Skirmish: The House War: Book Four

by Michelle West

  “I was a young man. A promising, bright young man,” he added, with a wry chuckle. “And I was, of course, charming. My mother oft said it was a failing—a bright failing. I am not lazy,” he added, “in my own defense. I have always preferred to cajole where another might threaten. But I was not without ambition in my youth.” He lifted his head, then, and rose. “I am not without ambition now, as you must know.”

  She nodded, because this at least she did.

  He reached out and laid his right palm against wood that had grown chill with lack of sun in the Henden wind. “She saw something in me, in my feckless youth. She was not yet The Terafin; she was Amarais Handernesse ATerafin, and she was estranged from her family because she had chosen to take the Terafin name. You were aware of that?”

  Jewel closed her eyes and swallowed. “Yes. Yes, very familiar. I knew her brother.”

  “I did not have that privilege, although I knew of him. Handernesse was an old, old lineage; it was not a significant player in the courts of power. Had she stayed with Handernesse, it would have been.”

  “It would not have been one of The Ten.”

  “No. But Terafin would not have been first among The Ten were it not for her leadership, either. The finest of swords cannot make a man an expert swordsman; it is the same with the Houses. They have the raw resources, and the reach, but without a man—or woman—who understands the whole of the political landscape, it cannot be expertly wielded, and to advantage. You met her in her prime, Jewel. She was impressive, formidable, and entirely in control of even the slightest of gestures. She was adored by her Chosen, respected by her servants, feted by her merchants.”

  “When they weren’t drunk.”

  He chuckled. “They could be a tad overfamiliar when drunk; it seldom happened more than once.

  “You did not see her in her youth.”

  “You didn’t—”

  “I forget myself. When I joined the House, she was young to me—although to you now, she would not have been. She was not a gentle woman in her youth. She was not Haerrad; she was not a monster. But she was a blade, a honed thing, and she burned with righteous anger.” His smile was a strange, soft smile. “You could have warmed your hands on her rage on the right days—or the wrong ones. She was always careful with her words—but her words were like a slender dam; what lay behind them could always be felt.

  “Perhaps because she was so bold, she found favor in the eyes of The Terafin. It was clear to the House, and to those with ambition, that some bond formed between them; he mentored her, where she would allow it. She was envied, and she was feared, for that reason. But not by me—I was not a member of the House Council; the age of The Terafin signified little in my case.”

  “And in hers?”

  He raised a brow. “I believe that question to be beneath you in your current circumstance.”

  Jewel had the grace to redden.

  “I was ambitious, Jewel, but it was more than that. She offered me a seat on the House Council for my support—what little support I could give her—when she made her bid to take the House Seat.” He sounded surprised. Still.

  “The House Council is not the House,” was Jewel’s sharp observation.

  “No. No, it is not. But it is by general acclaim, by consensus, that The Terafin is finally chosen.”

  “It’s not—”

  “Very well. It is by the consensus of those who remain alive after the worst of the conflict has occurred. Will that suffice?”

  She nodded.

  “I accepted her offer.” He studied Jewel’s expression; in the dark at the end of the three longest days of her life, she couldn’t guard it well. “You think I accepted it because I wanted the House Council seat.” It wasn’t a question. “That is fair, Jewel. I did want the seat, and if I were asked at any other time but this one, I would ask, loudly, if there was any other reason to accept such an offer.”

  She waited, now, her hands slowly unclenching by her sides, the night air in her lungs as he turned his gaze to the coffin again. “But this is the shrine at which oaths are made to the House, or of it, and here, I will not lie. It was her, Jewel. When she spoke to me—I wanted what she wanted.” He smiled. “She was so clear in her principles. She was so determined. She burned, in a way that made fire beautiful.

  “You will, of course, declare yourself for the House Seat in the Council Hall on the morrow.”

  She should have said yes, and knew it; she was silent. There was no question and no doubt in his words. But standing in the lee of the coffin, the woman she respected most in the world enclosed and in all ways unable to return, she could not. She had wanted three days to mourn.

