Battle: The House War: Book Five (7 page)

As she was, or rather, as the carriage was clearly marked to indicate that its occupant held the seat, the carriage was immediately waved across the bridge—once it reached that point. If the weather had not been cool, it would have been unbearable. As it was, enclosed in a carriage with Avandar’s disapproval and Celleriant’s disdain, it was close. Angel, never the most talkative of the den, chose to watch the road.

No one spoke until the carriage reached the holdings. As it did, the noise on the roof receded. Snow and Night were perfectly capable of dignified behavior when it suited them; it seldom did.

If you so chose,
Avandar said,
they would behave perfectly at all times.

Jewel didn’t particularly feel like listening to an angry domicis on the inside of her head. “I choose not to.”

“It diminishes you.”

She shrugged; his frown, which had started before the carriage had pulled away from the manse, deepened. “It diminishes them. They’re cats in name only; they look like winged, maneless lions. They’re a threat; everyone who sees them can feel it. But anyone who has to listen to them for more than five minutes doesn’t. I can’t get rid of them; not even Haval considers it wise. This is my compromise.”

“If they are, as you suggest, terrifying, it suits their role as guards.”

“It doesn’t. When I lived in the twenty-fifth, I would have avoided any streets—and the market—that contained those two unless I’d heard them squabble.”

“You would have avoided the House Guard as well.”

“Yes and no. The magisterial guard, yes. They generally threw us out of the Common on the flimsiest of pretexts. House Guards didn’t; as long as we kept out of purse-cutting range, they left us alone. When the cats are dignified—as you put it—they look like they’re on the prowl. We would’ve assumed that they’d eat us—or worse—and the magisterians would turn a blind eye. After all, The Terafin is powerful.” Her laughter was brief and bitter.

She was. She knew it. She knew what House Terafin meant, both in Averalaan and in the Empire itself; as a House Councillor, it had been part of her job—and not a little of her pride—to bolster that reputation. But nothing she had done since The Terafin’s funeral had made her feel more powerful. She was theoretically in charge, but every order of any import at all had to be inspected, measured, and weighed before it left either her mouth or her office. The former was much more difficult.

The assassination attempts had done very little to ease her doubts. Yes, she had been affirmed as The Terafin; Elonne pointed out that given the events of the first day rites and the presence of every man or woman of any standing at all in the Empire the title had already been given to Jewel in all but name. But clearly, affirmation was not the same as acceptance. If she was to be replaced, time
mattered
. She had not yet fully consolidated her power, especially not in the outer reaches of the Empire. Haerrad’s duties to the House were his; if she wanted a full review from him, she needed a small legion of incredibly competent spies. He was only willing to tell her what she already knew; he would cede nothing.

It was not Haerrad that troubled her, although she hated him. She had hated him since the day Teller had been taken to the infirmary with two broken limbs—a gift and a warning from Haerrad. She had fervently hoped that Rymark—or Elonne—would succeed in ending Haerrad’s life; attempts had been made, but he was, besides being a cruel, power-mongering son of a bitch, clever, cautious, and lucky.

Rymark was different. He wanted power, of course—they had all wanted that—and he was clever, cautious, and lucky. But he was talent-born as well, a member of the Order of Knowledge, and the former right-kin’s son. His presence on the House Council caused nothing but disquiet; she knew that if Rymark suddenly retired or disappeared, Gabriel might be convinced to remain.

But Gabriel did not want to face his son.

His son had produced a forged document proclaiming Rymark ATerafin heir to the House. It had been signed by Amarais, witnessed by Gabriel. Neither, of course, had seen the document before he had produced it in the Council Hall. Were it not for Gabriel’s bitter silence, he would have been relegated to Rymark’s faction by the other contenders; because of it, he had been allowed to rule as regent. His silence, however, included no open disavowal of the forgery.

Blood mattered. Even in a House where its members were required to take an oath that severed those ties completely, it mattered. If she had been Gabriel and Carver had been Rymark—if Carver had been in a position to produce such a document and make such a claim—it would have counted among the worst days of her life. She could not, even in the silence of thought, be certain what she would say or do, but she was certain that she would hold denial in abeyance until she had the time to grab him by the collar, drag him off into a corner, and demand an explanation. She would owe him that much.

What was difficult for Jewel was Rymark himself. If Rymark had been like Marrick—or the dead Alea—Gabriel’s reaction would at least make
sense
. Rymark wasn’t. He had always been arrogant; he had never stooped to kindness where malice—or veiled threat—would do in its stead. Magic, for Rymark, was a tool, just as assassins were tools. He lived part-time in the manse; all of the House Council had rooms there, and the rooms were grand ones. But the Master of the Household Staff was very particular about the cleaning and care of those rooms. Only specific servants were allowed to tend them, and the schedule of their working hours was strictly enforced and inflexible.

Rumor had it that he was not particularly careful about the servants, ATerafin or no. Especially not the women. Jewel had had some experience with Rymark’s certainty of his own irresistibility; she believed those rumors were true. They came, indirectly, from Carver. Rymark had an imperfect history within the Order of Knowledge; he wore their symbol and gained prestige through it, but Sigurne did not trust him. He clearly had funding—but attempting to trace that funding to its source had proved, to date, fruitless. Finch could find nothing in the records at the Merchant Authority; Angel’s friend could find no records of manifests or cargo that could be linked with Rymark’s external supporters. He owned some land and some leaseholds, but in and of themselves they were not enough to justify a bid for the House, unless that bid was accepted
quickly
.

There was no reason—at all—to give Rymark ATerafin the benefit of the doubt. But Gabriel, by his silence, had done exactly that. Someone like Carver had done nothing but good. No, that was an exaggeration, but Carver was part of her
den
. Rymark, she would never have taken.

