Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (43 page)

Alowan was silent a moment. "You mean the House War," he said at last.

"Yes."

"I… have some idea."

"And you think she can somehow survive it?"

"Given what she is, yes, I do." He was quiet. "I value this House. I know that you don't understand that. But it stands for—it has stood for—things that I admire. Not all power is evil, Levee."

Levee was silent. At last he rose. "I do not do this without misgivings," he said gruffly. "But I believe we may help each other, you and I."

Alowan nodded, almost serene. "I thought as much."

The younger healer's eyes narrowed. "You know."

"I… have friends in the healing house."

Levee bowed. "I will send for the boy."

"He is hardly a boy, Levee."

"You think of her as a girl, and she is hardly that. We all have our foibles when we think of those who've wormed their way into our affections."

He returned with a young man. It took the better part of two hours, and Devon and Avandar stood in the room as if pacing was beneath their dignity but the desire for if was fierce. Finch came and went; Carver came and went: Jester came and went. Arann, oddly enough, did not; he stayed, unmoving, apparently unmoved.

Alowan knew well why; Arann, of all of them, could understand Angel's loss, the pain that came with being only physically whole. The old healer was glad that Kiriel had returned to her unit; he did not like the girl, although he did not know why, and it shamed him.

His young aide came into the room in a rush and a bow. "Healer Levee," she said.

"Alone?"

"No. There is a young man with him."

"Good. Send them in."

He watched, waited. A young man entered the room. He was taller than either Levee or Alowan; he was as fair in coloring as Dantallon, the Queens' healer, but he was grimmer in look, colder in bearing; his presence was not unlike that of the domicis, Avandar.

Not a healer by avocation, merely by birth.

Except, of course, that was impossible. Alowan bowed.

"I am Alowan," he said.

"I am Daine," the younger man replied, bowing stiffly. "Healer Levee holds you in regard." •

"And I him. Come in."

Levee followed, silent. He made his way between the twin sentries of Devon and Avandar, demanding by presence alone that they give the bed in which Jewel lay a wider berth. They did. "This," Levee said to the stiff young man, "is the girl."

"You want me to heal her."

"Yes."

The young man stared at her a long time. He sat, stiffly, in the chair by the bed. "And if I do not want to do this thing?"

"She will die." Levee shrugged. "I will not force you, Daine. You have suffered that once."

Alowan closed his eyes; turned away. The rumor was true.

"Then I will not do it."

"
But
," Levee continued, "I believe that you will find a way back from death that will free you from the last journey, if you choose this one." He took the younger man's hand; Daine stiffened but did not pull back. "I
ask
it, Daine, but I cannot command it."

"And if I don't do it, what will you do? Revoke the protection of your House? Leave me vulnerable to the demands of the patriciate?"

"
No
. I will leave. You will leave with me. I ask it, Daine, but I will in no way compel it." He was quiet. "You were born in Averalaan, if I recall correctly."

Daine snorted. "You know damned well I was born here. It's the free towners you fawn over." Only when those words left his lips did he look his age; younger than Jewel ATerafin or her den, with the exception of its newest member.

"Then you were alive during the Henden of 410."

Daine nodded grimly. "We all were. And we all thought we wouldn't see First Day."

"If not for her, we wouldn't have."

He looked at her, then, as if seeing her for the first time. The ice stiffened in his eyes a moment, and then his resolve faltered. "If you're lying to me," he said softly, "I'll know it. I'll know it when I heal her." He frowned. "Why is she dying? Is it the House War?"

Levee didn't answer.

Avandar did. "She was hunting the kin in the streets of the city. She found one, but he was more powerful than any of us expected; more powerful than we were prepared for. You've heard of the bodies discovered in the fifteenth holding, no doubt."

Daine nodded his slender, pale face. Youth there, now, for a just a moment.

"They weren't killed there. She and the mages have hunted them once; they were doing it again, upon the orders of the Kings."

"We've heard none of this."

"There are too many people alive now who were alive in that Henden; it will cause panic, and the panic will serve not our interests, but the interests of the demons."

