War

by Michelle West

Her dark eyes narrowed. “You are prepared for travel,” she said, this time addressing Gilafas directly.

  He frowned at her but did not turn away; his expression was almost troubled. “I am prepared for travel yes, and in the cold. It was cold, the last time I ventured into these lands, and I do not think them markedly changed.”

  “Are you aware of the possible dangers you will face?”

  His expression stiffened then, the lines almost becoming cracks in the rigidity of his face.

  Jewel dismounted, the motion light and almost graceful. She came to stand beside Calliastra, placing a hand on the godchild’s shoulder. “This is Calliastra,” she said, before Gilafas could speak. “And this is Master Gilafas ADelios, of the makers. He is the head of the Guild of Makers.”

  “I cannot imagine,” the guildmaster said, “that any danger I might face on the road would be a greater threat than you.”

  Calliastra stiffened, and Jewel cursed inwardly, but this at least would be unlikely to wound Calliastra’s pride. Before she could reply, Shadow stepped on the godchild’s foot. The cats habitually stepped on people’s feet; it was their petty way of sulking or pulling invisible rank. They seldom—if ever—tried this with Calliastra.

  “We are more dangerous than she is,” Shadow said, tailing swishing as he spoke.

  Calliastra turned her glare on the gray cat, folding her arms as she did. “You are not more dangerous to mortals.”

  “We eat them!”

  “Oh?”

  Angel signed something, briefly and quickly; Jewel grimaced but kept her hands by her sides.

  “Calliastra is concerned for your safety,” she told Gilafas, squeezing the words beneath the clipped sentences of growing argument between winged cat and goddess. “She values the maker-born highly—far more highly than the simple seer-born or any of the other talent-born. She feels it is too dangerous for you to travel with us.”

  “It is too dangerous for you to leave me behind,” he countered, fully behind his own eyes now, the odd and almost compelling feyness banished by her words. His smile was chilly. “I am not a child and, as you have said, not a possession. There is only one thing I desire of my life before its end, and you are the only possible avenue to achieve it. You will take me with you, Terafin.” It was not a request.

  “Yes,” she said. “I promised. I have no intention of leaving you behind if this is what you truly wish.”

  His expression softened slightly. “You are young. But so was she. Have I told you of my apprentice? I lost her to the Wild Hunt and the Winter Queen. But before that I almost lost her to the halls and the rooms and the dungeons; she wandered much farther in Fabril’s reach than any before her who were also known to survive.” As he spoke, his voice softened as well. “She was an Artisan. She was an Artisan matched only by Fabril—and in my opinion, that might be generous to Fabril.

  “I have never seen a man or woman so driven to create. She could forget to speak, forget to eat, forget to stop; she worked her hands bloody on several occasions. The pages and the servants that could navigate Fabril’s reach—maker-born, all—had one task by the end of her time here: to find her, to follow her, to feed her, and if these could not be done, to find me so that I might do them.

  “I was guildmaster, yes—but she was the heart of the guild. I did not see it at first, but I see it every day in her absence. The butterflies are hers. They fill my chambers with the echo of her voice. They have come to me consistently, in ones and twos. Sometimes there are tiny, glass birds. All of their voices are hers.

  “She is alive, Terafin. She is alive, and I mean to find her.”

  “If she can make those butterflies, she might be happy.”

  “Ah. I am a selfish, selfish man—and I am not happy.” He bowed to her then, as if finally remembering that she was The Terafin, ruler herself of one of the most powerful Houses in the Empire. He glanced at the gathered Arianni, who were still entering the courtyard, and frowned.

  Then he looked at Avandar, deigning to see a servant for the first time, and he held out a carefully padded rectangle. “Take this, please, and guard it with your life.”

  Angel choked.

  Avandar, however, bowed and retrieved the package from the guildmaster’s hands, silent and graceful, as if he were truly a servant, and not the immortal known as the Warlord.

