The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 Read online

  But she raised a hand before he could retreat, and the movement, as subtle as command could be to one who understood it, held him fast. “Morretz, when your service here is ended, what will you do?”

  He could not speak, although he understood that he could serve her best at this moment by offering her the words she asked for. And what of me? he thought, bitter now, the words so foreign they were almost another language. What of my needs?

  It was so wrong.

  And yet, beneath the weight of hers, beneath the years of the service he had willingly undertaken, his needs had been met. Until now.

  She had always accepted his silences before. But he knew that she must want companionship very badly, for she did not choose to do so now.

  “Will you return to the Guild? Will you teach? Will you return to the home that you have never once spoken of in your years in my service? Or will you choose to take another master? There are few who would not value your service, given what you have built here.”

  “Terafin.” The familiar syllables smoothed the anger out of his voice, although it was there, it was suddenly present. He wondered if she understood how deeply she had just insulted him, and decided that she was Amarais; she must, and she had chosen to do so deliberately.

  “I will never seek another Master, no matter what the outcome of this current situation is. I am done with power. I am done with the hopes—” He stopped, then, seeing, for a moment, not the glorious evening gardens of House Terafin, but the enclosed classrooms of the Guild of the Domicis.

  I will serve a lord I admire.

  That had been the right answer; it was the right answer now. But no one had asked him—not himself, especially not himself—what he would do when that service ended. He had made it his life, having found a lord he admired and respected, to serve her, strengthen her, provide her with the support she required that she might meet the goals she held aloft for his quiet inspection.

  She was silent as he returned to the present. But he did not think the silence would last; it had a curious unfinished quality to it that spoke of the hovering presence of unshed words.

  “Amarais.”

  “Morretz.”

  “I . . . cannot speak of your death.”

  He thought that would silence her, for she herself had never once spoken of it. It had become impossible not to know that she expected it, but he had waited, in a strained silence he had thought—until this moment—was devoid of hope.

  He knew, now, that he had accomplished only the unenviable task of lying to himself. He had had hope, and she meant, this eve to deprive him of even that.

  “If you accepted it, Morretz, you would speak of it. You would speak of it because you would know—as I know, and I have accepted—that my death may mean the end of all that we have built together. The heir that I chose is gone; the South has taken her. The war—a war that is larger in every way than my House, but only slightly—has devoured her energy, her time, her attention.

  “You would speak of it because you would desire a plan, some course of action, that would protect what we value more than we value life.”

  “Seers have been wrong in the past.”

  “Perhaps; I will not argue with you. It is not of the past that we speak, it is of the future, and of the future, there is little doubt. What she saw, she saw; in its fashion, it will come to pass.”

  As if she wielded the sword of Terafin, her words were sharp and terrible. He lifted a hand. They passed through it.

  “You are astute, Terafin. I cannot accept what you accept.”

  “If acceptance is beyond you, can you find it in yourself to forgo anger? I have no intention of walking easily to death; it will come from a quarter that I cannot now foresee. I abjure no responsibility; anything that I can prevent will be prevented.” Her smile was the wolf’s smile, lean and powerful. “Let them work for my death. Let them out-maneuver me, outthink me, outplay me.” But the smile was a ghost; it passed. “Accept that there are things I cannot do.”

  And here was the crux of the matter. Here, at last. This woman, this slender, beautiful woman—yes, beautiful, more now than as an unformed, grave youth—was The Terafin. She had never failed at anything she had set her mind to—not even when that thing was the governing of the most powerful House in the Empire. Against odds far greater than this, she had won her seat, had survived the House War that had decimated the ranks of the House Guards, divided all.

  Fight this! Fight it, you can only be killed if you choose to surrender!

  As if she could hear the words he could not say, she glanced away.

  “Tell me that you are not tired, Amarais. Tell me.”

  She was silent a moment. At last, she said, “Bring the den.”

