Battle: The House War: Book Five

by Michelle West

  “I should hope not.” This was said with more asperity. “He had no business doing what he did; he has no business teaching you any of it.” She withdrew her hands. “Adam?”

  Adam rose more slowly than Jewel had, and he glanced at Jewel, his fingers slipping into surprisingly confident den-sign. Jewel hadn’t taught him that; she wondered who had.

  Jester, he signed.

  Jewel was surprised. He signed something Jewel didn’t recognize. Two things. “My name,” he told her. “And Ariel’s.”

  She blinked. But Adam was older than any of the den had been when they had first come together. He was, in many ways, more competent than any of them had been, as well. He was as calm as Finch or Teller at their best, but clear-eyed and compassionate in a way that almost no one in the den had been when it came to outsiders. He was watching Hannerle now.

  She reached out for one of his hands, as if he were in fact a child. He accepted the gesture without a trace of self-consciousness. “I promised I’d show him the store,” she said to Jewel, by way of explanation. “Do you want to join us?”

  Jewel nodded. She almost took Hannerle’s free hand, but she would have felt extremely self-conscious. You are not a child, she told herself. It had been so long since she’d missed her mother.

  Adam followed Hannerle, as he was attached; Jewel trailed behind them, gathering her words, preparing them. She realized that she wasn’t comfortable in the store, although it looked—to her eye—very like the store that she had visited infrequently in her youth. Dreams had a way of shifting geography, but if this was the geography dictated by Hannerle, it was solid. It did not, had not, changed.

  Hannerle, who often left Haval to his work, showed Adam the pride of her collection: the silks colored in the most expensive of dyes. One or two were a shade of blue that Jewel had never seen; she didn’t think this was because Hannerle was dreaming, but couldn’t be certain. Hannerle spoke of only one or two customers by House—but, of course, the most significant of these was Terafin.

  Adam said, “Jewel is The Terafin,” and Hannerle stopped, arrested. She turned to Jewel, and Jewel felt her clothing shift as Hannerle examined it. It was not comfortable to be a passenger in another person’s dreams.

  “Why, so she is. Haval has been making dresses for her, hasn’t he?” She frowned. Hannerle, always pragmatic, shook her head as if to clear it. “He’s been working for you.” The shift in tone was wrong.

  Jewel swallowed. “Hannerle.”

  “What have you asked him to make for you?” Her knuckles were white around Adam’s hands.

  “Dresses,” Jewel replied. “As always. But it isn’t just me he designs for; it’s Finch and Teller.”

  Hannerle closed her eyes. Jewel was afraid the store would vanish around them; it faded, becoming momentarily transparent. But before Hannerle opened her eyes, it reasserted itself. This was Hannerle’s home. This was what she had built. She was not about to let it go.

  And Jewel had taken Haval from its heart, and she did not intend to relinquish him. For herself, yes. She could forgo his often caustic advice and guidance. She trusted the gift with which she’d been born to preserve her own life; it was the lives of everyone else it might fail.

  She understood, as she waited for Hannerle, what Haval had understood in the intimate environs of her private dining room: She held Hannerle here because she did not wish to let Haval go. Haval did not lie to Hannerle. Haval had promised her that when she woke on her own, he would leave Terafin and return to their life at the shop.

  “Hannerle,” she said.

  Hannerle opened her eyes and met Jewel’s gaze. “Terafin.”

  Jewel didn’t flinch. It took effort. “Haval will come home if you ask him.”

  Hannerle’s lips turned up in a strange, bitter smile. “Will he?”

  The question robbed Jewel of an easy answer. She thought, in that moment, Hannerle knew everything. Jewel was accustomed to this from her husband, but not from Hannerle herself. “Yes. You must know that.”

  “I know that I keep him here, yes. But some days I feel as if I built this. Me. I’m like a cage, Jewel. Beyond my bars, he is what he always was.”

  Everything. “He loves you.”

  “Yes.”

  “He always has. The only part of his past he’ll speak about is you.”

  “I’m the only part of his past that’s unlikely to kill him,” was the gruff reply.