  “I have a few things I brought with me,” Gilafas continued. “They will, I hope, ease our passage. The road that you have followed does not continue indefinitely, and where we walk, there will be no roads.”

  “Will it be Winter everywhere?”

  “It is only Winter here,” Gilafas replied. He walked away before Jewel could ask him how he knew, but in truth she wasn’t certain she would have. She had known so many things in her life, and in her childhood, being asked how had almost been torture, because she’d had no answers she could give that would have made sense to her parents. Her Oma, however, had believed her. Believed her and forbid her to speak of her certainties, to attempt to use them.

  Only after the old woman had died had she begun to push the boundaries of those early demands. Finch was alive. Teller was alive. The gift itself became something more than a curse or a shameful secret because of them. And because it was more, it had become a precious burden. She would carry it until she could carry nothing at all, not even memories.

  “We should leave,” he said, clearly expecting to be obeyed. She understood that, too. He was a man of such wealth, such consequence, that he didn’t have to fit in; people moved to make way when he walked, and people practically abased themselves in his presence.

  “Yes,” she agreed. She turned to give the order to the man who seemed to be the spokesman for the Arianni present, saving only Celleriant and Shianne.

  “But I want to speak with your bard.”

  “He is not my bard, but he is my companion, and I am certain he would be pleased to speak with you.” And if he wasn’t, he was Senniel trained; he could affect delight and interest without feeling either.

  * * *

  • • •

  Master Gilafas had prepared for a journey of perhaps two weeks, judging from the pack upon his shoulders. He carried it as if he were a much younger man, and only when he set it down for the first time did Jewel understand why; it weighed almost nothing. It was thick and sturdy and well-made, of course—but the leather itself seemed to weigh less than the sheerest and finest of silks. The contents of the bag likewise appeared to weigh nothing while nested in the bag.

  The bag, however, contained far more than the normal packs that Jewel otherwise carried. Whatever Gilafas pulled out of that bag was unwrinkled, as if gravity and weight within the pack’s interior were held in abeyance. And, judging by some of the food, time as well.

  “Fabril made this,” Gilafas said conversationally. “It is seldom used, and when it is, it is used only by the guildmaster.” The last was said modestly and factually, as if he were explaining the function of an umbrella or an oilskin. He drew a cloak out of the bag and handed it to Jewel. “This, however, was made by my apprentice. Wear it,” he added. “I believe it was intended for you.”

  “I’ve never met your apprentice.”

  “No, of course not,” he replied, with evident confusion.

  “I believe,” Kallandras interjected, “that The Terafin feels it could not have been made specifically for her in that case.”

  This seemed to make no more sense to the guildmaster than Jewel’s comment, and as a man of power, he was accustomed to ignoring nonsensical words from his subordinates or inferiors, his tolerance implying that such ignorance was bewilderingly constant. Jewel almost laughed. But he was a man of power, and she knew better.

  The Wild Hunt gathered around him in brief periods of activity, examining—discreetly—the cloak, the pack, and even the food.

  Kallandras, however, put Gilafas
immediately at ease. Or perhaps it was the butterfly, which nestled on the bard’s shoulder. Only when he approached Gilafas did it rise; it flew to the guildmaster’s face, fluttered around in a dance of gentle light, and then returned once again to Kallandras. During this time, the guildmaster forgot whatever it was he had been doing—eating, in this case—to stare at it with something like heartbreak and longing.

  But he did not ask the bard to return it. And perhaps it was, in part, the presence of the butterfly on the bard’s shoulders that made the guildmaster comfortable. The Arianni found the butterfly disturbing but were similarly awestruck when it wove light across the air, leaving only its after-impression as proof that it had happened at all.

  * * *

  • • •

  They reached the end of the road by the middle of what Jewel assumed was the day. The road ended at a cliff, as if some force of nature had seen the road, found it displeasing, and sheared away the land beneath it in one abrupt gesture of displeasure.

