Battle: The House War: Book Five (47 page)

You don’t understand why I prize them more highly,
she told him.
I don’t think you
can.
It made you the ruler you were. It makes me the ruler I am. But think: In the end, if you obtain what you desire, it will not be because you were the ruler you were.

She let him go.

Avandar’s silence was a very familiar one, but he did not fill it—not with a lecture. “What is coming, Jewel?”

“Winter’s heralds,” she replied. “If Ariane cannot leave her sequestered Court, her lords can.”

* * *

She carried no weapons on her person; she had the Chosen, and she accepted the risk they faced; it was hers. They were mortal.

But she accepted, as well, Shadow’s words. These lands were not hers. Not yet. She felt it as truth, beneath her feet; the stone was simple—and cold—stone. The wind’s voice was beyond her, and hers was too quiet to command it. She had the things that had defined her life: loss, and the fear of its permanence. Here, no tree of fire warmed her, and the world did not respond to her urgent imperatives.

But the cats had grown six inches, given the way their fur had risen, and they growled in low unison; it was like a visceral, ugly,
living
song. She placed a hand on Snow’s white head; felt the almost dreamlike quality of his fur, it was so soft.

“Can we kill?” he asked, his voice shorn of the inflection that lent it character and made it almost comical.

She said nothing, waiting; the world seemed to hold its breath.
Ellerson
, she thought.
Carver
.

She feared to see their corpses, and lifted her chin. What came, what would come, was in theory so much worse—but she welcomed it: war, violence, death: as long as it wasn’t theirs. As long as she could
see it
coming, as long as she could stand in its way, as long as she could
do something
. Anything. Even die.

Shadow said, “Walk away from death, or it will devour you.”

“I am not walking to my death.”

“That’s not what I
meant
. Life—your life—will
always
have loss. It is not your death you fear; when your death is almost upon you, you are
too busy
to be
afraid
. It is theirs.”

She said nothing.

“This is
why
rulers disavow love and friendship. It
eats
them.”

“I would never have come this far without friends.”

He growled again. “Perhaps. But if you continue this way, you will fall. And what remains of your city after your fall might make even the gods weep. You
must
learn.” He spit as the wind changed. “You have sent
him
away. If you confront
her
, and she accepts him, you will regret his absence. He goes where even we cannot safely go.”

“You go,” she replied, “where he cannot safely go.”

“Pffft. He is a man.
We
are cats. But there are places where he may run that we may not fly. There is no place—save one—that
she
has gone that he cannot traverse. She doesn’t
like
cats.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

He opened his mouth to continue—because Shadow, unlike Avandar, could lecture in the face of attacking demon lords. Or so she would have said—but he turned away as the wind in the hall—in, Jewel thought, the tunnel the hall had become—died into stillness.

Jewel
.

From the darkness of the distant hall came three riders.

* * *

They carried moonlight with them; it silvered their armor and the white, white fall of their unbraided hair. It wasn’t magelight; it was grayer and softer. But it spread evenly across the long, long hall, at a distance that magelight failed to touch.

Three, mounted, not on stags, but horses, or creatures very like them; the mounts seemed, to Jewel, to be too fine, too slender, but they had the broader, longer heads, and the wild manes. The riders carried long spears; the man in the lead carried a silent horn. There were no banners, but the heraldry of the
Arianni
was almost unknown to a woman who had spent years memorizing human variants. The absence made no difference; she
knew
this man.

And he, she thought, knew her. He did not slow; instead, he leveled the blade of his pole arm, and spurred his mount to greater speed; hooves clattered across stone as if they could shatter it. They might, she thought. But she made no attempt to evade him; not even at Torvan’s urgent command. It
was
command; she lifted a hand to stay it as the
Arianni
drew closer, closer.

“No, Captain.” She did not order the Chosen to stand down, but something in her tone gave them pause—and it should. In the end, it should. Even the den had come to trust her word and mood in times of grave danger and conflict; if the Chosen were her armor and shield, they must come to do the same.

Shadow leaped before the last syllable faded. Night flanked him; Snow moved to stand in front of her. Jewel herself did not take a step, either forward or away; had it not been for the damnable cold, she would have been motionless.

Wind roared, returning to the hall in a rush.

It came, however, from behind them; she heard the clang of armor as the Chosen turned. Only the Chosen moved; Avandar, by her side, seemed made of living ice. Around her feet, however, a circle of orange and blue appeared, glowing faintly. A like circle did not appear around his; he stood outside of its boundary.

Avandar
.

He didn’t even raise a brow in response.

Shadow leaped as the horses approached; the leveled spear wavered briefly in the gray cat’s direction. Jewel held breath, remembering: the cats were no longer creatures of stone.

“Stone forms would not prevent their injury,” Avandar said. “Not against this opponent.”

The horse did not slow, but the spear snapped to the side as Night now leaped, changing the mount’s trajectory by landing on his side. A different rider would have been unseated by his mount’s fall; this one jumped and the air caught him before he could land. It carried him, in a rush, over the two cats, but not past the third, who now sprang from his position in front of Jewel.

She watched, hands by her sides; they were looser now than they’d been since she had entered the closet that was not a closet. She raised chin, drew breath, exhaled; breath made a veil of mist through which the cat and the first assailant clashed. There was no blood; there was sound and fury; the wind drove cat and man apart, but it failed to dash the cat against the nearest wall.

