“You worry far too much,” Calliastra said. “They are Arianni, but even so, they are not complete fools. Not even Corallonne would hold you accountable for the damage these creatures do.”
Jewel exhaled. “And if they were truly mine?”
“They could not be.”
“You’ve said—”
“Yes. I have. But you could not be that master. You have the power; you lack the will. You will always, I think, lack the will. I taunt the wretched creatures because they cannot harm me.”
Shadow, who had not once looked into Jewel’s eyes, now swiveled a head in Calliastra’s direction. “Can too.”
“I would like to see you try.”
“I wouldn’t,” Jewel said, in the same flat tone. She folded her arms, glaring at the side of her cat’s head. His ears twitched as she exhaled.
“Snow, get down here right now.”
A white cat landed on the tree roots. On his back was Adam.
Chapter Five
‘‘WHAT I WANT TO know is: why are you even here?”
Snow had ditched Adam the moment his claws touched ground. Adam fell off, landed with a thump, and sprawled backward into a tree trunk. His pallor was a shade that only suited corpses.
Since the question could have been aimed at either of the two new arrivals, Snow attempted to escape immediately; he bunched his hind legs to push himself off the ground and back up through the crown of trees.
Calliastra kicked his back legs, a sweep of perfect, elegant motion that spoke of deadly grace. Snow growled, turning, the sky forgotten, and Jewel marched over to him and placed a hand squarely on the top of his head. “Don’t. You. Dare.”
Snow hissed. So did Shadow. Clearly the simple shift in Jewel’s anger was cause for amusement. Jewel glared at the gray cat and the tenor of the hissing reversed. It was like being accompanied by lethal four-year-olds.
“You are supposed to be at home, protecting my forest.”
Snow said nothing.
“And you,” she said, rounding on Adam, “are supposed to be at home with the rest of the den! What are you doing here? The cats hate it when you even threaten to touch them—how did you convince Snow to let you ride?”
Adam, not one of nature’s natural liars, simply looked confused.
“He begged me,” Snow said promptly. “Whiny, whiny begging.”
Jewel’s eyes could not possibly be narrowed any further if she still wanted to see. “So . . . it was your idea, Snow.”
Snow hissed; his belly inched toward the ground. When Shadow hissed, however, he said, “It was Shadow’s fault. He made me. He told me I had to bring the boy. Me. I had to carry him. Don’t let him fall. Don’t eat him. Don’t make him bleed.”
“Jay,” Angel said. Having caught her attention, he signed, doesn’t matter. Adam’s here now. When she stared at him, her hands still, he added, trust, and pointed at Shadow. At Shadow who had just attempted to eat one of the Arianni.
“Eat him?” Shadow yowled in outrage. “No one could eat that! It’s disgusting!”
“Jewel.” Calliastra put a hand on Jewel’s left arm. “While Shadow exaggerates for his own benefit, it is true that the verbal hostilities started within the Wild Hunt.”
“Did he die?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t consider it significant, myself.”
Silence.
Calliastra looked through the Ellariannatte toward Celleriant, who was approaching at Terrick’s side. They exchanged a very distinct look; Jewel felt it was the coda to a conversation she had missed in its entirety.
Celleriant approached, but it was Calliastra who spoke; she had, after all, spent far more time with mortals than the Arianni Lord who nonetheless served Jewel. “You walk in the wilderness now, high or low. The Wild Hunt is a part of the wilderness. I do not know why Lord Celleriant chose to serve you, why he chooses to call you Lord. Perhaps because he has, he has forgone the rules that govern the rest.”
“What rules?”
“Rule is perhaps too rigid a word. The Wild Hunt is a power.” She paused until Jewel nodded acknowledgment of a statement that didn’t seem in need of it. “Your miserable, self-indulgent, noisy cats are, sadly, also a power.” The last word was drowned out by the outraged yowling of two of them. She didn’t wait for them to stop. Instead, she raised her voice.
She raised her voice, and the trees shook. Leaves fell. The roots themselves trembled beneath the feet of the gathering company. But the words themselves weren’t loud. It was a very striking contrast.
“When one power seeks to challenge another power, and the challenge is accepted, there is only one outcome: the weaker falls. It is understood by everyone here. It is understood by your human bard. It is understood by— What is he doing?”
She was frowning at the guildmaster, who progressed toward Jewel at Shianne’s side. They were moving very slowly because Gilafas was now crawling on his hands and knees as if he were a toddler.
There was a momentary hush as they watched him; in just such a fashion had he examined the dress Jewel had worn at The Terafin’s funeral. But here, he seemed to be examining interlocking roots, as if searching for something he had absentmindedly dropped.
“He’s an Artisan,” Jewel said quietly. “I’ve only watched him work once, but if I had to guess, given all other reports, I would say he is looking for material with which to craft.”
Calliastra’s eyes narrowed slowly as she continued to observe Master Gilafas crawling along the ground. Her lips tightened. “This,” she said, with obvious disgust, “is how you treat your makers?”
A beat of silence followed the godchild’s words, which were almost like a miniature thunderstorm of bewildered rage.
