War

by Michelle West

“That is true,” Calliastra said, appearing not far away from the discussion, as if she was stepping out of shadows cast by magelights. She looked down a perfect nose at Finch. “But I have no reason to protect you.”

  Finch glanced at the darknessborn woman. “No. Neither did Duster.” She turned more fully to face Calliastra. “Duster was the toughest of us; she was the most dangerous. None of us could give her orders, and none of us tried. She’d listen to Jay.”

  “Jay is a bird, in Weston?”

  Jewel exhaled. “And Jewel is a cut, polished rock. I preferred the bird.”

  “Could you not perhaps have chosen an entirely different name?”

  “Not and forced my parents to use it, no. Jay was the diminutive as far as my Oma was concerned, and the rest of the family fell in line.” Na’jay. A child’s name. A name she had never called herself, but a name it had always been a comfort to hear. Anyone who had used it was gone. Jay was the closest she could come. She did not feel up to explaining this to Calliastra. Not now, and maybe not ever.

  She might have returned to the forest immediately had it not been for Calliastra—but Calliastra could not stay in the West Wing. If she was to be at home in the Terafin manse, it was here, beyond the doors that still separated The Terafin’s personal chambers from the interior of the manse. Wherever that here had currently become.

  * * *

  • • •

  The mist-laden stretch of path remained unchanged from the previous day; the waterfall was also present. The skies remained blue, not the amethyst they had been when the forest had been a library, with trees that had bookcases and shelves instead of branches.

  Those books were probably on the inside of the castle Jewel had not yet examined; Ellerson’s arrival—and the brief, sharp hope that Carver was with him—had interrupted the apprehensive examination of what was, in theory, Jewel’s new home. Teller’s concern, on that first trek, had been the library and its many books.

  Judging from his expression, it was still his concern, but he said nothing while Finch and Jewel continued their discussion. They spoke more quietly because Calliastra had joined them, and it was difficult to treat Calliastra as a third person, if not downright suicidal. He did say something when Snow stepped on his foot, but Jewel thought, judging tone as the words were too soft to catch, that he was apologizing to the white cat for his obvious neglect.

  Shadow was bored. Snow was less bored with Teller’s attention. Night was, for the moment, absent, but not in trouble—had he been, Snow, envious of the lack of boredom, would have been with him.

  * * *

  • • •

  The contents of the Terafin library were not what they had been before Jay had become Terafin. Teller knew that it was larger, the books older, some of the contents forbidden by magisterial law. The volumes contained in Amarais Handernesse ATerafin’s library still existed, but they shared space with volumes that might once have been part of an earlier Terafin’s library—in the time of the Blood Barons, when demons had been considered the only reliable guards.

  This castle reminded Teller of that ancient history.

  Snow snorted. “It is not ancient,” he told Teller. He rarely called Teller stupid.

  “What do you see,” Teller asked, “when you look at the fountain?” The fountain was the first thing that could be seen when the gates opened. Although all eyes were upon it, they did not see the same thing; the differences could be dramatic.

  Snow glanced at Shadow. Both of the cats disliked water on principle. They had therefore avoided the fountain which now seemed the centerpiece of this new building’s front causeway.

  “We don’t,” Shadow replied. “There is nothing to see.” The sibilant turned the last word into an extended hiss.

  Calliastra said, “It is clearly not only the mortals who are obtuse.” Which caused predictable outrage. The outrage seemed to dim the importance of the fountain to Calliastra, and she turned toward Jay as they all turned toward her, sooner or later.

  Quietly, Jay said, “Library.”

  Teller was happy to go. He was happy because he could see Jay’s face in that fountain—made strange, made majestic, made hard and cold as stone. Not even in anger—and she had had a temper, especially in her youth—had she appeared thus. No, only The Terafin had, and when she had, it was always bad.

  Jay was The Terafin now.

  Jay had never wanted to be The Terafin. She had respected, even revered, Amarais Handernesse ATerafin enough that she had promised to take up the mantle so that her predecessor might know a moment of peace. She kept her promises. She always had.

  She headed up the stairs, stopping at the grand, closed doors of her castle. The doors did not magically open. Carver did not—as Ellerson had the day before—open them from the inside, either. Ellerson’s report made that a daydream, but it was a daydream with roots in pain and hope. Hard to shake, ever.

  Avandar moved to join the Chosen at the height of the stairs, and they stepped back, a human wall between door and Terafin. Her domicis spoke; he gestured. The door did not open for him. Jay’s impatience was felt; she had expected neither the Chosen nor the domicis to succeed.

  She disliked the necessity of waiting until they had tried, but accepted it, her expression pinched, until Avandar also surrendered. It took the domicis much longer than it had the Chosen, and Teller wasn’t entirely certain this wasn’t deliberate. Avandar would give his life to protect Jay—but Teller suspected the cats would, as well, if it came to that. It didn’t mean the cats were more tractable or obedient.

  Jay stepped up to examine the door. After a brief pause and a quiet curse, she thumped it with the side of her fist. “It’s just like me,” she said, “to somehow create a castle I can’t even enter.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Teller watched the doors. He watched Jay. The sound of water falling did not draw his gaze to the fountain; there, the statue was cold and hard; it seemed to know nothing of struggle. Jay in life was not that person, had never been that person.

