House War 03 - House Name

by Michelle West

  “If anyone had told us you’d be ATerafin, we’d have chuckled—if we liked them. Or we’d’ve thought they were mad or scheming. We can’t see our way to the end from the beginning, and that’s the way it should be. Figure out what you value, girl. Cling to it, be true to it; it’ll grow with you. It won’t look the same to me or my husband, maybe—but it’ll be there.

  “And come and see him when you can. Not for the food—you’ll have far finer here, no doubt, and far more dear—but to remind him.”

  “Remind him?”

  “It’s not all starvation and death and loss. Some of you make it out, or at least survive.” She ran a hand across her eyes. “And listen to me, going on like this at your party. We’re happy for you, Jay. There’s going to be some envy, always is. But it doesn’t mean the happiness isn’t there.”

  And so she mingled, moving from group to group, from past to present and back, as if for one moment, all time could be measured this way, as if it overlapped, always, in unexpected ways. What she missed was her dead, or even their ghosts; she’d been haunted by the ghosts of the future for most of her life, so the ghosts of the dead held little terror.

  This room, with its fireplace, its many chairs, and its circulating plates of food and drinks, was loud, and her thoughts were soft and attenuated, so she moved away from the noise that on most days she craved, leaving the great room for the smaller rooms and heading toward the kitchen, where she stopped before she touched the door, reversing her steps. The kitchen might define the den on most days, but this one wasn’t one of them; it wasn’t their kitchen, tonight. It belonged to the servants and the cooks, each of whom also had something to prove.

  She reversed course, but instead of heading back into the thick of things, she turned toward the entrance, bumping into Avandar along the way. His raised brow clearly said, “Where are you going?” and her shrug, which was awkward and half-embarrassed, was as much of an answer as he needed. He fell into step beside her.

  “I’m just—I’m stepping out for air.”

  “Yes.”

  “Avandar—”

  “I am stepping out for air with you, as you appear to have shed your guard.” When she opened her mouth, he grimaced. “I will not lecture you on your obvious desire for solitude. The Terafin, however, has yet to make an appearance, and if she happens to make one while you’re wandering—alone—in the halls . . .”

  Jewel gave up with as much grace as she could muster. She exited the doors, knowing that this made her the worst of hostesses, and headed into the external halls, which were apallingly well lit tonight. Avandar shadowed her every move.

  She didn’t get far before she found what she was looking for, although had anyone asked, she would have said, until this moment, she’d been looking for nothing, and lots of it.

  Evayne a’Nolan stood beneath the steady glow of magelights, beside a standing urn that had cracked and faded with age. She wore what she’d worn every time Jewel had seen her: long, dark robes that rustled in the nonexistent breeze. Shadow pooled at her feet and, more alarmingly, in her eyes, tainting the whites.

  But even so, she wasn’t a threat. Jewel knew that much.

  The seer’s hands were empty and her face was partly hooded; she lifted those hands and removed the hood, as if it were an act of exposure. It wasn’t. She was The Terafin’s age, and she had The Terafin’s composure; her expression was so guarded an army couldn’t have got past it to what lay beneath.

  “Jewel,” she said.

  “Evayne,” Jewel replied. Avandar, by her side, said nothing. But Evayne looked at Avandar and her brows rose slightly.

  “Viandaran,” she whispered.

  Jewel glanced from one to the other. Avandar was about as open as Evayne; nothing escaped. But she’d grown to recognize all the little signs of irritation or grievance that marked his daily interactions, and they were entirely absent. He said, after a moment, “Why are you here?” and his voice was Winter cold.

  “I am not here to threaten or to cause harm,” was the seer’s even reply. “But Jewel ATerafin is the only seer born into the Empire in this generation; there is one other who is not yet born, but when she is, she will be born in the Free Towns to the west of the Empire.”

  “And that other?”

  “Me.” She turned to Jewel. “You have a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ask. If I can answer, I will.”