“Yes,” Jewel said quietly. “We accept them as they are.” Her voice was softer—it would have to be—but the words carried nonetheless. Leaves fell; they touched her forehead and cheeks as they traveled along gravity’s unforgiving path.
Calliastra, however, was not cowed. “You should be doing what he is doing. You should be finding him materials with which to craft. He should not be lowering himself in this fashion. No one who saw him now would believe that he was a creator. No one.”
“We see him, and we believe it,” Jewel replied.
Shadow snorted. “Let him grovel.”
“He’s not—”
“He is. But it is not for you. Or her,” he added, throwing a sideways glare at Calliastra. “He makes. He doesn’t know what he seeks until he finds it. Let him find.” And he turned to look up at the multitude of branches, beyond which Snow was once again in the air. Jewel had not seen him move. Shadow roared.
There was a brief pause, and then Snow roared back, shaking those branches with the full fury of his voice.
Since everyone was occupied with waiting, some more patiently than others, Jewel turned to the gray cat again. “Do not eat, injure, or mock the Arianni.” She thought about that, sighed, and said, “Do not eat or injure them.”
“Can I kill them?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you are stupid and boring. And he started it.” He glared at Calliastra, who chuckled.
“I did tell her.” The brief warmth of the smile left her face. “Understand the rules of Winter. He felt that he could best the cat. He felt that he could intimidate your Shadow. He took the risk, and he failed. He will not try again.”
Thinking of her many acquaintances, Jewel frowned. “Sometimes it’s the failure that propels them to try again.”
“They are not mortals. Until and unless he is certain of his own power, he will not try again—not unless his Lord commands it. That is our wilderness, in this winter. Shadow has proven his power. And . . .” she stopped.
“And?”
“Shadow did not kill.”
“They don’t die easily
,”
“Not easily, no. But I believe your cat could have killed the Arianni who spoke so. He did not.”
“Damn good thing,” Jewel said. “I’d’ve—”
“What? What would you have done?” Shadow’s tail wrapped itself around her left leg. “What? What? What?”
“I’d’ve been very angry.”
He stared at her and then sputtered, because up above the treetops, Snow was laughing. At him.
“There goes Shadow,” Angel said quietly, as the gray cat launched himself off the odd ground.
“They’ve never managed to kill each other,” was Jewel’s reasonable reply. She glanced over her shoulder. “And I don’t think we’re moving anywhere until Gilafas is done.”
* * *
• • •
Unlike Calliastra, none of the Arianni seemed to find Gilafas ADelios frustrating; nor did they find the studied disregard that Jewel had called acceptance insulting to him. They seldom glanced in his direction. They spoke softly among themselves from time to time, but their words did not carry; they were watchful, though not overtly suspicious. Nor, she thought, overtly condescending.
Given Celleriant when they had first met, this was surprising.
Jewel had to grab Adam by a shoulder to prevent him from walking into the subtle camp set by the Wild Hunt—one devoid of tents, fire, or the other accoutrements of travel—the moment he understood what Shadow had done. Although she had explained that they were immortal, although he had experience with the hostility of the immortals to healing, he nonetheless wished to examine the injured man.
Shianne was even more firmly against this than Jewel herself, and Adam surprised them both; he argued. It was Shadow, spitting and cursing, who ended that argument. He landed on Angel’s foot and turned a glare on Adam that would have shriveled small plants.
Adam, accustomed to the cats, barely noticed.
Adam, the one they’d almost killed once.
Jewel reached out for Shadow’s head. He ducked. “They don’t want your help. They don’t need it.”
Adam met Shadow’s gaze and held it. It was the gray cat who looked away. But he looked to Jewel. “I will take him. They can tell him to get lost.”
Shianne lifted a hand; she was closer to Adam than Jewel had been to Shadow, and her arm rested easily on Adam’s youthful shoulders. “I will go.”
“Not you,” Shadow said. “Not you.”
“He came for my sake.”
“Not yours.” Shadow glared at her very obvious belly. “His.”
“It is the same, in the end. They will not harm him if I am there.”
“They might harm you.”
Shianne’s eyes flashed—literally. Mortal, she might be. But she was not mortal the way Angel was.
No. She is deadly. She is far stronger than any of the magi as they are currently constituted. She is stronger by far than Sigurne.
And Meralonne?
No, Jewel. No one, I fear, will be stronger than Meralonne. He is almost awake. There was a hint of regret in those words. But she can stand against her lesser brethren should the need arise. She is no longer as they are—but she once was. I believe there are those who remember what she once was.
Then they—
They are the ones most likely to attempt to harm her.
Jewel did not understand immortals. She didn’t understand their concept of family. This thought made the Winter King chuckle. Do not sentimentalize mortal families. I told you—most of my surviving children attempted to kill me at one time or another. We are not, and were not, as you are. And that is why we were powers. Power, Terafin, is its own family.
If it was, it was not a family she wanted.
No, he replied softly. But it is, in the end, the family you must also own. I have never seen a successful amalgamation of absolute power and kin in the sense you use the word. To make the choices you have made, most must abandon the choices that I have made, sooner or later.
