Skirmish: A House War Novel Read online

  And a man who held a great deal of power without implying either was a threat.

  He thought back to Lucille’s abrupt and chilly greeting, and to her four unknown new employees. The fact that those four were already in place, and in such short order, made clear that the House Council had not expected The Terafin to survive for long. They were prepared for a struggle for the seat; they’d had the time to prepare.

  If they were clever, if they were ruthless, and above all, if they could move with speed, it would be short.

  “Gabriel serves as regent?” he asked softly.

  “Gabriel, at the moment, is the titular head of the House Council, yes.”

  “Will he serve as regent until the succession is decided?”

  “If he survives,” was Jarven’s soft—and surprising—reply.

  Haval glanced at the stone in the table’s center, and he drank again, the silence harsh. “How bitter will this struggle be? How far will it go?”

  “In truth, I cannot answer. If the situation were different, I would say it would be decided swiftly—if messily. But the Kings are now involved, and it is not clear that they have a mind to step back. Nor is it clear to the House Council how they came to be present almost at the moment of The Terafin’s death; there is some rumor that she herself summoned them. She certainly summoned,” he added, “Sigurne Mellifas.”

  “And demons came, in the presence of the magi?”

  “And demons came.”

  So many variables, so many combinations, now played like invisible notes between these two momentarily silent men. They had survived demons before, but they had no wish to repeat the experience; the shadows history cast were long.

  “Let me answer your previous question with a different question,” Jarven finally said.

  “And that?”

  “Tell me, Haval, in your opinion, is Jewel among those who will vie for the House Seat?”

  28th of Corvil, 427 A.A.

  Order of Knowledge, Averalaan Aramarelas

  Sigurne Mellifas lit a candle.

  Its soft, flickering glow cast more shadow than light in the darkened interior of her office. The moon cast more, but she had curtained the windows.

  One candle, she thought. One candle’s length.

  Beyond—and beneath—the Tower heights, the magi were gathering in ones and twos. They would move with either purpose, reluctance, or great curiosity, toward the grand chambers in which the First Circle magi convened in times of emergency, pulled toward it the way rivers are pulled down mountains. Matteos would be fretting, because she had sent him ahead, divesting herself of the protection he was certain she required.

  But there were some conversations she could not have within his hearing, and some conversations that perhaps would be best not had at all. She watched as the wax beneath the wick began to melt. The Tower was silent. She watched her wards with the gathered patience of decades, waiting. They were nascent. No one—no man, no demon—approached as the wax continued to melt.

  The Terafin was dead. The creature that had killed the most powerful woman in the Empire was ash. Ash answered no questions. And questions? They abounded in this confined space. The Kings’ questions. The questions of the House Council. The questions of the magi themselves, although those at least would be dealt with before the night—the long, long night—had passed.

  Meralonne, she thought, where are you?

  The runes continued to sleep. The candle flickered as she at last gave in to her unease; she rose, pulling her robes more tightly about her. She could feign age; could feign forgetfulness, could even feign frailty. No scruple prevented it. But she could no longer feign youth; it had passed, and with it, so much of her hopes. Had she not seen the demon with her own eyes, hope would be easier to grasp, and it would be far less painful. But summoned, she had.

  Meralonne.

  The stairs remained empty; the door remained untouched. The candle, however, continued to burn.

  Meralonne APhaniel was not, had never been, docile. His temper was uneven, and he disliked—intensely—the papers by which so much information among members was shared. He was not fond of explanations—either given or received—and his pipe irritated at least half the members of the Order, regardless of their standing. He could be cajoled, when it suited him. He could be nudged; his ego could be pricked. All of these, Sigurne had done in her time.

  But he could also be commanded, and that, she did so rarely it might never be noticed. Complaints about her tolerance of his habits, his temper, and his flagrant use of technically illegal magic littered her desk. Demands about the same did likewise. She had learned how to deflect most of them over the years. Even Matteos enjoined her to rein Meralonne in from time to time.

  She had never explained to Matteos why she did not. One day he would know, and she dreaded the coming of that day. Her silence was not something that Meralonne himself demanded; if she had never offered explanation to Matteos, it was in part because the subtle negotiations that existed between Member APhaniel and the Guildmaster of the Order went unspoken. Meralonne had never threatened, and Sigurne had, likewise, refrained. They walked a knife’s edge, balancing between the careful fabrication of ignorance and uncertain knowledge.

  Always, always.

