“You have my butterfly.” The girl frowned. “What have you done to it?” Tilting her head to the side, she leaned in and around the Winter Queen, as if she knew no fear of that august lady.
“I have many of your butterflies. They came to me, but they could not return to you. I have kept them,” he added softly, “in Fabril’s reach. Have you need of them?”
She shook her head, but she twitched. “May I have that one?”
Throughout this discussion, the White Lady glanced down at the top of the stranger’s very mortal head, for the girl was mortal. Nor was she young enough to be called girl, but there was something about her that was nonetheless youthful; perhaps the intensity of her focus.
Gilafas said, without looking back, “Give me permission to join her, Terafin.”
Jewel said nothing.
“It is for this that I have waited and worked; only this.”
She meant to ask him if he intended to abandon his responsibility to the guild, but the words would not leave her. She knew there was nothing she could say that would change his mind or alter his request. And she knew, too, that she must grant it.
The White Lady knew as well. She had not called the child to be hostage. She had called her only for this, and now she waited. It surprised Jewel almost as much as Gilafas’ reaction to the Winter Queen; she might have been a particularly fine piece of architecture. He noticed her, but she did not command his attention; he did not have to struggle to speak in her presence; it did not cost him effort to look away.
Jewel turned to the Wild Hunt. They had never seemed so military as they did at this moment: swords and shields at the ready, eyes narrowed, all attention caught between their Lord and Jewel herself. She bowed to them. “If you will return to your Lord’s side, do so freely.”
They did not move as Gilafas had. Instead, they looked past Jewel to the only woman capable of ruling them. Only when Ariane inclined her head did their swords and shields disappear. They were not Cessaly, mortal and young; they did not bounce; everything about their movements was stately, deadly, graceful.
Shadow roared.
This time the Winter Queen’s eyes did narrow, and as one, the host paused, turning toward the gray cat as their Lord did.
“You.”
Shadow hissed. It was the laughter hiss; Jewel had never felt so mortified by it as she did at this moment. He was not standing as close to her as he usually did, and she realized that he had allowed himself to be variously shouldered or gently nudged out of the way—which never happened. She should have known, but thought was difficult when confronted with the White Lady, the Winter Queen. She could not reach him without moving, could not drop a hand on his head.
The Wild Hunt had not yet passed through the arch that would reunite them with their Lord.
Jewel lifted a hand. “He is mine,” she said. “They are all mine.” She spoke of the three cats, and the Winter Queen seemed to understand this. Not even when Jewel had had the effrontery to attempt to negotiate with this woman, who was almost a walking god, had she looked so . . . annoyed. It was not an expression Jewel had ever thought to see on the Winter Queen’s face. Rage, yes, or anger—but not something as petty as annoyance. It was almost human.
“That explains much,” was the cool reply. “Too much. Were it not for the interference of these creatures, Winter would not have reigned in the world for so long.”
“But the Winter King—”
“Do not imagine,” Ariane continued, “that they are truly yours. Do not imagine that they serve; their very nature all but prohibits true service. They are willful, fractious, and sly.”
Shadow appeared to consider these words accolades of greatness; his chest was practically a foot wider.
“I will not have him in my Court. I allowed it once, and to this day I rue that act of generosity. While I offer hospitality to the other members of your fellowship, I will not offer it to him.”
“He is one of my companions.”
“Indeed. And were I to accept his presence, you would bear the weight and responsibility for any of his actions while you sojourned in my court. I have been called cold. I have been called cruel. But even I would not entrap you thus.”
“He will behave.”
“You are mortal, Terafin. Even had he been a companion to you for all your life, it would be a mere handful of years in the tally of our long experience. He is wild; he cannot be tamed and cannot be owned.”
Jewel said, “I cannot travel the wilderness without him.”
After a pause, Ariane said, “You will not travel the wilderness; you will be at harbor here. There is nothing that he offers you that I cannot offer; no protection that he provides that I cannot provide.”
“He protects me while I dream.”
Silence, then. Shadow was practically preening.
“Do not think,” Ariane said to the gray cat, “that you are invulnerable.”
The cat’s eyes glowed as the Wild Hunt once again drew swords.
“Shadow,” Jewel said, in her most severe tone. Ariane said nothing at all, but the swords once again faded from sight. Shadow pouted. There was no other word to describe his reaction.
“The dreams of the Sen are dangerous,” Ariane finally said. “The whole of the wilderness hears them. Do you believe he is necessary?”
“Yes.”
“Do you understand that you will be responsible for any damage he chooses to do while he remains by your side in my lands?”
Jewel exhaled.
“Do not be foolish,” Calliastra said, voice low. “There are things that the cats might do that you could not conceive of—and you would have no way to pay the price demanded in restitution. The closest you might come might be to serve—to fully serve—my sister, for eternity.”
“I won’t live that long.”
Calliastra looked . . . frustrated. Or disgusted. Perhaps both. It was such a blessedly familiar expression, Jewel almost reached out for it with both hands. “You are entering the Hidden Court, the heart of my sister’s domain. It is hers; there is no force alive—not even my father—that could wrest it from her, and it has been tried. It has been tried, it has failed, and it will always fail while she lives.”