  She’d made this castle. She’d made it without knowledge, without intent. It had come to her the way the forest had come to her—and every creature in that forest had come as well, liege to her Lord. But here, she was like any other member of their den; she was frustrated and stymied by the wilderness.

  The wilderness, he thought, that was within her, part of her, inseparable from the woman she had, over half her life, become.

  “You are not listening,” Shadow brought his left front paw down, narrowly missing Jay’s foot. He didn’t miss the flat of the stairs, though; they cracked, the fissure spreading slowly as if it were liquid.

  Jay glared at him.

  “Why are you so stupid? Can’t you hear it, stupid girl?”

  Snow hissed laughter, which didn’t help Shadow’s mood any.

  “It is speaking your name. Ansssssssswer it, or we will die of boredom!”

  “It is hers,” Snow told his brother. “We will die of boredom anyway.”

  Shadow had no response to this. He took an ill-tempered swipe at Jay’s leg.

  Jay, however, straightened her shoulders, lifting her chin. Her lashes became a dark fan as she closed her eyes, brown to the auburn of her hair. She lifted her hands to shoulder height, turning her palms toward sunlight. Her expression was calm. No, not calm exactly. Absent fear, frustration, worry. Blank.

  She looked like the statue that he would not look at, but rendered in flesh, not stone.

  Without thought, without intent, he ran up the stairs toward her, pushing through the Chosen who allowed him to pass unhindered. He caught Jay by the shoulder—the right shoulder.

  Finch joined him, her hand across the left.

  “Jay,” Teller said. “Jay. Jay, you’re with us. You’re with us. We’re here.” As if it needed to be said.

  Jay blinked rapidl
y as the doors began to open. She didn’t look toward the hallway that lay beyond the doors. She turned to look at Teller, and then at Finch, exhaling as she did. She shook her head, as if to clear it, and then pushed stray curls out of her eyes.

  She signed. Thanks.

  * * *

  • • •

  Shadow pushed his way past them and into what appeared to be a great hall. “Boring,” he said, over his shoulder.

  “I told you.” Snow entered next; Jay dropped a hand to the white cat’s head, stalling him for long enough that Shadow’s tail was not a target of easy opportunity before she lifted it. Snow then followed his brother into the great hall, of which he disapproved. Loudly.

  “Is that wise?” Finch asked, when they were out of earshot.

  “Probably, given what occasionally made its way into the previous iteration of the library. It’s going to be hard for things to drop from the sky—” She stopped. It wasn’t the creatures from the sky that had taken Carver.

  The Chosen followed the cats, and Avandar followed the Chosen. The hall didn’t swallow them.

  “Are you worried?” Calliastra asked.

  “She is always worried,” the previously absent Night replied.

  “I didn’t ask you. I can’t imagine wanting your opinion.”

  Jay dropped a hand to the top of the black cat’s head.

  “Why me?” Night asked. “She started it!”

  “Sometimes I require you to be the better man.”

  “Men are stupid!” Night stormed into the main hall, cursing and spitting.

  * * *

  • • •

  They walked in silence. This hall was older than the Terafin manse, at least in architectural style; it was both grander and colder. The predominant colors were gray, with hints of Terafin blue that added no visual warmth. Weapons lined the walls, and only as they passed beneath the arch in the distance did that change.

  * * *

  • • •

  The Terafin library no longer rested on shelves that had sprouted from the trunks of standing trees. The unreality of that transformed library had given way to a less fanciful, impossible space: the shelves were of hardwood, the floors, rug-covered stone. The rugs were blue. There were windows that allowed natural light to enter the room on all sides; the windows were tall, the glass clear.

  The ceilings were equal in height to the ceilings in the great hall, but this was because there appeared to be three levels of shelving, which hugged the walls that were not possessed of windows. Or perhaps four levels. Ladders rested against rails. Teller had twice visited the royal libraries. He had once visited the great library in the Order of Knowledge, the personal collections being entirely off-limits if one did not have access to the collector. A cursory glance strongly implied that neither would be the equal of this one.

  A cursory glance was all he had time for; he did not imagine that many would be allowed to make a more thorough comparison. The Terafin no longer knew for certain the contents of her library, and in the reformation of the prior collection, volumes that could not be possessed legally had been found, lying closed on a library table.

  Teller did lift a random book or two within easy reach, more to check for dampness or damage than for the contents. Books, however, were always difficult objects; the second caught and held his attention.

  He was surprised to see Calliastra’s shadow darken the page and did not wonder, as he lifted his head, that he knew it for hers; there was, about her, a darkness that spoke of danger, of desire. It reminded him of Kiriel, but Kiriel’s darkness had been death. Just death.

  He wondered, not for the first time, what Kiriel was doing. Kiriel had come to the den with Jay, just as Calliastra had, but Kiriel had not remained. He wondered what Calliastra would make of Kiriel, or perhaps what Kiriel would make of Calliastra, but knew better than to ask.