  Life doesn’t have time for your tears, girl, her Oma’s voice said sharply. You shed them, fine. You’re still a child. But you keep moving while you cry. If you don’t move, the vultures will think you’re carrion.

  Yes. Yes, Oma.

  “We were not certain,” Marrick continued, when she failed to reply. “Until your unexpected arrival at the moment The Terafin was assassinated, your candidacy had been considered a possibility—but you are young, by the standards of the Council Hall, and you have not built an impressive base of power. Or so we believed. When you did arrive—without announcement, and in the middle of the chaos—it became a probability, but the caveat still remained. You are aware that at least four of the senior Council members intended to advance themselves as candidates before the full Council.”

  Jewel nodded.

  “And those?”

  “You. Elonne, Haerrad, Rymark. I’d so hoped that Gabriel—” She bit the words off. “Those were the four that I knew about.”

  “You are correct; if there is a fifth—besides yourself—I am unaware of them.” He watched her face beneath the flicker of lamplight; the shrine was not lit by magestones. “On the first day of the funeral rites, my dear, it was clear to at least two of us that you intended to declare. The dress,” he added, his smile softening as if the memory were precious, “drew every eye, from the highest to the lowest—and you wore it surprisingly well. I will say that when your cat chooses not to speak, he is fearsome.”

  Jewel grimaced. “Luckily, that’s almost never.”

  To her surprise, Marrick nodded gravely. “It is lucky, ATerafin. Jewel. He is otherwise too strange and too dangerous. Most of the House has now been exposed to his constant litany about the perils of boredom; when they hear him, they roll their eyes and try to go back to their work, in much the same way they would were he a small, cranky child. It favors you.”

  “He made the dress,” she said. She wasn’t certain why; Marrick was clearly surprised.

  “How? He has no hands—”

  “I don’t know. I don’t really want to know; I never want to wear it again.” But she would. She felt it suddenly, sharply, certainly: she would wear that dress again, and the wearing of it might save her life.

  He was silent for another moment, and when he spoke, his voice was steady, low, and cool. “The wearing of that dress was a bold move, Jewel. Fortune oft favors the bold, and no one of us could have carried it off. Nor would we have thought to try. It did not please Haerrad—” He lifted a hand as she opened her mouth, and she shut it. “But Haerrad is not considered one of your natural allies. It confounded even Rymark.

  “I have spoken with Elonne; we speak often, as friendly rivals oft will. I have spoken a few words with Haerrad; those are, of necessity, chosen with care—but I have never been Haerrad’s natural enemy; in the past week, he has focused the whole of his anger and his attention on Rymark. To be fair, Rymark has returned that regard; they circle each other. It is a pity they are both still standing.”

  Jewel shook her head; she was smiling. She couldn’t help it. “Yes,” she finally said. “It is. I don’t suppose—” She stopped.

  “Don’t stop on my account; I am certain my advisers have heard me say far, far worse, and in far more descriptive language than you could manage—unless you spoke your n
ative Torra.”

  She startled, and then relaxed. Of course he knew about the Torra; there was probably very little about her life he—or the other three—didn’t know.

  “Yes,” he said, noticing it. He said nothing else for a long moment; the night was dark, now; the moon was clear where it shone, veiled only by the bowers of the trees—the new trees—on the grounds.

  “When the rains started, ATerafin, when the earth began to break beneath our feet, when the waters of the statuary rose like a tidal wave in miniature, we put aside all thought of our own politics and our own ambitions; our ambitions, at that point, were more primitive. We wished to survive. We wished the House to survive. It was a very clarifying moment. I am not a terribly religious man; I do not give much thought to the gods, although I mind with care the dictates of their children. I expect that the gods do the same with regard to me and my desires. I did not, therefore, pray.