Jewel felt that she understood this, but it was clear Calliastra did not agree—and Calliastra, like Ariane, was of the gods, of things not mortal. She therefore waited.
“Time does not touch the Hidden Court, except at Ariane’s whim. Were you to be trapped there, it would not touch you either, unless she desired it.” She turned then to the woman she called sister. “She does not understand.”
“Winter and Summer are seasons,” Jewel said quietly. “Seasons exist in time; they require the passage of time.”
“Your mortal seasons do, yes. But, Jewel, we have known Winter for centuries. Winter Queen or Summer, in the Hidden Court, there is only Ariane. Leave the cat; she is not wrong. While you are in the Hidden Court, you will have no need of him.”
Shadow growled.
He did not care for Calliastra; nor did he care for Ariane. Yet he seemed to like Shianne, who had been some part of the White Lady from the moment of her creation. Jewel did not understand him, but then again, she’d never really understood cats. She said, “You are wrong.” The words were spoken with conviction, and even as they left her, she knew that she would take Shadow with her, or she would not go at all.
Ariane seemed to understand this as well.
“You are careless, Eldest; you always were. If you choose to accompany the woman who foolishly believes herself to be your master—when none of the firstborn would dare to make that claim—you may well doom her, and if she does not escape this place, everything of value that she does not now carry with her will perish.”
Shadow stretched a wing and flattened two of the Wild Hunt; they took no injury to anything but their
dignity—but dignity was a currency that was valued far more highly than gold among the Arianni. He then sauntered over to Jewel, glaring at Calliastra as if she alone prevented him from returning to his place at the side of The Terafin.
Jewel. This time it was Avandar. Decide, but understand one thing: the White Lady has not agreed to your conditions because she cannot. You have—and I suspect she is aware of it—the lone Summer Tree that still survives in the wilderness. But the change of seasons is not dependent only upon the sapling; were it, things would be much simpler.
Jewel waited in silence; she felt, of a sudden, that she could not draw breath.
The Summer cannot come to the wilderness until she is crowned. And, Jewel, she cannot be crowned Summer Queen without a Summer King. You understand that the Winter Kings are drawn, always, from mortals; they are rulers, Terafin; they are powers. That is the heart of Winter; it is cold, it is merciless.
But the Summer Kings are different; Summer is a different season. I would say—would have said—that we wish to face the god we do not name at the height of Winter—but in Winter, his power is also more prominent. The Summer is not his season, and he knows it. For that god, this situation we now face is the best situation: it is Winter, but she cannot fight him or face him upon any field of battle he chooses to take; she cannot leave the Hidden Court.
And he will know, Jewel. Darranatos is dead. Darranatos was his. He will know that Darranatos failed. He will not—yet—know how, or why. But no small power can exist that could topple Darranatos. Make a decision, but you must make it quickly; you do not now have the luxury of time.
Jewel shook her head, a motion that caught Ariane’s eye. I haven’t had the luxury of time since we first set out to walk the Oracle’s path.
You must change the terms of your acceptance. One of our number must remain by her side as Summer King, or all effort will be for naught; if she crowns no Summer King, she cannot leave, she cannot be ally—or enemy to the god who dwells in the north—if someone does not remain.
Chapter Eleven
JEWEL CLOSED HER EYES.
This, Avandar said, his interior voice almost gentle, is what Adam calls the burden of Matriarchs. It is the weight of choice when no comfortable choices remain. It is, he added, the cost of ruling, if one does not rule purely for power. Consider that, he added. If we are not born seeking power, we learn its byways and its avenues; we cannot seek power, otherwise, and remain sane.
“He is right,” Shadow said. “What will you do?”
No answer came to Jewel; no certainty. The gift had deserted her for the moment. She was left only with what she knew: that the White Lady must plant the Summer Tree, must change the seasons, must take, at last, to the wild roads. Hers was the balance of power against a walking god; she was of the gods but bound to the world—even if she had remained for centuries in the hidden wilderness.
That wilderness was waking now.
“Jewel,” the White Lady said.
Jewel opened her eyes at the sound of her name.
“We are not friends. We cannot be. What you are is not what I am, and what you desire for your kin is not, in the end, something I am capable of desiring. But you are, in some fashion—all of you—the children of one of my parents. I did not wish your destruction in the twilight when the gods made their final choice; I do not wish it now.
“But the heralds are abroad; they begin to sound their horns for the final time. I cannot prevent it, even had I the desire to do so. Do you know where their masters sleep?”
Jewel swallowed. “They sleep at the heart of my domain.”
For the first time, Ariane smiled. Jewel saw an echo of the Summer Queen on the features of the Winter Queen’s face, and she thought for that one second that if this were the last thing she saw in life, it would be enough. She would hold this memory forever, even kneeling at the feet of Mandaros in the halls of judgment that awaited the dead.
