She glanced around; Duvari still leaned against the far wall, and the cats stood by her side, lolling in a way that implied they were very bored. Luckily, they hadn’t descended into complaint.
As she blinked, the Exalted began to move toward the three braziers that still emitted their faint trails of smoke. They gestured, and the embers from which the smoke rose were guttered.
“Regent,” the Mother’s Daughter said, tendering a bow of respect—and exhaustion. “We must repair to the cathedral again. We will return in two days to convene the first day of the funeral rites.”
Gabriel raised a brow. “The gods—”
“The gods are troubled, but we give leave to return to your duties; we have much work to do on their behalf before we return to your halls.”
Duvari now lifted himself off the wall, his eyes narrowing into unfortunate slits as he strode from the back of the chamber to where the Exalted now gathered. He bowed to them; it was the first time Jewel had ever seen a bow used as both an interruption and a demand for instant attention.
“Lord of the Compact,” the Exalted of Reymaris said, as the priests who attended him gathered—and emptied—the brazier. “We do not have the luxury of time. If you wish to speak, accompany us.”
Duvari rose. It was not to the Exalted that he now turned. “Member Mellifas,” he said, in as severe a tone as he generally reserved for powerful members of the patriciate.
“Lord of the Compact,” Sigurne replied. She glanced at Matteos. Matteos, however, failed to notice; he was staring at the ground as if by so doing he could unlock the answer to the Mysteries.
Jewel frowned.
What troubles you now, Jewel?
I thought the magi came with us, but I...
She felt the Winter King’s smile. It was sharp. They did. They were witness to the gods and their conversation.
I don’t remember seeing them after the gods arrived.
No. But they were present; they were given no voice and no role. I do not believe it was to the guildmaster’s liking, although it is hard to tell.
She wondered how he knew.
He didn’t answer; not directly. Instead, he said, They wished the guildmaster to bear witness; I am not certain why. Did you truly not intend to take control of the landscape?
You already know the answer to that.
Again she felt his smile, but this time it was less cutting. I will leave you here, Jewel. I believe the day will be trying, but the worst of it is now over.
He was wrong.
The return to the West Wing was only a little less demanding of attention than the procession to the audience chambers had been; the Winter King had departed. This left the cats as obvious, out-of-place markers of strange magic. The magi, who accompanied her in silence, raised no eyebrows, however.
Celleriant did not travel to the wing; he veered off at the doors that led to the garden, or more precisely, to the forest. Jewel was content to let him go, because she had no questions she wanted answered at the moment. She was surprised when Avandar excused himself and followed; it made her feel oddly underdressed. The distinct unease of the past several hours had grown sharp enough to scare her, and she wasn’t ready to face it yet. Just give me three days. Three days. Funeral rites. Last respects. It might be too much to ask, but it was not too much, in the end, to demand. When the first flowers were planted and the last prayers spoken, she would be willing to face the shrouded future.
Sigurne was silent as she walked; Matteos, silent as well. The cats, however, were not; they were restless and very, very bored, a fact they made clear enough that servants paused to see who’d been so ill mannered. Jewel very much doubted they knew what to make of the answer. But that was something she’d have to worry about, as well.
The small party made it to the wing, where Ellerson greeted them at the doors, his expression one of mild concern. “The audience was short,” he said quietly, the last syllable trailing slightly upward in tone.
“Was it?”
“Very.” It was Sigurne who replied. “It was almost over before it began; Duvari will no doubt be beating a path to your doors in short order. If you’ve developed an appetite at all, I suggest you eat something; you are likely to miss lunch.”
“And you, Member Mellifas?” Ellerson bowed head as he spoke.
“If Jewel’s discussion with Duvari does not satisfy Duvari, I am certain that we, too, will be entertaining him. In a manner of speaking, and with my prior apologies, in your domain. I would, I think, like something warm.”
“Tea?”
“Indeed. I would not take it amiss if it were, on this single occasion, fortified.”
Jewel seldom felt grateful to the gods, but today, she managed. It was, she knew, going to be a long day, and in any event, had Duvari been present, he would probably have attached himself at the hip and followed her back to her home. The gods had saved her time, which was in very short supply.
They might have even saved her some of Haval’s decidedly short mood.
“ATerafin,” Sigurne said, as she turned for the hall. “Will you join us?”
“Yes—but I need to check with Haval first; he’ll be in that room all day making clothing that we need to fit properly in two days.”
The door was closed. Most of the doors in the hall—including her own—were in this state, but only one of them contained an underslept and therefore cranky dressmaker. Jewel stared at the door for a long minute. Avandar reached over her head and knocked. She wasn’t profoundly grateful. A muffled command to enter saved Avandar from being told as much in too many words.
She pushed the door open carefully, aware of what rooms generally looked like when Haval was working in them. He’d only had this one for a handful of hours, which meant she could still see floor—although admittedly not nearly as much of it as she knew existed. At the moment, he was on his knees, rather closer to ground than looked comfortable, fussing with the hem of a dress; he was adding black lace. To her surprise, Finch was still in the room. Teller, however, was not. Jewel lifted her hands and gestured briefly; Finch gestured back, but her movements were muted.