"Enough, Avandar," Devon said. "You tread too fine a line. Remember that your service requires secrecy."

"He needs to know it," Avandar replied.

"That is for the Kings to say. Not a domicis."

"We are not in
Avantari
, ATerafin, but in Terafin; it is for The Terafin to decide."

"It is now moot," Alowan said, more curtly than he intended. "Daine, she is worthy of your gift. I have seen her in this House the past sixteen years and more, and she is worthy of mine."

"You didn't heal her," he said pointedly.

"No."

"Why?"

"Two reasons. Briefly: Her companion was also dying: she feels responsible for him, and had she lived at his expense, it would have broken her. Second, because I am far too old. I cannot guarantee that I could walk a death for Jewel ATerafin and separate myself from her afterward. Not for Jewel.

"Angel is different enough from the things I admire and the things I desire to protect; I know where I begin, I know where he ends, and I—I have just enough of myself not to want to remain where I don't belong."

He had not yet been as bluntly honest as this; honest enough that Levee would understand it, but not so honest that either Devon or Avandar would. It was hardest, always, to separate oneself from a person one could trust, could—under normal circumstances, love. "I have enough of her companion in me now that I am not above begging you, if that is what you require."

But Daine had already pushed Levee aside; had taken his place beside her. "She—she wears a Council ring," he said. Alowan thought he detected a tremor in the words, a fear.

"Yes. Therefore you must judge the truth of all of our words for yourself. The ring, she earned by her actions. Not her birth, Daine. Not her ruthlessness; she has precious little of that. Not, we fear, enough—but it is not ruthlessness alone that rules the world. Think of the Kings."

"The Kings are god-born."

"Yes. But we all come from a beginning that knew gods, or else there would be no healers. No bards. No young women like Jewel."

Hands, shaking now, touched her face, much as Levee's had done. "I will—I will try this thing. For you, Alowan. For Levee." His smile was ghostly, thin. "For myself, I think. I remember that Henden. I remember that First Day—it was, the
first
First Day, for me. It marks them all. The screaming and then the silence, the dawn. A miracle." He closed his eyes. "I remember the darkness, Levee. I'm so tired of darkness." All arrogance was gone, all ice, although he struggled to speak the words as if against himself, his better judgment.

And Levee said softly, "I know." He looked away, and there were, Alowan thought, tears in the folds of his eyes. He was stubborn, proud; they wouldn't fall.

The healing began.

"Will he be able to let her go?" Alowan asked quietly.

"I—I don't know."

"Who was it? Who forced him to this act?" There was no worse thing one could do, to a healer—but only a healer understood the truth of that; those without the power, those who did not and could never pay the healer's price, could not conceive of the violation.

"A member," Levee said bitterly, "of
this
House."

"Who?"

"It is not of concern," he replied.

"Does he live?"

Levee tendered no reply. It was reply enough. They watched for a while. "Daine is—he was—a soft-headed, soft-hearted idiot."

"You're fond of him."

"I'm always fond of the stupid ones. It's my worst failing." Levee's jaw locked. "They caught him using a child as bait. Makes me wish children had never been invented. They threatened to kill her if he did not heal the man they wished healed; they… injured her. The noble was dying. The girl was screaming. Daine— what other choice did he have? He's stupid."

"He did it."

"Yes. They would have killed him afterward, but the man forbade it." Levee closed his eyes. "And it scarred my boy. He has seen murder, and far, far worse, and has had to live with and through it to call the man who has committed all of these atrocities back from the
Hells
."

"Will he hold her too tightly?"

"I think—I think he is stronger than that," Levee said.

He was lying. Alowan heard it in his voice, but said nothing. What was there to say? There were few enough who would risk the walk to begin with; she did not, in his opinion, have the time to wait until they found another, Avandar's magic and Meralonne's containment notwithstanding.

But he knew, then, that the man whose servants had forced the healing must have been Corniel ATerafin. The only man who had died far enough away from the Terafin manse that his body had not been brought to the healerie. Alowan had not regretted his death then; he did not regret it now.

