But anger provided all the warmth he needed, and it was turned both outward and inward. He had never formalized anything with Jay; she’d never asked for his service, never taken his oath, never demanded much—except, perhaps, that he not eat all the available food. He’d never offered. He hadn’t asked to serve her, because it would have been embarrassing. She’d have stared at him as if he were trying to grow two heads, and if he wasn’t lucky, she’d’ve smacked one of them as well.
He might never have made the conscious choice if it weren’t for the son of Cartanis. Even if he had, it might not have had the significance it now did if it weren’t for his father’s duty, the burden that Angel himself had inherited so cautiously. He was part of her den. The newcomer, yes—but she was important to him in the same ways that she was important to the rest: Teller, Arann, Finch, Carver, and Jester. Even Jester. But she was important to him also in ways that she wasn’t to the rest of the den.
And it was a burden, he understood that. But it was his burden, not hers.
Tonight he felt its weight, its awkwardness, its pretentiousness. He couldn’t share that—not with them. Not with Jay. He shouldn’t have felt the need to share it at all. But here he was, in the Common, the blacksmith’s forge not a block away.
He made his way to the first of two doors, fished out the keys that he still had, and entered. It was dark in the narrow stairway, but he could see the faint gleam of muted light at its height; Terrick was home. Terrick, home, would hear the door; he would hear the creak of the warped, wooden steps. He would, of course, hear the key in the lock if Angel tried to unlock the second door.
He didn’t; he knocked.
Beyond the door, the floor creaked in a familiar way; Angel had lived with Terrick for months, and he knew the sound and the rhythm of his steps. He waited.
Terrick appeared in the open door, looking entirely unsurprised to see him. “You’ve eaten?” he asked.
Angel nodded.
“You’ve eaten enough?” He smiled.
Angel grimaced, ducking his head, heavy with its spire of hair, as he did.
Terrick stepped out of the way, and Angel walked into the darkened room. A candle burned here; in the small stove, wood burned as well. Terrick’s eyes were circled and dark, but they would be; he’d been sleeping—and working—in the holdings. Two days of silence wouldn’t keep nightmares or memories at bay.
“First Day arrived,” Terrick said gravely.
Angel nodded.
“And the silence, at last, of the grave. If you have ever wondered why that silence is peaceful,” the Rendish man added, his voice dropping, “you will never wonder again.” He lifted his hands to his face for a moment and then shook once and gained a couple of inches of height. “Will you tell me how it ended?”
Angel hesitated, and Terrick smiled; it was pained. “I can tell you that it did. I wasn’t there for the end; I don’t know all the details.”
“This was accomplished by your Terafin?”
“No. But without her . . .” He shrugged.
“Come, then. Sit. Tell me why you are angry enough to run from the Isle to the Common and the company of a Port Authority clerk.”
Angel looked at the floor. “It’s not the Port Authority clerk I came for,” he finally said.
“Ah. Tell me.”
“Have you met a priest named Caras?”
Terrick became very still, not that he fidgeted much to begin with. “Yes.”
“Is that where you go, now? The Cathedral of Cartanis?”
“Cartanis does not require cathedrals, as you well know. Or perhaps you don’t; at times I forget you spent your youth in the warmth of the open fields of the Free Towns. The church was part of your life?”
“The Mother’s church, yes.” The Mother’s church belonged in a different lifetime. Averalaan had become his home, and he knew why. But as he fell silent, he remembered the church, with its wooden benches, its pale walls, its candles and the baskets into which the villagers placed food and tallow and wool for the priests’ use. He remembered his mother lighting a candle; remembered the way the orange flame seemed too meager, too insubstantial, for the strength of her quiet devotions. He could not, at this remove, hear her voice, and he didn’t remember her words—but her expression, he hoarded.
“Angel.”
Shaking his head, he looked up at Terrick.
“Sit. I’ve not eaten yet; keep me company.”
