Oracle: The House War: Book Six (84 page)

“By who?” Hectore asked mildly, although his gaze flicked the side of Jarven’s face.

“I do not recall. If it becomes relevant, I’m certain I will.”

Hectore nodded. He glanced at Birgide, but Birgide was speaking softly with Jester. “These rooms are of relevance to Araven?”

“They are, in my opinion, of relevance to all of Averalaan,” Finch replied. “I have not spoken of one room, within the small complex of The Terafin’s personal rooms.”

This caught the attention of both Jester and Teller.

“Were you to enter those rooms, you would find them at odds with the Terafin manse in every architectural way; the ceilings are low, the floors are worn, the rooms are very small and very poorly appointed.”

“She had these rooms built?”

“No. They are rooms that are, to the finest detail, rooms that we occupied for a brief period when we were children. You are old enough to remember the Henden of 410.”

Hectore nodded.

“Those rooms and that childhood are rooted in the experience of that Henden, although we did not know it at the time.”

Andrei had returned to the sideboard.

“There was, once, a city—a different city—that stood in this location. It is possible, according to the Order of Knowledge, that there have been several. But the one city is significant. And it exists beneath the streets of the hundred holdings, even now.”

The door to the room opened, and three servants, wearing the blues of the Household Staff, entered, pushing wheeled trays. Hectore, accustomed to the invisibility of the servants, would have failed to notice them; he almost did.

But Birgide Viranyi’s sudden stiffness served as warning; she glanced at the door, at the servants, and last, at Andrei, who appeared not to notice as they placed various dishes on the sideboard. He abandoned his position by that wall, although he did not join the party at the table; no seat had been set for him.

The servants—one woman, two men—had the crisp, starched silence of exemplary servants in any House; their economy of movements implied stately grace, rather than hurried bustle. They were not, of course, friendly, but no one expected that of the Terafin servants; they would likely lose their jobs, otherwise.

They did, and said, nothing untoward; they did not arm themselves, they did not call upon any hidden mage-born talent; they served.

It was only when the first course was brought to the table that Hectore frowned. He glanced across the room at Andrei. If Andrei noticed anything untoward, his disapproval was hidden in the stiffness of his posture.

“Is there a difficulty, Hectore?” Jarven asked.

Hectore’s gaze lifted to meet Finch’s; hers was occupied. She was looking—as Hectore had—at the shallow dishes in which soup had been served. They were, to Hectore’s eye, fine dishes, all; they were slender and light and in perfect repair; gold and platinum formed crescent patterns around their edges.

But they were not the dishes that Hectore had seen at his dinner with Jewel. He waited on Finch to start the meal. Finch’s hands fluttered deliberately over her cutlery.

Teller’s hands, however, did not. He nodded once—to Birgide; at his back, Hectore heard the movements of the Chosen.

“Hectore,” Jarven said, in the mildest and softest of all of his many voices.

Hectore rose. He was both polite and diffident in his movements. “If I find this is some mischief of yours,” he told the Terafin merchant, “Terafin and Araven will be at war until you expire of old age.”

“Have you not heard that only the good die young?” Jarven, the bastard, was amused. Highly amused. “I am merely a guest; I assure you that the events of this evening cannot be laid at my feet.”

Haval Arwood lifted a spoon. There was a long, silent moment.

Birgide Viranyi broke it. She rose. “I think it best,” she told them all, “that you refrain from eating for the moment. There has clearly been some difficulty in the kitchen.”

 • • • 

Everything happened at once.

The two servants at the sideboard turned instantly, shedding the stiffness that servants of quality exuded as a matter of course.

The servant nearest the table threw the dish in her hands and pulled two slender knives. In any other circumstance, Hectore would have assumed he had wandered into the first iteration of a very haphazard play.

She was not, however, the only person who was armed; Jester now shoved his chair back from the table. The Chosen moved; Birgide moved. Even the right-kin moved. The only person at the table who seemed entirely unflustered by this sudden shift in servant demeanor was Finch. Hectore caught a glimpse of her expression as Andrei stepped between his master and anything else that moved: it was grim, set, and almost painfully resigned.

