Battle: The House War: Book Five (8 page)

She could, of course, afford to slight Teller and Finch, the two people she would have chosen had she been able to make that choice without consideration for the political costs and benefits accrued. But she trusted Teller and Finch; they trusted her. They would understand why she had chosen Elonne and Marrick over two members of the House Council who had occupied their junior seats for a scant handful of months.

She also knew that would have to change. She trusted Teller and Finch. In order to build a House Council she could trust to actually support her, both of them would have to gain power. Power, in the Council chamber was not decided by any actions or arguments taken therein; you brought your power to the table and you wielded it with care. Or, in Haerrad’s case, like a cudgel.

Jarven was close to retirement—or so he’d said. But Finch pointed out that he
said
this on a more or less continual basis. If he did amaze them all by actually retiring, Finch could, in theory, succeed him—but it was tenuous theory. To make it solid, she had to be responsible for some truly clever, and extremely profitable, trade deals. At the moment, according to Finch, there were three men associated with the Merchant Authority offices who were capable of doing what Jarven had done in his prime. Unfortunately, they were capable in thirds, and three men would not fit in that office.

Jewel shook herself and ascended the stairs; no one else would move if she did not. Gabriel offered his arm; she took it. “You will have to choose a right-kin in the near future,” he said, his voice low.

She nodded, that stiff almost regal movement of chin—and nothing else—that Ellerson had so laboriously taught her. “Let us discuss this in two days.”

“Terafin.”

She did not go to Gabriel for advice anymore. Not directly. Teller did, and Gabriel was comfortable with that. He had been comfortable giving advice to Amarais—but Amarais didn’t follow advice; she accepted it, as if it were an offering, examining it for its inherent value before she decided its disposition. She did not
need
Gabriel’s advice; she valued it, no more. Jewel, in Gabriel’s eyes, was in need of advice and it unnerved him.

Teller was her right-kin. He was the right-kin of her heart; he had served as right-kin in her den, although her den had never required pretentious titles for what he did. But Teller was so junior a member of the House Council he lacked the gravitas of Gabriel. If she made him right-kin now, she would be throwing him into the line of fire.

* * *

Gabriel took the chair to her right out of long habit; only when he was halfway seated did he realize what he had done. He glanced at her, chagrined. She couldn’t help but smile; she could keep it as brief as possible. Elonne took the seat directly to her left. If there had been some subtle negotiation between Marrick and Elonne, it went unnoticed; Marrick did not appear to be unduly ruffled.

When Snow and Night joined her, Snow to the left and Night to the right, she realized why; he’d taken the seat farthest from the cats. He caught her gaze and winked. It was something he wouldn’t have dared to do with Amarais, but it was conversely something he’d frequently done with the den. She knew it was inappropriate to respond to it here; she knew Marrick knew it, as well. It was a game, but as far as games went, it felt harmless. Attempting to avoid making any further eye contact, she looked up, and up again; the trees of the Common cast their shadows. Here, the leaves were in bud, not bloom, and the trees were surrounded by buildings and awned carts, not the carefully cultivated flower beds and smaller trees of the Terafin Master Gardener.

Wind rustled the tips of high, slender branches. It was a cool, biting wind, heavy with salt. Home.

Terafin
.

She blinked and found herself staring into the wide, golden eyes of Snow; he had shifted position to face her, and his wings were high.

Avandar
. Beneath the tier on which the Terafin chairs stood, The Kalakar and her attendants had arrived. Not to be outdone, The Berrilya, with his attendants, was also present, although the Berrilya House Council had yet to take their seats. The Kings, in a position of prominence, had not yet taken their thrones—chair was too petty a word to describe them—when the wind grew stronger.

It was a wind she shouldn’t have felt; the branches it moved were far too high. Her skin tightened; the hair at the back of her neck—what very little of it had escaped Ellerson’s merciless attempts to confine it—rose. So did Jewel.

Gabriel looked to her instantly; Night rose and whispered something to Snow. Jewel heard it, but didn’t recognize the word. She understood its significance.

“Avandar!”

He was behind the tall back of her chair.

“Terafin.”

To the left of House Terafin sat The Morriset; to her right, the deliberately bald Korisamis. Above, on the widest of the platforms, the rest of The Ten. She scanned the growing crowd, searching for Devon, for some sign of Devon; when she failed to find him, she searched, instead, for the magi. The guildmaster was distinctive enough that she, at least, was easily spotted.

“Terafin.” Gabriel’s voice was low, urgent.

Jewel said, “We need to get everyone off this platform. We don’t have much time.” To Night she said, “Find Sigurne Mellifas. Tell her.”

“Tell her
what
?”

