Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (27 page)

"And the grindstone," she snapped. "And the blood." She lifted a hand to her eyes for a moment, and then said, from beneath the safety of that hand—and in a much smaller voice, "Sorry. It's not your fault."

"They want you to choose a side."

"The two that have managed to find me, yes."

He reached out almost gently and pushed the hand away. "Why is she doing this. Jewel?"

"Mandaros knows," she snapped. "I don't—"

And then she was struck by the lie in the words that she had spoken. Four words. Simple words. She Wanted to tell Devon, then, but she couldn't quite bring herself to speak of it openly. Death. Loss.

"Without her," she managed to say, "this won't be home."

"No. But it will be a House." He was quiet. "Jewel—"

"I can't." She reached for her hair again, pushing it back, nervous habit. "What about you, Devon? Surely they've come to you?"

"Not one of them, however many there are," he replied, and she
knew
, suddenly, that he knew exactly how many there were, exactly how many there had been, and exactly who was left. "They are all wise enough to know what you won't know—that this is House business, and that the less a man who also serves the Crowns knows, the better. I'm sorry, Jewel." He paused. "If it helps, you are valuable to the Crowns, and valued by them."

She smiled grimly. "Tell that," she said, "to Haerrad."

He offered no response. "If you wished my aid for this —"

"No. I should've known what you'd say."

"Yes. But you're young for a full Council member, and I won't mention this transgression to The Terafin."

"Why thank you."

The sarcasm was lost on him. It wasn't always. "You said there were two concerns?"

She placed her palms on the altar and leaned slightly into them, letting the stone support her weight. She drew a breath, looking intently at his neutral expression. At last, she said, "You aren't going to like the second one."

"I never do. What is it?"

"There are kin in the hundred holdings."

She had a childish desire to see some sort of shock or surprise across his features, and she set it aside immediately as his face became rigid and cool as the stone beneath the flat of her palms.

"Where?"

It was not impossible to keep anger from his face; it was just difficult, and Devon ATerafin was used to this. There was a fine difference between acting in anger and acting after the fact, when the anger itself had quieted into the depths of a cool, implacable determination; it had been long since he had given himself over to the former. But not that long since it had been tempting; that was the nature of anger.

He listened as Jewel spoke, naming the seven holdings among the hundred that were the more densely populated and therefore harder—much, much harder—to easily investigate without drawing attention.

Also more dangerous to fight in, to kill in.

Oddly, the presence of the kin was not what angered him.

The kin were not creatures that he understood, he could not judge them. They were not human, had been birthed, so far as he knew, in the fires of the Hells, under the grip of, the dominion of, the Lord of the Hells himself. It was a source of argument among several of the priests of almost any religion save the Mother's whether or not these creatures had freedom of will; it was agreed that they were malice personified; malice made grand and infinitely dangerous when it managed to escape the Hells.

He did not hold the kin responsible for their actions any more than he might hold a rabid dog responsible for its; what was true in either case was that the creature must be killed in as efficient a way as possible. The kin were intelligent in a way that rabid dogs were not, and therefore more dangerous. But they were what they were.

No—his anger, when it found him at all—was always engendered by and for people. And Haerrad had—he was certain of it, now, although the spies within the House beholden to the Astari had been less than clear—threatened Jewel. He did not speak of it because he could not; he did not lie to her when he made clear the lack of wisdom she showed. But it angered him nonetheless.

The more so, oddly enough, because it was not the threat to her life that frightened her or moved her; rather, it was the threat to Teller, a man who had never quite achieved full growth, who seemed in some ways ageless adult and in some ageless child. Of all the den, ail her unusual and loyal den, it was Teller to whom she was most attached.

And he hated the fact that loyalty and love were rewarded, always, by this terrible weakness: the threat of loss, the fear of it.

Accident, illness—these took lives, where the healer-bom or the Mother-born chose not to—or could not—interfere. Age did the same, regardless of choice or decision. But willful death, murder…

"Devon?"

He was almost embarrassed, but it didn't show; very little did unless he chose to reveal it. "I'm sorry," he said. "I was— remembering." He felt a twinge of guilt when he saw her expression shift.

Between them, the mutual memories of kin and their ravages were strong, profound. To use those memories, to invoke them, to hide a more natural emotion, was probably wrong.

To use them, with Jewel ATerafin, was also foolish, but it was easy to forget, with Jewel, that the future existed: She was a woman who seemed to live in the present, with earth-deep roots, a practical, unsentimental mind.

He saw her eyes narrow, and he shrugged in response, remembering that there were some lies that never got past her.

Some did. She rarely called him on either.

"What do you need from me?" he asked her quietly.