  To this point, the snow had avoided the road, and when they stopped, they made an odd, elongated camp upon the pristine stone itself.

  Angel signed; Jewel shrugged. But the shrug would not carry her far, and she knew it. Almost as one, people looked to her for instructions or commands, as if her life to this point had taught her how to traverse the empty air.

  “Can you see what’s on the other side?” she asked her den-kin.

  Angel frowned.

  “Is there road?”

  “I . . . don’t think so.”

  “Snow? It looks white to me.”

  He hesitated, and then turned to say something in Rendish. Terrick batted the back of his head with gruff good humor. Sensitive to Jewel, however, he said, “My eyes are not what the boy’s are, either.”

  Angel, in his thirties, was no boy, but Jewel did not correct the Northerner. “He has faith in you,” she said instead.

  “Aye, and it’s no blessing to have impossible faith laid on a man as a burden.”

  She did smile then.

  Jewel.

  I can’t fly.

  No. You cannot. Avandar turned to look at Kallandras. The bard had not moved until that moment, but rose—literally rose, his feet leaving stone, his body leaving Lord Celleriant’s side—and headed toward Jewel. She wondered, then, if there was anything he did not notice, anything about which he was not almost preternaturally aware.

  “Terafin,” he said, coming to ground where he could then offer her the most correct of bows.

  “We are not in the Terafin manse; we are not in Averalaan.” He did not move, and she surrendered. “Rise.”

  “You wish me to ask the wind to bear us across this divide.” The last syllable canted up, as if it were a question.

  “It is unnecessary,” Shianne said, before Jewel could answer, although she was well away from the edge of this unnatural cliff. “You have forgotten those who travel with us. For the hunt, even unmounted, this is not inconvenient. And you yourself can cross on the back of your stag.”

  “Not everyone is the Wild Hunt.” Nor did she want them to be.

  “No, Terafin. Order the hunt across, and they will obey. Order them to see your grounded companions across, and they will likewise obey. You are ruler, and you are Sen; you must by this time understand the value of, the necessity of, command.” She fell silent, but she was not done.

  She lifted her pale arms; she did not wear armor, nor did she wear the winter clothing that girded all other mortals in this place. She wore only the dress that Snow had so reluctantly made for her, and Jewel thought, with a flash of the intuition that had guided her life, that it would be the last dress she wore.

  Her hair began to move in winds that did not touch the rest of the company, and her eyes—her oddly silver eyes, so arresting in a mortal face—to glow as well, as if they were either polished silver or steel. The hem of her skirt began to twist in a way that was not consistent with the wind that touched her hair, and although the skirts were nothing like the robes worn by Evayne a’Nolan, Jewel thought of them as she watched.

  And in all of this, she was most aware of the fact that Shianne was pregnant, visibly, notably pregnant; that Shadow or the Winter King should have the keeping of her, should carry her across the emptiness. She thought of the emptiness, then, and shouted a single word as if it were the whole of her thought.

  “No!”

  Shianne froze, although the wind still swept across her, and turned her perfect face toward Jewel Markess. Jewel flushed almost scarlet and forced herself to close her mouth on the instant, groveling apology that was her first response.

  “No,” she said again. “Not you, not the Wild Hunt, and no, not the Master Bard. My apologies. I did not recognize—” She stopped. Did not recognize what, exactly? Air? Cliff? The sudden drop?

  The emptiness.

  She turned to Avandar; he was waiting, his hands by his sides. But he met and held her gaze, and after a brief pause, he nodded.

  “We can’t go this way,” she said.

  The guildmaster frowned. “I believe if the road was built to this point, we were meant to cross it.”

  “And I believe that if we were meant to cross it, it would not have been so easily destroyed.” But even that felt wrong. She turned to the guildmaster, but so did the bard, for the butterfly was singing.

