The Master of the Household Staff had, of course, scouted that new building. She had pronounced herself satisfied with both its condition and its architecture, and word had trickled down—like pebbles becoming an avalanche—that the building that had all but destroyed the Common upon its first rise through the streets of the city was more the Terafin manse than the building in which the servants had worked for the past year.
This building was not. It retained much of the general shape of the former manse, but whole sections had been transformed dramatically, and it was difficult, in many places, to close the doors to various rooms, because those doors no longer existed. The back halls, the sprawling network by which servants could become effectively invisible when not actually performing their duties, had likewise suffered some alterations.
Carver wished that one of those alterations had been to make them wider.
“You are certain,” Finch had said, to the august and terrifying Master of the Household Staff, “that you wish to facilitate a transfer of the staff immediately?” Carver had been surprised at her tone, because it implied that there was only one acceptable answer to the question.
If Carver had been surprised, the Master of the Household Staff had been glacial. “I am.” She did not look down her nose at Finch, not precisely, but the gesture itself was evident in her expression and her tone of voice.
“Very well. The Chosen have indicated that the building is ready for occupancy.” She hesitated and then added, “It is, in their estimation—and I am aware that our estimation is not, where it concerns the Household Staff, of great use to you—safe.”
Finch had, of course, been correct. Their estimation was of little value to the Master of the Household Staff. Her own, however, was above reproach.
Finch’s hand had fluttered briefly, and Carver, accustomed to the Master of the Household Staff, did not react in any way, although it had been a trial.
But even the dour, grim Master, whose given name Carver had never, in his years in the back halls, learned, returned to the manse with a kind of purposeful excitement that was palpable if one had any experience with her. Yes, the quarters were ready for occupancy, and yes, the Household Staff would occupy those quarters immediately. That, after all, was where The Terafin was now situated, and she had none of her own servants with her, save her domicis.
Carver assumed that the ruckus in the back halls was mirrored in the manse proper, but the frenetic preparations of the House Council and its various attaches took place in a much larger environment.
It had not, he thought, been even a day.
But much had happened in the course of that day, and the sun was only barely cresting the horizon.
* * *
• • •
Not all the servants could leave immediately. They were to move over the course of the next three days, but it was expected that they would not let the public halls go to humiliating ruin in the meantime.
But the one mercy—and it was as questionable a mercy as any offered by the Master of the Household Staff—was that the servants who tended to the West Wing were to be in the first wave of evacuees. This caused predictable squabbles in all levels of the House hierarchy, but no one, save perhaps Haerrad, was foolish enough to let their displeasure be known.
Haerrad, however, was in the care of the healerie. Carver wasn’t certain how he felt about that; his dislike of Haerrad since Teller’s injury had not abated. But Finch seemed to have made her peace with him, and it was Finch, not Carver, who would deal with the consequences.
The healerie was to move last. The right-kin’s office was a terrible mess, but the entire den, with the unfortunate exception of Teller, could avoid it; apparently the transformation of the manse during the height of the Sleepers’ attack had swallowed the paperwork. It had also swallowed some of the art. Barston’s stiff upper lip had almost shattered at the blow, but he had managed—barely—to hold himself together.
Finch’s assurance that there would be no further loss going forward had only barely mollified him. Carver, however, doubted that she could make that claim with authority.
He had come home. He had changed his clothing, offering what remained of the clothing in which he had left the manse to the fireplace. He had found shoes, and he had put them on while around him the den bustled, the West Wing a miniature version of the back halls, but far less crowded.
Last, he had watched the den leave. They were the first to go; only Finch remained behind.
She watched him now, her arms folded, her lips pursed. “If you wait much longer,” she finally said, “you’ll miss her entirely.” Before Carver could answer, she held up a hand. “If you miss her entirely, she’s going to wonder whether or not you’ve changed your mind.”
“She won’t.”
“She might. Many things have changed today. We haven’t discovered all of them. And you were presumed . . .” She shook her head. Not even she could finish the words. “She knows you’ve come back.”
“You told her?” Before Finch could answer, Carver smacked himself on the forehead. Of course, she hadn’t. But nothing remained hidden from the servants for long.
“Go. Barston is not the only person to have lost valuable House records. I am about to meet with Iain. Our treasurer.”
“He’s coming here?”
“He is. And you know how hard you find tears.”
* * *
• • •
Carver slid into the back halls. They were narrow and poorly lit, but that made them feel like home. He had the right to live in the West Wing as an occupant, but it was in the back halls that he had made himself useful to Jay, and in the back halls that he had found Merry.
He was surprised to see Berald, close to the doors that were used for the West Wing; Berald, being a senior member of the Household Staff, had the duty of overseeing those under his purview. Apparently, Carver had become one of them.
“I have run as much interference as I can survive,” the older man now said, as he unfolded his arms. “It is . . . good to have you back.”
