War

by Michelle West

  “Please do not make me regret this,” she said, in the quiet tone that indicated she had run out of patience and was now dangling on the edge of its figurative cliff.

  “Yes, yes, yessssss.” The gray cat sniffed, stuck his nose in the air and accompanied her, head held high. But Jewel noted that his foot crossed the threshold of the Artisan-crafted arch at the same moment hers did; it touched ground on the opposite side in the same fashion.

  Only when Jewel had cleared that arch and stood upon a path that seemed to have been built for just that purpose did he lower his head. No, not just his head. He stretched his paws out before him in Ariane’s slender shadow.

  The White Lady looked down upon the prone cat’s head, as if from a great remove. She then lifted her gaze. “I bid you and your companions welcome to my home. We have had some time to prepare.”

  Jewel was accustomed by now to the speech of Kings; she did not, therefore, question the plural. Instead, she followed the White Lady’s lead. Winter had reigned in the lands in which Darranatos had lain in wait, but in the Hidden Court, if the breeze was chill, no snow had fallen; all of Winter was in the heart of the woman who ruled it.

  Shadow remained by Jewel’s side. The uncharacteristic bow he had offered he shed as soon as he possibly could, but he walked silently; the only sound he made was the occasional growl. He did not otherwise speak, and he did not insult her; nor did he whine about boredom. Here, he looked like a great hunting cat, with the addition of wings whose feathers caught the sunlight in Ariane’s land and seemed to encase it. It reminded Jewel of the butterfly’s light.

  Jewel had seen the Wild Hunt in the Stone Deepings. She had imagined that this court would reflect that experience, and indeed, the hunters that had come to her side from the side of the Winter King did. But there was a quiet, a hush, that implied a kind of throttled, hidden joy. They did not smile; they did not express it in any way Jewel could point to.

  “No,” Shadow said, his voice softer and far less whiny. “In the wilderness, it is unwise for the powerful to express anything that hints at love. Love is just another weapon.”

  If the Arianni heard the great, gray cat, they betrayed no awareness of his words.

  “Shadow—”

  No, Jewel, the Winter King said. Enough.

  But the Arianni love the White Lady. It’s impossible not to know it.

  Think, but never mention it here: the Allasiani exist.

  Shadow snorted but said nothing.

  “Love,” the White Lady said softly, “is also a gift, Eldest. Where the cost of the giving is not so high, it illuminates.”

  “And where it is,” the cat countered, “it destroys. It is not necessary. Who needs it?”

  “Need? Eldest, you need nothing. Nor did the gods when they walked. They might have existed without the wars that destroyed so much. I need nothing,” she continued, voice soft. “I could exist for eternity in my Hidden Court and weather the passage of eras as they slipped away. Need has never defined our existences.”

  Shadow did not reply. His wings shivered.

  Ariane then turned to Jewel, and to Jewel’s lasting surprise, the gray cat gave way to the White Lady, who fell in beside her. Jewel looked at her feet as she walked. It was easier; to look at the White Lady was akin to staring at the sun. All beauty, all relevance, all power were contained in Ariane; in her presence, it seemed that life—and love—as mortals knew them were dim and gray and pointless.

  And they weren’t. Jewel knew it, but knew as well that the knowledge was shifting beneath her feet like loose sand.

  She was, therefore, unaware when the path itself opened up; when trees gave way to architecture, when wildflowers gave way to more ordered white and green. But when the White Lady said, “I have another guest,” Jewel looked up to see that she was no longer surrounded entirely by forest.

  The Wild Hunt—the hunters—had dispersed; only Celleriant remained. He was silent and reserved, the joy of homecoming shattered by the circumstances. Kallandras remained by his side. Shianne, however, remained with Adam, and if Celleriant seemed joyless, she seemed lifeless in comparison. It was too much, Jewel thought with a pang: the loss of Darranatos, the consequences of her own choices.