  Jewel laughed; she couldn’t help it. “You’re the only part of his past he wouldn’t stop, if you demanded his death.”

  “You think he’s been staying with you because of me,” Hannerle said, releasing Adam’s hand and getting, at last, down to business. “He tells you that. You tell yourself that. Do you actually believe it?”

  Jewel’s automatic response was yes. She bit it back. Hannerle was not asking a rhetorical question. “I did.”

  “I don’t.”

  “But—but why, Hannerle? He’s run this shop since before I met him. He’s good at what he does, and he’s never seemed unhappy.”

  Hannerle snorted. “He seems to be whatever’s convenient for him at the time. He could, if he wanted, treat the shop with active loathing and you’d believe it just as readily.”

  “I wouldn’t. If he loathed this store, he wouldn’t be in it. Nothing holds Haval down unless he wants to be pinned.”

  Hannerle folded her arms across her chest. “So. You understand.”

  And she did.

  “What do you want from my husband? I’ve known you for over half your life. You haven’t asked him to kill for you.”

  How much did Hannerle know?

  “No.”

  “I could kill Rath myself,” Hannerle continued. “But not you. I never approved of Rath; I never approved of your association with him. But you’re The Terafin now; maybe I misjudged him.”

  Jewel shook her head. “You didn’t. But if it weren’t for Rath, I wouldn’t be Terafin now.” She exhaled. “I don’t need your husband for my sake. I have my Chosen, and others besides. Inasmuch as every demon discovered in the city in the past few months has been discovered while trying to kill me, I’m safer than I’ve ever been.”

  “But?”

  “It’s not his advice, Hannerle. If he left the manse and returned here, I’d still commission dresses from him, and I’d still talk to him about my daily life. He takes Terafin money for his work, but it’s not the money that he wants; he wants the gossip. He wants to know what happens in Houses of power.

  “He’d probably be happier if he didn’t have to live sequestered in the West Wing. It’s much harder for him to gather information when he’s not in this store, being visited by patrons of power and note from time to time.”

  Hannerle snorted again. “If you think he hasn’t been gathering information while tucked away in the Terafin manse, you do not know my husband.”

  “No,” Jewel agreed. “I don’t. I know as much about him as he wants me to know.” She hesitated. “That’s unfair. I know that he’s observant.”

  Hannerle snorted.

  “I need him to be where he is.”

  “Why?” The single word was the sharpest word Hannerle had yet spoken.

  But Jewel understood women like Hannerle. They were part of her history, her childhood, her sense of what people were. She was The Terafin, yes; The Terafin was meant to define autocratic. It was not, however, as Terafin that she confronted Haval’s wife now. She wished, briefly, that her clothing would shift into something more appropriate, but realized as she thought this that there was nothing else she could wear.

  “Because I won’t be where he is for much longer.”

  Hannerle waited, lips compressed in a tighter line.

  “I need to leave Terafin, and I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. I’m Terafin, yes—but I’m also the only person who can undertake this journey. I can’t order someone else to take it—unless you happen to know another seer.” Jewel turned to examine the bolts of cloth
that Hannerle had shown Adam with such pride. “I wouldn’t leave, Hannerle. Terafin is my home. The only family I have left is in Terafin. They can’t come with me, and I wouldn’t take them even if it was possible.

  “You’ve seen my cats,” she said, lifting the edge of a bolt of blue silk and letting light play across its fabric. “I don’t know if you’ve seen my forest.”

  “Of course I have,” she replied, in an entirely different tone of voice.

  Jewel turned. The store had not melted away, but Hannerle drew her—and Adam, who remained silent and watchful throughout their discussion—toward the store windows. Outside of those windows the familiar streets of the Common no longer existed; instead, there were trees of silver, of gold, and of diamond.

  “I find it beautiful,” Hannerle said, her voice softer. “I find your cats beautiful—but I’m glad they’re yours, not mine; I think their constant whining would make me box their ears. I couldn’t own a forest like this one,” she added softly. “I’d forget how to live and work, I think. I’d wander through those trees looking for—for gods only know what. I’d be searching for the heart of those lands. I’d feel my own life too small and too dismal, too gray.