“You’ll only complain when I touch your food,” Angel replied, forcing a smile to lift his pale lips. Terrick responded with the silent lift of a brow, and they took chairs facing each other. Terrick lost appetite easily; very little destroyed Angel’s. The Rendish man ate slowly and deliberately, waiting.
“I met Caras,” Angel finally said, as if this could be neutral.
Terrick nodded. “I’d guessed as much from the question. And?”
“He’s god-born.”
Terrick had an almost natural lack of sarcasm, which made the comment safe; in the den it would have elicited derision from at least Carver and Jester. But it was a comfortable derision. Angel had no brothers; he’d been, to his mother’s sorrow, an only child. He wondered what his mother would make of Carver and Jester; he knew she would’ve liked Teller and Arann.
“He’s Cartanis’ son. So is Weyrdon.”
The larger man could make his stillness almost graceful. “He spoke to you of Weyrdon.” It wasn’t a question.
Angel nodded, fidgeting a moment with the cuffs of a much finer shirt than Terrick’s. “He came to the Terafin manse,” he finally said, lifting his head and becoming as still as Terrick now was. The stillness, rather than being confining, brought a measure of peace. “He came, in theory, to speak with The Terafin.”
“And in truth?”
“To see my den leader.”
“The girl? Jewel Markess?”
Angel swallowed. “She’s Jewel ATerafin, now.” And she’d been ATerafin for a month, in secret. Jay, who couldn’t lie to save her life, still knew—as they all did—how to hide.
Terrick’s brows rose slightly. “She’s young for it, for an outsider.” His tone, not his words, asked Angel why this was a problem. But he’d always been good at waiting. Sometimes Angel could outwait him, forcing him to speak first if there was to be any conversation at all; this wasn’t one of those times.
“When Garroc chose to serve Weyrdon,” he finally said, “what did you do?”
“You know what I did; I continued to serve Garroc.”
“But—what did you do at the time? When you found out?”
“An odd question.” Terrick’s smile was slim but genuine. “I was angry. I knew Garroc. I knew when he was smitten and when he was awed. I knew that Weyrdon had impressed him in a way that no other man had, before or after. But even knowing what would happen, what would have to happen . . . I was angry.”
“Why?”
Terrick’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask me this now, boy?”
“Because I’m angry,” Angel replied. “I’m angry and it makes no sense.” His hands curled to fists and he levered himself off his chair. He almost never paced; he never needed the comfort of the motion. Angel didn’t feel caged or confined in his own body.
But now? He was. He was trapped inside an anger that he hated and couldn’t shed. Maybe this is why Jay could never keep still.
Terrick watched Angel pace, examining the boy’s words, his gestures, the thin line of his lips, the white knuckles of hands that would, whether he desired it or not, form fists at his sides.
He understood then. “You are angry at Jewel,” he said, “because she has taken an oath to serve another lord.”
“To serve The Terafin, yes. It comes with the House Name,” Angel added bleakly. “She’s wanted it all along. I knew she wanted it. We all knew. We knew why. She’s worth it. She’s earned it. More than earned it. If it weren’t for Jay’s intervention, the Lord of the Hells would be walking the streets of the city now.
There would be no First Day; no end to Henden and the Darkness.
“She’s worthy,” he added, his voice lower, the circle he traced across the kitchen floor growing slightly smaller as he walked.
Terrick nodded. He fished out a pipe and set about lining its bowl. While he worked, he talked. “When Garroc chose to offer his service to Weyrdon, he had already accepted mine. Has Jewel?”
Angel stiffened. Swallowed. “No.”
“No?”
“I’ve never offered it. Not formally. Not in so many words.”
“Ah. And you feel that because you haven’t, you’ve no right to feel abandoned?”
“I don’t feel abandoned.” He stopped walking. Took a deep breath. Examined the words he had just spoken in that quiet and critical way the boy sometimes could. Then he left off pacing and circling and returned to the table. “I feel abandoned.”
