Battle: The House War: Book Five

by Michelle West

  Avandar’s grip tightened, and she realized that she had started to move toward the mage. Do not touch him. Do not touch the book. If you struggle, I will be forced to act, and I will not gain the information we require.

  What information?

  Who the creator of the book was.

  * * *

  The book was old. It looked old. Everything about it spoke of the ancient. But it was Meralonne’s approach that inspired awe, for Jewel recognized the twin aspects of a magic that mortals in the Empire did not use: Summer and Winter. She had seen Meralonne use Summer magic before; she had never seen him use Winter’s. Yet she was not surprised.

  Terrified yes, but not surprised. She almost ordered him to stop. A small part of her mind told her that she could, and he would obey. She was The Terafin; she was no longer a desperate, hungry girl from the poor holdings. But instinct kept her silent. She realized that he must do this. She didn’t know why, and didn’t argue.

  Meralonne didn’t touch the book’s cover again; he gestured instead. It flew open, pages fanning as if caught in the gust of a strong wind. None of the other books upon the table was caught in the same wind, not even the book that had so discomfited Evayne, but she spared them a glance, no more; Avandar’s hand had tightened in a death grip.

  The pages did not, as Jewel expected they would, come to rest. They continued to fan up and over, until they were a blur of ivory motion, a semicircle of faintly glowing light. It wasn’t white, but wasn’t gold; it wasn’t the black of winter. It was a color that Jewel had not yet seen magic take.

  She glanced up from the book and her attention was caught and held by Meralonne’s expression. His eyes, reflecting the book’s light, were shining silver; his hair was caught in the wind that touched nothing else. He took a step back from the book, his expression shuttered. Gone was the delight of anticipation, although no boredom remained to take its place.

  Avandar, let go.

  To her surprise, he did. She walked the short distance to the table, and stood to one side—and in front—of the silent mage. When she looked at the book itself, the pages suddenly fell to one side or the other, exposing a spread of two pages. Upon the left were words. They were, to Jewel’s eye, Weston. Not Old Weston, but Weston. The upper corner of the page was a detailed illumination, the paint and the ink so bright and new the book looked like it had never seen sun. Or time.

  But she didn’t need to read the words—although she could. The right facing page was not covered in text; it was an illustration. The paint here was as bright, as new, as that used for the illuminated letter, but it wasn’t the color or the artistry that caught her attention: the illustration depicted a young man.

  A familiar young man. Adam.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  WHEN THE CAPTAINS of the Chosen were separated from their duty, even briefly, they were different men. They relaxed into simple things like, say, discussion. They spoke. They made the occasional joke. Angel understood this transformation better than any of the den except Arann. The others accepted it, although it was Jay who found it the most difficult, which was ironic, given she was their reason for existence.

  Angel understood service. He understood it in a bone-deep way. He didn’t feel the need to put that understanding into words; they’d just make Jay uncomfortable. But he had already laid down his life for her once. Only the intervention of Alowan had saved him.

  He entered the war room first; Torvan and Arrendas were enumerating the Chosen by name and seniority. They had listened to Meralonne’s arrogant commentary, and had accepted it as truth: not everyone who wanted to own a weapon considered significant by the mage would be able to do so.

  But Angel had not been tested by the pole arm he’d grabbed from the wall. There had been no moment of judgment, no measure of his worth. He had seen the pole arm and he had realized it was the right weapon for the job at hand. The Chosen carried long swords, but the reach of the creature’s wings had rendered them ineffective for anything but defense.

  And offense had been required. The creature had taken out two of the Chosen—not fatally, thank Kalliaris—almost before the battle started. Angel glanced at Torvan; Torvan returned his regard.

  “When you took the spear from the wall, did anything unusual happen?”

  Angel chuckled. The Chosen were bound by rules, regulations, and customs in ways that Angel would never be—but at heart, they understood each other. “I was just wondering that myself. I didn’t notice anything at the time.”

