But Jewel shook her head.
“You need to know she’ll be all right?”
Jewel nodded.
Angel grimaced and said, “I don’t.”
“You’ve seen births before?”
He nodded. “In the Free Towns, not in Averalaan.” In den-sign he added, trust Adam.
She did. But this was the first birth she had seen, and the most significant, and given that it had started in pain, had proceeded to blood, she needed to see the life that came from it; needed to know that there was a reason that it was so much of a struggle.
Angel did not try to move her again.
Later, she would remember that Avandar had not tried at all. Nor had the Winter King.
* * *
• • •
Jewel felt the time pass as slowly as if she were once again a child.
The very environs of the Hidden Court seemed to hold their breath; the quality of the light, the ambience of the atmosphere, did not change at all. Kallandras replaced Terrick as Adam’s attendant and help; Terrick ate, but sparingly, with an eye to Adam and Shianne.
It was Adam who brought the infant into the world; Adam who declared it a boy; Adam who freed it from the umbilical cord which had been its sustenance, and who cleaned it, washed it, swaddled it; Adam who returned the infant to his mother’s side. He looked relieved; he did not look exhausted in the way of the talent-born. As Jewel met his gaze, he smiled and shook his head.
“My people have given birth without healers for most of their history. And so, too, yours. The Houses of Healing exist for those with power, rank, and wealth—but that does not describe most of your citizenry. Or my people. She is strong,” he added.
She was holding the child.
The child was looking out at the world with narrowed eyes, as if he understood everything his eyes saw. As if he could see.
And she understood then.
She understood, and wheeled, and the earth seemed to ripple as she strode across it in the sudden and unexpected depth of her fury.
* * *
• • •
Avandar joined her before she had cleared the lake area; he caught her arm, and she shook his hand free without breaking stride.
Jewel.
No.
Jewel.
She failed to respond for one long breath. Did you know? Did you know at the outset that this is what she intended? She could manage to keep the words contained, but only barely, and it was costly.
Did you not? Did you truly not understand?
Of course not! He’s a child, Avandar. A baby.
Yes. A baby that the White Lady’s kin chose to bear. Did you think she made that choice out of love for the infant—an infant that did not exist when she chose? Did you think that the pregnancy was inconsequential?
A baby. An infant. A newborn infant.
And what do you intend to do? Confront her? In the Hidden Court? Will you throw away your own life for the life of a stranger’s child?
I won’t buy my own life with the life of a stranger’s child!
There is only so much effrontery the White Lady will tolerate. She will not tolerate this. The child is the mother’s; the mother has already chosen. She chose long, long before you were born. She chose long before our kind was born. Do you understand?
Jewel had no response.
She became mortal—but she is not mortal as we are.
You’re not mortal.
He may have flinched. She did not care.
And her child, Jewel, is not mortal as we are. It is the first—the first pregnancy of its kind. But the gods did not know then what they know now; not even Neamis. Ariane has said that she cannot crown a King who does not desire that crowning. Think. Did you not hear her words?
Shadows cast by looming branches flittered across her hands, her shoulders; she seemed, for a moment, to be walking into a net—a net meant for dragons, for things much larger than one mortal woman.
Jewel.
Jewel.
Her wrist suddenly burned with the force of the single word: her name. Avandar’s mark was glowing.
You will die here. If you die, every one of your chosen kin will perish with you. Not just Angel, but all of your den. The forest you planted, the forest you rule will be unbound in a moment. What do you think the forest denizens will do with the little that remains of your city then? You are angry. I confess it did not occur to me that you could not see this far.
And her wrist bled. She could see the wound, but could not feel it, so potent was her fury.
Will you throw away everything you have done, every gain you have made, in a moment of fury? You cannot change what will happen. The tenor of his voice changed as she stilled. What she said was true. She could not crown Adam. Adam will never be hers—not as the Winter King was. I could never have been Winter King, for the same reason.
Babies are entirely dependent on the person who feeds them, cares for them, protects them. All babies.
You do not understand, he said again. And even if you did, you would not be at peace. The babe is not the child of mortals. I had expected this from Adam. Not from you.
Adam.
She froze, her wrist throbbing. She had heard the phrase “seeing red” for much of her life and understood it as metaphor—but her vision seemed filmed, unsteady, the air surrounding her thick with emotional fog.
This is why Ariane had asked her to name a boon when she had asked it.
Avandar nodded quietly.
She had. She had not intended to ask for what she had asked—and she felt, as she tried to inhale, that she had traded the life of an infant for Carver’s life. Something he would have hated and would never, ever have asked.
To her lasting surprise, Kallandras joined her; she startled when he landed. What she had not allowed Avandar, she allowed the bard. He took both of her hands in either of his while she trembled with rage—and guilt.
“She did not agree to save your city,” he said, his voice so soft she should have barely been able to make out the words. “Do you remember why?”