  He wanted to shout at her then; wanted to grab her by the arms and shake her, as if by doing so he could force her to feel what he now felt, measure for measure. You are Amarais, you are the woman I chose to give my life to. You have failed at nothing in your life, will you surrender now?

  But he was domicis; and if what he had undertaken with such profound hope so many years ago had become an almost unbearable burden, he bore it still.

  He bowed stiffly and offered her his silent obedience.

  Finch woke.

  There was no light in her room, but she wasn’t Jay; she found the darkness of the sleeping House peaceful. Whatever fears clung to her from the past that had shaped them both found its hold diminished, not strengthened, when the lights dimmed and faded. Had nights in the twenty-fifth holding been bad? Yes. But the days had been worse, for Finch. At night there were shadows, places made of moonlight and starlight in which someone slender and quiet could hide. Day forgave little.

  She therefore needed no Avandar to stand by the foot of her bed, light in hand or cupped palm, as guardian against nightmares that might follow the waning of the day; indeed, had she been offered such a sentry, she would have found it hard to sleep, for she desired the simple stillness of a completely private place; she found in it a freedom from the responsibilities of the waking day.

  Teller envied her for that; it was in the darkness that he, like Jay, lay awake, thinking with precision and clarity, about everything that had gone—or could go—wrong, and an hour might pass while he lay, immobile, waiting for something as elusive as sleep.

  Not Finch. Covers tucked to chin—the one night foible she shared with almost every one of her den-kin—she could listen to the quiet sounds of the House.

  Those noises differed from season to season, and she had grown to know them all, in the quiet and safety of this building, this gift from a merciful god. A merciful god, and Jay.

  Jay.

  Even in safety, there were barbs.

  The House Guards were on patrol.

  She heard them, heavy steps almost in unison, in the doors beyond the wing. Since Alea’s death, guards such as these—perhaps these; at this time of night, she was uncertain who patrolled—had crossed one end of the manse to the other, in groups of no less than eight; Torvan himself saw to the composition of these small squads to assure that the loyalty of these men was, if not unquestioned, then at least not uniform.

  They all serve The Terafin, she’d said, naïve then and no doubt naïve now.

  Yes, he’d said, voice soft, gaze on a spot she couldn’t see clearly, no matter how close it seemed to be. But they know that an heir has to be chosen, and they know—all of them—that they’ve never been Chosen, not by the reigning Terafin. If they choose to support one of the contenders for the title, if they choose wisely, they’re in at the ground, and they have a chance at promotion they’d never see here.

  You think they’d—they’d attack her?

  The Terafin? No. Never. But each other? They owe no loyalty to any other lord.

  Well, she’d asked. Funny, how little comfort answers offered.

  The month of Misteral was often heavy with rain, damp and cool compared to the rest of the year. This month was slightly different; rain threatene
d to fall, but the clouds that carried it were shunted to one side of the city—or the other—by the gusts of salt-laden wind. Nevertheless, sailing merchants that came to make their reports, and take their rest, at House Terafin, could be heard cursing the weather with seasonal fervor.

  They drank, Finch thought, nose wrinkling, too much. But when they weren’t falling down drunk, or unpleasantly drunk, they had the best stories to tell; tales of lands far to the South, to the North, or—almost impossible to believe—to the East, beyond the ocean that stretched across the horizon without break.

  Often in Misteral, Corvil, and Henden—Corvil was worst—they spent time in the city, bound to land; they visited their families, their Lords and their bankers, and they allowed themselves to be wheedled out of a good story. Finch, small for her size and gentle in manner, had become inordinately good at wheedling.

  But this Misteral the merchant voices of House Terafin were notably strained or silent; the merchants stayed away from the manse unless they were drunk or commanded to do otherwise. She didn’t blame them. If she’d had a choice, she’d’ve been anywhere else.

  But Kalliaris had already frowned, fickle goddess.