  “Your age—that’s not part of the talent, is it?”

  “No. I age as you age, but I wander a path that travels between years as easily as the halls here travel between rooms.”

  “The crystal—”

  “Yes. It is why I have come. You have vision, and that vision has led you here, but it will not, in the end, be enough. The crystal,” she said, “comes from me, it is of me. It is the gift made physical, made manifest. What I see in it, what I can see in it, is deeper, wider; it is not a glimpse, not an accident, not a strike of lightning or luck or fate.

  “Have you not dreamed of this?”

  Jewel looked at the seer. “Yes,” she finally whispered. It sounded a lot like no.

  “There is only one teacher who can give you the skill you need to create the crystal, and that teacher must decide whether or not she finds you worthy. It is not a simple task, and her assessment is unpredictable; she is not human.”

  Jewel’s brows rose.

  “But you must make the trek, sooner or later, to her. When you are ready, Jewel, call me; I will come, and I will lead you there.”

  But Avandar now raised a hand. “It will not be necessary.” His voice was cool.

  “Oh?”

  “I know the way, and I know of whom you speak. But you are not entirely truthful, Evayne; the trek itself is no guarantee of success, and the cost of failure is high; it scars, where it does not kill. Come, Jewel. It is time that we returned.”

  But Jewel asked, “Why did you take the test, Evayne?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You said you were—will be—born in the Free Towns. That wasn’t a lie. What made you go to—to whoever this person is—and run the risk of ripping out your heart?”

  Evayne’s lips twisted in a bitter grimace. “I seldom meet seers,” she said, at last. “And although I do not owe you an answer, not yet, I will give you one: my father.”

  “Your father?”

  “I am god-born, Jewel Markess ATerafin. I do not know who my mother was; I know only who my father is. I took the test of the Oracle, and I walked the Oracle’s path, because I was young. Oh, my father had told me of the war—of the gods and the kin and the monsters that would rise in the breaking of the ways—but I was then fifteen years of age, almost sixteen, and I had lived my life as a blacksmith’s daughter. I neither knew of these things or, truth be told, cared; they frightened me. He frightened me then.

  “I was a strange child, and I had few friends in the village, but those friends were all I valued. It has not happened yet,” she added softly. “But I will grow there, and I will walk a normal path, following in the wake of days, until the day my father makes himself known.

  “There is war,” she added softly. “And he tells me of it, of what it presages, of what it might mean.” She shook her head. “But it isn’t until I see the demons approach the village, it isn’t until I see the slaughter begin, that I understand.” Her violet eyes closed, and she grimaced again. It made her seem younger. “It was then, and only then, that I made my choice, because I understood that I would be sundered from my friends and from the village itself. But if I did as he asked, if I did all I could, I might, in the end, lead those who could stand against the demons to the town itself.

  “And I have waited, Jewel.”

  Jewel stared at the seer for a long, silent moment, and then she said, “What happens to your friends?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can’t see it?”

  “One is not yet born, and the other? He will go to war in the South long bef
ore he makes Callenton his home.”

  “But you—you were sixteen?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if you—if you win somehow, if we win, when you go home, will you be sixteen again?”

  “No. I will be even older than I am now, and they will neither recognize nor understand me. I will never be the blacksmith’s adopted daughter again, and I will never be at home in the primitive confines of a Free Town. They are lost to me; they were lost to me the minute I took my first step on the Oracle’s path. But they would have been lost to me—and to themselves—regardless.” She lifted a hand. “Has this answered your question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I give you this. You have made all of your choices, if I recall correctly, to date to bring your friends and your family to this House, and they are with you now. You will not desert them easily, or perhaps at all; you cannot walk the paths I have walked because you weren’t born to them, and I think—I think it impossible. Even with the crystal in your hands, you will be human and mortal; you will not be able to walk through time as if it were a mansion.