Did she? Her hands tightened; his remained loose. He did not intend to hold her here if she could not force herself to stay. “She couldn’t be certain she could grant it.”
Kallandras nodded. “I have spoken with Evayne. I asked her to come to you; she could not bring herself to do so. Not yet. In decades—her decades—she will do far worse than you feel you have done, here. But in decades, she will finally be strong enough to learn—truly—why she must. She is young, now, here. She was brought to the Hidden Court to learn the magics she must know in her own future. You have seen the results, in your past.
“Had you understood, when you walked through that arch, the fate of Shianne’s child, had you asked that, in return for the Summer Tree, Ariane spare the infant, she would have made the same reply that she made when you asked that she save your city. If the infant is not born here, if he is not raised here, if he does not serve as Summer King, the sapling that you preserved and offered to her would have no meaning.
“Among us, there are those who would serve her as King; it is the whole of their desire. But among those, there are none who could serve as Summer King.”
“She said Adam—”
“She was not kind, Terafin. But she said, also, that Adam would never be hers. Could he, he would be a Summer King beyond compare. But if he is moved, even to tears, by the White Lady, she is not, and will never be, the whole of his desire. Had you understood, had you asked for the infant’s life, she could not grant that boon. And, Terafin, you are not bard-born. You are aware that the bard-born can command.”
Jewel nodded, although it was not a question.
“They can make themselves heard across great distances, no matter what stands between them and their audience.”
S
he nodded again.
“Are you aware that the bard-born also listen?”
Her nod was slower although she offered it to him.
“Then understand: that infant is not a child in the way of our kind. Perhaps he once was, but he has spent centuries—more—hearing the voice of his mother. He has learned to speak, to think. He understands the whole of his mother’s desire; he understands the purpose of his existence. He has waited, and waited, and waited for this moment: to be born, at last, in the shadows of the White Lady, that he might love her as his mother loved her, and free her, as even his mother could not.”
“He’s an infant,” Jewel countered. “And the very young always want to please their mothers. He doesn’t know—”
“—What he wants? That is not true. You might argue that it is true of mortal children, that it was true of you; that consequences are things that are not clear to the very young.”
“Kallandras, he’s an infant.”
“He is an infant born as the instrument of the very gods, and that fate has never sat kindly upon the shoulders of the merely mortal. I understand the burden of guilt, and if you must shoulder it to remain true to yourself, I cannot relieve you of its weight. But, Terafin, in this, you, too, are such an instrument.” He released her hands. “She will not grant what you ask because she cannot. This war has become the purpose of her existence, and she has humbled herself in order to fight it. But she will fight it. Should that war require the sacrifice of every citizen of our Empire, she would sacrifice them all without so much as blinking.
“You have not sacrificed an infant to save your kin. She would never have granted that request.” He bowed then, and the wind took him, sweeping him gracefully into the air. He looked part of it, somehow, as if his feet had never truly touched the ground.
She was left standing in his wake.
* * *
• • •
The sun in a court that was timeless nonetheless turned; the shades of high noon ceded sky to dusk. Shadows slanted, and warmth dissipated; night fell. Jewel lingered near the lake Cessaly had called a bath. She had chosen to shed the white dress, to pack it—with care, although care was not required. She had also removed the fussy adornments with which she had girded herself, but she handled those more carefully.
The ring, however, she did not remove. This was not for lack of trying. Or perhaps lack of wanting to try, on some visceral level.
Angel did not hover. He understood her mood, understood her anger, understood her need to pace as if pacing were a foot race it was necessary to win. Even in the days when the den had been crammed into two rooms, her den-kin—with the exception of Duster—knew when to leave her alone. But he was never far.
Nor, to her surprise, was Terrick. Something had shifted in him when Shianne had gone into labor, and it had not yet righted itself.
Kallandras, for the most part, kept company with Lord Celleriant. But if the meeting in the vast, open-skied audience chamber had done nothing else for Celleriant, it had nevertheless made it clear that he would, one day, call this Court home again. The Winter Queen had made clear to all who observed that she considered Celleriant of value.
They did not doubt her.
Jewel wondered if they even could.
And her thoughts drifted, as she wondered, to the Kialli, and to Darranatos. From there, they moved to Shianne and her sisters. To Shianne herself. Darranatos had, in his fashion, loved the god they did not name. And he had, in his fashion, loved the White Lady. Even at the end, she had heard, in his rage and sorrow, the tremulous desire that the White Lady be exalted. If he had chosen to serve Allasakar—even thinking the name was an act of defiance—he had desired, for Ariane, a place, a singular place, of honor by that god’s side.
She had never forgiven those who had chosen to desert her.
She would never forgive them.
And she would never forgive the Lord of the Hells. Jewel had not understood the depth of her enmity; she had assumed—and why?—that any living being must oppose Allasakar. The gods did. The gods had.
But for the Winter Queen, it was personal, and Jewel wondered then if the seasons—Winter and Summer—existed as they did solely because of that enmity; they had not existed in that fashion in Shianne’s time.