He would judge her as she then deserved to be judged. She found words although it was difficult. “Can I not—”
“No. Even were it possible, you could not offer what is required. You are not Summer’s and cannot be; even could you, your Empire will perish without you. All the people in it will be scattered—those few that survive. You will lose everything you have built. Those things are not of value to me save in one fashion: your lands will stand against my ancient enemy when all else falters.”
Jewel wondered, then, if Ariane had spared her for this moment, this crossroad; if she had known, in the Stone Deepings, that this was the choice that Jewel would eventually have to make if she survived. And she wondered, as well, if this was the last of the Oracle’s tests.
But even without her gift, she knew. The only hope her city had of surviving the Sleepers was the White Lady because the White Lady was the only Lord they would obey. She remembered, clearly, what Meralonne had said of the Sleepers in a carriage ride to Avantari. She did not doubt him. If they woke and emerged in the streets of the hundred holdings, they would lay waste to everything they could see.
Yes, she thought, this was why men and women of power seemed so heartless, so calculating, so lacking in compassion. Because the decisions had to be made regardless; no amount of pain or fear or guilt changed that fact. And if pain or guilt changed nothing, it was far better to dispense with them.
“One,” she said, the word too quiet and too painful. “I will leave one member of my entourage in your court, should he choose to remain.” And she bowed her head.
“Yes. I am Winter Queen, and I knew. I should deny you the hospitality you seek, but I understand all of what you bear, and in return for my freedom, I forgive your trespasses. I will accept the eldest as your guest; I will accept my sister on her own terms, should she choose to accompany you.”
“I won’t,” Calliastra said, folding her arms.
Jewel turned to the daughter of darkness. To the daughter of love. She held out a hand. It was a mistake, of course, and she realized it too late to drop that hand; what Calliastra would accept in privacy, away from the eyes of the wilderness, she would find almost humiliating in public.
But there was no rage or humiliation in Calliastra’s expression. “You have no time,” she told Jewel. “You buy yourself time if you accept the offer of hospitality—but even that will not be enough.
“You have said your home will be my home. I will, therefore, return to our home; without the need to keep pace with mortals, I will be there in a handful of minutes. I will be waiting there if you survive.” She pushed up off the ground, her wings snapping so close to Jewel’s face that she could feel their tips across her left cheek.
Angel’s expression made clear that she was bleeding, but he said nothing.
“Gilafas,” Jewel turned to the guildmaster. “After you.” He was gone through the arch before the last syllable had faded into stillness, but there was no silence; the young woman, Cessaly, who stood bouncing on her toes on the other side of the arch had thrown her arms wide, her expression the essence of joy. Of homecoming.
And this, too, Jewel would remember; it was very, very seldom that such unfettered joy was visible on the face of an adult. Gilafas, the stiff ruler of the Empire’s most powerful guild almost knocked the White Lady over in his haste; some primal instinct of self-preservation must have prevented it. The Arianni were coldly, terribly silent watching this, unable to interfere.
The White Lady, however, laid a hand on both the girl’s and the guildmaster’s shoulders, and her expression was as gentle as Jewel had ever seen it. Calliastra had said that the maker-born were valued by the immortals and the gods, and Jewel now believed it.
In her secret heart, she wished—for just that moment—that the seer-born were valued in the same way. And then she shook herself and turned to the Wild Hunt.
“You have permission,” she said, her voice quiet but steady, “to return to your hom
e.”
7th day of Lattan, 428 A.A.
Terafin Manse, Averalaan Aramarelas
In the night of Jay’s forest, the wind felt bitterly cold; the nights beyond it had already started their turn toward summer, but here, it seemed that winter clung. Finch sought the warmth of the tree of fire as blindly, as naturally, as she sought the warmth of her chosen kin. And there was warmth, beneath the branches and the lowest of the hanging leaves, but at its heart, heat, the fire that burned and consumed. To her ears, the crackle of wood that nonetheless left the tree standing, was harsher, louder; the leap of white-yellow flames higher, as if the tree itself were reaching out to touch the unseen world beyond the forest’s border.
Haval noticed; his expression was almost rigidly neutral. She glanced up once at the branches above her head.
“Finch.”
Reaching up slowly, her fingers grazed a leaf; she snapped her hand back before it could burn.
“Yes,” Haval said, as if divining her thoughts. “Without warmth, we perish, but it is dangerous to forget that what sustains us will also destroy us if we cannot approach with caution.”
“I feel as if I could touch this tree safely.”
Haval inclined his chin. “It is fire, Finch. If we understand its properties, we can create fires for our own use; we can control what burns, and where. But if we are careless, we lose control and, often, lives.”
She nodded then, lowering her arm. “Is it time?”
He raised a brow.
“I ask for your counsel, Councillor.”
His lips turned up in a smile that almost reached his eyes. “Yes, Regent, it is time.” He lifted one black-clad arm, and around the tree of fire, the people she thought of as trees came out of the shadows. They were golden-skinned, all, but across their shoulders and backs were graven symbols that seemed to glow almost blue in the fire’s light, and they carried spears and bows. They had always been lithe, tall, supple, but she had never before felt dwarfed by them.
“Birgide should be here,” she said softly.
War Page 32