She knelt, taking the first leaf from her satchel; she set it down against the stone of street and the stone absorbed it, drawing it into the earth itself. What emerged was a tree of blue: blue bark, blue branches, blue buds. She spoke a name.
“Lillian Vess.”
A woman stepped out of the trunk of the tree. Older than Jewel, but not by much, her hair was the same frazzled mess that Jewel’s often was by the end of the day. She bowed to The Terafin; Jewel’s bow was lower, held longer. If it surprised Lillian, none of the surprise showed on her face; she waited until The Terafin rose.
“May I go?” she asked.
Jewel nodded. “You will not be able to leave this city.”
“Why would I want to leave it? My life is here.” Lillian’s frown was more felt than seen. She straightened her skirts, glanced once at the brief flare of light high above, and walked with purpose away from the Common.
Calliastra said nothing. She shadowed Jewel almost as closely as Angel did when there was danger. Thirty-four times, including the first, Jewel set a leaf down, and the leaf became a tree. But the trees did not reflect the people who then stepped out from them; they were all of a height and of an apparent age. In the night, they seemed to reflect light.
They didn’t.
Carver and Angel followed as the magi slowly retreated, leaving the moons and stars for illumination. Magelights, which had existed in the streets before the city had been rebuilt—in an instant—would have to be added to the landscape. The Terafin’s office was already besieged by the bewildered and the angry among the various bookkeepers of the capital of the Empire, but Jewel had no idea how to return what they’d lost.
No, that wasn’t true. She had some idea, but she was afraid to make changes to what now existed, because other changes—unintended—might follow. Perhaps later. Later, when she better understood her own limits and the damage she might do.
“You understand, already, the damage you might do,” the thirty-fifth man said. He stepped out of the trunk of his tree—she would forever think of these trees as people, a mortal variant, made strange and wild by the scion of gods and the ancient wilderness—said. He was taller than Jewel; taller, but less immediately obviously, than Carver or Angel.
Something about his expression reminded Jewel of her Oma. For a moment, the memory of that terrifying, paradoxically comforting woman stood beside the man, her lips folded in a familiar frown. Ah, it was the arms. The arms were crossed in the exact same way.
“You’ve made your choice,” her Oma said, her voice as clear as any living person’s. “You’ve made it, and you’ll live with it. I won’t hear whining, do you understand?”
Yes, Oma.
The man was standing, silent, as if waiting orders.
“Colm Sanders,” she said.
He nodded. He didn’t seem surprised that she knew his name. Then again, he wouldn’t; her Oma wouldn’t have been, either.
His eyes narrowed. “You shouldn’t be here,” he finally said.
“I have to plant the last of the leaves,” she replied.
He nodded. “But before you do, I have questions.”
“I don’t have a lot of time left to answer them.”
“Then answer quickly.” His voice was a snap of sound, a sergeant’s voice. An Oma’s voice, for all that he was a man, a soldier, and a Northerner.
Jewel nodded. She could swear she could hear Calliastra grinding her teeth, and she lifted a hand in brief den-sign before she remembered that Calliastra couldn’t yet read this truncated language.
“We’re clearly alive in some fashion. I don’t feel any different. I don’t, judging by your reaction, look different, either. What will happen to us?”
“You can’t be a soldier in the Kings’ army anymore, unless war comes to us—as it did yesterday. You can’t, as you suspect, leave the city; you are part of it, now.”
“Can we die?”
Jewel swallowed. “No. Not yet.”
“Will we die when you die?”
She lowered her head, because it was hard to meet his steady gaze. And then she forced herself to do it anyway, to lift chin, to raise face. “No. You are part of this city. Only when the city fails will you fail. Your lives will be lived within the boundaries of Averalaan—although those boundaries include the wilderness that hears my name. You are necessary, and will be necessary, when I am gone, if the city is to survive.
“A god walks the mortal world. While I live, the city will stand; when I die, it will stand only if you stand. You. The thirty-six. I won’t insult you. And I won’t apologize. Everyone that now lives in the boundaries of Averalaan owes their lives to you. Everyone.
“On the morrow, in the heart of the Common, in the center of the three trees that will define it, your story will be writ in stone, and for those who cannot read, it will be spoken by that stone. This city will know and understand what you have sacrificed—and what you will sacrifice in future.
“You will not starve. You will never grow hungry. You will not age. Until the city itself is gone or the wilderness is destroyed, you will be here. I don’t imagine,” she added, voice soft but steady, “that you care all that much about monuments and the honor of strangers—but you are only one of thirty-five.” She lifted the last leaf. “Others will care.”
She knelt once again, a final time, and she placed the last of the leaves upon the stone of these new streets. Colm Sanders, unlike the others, did not leave. He waited.