  “Elonne did. I do not consider prayer a weakness,” he added softly, still looking into the slightly moving boughs of the highest of branches. “Amarais was known to pray to Cormaris; she did so publicly. She was not a weak woman. But, Jewel, the strangest thought occurred to me in the moment when it seemed that the whole of the Terafin grounds might collapse beneath those of us who avoided being crushed—or drowned.

  “I remembered my youth.” He smiled as he said it, and this time he did look at her. “You are aware that a House War is often fought in Terafin when The Terafin dies. The Terafin may assign an heir, but the document of assignation is worth the paper it is written on—and while the paper is no doubt very, very fine, it is not a match for the forces that work against it. If the heir is to be appointed, if consensus is to be reached in Council, it is entirely because the heir has proved himself or herself worthy of the position—and worthiness encompasses survival.

  “I have told you I was young when The Terafin took her place on the House Council; she was considered young for it, but not as obscenely young as you were when you were appointed. In the early years of her reign, I do not think she would have dared to appoint you in that fashion. But the House Council understood the part you had played in that wretched Henden so many years ago; we understood that you were a valuable asset—even a crowning Jewel—and that some statement of your value and worth to the House must be sent immediately to the Crowns. We wished to retain you. We did not demur.

  “Ah, but I wander. Where was I? Ah, yes. Amarais approached me before I had achieved a Council seat, and she offered to sponsor me, conditional upon my future support. Have you likewise approached any members of this House? No, don’t answer; I know you have not. You lacked the ambition that drove Amarais; it was almost incandescent, in her youth. In our youth,” he added, “she was ruthless.”

  Jewel started to speak, and stopped herself with difficulty.

  “You think of Haerrad as ruthless.”

  “Or Rymark.”

  “But not Amarais. Not Elonne, and not Marrick?”

  Aware that he might take the admission as an insult, she fell silent.

  “Not Jewel?”

  “Not Jewel,” she conceded.

  “Then you fail to understand what ruthless means in this context.”

  “I understand what it means.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It means there’s nothing—at all—a person won’t do to achieve their goals. Nothing. There’s nothing that causes pause, nothing that deters them.”

  “It was true of Amarais.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  He held up a hand. “It was, Jewel. Understand that her goal was not to take the House Seat; the seat was her means of achieving her goals. She saw a future she felt she could build; inherent in that future were some of the principles you value so highly. She valued them as well; they were, in large part, what she hoped to achieve. Yes, there were some things she would not do—but she would not do them precisely because they were anathema to what she actually wanted.

  “Outside of those things, there was nothing she would not surrender. Are you so different?”

  Jewel swallowed anger, reaching instead for the words that he’d actually spoken. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because, Jewel, I heard your voice at the height of the storm. There is not a man, woman, or child upon the grounds—or in the manse—who did not. I heard what you said, and if I did not hear a reply, the effects were writ large in sky and on ground. All those years of planning, of carefully building my own base of power were suddenly made so small and insignificant. Tomorrow, or perhaps next month if I am being honest, reality will reassert itself. But the House Council will not meet in a month; it will meet on the morrow.

  “On the morrow, if you will have it, I will offer you my full support.”

  Jewel was utterly silent. When she could move at all, it wasn’t to speak; it was to shove her hair out of her eyes.

  Marrick chuckled. “It is not what you expected? You will learn to hide that, in time. I suggest in eight hours’ time.” His brief chuckle evaporated, his face losing the familiar lines of merriment, his expression so serious Jewel felt momentarily at sea. “I have spoken with Member Mellifas at short length, as she did not have much time for me. It is clear, however, that she feels that what you did should have been impossible. We are alive. I do not think she expected it.

  “But, ATerafin, what I heard in your rough, angry speech was what I heard on the day—decades past—that three members of the House Council died at the hands of a man we seldom name; it was the bloody start of a House War that would see dozens dead within the week. On that day, Amarais declared herself. She was always a cautious, careful woman—but not so cautious that she did not know when to gamble; not too proud that she did not know when to concede with grace.

