.

  The kitchen, however, was in use every evening when Teller and Finch returned from work. It was there, listening to them talk about their days, that she relaxed—watching intently, and interrupting them for details.

  For herself, she had little to report. Which was unfortunate; Ellerson knew that she was now ATerafin, and also knew that she had chosen to keep that information to herself.

  Do you think they won’t trust you, Jewel? Do you think they’ll fear to be left behind after everything they’ve done and everything you’ve done? He said nothing. She had not informed him of the change in her status, and he had not yet decided to broach the subject. But she felt the weight of her secret, if he was any judge; she was not good at keeping her own counsel when she was among her kin.

  She was, however, there to help with preparations for the Dark Days. She was strict about food, which caused Jester and Carver to grimace; she was strict about light—the lamps were forbidden, and she threatened to have them all removed—permanently, mind—if that prohibition was broken.

  This extended, sadly, to her sleeping hours; given her mood, the domicis was disinclined to point out that lack of sleep might become an issue should she continue to be required to attend The Terafin. In most ways, Jewel was a pragmatic, practical girl. In this, she was not, and she made clear that her orders were not to be questioned.

  For light, there were tallow candles, and they were to be used sparingly. For food, flat bread had been made—by whom, Ellerson was not entirely certain; there were also the traditional hard cheeses and dried meat. They had water, and water was all the drink they were to have. Her parents—one of them—had been a strict observer of the Six Days; Jewel followed that parent’s lead as if, by so doing, she could somehow guarantee that the traditional end of those days would become, as well, the end of the ones the city now endured.

  But the waiting was hard; he saw it in the sinking lines of her shoulders and the darkening circles beneath her eyes; for the last few weeks she had eaten as if the Dark Days were already being observed. He heard it in the way she woke in the darkness of the manse at night and saw it in the path she chose to take as she paced the rooms the den occupied.

  Tonight, however, when she woke, she was silent; she dressed in the dark—and that, Ellerson could not help but hear; she was expressive when she stubbed her toes. He did not approach her in the hall, but he did observe.

  She noticed him and turned to face him.

  “Would it not be better,” he said quietly, “to wait?”

  “All I’ve done is wait,” she replied, with enough heat to dispel sleep’s tenuous grip. “All we’ve done is wait. The priests—even the Exalted—won’t commit to this.” She hesitated and then grudgingly added, “No, the Exalted will. But the Kings already have, so it’d be hard for them to argue. It’s the other gods. Or the other god-born.”

  “Other?”

  “Cartanis, Mandaros, Teos. I don’t know who else,” she added. “I don’t think Kalliaris gets a vote.”

  As Kalliaris was the closest to a personal god that the den had, Ellerson kept his silence on the goddess of luck. “If the gods are concerned,” he said quietly, “there is good reason for it.”

  “How good can it be, Ellerson? People are dying—horrible, horrible deaths that make slit throats and lopped off heads look good—every damn day. What else needs to happen? We can’t reach them. We can’t save them. We sit here—we especially—and do nothing!”

  “What would you do, then?”

  “I don’t know! Anything. Anything at all.” She looked around at the walls as if they were closing in on her.

  Ellerson said, “Shall I send for an escort?”

  Which stopped her short. “A what?”

  “An escort, ATerafin.”

  Her eyes rounded slightly, and then she raised both hands in den-sign for shut up now.

  He waited.

  “I don’t need an escort. I’m just going out.”

  “The Terafin has seen fit to require an escort—of Chosen—for Finch when she leaves the grounds. Finch is not—”

  “I’m not leaving the damn grounds,” she replied, but she’d lowered her voice, and her expression was one of resignation. “You know.”

  “Indeed. I am apprised of any change in situation which might affect the master I have understaken to serve.”

  “Don’t tell them,” she said softly. “I’ll tell them. I will. But this is not the time.”

  He did not ask her what the time would be; he just nodded. “Where will you be traveling?”

  “To the grounds.”