She knew why.
And so she planted the final leaf, holding it for just a moment longer than she had any of the others. She waited, rising, while Carver held breath and Angel said nothing. Even Calliastra was uncharacteristically silent.
The cats, above, were not.
Shadow came to land on Carver’s foot. Snow and Night circled above them, above the tree, insulting each other and their brother. Hissing laughter. Hissing annoyance. Threatening the last of the magi, for the magi, while done with magics, were not done with the usual cleanup required after their audience had gone home for the year.
Shadow glanced at Colm Sanders; Colm Sanders looked down at the cat.
Jewel, however, focused on the tree, waiting for it to disgorge the last of the thirty-six dreamers.
Stacy A’Scavonne exited the tree in an excited rush. She bypassed the dour Sanders and headed straight for Carver, who bent and opened his arms, sweeping her off her feet in a way he wouldn’t have dared had her parents—and her guards, for of course she would have them if she visited the Common—been present.
Only when he set her down did Stacy’s jumble of excited greetings fade. “She’s still sad,” she told him.
“Not all sadness is bad,” he replied.
“But you’re here, and you’re not dead.”
“Yes. She isn’t sad about me now.”
“About me?”
“A little, yeah.” He set her on her feet. “Stacy, this is Jay.”
“I think you’re supposed to call her The Terafin.”
“Well, your mother’s not here.”
She nodded and turned to Jewel. “I’m not sad,” she said. “I’m going to live forever. My mother’s alive. And my father. And our servants.”
Jewel nodded.
“And I can go home and tell her that I’m never going to die!”
Colm Sanders said nothing, and he said it so forbiddingly that Jewel could only nod. “Yes.” She turned to Shadow.
“He’s living with us, right now,” Stacy then said, pointing at Colm Sanders.
“He is.”
“We have to go home.” She was looking at Colm Sanders but failing to meet his gaze. Jewel realized, then, that she was afraid. Not terrified, but afraid. As if she understood that not all of her mother’s reaction would be happy. “You’re coming, right?” she asked him.
“I’m coming. I probably won’t stay in your mother’s house.”
“Why not?”
“Because you won’t need guards now, and it will only remind your mother that you slept and couldn’t be woken.”
“But you’ll come back with me now?”
“I will come back with you now. We should leave,” he added. “It’s late, and she’ll be worried sick because both of us are gone.”
“Shadow.”
The gray cat hissed, but it was a soft hiss, and he didn’t accompany it with the usual torrent of disgust. He stepped forward toward Stacy, whose eyes lit up.
Jewel didn’t even need to tell them that Shadow would fly them home. Colm Sanders understood, and so did Stacy. She was going to go home on the flying cat.
“Can I visit you?” Stacy asked, as Colm Sanders lifted her and placed her firmly on the back of the great winged cat. “I mean, when you’re not busy?”
“Yes. You can visit me any time you like. You won’t need to make an appointment, and you won’t—it will be safe for you to visit me.”
“But it won’t be safe for everyone.”
“No. If you wish your parents to meet me, they will have to make an appointment.”
“Because they’re normal?”
“Because they’re normal.”
Colm Sanders seated himself behind Stacy, looking grim, where she looked excited. Shadow pushed up, off the ground, but Jewel could hear Stacy’s last words clearly.
“Can we circle around the top of the new trees before we have to go home?”
* * *
• • •
“Why did you pick up the leaves?” Jay asked, as she began the climb up the steps of the new Terafin manse. The front of the building had been altered in the passage of hours; it looked far more like the manse on the Isle than it had when she’d claimed it as her residence.
Angel was silent for three steps. “I thought it had to be done,” he finally said. “I thought you would do it, if you had the time.”
“You knew?”
“You said their names. I heard you speak their names. I recognized one or two of them, because we were in the city when the sleeping sickness started, and Adam was shuffling between the Houses of Healing and home. I thought—” He shook his head.
“If you could do everything yourself, you would. But you can’t. None of us can. What you wanted, we wanted. Even Duster.” He did not glance at Calliastra as he spoke Duster’s name. “I don’t know. I just knew I had to pick them up.
“I have your back.”
“You always have.” Her smile was shadowed, her eyes wide. She’d been out in the streets too long. “But this—this was more important than demons, to me.”
He signed, I know.
She signed back. Thank you. Angel.
About the Author
Michelle West is the author of three interconnected series: The Sacred Hunt duology, the six-volume Sun Sword series, and The House War novels. She has published numerous short stories, as well as fantasy novels, under her maiden name, Michelle Sagara. She was a two-time nominee for the Campbell Award. She works part-time at BAKKA Books, one of Toronto's larger bookstores, and writes a column for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She can be contacted via her website, michellesagara.com.
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