  Something tugged at her wards; she saw their brief, dull glow—orange, all—but it was subtle and slight; it was wrong. Perhaps a child walking those stairs might have made that faint an impression; a child or one who used magic to approach with stealth. She suspected neither, but tested her wards, touching them without even a gesture to catch a glimpse of what lay beyond her closed door.

  Darkness and magelights, nothing more.

  But the wards continued their faint glow, tightening like a web, and she froze for just a moment, breath forgotten until the ache in her chest reminded her that it was a necessity. She turned from the wards and the door toward the closed curtains that blocked moonlight and starlight both. Placing one hand on the surface of her ancient desk—for comfort, not for support—she gestured. The curtains flew to the left and the right of the window, exposing the glass of the Tower’s height. From where she stood she couldn’t see the street.

  Nor had she need. A foot beyond the glass, maybe more, stood the most difficult of her mages.

  * * *

  At the very height of the Tower, one might walk the roof undisturbed. Sigurne now closed the curtains and repaired to that roof, although the night was cold and the winds ungentle. Meralonne did not join her immediately; he stood, suspended in air, a weapon—a sword—in one hand. His eyes were the color of polished silver and his hair curled and billowed in the wind’s folds, almost touching his ankles. He wore no other cape.

  “It is not yet time,” she told him, speaking softly.

  His frown was slight and sharp, his brow momentarily furrowed as if her words were spoken in a language he didn’t understand. As there wasn’t, to her knowledge, such a language, she waited for a minute before she repeated the words. He closed his eyes, and even in the darkness she could see the pale sweep of platinum as lashes brushed flawless cheek.

  Only then did he leave the whispering voice of the air to step, once again, upon something more substantial. “Can you not feel it, Sigurne?” he asked. She thought that he had not abandoned the wild wind; he had merely swallowed it.

  “No,” she whispered. “I cannot. I cannot feel it, I cannot see it.”

  “Surely that is your choice?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “How many years have passed since we first met, Member APhaniel?”

  He frowned.

  She had not expected an answer. “Many,” she told him. His sword still graced his hand, the edge a bright, crisp blue—a glimpse of azure, as if the blade had cracked the facade of night and allowed a sliver of day to leak through before its time. “What do you feel, Meralonne? What do you see?”

  “Do you remember the snow, Sigurne?” He lifted his sword. “Do you remember the sky?”

&n
bsp; “You already know the answer.” She lifted a hand as if to touch him. Here, now, she couldn’t. Not without calling upon reserves of a power best used in other ways.

  “Do I?”

  Ah, his eyes when he turned; they were wild, fey. Gray gave way to silver, the lie to the truth. He was never so dangerous as when he was like this; nor was he ever as beautiful. She wondered if it was always this way: those who had touched the edges of true, abiding power must define beauty ever after as inseparable from deadliness.

  “No,” was his soft reply. Had she asked the question aloud? “Had you, Sigurne, you would have lived your life in a tower in the ice and the azure of the far North. I know who trained you, and I know who taught you; they were not the same.

  “There are, of course, those who kill to gain power—or to hold it. You, Sigurne, are not among that number; you have taken power here, and you hold it the way a Matriarch might. But the death of the Northern Mage availed you nothing. You were too weak to take what he had built and make it your own, and you did not have that desire.” He lowered his sword, although its edge still gleamed. “There are those who kill simply to gain their own freedom. Had you been that, you would have fled long before I arrived.”

  “I was that,” she said, voice rough. “I wanted my freedom.”

  “Freedom? From life? You were not yet old enough to consider life a burden.”

  She didn’t argue, although mere decades past, she would have.

  “You watched. You waited. You bore witness. You were willing to pay for that privilege with your life.”

  “Until I saw it with my own eyes, I could not be certain he would die.” She forced the brief, rough edges from her voice. “You saved my life, then. Why?”

  “Because you did watch, Sigurne. And I knew, the moment I saw you, that you had both seen and understood. I was not certain how long you would live, and yet, here you are: the Guildmaster of the Order of Knowledge. Conversant with the customs and the powers of the Kialli, but respected and trusted by the Kings and their divine parents regardless.

  “You have seen my hand in the training of the warrior-magi, Sigurne, and you have seen their power take an…unexpected turn. This sword?” he lifted it once again. “You have now seen its like in the hands of your own. Not all are capable of forming such a weapon with will and power alone, but half, now. Half of my students.”

  “Meralonne—”

  He lifted a hand. “Give me but a few moments more, Sigurne. A few. Can you not feel it?”

  “I have already said—”

  “Yes. You have. Let me ask you a different question, one closer to your own heart. You have misgivings about my work with your mages. You have always had those misgivings.”