  He turned to the side table in the darkness and handed her a heavy bundle. “I thought that might be the case,” he replied. “It is cold, tonight. You are not eating or sleeping.”

  “I am—”

  “—And now would not be the time to fall ill. I will wait for you,” he added.

  “We’re not eating—”

  “With boiled water.”

  “We don’t have the—”

  “Jewel.”

  She bit back words and took the cloak.

  She visited the Terafin shrine. As far as she knew, Ellerson had never come here, but he’d known where she was going the minute he’d heard the door creak; she’d’ve bet money on it, on any other day of the year but these six.

  Torvan was waiting for her in the half-light of torches to one side of the altar that was spotless no matter what time of year it was. Even the leaves didn’t dare to fall here. Jewel dared to walk, but only barely. She had not come to the shrine since the day she’d met the Twin Kings, if you could call total abasement and abject humility “meeting.”

  He nodded when she approached the shrine, and a half-smile changed his expression as she hesitated there.

  “It’s not you,” she said in an awkward rush. “It’s the torches. They’re still burning.”

  A brow rose; his expression was entirely unlike Torvan’s in that moment. “Torches? Ah, yes. The light. There is no symbolic extinguishing of these lights,” he said gravely. “For they burned even during the Baronial wars, when mages ruled and demons were their assassins of choice.

  “They burned in the days leading up to Veralaan’s decision; they burned when she returned with the young Kings-to-be at her side. There are some lights that cannot be hidden.”

  “You don’t observe the rites.”

  “No. I observe only Terafin.” He turned then to look at the cloudless sky, as if he could appreciate its clarity. Jewel could barely acknowledge it.

  “Acknowledge it,” he said softly. “It is not less beautiful because there is ugliness in the world.”

  “I can’t—I can’t think of things like that now.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “Because there are people suffering and dying—”

  “There will always be people suffering and dying; it is only your ignorance that affords you protection from their pain. It is real,” he added. “I do not trivialize it. But it is not the entirety of the world, nor has it ever been.” He paused, and then asked, “Have you come to reaffirm your chosen name?” And nodded at the shrine.

  She stared at him as if he had spoken in Old Weston. And then she had the grace to redden.

  “Are you not proud of the name that you bear?” he asked, his voice soft, the light in his eyes hard.

  “I am—”

  “And yet you hide it. You fail to mention it to those whose direct service you have taken.”
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br />   She flinched, but she didn’t argue.

  “Why?”

  “People are dying,” she said quietly.

  “People are dying. People are also being born. They breathe, they eat, they sleep; they know pain and joy and fear. The House Name changes neither fact. But it should mean enough to change something. Why are you here, Jewel Markess?”

  She sat on the cold marble floor and lifted hands to her face. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I thought—I thought if we came here, if I could prove I was useful, we’d have a place here. We’d be safe.”

  He said nothing.

  “And I’ve proved myself useful enough to The Terafin,” she added, with a trace of defiance, as if she expected him to argue. He didn’t. “But this House is hers. And the den is mine. I don’t know how to be hers and theirs at the same time. And I won’t give them up for the Name. If that was part of it, if that was the condition, we’d go back to stealing on the streets.”

  “You do not think them worthy of the House?”

  She stiffened. Before she could speak any of the heated words that were tripping over each other in their rush to leave her mouth, the Terafin Spirit held up a hand.

  “I judge as I judge,” he said softly. “But I am not judging now; I am asking for your judgment.”

  “I don’t judge them.”

  “You do, or you would not lead them. Each one of your den proved herself or himself to you somehow.”

  But it wasn’t like that. She had rescued Finch because of a dream; she had found Teller in the snow beside his mother’s corpse because of a waking vision. Angel had come to her the way Teller had. Arann. She’d practically tripped over Carver while avoiding a drunk den in the streets of the holdings. Jester, still alive somehow, had come with the freeing of Duster—and Duster was dead.

  So many were dead. Or worse.

  But she thought of Finch, who had never been any use in a fight, and she said, quietly, “Yes. Yes, they’re worthy of any House that would take me.”