The knives the woman had drawn were throwing knives.

They flew.

They flew, unerringly, toward Finch.

 • • • 

I don’t like it
, Jester had said.
I don’t like it at all.

I know.

I won’t do it.

Finch had said nothing. A long, bitter nothing.

Jay wouldn’t do it
.

That was the heart of the matter. Finch didn’t argue the point directly.
She wouldn’t
need
to do it. And if we were different people, if we could make different choices, neither would we. I could just arrange to have the dangerous people put out of the way. I have the knowledge and the contacts, at this point, to do it.

Jester was silent.

And I can’t. I can’t, because Jay wouldn’t allow it. What she’ll do in self-defense she would never do in any other way.

I won’t tell her,
Jester finally countered.
Kill them. Have them killed. I don’t care. I won’t tell her.

But Finch shook her head.
I’ve considered it. I’ve considered almost nothing else for days, now. Jarven considers us quaint. It’s his polite word for stupid.

...You’ve discussed this with Jarven.

Yes.

Did he bring it up?

Does it matter? You can talk to the Master of the Household Staff.

It is not exactly trivial—

Neither is this.

Have you spoken to Teller about this?

What do you think?

That you haven’t. He wouldn’t risk the guests. It would be too politically costly, and the deaths of outsiders would force the Kings’ hands.

Do you think he cares whether or not the Kings’ hands are forced? The Kings were
there
on the day The Terafin died—and yet, Terafin is still materially untouched. There was a
demon
, and the Kings, in the end, did not act. Do you honestly think an assassination will somehow be enough of a pretext?

Yes. In the end, it was The Terafin who died. If Hectore is killed—a powerful, respected man with a fortune of his own—it will be more significant.
Jester did not walk out on the conversation.
Finch, why?

Because it has to be stopped, and this is the cleanest way to do it. Yes, it’s dangerous. It’s always more dangerous. But it’s harder to make mistakes that can’t be fixed. Speak to the Master of the Household Staff.

What do you want me to say?

She had smiled.
Arrange for dinner. Tell her where it will be. That’s all. If nothing happens, we’re wrong.

And if something does?

She had only smiled. She knew who the target would be.

 • • • 

The knives struck cloth with force. Finch buckled; this was not entirely dramatics; it hurt. She thought there was a chance that she had cracked a rib, or rather, that a rib had been cracked. The would-be assassin would have no chance to strike again.

Haval had seen to that. Apparently with a dinner knife, since no weapon of any sort remained in his hand and his setting was missing cutlery. She had not seen him move, and when she glanced up through the momentary pain-blindness, he looked confused or even frightened.

It was a performance worthy of Jarven.

Finch rose, twisted, and threw herself bodily between Teller and the wall against which the sideboard rested. It was not a simple act of precaution. What she could survive, Teller might not.

Daine, of course, had been alerted; Daine was waiting in the healerie. But it would be far, far better if his services were not required. Vareena, however, was with him. She was a silent, withdrawn girl, more like Duster in appearance than any but Finch had noticed. But she had been healed by Daine, and her ambivalence in being discovered warred with the desire to remain by Daine’s side.

Finch intended to keep her.

But to do it, she would have to survive. Andrei had all but pushed the Araven patris out of obvious harm’s way; Finch, taking one dagger in the back just beneath her left shoulder blade, drew a single sharp breath, and pushed Teller in the same direction. He caught her arms and dragged her with him as Torvan and Arrendas closed with the remaining servants.

The servants lifted hands, palms empty, in the universal gesture of surrender. Had the Chosen not been exceptionally suspicious, vigilant men, they might have died there. One—one at least—was mage-born.

It was not the first time the captains had encountered the mage-born. Lightning struck the floor where Arrendas stood, sword steadied; it missed. It barely missed; the captains were in armor, the servants were not.

Torvan shouted for backup as Arrendas drove the edge of his sword into the neck of the mage.

