Of course she did.
Jester lacked the substance, but he understood the show. He could wear the clothing, eat the food, rub shoulders with those who would have been disgusted to know that he had come to Terafin from the poorest of the hundred holdings. From, in fact, an illegal brothel. He was largely unconcerned with their opinions—but never completely—because while he respected the possibility their power could be a threat to him, he felt no actual respect for them as people. He didn’t require that respect in order to mime a semblance of it.
Jay, however, probably did.
And Jay had left Terafin to the den to guard while she tried to find some solution to waking princes that did not result in the destruction of most of this city. The problem with that was Jester did not feel up to that responsibility. He had no visceral fear for the loss of anything but his den. Did he desire it? No. But ultimately as long as those people were not bleeding out and dying in his lap, he didn’t really care. They were strangers. They had no responsibility for him, either.
The only reason he cared—the only reason he could find—was Jay. Because Jay did care. She’d cared enough to come to the brothel for Duster, of all people. She cared enough when she arrived that she would not leave any of the rest of them to burn in the magical fires that had destroyed that building.
She proved, by her constant action, her loyalty, that there were people with no prior obligations who would help. And maybe, he told himself, as he gazed at the surface of his drink, he hadn’t met them all yet—and if the Sleepers did wake, he never would. Maybe some other Jay, some other Jester, were growing up in the streets of the hundred holdings, and their lives would be cut short before they could ever meet.
He gave up and downed the small glass. No matter what he told himself, he didn’t believe it enough that he could crawl out of the comfortable, irresponsible life he had inhabited.
He had come to the Order of Knowledge to deliver a message to the guildmaster—a message he believed she would heed. He expected that a page would open the door. He expected that he would be relieved of his empty glass, that he would be inspected for unusual weapons, that he would be asked basic, perfunctory questions—he bore the House ring, after all—and that he would be led up the stairs—a long, punishing, and somewhat unforgiving climb—to speak with Sigurne Mellifas.
He did not relish that. Nor did he relish the long, punishing descent, the return to flat ground, and the race back to the manse, where he would once again be surrounded by the prelude to, the echo of, war. He was not, in any sense, a soldier. He had taken the necessary task because it would take him, in the end, to the solid streets of the city itself. To reality, for however long it lasted.
And perhaps because he was not even close to the decent person he knew that others were capable of being, his disguised cowardice was rewarded.
The door did open, but it was not a page that stood in its frame.
It was not the guildmaster, either.
It was not, in fact, a man, although Jester recognized him. His hands fell to his sides, but he retained his grip on the glass. It was thick-cut crystal, or it might have splintered in his hand.
He did not bow. He did not nod. But for the moment, he did not speak; he knew better.
“Well met, ATerafin,” said the chain-clad, silver-eyed man who had—until an hour ago—been the Terafin House Mage.
Chapter Seven
JESTER DID NOT LIFT his hand, did not wave his ring, did not lift his voice. The words of the forest folk, the words of Haval and Jarven, seemed to echo in a room that was suddenly too small, too ordinary, for them; it was far too ordinary now for Meralonne APhaniel.
He remembered the first time he had seen the magi fight—a battle that had destroyed the Terafin foyer. Jay had not been Terafin; Jester had not been ATerafin. That had come later. It had been easy to forget that mage in the intervening years; easy to be irritated by the omnipresent scent of pipe tobacco and oddly inappropriate clothing; easy to be amused by his apparent disregard for any authority save that of the guildmaster herself.
For a moment the audacity, the ignorance, of such assumptions was galling. Beyond that. Humiliating. And beneath that . . . insulting. On a visceral level he knew that it was the latter that would be his death. He did not imagine, as he stood before this man, that the death would be particularly pleasant; fast, painless deaths would probably be granted by accident, to those unlucky enough to be standing in the way.
Jester had been a bystander for much of his life; bystander was better, by far, than victim in his personal experience. But he had chosen to come here to avoid the detritus of preparations for a war he was in no way qualified to fight. And he had come to speak with Sigurne Mellifas.
He did not, therefore, bow—or kneel or grovel—which was not as hard as it should have been; his knees had locked. He forced them to move and headed toward the glass-fronted door of a cupboard that contained liquor. There he paused, as if choosing with care. Over his shoulder, when he trusted his voice to be steady enough, he said, “Can I get you anything?” almost as if they were in the West Wing and he was at home.
“I am here to inform you,” Meralonne replied, “that Sigurne Mellifas is away from her tower, at the behest of the Twin Kings. It is highly unlikely that you will find her at home in the foreseeable future.”
“She sent you?”
“She is unaware of your visit; I assume no appointment was made.”
Jester refilled his glass. The attendant had vanished—hopefully on his own two legs. Had Jester the option, he would have joined the man. He did not; he was ATerafin. Being ATerafin had been better, by far, than the alternatives for well over a decade now. Almost two.
But nothing in life was free. He turned, full glass in hand, to face the man Teller had obliquely implied was the last of the firstborn princes—and the only one, in the end, who had not failed in his charge.
