Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows Page 17

  And what, in the end, was a domicis, and was it—like parenthood was reputed to be—a thing that a man could only understand when he finally became one? Or was it something he made of himself? Was it something that was denned individually, between a lord and a domicis, in a privacy much like a marriage? None of the answers were as clear to him as he had always desired they be… but one thing was.

  Commitment.

  For a moment, in that hall, beneath the weight of questions that had plagued him for three years, he felt it, like a whisper of foreknowledge: this was what he would do with his life, and his life would count. Not by any accident of fate—for Kalliaris had been brutally unkind to him, and he did not trust her whim—but by his own determination; by the decision not to be deterred or distracted.

  And what better way to confirm it than to speak it aloud to the only peers he would have, no matter how far they scattered in the isolation of their service? He was not without pride; he understood that to speak of one's goals in public was to risk humiliation if one failed.

  But not to speak was to hide, a hedge against failure, a nod to that sense of possible shame; it served neither his goal nor his growing sense of what he would make of himself.

  "I understand that the goals of any adult shift with time and circumstance. That the man or woman I choose to serve now may walk a path, a decade from now, that without my service would be reprehensible to me. But I'm arrogant enough to believe that with my service that path might never be walked."

  "Oh? And you believe you will have that influence?"

  "Yes. Why else would I spend three years of my life slaving as your student?"

  Others in the room chuckled, their mirth little eddies in the undertow of his words.

  "If you've learned to have that much influence in three years, you might consider replacing me at the front of the class," Ellerson replied dryly.

  He heard another rush of chuckles, like wind in the leaves; he was the tree. Here, above stone floor, within stone walls, beneath beams cut from trees long dead, he was at the center of the life he had never thought, as a terrified and grief-driven young boy, to live. The screams of the dead were mercifully absent.

  "I will serve a lord I admire. My years here have taught me that those men and women do exist in positions of power, although I would not have believed it in my youth."

  On the steps of the guild, his hand on one of three doors, Morretz accepted the fact that he would never escape his youth; that it had fashioned him, in the way the maker-born fashion stone and wood—a simple statement of life, arresting in its detail, no matter how much pain went into the making. He wondered if the ability to capture life, and not its pallid fancy, was the real reason that Artisans—the most powerful of the maker-born—always went mad.

  He accepted his past. No, he accepted the slaughter of his family, his friends, the burning of the farms in the township. He accepted the circumstances which had made an uneasy, a terrible, ally of the man he had sworn he would one day destroy.

  Accepted it, then shied away from it.

  He opened the door. Walked into the Hall of the Domicis.

  An easy life would not have led him to the guild; a simple life would never have led him, in the end, to Amarais Handernesse ATerafin.

  Amarais.

  "I will find such a patris. And such a man or woman will understand that admiration is a burden, a geas they accept when they accept my services. Service such as we have been trained to perform is not a simple, one-way affair, not a simple exchange of money for goods."

  For the first time, Ellerson spoke, not breaking the monologue, but adding to it, a harmony to the melody. "There is a reason the guild interviews those who choose to inquire about the services of a domicis; a reason why more than half of the men and women who come are ultimately disappointed. Go on. Go on, Morretz, of no family and no House save this one."

  "I am not interested in making history." He rose, as if height gave strength to the words. Or as if it would give him strength to finish them. "But I am interested in history." He turned to the shadow; to the youth that had scarred him, had decided which path he would take and which he would reject.

  "I am interested in a history that does not repeat itself for me, for mine, for those who, helpless, were like us, and are like us now."

  He bowed his head. "There exist men and women—besides the Kings—who have at heart that goal; who understand the life I lived and the lives I lost; who will work against such a loss with a skill I do not possess." There. Spoken. Out loud. A skill I do not possess. "And when I find that person, I will make them strong; I will be shield if they choose battle, and I will be healer if they are injured by it. I will give my life to their life so they can give their life to their cause."

  Ellerson bowed his head a moment; it shocked Morretz into silence.

  But when his teacher raised that familiar face, his smile was a shallow curve of lips. "There is one problem, of course."

  "Sir?"

  "By strict guild rules, it is the guildmaster who will choose the lords you may serve."

  Morretz's smile was shallow for a different reason, although the expressions, young and old, were similar. "Of course. But by guild law, the right of refusal is mine."

  "Indeed. And you may say no to Guildmaster Akalia— but I will warn you in advance that I never have."

  Days later—maybe weeks, as at this remove the passage of time had become a stream rather than a discrete measure—the guildmaster had summoned him.

  Akalia was not a pretty woman; not a patrician woman. But she was a power in her own right, and only a fool could have failed to accord her the respect she was due.

  He had been foolish at times as a student, but had never been a fool.

