Skirmish: A House War Novel (55 page)

“I want access to him. I wish to be able to interview him when he’s not under Levec’s watchful eye.”

Andrei gave Hectore a very pointed look.

“Yes?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, never fear, Andrei. It’s not like I have any intention of adopting the boy, or taking him under my wing; I am concerned about my grandchild. That’s all.”

“Of course, Hectore.”

Levec was not in a good mood by the time the magi were done; Adam suspected he was hungry; Levec seldom ate while working. Adam woke two of the sleepers; a woman in her forties and a man of about the same age. Levec chose them. The magi conducted their interviews—Adam was impressed at just how long each of the magi could talk; he was certain they would still be there had Levec not insisted they leave. They obeyed his bald order with both surprise and annoyance, but at that point, Levec didn’t care.

When they were ensconced in the carriage, Levec said, “It was harder, this time.”

It wasn’t a question; Adam nodded, and then asked one of his own. “Did you sense anything different?”

“Beyond the continuing atrophy of muscle tissue, no. You did?”

Adam nodded again. Levec didn’t ask him what; he simply waited
while Adam struggled with Weston—and, in this case, Torra—in an attempt to come up with meaningful words. “When I wake them,” he finally said, in his halting Weston, “when I have woken them before, it is—” he shook his head. “They aren’t quite in their bodies.”

Levec frowned; he’d heard this before. “Let me come in with you,” he finally said. “I’ve two hours before I’m to meet with Duvari. I want to hear what your Jewel has to say.”

“I am not supposed to discuss this with her,” Adam began. He could feel a flush rising in his cheeks, which was made worse when Levec lifted a skeptical brow.

“You’re not,” he agreed curtly. “Nor, in theory, am I. But I am not about to expose your ability to the magi, and I need a better translator than either you or I. She understands what you can do.” It wasn’t a question.

When the carriage pulled up the wide drive to the steps of the manse, Terafin footmen were there to greet it. They attempted to offer Levec aid in disembarking, and didn’t lose their hands; Adam thought it was close. He accepted the offer of aid, and came to stand beside a glowering Levec.

Levec wasn’t glowering at the footmen, however; he was glowering at the man on the top of the steps, just outside of the range of the doors.

“Healer Levec.” Duvari bowed.

Levec didn’t. “Lord of the Compact. I see preparations for the funeral are keeping you busy.”

“Indeed. I’ve been waiting for you, Healer. Please, walk with me.”

Adam was surprised when Duvari began to lead the way to the public galleries, Levec by his side. Servants moved through the wide halls, cleaning and arranging both flowers and candles as they did; guards stood watch as visitors—and inhabitants—passed by. Adam, who had rarely spent much time within the homes of the clansmen, still found halls like these both foreign and astonishing. There were no hangings between rooms; there were doors. There were more windows, more glass, and high, high ceilings, but there were no spaces of elegant silence, no fonts of contemplation, no platforms that faced moon or sun or sheltered behind the artful construction of trees or hedges. He followed behind the two older men as they talked in low voices, apparently oblivious to the constant, moving throngs.

Adam had become accustomed to the perpetual presence of people. It wasn’t as if he had enjoyed a great deal of privacy in the caravans. But there the people spoke Torra, and to one degree or another, they were all his kin; one large, moving family, with the responsibilities, rivalries, and affections that implied. The city of Averalaan seemed to him a loose congregation of strangers.

Even this manse, in theory the home of the Terafin line, was in practice the city writ small: strangers, whose duties seldom crossed lines, living side-by-side.

But as he followed Duvari, he realized where the Lord of the Compact was taking them, and he felt himself relax. Each step brought him closer to the doors beyond which Jewel ATerafin and her den lived. They claimed no blood ties, but they understood kinship; he felt welcome there, although he knew Jewel and her friends were often in councils of war. He liked Ellerson, who served, and Finch, who was never harsh, and he worried about Ariel, the child who had come with Jewel from the South. It had fallen to him to care for her, although she was willing to stand beside—or behind—Ellerson when he worked; she didn’t speak very much and she hid her hand whenever she noticed its missing fingers.

The doors opened when Duvari knocked. Ellerson stood between them. He acknowledged Adam with a single, silent glance, and then invited the visitors into the wing; Adam stepped through the doors and exhaled.