“Watch for fire.” She stepped away from her chair and turned to House Morriset. “Morriset,” she said, her voice even and steady, “we must vacate these stands.” Without waiting for his assent, she turned to The Korisamis. He was a man to whom protocol was as natural as breathing; for that reason, she had always felt ill at ease in his presence. Today, it didn’t matter.

“Korisamis, my pardon—but it is imperative that we leave the stand at once.”

“May I ask why, Terafin?”

It was the question she dreaded. “I will explain later—any explanation now will be costly.” Again, she moved, this time forward, to where the edge of this platform almost touched the back of the seats on the platform below. “Kalakar. Berrilya.”

They turned instantly at the sound of her voice, as if they were still on the battlefield; they recognized the tone. The Kalakar’s brows rose. “Terafin.”

“The platforms must be cleared, now. The Kings and the Exalted must stand back.”

The wind grew stronger as she spoke. Snow came to his feet, his fur rising. The Kalakar frowned as she turned to The Berrilya; he nodded smoothly and without hesitation. Their counselors had heard Jewel speak, but waited, stiffly, on the commands of their own leaders, which followed seconds later.

“I will carry word to the Kings’ Swords,” The Berrilya said. He hesitated briefly before he leaped. Jewel was almost—almost—shocked; The Berrilya was so proper and so exact in all forms of patrician behavior the thought that he would take the most direct route to ground had never even crossed her mind.

As if she could hear the thought, The Kalakar smiled. It was both broad and grim, a slash of an expression. “We recognize the feel of this wind.” Her tone matched her smile. “It appears to have followed us home.” She turned. “Korama, alert the Kalakar guards. I will make certain that word travels in haste to the army.”

The army. Jewel closed her eyes and exhaled. The army that was, in theory, to perform a full dress parade through the center of the Common. She turned to see that The Morriset had already passed word to the platform above; people, some clearly displeased, were abandoning their chairs and heading toward the stairs that bound either side of the almost concentric flats.

The wind grew stronger and wilder—but the wind itself wasn’t the threat; she was certain of it.

Certain enough that when the floor cracked a yard beneath her feet, she shouldn’t have been surprised. Slats of wood splintered, as something burst through, knocking the now empty chairs in a wide, wide circle.

* * *

Snow leaped up, wings scraping air as if to gather it. His claws were extended, his lips pulled back over long teeth that glittered unnaturally in the morning light. Wood cracked again; someone in the distance screamed. Jewel turned to look over her shoulder; Avandar filled her view. He grabbed her, lifted her—and to her great surprise, threw her. He followed.

Only Avandar hit the ground, and as the platform crumbled, it was a significant drop. She should have joined him. Instead, the wind caught her, buoying her up, as if she had invisible wings. She caught threads of pale, platinum hair as they drifted across her open mouth.

“ATerafin,” a familiar voice said. “Ah, my pardon. Terafin.”

She looked up into the familiar face of Meralonne APhaniel. Snow circled them both.

“I see Sigurne did not exaggerate,” he said, although he spared Snow only a glance. Instead, he faced what was left of the platform as obsidian emerged, shedding planks as if they were splinters.

“Terafin,” he said, his face impassive, his eyes narrow, “guard yourself. I believe the
Kialli
has come for you.”

Chapter Two

I
T WAS NOT THE FIRST TIME Jewel had seen demons, nor would it be the last. But this one was unlike any other she had seen. It was dark, and its skin caught morning light, reflecting it as it unfurled great, glowing wings—of fire. Where they touched the gaping hole left in the platforms erected for The Ten and the Kings, wood began to burn.

Meralonne spoke in a voice that hinted at Winter wind, and the creature turned to face him; as he did, he laughed. The laughter was like an earthquake, a sensation more than a sound. Even caught in Meralonne’s spell as she must be to stand suspended above the cobbled streets, she felt it reverberate.

“Illaraphaniel, I did not think to find you here, among the cowering mortals.”

Meralonne inclined his head.

“Stand aside, little Prince, and I may—may—be moved to stay my hand. I see no battle here.”

“Darranatos.” Meralonne, for as long as Jewel had known him, had always become strange and wild when presented with a fight that anyone sane would flee in terror. His eyes would widen slightly, his lips would turn in a feral, perfect smile.

Today, there was no jubilation to be found in his expression; it was a pale mask of grim determination, as terrifying in its way as the slow emergence of the demon had been.

“Snow—”

“He’s
ugly
,” the cat replied. He flew in a tight circle that went nowhere near the demon, and he looked enormously puffy in spite of the chill wind.

Below them, people screamed. Not all of the voices raised were raised in terror; some were raised in command. The Kings, she thought dimly. The Kings were upon the field. If it was a field of cobbled stone, stone building, wooden wagons, and cloth roofs, it mattered little; the presence of a demon twice the height of a man turned the familiar into a battlefield.