“Oh, do, please, answer her,” Haval told Finch. This didn’t appear to surprise Finch, although it did make her look momentarily guilty.
“He’s in Gabriel’s office. When Haval’s ready, we’re to send for him; Barston is inundated with people he can’t afford to offend.”
“What, all twelve of them?”
Finch chuckled. “From the sounds of it, yes. At once. On top of each other. I did offer to send them to Lucille, but Teller wasn’t certain that would be more merciful.”
“I offered to eat them,” Snow said. He was reclining to one side of Finch’s chair, and although he should have been impossible to miss, Jewel had. Probably wishful thinking. Finch dropped a hand to the cat’s large head and scratched behind his ears.
“Has Snow been at all helpful?” she asked. She asked it of Finch because she was a coward.
It was Haval who answered. He set aside his pins and rose; his knees cracked. “I think,” he told Jewel quietly, “you should see that for yourself.” He gestured toward a screen that stood in the corner of the room.
“The dress?”
“Behind the screen.” She glanced at the cat, who looked very pleased with himself. Then again, when he wasn’t fighting with Night, he generally did. “ATerafin?”
She made her way—carefully, to avoid stray pins—across the room, and stopped a yard from where the screen stood, staring at it with a frown.
“ATerafin?” Haval said again, his intonation different.
“Where did you get this screen?”
“Very good. Do you recognize it?”
“No. But I recognize that mountain.”
“It was not, before Snow came to assist me, a mountain.”
“What was it?” she asked, as if staving off fate.
“Flowers. Not,” he added, “terribly good flowers, on the other hand. This is b
etter; it is simple but exact.”
“It had bees,” Snow hissed.
“Haval—what did he do to the dress?” Her voice was too loud to be a whisper, but not by much.
Haval did not respond. Instead, he folded arms across his chest—and across the thick apron he wore—and waited, his face a mask.
“How’s Hannerle?”
“Sleeping.” The word was curt but neutral. “And that was a very sloppy attempt to buy time, ATerafin; I expect better in the future.” As she hesitated, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Expelling it cost him inches of height. “My apologies, Jewel. If it has been a trying day for me, I imagine that it has not been entirely pleasant for you. I am always impatient when I work, and in the end, the impatience will be of little benefit to you.
“You have made at least one significant decision.”
“The House?” she asked softly, aware that he was allowing her to stall in a more graceful way, and grateful for it.
“That is one, yes.” He glanced at Snow. “Your cats are another, and if they are less considered than your decision regarding the House, they are no less significant. But you fail to see their significance clearly. I fail to see it, at the moment, but I see that it is there. You cannot afford to choose ignorance at this juncture in your career. Ignorance may appear as the more comfortable alternative, but it is not, in the end, the act of someone who will—must—be a power.
“What, exactly, frightens you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I will allow that. And I will allow you the fear that knowledge brings. I will allow you the ignorance that comes with a surfeit of fact. But I will not allow you to knowingly choose it from this point on. It is a luxury you cannot afford. Fold the screen, ATerafin, and see what a creature without hands has achieved.”
“Creature?” Snow said, rising. He shrugged off Finch’s hand and ambled across the floor, taking distinctly less care than Jewel had. He was immune to Haval’s ire; it was too subtle. Wings spread, he rose, hovering in the air at the height of Haval’s shoulders, which shouldn’t have been possible given the size of the room and the inadequate height of the ceiling. Shouldn’t have didn’t cut it. He flew, and to Jewel’s eyes, he was glowing; a nimbus of interwoven blue and white surrounded and hallowed his open wings.
His eyes were gold, wide, unblinking. “Creature?”
Jewel began to gather the three panels of the trifold screen, slowly collapsing them in nerveless hands. The work steadied her until the moment she saw the dress. This was not the dress that she had tried on in pieces as it came together under Haval’s rapid needles. It wasn’t even close to that dress. It was almost entirely white; there was black that trailed the edges of sleeves that were not, in any way, current with Court fashions. They were long, their ends belled in yards of falling fabric. Gold strands of something seemed woven into the fabric itself, catching and bending light. The skirt was far, far too full; it had a train that seemed to contain as much material as the rest of the dress itself.
“This isn’t—this isn’t the dress we agreed on.”
“We did not discuss the dress we purportedly agreed on,” Haval replied. It had been one of his common complaints over the years; he expected Jewel to take an interest in current fashion; Jewel expected Haval to be aware of it in her stead. His pride as a craftsman had never allowed him to embarrass her in public, because it was his business that would suffer.
“This isn’t—”
“Current fashion, ATerafin? I am surpised. No, indeed, it is not. Will you try it on?”
She reached out to touch it, not to take it. Her hands lifted sleeves and dropped them almost instantly. “What is the fabric?”
“You will have to ask Snow,” he replied. “It is not a fabric with which I am familiar.”
I can’t wear this, Jewel thought, staring at the dress. She turned toward the hovering cat.
He slowly alighted. “You don’t like it?” His brows rose as high as his voice.
“Yes—I like it,” she said, too quickly.
“Then put it on.” His wings brushed the tip of her chin as he stretched, and then settled them.
“Snow.”