“The Terafin?” Meralonne asked, which was not the question Jester had been expecting—if he’d been expecting questions at all. The air seemed to move around the magi, lifting only the strands of his hair, which fell past his shoulders down his back, a second cloak.
“She has not returned.”
“Can you hear them, ATerafin?”
“Hear what?”
“The dreams,” he said, “of the Sleepers. The horns of the heralds.” He trembled as the words left his lips, but not in fear.
“No,” Jester replied. He did not look away. Could not. “But those dreams have been felt. They devoured one of my kin.”
“Ah.” For the first time since the door had opened, the magi moved; his feet did not seem to touch ground. “Do you understand what is happening?”
Jester shrugged before he could stop his shoulders from moving in the elegant gesture of nonchalance that had become second nature. He froze a second later, and once again forced himself to relax. It had never been wise to show fear where it was possible to hide it.
“Why did you wish to speak to Sigurne?”
As much as Jester disliked pipe smoke, he wished for it now. He met Meralonne’s steady gaze. “Do you serve her still?”
At that, the mage smiled. “As much as I ever have. Mortals were oft a challenge in my youth; they were fragile and even if one could preserve their lives, those lives vanished so quickly. She is not what she was when we first met.”
“Are you?”
“I am all that I was. All.”
Jester did not like risk; but sometimes he was drawn to it, like gamblers compelled to place bets. He preferred games of chance that involved simple coin, simple gold, but understood that it was not the gold itself that was the draw. “Are you more? No, not more. Other?”
“Not yet, boy. Not yet, but soon. Why did you wish to speak with Sigurne?”
“Because we were told we could not speak with you.”
“Your
advisors were wise, but premature.”
“Were they?” Jester drank. “We wished to speak to Sigurne because the fourth herald is not on the hidden roads, seeking a way into these lands.”
* * *
• • •
Silence.
The air was charged; Meralonne APhaniel’s hair rose across his back as if it were alive. His eyes flashed, the silver gleam so much like blade’s edge they appeared to be weapons.
“If you seek to stop us—”
Us. “We seek to delay. We are aware that we are not, in any way, your equal.”
This did not mollify the mage—but it did not further enrage him. Jester drank again.
After a long pause, Meralonne continued. “The heralds are not as you are. They are not as the men given to the Winter King’s service. They are not as Lord Celleriant, the youngest of the princes of the Hidden Court. Without the Sleepers, the heralds would not exist at all.”
Jester did not understand this.
“The heralds were created in the wake of the Lady’s displeasure. She did not, for reasons no one of us understood, desire their death, their destruction. They had failed her, but—” He closed his eyes. “Perhaps she saw what must happen, in the end: the return of her enemy. The return of the god.” Silence fell, its weight texturing the air. Jester found it hard to breathe.
“You do not understand what the Sleepers were, to their kin, to the White Lady, to her Court. We had lost much. To the earliest of her children she granted the power of herself, firstborn. You have seen Shianne,” he continued, when Jester failed to speak, “but you have not seen—ah, no.
“Just as your Kings are loved and revered, be they as mortal as the most insignificant of your poor, they, too, were loved and revered. There were those among the White Lady’s kin that could not bear to lose them. They spoke,” his voice was quiet, the words so soft they should have been inaudible. “It was folly. But perhaps she knew mercy, of a kind—a Winter mercy. It is cold, ATerafin. She took four—four who dared to speak against the decision of gods and the White Lady herself, and she gave them what they professed to desire: a chance to wake the Sleepers, should the possiblity of their redemption ever arise.
“She tied their existence to the Sleepers.”
“She made them...for the Sleepers?”
“Yes, and no. They exist for one reason, and one alone: to wake the Sleepers. And should the Sleepers wake and finally walk this world again, the heralds themselves will vanish. They might have a glimpse of those for whom they surrendered their existence, but that was not the Lady’s intent; she was angry, and her anger was cold.
“You do not understand, and I do not expect it. You and your kind have played by the side of a tepid brook and imagined you played in the ocean.”
“You’ve played here as well.”
“I have waited, ATerafin. I, too, have slept. My waking is not entirely in my hands, but I am not as my brethren. I failed; I did not disobey.”
“And your herald?”
“His fate was not their fate. I did not betray the White Lady. I did not disobey her commands.”
“He doesn’t need to be here to wake you.”
“I do not know what will happen, should he travel. I do not know that he has. I have not seen him, have not heard his voice, have not spoken to him. I know that he is alive.” He bowed head, spoke a word that Jester did not understand, a crack of syllables that froze the air. Frost dusted the glass doors of the liquor cabinet in front of which he was standing. “He is alive.
“I slept. I sleep, even now. But I did not, and do not, dream. He is not, to me, what the heralds are to my brethren; he has not been sundered from the mortal realm. Unlike the three the forest has misguided and misled in the wilderness of The Terafin, he has roots here.” The smile returned. “You wish me to tell you where he might be found? You wish me to tell you how to stop him?”
