Oracle: The House War: Book Six (77 page)

“Thank you. I am a gardener. In the Order, I am called a botanist. I have accepted a position of permanent employ with the Terafin Household Staff.”

A glance at Jarven’s expression made clear to Hectore that he was surprised. His eyes were bright and slightly narrowed.

“I am known—among gardeners—for my attempts to transplant the Kings’ trees. In more than a decade I have seen dozens of failures. I have had precisely one success. That success, however, was both recent, and in
Avantari’s
Courtyard gardens. My success there led me indirectly to two men: Jarven ATerafin, and the Patris of House Araven.” She glanced, once, to the door, exposing the defined lines of her profile.

“She has come,” Jarven said, when she fell silent, “to interrogate two old men.”

“I do not think of myself as old,” Hectore replied. “And if it comes to that, I think of you as ageless.”

Jarven laughed. “Come, Birgide. We are both famously busy men. Tell him the rest.”

But Birgide shook her head. “Patris Araven, how long has your servant been in your employ?”

“I see,” Hectore replied, “that this is going to be one of
those
days. You are not the only person I have seen today who has expressed an interest in my servants—although given your position on the Household Staff, your curiosity is less of a breach of manners.”

“Is that how you answered the other person’s query?”

“No. Unfortunately for me, it was not a discussion I could easily deflect or avoid.”

“Which is not to say that he did not do so,” Jarven pointed out. He rose with the aid of a cane, and made his way to the bookshelf. There, he withdrew one slender tome, nestled among ledgers that had never been intended to serve as decoration. He returned to his desk. “If Birgide will not be more direct, I will. She has come to question us because of our part in the defense of the Merchants’ guildhall. Apparently, one of the defenders was noted.”

Hectore nodded. He dispensed with the cultural habits of life as a merchant, and shuttered his expression. Men and women with any wisdom did not push Hectore when he wore that mask. The Terafin gardener understood this in an instant, which deepened Hectore’s curiosity. He did not tell Jarven to continue. He was done with that particular game.

All of life was a negotiation. Some negotiations were pleasantly familiar. Arguing with the owner of a small stall in the Common sometimes invoked nostalgia.

But there were some things the Patris Araven would never buy, and some he felt—strongly—were not, and should never be, for sale.

“You intend to bore us all,” Jarven said, noting correctly the cast of Hectore’s expression.

“You are here; your very presence and general attitude should cause any who complain of boredom to reconsider their stance.” To the Terafin gardener, he said, “For what reason have you come?”

“To ask questions,” she replied, “that might lead me to the man who chose to act in defense of the guildhall.” The door opened; Hectore had spent more time in defensive silence than was his wont.

Finch entered the room, widening the gap between door and wall; Andrei followed her, carrying a tray. On it was the usual expensive tea set, with its enchanted paint and its less expensive tea. But there was also a stoppered, square bottle—an equally expensive one, and short, squat matching glasses to one side. Frowning, Hectore met Andrei’s glance—or tried.

Andrei was, however, looking at the Terafin gardener. And the Terafin gardener was looking at him. Truly looking at him. Until this moment, Birgide Viranyi had displayed the cautious neutrality servants generally showed in the presence of patricians. Her eyes, however, were rounding, the narrowed edges lost to a genuine surprise.

Or horror.

It had been a long, long time since Hectore had truly considered killing a man. He considered it now. But if the Terafin gardener died, Hectore would still be left to deal with the magi and their implacable leader. And even if the power to end Sigurne’s life resided in his hands—and most things did if he was willing to pay the price—he knew himself well. He would never be able to look himself in the eye again—not that mirrors were a great boon, in general—were he to exercise it. She was dignified steel, but of an age where respect was her due and her right; he could no more bring about her death than he could murder a child.

What would you do to protect your family?

Old, old questions. Old, terrible questions.

Anything
. It was a young man’s answer. It had been spoken with a young man’s helpless certainty, and a young man’s drive and focus. And had that been the whole of his answer, the whole of his truth, he would not be in this room today, thinking these dark thoughts.
Anything that I could share with them after the fact.