  Finch missed the merchants’ voices the most; they could often be heard late into the night, mingled with the songs of hapless young bards who’d been dragged into the gardens or the halls. Merchants often did that, in any House, finding the open space, the acoustical heights, of the stately, fixed buildings irresistible in comparison to the vessels that were their true kingdoms.

  No song, tonight. Or rather, no harp, no lute, no raised voice.

  She heard owl cries instead; hunting songs, primitive and plain. Too primitive for the tended and controlled gardens, the clipped hedges, the flowers arranged into whimsical, well-ordered patterns that hinted at wilderness without ever being touched by it. She had learned the names of basic edible weeds and plants as a child in the twenty-fifth holding, and none of those graced the gardens. She had never learned the names of the plants, although she knew the tree names: oak and ash, yew and rood. She couldn’t always tell which tree and which name coincided, but had learned to gloss over ignorance on the rare occasions she was forced to entertain someone who wished to walk the gardens.

  And she found comfort in those nameless trees at night; they housed the wild birds, their sleeping children still wary of the hands and the intentions of men. Did it matter that some of those birds were birds of prey?

  It had, once.

  Now, they were simply what they were.

  She listened as she lay in bed, palms curled round the edge of blanket, thinking: I never hear the mice.

  Morbidly, she wondered if mice screamed when they were caught by the birds whose cries and calls she did hear.

  Jay, she thought. Are we still mice? After all this time, do you think we’ve really learned how to be anything else? Come home, damn it. Come home.

  But Jay was a continent away.

  And Finch was here.

  Thinking about mice. Finding an absurd comfort in the fact that these small furred creatures—and the red kits, the dwarf rabbits—inconvenient in every possible way to the House and annoying to the gardener if they chose to nest in the wrong places (and they did), persisted; they existed no matter how well coiffed and tended the natural world around them became. Lived, no matter how hunted they were by the birds whose cry she could hear, when their own dying voices were silent, always silent.

  Perhaps because she needed that reminder now, she lay awake longer than she usually did. She couldn’t say why, but she wasn’t surprised when she heard the knock at the door, even though she wasn’t consciously aware of the sound of anyone in the hall beyond it. Not consciously.

  She knew it was Ellerson.

  Funny, that he could be here for so little time and have already worked his way down into an awareness that owed more to instinct than intellect.

  She rose quickly, shedding both blanket and reverie, and opened the door; the hinges had time to squeak a faint protest.

  He carried no light; the wall sconces did that for him. Jewel had ordered them set with magestones—and once the rest of the den had gotten over the cost, they accepted this daily evidence of magery as easily as they accepted all her other orders.

  She blinked; light from the hall reached her eyes, wakening vision, returning the sense that the world was possessed of and by color.

  “You had best dress,” he told her quietly, his voice the essence of gravity.

  “Dress well or dress?” she asked, but without much hope.

  “The Terafin has sent for you.”

  She heard another creak down the hall; saw Teller’s slender face peer out from the gap between door and frame. “Finch?”

  She nodded. “There’s trouble. Get dressed. Dress well.”

  “It is not necessary to assume there’s trouble, as you call it,” Ellerson told her, his minute frown as familiar as the tone of his voice, the stiff line of his shoulder.

  “At this time of night? This is trouble. Teller, get the others, too.”

  “All of them?”

  “All of them. But don’t bother arguing with Angel about his clothing.”

  “What about Arann?”

  “Him, too.”

  “But he’s got patrol in two hours.”

  “Him too.”

  Teller nodded. His head disappeared and reappeared so quickly Finch wondered if he’d even bothered to change out of his clothing before going to bed.

  “Ellerson?” he said, looking past her.

  Ellerson nodded.

  “Do you know what’s wrong?”

  “I am domicis,” the old man replied.

  “Why is she doing this to us?” Finch demanded, between clenched teeth. Her jaw was sore with it—it was an expression she’d learned, over the years, from watching Jay.