“I’m not sure the Master of the Household Staff agrees,” Carver replied, an easy smile transforming his expression.
“No one has been foolish enough to ask.” Berald’s careworn smile was a blessing. “In your absence, however, she was forced to make do with Jester.”
Carver laughed. He could not imagine Jester and the Master of the Household Staff comfortably occupying the same room for more than two minutes. He wanted to know more—and on any other day, he might have taken the time to find out. But now that he was in the back halls, he felt a sudden excitement, a sudden anxiety.
He was home. His second home.
Or perhaps—and this caused him some guilt—his first home. The den was his family. It had been his family, with all of the squabbles and conflict that implied, since the day he had first run across Jay, hiding in an alley near Taverson’s. But Merry?
Merry was family as well. Not the den, and not the den’s family. Carver’s. No home, he thought, was complete without her in it. He wasn’t certain if this had always been true. He had been drawn to her from the start, and she had been against any possible entanglement, because the den were important House people, and she was a servant.
But there was, in the service, something of the den in her. She was not hard, not polished, not patrician—and she had never evinced any desire to be so. She did not despise the patriciate, as Jester did; she just considered them irrelevant, except in one way. They kept the House going. They served to make the House more powerful. And Merry was ATerafin.
He made his way, flattening himself against the wall more than once to avoid collision, to the room Merry shared. And he froze, once again, outside her door. He could not understand what was wrong with him. He hadn’t been this clumsy or this nervous since the first night.
As if the thought were words�
��and at that, shouted words—the door opened. Viv had swung it wide. She looked up at Carver, blinked, and then shook her head. “You know we’re really busy, right?”
He nodded.
Viv snorted. “Fine. Try not to get us all dismissed, hmm?” And she stepped out of the room, pushed Carver into it, and shut the door firmly behind him before he could find the words he was usually so glib with.
And . . . there she was: Merry, hair pulled tightly back and off her face, her skin glowing with the sweat of her endeavor to pack up the things she would need to take with her to her new home. Her arms fell to her sides, but even so, she did not drop the brush she was carrying.
She stared at him, her mouth hanging half open. Her eyes rounded, her mouth opened; she tossed the brush onto the bare mattress so that she could raise both of her hands to her mouth.
He was almost embarrassed. That was the truth. He had thought of hundreds of words, had thought of what he could, or would, say to her. He had known he was home when Angel had practically knocked him off his feet; had felt the reality of kin when Arann had achieved, in his armor, what Angel had not quite managed. He had thought he would never see his den again.
And he had accepted that, just as Duster had, and probably less angrily, in the end.
Coming home at the side of the Summer Queen had not been part of any of his wildest—or darkest—dreams. She had found him, and she had offered him his freedom because that was Jay’s one request of her. Carver would never have dared to ask anything. He would never have dared to approach her at all. She made beauty intimidating, terrifying, belittling, simply by existing.
And seeing her that first time, he had been robbed of words, of breath, of sound, for even the earth had fallen utterly silent as she stood upon its surface. She was like staring at the sun. A long-ago voice, robbed of face and identity by time and inadequate memory, told him don’t stare at the sun. You’ll go blind.
Even so, he could not close his eyes. He could not deprive himself of the sight of her. He thought that, had she offered him a place in her court, he would have accepted. In any position. Just to continue to be in her presence.
She had not offered.
And he had come home. To his den, waiting in the streets of the city as if they’d expected him, their shock, their joy, their surprise and even their tears proof that they hadn’t. They were not beautiful in the way the Summer Queen was. But they were warm, they were real, in a way she was not. All his history, from the thirty-fifth holding, to the twenty-fifth, to the most powerful of the Ten Houses, was reflected in their eyes, their expressions, and their joy.
It was their joy that he had reached for; it was their joy he had made his own; he had swallowed the echoes of it until he, too, resonated with the joy of homecoming.
He would not forget the Summer Queen; she was a force of nature that did not—at the moment—threaten his life. Like the ocean and its storms. Like the most brilliant of sunsets. Like the stars and the moons on a particularly clear night.
She was not kin. She was not den.
And, more significant, she was not Merry. He swallowed, his throat thick as he met Merry’s eyes. “I’m sorry.” It was a whisper of sound, but it was what he could manage. She stood frozen in the room’s center, her hands still covering her mouth.
Carver lifted his arms, held them open, offered her a half-smile.
She almost knocked him over as she leaped into those arms. Chin resting on her head, her hair, he said again, “I’m sorry.”
She said nothing, not even his name; he was almost certain she was crying—and the Master of the Household Staff did not hold with tears; they were a sign of weakness, and she expected better from the ATerafin under her command.
But he knew, as he held her, that he was fully, finally, home.