But he bowed his head a moment, in prayer to the Mother that he might not feel such a vicious, such a terrible, sense of triumph at another man's murder.

He was tired, so very, very tired. Angel burned him; he could not separate his fear for Jewel from the younger man's.
I misjudged you
, he thought, not for the first time.

They watched the boy.

Avandar interrupted Alowan's reverie three times, and each, to ask—by gesture alone—if he might somehow interfere. He understood the risks of a healing, to both the healed and the healer. Each of the three times, Alowan shook his head: No.

Alowan understood, then, why Levee cultivated such a dour, grim appearance; no one noticed, who did not know him reasonably well, when it was genuine and when it was not. Today, it was genuine. He kept putting his hands behind his back, pulling them away, wringing them, pulling them apart. It was odd; he was a big man, a man who projected a certain strength, a force of immovable will. The gestures themselves, unconscious, suited him ill.

He heard Finch, as if she were her namesake, fluttering and whispering in a high voice. Thought he should tell her that lower voices carried less of a distance.

And then he heard it. Over the mutter, the questions, the whispering between members of Jewel's den, over Levee's heavy step, Devon's light one, and the merciful stillness of the man whose calling it was to watch and to harbor, the domicis.

"Jay."

They started, all of them. The voice was so labored it was hard to tell who of the two had spoken: Jewel ATerafin, or Daine of Levee's House.

Interesting
, Alowan thought, slightly surprised.
Jay
. Not Jewel.

"Jay," the name came again. Stronger this time. Definitely Daine's voice. She did not respond.

They drew breath then, collectively; they had become, in the intensity of their observation, one person, with one hope.

"Jay."

Too late
, Alowan thought, almost numb with the certainty of it. Aware that it was his risk, that he had taken it, as a gambler might. He bowed his head; there was enough of Angel in him, would always be enough of Angel in him, that he knew either way—Jewel or Angel—there had been no way to separate the choice made, the cost of failure.

"Jay—I'd let you stay where you're safe," Daine said, his voice low, intense. "I'd stay there with you myself, and gods be cursed, healers be damned.

"But you know what you have to do. And
I
know it. You
know
what was done to me. Death doesn't change it."

Alowan began to cry. It was not loud; indeed, it was completely still, and the tears were lost in the folds of his skin, lost to light, lost to discovery.

"I won't leave you," he continued, his voice hoarse. "But I can't leave you
there. Kalliaris
curse you, Jay—I've been there. I've been there with
Corniel ATerafin
. I've been living with him for two months. I've been mad with it. I
am
mad with it. You want to die? Tough. Tough shit.

"Come home."

He had never heard a calling so violent. Never heard a calling so angry. And he had never heard a calling so fraught with respect and intent and purpose. But he thought, as he listened to the tenor of the young man's voice, that he might have heard the last of these three things if he had listened to his own voice on a cool, sea-heavy day, over thirty years ago.

Her eyes opened slowly, separating lash by lash into the harsh glare of light, any light. She saw the man who had called her, and she did not shrink from the anger in his voice; instead, she reached up, she reached up to where his hands were gripping her face so tightly her skin was white beneath his fingers.

He thought she would cry.

She did not.

He thought she would be too overwhelmed to speak.

But perhaps, Alowan thought, he had never understood the particular demands of being seer-born. Perhaps this finding, and this losing, was not so new to Jewel ATerafin as it had been to a young Alowan, a young Amarais ATerafin, in a House as much— more—under siege than this House.

"All right," Jewel said. "I'm back."

But she gripped his hands with hers; held them tight.

Youth and renewal
, Alowan thought, caught between bitterness and a brief relief.
The wars return and recede, like the tide. And we have to fight them; it's how and what we fight that defines us. Hones us
.

And of course what was he thinking about? War. Weapons. Death. He was older now, but still remembered what being too young had truly been like; he could see the edges of youth, the pain and the passion of it, carved in the damaged lines of Daine's face.