  She did not understand immortals; did not understand immortal love. She understood loss and the pain of it, but wondered if even that was a shadow of, an echo of, what Shianne felt.

  And then she had no time to think. A table that reminded her of the table in her library—in all its incarnations—stood in the open, beneath a cloudless azure echo of a real sky, and seated at it—seated, but rising in haste to abandon her chair—was a young woman Jewel recognized.

  “Yes,” Ariane said, although Jewel had not spoken.

  Seated at the table—but making haste to rise—was Evayne a’Nolan.

  * * *

  • • •

  She was not the young woman that Jewel had first met in the ruined foyer of the Terafin manse, but she was not the older woman, either. She was younger than Jewel now was, but older than she had been on the night they had faced a bestial, wild god.

  She wore her familiar robe. Her eyes were violet in a pale face; she wore a necklace openly that the robes usually concealed, a delicate silver lily. That the necklace had survived all her life experience and still adorned the neck of the powerful, older woman she would become was almost surprising. Her expression was gaunt, but even thinking that, Evayne’s smile changed the cast of her features.

  The smile was not meant for Jewel; it was certainly not meant for Ariane.

  “Evayne!” Adam said, his voice rising slightly at the end. He took a step, and then glanced at Shianne and stopped. Shianne said nothing, but her expression was pure Winter; there was no welcome, no invitation. Perhaps, had Evayne been looking at Shianne, this might have given her pause. She wasn’t. She had eyes for Adam, only Adam.

  Her chair teetered as she left it.

  Adam could not leave Shianne. But he took a step forward and opened his arms. It was surprising to see that he was taller than Evayne; it was surprising to watch her walk—run, really—into the circle of those arms. She threw her own around him and held on.

  So, too, Adam; his cheek could rest across the top of her black hair, and did.

  “I couldn’t find you,” he said. “I couldn’t find you the next day. I looked. I’m sorry.” He looked up to meet Jewel’s eyes, his own moving in Shianne’s direction, although they couldn’t reach her.

  Jewel, staring at the back of this young seer, nodded. She turned, approached Shianne, and offered her an arm. Shadow growled, but for once he did not attempt to position himself between Jewel and whoever she approached.

  Kallandras, Celleriant by his side, approached Shianne as well. He offered her a bow—a perfect Weston obeisance. Evayne stiffened. She let Adam go and turned toward the Senniel bard, her shoulders curved inward, her head low.

  Kallandras bowed. “I am here with The Terafin. We have come to deliver something of value to the White Lady. We crossed the winter wilderness, searching.” His lips turned up in a smile; Jewel was surprised to see that it was both wry and gentle. “You sent me, Evayne.”

  And Jewel understood, then, in a flash of insight that had more to do with lived life than talent-born gift. Somewhere in their history together, Evayne had done something to the young Kallandras, had set him upon the path he now walked. He was decades away from it, now; this Evayne was not. She was too young not to feel the burden of guilt; it bowed her. Kallandras walked across the simple stones until he stood within arm’s reach of her midnight robe. The cloth began to rustle, its hems undulating against the ground. The robe had not responded to Jewel that way.

  “Do you remember the Winter paths we walked together?” he asked, voice soft.

  She nodded.

  “It has served me well. I am not the boy I was. My brothers
are behind me, forsaken. You believe I hated you.”

  “You did. You still do.”

  “Yes. But I understand enough now. I see the shadow of gods across the lands; I see the walls that have contained the wilderness breaking, stone by stone. There are dragons in mortal skies now. There are forests that have overgrown merchant roads, and no caravans that pass through them ever emerge.

  “And the Lord of the Hells no longer sits upon his distant throne. The world is stirring, Evayne, just as you said it would. Not one of the visions you showed me—”

  “That I forced upon you.”

  “—That you showed me was a lie. And what you showed me was that I was destined to lose everyone I cared about, sooner or later. I did not understand then why you chose me; I better understand it now.” He held out a hand, palm up, before her.