  Snow, however, said, “What are you looking at?” and bumped the underside of the book with his head. Teller was accustomed to tightening his grip—on anything—when the cats were underfoot; the book did not fall. He would have been upset had it, because it was old, the pages brittle, the colors of the illustrations—a separate, painted page—faded and slightly uneven.

  “Where,” Calliastra said softly, “did you find this book?”

  Teller waved at the shelf at which he’d stopped although he did not take his eyes from the illustration. In the scant time between opening the book and looking at the page, the colors had deepened. He wasn’t certain what he was looking at. He had thought it a dawn or a sunset at first, because the colors that remained on the page had suggested one or the other.

  As he watched, the colors resolved themselves, hardening into something that looked much more like fire than a distant start or end of day. The edges of what might have been sun were orange, red; the blue that surrounded the whole was indeed sky.

  “Do you recognize what this is?” Teller asked. “Snow?”

  Snow hissed. It was not the laughter hiss. Shadow snickered. No one who might be able to answer the question answered it now. Calliastra said, “Let me see the book.”

  Teller passed it to her. He was not surprised to see the book change physical shape as it came into contact with her hands; it grew larger, the covers darker, the words pressed into the binding clearer. The book in the godchild’s hands would no longer fit the shelf from which it had been taken.

  Relieved of his precious burden, he turned to Jay; Jay’s eyes were wide, shadowed, as she looked past Calliastra to the open page. Teller could no longer see it.

  “Do you recognize it?” Teller asked Calliastra.

  “Yes.” The word was flat. It did not invite further questions; it slammed the door on them. She did, however, turn the page, something Teller could not have done. “The book is a bestiary.” She closed it firmly, setting it flat on a table. Until that moment, Teller had not seen the table, but he had become accustomed to the warped rules of the reality of Jay’s personal space, and he recognized the table. It had existed in the previous Terafin’s library. It had existed in the remade forest of shelves and books.

  It existed here.

  The chairs that surrounded it were also familiar. He was surprised at how much he wanted, or needed, the familiar in this grand space. Perhaps Jay was no different. She sat gracelessly in one of those chairs, as if the strength to walk had deserted her. To Teller’s surprise, Avandar bowed to Jewel, turned to nod at the Chosen, and followed.

  Jay’s collapse into the chair was not, as Teller had first thought, an accident of exhaustion. She had taken a seat in front of a small stack of books. Teller did not have perfect recall, but this table and those books seemed almost unchanged, as if the whole of the landscape revolved around them. Ellerson had said, however, that The Terafin’s clothing and personal effects were within the castle, so perhaps that was simple fancy, a desire to make some sense where almost none was available.

  The roar that broke Jay’s moment of rest was familiar to the den. Jay pushed herself out of her chair; Calliastra was already halfway across the library, pushing herself between the Chosen who had also moved into loose formation.

  Finch looked at Teller, who shrugged and made to follow.

  * * *

  • • •

  There was a bear in the hall.

  It was brown, it was huge, and its mouth seemed to be composed of fangs that shouldn’t have fit in its hairy, unfriendly face. The cats were discomposed; their fur had risen, and their wings were stiff and high. Shadow was tensed to leap; Snow was just tense. Night had not rushed to join his brothers, which allowed Jewel to relax. Marginally.

  Jewel could not push her way past the Chosen and didn’t try. She drew breath.

  “Snow. Shadow.”

  Cat words had given way to guttural growls; neither bothered to look in her direction.

  “He is Ellerson’s
guest.”

  The white cat began to sputter, but his fur fell.

  Calliastra, not being Terafin, pushed her way between Torvan and Marave, and to their credit, they let her go. They would not have let Jewel through unless Jewel had ordered them to do so. Ruling, she thought, was complicated, unwieldy, and inconvenient.

  “What are you doing here?” Calliastra demanded.

  The bear turned instantly at the sound of her voice, but almost everyone in the hall did, even Shadow, whose fur was still high. Snow, however, affected nonchalance and strolled across the library floor, nose in the air, until he reached Jewel’s side. Jewel dropped a hand to his head without a second thought, or perhaps even a first one. She was staring at the bear. And at the godchild.

  “What are you doing here?” the bear countered.

  “I was invited.”

  “I was invited.”

  “I was invited by the Lord of these lands.”

  The bear did not condescend to reply. From this, Jewel understood instantly that he had extended his own invitation, and Ellerson had agreed. She was not offended; Ellerson was like kin, and this was his home. The bear could not be more trouble than the cats.

  Snow hissed.

  “Did I say that out loud?” she asked, shifting her hand to scratch gently behind his ears.

  “We could be much more trouble.”

  “It wasn’t a challenge, Snow. Shadow, come here.”

  Shadow ignored her. He ignored Calliastra. He ignored everything but the bear. “Where is he?”

  “He is sleeping,” the bear growled, his voice softening, the rumble that underscored his syllables fading. He began to shrink until he was no bigger than a dog of intermediate size and parentage, although his shape changed; his body became rounder, his ears more pointed, his tail bushy; his eyes were ringed with dark fur and his snout was pointed, a bit like a fox’s. “But he was almost awake.”