  “Go back to your friends. Have what I cannot have, for a while longer. But remember me, and remember what I have said.” She bowed then.

  Jewel didn’t. She waited until Evayne rose, her violet eyes glittering in the magelight, her expression once more serene and composed.

  “I don’t—I’m not—I’m not as strong as you are,” she finally said.

  “You are not yet as strong as I have become,” was the soft reply. “But strength oft comes from necessity, and from the burden of both responsibility and love. Both of these you have, Jewel, and we have time yet—although it has, at last, begun to dwindle.” She might have said more—she even opened her mouth—but the isolation of the empty halls had now ended; from the east, with a sparse guard of four, walked two familiar figures: The Terafin and her domicis.

  “Much of your strength will come from the challenge of the House itself,” Evayne continued, her voice soft. “But when it is time, you will know. Before then, you will walk paths that have not been walked since the gods left the world; you will see war and death and magics older than man; you will fight to hold everything that you have not yet won in the House tonight.

  “You will gather allies, Jewel; you have already started. You will leave this House only once, and when you do, you will walk at the side of the enspelled, and you will ride on the backs of Kings; you will be served by the scions of Winter. You will see the dead and the living, and you will return to death and to war.

  “I envy you,” she added, her voice dipping slightly. “I envy what you will have before you face a choice whose end I cannot yet see. But often it is those who have much to lose who find the strength to preserve it, even if they cannot preserve it for themselves alone.” She turned, the edges of her cloak billowing.

  Jewel watched as she took one step forward and vanished.

  The Terafin, down the hall, had seen, but she didn’t stop, and she didn’t rush forward; Evayne might, like any other troubling work of art, have been a part of the galleries themselves. Jewel waited.

  “You are not in the West Wing,” The Terafin said, as she drew closer. The guards were Chosen, although Jewel didn’t know their names yet.

  “No—it was loud and I . . . I wanted air.” She glanced at the spot that had moments ago contained the only other seer Jewel had ever met.

  “Ah. Well, perhaps you have never before held an event of this significance; you will learn with time. The dress,” she added, “is very fine.”

  “This?”

  “Indeed. Who made it?”

  “Haval. He works in the Common, but he makes dresses for women of noble birth, as he calls them. Do you want to meet him?”

  “I would, if he is a friend of yours, be most pleased to make his acquaintance. Come, Jewel. You will not have a night like this again, and if you can, you must enjoy it. Without joy, there is only burden, and the burdens will be heavy indeed.”

  Jewel nodded and fell into the space the Chosen had made for her.

  They came at length to the West Wing and the gathering that continued within, unaware of the absence of one of its hosts. They could not remain unaware of the presence of The Terafin, however, and silence descended—if slowly—as her name spread across the crowd. She’d chosen to dress simply, although nothing she wore could ever be called inexpensive, and her hair was bound—as it had been the first day Jewel had laid eyes on her—in a fine net that seemed to sparkle slightly when she turned her head.

  Haval and Jarven had finished their game—or abandoned it, at any rate—and had rejoined the gathering, and they looked up as The Terafin approached, led by Jewel.

  “Terafin,” she said, “this is Haval and his wife, Hannerle. Haval is my dressmaker.”

  Haval, who could manufacture any expression he chose, chose delight—and humility—for this first meeting.

  “You’ve met Jarven?” Jewel asked.

  “I have, indeed, met Jarven ATerafin,” was the slightly amused reply. “And I trust that he is enjoying himself in an entirely appropriate fashion this eve.”

  “Oh, he is,” Lucille replied a little grimly.

  To Jewel’s surprise, The Terafin laughed. “I did not promise it would be an easy job, Lucille—merely a rewarding one, in the end. It has been that?”

  Lucille raised a brow and then, as if she were playing cards, folded; she smiled. “It’s definitely been that, Terafin.”

  Jarven, unruffled, offered The Terafin a perfect bow. “You will mingle, of course,” he said. “I would be interested to hear what you observe while you do.”