That time, as so many others, had passed. She bowed her head. The whole of her focus was turned, had been turned, toward the newborn infant.
Perhaps, because it was, she did not immediately notice the presence of a visitor. She didn’t notice, in fact, until that visitor cleared her throat.
Evayne a’Nolan stood, hands clasped behind her back, waiting for Jewel’s attention. Jewel turned to fully face her. Some of the bitterness, some of the anger, deserted her as she studied the lines of the young woman’s face, softened by dusk and the gentler lights that alleviated darkness. She had, she realized, never been older than Evayne. Even when Evayne had come to Terafin as a woman younger than the one who only barely met her gaze now, Jewel had been younger still.
What must it be like, to age naturally, while the people you knew jumped back and forth in time, in a constant and unpredictable way? How did you build a history with them, or with anyone? What must the future look like to one whose future was a simple march of entirely unconnected days? What home could you build? What family?
She shook herself as her thoughts returned to Shianne’s child and turned away again.
“I saw you here,” Evayne said, when Jewel’s back was turned. “The first time I tried to look into the future—into the Winter Queen’s future—I saw you.”
“Did you tell her?”
“No. I’ve been told that I’ll become better at understanding, at teasing out meaning from what I do see. It’s—” She fell silent, and this time, when Jewel turned again, she continued. “It’s harder. I have to make decisions when I’m uncertain—and I’m uncertain all the time.” She exhaled. “This is the first time, since I made the choice to walk the Oracle’s path, that I’ve stayed in one place. I—” She shook her head. “You know Meralonne.”
Jewel nodded slowly.
“I saw him regularly. Day after day. He was almost normal.”
“I cannot imagine the life that you would have to lead to consider Meralonne APhaniel almost normal.”
Evayne’s eyes widened, and then—to Jewel’s surprise—she laughed. Jewel had never seen her laugh before.
“I understand that the Hidden Court is a dangerous place, that you would not be here were the situation not so desperate—but I think it might be the last home I will ever be allowed.” This was said with no humor at all. “I have never seen the court in Summer. I have seen only the Winter face of the White Lady.”
“You will see the Summer face,” Jewel said, although the words left her mouth almost of their own accord.
Evayne heard the certainty and understood its source—she was perhaps the only living person who could understand it so completely. She bowed her head again. “What Cessaly makes now—and she cannot be diverted or interrupted, although the Arianni sometimes amuse themselves by making the attempt—she makes for you. She is not aware of it. She does not do it consciously. But it is for you, and you must take it and keep it with you.” A shadow crossed her face.
Jewel could see herself in that shadow, in multiple ways. And she faced them all. “What have you seen of me?”
Evayne lowered her head, but not before Jewel saw the ripple of pain cross her features.
“Tell me, instead, about the child.”
“Ariane will not leave when you depart. She cannot. The child is too young. But what she said was truth: time passes for mortals who remain in the Hidden Court. When you leave this court, you will leave almost in the moment you entered it, as far as the world without is concerned. If she leaves the court, she will leave the same way. But for the mortals within, time passes as it always passes. Ev
en for people like me.” The last was said with a trace of pain, of a bitterness that had not yet passed.
“When you are older,” Jewel said, “all of this will make sense to you. Every choice you’ve made, every painful decision. You will look back on it, and you will understand it all.”
“I understand it now,” Evayne said.
Jewel exhaled. “Sorry.” She ran hands through her hair although it was pointless; the hair was bound. “You’ll accept it. You won’t hate yourself, or hate the Oracle, or any of those things.”
Silence for one long beat. “Is that how it worked for you?” There was no barb in the question; it was honest. Earnest.
“No.”
This surprised a wry smile out of Evayne.
“I think that’s how it works when you’re older, though.”
“How much older?”
“When you’re older than I am now, you’re a power. You’re a power to be reckoned with. You don’t look doubtful. You don’t look conflicted. You move with purpose, walk with purpose.”
“Maybe,” Evayne replied, “I’ve just gotten better at hiding it. To me, you don’t look filled with doubt.”
Jewel stared at her. After a pause, in which she considered her words, she said, “Or maybe we’ve both gotten better at hiding it. I don’t want to leave the baby here.”
“If you take the child with you, she will never be free of this Court. She will not wither, she will not be damaged; I do not think the Kialli would accept it. They will kill the Arianni wherever they can—but I am not at all certain they would raise arms against the White Lady. And Jewel—I do not think we can win this war if the White Lady remains trapped in this court.”
We.
“I don’t understand all of what she did. But she is part of the wilderness. She always was. She was scion of gods, but not free to leave when they left. Winter magic is the magic most used by the Lord of the Hells when he walks this plane. He will not be helpless in Summer—no god would be, could they walk as he walks now—but he will not be as strong. We have a hope of surviving his presence because the plane itself is not what it was, and it will not conform easily to his desires.
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