Ah, no, she thought, there was blood; it was scant—a scratch across a perfect, Winter cheek. She caught a glimpse of it as he turned, dropping spear to draw sword. It was—of course it was—pale, perfect blue, a thing of light and motion. She expected shield, and it followed, instantly adorning the arm bent to bear it. That shield took the full force of Snow’s extended claws, and the blow sent the
Arianni
back.

Jewel grimaced. She knew where back was in this fight: toward her. The
Arianni
Lord had positioned himself
perfectly
, and the force of Snow’s almost aerial blows pushed him exactly where he wanted to go. Had his opponent been Shadow—who was now embroiled in his own fight farther down the hall—such a tactic would have been pointless. But Snow and Night were not the tacticians Shadow was; Jewel stood her ground as the
Arianni
Lord spun in air, sword raised. It came down in a flashing sweep that looked, to her eyes, like handheld lightning.

A hand’s span from her neck, the blade slammed into a second, similar sword.

Celleriant had arrived.

* * *

Jewel felt no triumph at all.

“Mordanant,” Celleriant said, as the echoes of steel striking steel faded. They did not put their swords up; they strained, blade against blade. All of the
Arianni
looked alike to Jewel—cold and perfect and Other. She could not see beyond that similarity to a family resemblance, although she knew they were brothers.

“Will you defend her here?” Mordanant demanded. “If she dies, you are
free
.”

“If she dies while I stand,” Celleriant replied, “I have failed.”

Mordanant’s eyes widened. “Impossible,” he said, the last syllable almost inaudible. “It is
impossible
.”

Celleriant remained unmoved by the disbelief, the shock, the pain, in Mordanant’s voice. Jewel did not, but she had a decade of practice at hiding pain in public.

“Why do you think she waits?” Celleriant asked. “She has not moved; she has not ordered her guards forward. She knew that I would be here before your sword fell.”

Mordanant was rigid. “How did she force this upon you?”

He shook his head. “She could not, as you well know. There is only one who can.”

“Then
why
? Why, brother?”

Celleriant, arms locked to prevent the downward fall of his brother’s sword, shook his head. “Does it matter?”

Mordanant did not reply.

“She is mortal. She has lived half her life; the handful of years left her—”

Mordanant’s gaze slid from Celleriant’s face to Jewel’s. She stood, chin lifted, watching some point beyond his back. Snow, struggling free of the wind’s grasp, padded deliberately toward Mordanant’s back. “No, Snow. Not yet.” The
Arianni
Lord’s pale brows rose.

“Do you think I fear
cats
?”

“
Snow
. Come to me now.” Growling, the cat did as she ordered—but it was a struggle. His fangs appeared to occupy most of his face. He moved to stand between her and Avandar, bristling. She did not answer Mordanant’s question.

“He came to
kill
you,” Snow told her. She dropped a hand on the top of his head.

“Believe that I’m aware of that.”

“Then
why
do I have to stand
here
?”

“Because he is Lord Celleriant’s brother.”

“
I
would have killed
mine
.”

“Enough, Snow.”

Mordanant was staring at her. To the cat, he said, “You serve
her
?”

Snow’s wings rose in his version of an extremely antagonistic shrug.

“You serve the mortal? You do not serve Viandaran?”

Incredulous, Snow’s head swiveled to the side beneath Jewel’s palm. “No,” he replied. “He’s
too ugly
.”

Only then did Mordanant lower his sword. Celleriant’s fell with it, although he did not relax. To Jewel, Mordanant said, “Release him.”

“I wouldn’t even know how,” she replied. It was truth, but it was not all of the truth.

“If you hold him in any regard, if you value any service he has rendered to you, release him.”

“Mordanant,” Celleriant said softly.

His brother turned to face him. “We have come this way for this purpose—and one other.”

“Order your men to retreat,” Jewel told him. “I will call the cats back.”

Snow hissed.

Mordanant ignored her.

“Who sent you onto the Winter roads, Mordanant?”

Mordanant’s sword faded from view. “The Winter Queen,” he said softly.

“She did not send you to kill this mortal and relieve me of my burden.”

His brother lowered chin; it was brief. “There is danger.”

“And it is a danger from which you have ridden?”

“I? No. If there is difficulty, it will not fall upon me.”

Silence.

Jewel
.

She nodded.

Something is wrong here.

She resisted the urge to employ sarcasm. The wind was cold, here, and the chill had settled into her so thoroughly she thought she might never feel warm again.

“What endangers my Lord?” Celleriant’s sword had not vanished, and he raised it as if it were punctuation.

Mordanant flinched. “Only once in our long history did the
Arianni
swear such vows to a mortal. Have you forgotten?”

“I am not as they were.”

“No,” Mordanant said, voice so low Jewel almost missed the word. “You are not.”

“I chose, brother. They did not; they were given orders, and they swore the oaths they swore—but their service was never truly
given
to a mortal. It was
my
choice. Not hers; it was given to her to accept—or reject—what I offered.”

“And what mortal would reject you?”

“What mortal indeed?” Celleriant’s smile was sharp and cold. Jewel’s hands curved in numb fists at the sight of it. “And yet you have asked her to release me from a vow she only barely understands.”

“She understood it well enough to call you, brother.”

“That is not understanding; it is instinct. I am not,” he said again, “as they were.”

“No. But it is coming.”

Celleriant froze.

“They are waking, Celleriant. They are waking, and they will visit endless anger upon this pathetic, mortal city. Upon,” he added, “the Lord you now serve. Will you stand against them? You will perish.”