  Evayne stared at it as if it were poison. And she stared at it as if she were drowning, and it might save her.

  Jewel thought again: I could not be you, for she understood from even these words that what Evayne had shown Kallandras, she had forced him to see; she had not asked for his permission, his consent. Had there been no Evayne, there would have been no Kallandras at Senniel College.

  “Evayne,” he said softly. He did not reach out to touch her hand; he waited. He waited, as the seer herself had not done. How old had he been when they first met? How much had she forced him to witness? How much had he lost as a result?

  How much, Jewel thought, did he have to forgive?

  It was the question Evayne asked herself, if silently; she lifted a hand. It trembled. She could not lower it but could not place it in his.

  He waited. He waited, and after a long moment, he lowered his empty hand. “For you, it has barely begun,” he said softly. “But for me, it is almost over. There will come a time—if I survive—when I might, at last, feel gratitude for everything I have lost.” He bowed. “I am no longer your enemy.”

  He turned away, and as he did, the paralysis that held Evayne dissolved. She ran the short distance, reaching for his shoulder, his arm, and he turned again and caught her. Jewel found herself holding her breath.

  Shadow stepped on her foot. Hard.

  “This is not for us,” he told her, almost primly. He turned to Celleriant, whose averted gaze was fastened to the table at which Evayne had been sitting. He looked up, wary, as Jewel approached. It was awkward, and Jewel almost turned away, understanding what it had cost him to come here.

  And yet this was what he had wanted. He might never return to this place; he might never know home again. But he was Arianni, one of the last of the White Lady’s progeny; exiled or no, it was his desire to be of use to her. No pain or loss would change that.

  She straightened her shoulders. Celleriant’s loss, Celleriant’s presence, provided the impetus that nothing else could. If she was mortal—and she was—she was his Lord. She was not his mother, not his reason for existence, not the person whose constant presence and approval he almost literally lived for, but she was his Lord. And in the Hidden Court, she could be that.

  She turned to Ariane, who had remained silent throughout, and tendered her a perfect bow; a short bow, meant in the Empire as a gesture of respect among equals. Shadow hissed.

  “We are weary and disheveled from both the road and the battle,” she said when she rose, “and would much appreciate the chance to bathe.”

  Ariane’s smile was slender and knowing. “Mortal customs are not our customs, but we have had mortals in the Hidden Court for all of their existence. We have facilities for your use. Cessaly?”

  Jewel shook her head. She did not expect Cessaly to hear the White Lady, let alone answer, and was therefore surprised when the girl came racing toward Ariane, arms held wide, left hand carrying something in a clenched fist.

  “Not yet,” Ariane told her softly, “but soon. Will you show our guests to the baths you use?”

  Cessaly nodded, turned to Jewel, and caught her hand.

  * * *

  • • •

  Adam and Evayne did not immediately follow Cessaly, although everyone else did. Adam understood, from his first sight of Evayne, that Evayne was more than guest in this place. Evayne was kin—somehow—to the Winter Queen, and it was a kinship that the Winter Queen publicly claimed and acknowledged.

  Ariane understood that this sister wished some time alone with Adam, and she said, “I will greet my lost kin.”

  Lost?

  “They have been long from my side; they were lost in the tangle centuries ago. I did not expect them to return in this fashion.” She did not bow but turned then, leaving Adam and Evayne alone in the clearing, with its table, its chairs, and the splash of gentle sunlight that came from no sun Adam could see.

  Only when Ariane had left did Evayne touch Adam’s shoulder. “You haven’t changed,” she said quietly.

  He had but did not say this; he understood what she meant. She looked older to Adam; more adult. The obvious distress, the terrible realization of loss, was gone; it had sunk beneath the surface of her face. She had lost weight, he thought with an Oma’s concern; he was far too polite to say so out loud.

  She led him away from the table and the clearing, but not in the direction of what the terrifying Winter Queen had called baths; instead, she found a small lake, its shores a reminder of desert sand. There, she sat.