No one answered their captain’s command. Nor did either man wait for a response; they were moving, now. Finch did not order them to subdue the two men—or the one that remained standing; she did not order them to take the obviously dying man to the healerie. She was unwilling to take that risk. But she looked across the table to Jester, who stood by Birgide, and lifted her hands, fingers flashing.

Jester, grim, signed back.
Need a drink.
He hesitated, and then added,
not finished yet.

Finch nodded.
Kalliaris
, she thought.
Smile. Please. Smile
.

 • • • 

Very few people considered Jarven a threat if he was not actively harming them. His
power
was a threat, if handled precisely and with care, but Jarven himself was considered too old and too feeble to be dangerous. Of the handful of people who exercised deplorable caution, three of them were—or had been—at this table, and one had been standing against the wall.

Haval’s reflexes had not appreciably atrophied in the decades since he had last theoretically put them to use; the servant who had launched two throwing knives directly at Finch was now dead, her attempt to end Jarven’s life stalled by Haval’s cutlery.

“Be wary,” he told Haval. “The Chosen stationed outside of this room cannot, apparently, hear their captains.”

Haval nodded. His gaze strayed, briefly, to the door—which, from this vantage, looked normal. “Attempt to be helpful,” he added, as he stepped back from the table to briefly examine the fallen servant. “Jester.”

Jester was armed, his pale skin a white that would look at home on the dead.

Jarven moved to take advantage of the protection Andrei offered his master.

“If this was your doing,” Hectore began.

“This is not the time, Hectore.” Jarven indicated the Araven servant; Andrei had turned to face the doors.

Neither man would therefore have been surprised had the doors been broken down; that was not, however, what happened. The elegant wooden panels simply faded, becoming a rounded, open space that implied window. It was a window into a sea of whirling color that appeared to be struggling to coalesce into a familiar shape.

Hectore reached out and put a hand on Andrei’s left arm. “Wait,” he said. It was not a request. But it was not, quite, a command, either. He let go when a familiar man stepped into a dining room that now seemed lamentably small.

 • • • 

“I see,” Haerrad ATerafin said, “that you started without me. A pity.” His smile, given the scarred map of his face, was slightly twisted. It was also unusual; Haerrad, in Jester’s experience, rarely smiled. For that reason—among others—Jester kept him at a safe distance, preferably in a different holding to the one Jester occupied. It wasn’t always possible.

But there was something in his expression that was off. The temptation to assume that he was simply revealing his true colors came—and went. Jester’s hand slid into his tunic. He glanced once at Birgide, whose expression was also unnatural—especially the color of her eyes. They had gone from a rust brown which could
almost
pass for natural to a red-orange that spoke of fire.

Jester started forward; she caught his arm—without once looking away from Haerrad.

Jarven said, quietly, “Don’t kill Haerrad if you can avoid it.”

Jester turned to look at the old man.

“Stab him in a limb; don’t aim for anything fatal.” As if Jarven knew of the dagger Jester carried, and had come to the same conclusion that Jester had almost arrived at. And damn him, he probably did.

Jester did not like to take orders from anyone. He actively resented taking them from Jarven. But he was no longer rebellious or resentful enough to refuse to do what was practical just because of the possible illusion of obedience. He glanced at Haval; Haval, hands behind his back, had stepped clear of the table—and of Birgide. His face was a mask.

Birgide, arms by her sides, said, “Haerrad.”

Haerrad’s smile deepened. “So,” he said, as if Birgide was the only person in the room who was worthy of his attention, “it
is
true. But you are not yet established in your tenure; a pity. It would have been interesting to see if you were truly capable of becoming a worthy foe.

“In the absence of your Terafin, you are not yet one.”

The floor directly beneath Haerrad’s feet burst into flame.

 • • • 

Given the widening of Haerrad’s eyes, the fire was not his. And as it leaped, licks of flame thinned and grew, twining around each other as if fire attempted, this once, to mimic ivy. From where he stood, Jester could feel the heat.