She had walked through these streets while demons destroyed everything in their wake; they had even felled trees before she and Avandar had made their escape. Avandar had been their target on that day.

Jewel!
The private voice she found so uncomfortable brought her a measure of relief.

I’m here—I’m with Meralonne. I think he recognizes the demon
.

His silence was marked.

Avandar, do you?

He is not an enemy you can fight in your current state,
was Avandar’s reply.
You have managed to survive significant foes in your time, but there is a limit to what you can avoid by simple instinct.

He’s here for me
, was her flat response.

Yes, Jewel. But you do not yet know how to fight him.

She closed her eyes. She knew what he was asking.

Yes
, he said.
Lord Celleriant is not wrong in this. You have the tools to defend this city, but you have no will to use them. Not yet.

These are not my—

They are, Jewel. The Common speaks to you as strongly as the Terafin manse.

But it didn’t. The wind she felt did not enrage her; the demon invoked fear, not furious defiance. The trees had no voice.

The fire, however, did.

* * *

It spread like liquid, consuming the fallen chairs and the broken slats on which they had once been standing. As they burned to embers, the creature’s wings grew taller, wider, brighter; had they not been demonic, they would have been beautiful.

No, they
were
beautiful. Darranatos was, in height and form, beautiful. She had no doubt at all that he would kill anyone fool enough to stand in reach; no doubt that the deaths would be painful and unpleasant, because fire
was
. But her mouth was dry, her voice absent, as she looked at the creature’s face; the line of his perfect nose, the angularity of his obsidian jaw, the height of his cheekbones. He was a nightmare, yes. But the Winter Queen had been so beautiful one might be moved to tears at the sight of her—before the Winter Host rode. Even if you were the person they were hunting.

Jewel bit her lip as bright, burning wings rose on the heat of the fires below. The demon flew to face Meralonne APhaniel. In his hands were sword and shield, and fire trailed up from the ground, enrobing him. Wind grew wild around Jewel; wind grasped at fire, tearing it away in chunks.

But fire grew again, regardless, crackling and almost sibilant.

“Meralonne—put me down!”

She might not have spoken; he did not react to her words at all. Before she could speak again, the
Kialli
rose higher. Meralonne cursed. “ATerafin—mount the cat. He will offer some protection against the fire, and he is far faster, when necessity dictates speed, than I. I have no shield,” he added, as he raised sword, “and I cannot allow him the advantage of height.” So saying, Meralonne rose to follow.

She was grateful that they had taken their fight to air. Grateful until she heard the tenor of the screams beneath her dangling feet: the fire had spread, and where it touched cobbled stone, the stones began to melt.

* * *

Sigurne Mellifas was silent. She had passed orders to the magi present, and she had sent word—in haste—to those who now sheltered in the Order on the Isle. She turned her considerable power toward the fire, knowing that—to the people who remained in the building-enclosed circle of the Common—the fire was the greater threat. But in the heat of the fire, she felt cold; as cold as she had ever felt when a Tower had been her prison on the edge of the Northern Wastes. There, she had learned the arts of summoning and control, and she had tested the boundaries of naming and names.

All forbidden. All.

At no point, in service to two masters, had she encountered
Kialli
such as this. She could not even see the shape of his name. In the binding of name and named, there were complicated, complex magics. Only adepts could sense some of that binding—but through it, they might begin to touch the hidden essence of the demonic avatar.

She tried, instinctively, while the magi began the casting of their shields and their defenses. But she stopped before she had truly begun.
No
mortal in the history of the magi—the long and troubled history—could contain the whole of this creature’s name. She was certain, as she lifted her hands and began to weave bright, orange light—a light unseen to all but the talent-born—that only the gods could.

The golden light of the Exalted joined her shields, lending warmth and substance to the desperate work of the magi. Against lesser demons, against even the
Kialli
lords she had encountered in her long, unspoken war upon their kind, the three Exalted might triumph. Here, now, she felt it a matter of time.

But the whole of a mortal life was simply a matter of time. Hers had been long, and she did not intend to surrender the time left.

* * *

Red lightning changed the color and complexion of the sky as the demon’s blade fell. Jewel heard the clash of blades, and knew a blue sword had parried, but that light was meager in comparison. She sat astride Snow; the wind no longer held her. But the cat was warm, the wind chill. Night rose to join Snow, as silent—and ruffled—as his brother.

“This is not for
us
,” he said. As he did, she saw one other take to the sky, and she recognized him instantly: it was Celleriant. She opened her mouth to call him back, and shut it, hard. He held both sword and shield, and even at this distance, they were bright, solid; his hair trailed behind him like white fire. She thought she could hear horns, faint and attenuated, above the roar of flame.