“Yes?”
“Look at me.”
The cat sniffed.
“I mean it. Look at me.”
“Yes?”
“Look at Finch.”
He didn’t bother. It would have required him to turn around.
“Are we wearing clothing like this?”
“Of course not. I didn’t make that clothing.” His sniff was the very essence of disdain.
“I can’t wear this, Snow.”
The great cat froze in place for a minute, and then he turned his head toward Haval. “What did she say?”
Haval winced. “What she is trying to say,” he told the cat, and in a much softer and friendlier voice than he’d yet used on Jewel, “is that she feels unworthy of such a magnificent dress.”
“Oh.” Snow looked back to Jewel. He walked to her side and then leaned into her; she stumbled. “You are a stupid girl,” he told her.
It was ludicrous to have this conversation with a cat. She knew it. But her whole life now felt dangerously unstable. If flowers—or gods knew—trees had grown up from the carpets, it wouldn’t have surprised her. Things had gone insane the moment The Terafin had died. It was as if Amarais had been the anchor of not only the House, but Jewel’s world. She bitterly, bitterly regretted her absence.
“You said it was an important dress. You said it was the most important dress you would wear in your life.” He hesitated, and then said, “Should it be armor instead?”
“No!”
“Should there be more black? I don’t like black.”
“He did, however, listen when I explained why black was necessary.”
“No. No, Snow, it doesn’t need more black.” She laughed. It was not a happy sound. “It needs an entirely different woman. This dress—this is something the Winter Queen could wear.”
Snow’s hiss was as loud as a growl. “It’s better.”
“Jewel,” Haval said quietly. “Come. Sit. Finch, if you will take Snow for a walk?”
Finch rose, but lingered. The crisp command in Haval’s request was not enough to drive her from the room. “Jay?”
Jewel lifted a hand, turned it in a swift motion, and then made her way to the chair that Haval was even now arranging for her. He stood behind it. Finch made space for herself—with care—on another chair. Its previous occupant, a bolt of fabric, she removed and set against the wall.
“Be careful with that,” Haval said, as the bolt hit the floor. He did not ask Finch to leave again. Finch’s compromise was Snow; she called the cat, and he came and plonked his head more or less in her lap. His purr was as loud as his hiss, and Jewel, facing them, watched as Finch scratched behind his ears. But Finch wasn’t looking at the cat; she was looking at Jewel.
Jewel, who knew she was as close to white as she ever got. She felt something pulling at her hair, and startled; Haval cleared his throat and she settled back into her chair. He pulled out the pins that Ellerson had so carefully, deliberately, placed into her hair, and as he did, that hair, still heavy with the oils that were meant to keep it in place, loosened.
“The dress is not in poor taste, ATerafin. It is, I admit, unusual; it is also striking. There will not be another like it—”
“Ever.” Snow interjected.
“—At the first day rites. It is not daring except in its circumvention of current fashion; it is not revealing. But it is not a child’s dress. You,” he said, as he began to brush her hair, “are not a child. It is not clear to me that the members of the House Council understand this, because it is not clear to me that you understand it yourself, except when you see those who are. Your Adam. Your youngest visitor.”
She stiffened. She had forgotten them. “I’m not a child,” she told him, closing her eyes as he continued to brush her hair. Her knees crept up
to her chin; the dress she was wearing crinkled loudly as she wrapped her arms around them.
“No, and perhaps I am being too harsh. Amarais Handernesse ATerafin was like a parent to you; she stood between you and the world. While she ruled, you trusted her—and I will tell you now, you trusted her more completely than she ever trusted herself.”
“She—”
“She, like any who acquire power while still maintaining a sense of duty and responsibility, bore the weight of fear: fear of the consequences of failure. You allowed this because she demanded it. She cannot demand it now. There is now nothing between you and the future; no safety, no one to stand behind. It is time that you do as she did. Take up the fear, carry it, and protect what you have long sought to protect anyway. No more, no less.” He did not set the brush down; he continued. “Wear the dress.”
“Is that an order?”
“If it will comfort you this morning, yes. An order I have no right to give you, and an order you have no obligation to obey.”
“For first day,” she whispered. “For first day, I’ll wear it.”
“I have work to do here; Snow did not see fit to likewise clothe young Teller or Finch. The work will be done in time if I am allowed to work without interruption.” He finally set the brush aside. “Finch,” he said, in exactly the same tone of voice he had used earlier. “Take Jewel to her room.”
This time, Finch obeyed.
* * *
Shadow was waiting for Jewel.
Unfortunately, he was waiting on the bed, and he didn’t seem to hear Finch’s quiet request that he move. Nor did he feel her less quiet attempt to shove him to one side. After a few minutes of the pointless attempt, Finch folded her arms.
Shadow then rose. He didn’t get off the bed, but he did move to one side. “Tell the old woman,” he said, “that she is sleeping.”
Jewel shook her head. “Sigurne is—”
Shadow leaped off the bed before she could finish, landing behind her. He knocked her over with the powerful swing of a forepaw. He hadn’t extended his claws, but it didn’t matter; she lost her footing so easily she might have been standing on ice.
Skirmish: The House War: Book Four Page 38