  “ATerafin—”

  “Someone’s going to notice this. If we report to her in the day, when everyone else does, they can take note of it, but they can’t prove anything significant has happened. But this—Kalliaris must have been frowning for weeks. Doesn’t she know that they’re all watching us?”

  He didn’t ask her who “they” were. Didn’t need to. Instead he said, “You are not the only people being watched.” The tone of his voice was critical enough that it would have stemmed the flow of words if those words hadn’t been riding on so much fear.

  “No—we’re the only insignificant people being watched.” She hadn’t meant to sound so bitter; she almost never did. Shame warred with fear, and fear won. “Gods, this is so easy for them. They’ve got money, they’ve got experience, they’ve got friends in all the right places—they’ve even got the House Guards all carved up between them, and she isn’t dead yet! They’ve got everything.”

  “Finch,” Ellerson said, reaching out to touch her shoulder.

  She looked up at him, eyes wide, the difference in their height startling to her. Had she shrunk?

  “ATerafin,” he added, when he was certain of her attention. “Do you truly believe you are without your support? Captain Torvan of the Chosen visits only one of the Terafin House Council on a regular basis.”

  “Jay,” she said at last. “But Jay’s not here.”

  His grim silence was reproof enough. She was silent for a moment. But when she spoke, her voice was level. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “You’re right of course. But I—”

  His hand, where it rested on her shoulder, tightened a moment. She met his eyes.

  Was surprised to see his smile. “No one who has responsibilities that they take seriously is completely without fear. No one. But I have never met a man—or a woman—who can meet those responsibilities well when fear rules them. Jewel ATerafin trusted—and trusts—you. If you cannot trust your own judgment in this, trust hers.

  “Or mine, if it is of value. I admit that I was hesitant to return here. I am retired. I have . . . enjoyed my retirement immensely. But having begun, I remember what
being a domicis means to me, and I am honored to serve your den.”

  “And how long will you stay? How long this time?”

  “I will stay,” he told her gently, “until I am no longer needed. Come. The others are waiting.”

  She looked up then. Everyone—except for Carver—was standing, silent, in the wake of his words. She wondered how much they’d heard. Carver joined them, struggling to get his elbows free of the neck of a shirt he was too lazy to unbutton.

  “Ellerson?”

  “Yes?”

  “Who delivered the message?”

  And a familiar figure stepped out of shadows that Finch knew weren’t natural. Jay had paid a lot of money to see to that.

  “Morretz?”

  He stared at her a moment, as if appraising her, but his expression gave none of the result of that appraisal away.

  “I did, ATerafin. I understand your fear. I understand your caution. I am here to make certain that—inasmuch as it can be—your passage to the shrine remains undetected by any of the would-be rulers of this House.”

  They had talked to Morretz. To Torvan. To Arrendas. They had spoken with Devon, and with Gabriel; they had become, in all things, Jay’s substitutes. They had learned, clumsily, but with a determination that desperation underscored, to navigate the byways of the powerful, dancing carefully along the edge of the increasing hostilities between the four men and women who desired what only the den knew Jay already had—the legitimacy of The Terafin’s choice.

  Those hostilities had left the injured, the broken, and occasionally the dead, as evidence of what happened when too much ambition met with too much ambition. Had it been up to Finch, not a one of the four would now have the Terafin name behind them.

  But The Terafin did not condescend to notice what could not be ignored. It hurt Finch, inexplicably, to see that, to accept it for what it was.

  She shook herself.

  Since they had understood the full meaning of Jewel ATerafin’s vision, since they had realized that The Terafin was to die before Jay’s return, they had not spoken with The Terafin. They had listened to her, when she had come to tell them of the demon attack in the Common; they had listened to her again, when she had finally decided that the personal investigation—the sifting through rubble, the tending to the injured—would be brought to a close. But they had not been required to speak; had not been required to meet her gaze and acknowledge their understanding.