All in, Jester thought. “Actually, we were hoping Sigurne would.”
Meralonne laughed. The sound was as close to normal as Jester feared his voice would ever become again. “And what makes you think she knows? Tell me, Jester, do you offer those who might become your enemies information about your weaknesses?”
“In general, immortals consider mortals incredibly ignorant; they don’t have to be careful about hiding weaknesses that cannot, ever, be exploited.”
“And you expect that I have so little regard for Sigurne Mellifas?”
A beat of silence. “No.”
“No, indeed.”
“Does she?”
“I would have once killed you for even asking; I find myself considering it now. But your Lord has embarked upon the only quest that now matters, and in respect—perhaps in envy—of that, I will hold my hand. No. She does not understand. But that is fair; I do not understand the whole of it myself. I understand only that the heralds will not die until the Sleepers do.”
“But—”
“I have tried. Even in my weakened state, I am more than a match for all but a handful of my kin. Or I was.”
“Wait. You tried to kill the heralds?”
“You seem surprised.”
“Did Sigurne order you to—”
“No. But it is not the time, not yet, for my brothers to wake. If I understand what is now happening—to this world, to this city, to your Terafin—it is not yet time. There are only two ways to buy time; the first is forbidden me, by the dying magic of ancient gods and the will of the White Lady. But the second? No. The wilderness is waking, ATerafin.
“I faced and killed two of the three long before your Lord could hear the horns sounding. And they returned. And returned. And returned.”
“And . . . your own?”
“Of course not. He is not, now, of the wilderness. I will not be what I am when he comes at last to wake me. I will not be part of your world, nor bound by it. But I find, to my surprise, that the tendrils of your benighted mortality are like the roots of the great trees. They are almost irrelevant when they first begin to seek purchase—but if they are few, they are surprisingly deep. I like your bards. I like your pipes. I like your odd food, your quaint and diverse customs. I even like your demonologists.”
Jester stiffened.
“They are the only way, in the end, that we might commune with our dead. And the guildmaster? I am . . . fond of her. In the decades we have been together, she has aged, but she has not wavered. She understands beauty as I understand it; she yearns for it, although she has never truly seen it. If I speak of your Terafin and her mission, it is almost all of the truth. Almost.
“But I have safeguarded Sigurne from the moment she first decided to die in the distant Northern Wastes, and I am unwilling to consign her to the death that mortals will otherwise face. Did she mention the heralds?”
Jester nodded.
“It is odd,” Meralonne finally said. He looked to the West although, at the moment, West was a wall with fine rails and baseboards but no windows. “I do not think he has yet begun to move.”
“Then you—”
“No. The wilderness is waking, Jester, and I am of it. Even were he to remain in the West until the End of Days, I will not—I cannot—be what I have been. Mortals speak of choice; they have spoken of choice for as long as I have walked among them.”
“Speaking as someone who lived for months with no real choice at all, choice is relevant.”
“Choice is the prerogative of power, of the powerful. Even in your world, it has always been so. To you, then—and to Sigurne—my situation might be anathema. Were you to be what I am becoming, however, it would not be. It is as much a choice as breath is to you.”
“The Chosen have disabled their beacons.”
Meralonne nodded.
“But the Terafin’s permissions are not in their control.”
“No.”
“Have you tried entering her forest recently?”
“No.”
To his surprise, Jester said, “Try. If we can’t have Sigurne, be Sigurne for now.”
“She would not ask that of you.”
“Who? Sigurne or The Terafin?”
“Either.” He exhaled. “Shianne did not remain behind?”
“She went with The Terafin. As did the Wild Hunt.”
He stared at Jester, his gaze so intent it seemed to sink, in the end, beneath skin, beneath all of the outward nuances Jester had so carefully developed over time. “Understand, ATerafin, that the Sleepers are my brothers. What your den is to you is the barest echo, the palest reflection, of what they once were to me. I would not see them harmed or destroyed, even were I capable of it. They are my kin, long-sundered, and I have survived in order to meet with them again. I have survived that we might ride out together, bearing arms in the service of the White Lady, and redeem ourselves. Even as I am—as I was—there was nothing I desired more.”
“But you attacked the heralds.”
“Yes. Strange, is it not?” He bowed his head, and it seemed to Jester, watching, that even that was somehow a struggle. “Very well. Sigurne attends the kings and the god-born priests. Let us test the boundaries of your leader’s permissions.”
* * *
• • •
Jester had expected that he would take the Terafin carriage back to the manse. In truth, he desired it; the cabin was enclosed, which kept the world at a temporary distance. He was in motion in the streets of the city but absolved of the minutiae of decisions: directions, roads, pedestrians. He headed out of the room to request that the carriage be brought round.
The servant, however, upon realizing that Meralonne intended to accompany Jester, shook his head. “I’ll send the driver home. Is there a message you wish me to deliver to him?” Although he spoke to Jester, his gaze went immediately to Meralonne. Jester didn’t even have it in him to resent this.
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