You took Duster
.

She stared out the window.

7th of Fabril, 428 A.A. The Common, Averalaan

Jewel was forced to disembark long before her carriage reached the platforms upon which chairs had been placed. Wagons lined the road, and they could not easily be moved to grant passage to carriages; only the Kings were given any exemption—an exemption they did not choose to enforce. What the Kings, and therefore the Queens and the Princes, endured, every member of the patriciate was expected to endure. Even the Exalted. Bards, however, roved the streets that led to the center of the Common, lutes in arms; even when they couldn’t be clearly seen, they could be heard, their voices full and sweet.

In her youth, when the bard-born walked the Common during Festival or the Kings’ Crown, the sound of those raised voices were a source of unalloyed joy. This was in part because her Oma rarely had a sour word for bards; she didn’t like their lutes, lutes being Northern, but she allowed herself to be captivated by their voices.

Oma.
What would you think of me, now?
The old woman, teeth yellowed by pipe smoke, lips creased in perpetual frown, had never cared for the patriciate, but she’d held them in no more contempt than she did two of the bakers and one of the cloth sellers. She didn’t trust them. She considered The Ten to be marginally less trustworthy—not because of their power, because power at least was predictable, but because they weren’t
family
. Blood mattered, to her Oma. The Ten eschewed the only bonds for which her Oma would have been willing to die. Or kill.

Her granddaughter, her only surviving grandchild, had claimed the rule of House Terafin. Now, flanked by Night and Snow, Angel and Celleriant, led by Chosen, she walked easily through streets that had once been so tightly packed she could barely see a foot ahead of where she stood in her Oma’s shadow. Although the day was cool, the sweat of the men and women who labored here in increasingly cramped spaces filled the air, broken by perfumes, colognes, flowers, and the welcome scent of food.

Enterprising bakers had already extended the lines of their stalls as far as the Common’s guards would allow them to go; bakers, their assistants, their families and the slowly increasing press of their customers, stood under colorful spring awnings. None of the merchants hawked their wares at their usual uninterruptible volume at the Royal Party; they were notably subdued when Jewel and her guards passed them by, carrying the banner of Terafin. Its vertical edges moved in the stiff sea breeze, and the heavy chains worked into the end of the cloth clattered against the pole on which it was hoisted. Jewel disliked it; it reminded her not of pageantry but battlefield.

It hung over her shoulder, like a great sign or placard, making her visible and drawing the kind of attention that would have meant certain starvation in her early life in the hundred holdings. She weathered it, lifting her chin and straightening her shoulders.

“Avandar?” Her domicis was frowning.

“Look very carefully at every stall. If you see even a hint of magic, mention it briefly.”

“It’s the Common. There’s going to be trace amounts of magic everywhere.”

His silence was both loud and dismissive.

“The magi have been here. The Kings and the Queens will attend. If there’s anything the
Astari
missed in their sweep, I’m not going to find it while casually strolling by.”

They do not see as you see.

No. Most days, they see better
. It was going to be that kind of a day.

* * *

The banner went as far as the second tier of the dais erected in the center of the circular road. It was, to Jewel’s eyes, a marvel of almost instant architecture, and she could see the faint glow of magical protections and enforcements—at least that’s what she assumed the soft blend of orange and green meant. This was not the Hall of The Ten. While Terafin presence was considered a political necessity, the internal politics of the House were considered beneath external notice; there were four large chairs, two to either side of the banner’s pole. Jewel was clearly meant to take one, and it was not uncommon for a domicis to stand behind the occupied throne. There was—if they were careful, and honestly, how likely was that—room for Night and Snow at the foot of those chairs; if they weren’t careful, however, they were likely to hit the backs of the Kalakar chairs, which had been placed in front of House Terafin’s.

The House Council had arrived, and they were congregated in a loose group; they appeared, as she approached, to be conversing—but it was the type of conversation in which little was actually said. They were waiting for Jewel, and conversation banked as she approached. Teller and Finch were there; so was Jarven. When she met his eyes, he raised a white brow and offered a smile that was slight and entirely without hesitation.

She nodded in turn and moved on. “Gabriel.”

“Terafin.”

“Elonne, Marrick, join us.” She lifted her hands, signed an apology to Teller and Finch, wishing as she did that she could speak to them the way she could speak to the Winter King. She glanced once again at Jarven; he wasn’t watching her. He was watching Rymark and Haerrad. His expression was genial, friendly—but Jewel had quickly come to understand that that was Jarven’s version of Haval’s sudden, neutral mask. The realization also made completely clear that Haval dispensed with the pretense of facial expression as a courtesy to her, a signal that she focus her concentration and attention on his words, or the history that formed their context.

That Jarven watched the two Council members she had chosen to leave on the ground wasn’t a surprise. Harraed and Rymark might consider the choice a slight; she’d bet on it. But she was also aware that they had abstained in the Council vote that had placed her in charge, and she couldn’t, at this point, slight Elonne or Marrick; as declared allies—if cautious ones—they deserved some acknowledgment. The House Council was not, by any means, settled. It might have been more stable if not for the assassination attempts; those attempts made clear that the assignation of the title alone was not enough to lay the war to rest. Best to show public appreciation for public support; those who were quiet might be moved to reconsider their silence.

No call had yet been made for her resignation—but House history, which existed in the admittedly biased form of the journals of previous House rulers, made clear that resignation, in all but one isolated case, was a synonym for death. Death, on the other hand, had been tried. While it was possible Elonne was still in the hunt, Jewel doubted it. Jarven seemed to doubt it as well; although he’d briefly glanced at Elonne, his attention seemed reserved for Haerrad and Rymark.

Jarven noticed that she was watching him, and winked. It was annoying.