I don’t understand.

You and most of the merchants I’ve had to cross pens with. If, to save my wife, I had to, for instance, kidnap or kill the child of a rival, I could
never
tell her. I could never look her in the eye again. You haven’t met my wife. Many feel that she is almost feral when threatened—and there’s some truth in that. But she exists within a tunnel. The walls that define what she will, and will not, accept are not permeable; they are not weak.

It is not of your wife that I speak.

No, of course not. Most men don’t. But it is relevant because she
is
my wife.
His first wife. His first wife, buried and mourned decades past.
If I saved her life in that fashion, she would assume that
she
was responsible for the act that preserved her. That it was not my hand that—let’s stick with kill a child—committed the crime; it was hers. Without permission, without intent, without consultation, she would be a murderer. She would, in her own mind, be a criminal of the type she has mercilessly and tirelessly fought.

Silence. Not Hectore’s, of course. The young man he could remember being was full of word and thought and humor and fire. Yet his words were a bridge to the past. His words were Hectore’s. They echoed; they had never left him.

I am not, in my own estimation, a “good” man. I have killed. I will, no doubt, kill in the future. But there are limits to what I will do. There have to be limits. If, by choosing the wrong action or making the wrong decision, I preserve my family, I will also nonetheless destroy it. And if it
is
to be destroyed, it will, gods willing, be destroyed by someone else.

But in this hypothetical case, your wife would still be alive.

Yes. But she would never again be my wife, and what exists in the spaces between us? It would be worse than ash. It would be pain and guilt and betrayal.

Betrayal?

Hectore nodded.
I am not the man I was when I first met my wife. She is not the woman she was. I like to think that we are more, or better. But the seeds of what we are now? Those were always within us. Men believe that if they are not quicker, smarter, and more cunning than the men who gather around them, they will never succeed. Or worse, they will fail utterly. Do you know why?

Because it is true?

Because they
want
it to be true.

That is not the case.

It is. If it is the truth, they are free to do as they please without recourse to guilt or conscience. If they can believe that
all
men must behave in a certain fashion, they are no better—or worse—than the men surrounding them.

And you?

I don’t believe it. I look. I see. Not all successful men are contemptible. For those who believe all men are, those men are simply considered more accomplished liars. They are smoother and more charming. And in some cases, that is the truth—but not all. If they look at those who appear, on the surface, admirable, they see everything that they are not. It’s a tricky thing. I’ve met men and women who
are
admirable. And also powerful.

Silence again.

All men change
, Hectore said, in that dim past, whose roots went so deep they could not be unearthed.

“Yes. All men change.” Everyone in the room, excepting only Hectore, was surprised by Andrei’s words. “Change is inevitable.”

“No two oak trees are alike,” Hectore replied. “But they are recognizably the same type of tree. I want to change the way an oak sapling does. I want to grow deeper roots. I want to grow thicker branches. I don’t want to become an apple tree or a rose bush or whatever else other people value. So: I will change, Andrei, because I am a man, and all men change.”

“And you will remain constant, because you are Hectore, and you will always be Hectore.”

Hectore smiled fondly. “That is the mistake you make. You think ‘Hectore’ describes one thing. It does not. All men—all people—are many, many things. Monstrous men are capable of great acts of kindness, kind men, of monstrous selfishness. We don’t want
one
thing; we want many, many things, all at once, some contradictory. We are not like you, but we contain multitudes in our own lesser fashion.

“And we decide, in the end, which of those we will strengthen, and which we will discard. Yet even then, we are shadowed at times by regrets and desires that make no sense at all to us. Do not agree to serve me because you believe that I am free of the constraint of foolishness or greed or desire; I am not. Agree to serve me, if you will, because you understand the way completely contradictory desires pull and twist a person, and you value the struggle to remain true to ideals that are, by their very nature, impossible to achieve.”