This was not his wagon; nor could he lie aground and watch the open skies. But here, at least, people spoke his native tongue and here, as well, they followed Jewel, just as the Arkosans followed Margret. They weren’t silent and obedient—but none of Adam’s cousins had ever been that. They could shout, sulk, or pound tables, but he knew they would follow her no matter where she led, and knew, as well, that they would fight and die for her.

If they knew how.

“Adam,” Ellerson said quietly, “Ariel was asking after you.”

“Is she—”

“She is well.”

“Has there been trouble?”

“There has been some—she is uninjured, but there’s been some small argument as a result.”

Levec cleared his throat. “We require Adam for a few minutes more. I wish to have Jewel ATerafin’s aid in a tricky translational matter.”

“Jewel is at the moment occupied, Healer Levec. Might I suggest that Finch would serve your purposes just as well?”

Levec frowned and shook his head.

“Very well. Let me ask Jewel when she can free herself from her duties.”

“Thank you.”

“Levec—” Adam began.

“Yes, yes. Go. Just be sure to return when I call for you; we’re not likely to have more than a few moments of her time, and those moments will probably be grudged.”

Adam headed down the hall, leaving a silent Duvari and an annoyed Levec at his back. It pained him to see the healer so worried—because he knew Levec was.

He stopped outside of Ariel’s room. Ariel had spent the previous evening with Adam; her Weston was almost nonexistent, and everyone else had been so busy, or noisy, or both.

“Adam,” Ellerson called, from the other end of the hall.

Adam looked up, his hand on the door’s knob. “Yes?”

“I am not certain how aware you are of the nature of some of Jewel’s guests.”

Adam froze. “I have seen the Hunter,” he said. “And the great stag. Why?”

“They are not her only guests. Ariel, at the moment, is entertaining one of them.” He hesitated and then said, “there was some minor difficulty, but she was not hurt, and the situation was addressed—quickly—by Jewel.”

Adam opened the door, and froze in its frame. Ariel was seated on the carpet, and curled around her was a very large, very gray, giant cat. It looked up, and as it did, it flexed and raised its wings. While Adam stared at it in shocked silence, it said, “Who are you?”

Ariel rose instantly, but so did the cat. Although it was large and bulky, it leaped in front of the child, standing between her and Adam.

Ellerson cleared his throat. The cat, tail and ears twitching, looked up. “Yessss?”

“Adam is a member of Jewel’s den. He lives in the wing. Jewel is very attached to him, and considers him very important. Adam,” he added, turning to the stunned Voyani youth, “this is Shadow.”

The cat hissed; he clearly wasn’t fond of his name.

“This—this is one of the guests who caused the—the difficulty?”

“Ah, no. The two that caused the difficulty have been sent to their room. They broke one of the bed’s posts while arguing, which upset Ariel.”

Adam couldn’t think of a single person—save perhaps Yollana of the Havalla Voyani—who wouldn’t find it upsetting. “The other two—are they also winged cats?”

“They are. Snow and Night, named after their colors.” Ellerson frowned. “Adam?”

Winged lions. Golden trees.

Ariel rose, ran to Adam’s side, and grabbed his hand, dragging him into the room. Because she was there, he went.

“Shadow speaks our language,” she told him, her voice very low, her gaze skirting the tip of his nose.

“Ariel, what did Jewel say to the other two after they’d had their fight?”

“I didn’t understand it.”

“But the cats did?”

She nodded. “They broke it.” She pointed to the bedpost. Adam didn’t entirely understand the purpose of posts such as these; nor did he understand the reason the beds were so high off the ground. Regardless, it was clear that the carved beam had been snapped in two, although it didn’t look as if it had been either bitten or clawed.

“They hit it,” Ariel whispered. “While they were fighting. It broke.”

“They were
careless
,” the gray cat said, slowly padding across the carpet, his claws exposed. His eyes were a disturbing shade of gold, and they were unblinking. He sniffed, snorted, and walked around Adam and Ariel, brushing the underside of Adam’s chin—and nose—with his tail. “You’re
sure
he’s important?” the cat asked Ellerson.

Ellerson stiffly said, “Very sure.”