  “Have you attempted to wield the spear since?”

  “No. We don’t generally carry weapons when we’re at home. We don’t carry them when we leave the manse.”

  “You’re thinking of changing that habit.”

  “Yes.” He hesitated. Torvan marked it. Torvan, unlike Jay or Finch, didn’t press the point. Angel addressed it anyway, coming at it from the side. “Has she talked with the Chosen about her future plans?”

  Arrendas glanced at Torvan. Torvan was silent, but it was a measuring silence, not a refusal. “Not explicitly, no. We are aware that she may be absent from the manse for more than a few days. You intend to go with her.”

  Angel nodded. “The Terafin hopes this has something to do with Carver, and he owes me money.”

  Arrendas actually laughed. “Who doesn’t Carver owe money?”

  “Probably Merry. I wouldn’t bet on it, though.” Angel’s gaze traveled across the wall. “I have an old friend in the city, and I think he’s been waiting for this.”

  “An old friend?”

  “Yes. A family friend. He’s kin, by my reckoning. He’s not a mage; he’s not a member of the Order. He works in the Port Authority. He keeps an ancient ax under his bed; it took him a few years to get used to the lack of weaponry on the city streets.” Angel smiled as he spoke. “I swear the weapons look different than they did on the first day.”

  “You noticed that as well.”

  “There are more swords. Do you think the weapons change shape somehow?”

  Silence.

  Angel said, uneasily, “I hope not. Can you imagine your sword turning into an entirely unfamiliar weapon in the middle of a fight?”

  “Yes,” was Torvan’s flat reply. He clearly took as much comfort from the thought as Angel did.

  * * *

  There were no chairs in this room; there were no ladders. The weapons were not at chest level; they were not even at eye level. They were—barely—within arm’s reach. They were also in scabbards, for the most part. The axes—there were three—were not.

  Angel’s experience with an ax consisted of Terrick and brief glimpses of his father; his father had not chosen to teach Angel the art of wielding an ax. He taught sword, instead, the instruction harsh and bitter. As a farmer, he was an exacting—and frequently disappointed—weaponsmaster. Angel was one of his best students, but only because after the rest of the boys had gone back to their farms, his father continued to drill.

  Angel had spent the past few years honing that rusty skill; turning the basic thrusts and parries of a youth into something more powerful and certain. He knew how to sharpen a blade, knew how to oil it, knew how to handle it. But he was almost never called upon to carry it in service to a Lord. His weapon—and the long sword he carried when a sword was allowed came from the Terafin armories—was not his measure in the eyes of that Lord. It was, like forks and quills, a tool to be picked up at need and set aside after the task was done.

  Or so he had believed.

  Yet he knew that were it entirely true, he would not have drilled with the Chosen and the House Guard. He would not have pushed himself. There was a reason that Terafin—and The Ten in general—had guards: the guards were their shields and weapons. Had he had a sword when he attempted to engage the demon that had almost killed Jay, it wouldn’t have made a difference.

  But he was here. He was here, at last, for a sword of his own. He looked at hilts. Some of the hilts looked like jewelry; they made ornaments
of the sword; the scabbards were likewise overdone. If Meralonne was right, these were magic; they had survived for centuries and did not look any worse for the passage of time.

  But if he was wrong in any way, scabbards like that one were a disaster waiting to happen. They’d attract the eye of every thief in range, and quite a few who would pick up the rumor. Angel wasn’t certain that thieves would be an issue where Jay was going—but he’d spent enough time in the streets of the city it didn’t matter.

  In the bad years, one of those thieves might have been Carver or Duster. No, he thought, shaking his head and walking, slowly, past the wall. They wouldn’t have been that stupid. They had known—or at least Carver had—what was out of reach.

  Wind gusted through the open window. The skies were not quite as purple as the open air above the library, but they were cloudless. At a distance birds could be seen—and flying among them, winged but all the wrong shape for birds, other creatures. None of them came to the war room, but then again, there were no cats and no Meralonne APhaniel to challenge them.