  “Too mortal,” she added. “You will not take Haval to your forest.”

  “No. Haval doesn’t belong in it. I don’t know what he’d do if he had to learn all the rules that govern and guide the wilderness; I don’t think rules really exist. But I can’t take my kin, either. I don’t want to put them at risk there. So I leave them at risk here.”

  Hannerle turned away from the window. “Here?”

  “In this city, where demons still hide and idiots still try to assassinate me. I’ll survive,” she added bitterly. “I always have. But they won’t. I’ve lost my kin before. I’ve lost—” she stopped as Hannerle put an arm around her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But I need Haval in my House while I’m gone. Finch will need him. And Teller.

  “But if I don’t go—if I don’t go—”

  Hannerle’s arm tightened, although she didn’t speak.

  “I know—I know you don’t want to lose him.”

  “No,” Hannerle said, “I don’t. I’ve never liked the games he played. I didn’t like what it did to him, what it made of him. I saw what he could become if he walked away—but I wanted to see that, and we both know Haval’s good at controlling what people see. I don’t want him to be devoured by what he was. And Jewel? He played games that only men of power play. He had no obvious power. He survived.

  “Sometimes he barely survived. Tell me where you must go.”

  “I—” She almost told Hannerle that she couldn’t speak about it, that the Kings were already so close to demanding the separation of her head from her shoulders. She didn’t. “How much has Haval told you about me?”

  Hannerle said, tersely, “Enough.”

  “I don’t know enough, yet, to use my talent properly. If I can’t use it, if I can’t control what I see and when I see it, the city will eventually be destroyed.”

  Hannerle exhaled. “I’ve been dreaming,” she said.

  Jewel glanced out the window, and Hannerle grimaced. “Yes, well. Haval is a normal man,” his wife continued, turning once again to gaze out at the trees.

  “Yes. But if Haval is here, he can provide by dint of will and observation what I provide by random vision and gut instinct. He can probably do better. If he decides to keep them alive, they’ll remain alive. I don’t know what he’ll do. I don’t know how he’ll do it. I don’t know where the information will come from—and Hannerle, I don’t care. I’m trying to care because I know what the cost might be to you. And if he loses you, I know what the cost will be to me.”

  “He has been bullying you.”

  Jewel smiled wanly. “With cause. If you were Finch, if you were Teller, if you were trapped sleeping while every other sleeper had finally awakened—I’d do the same. I’d be angry. I’d be—”

  “Oh, hush. Tell him he’s to stop. I don’t want him to become what he was—but I like your Finch and your Teller. I like you—and he knows it. He’s probably gambling that my affection for you is greater, in the end, than my fears and my needs.”

  “It shouldn’t have to be.”

  “No. Not in a world that had no forests such as this one. I can’t offer you any help. You’re The Terafin; you’re so far above me we shouldn’t be having this conversation. The only help I can offer, in the end, is Haval.”

  But will you? Jewel almost said. She didn’t. She had laid her own need bare, and now she waited. She had left the decision in Hannerle’s hands—and Hannerle knew it.

  “I can’t live in your manse,” Hannerle continued. “I understand why you had me moved, but I can’t live there. The West Wing will never be my home. Even if I could chase every servant out of the kitchen, I could never be comfortable. It’s too large, and there are too many people in it.

  “I want to go home.”

  Jewel nodded.

  “I don’t know whether residence in the manse will suit Haval in my absence. I don’t know if it will suit his intent. He worked for a select few men in his time, and he did not dwell in their homes. But those men were not Finch or Teller. They were not you. If you weren’t The Terafin, I would tell him to keep an eye out for your interests—but he’d do that anyway.

  “I won’t force him to abandon your den-kin. But I’m not of a mind to make it particularly easy for him, either. He knew I’d be angry when he had me moved. He knew I’d hate to be surrounded by people in positions of power. He expects me to be angry now, and I find with Haval it’s often best to give what he expects.”