"Your support," she replied, softly, so softly, he almost lost the words. Would have, if a sudden breeze hadn't picked them up and carried them to his ears.

"Jewel—"

"I know. You can't. Or the Kings will get involved."

He heard the bitterness in the words.

"I'm not one of your den," he told her softly. "And you're not— quite—one of mine. But I promise you this: Not a single one of the heirs presumptive, as they style themselves, will be foolish enough to touch you."

"They couldn't anyway," she answered starkly. "
My
death, I'd always see in advance. They're ambitious, Devon. They're not stupid."

He lifted a hand to touch her arm, and she stepped away. "You think I care, don't you? You think I care about all of this?"

"About Terafin?"

"Yes."

"Yes," he replied, carefully, neutrally, "I do. Will you try to tell me that you don't?"

"No. But what Terafin means to
me
and what Terafin means to the rest of you—it's not the same. Do you think I care if the Kings intervene, do you think I care if they stop this stupid war before it takes the lives of our own? It's only our own that'll die in it."

"Terafin is not a collection of children, to cry into the pleats of their parents' robes," Devon told her stiffly.

"No. It's a collection of murderous thugs with fancy accents, fancy clothes, and a better class of hidden dagger."

"Terafin is Teller," he told her. "Angel. Carver. Finch. Jester. Even Arann. It is me, Torvan, Alayra, and even Alowan, although he, like Angel, has never chosen to take the name that has been offered to him. More than that, it is you. Jewel."

"And if it were me, would you still give me the same damned answer?"

He didn't answer the question for a moment, because he almost didn't understand it.

And when understanding dawned, his mouth went dry; his face lost—for just a few seconds—the neutrality that the Astari so highly prized.

"Is that the game?" he said softly, bitterly. "Is that the game you desire to play?" He was disappointed. Worse, but the rest of it would come later. The silence was awkward between them, foreign. "The years have changed you."

"Maybe," she said, offering him the shrug that passed for nonchalance among her den. Their eyes met, and she looked away. "I want you to get me a writ of execution."

"For the kin?"

"No, for the rodents in the holdings." she said, sarcasm shaky, but definitely hers. "Yes, the kin."

"Done."

"I need a writ of execution for those who attempt to aid and protect the kin."

"You know we can't grant that. We can evaluate the crime itself behind closed doors in the Hall of Wisdom, but for that, you know we need to call in one Mandaros-born to judge."

She shrugged. She'd known. "I also need a writ of exemption."

"That is less quickly done. The Mysterium grants the writs of exemption in conjunction with the Magisterium and it—"

"That's not my problem," she said curtly, even angrily. "We're not going kin-hunting without the ability to use the magic we've got."

"And you've got a mage traveling with your den now?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"Who?"

"None of your business."

"Jewel—"

"No. I mean it. You're no part of my den," she told him angrily, throwing his words back at him as if she'd aimed each one. "You want the kin out of the holdings before the Kings' Challenge— more particularly, before the gauntlet is run. We can do it, but we can't do it with ceremonial daggers—we need to be free to use what we've got at our disposal."

"We?"

Her lips pressed themselves into the line he least liked, thin and white-edged. "No," she said, at the same time as he said, "I'd like to join you."

"Jewel—" he said, starting over.

"You don't trust me, if you can think that I want what Haerrad wants."

To the point, and cutting. There was nothing of the delicate sadist in Jewel ATerafin. Nothing of the diplomat either. "I trust you with the hunting of the kin," he said. "We've done that before."

"We were on the same side before, Devon." She turned then, to face the altar that had been supporting her weight. Showing him, with stubborn finality, the flat of her back.

"We're not on opposite sides now," he said, the heat of anger permeating each word, no matter how measured he made them.

She bent, placing her hands against the flat of the altar; he could not see the expression upon her face, although perhaps that was better.

Anger. And then: Wonder.

The altar began to glow, softly at first, but more and more brightly; the sky lost the patina of silvered moon, of night color. He knew that this was not a magic of Jewel's creation; she did not have that ability.

Before he could speak, she cried out, wordless, and stepped back, and back again; her back hit his chest with a soft thud. She froze, there, the circle of his arms not yet closed. Not closing. You couldn't close her in, couldn't trap her, couldn't offer her safety that she didn't ask for.

That had always been the rule.

"I don't want this," she said softly, and he was certain that she didn't speak to him, although—if one ignored the distant presence of Avandar—he was the only other person present.

"What does it mean?"

"I
won't do
it."

"Jewel—Jay…"

But she did not even look at him. Instead she turned, ran down the steps of the altar, trailing past a startled Avandar in her flight. He knew, then, that she was as afraid as she had ever been.

What would you give, to protect the Kings?

The silent night held no answer but the echo of her last words. His own accusation.