“You do not see yourself clearly,” Andrei said. “And you never have.”

“I see myself clearly,” Hectore countered. “It is those on the outside of me who cannot. They see the actions, but not the struggle to reach the decision that prompted the actions. They see generosity and assume that generosity was the only impulse.”

“I did not say that you were particularly generous, Hectore.”

Hectore laughed.

“But I see you have decided.” Andrei then set the tray down on the small, exquisite table meant for use by visiting dignitaries. Finch did not, as Jarven had, seat herself behind her large desk. She sat beside Hectore, instead.

“Would it help you to know I have fears?”

“Only if they do not involve your grandchildren or godchildren and the foibles of their respective youths.”

Finch laughed, which surprised Hectore.

“You are embarrassing me in front of the joint heads of the Terafin’s merchanting operations.” But he spoke with an easy, relaxed smile. He was fond of Finch. He was fond of her Jewel. He was not a young man. He had not, in truth, been a young man for decades. But Jewel? She was young. And Hectore thought that she was one of the very few who could accept Andrei’s service. Hectore could—and had—amass a fortune; he could leave endowments for the children and grandchildren he had watched for the entirety of their short lives.

He could leave no such thing for Andrei, because in the end, that was not what Andrei needed.

Andrei served tea; Finch tried to do so, but retreated, as if understanding that the role that defined Andrei was necessary this afternoon. Or perhaps she simply accepted that in service such as this, she was nowhere near as competent as the Araven servant.

He, therefore, took tea to Jarven; Jarven accepted it without his usual complaint or cheek. He was assessing every man and woman in the room the way a merchant assessed a contract.

When Andrei carried tea to Birgide, however, he bowed. The bow was not, in style or even substance, a terribly Weston bow; it was not the bow offered between equals. Hectore was not familiar with the protocols of the back halls, but knew enough to know that this gesture was not among them.

Birgide seemed almost as discomfited by the gesture as Hectore felt. Jarven, of course, was neutral. Finch was not. She looked to Birgide, and Birgide turned toward her. It was a brief and unexpected display of uncertainty. What surprised Hectore was that she sought reassurance of a kind from Finch.

And that Finch could, in fact, offer it. She turned her neutral, pleasant gaze on Andrei, Hectore’s erstwhile servant. “Have you come,” Finch asked him—directly, and against all protocol, “to offer us aid?”

Andrei met Finch’s gaze; his own flickered, briefly, to Hectore—as Birgide’s had previously gone to Finch. Birgide was paler; her scars more pronounced. She had looked away from Andrei.

Hectore understood why. Again, he thought of having this woman killed; this time the impulse was stronger, clearer. But Andrei had bowed—to her—as if he somehow recognized her. As if she was part of the shadowed world of his life before Araven and Hectore.

“He is my servant, a fact that appears to be lost to the lax protocol of this particular office,” Hectore said, without rancor. “I hold you blameless,” he added, when Finch turned her surprised expression on him. “You have been left to Jarven’s sensibilities for far too long, and Lucille has never been one to stand on formality.”

The mention of Lucille caused Finch to relax. Jarven, however, grimaced.

“As a servant, he is not here to do anything but see to my needs. He is invisible—among people with manners—until his service is required; he becomes invisible the moment it ends. Servants,” he added, his tone becoming more severe, “do not, in general, bow to strangers in an office such as this.”

Andrei had unfolded, returning to the posture that defined him. The fact that he was not standing against the wall changed nothing. But there was a peculiar tension across the line of his shoulders, a tightening that implied held breath.

“If you can, perhaps, explain why this singular bow has been offered, the rest of us can stop gawking like awkward youths.”

Andrei’s expression shifted into something more familiar—irritation. “Even servants are expected to bow to the Kings.”

“She is not, unless something has radically changed since our meeting with the guildmaster this morning, one of the Kings. Were she—or, failing that, given gender, a Queen or one of the Exalted—your bow would be remarkable only for its lack of servility.”