  Adam sat with her. “Can you talk about what you’ve been doing since I last saw you?” But no, that wasn’t the right question; he knew it before she tensed. “Sorry,” he said quickly. “That is the business of Matriarchs. But . . . can you talk about how you’ve been feeling?”

  She smiled then.

  * * *

  • • •

  Although the baths were meant for mortals, Celleriant and Shianne accompanied Jewel, as did Terrick, Angel, and Avandar. Kallandras was slower to follow but did. No one, however, entered the water immediately, because the Ariane version of a bath was not a tub or basin. It was not even a pool, enclosed and protected from the elements.

  It was a placid, still lake; the only thing that disturbed its surface was the water falling to the left in a spill of sound and light. To the right of Jewel’s party were large, flat boulders, covered in moss; the shore of the lake was a white, white sand that suggested snow.

  “It’s warm,” Cessaly told her, as if she could hear the thought. “They don’t come here.”

  “They?” Kallandras asked.

  She blinked, as if the sound of his voice was unexpected. Unexpected and fascinating. “The Winter people,” she replied. And then, as if she wanted—or needed—to hear more of that voice, “Do you know them?”

  “I have encountered them before on my travels. I did not expect to meet another mortal in this court, at this time. When did Evayne arrive?”

  Cessaly made a face. “I was here when she arrived. It is hard to tell time here,” she added apologetically.

  “Time is not of import to the White Lady.”

  “Do you sing?”

  He smiled. “Often.”

  “Will you sing?”

  “I will not sing here without the White Lady’s permission.”

  Cessaly looked crestfallen. “Just a little?”

  The bard’s smile deepened. “In the wilderness, my voice carries.” As he spoke, Jewel noticed that butterflies had begun to gather around the boulders nearest the lake. Their wings caught light, reflecting it; they seemed like living jewelry, their wings spread as if to adorn the pale colors of the lake.

  Kallandras noticed them as well—had probably noticed them first; there was so little that escaped his eyes. “Did you make these?”

  Cessaly nodded. Her right hand was twitching; her left, still clenched in a fist, was now white-knuckled. Her expression was odd, and it took Jewel a moment to place it; she had seen something similar on the face of the guildmaste
r when he had examined the dress she had worn at the first day of The Terafin’s funeral rites.

  “They sing,” Kallandras said.

  “Yes—but not properly. There was no voice—” She stopped. Her eyes were sharp, clear, the various elements of her face falling into lines that made focus her only expression.

  “I will ask permission of the Lady,” the bard said softly. “But in this place, all things that occur must occur with her permission. It is not for my own sake—”

  But Cessaly had turned heel in that instant and all but disappeared in her haste.

  * * *

  • • •

  After the bath, Jewel left her traveling clothing on the rocks. She had, with Avandar’s help, removed the white dress which Snow had crafted for her, and with his help, had donned it. From her pouch, she had drawn both bracelet and tiara, gifts from Guildmaster Gilafas. They were not, she thought, for her; they had not been crafted for this moment.

  But she wore them, regardless.

  Avandar did not carry the various brushes and combs she would otherwise have at her disposal, but he made do with the pins that had mostly kept her hair in place during their journey, and when he was at last done, she stepped forward, shedding the self-consciousness that almost always accompanied this dress.

  She had thought it fit for Ariane, when she had first seen it. She had thought herself unworthy of its almost unearthly beauty. Knowing now how it had been created did not make the wearing more comfortable—but it was not, now, something that she could simply give to the White Lady. Or anyone. Snow had made this for her, and she would not be parted from it while she lived.

  Celleriant was first to bow, and his bow was low, almost reverent, as if the dress, rather than hiding her inadequacy, had somehow revealed her strength. Shadow came to her and sat, heavily, cleaning his paw and eyeing the butterflies that scattered the minute he approached. She placed a hand on the top of his head. But if he felt she was stupid—and he must, he was a cat after all—he said nothing.