  Jewel frowned. “But he knows people so well, he observes so much. If he’s certain—”

  “I’ve been dreaming,” Hannerle replied, voice low. “And I have seen things in my dreams that you might see only in nightmare. I’ve been safe. I’ve been here, in the heart of my home; the scenery on the outside changes. But my windows don’t break, and none of the violence or death crosses my threshold; I witness it, but I’m not threatened by it.

  “And I’ve seen enough, Jewel.” She closed her eyes. “I will not speak of it, not even here. I hope, when I wake, it becomes as distant and vague as nightmare. I know—I know what you fear. I know why you must leave. It’s been explained to me in a hundred different ways.

  “I don’t feel it’s fair that you’re the only hope the city has. I think it’s appalling. What do we have Kings for, if not tasks like this? You don’t deserve to bear the burden of the entire city. But we mostly don’t get what we deserve in this life.”

  “That’s what my Oma always told me.”

  “Smart woman.”

  “And scary.”

  “Come, Jewel. Take me to my husband.”

  Jewel closed her eyes.

  * * *

  When she opened them again, she was in the West Wing. Hannerle’s hand was clasped tightly in both of her own; Adam held the other, his eyes still closed.

  “Adam,” Jewel said.

  He opened them and met her gaze. Hannerle’s eyes opened as he withdrew his hand and set it in his lap. Haval had not moved an inch. His expression shifted only as his wife’s eyes narrowed in recognition.

  She said, in a much creakier voice than the voice she’d used in the dreaming, “I’ve a few words to say to you, Haval.”

  His brows rose. As a greeting, it wasn’t promising. “Of course. If I may ask for a moment of privacy,” he added, glancing pointedly at Adam and Jewel.

  Hannerle’s hand tightened briefly around Jewel’s. “Help me up,” she said, as if The Terafin were the least significant person in the room. Jewel nodded to Adam, and Adam pulled the pillows that lay decoratively at the foot of the bed; together, they propped Hannerle up. She hardly seemed to notice; her lips had set in a thin line, and she was glaring at her husband.

  Her husband, in response, seemed to wilt. The patina of self-confident patrician deserted him. Jewel knew this w
as deliberate affectation, but felt a pang of sympathy anyway.

  “Don’t you dare,” Hannerle said, proving that if she was not as observant as Haval—and Jewel doubted anyone could be—she was still fully capable of noticing what went on beneath her nose, even if that nose happened to be pointing up beneath narrowed eyes. “I have a few words to say to you,” she said.

  “Hannerle—can it wait until the children are gone?”

  Hannerle snorted. It was a far weaker sound than it should have been, but it didn’t matter. “What have you been doing while I’ve been ill?”

  “Making dresses, love. And two suits.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “I’ve had a few conversations, most with young Jewel.”

  “Conversations, you said?” She turned to look at Jewel. “I think you’d better leave. I know how you feel about lying in general, and I have some regard for my husband’s dignity.”

  Jewel retrieved her hand and stood far too quickly. She nodded at the Chosen, and they headed toward the door. Adam left first. Through the closed door, Jewel could hear Hannerle’s voice rise in pitch and volume; she couldn’t make out the words, which was probably a mercy.

  * * *

  Jewel did not join her den for dinner. She chose to remain in the West Wing instead, in the comfort of the great room. The great room was occupied by the Chosen who served as her shadows, her domicis, and one very bored, very whiny cat. Finch came just before the start of the middle dinner hour. They didn’t have the chance to converse; Hectore was waiting, and Finch immediately joined him.

  “Jarven will most likely be in the dining hall,” she warned the Araven merchant.

  He laughed. “That will most certainly make my evening. I suspect it will somewhat sour his.” He glanced at his servant; Andrei’s expression made clear that the warning meant for Hectore found favor in his eyes; he clearly disliked Jarven. But Finch found neither man off-putting. She was diffident, polite, and appeared to be entirely at ease in their company—something Teller could not feign.

  “You will not be joining us, Terafin?” Hectore asked.