  Torvan said, “Is that where you think she’ll be?”

  “I don’t know where she’ll go. I don’t know if I’ll see what she sees. When we rode up the side of the tree, she saw a plain of untouched snow. I saw the tree.” He shrugged. “We’ve never seen everything she can. We’ve bet our lives on what she does see—but we do it because we trust her.

  “On the day Celleriant was caught in the tree—and if I understand what happened, the dreaming—I couldn’t follow her. I would have fallen if I’d been on the back of any other mount. But she needed me to see what we see. Maybe that’s why she wants me.”

  “It’s not just that,” Arrendas said. “You’re better than Arann with a sword; he’s close, but you’ve got grace and skill. He has everything else.”

  Angel paused beneath two crossed weapons. One, sheathed was a long sword with a narrower blade than the swords found in the Terafin armory. The other, however, was an ax. The blade curved; it was heavy and entirely without blemish. The haft of the ax was simple; there were no jewels, no gold, nothing but black leather on the grip. The pommel was rounded, but seemed to be simple steel.

  The scabbard of the sword was likewise simple. It looked new, but it had none of the obvious ostentation of some of the more complicated—and therefore expensive—scabbards his father would have despised. He could almost hear his father’s voice as he stood beneath the intersection of these two weapons.

  He could hear the question that his father had never asked. The question that Terrick had avoided. He could hear the question that Caras the god-born son of Cartanis had asked: Tell me, Angel, Garroc’s son, do you serve The Terafin?

  No.

  Jay had not been Terafin, then. She had become Terafin months ago. She had offered him the House Name, and he had hesitated. Stubbornly. Does it matter what I’m called?

  In this room, for the first time, he faced the truth. Yes, it mattered. Jewel was The Terafin. He had come to House Terafin in her service. He had served no other Lord, and no other master. He had made clear to Caras that he never would: he followed Jay.

  Weyrdon didn’t tell me to find a Lord that he would be willing to follow; he told me to find one that I would.

  She has not taken your oath.

  No. No, Angel thought, she had not—because he had never formally offered it. He knew it would embarrass her.

  She knew, though. He had told her in every other way. He had explained why he would not take the House Name the first time it had been offered to the den. But as he looked at the crossed weapons, they were like a window into the future: they illuminated a truth that he had decried as unnecessary. On the paths she would walk—no, the paths they would walk together, he was hers. She was his Lord. And he needed to offer the formal vow to seal a future that not even Jay could see.

  He reached up. His fingers could easily touch the weapons, but they were high enough that he could not grasp them firmly. The worst outcome, of course, would be that he jog them loose and have the ax come crashing down, blade first; he took that risk. He knew that these—sword and ax—were the only things in the room he wanted.

  Why these two? He wondered as he stretched. In a room with walls full of weapons, why these two? He should at least look at the others. Not the extremely ostentatious ones, never that—but the other weapons. Yet it was these two that drew the whole of his attention. The sword. The very Northern ax.

  Ah.

  Why had he not offered her his binding oath?

  A flash of light across the ax blade caught his eyes. The ax was above his head, it was flat against the wall. It shouldn’t have shown him a reflection of himself—but it did. He saw his own face, his cheekbones, his chin, and the rising spire of his hair. He froze, arms lifted, hands touching the hilt of the ax itself.

  And he understood.

  “You wield an ax?” Torvan asked, the voice coming from somewhere over his left shoulder.

  “No,” he replied. “Not me.”

  “The friend you spoke of.”

  “Yes. My father’s man, in every way.” Still. After decades, still the man who served Garroc. Angel’s father was dead. Angel had loved him, but he had never understood Terrick’s insistence on serving a memory. Even Angel had not chosen to do that.

  But no, he thought, his reflection gazing back at him like a subtle accusation. That was a lie. He could make truth of it in only one way. He had thought he could never be Terrick. He had thought himself beyond that kind of bone-deep theoretical service. What service, after all, did Garroc require? He was dead.