* * *
• • •
The magi came out on the evening that the Summer Queen had ended the threat of the Sleepers. Every year, when the sun had finally set—and this was the longest day of the year—they made their way to the Common, and this year was no exception. Sigurne had, of course, already received the permits required by the Kings; apparently, the paperwork of the magi, in all its many forms, still existed. Although the hundred holdings had been substantially transformed, the Isle had seen far fewer changes; Sigurne’s writs of exemption, unlike the merchant contracts in the Merchant Authority—or the Port Authority for that matter—remained where she had placed them.
It was not her custom to join the magi in their display of celebratory illusions, but she made an exception this year. She thought, if age was kind, she would make an exception for every year that remained her.
The Common was less crowded, and that gave her brief pause. But it was not empty. Parents, grandparents, brought children of varying ages, as they had done every year on this night. There was an intensity to their gratitude, and an intensity to their grief, that would lessen with time. But this night was the first night of a new city; it was history in the making.
The bards came, as they often did; the merchants, however, did not. The Ten were present, but their own supplies had been compromised; they therefore came as citizens of Averalaan, not as rulers. And on this eve, the Kings and their Queens also joined the crowds.
Jewel was present. She was surrounded by her den and her Chosen, and she had come to the Common to watch the magi’s show of lights. This had been one of her favorite times of year; she could almost hear her Oma admonishing her to avoid strangers because strangers were dangerous.
The three cats had taken to the night sky under firm instructions to leave the magi—and their illusions—alone, and Calliastra watched them fly almost wistfully.
“You can join them,” Jewel said quietly.
Calliastra shook her head and looked at her feet. She was young, tonight; Jewel had come to understand that her appearance, her physical form, was not a simple thing. It reflected her mood and her desire.
“You need to be here,” the godchild said. “Nothing you do can hurt me, but hurting these people will hurt you. I can remind you that this is where you are.”
Jewel swallowed and nodded. Her eyes were tired, now; things were blurry, ill-defined. The trees, she could see clearly. And Calliastra. The people were less distinct, their outlines slightly blurred. That blur would increase with the passage of time.
This was her city, and if she wanted it to remain that way, she could not remain long in its streets. But she wanted to see the lights. She wanted to be part of this festival; it was a continuous link to her childhood, and she had watched it every year, sometimes at a remove. She could exist more easily in the forests that had been brief harbor to those citizens of Averalaan who had survived but did not wish to spend the time in the company of the Summer Queen.
No, that was a lie; she did. But not if it meant missing this display.
The magi that worked above the trees were fewer in number than they had been. But they, too, understood the import of the festival.
Still, she turned from the skies when she felt the presence of her den. Two of her den, Carver and Angel. Carver was now wearing shoes and appropriate clothing, and the two were conversing. Carver grinned. Whatever his experience of the wilderness had been, it hadn’t broken him. She was grateful for that—but broken or no, she wanted him here.
Jewel walked toward them.
Angel slid a hand into the satchel slung over his shoulder; he withdrew a single leaf.
Jewel stared at it for one long beat.
“He gathered them,” Carver said, when Angel failed to speak. “Every tree on which your path home was built dropped a single leaf. He picked them all up.”
“There are thirty-six,” Jewel said. “Thirty-six leaves.”
Angel nodded.
Carver didn’t seem surprised at the number. “You know what they are.”
She hesitated,
and Angel signed.
“I know who they were.”
“Can you—can you somehow release them?” Carver’s hesitation was marked because he didn’t usually bother to hesitate. “I spoke with two of them.”
“When?” But even asking the question, she knew the answer. She wondered if it would always be this way. She lifted a hand, brushing her own question aside. “I can’t.”
“Can’t release them?”
And this answer, too, came instantly, although the knowledge was new. And bitter. Over the heads of her two den-kin, she could see the buildings that would form the new horizon of Averalaan. She could see the people in the streets of the city itself. She understood that they were here because of thirty-six people who had become the heart of Averalaan the moment she had planted the single blue leaf that remained in her hands when she walked out of the dreaming.
“I can’t release them,” she said. “I can’t change what they’ve become.”
“But if you made them—” Angel stepped, hard, on his foot. Carver swallowed the words.
“Who did you talk to?” she asked.
“Stacy. I don’t know her family name.”
“A’Scavonne,” Jewel replied, without thought, without effort.
Carver caught her by the arms. “She wanted to save her mother. Is her mother still alive?” As if he expected Jewel to know the answer.
And she did. “Yes.”
“Then she did what she wanted.”
Angel carefully handed the satchel to Jewel. She knew what it now contained. Knew, as well, that he wanted her to plant these individual leaves.
She did. But she did not release them to the wind, as she so often did. Instead, she walked away from the heart of this new Common, until she reached the boundary of it. No, that wasn’t exact. She reached what would become the boundary in the years to follow. She was, even now, marking that boundary.
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