  “On that day? She was neither. The House was her family. It was her heart’s blood. If she came to Terafin thinking it a tool, she was transformed by the experience of guiding it, even as Council member. She had respect for The Terafin of the time, and if they argued—and they did—that respect remained largely undiminished with the passage of time. She knew that there would be conflict when he died; she did not expect it to be so ugly, so swift, and so near complete. She herself survived because of the intervention of a healer.” He closed his eyes.

  “Alowan.” Jewel said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Indeed. Alowan. He was never ours; he was always hers. She did not rest the week he demanded; she came to the House Council through halls made silent by fear. The sound of the doors opening—and closing—could be heard throughout the manse. I bribed a servant,” he added, without a trace of regret, “so that I might hear what she had to say.”

  “You could have asked.”

  “Indeed, but that was hardly the point. She was the woman to whom I would owe my future, and she had almost died. I was callow, Jewel; I was not certain with whom to throw in my lot in the event of her passing. She took The Terafin’s chair,” he added. “There was no regent; the regent was among the three who had died. She did not take her own Council chair; on that day, she took the House Seat, and she waited while the Council Hall filled. She had two guards with her: Alayra was one. You will not have met the other; he perished during the weeks that followed. She had one adjutant—Gabriel, who did survive.

  “She was challenged,” he added, his voice sliding into a softer register. “For her presumption. She did not even blink; she expected it, and she shunted the objection aside.”

  “How?”

  “She said, if I recall correctly, that there was no one else who was worthy to take the seat, and short of her instant and immediate death, she would not surrender it.” He smiled. “She had done one thing in preparation for this singular meeting: she had retrieved the House Sword from its cradle. I don’t know how; I asked her only once, and she refused to answer.”

  Jewel thought she knew, but said nothing.

  “She drew the sword, Jewel. She was not an expert swordsman; she couldn’t be. But i
t was clear from her handling of the blade that she had endured some training at the hands of one who was. She said, ‘This is the sword of Terafin the Founder. This is the sword that he offered to the first Twin Kings, and the sword he wielded in their war to create the Empire of Essalieyan—an Empire governed by the god-born sons of the Lords of Justice and Wisdom. The blade’s name is Justice. The House is not a prize for butchers with the hearts of the most mendacious and unscrupulous of merchants. First among The Ten, it has always stood for more, much more, than that.

  “ ‘No one who cannot understand what the House must mean can take this seat while I live.’“ He shook his head. “She had almost died; we all knew it. It galvanized her. It did not force her to reconsider or withdraw; she had faced death; it made her stronger. The butcher sat across the Council table; it was clear to whom she made her challenge. But she made it in defense of the House, of what the House must mean.” He shook his head. “Heady words, to a younger man. Heady, impulsive, idealistic—even noble words. She spoke with a passionate conviction that the politic never use. And we heard her. I remember the sound of her voice,” he added softly. “Tonight, of all nights. Time has—had—tarnished it somewhat; experience had belittled it from a safe distance.”

  Jewel could imagine Amarais Handernesse ATerafin in that chair, in that hall, the sword in her hands. She could see Alayra—unscarred, determined—by her side. She could imagine Gabriel there as well, steady, silent in his determination. What she could not imagine is what he said next.

  “I heard her voice in yours, Jewel. I heard it, from a remove of decades, and I understood what it presaged. I am not seer-born; I have no particular talent that lifts me above other men in any regard. I am on the House Council by dint of my ability to see, and understand, the people around me. And to like, respect, or admire them—as necessary. But what you have, she had; what you have is not in me. She could not have done what you did,” he added. “But what she did, in the end, was similar: she risked all, to save what the House meant to her. I would have taken the House if I could. I understand both Haerrad and Rymark; I understand where much of their danger lies. I consider Elonne competent, sharp—and almost appallingly elegant,” he added, laughing, “although I will trouble you not to repeat that.