  * * *

  • • •

  Its song was soft and persistent, but easily missed, at least to start. Kallandras’ head was tilted to one side, as if to better catch the nuances of music that Jewel could only barely hear, although she was closest to him, saving only the Winter King. She leaned forward and leaned again; the song buzzed around the edges of audibility, and she felt almost an ache at the echo of familiarity, as if she had heard and loved this song in the past but could not immediately recall when.

  Can you hear it? she finally asked her domicis and the Winter King.

  No, Jewel, Avandar answered gravely.

  The Winter King was silent for a much longer beat. I hear what you hear, he finally said. And perhaps I hear it only because you hear it. It is not a Winter voice; it is not the song of the White Lady or her kin. What does it mean to you?

  She shook her head. Nothing. But it feels like it might, should I truly recall it. She turned, once again, to the divide. The emptiness here was not the emptiness of air, as it had first appeared. It was a thin mist, a translucent fog. It reminded her of dreams, of dreaming.

  And dreams shifted and changed constantly and without predictability.

  “No,” Shadow said, “they do not. Not here.” He looked up at her with golden eyes. He waited, but he was a cat and did not wait patiently, and while Jewel absorbed his words, he lifted a paw, examined his sheathed claws, and then whacked the Winter King’s right forefoot. Had the Winter King been mortal, had he been, in truth, a stag, that blow might have snapped his leg; as it was, the leg buckled.

  Jewel slid off the stag’s back.

  “Are you ready?” Shadow demanded, his voice more roar than speech.

  She could have said no, since it was the truth, but it didn’t matter. She had come to understand that readiness in the wild was a state of mind, because the wilderness, like dreams themselves, was treacherous; it changed constantly. She mounted the great, gray cat’s back while her company watched her. She was surprised when Angel said, “Move over.”

  Shadow hissed, but Angel was not of a mind to care; he wedged himself onto Shadow’s back, with much less cooperation for mounting than Jewel had received.

  “We don’t need him,” Shadow sniffed, in a much more normal voice.

  “You don’t need him,” Jewel countered. Angel sat astride the cat and behind her. She understood that if she were lost here, he would be lost with her, but she smiled; he couldn’t see it.

  “What do you see?” she asked him. “Your v
ision has always been better than mine.”

  “I see clouds,” he said.

  Jewel didn’t.

  “I see clouds. When I was a kid, we used to lie in the long grass looking up at them. We’d call shapes,” he added. “When the wind blew, the clouds shifted. It was a game.”

  “What shape would you call here?”

  He slid his arms around her, as if to brace either her or himself. “Here? I’d be afraid to call any. Things have a way of answering.”

  “They do,” she agreed. She closed her eyes. “They do.” Inhaled, exhaled, and opened them again. She could now see Angel’s clouds—she would always think of them as Angel’s clouds, thereafter—as wind pushed them around the sky. “Can you see the other side?”

  A beat of silence. “Can’t you?”

  “I can—but it’s foggy for me. Not fuzzy, just . . . shrouded.”

  Another beat. Not what Angel saw, then. But Angel hadn’t seen what she had seen when she’d ridden up the trunk of a wild tree to find and, in the end, save Celleriant. She had trusted his vision then because she knew that what she saw was not the whole of what was there.

  It had been real. Celleriant had been close to the surrender that was death for the Arianni. But it had not been the only reality in that space. The concept of two coexisting realities was difficult for her. The certainty that she could not trust her own eyes to reveal reality made all of reality suspect, unstable.

  But she knew that two people could hear the exact same words and derive different meanings from them. She knew that they could witness an event and their stories afterward made the event itself seem as unstable, as changeable, as Angel’s clouds.

  This was not the first time she had experienced such a dislocation. The first time—the first time that she was aware of—had been in the Stone Deepings. In the Stone Deepings, she had met the Winter Queen. In the Stone Deepings, she had been given the Winter King and Lord Celleriant, as penalties to each for their failures.

  She is Winter, the Winter King said. And the Winter is harsh.