  “That is hardly playing by the rules, Jarven. You are a master of observation; you cannot expect such information to be simply given as if it were of little value.”

  Jarven chuckled. “Oh, indeed, indeed. May I join you?”

  Jewel retreated to the fireplace and to Teller, who seemed to be waiting for her.

  “Breathe,” he told her.

  She laughed. “I’m happy, Teller.”

  He waited, and she added, “I’m just not sure how long it will all last.”

  “For at least tonight,” he replied firmly. He glanced at her expression and shook his head. “You really did have an Oma, didn’t you?”

  “That obvious?”

  “She told you all we have is now—and this now is a good one. Stay in it, don’t leave it until it’s passed. None of us can see the future—” he held up a hand, den-sign, “ugh. You get the idea.”

  “You’d be a terrible Oma,” Jewel replied with an affectionate grin.

  “It’s not one of my life’s ambitions.”

  “Your what?”

  “Barston says I’m to have ‘life ambitions,’ ” was the rueful reply. “He says we’re all to have them, especially you.”

  “Good damn thing I’m not the one working for him, then.”

  “No. You work directly for The Terafin—I think he thinks that’s harder.”

  “It’s not harder than starving,” she said quietly. “It’s not harder than freezing. It’s not harder than—” she stopped, grimacing. “I’m not good at being happy,” she finally said. “I’m afraid of it, sometimes.”

  “You and Duster,” he replied, relenting, giving her the breadth of loss.

  “What about Duster?” Finch asked, joining them in the momentary quiet of crackling wood and distant conversation.

  “I miss her,” Jewel said. “I miss her anger and her contempt and the dagger that never left her hand, even while she was sleeping.” Finch put an arm around Jewel’s shoulders, in part because she could without causing Jewel to flinch. “I miss Lefty. I miss Fisher and Lander. I wish they were here; they were part of it, in the beginning, but they never got to see the end.”

  “No,” Teller replied. “But we’ll see them again, at least once; we can tell them all about it then.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I want that to be a long, long time
in the future.”

  Teller, serious, said, “So do I—but at least death will give us something if we’ve got no choice. We all miss them,” he added softly. “I can’t even say that Duster would’ve been happy for us—she’d probably be reminding us that we owed it all to her, that we’d never have made it without her. It’s true, we wouldn’t. Doesn’t make it easier.

  “But it’s not supposed to be easy, losing someone. If it were, we wouldn’t care enough to try to keep them. Best we can do is try.”

  “So we can feel less guilty?”

  “So we’re not afraid to care about each other.”

  Jewel said, “I’ve never been afraid of that.” She glanced at the window and shook herself.

  Finch, understanding, said, “Is it time?”

  “I’m not sure how long she’ll stay,” Jewel replied. “But she’s here now.”

  “You’re sure you still want to give it to her here?”

  She had been, until the actual party had arrived. Now she felt far less certain. Hesitating, she looked to Teller, and he nodded slowly. “I don’t know how she’ll explain it,” he said. “But she’s The Terafin—she doesn’t have to. You’re sure you don’t want to keep it?”

  “For what? I’ll never, ever be able to use it.”

  “Neither will she,” Teller pointed out.

  “We don’t know that. And anyway, that’s not the point.”

  He didn’t ask what the point was; he knew. “Go and get it,” he told his den leader. “We’ll try to clear a little space.”

  Jewel walked quickly to her room; Avandar stopped her once, but when she told him why she was leaving—and promised to return promptly without meeting any more powerful, mysterious visitors—he chose not to dog her steps. He was watching the crowd, and he paid attention to only a handful of the men and women present: The Terafin, but everyone did that; Devon ATerafin, Haval, Jarven. He’d glanced at Gabriel once or twice, but Gabriel’s position as right-kin failed to engage his interest; he’d done more than glance at Angel’s friend, Terrick. He didn’t, however, speak to anyone.