“Aye. Garroc never left me. He never intended to leave me. He was as true to our friendship as it is possible to be while still having outside goals. This is what your Jewel is?”
Angel nodded.
“But the whole of my life, until Garroc made his choice, was that service, that relationship. Garroc fulfilled his role, and I, mine. Stepping outside of it, adding a man who would demand at least as much from Garroc—if not more—than I did or could was a change. It was large. And it was, of course, a change made—a change decided upon—by Garroc, and Garroc alone; he didn’t even ask what I wanted.”
As he had known they would, the words calmed Angel; they were, with a slight change of names, what the boy was feeling. “I told you, we fought often, Garroc and I. I did not bend knee to him.”
“Did you fight, then?”
“In a manner of speaking. But I accepted it, in the end. I’d made my choice, years before, and I had no desire to walk away from the life or the lord I had chosen. I wanted things to remain as they were; it was a younger man’s desire.”
“And I’m young?”
“You are. Younger by far than I was when Garroc made his choice. And Garroc knew what I offered, what I had always offered, him. Your Jewel, if I understand what you’ve said correctly, does not.”
“It’s—you have to understand, Terrick,” Angel finally said, spreading his hands, palm up, across the table. “Averalaan isn’t Arrend. They’re not—we’re not—soldiers or warriors. We’re not forced to defend our homes and our lives against raiders; we’re not raised to sword or—or ax. In the city, they’re not even raised to grow most of their own food.
“We—the den—look out for each other. We do what we can to keep ourselves going. One of the things that doesn’t involve is hefting a weapon and cutting off someone’s head. Or threatening to. It’s different here.” He grimaced. “There are no vows or oaths.”
“But there are Names.”
“House Names. Terafin is—”
“One of The Ten, yes. A powerful House.”
“I don’t even know if she’d understand.”
Terrick raised a brow.
“My choice,” Angel added. “I don’t know if I could explain it in a way that didn’t make it sound—wrong.”
“You will tell her.” It wasn’t a question.
Angel exhaled inches of height and nodded.
“Good. She’s made her choice, for good or ill. But her choice is not yours, boy. Your choice must stand on its own.” He hesitated. “Caras knows?”
“Yes. He came to see Jewel, and he saw me as well. I told him. But I told him in Rendish; no one else could understand what we said. He asked me if I had found what Garroc sought.
“And I haven’t. But what I’ve found is important to me, and I’m not Garroc. I’m not Weyrdon. I’m Angel.” As he spoke, the boy unfolded, gaining height and losing the restlessness that had robbed him of his center.
“What did Caras say?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Terrick’s smile was slow to unfold, but that was as it should be; it crossed years, touching the distant past, and the pain of it, before it landed in the present. “Serve her. Guard her. Guide her when she can bear to take any advice but her own.”
The boy’s grimace was more familiar.
“And when you are ready, boy, when you know what must happen, come to me. I have waited almost two decades in this place, and I will go where you go.”
“I’m not going anywhere. If she does this—no, when she does it—I’ll be anchored to House Terafin.”
“Tell her,” Terrick said again.
He nodded, the white of his Rendish hair dipping slightly forward, as if it might fall.
He left Terrick’s when the moon indicated the late dinner hour had passed. Whatever ceremony The Terafin required to elevate the rest of the den was—should be—finished. He’d missed it, but even if that proved awkward, he’d had no choice. Living in the manse? Angel could do that. But swearing an oath to another lord? Not while he breathed.
His mother wouldn’t have cared. In fact, he was certain his mother would have boxed his ears in outrage. He’d been offered a House Name. He’d been offered the Terafin House Name. His mother had not been from a fine family, and her experience with the patriciate had involved servant’s duties at best, but everyone who lived in the city knew the names of The Ten.
His father would have attempted to distract her from her disappointment.
Or would he? He’d served in the Kalakar House Guard. He couldn’t have served in House Kalakar without swearing an oath of allegiance, could he?