“Oh.” He leaned against Adam, and Adam stumbled to the side. To his surprise, Ariel detached herself and smacked the cat on the nose, frowning.

Winged lions. Except they weren’t. Adam understood then that although he was hundreds or thousands of miles away from his home, he had found, and was walking, the Voyanne. His suspicions about Jewel hardened to certainty, and that certainty became the silence with which
he had always guarded both his mother’s and his sister’s conversations. Their secrets were the heart of Arkosa. Jewel’s would be the heart of Terafin—and no one but a fool exposed a clan’s heart.

“Where,” he asked Shadow, “did you come from?”

The cat raised a brow and sniffed disdainfully.

Adam reached out to touch him. The cat allowed it, swiveling his head to meet Adam’s eyes, light to dark, gold to very mortal brown. The cat wasn’t human. Anyone that Adam had tried to heal until now had been; nor did the cat look injured. But Adam touched Shadow as if he were, and warmth spread from his palms into the gray fur, and beyond it, into the body of the winged creature itself.

Shadow roared, and wheeled. His wings rose and snapped; Adam, wingless, flew across the room, colliding with the side of the bed. Ariel shouted. She didn’t, however, scream; she was both worried and angry. And it was good to hear her so angry, because she always seemed like the ghost of a child, to Adam; so faint, so attenuated.

Shadow landed on his chest, growling.

Ariel climbed up on Adam as well, her heel landing in the hollow between collarbones, which made breathing difficult. She faced the cat. Adam could only barely find breath to speak her name to tell her to flee.

Ellerson raised his voice and after a few minutes, so did Jewel as she stormed into the room, her face pale, her eyes round.

Shadow turned to her and said, “He is
dangerous
.”

“He is
not
dangerous. He’s a
healer
, and you will get off him
now
or I’ll—”

“Ye-es?” Shadow said, sliding off Adam enough that Adam could sit up—if Ariel hadn’t been so precariously balanced on top of him.

Jewel strode across the room to Adam and offered him a hand. He very gently disengaged Ariel, accepted the hand—which was more command than offer—and rose. “What happened?” she asked, in the quiet intensity of worried Torra.

“I—it’s my fault,” he told her.

“I’ll be the judge of that. What happened?”

Adam lifted his hands. They were numb, now. Numb and tingling. “I touched the—I touched Shadow.”

“I touch him all the time. I hit him when he’s being a pain. He’s never tried anything like that.”

“You’re not a healer. It’s not the same.” He touched the back of his head
and discovered a bump the size of Ariel’s fist. “I shouldn’t have done it; I wouldn’t have, if he’d been—”

“Human?”

Adam nodded. He bowed to her, which hurt. “I won’t do it again.”

“Shadow.”

Shadow snarled.

“Come here. Stop hiding behind Ariel.”

He hissed, but the insult to his dignity had the desired effect; he crept across the carpet.

“Did he hurt you?”

“…No.”

“What, exactly, did you think he was trying to do?”

“I don’t
know
. It felt
funny
. It felt
wrong
.” He hissed again.

“Do you know what a healer is?”

Shadow didn’t answer.

“All right, let me make this clear: Adam is our friend.”

“You have
too many
friends.” His claws raked holes in the carpet.

“If you don’t like it, you can always go back.”

“To
where
?”

“To wherever it is you came from.” Jewel folded her arms. “I’m not joking. If I can’t trust you not to kill or injure my friends, you can leave now.”

“What if I
don’t want
to leave?”

“I’ll have Avandar and Celleriant change your mind.”

Shadow hissed again. But he sat down heavily, and when he did, Ariel crept back to him and put her arms around his neck.

Jewel then turned to Adam. “Levec wanted to speak with us.”

“Levec,” Levec said, from the door, “does indeed.” The older healer’s eyes were narrowed, and his brows were gathered into one thick line. What Adam remembered, Levec also clearly recalled.

“How long,” Levec demanded, “has
that
been in residence?”

Jewel had shooed them all out of the room, as she hadn’t quite finished whatever she wanted to say to Shadow. Ariel almost followed Adam out, but one glance at Duvari and Levec changed her mind.

“I don’t know when he arrived, I’m sorry. It can’t have been more than a day ago.”

“A day. Yesterday?”

Adam said nothing, aware of Duvari’s watchful presence.