  But his quest? Ah. His quest was not. Whatever it was he had dedicated his life to achieving, he had failed—but failure was not infinite. It was not a stable state. His son, Angel, had come to Averalaan, seeking. His son, in ignorance, had chosen to undertake the quest that had sent his Rendish father into exile.

  Terrick knew. Terrick waited. He had waited for decades. And Angel had not yet completed the task set his father by Weyrdon before Angel’s birth. Angel had found the only master he ever wished to serve, but it was not yet done.

  He gripped the haft of the ax, standing almost on his toes to do so; the ax came easily off the wall and did not demand his toes in payment, although the whole of its weight suddenly dragged Angel’s arm toward the floor. He knew what this ax meant now. He knew what he had to do.

  The sword came more easily to his hand, but again, there was no test, no measure taken. Only when he attempted to draw it from its sheath did the blade resist. He heard no voice, no commandment; it was a weapon.

  But it was a weapon he could not draw.

  “So there is something to it, after all,” Arrendas observed. “Too bad you can’t use axes.”

  Angel grimaced as he put the whole of his weight into his hands; the right on the sheath, the left on the sword’s hilt. Try as he might, he could not separate the two.

  “Try a different sword?” Torvan suggested.

  “No. It’s this sword, or no sword.” Angel was not seer-born. He couldn’t speak with the certainty that lifted Jay’s pronouncements from the realm of the merely stubborn. But he felt that this was not mere ego on his part. This sword was meant to be his.

  But not yet.

  He knew what he had to do. He took the ax—which had no sheath—and tucked the sword into his belt. “I’ll leave you both here,” he told the Captains of the Chosen. “I have to head into the city.” He began to walk toward the door, but Torvan called his name, and he halted and turned.

  “You are not one of us,” Torvan told him. It was not said with any disdain. “You would never surrender yourself to the Chosen. Arann did. The Chosen serve The Terafin; we exist for no other purpose. But in serving The Terafin, there are rules, regulations, there are hierarchies. The Chosen are a unit. But we are aware of you, Angel. We know what you mean to her. We know what you offer her—even when she doesn’t see it herself.

  “The Terafin is not a woman who like
s to be beholden to others; nor is she a woman to whom rule comes easily. The Chosen are part of Terafin to your master. They are inextricably linked. Where she goes—and I see, by your decision here, that she will go—the Chosen cannot follow.

  “I will argue for it,” he added. “I will demand that she take at least a handful of the Chosen with her. I do not think in the end I will be successful.”

  Angel said nothing. He waited, knowing that Torvan had not yet reached the end of a speech that was difficult for him to make.

  “You are, therefore, the only one of us who will accompany her.”

  “I am not—as you said—of the Chosen.”

  “Not hierarchically, no. But in spirit, you are equal to the very best of us. Perhaps you are better. We are proud of the Chosen, Angel. We are proud of what we are in her service. You exist as hers without rank. She will tolerate you. Where she walks, she will take no one but you, if I understand her intent at all.

  “We will guard her seat in her absence. We will protect Finch and Teller as if they were The Terafin herself. We will do everything in our power to prevent a House War in her absence; we will hold the home she has vowed to both rule and protect. There is nothing more that we can offer her, and indeed, nothing she would value as much.

  “We will do this because it is all she will allow us to do. You will, therefore, stand in our stead.

  “Bring her back to us,” the Captain of the Chosen commanded.

  13th of Fabril, 428 A.A. Port Authority, Averalaan

  Terrick Dumarr was a man of middling years, with more gray than color in hair that had been pale to start with. He had taken on the ruddy complexion of a man who lives by wind and sun, and if his position behind the open window of a wicket in the Port Authority was not unassailable, it was not because of his demeanor; he was still a man whom the Port Authority guards found intimidating if he did not approach them with care.