Unsettled, Angel’s brisk walk slowed to a crawl, and he looked up at the graven face of Moorelas. This wasn’t where he’d intended to walk, but that suited the whole of his life at this moment. Moorelas faced not the city, where men and women congregated around his statue as if he were—almost—a god himself, but the seawall.
“Who did you serve?” Angel asked him, although he expected no answer.
Why did it matter? Maybe Moorelas had never willingly served anyone specific. He’d ridden to war, wielding a sword that could kill even the gods, and maybe he’d needed to serve no single man or woman to do so; maybe he could see purpose in every wandering stranger, every child, every ancient man or woman across the breadth of this Empire. Or this world. Maybe that’s why he’d made his choice. Maybe not. It had certainly ended his life, regardless.
But he’d had a purpose.
Maybe he’d had doubts. Maybe doubt had never touched him because there were no other alternatives, no other way to live, to stay alive. Angel wasn’t Moorelas. He wasn’t a hero. He wasn’t a warrior, not yet—and he might never become one. He’d been, until the death of his parents, a farmer’s son.
But Jewel wasn’t a warrior either.
She was just . . . Jay.
Jewel turns. “You,” she says. “What’s your name?”
“Angel.”
She raises an auburn brow, and shoves her hair out of her eyes. “Are you an idiot?” Half-smile on her lips, and in her appraising glance.
He shrugs. He knows what she’s talking about. The old woman, on the ground. Six of Carmenta’s den. One boy. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“I’m sure that’s what all the suicides say in Mandaros’ Hall.” She shakes her head, adds, “My kind of idiot. You have some place to stay?”
He has Terrick’s.
But he shakes his head. No.
“You have one now, if you want it.”
And maybe, he thought, sliding effortlessly into the past and back, that was all it came down to. Jay was home. His father—and his mother—had defended their home with their lives, and Angel got that. He understood it so viscerally he’d never needed words for it. He was their son; he’d found, and made, his home. Nothing would destroy it while he lived. The farmhouse hadn’t always been easy, and it hadn’t always been peaceful—although it’d been months before he could remember that clearly through his homesickness—but it had been home.
It didn’t matter what Jay called herself. Ma
rkess. ATerafin. She was Jay.
Angel was Angel.
He drew a deep breath and turned toward the bridge, stopping only once to offer Moorelas’ statue an almost perfect bow.
When he finally reached the den’s wing, he was surprised to see Torvan ATerafin standing at the doors. The halls were the type of dark they got when guests were no longer rushing to and from various meetings; the magelights were a soft, even glow that adorned the halls for as far as the eye could see. Angel hesitated, and then he approached the closed doors, which were behind Torvan’s back.
Torvan nodded. “I was asked to wait here,” he told Angel.
“For me?”
“For you.”
“I was at the Common, visiting a friend.”
Torvan raised a brow. “You weren’t present at dinner.”
“No.”
“You are aware of the significance of this particular dinner?”
“Yes.”
Torvan watched him carefully. “Carver didn’t actually run into a door, did he?”
The anger that had driven Angel to Terrick’s side had evaporated enough that the thought of Carver with a swollen eye being presented to the rest of the House as a newly anointed member of Terafin made him wince. “No,” he finally said, looking away. “Was it bad?”
“It’s Carver. He’s well known, and he performs no obvious official function; I believe it was both embarrassing and survivable.” Torvan hadn’t moved, and by this time, it was clear to Angel that he wasn’t going to, either.
“Jay’s not in, is she?”
“No. The wing is empty. But your presence has been requested in the garden.”
“The garden?”
“At the shrine.”
Angel hesitated and then shook his head.
Torvan, however, didn’t move. “You don’t intend to take the House Name.”
“No.”
“May I ask why?”
Angel was silent; he was good at that. But Torvan had always been perceptive. Instead of asking again, he changed tack. “You understand that it’s important to Jewel.”
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