One of the demon’s wings shifted, spread; it struck the Arianni Prince and sent him flying. The hair that seemed the pride of the Arianni caught flame a moment before it banked, but Celleriant righted himself as it did. The trees were the only thing in the Common that approached the height of the combatants.

Silent, immobile, she let Snow move as he would. As she did, she felt something in the back of her thoughts. It was familiar, but it took her a moment to understand why—and when she did, immobility was forgotten.

Avandar! No!

There is no other way
, he told her, his voice distant even on the inside of her head.

Celleriant and Meralonne—

His laughter was bitter and quiet; nothing hampered it. It joined the wail of wind and the crackle of flame.
They are not a match for what they face now. There
is
no other way
.

She was afraid; the fear was visceral. If he did this—if he did—she
knew
she would lose him. She could not be where he was; she could not draw him back, not in time. If the demon died here, so would Avandar—the Avandar
she
knew. She did not want to lose him.

But he rose, now. He rose and in his hands—sword, golden, gleaming. Sword, she thought, and shield. He hadn’t the hair or the grace of the Arianni, but watching him, she could see the slow death of anything she defined as mortal. As human.

“What will you
do
?” Snow asked, as if he had heard each silent word. Her arm throbbed. Her sleeves were long and heavy; she couldn’t easily pull them up to look at the skin that lay beneath them. But she knew the brand burned there in haste and without permission was bleeding; blood had seeped into Terafin blue.

The Terafin banner was ash. So, too, the banners of every one of The Ten; the banners of the Kings had not yet been placed, and they flew in wind; the fire did not reach them.

“Up,” she told Snow. He obeyed instantly. The Common became smaller as she rose; the streets narrower. She could see the movement of crowd as people flowed away from fire, magi, and patriciate. Moving against that tide—splitting it, as large rocks split streams—came the bright and shiny dress parade, composed of the men and women who had survived the war in the South. Today was to have been their day—a celebration of their sacrifice and victory over the shadows that lay across the Dominion.

They’d come home, as Jewel had come home, to find home had changed. Maybe because of their absence—but worse, maybe because of their presence. They hadn’t left the war behind, although they’d tried.

Enough
, she told herself, hands clutching Snow’s fur. Her voice sounded—felt—like her Oma’s voice, the word laced with the same biting, sharp anger, the same momentary contempt. The sky reddened, brightened, and reddened, as demon warred with Arianni, sunset with sunrise. There was nothing she could do here but wait, witness; her hands shook.

No, she thought. No.

Avandar—he’s here for me. For
me
.

He is.

Will he remember why he came?
Fire lanced sky as Snow hissed and dropped. It was enough of an answer. It was the answer she suddenly wanted. She heard the demon laugh, a sound as wild and unfettered as angry wind, hungry fire. Even at this distance, her spine stiffened, her shoulders tensed; she
knew
that she was not yet far enough away for safety—if safety could ever be reached again. She had nothing to throw back; even had she bow, she couldn’t string it, couldn’t aim it, couldn’t choose a path that defied or used the currents of air.

“Night—find Meralonne.”

Night hissed.

“If he is injured, carry him. If he is not, follow.”

“To
where
?” His voice cut above all other sounds. He knew she wasn’t asking—wasn’t commanding—him to fight.

“Home,” she whispered. Tightening knees around Snow’s back, she bent head to bring her lips closer to his ear. “Home,” she whispered again, in an entirely different tone. Snow growled. His voice was a low, low rumble, felt as it moved between them; it was hard to imagine something so bestial could also whine and sneer so effectively.

He wheeled in a tight half circle; his haunches gathered, muscles tensing and releasing as if the air were solid beneath his great paws. Without a single, backward glance he flew directly toward
Averalaan Aramarelas
, where the Terafin manse lay in wait.

* * *

The voice of the wild wind grew distant; it did not dog her steps. The fire’s crackle receded as well; the streets emptied as she reached the channel that separated Isle from holdings. Not even half a city away, people went about their business, unaware of what now waited in the Common. But as Snow angled closer to ground, she heard the demon’s roar—and she saw heads lifted in confusion as people stopped and turned.

Winter King
, she called.

Jewel.
The manse could be seen before they had left the channel behind—the great trees rose in clusters, obscuring the building’s fine roof. Here, leaves caught sunlight in a sky that was neither red nor blue, and it seemed to Jewel that they reflected it in bright, sharp bursts, glittering like unidentified metal. She shook her head; these were not trees of diamond, gold, or silver; they were too tall, too
alive
, for that. But where the wind at the heights of their crowns moved through their laden branches, the rustle formed whispers from which words emerged.

Too many words, spoken at once; she could not separate the syllables into something she could recognize.

Snow did not even try to reach the manse, and for that, she was grateful. Night cut across their path; Meralonne was not on his back. “Night—clear the grounds. Tell the gardeners to go inside.”