She thought, then, of Ariane, the Winter Queen. Of the Winter Queen’s daughters, all of stone, in a long-abandoned hall.
Yes.
Shadow pushed past Avandar with a snarl. “Are you coming, stupid boy?”
“Terafin, is this wise?”
“Gilafas has not yet found what he seeks, and Adam is upset about the blood. If it’s not wise, I don’t think it’s harmful. No,” she added softly. “Not you, Shianne.”
Shianne’s lips tightened, but she accepted what was a command.
* * *
• • •
“You cannot heal the immortal,” Shadow told Adam as they walked over the uneven path made of interlocking roots.
Adam said nothing.
“You play with time. That is your gift. Why do you care about him?” He took a careless swipe at the bark of the nearest trunk—the one Adam was currently steadying his weight against. A branch fell on the gray cat’s head. Shadow’s eyes became circular; he roared in fury, launching himself, claws extended, at the tree.
Adam grimaced with his whole body, and Gilafas rose instantly.
There was almost a hush as the guildmaster, his knees crinkled but strangely clean, stumbled toward the gray cat. Shadow growled, lowering his head as if to stand his ground. But no; he lowered his head to pick up the offending branch between his jaws, his prominent fangs a splash of white against a familiar and comforting brown.
“You’ll just get splinters in your mouth,” Adam told the gray cat.
The gray cat however shoved his head toward the guildmaster’s open hands, and the moment the branch touched Gilafas’ palm, those hands closed so tightly Jewel could see the whiteness of his knuckles from where she stood. He immediately straightened, his shoulders and neck losing their stoop, his eyes clearing. “I will keep this,” he said, turning to Jewel, “with your permission, Terafin.”
She started to tell him that her permission was not needed, but the words would not leave her mouth. Looking up to the endless canopy of Ellariannatte, she said, “I would be honored.”
This seemed to somewhat mollify Calliastra, whose fingers began to tap her folded arms with impatience. “If we are done here?”
Jewel smiled. “We are almost done. Adam, go with Shadow.”
The gray cat had nothing sarcastic to add; he was too busy spitting out pieces of bark.
* * *
• • •
Adam knew Lord Celleriant as well as one could know something dangerous and inhuman: at a distance. He understood viscerally that Celleriant served the Matriarch, served Jewel, but more than that? No. He was a winter creature, a desert creature, and like the winter or the sand, he was all encompassing, beautiful, and deadly. Sometimes the deadly could drive away all thoughts of beauty, but the beauty itself remained—untouchable, irreproachable, itself.
Shadow walked unusually close to him, glaring at everything that moved. And at everything that didn’t.
“You are stupid,” the cat said. His voice caught the ears of the Wild Hunt, and they turned to face him, their hands, for the moment, free of weaponry.
“Yes,” Adam agreed. “It’s often safer that way.” He inhaled, glanced down at the cat’s head, and added, “Thank you.”
Shadow hissed. He rarely laughed at Adam, and this hiss was no exception.
“I would have followed the Matriarch.”
“She didn’t want you.” This was said with more smugness.
“No.” Adam’s voice was grave. “To the Matriarch, I am just another child.” As he had been to the Matriarchs of Arkosa, past and present.
This annoyed Shadow, but at least it didn’t make his mood any worse. “Why are you here?”
“I am here because Shianne is here.” Even saying the name, Adam felt his cheeks redden. “I am here because she is with child.”
“So?”
“I mean to deliver the child safely if the delivery is complicated.”
Shadow turned to stare at Adam, his eyes gold and unblinking. “Do you understand what the child is?”
“A child. A mortal child.”
“He is not.”
“He is. Wait. How do you know it’s a boy?”
Shadow growled. A volley of insults followed, but these were the insults with which Adam was most familiar, and he found it comforting in the same way the Matriarch did. Adam accepted the cats’ obvious distrust of him; he did not expect to be trusted by anyone but kin.
But the den trusted him; they claimed him as kin although they shared no blood and very little history. The Matriarch accepted him as if he were truly one of her own. She accepted his curse—his gift—in its entirety. She was, had always been, hesitant to command him, and he had found that both surprising and difficult at first. He was accustomed to women who ruled and led; he was accustomed to the way that ruling made them harsher, stiffer. There was no other way; something soft and malleable could not bear the burden of responsibility that had always been placed upon the shoulders of the Matriarchs.
Jewel was not quite a Matriarch. She had the power, and she had the responsibility. She didn’t have the steel, the stone, the horrible gravity. Her domicis constantly urged her to be different, to be other than she was, and Adam even understood why. He had spent time with his clan on the edge of the Sea of Sorrows; he had seen the vast deserts, the wasteland of the dominion that had once been a true home to the Voyani.
But she was Matriarch.
To her side, she had gathered the Wild Hunt; she had gathered the walking shadow; she had gathered the cats themselves. She rode a beast of the Wild Hunt. She walked beside a man whose existence was distant legend, distorted and made both tragic and grand. No other Matriarch could do this. Not even Yollana.
Thinking of Yollana, he flinched.
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