  She stiffened.

  “When you saw the weapons—and I admit the bow surprised me; I think it unique, in all of mortal history—you were afraid.”

  She did not trouble herself to deny it. With Meralonne, there was no point. He understood her well enough to know how fear drove her; it was not a weakness he—or any man—could exploit.

  “Why, then, did you not withdraw those mages from my service? Why did you allow me to expand their number?”

  It was Sigurne who looked away. She had no candle to mark time, although she had the moons, and she watched them, their distant silver faces so much like his eyes.

  “What did he tell of you the ancient days?”

  “Only that men had fallen far from the height of their power.”

  He did not believe her, which was fair; she was lying. But she could. “The Terafin is dead.”

  His gaze sharpened.

  “You had not heard?”

  “I am in service to the Kings’ armies in the South, as you well know.”

  “Yet you are here.”

  “Your summons was urgent. How did she die?”

  “Kialli.”

  “Kialli here, as well?”

  It was the answer that she had dreaded, although it was also the one she’d expected. “How large are their forces in the Dominion?”

  “They have already moved openly within the Terrean of Mancorvo; they have shed the pretense of humanity at least there.”

  “They own those lands?”

  “Ah, no. But it was closely run. The kin failed there, and I believe that we will see the whole of their forces gathered, at last, in Averda. There are events that are troubling, even to me. I would not have said that they could coordinate an attack within Averalaan while they concentrated upon the Southern War.”

  “And what does it mean? What do you fear?”

  “The Shining Court,” he said softly.

  She raised a hand, and he fell silent. “What of her new companions, APhaniel?”

  “You speak of Jewel ATerafin?”

  She nodded.

  What he said next surprised her. “She has now walked roads that you will never walk; she has seen things that have not been seen since the gods themselves ruled the world. Three at least of her companions have seen what she has seen; you must draw your own conclusions from that. You could speak with her,” he added.

  “You know why I cannot. At best, I could speak with Gabriel ATerafin; should I request an audience with Jewel, it would merely accentuate her power in a House divided. She will no doubt already be in danger; she will no doubt be heavily observed. She is seer-born; she has value. Are her companions a danger to us?”

  “Only inasmuch as Jewel is. While she lives, I think they will not be of concern to you—but I cannot guarantee it.”

  “And you are now so well acquainted with Jewel Markess ATerafin that she has taken to confiding in you?”

  At that, he chuckled, and she exhaled slowly in relief. “Ah, no. But you can feel the winds of Winter when she speaks; you can almost touch the turning of the seasons when she glances at you. You can see shadows of the Winter Court in its glory when she walks, Sigurne.”

  “Faded glory, then. She seems mortal, to my eye.”

  “She is, and you are now being deliberately provocative. I have traveled all this way at some personal expenditure of power.”

  “And you weather it…well, APhaniel.”

  “You did not answer my question.”

  “No, nor you, mine.”

  He bowed. “Then let me show kindness, in my own fashion. The end of days is coming, Sigurne, inexorable as dawn, dusk, or nightfall. The winds change, the Cities of Man rise. Soon, you will see the ancient waken from its slumber; I do not know what form it will take.”

  She caught his elbow in one hand; he had settled enough that it was almost safe to do so. “How long?” she whispered. “Decades? Years? Months?”

  He reached out and gently lifted her chin with the tips of his fingers; her eyes widened. He had not touched her in this fashion for many, many years. “Perhaps a decade, Sigurne. But I feel it will be less—much less.”

  “You do not fear it.”

  “No. Never.” He smiled, but the smile was no longer sharp and cold. It was worse; it was tinged with pity. “I would hurry it, if I could, Sigurne; you have few years left, and if you die, you will never see what unfolds.”

  “I would never see it at all, if it were within my power.”

  “Yes. That is the strange and confounding truth about you; you comprehend beauty; you understand those things that are truly terrible; you have even raised hand against them. But you deny your own desire.”

  She shook her head and lifted her chin further, breaking the contact. “I have many, many desires, Meralonne. I do not deny that power is compelling; I never have. But it is simply one desire, one reaction.” She made her way to the edge of the Tower and looked down, to the web of light that the streets below were gradually becoming. “There is beauty in birth, and beauty in life, even mortal life, which passes so quickly. Perhaps especially in mortal life; one has to stop, to witness, or the moment is gone; it cannot be captured or lengthened for eternity.

  “There is beauty in peace, Meralonne, and you will n
ever know it. But I know it.”

  “That beauty, if I grant you its existence, is exceptionally fragile.”