  He had been offered the service of three members of the patriciate, all born to power, and all within the ranks of The Ten; none at their head. He had refused two by the simple expedient of asking Akalia for her assessment of their goals.

  But the third…

  The third had been so intriguing. She came and interviewed him, and then adjourned, saying that she wished— with the permission of the guildmaster—to conduct the remainder of the interview at the heart of her small home. That had been humor, although he had failed to note it at the time. She had tested him, showing, by such a test, that she understood that if she offered, and he accepted, her contract, it would be binding; permanent.

  Service. Loyalty. Duty.

  He made his way not through the halls in which he had lived and studied, but to the halls in which he might meet the men and women who had passed whatever tests were set them by their inscrutable or irascible instructors.

  There, he took a seat, staring into the knots and dyes of a tapestry that told the story of someone else's life.

  He rose from the comfort of soft leather, his hand raised in greeting, as the older—almost old enough to be old— man approached. At some point in his life he had become the unthinkable: this man's peer. In a classroom a lifetime away, the thought that they would be peers had never occurred to Morretz, although with the simple application of reason and logic, it should have seemed inevitable. Which brought him quietly to this conclusion: nothing in life was simple; all answers were arrived at the way Morretz himself had learned to arrive at any conclusion: in the grace of uncertainty, in the balance, intricate and unending, between the experiences of the past and the changing goals of the future.

  Unending? As the older man drew close Morretz, domicis to Amarais, The Terafin, realized that even that was inaccurate.

  "Morretz," Ellerson said quietly. "I received your message."

  "You are looking well."

  The man considered by most to be the future head of the guild frowned. "Your manners are impeccable. Either that or your eyesight leaves something to be desired, a certain sign that you've finally begun to approach the age of reason. I had occasionally despaired of that possibility."

  Morretz smiled. It had been years since he had
offered anyone this particular smile; too many. The Terafin's life did not lend itself to such ordinary affection.

  The smile dimmed.

  "You know I've retired."

  "You've retired before."

  "I'm not currently teaching."

  He started to say something light and clever; the words didn't even reach his lips. Everything on which a lifetime was founded had shifted, and not to his liking. "Not teaching? May I ask why?"

  "No."

  He expected this answer; in truth, he had asked the question only to buy himself time. "You know why I'm here."

  "No, although I assume you want to waste my time with a request I'm going to turn down. People seldom visit just to be social."

  "You would have them hanged for wasting your time."

  It was the old man's turn to laugh. "I've almost missed you, Morretz. Our brightest always seem to choose a contract more binding than marriage."

  "You never did."

  "I was never considered among the brightest," was the dry reply. "But I have found satisfaction in the people I have served, and I have learned much."

  "Enough satisfaction that you might be willing to do so again?"

  "Serve? Perhaps you're not as bright as I thought. Does the expression 'retire' or the infinitive 'to retire' mean nothing to the young?" His eyes harrowed. "Is that why you've come?"

  "Yes. But you knew that."

  Ellerson shrugged. "Perhaps. But my stated intent—retirement—should be treated with a modicum of respect. Who do you feel merits such service?"

  "Someone you may or may not remember." If he ever forgot anything. "Not a person of power. Not a leader; not technically a person at all."

  For the first time since he'd sat so heavily at Morretz's side, Ellerson lifted a brow. "Not a person?"

  "No."

  "I see… You are a guild member. You are aware of the rules that govern the organization. Not a person?"

  Morretz nodded.

  "Although there are no rules against accepting the contract of something nonhuman, I must assume, given your current involvement in Terafin, that you are not asking me to serve something demonic—and anything else, if it exists outside of children's story—does not require service. Therefore I must assume that you are asking me to serve an institution."

  Morretz shook his head. "I may have foolishly decided to go beyond these walls decades ago, but I did not entirely take leave of my senses. I do not ask you to serve a House, except as I have done: as it serves the interests of those you serve.

  "I ask you to consider serving a… family."

  "Morretz."

  "I would ask another but I am bound by two considerations. First, the family in question is difficult. The last stranger that was thrust upon them from the outside took five years to gain their trust. If they are to—to prosper, they will not have that time."

  "Second?"

  "You are the only man who would consider accepting this task. I asked them to choose from among themselves an individual whom I could present to the guild as a possible candidate for the service of a domicis. Their response was unanimous: No. They have a leader who has already been accepted, and they will do nothing to supersede her."

  Ellerson was not a stupid man!

  "She's gone."

  Morretz had so many questions to ask; he asked none. "Yes."

  "And… her domicis?"

  "From all reports, they disappeared together."

  The older man looked, for a moment, old. "They were in the Common." It was not a question.

  "From the scant information we've been able to gather, yes. But their bodies were not among the fallen." And you know this. Morretz had personally delivered The Terafin's report to Akalia. She had taken it without comment; no reply had been requested.

  For a moment, Avandar's name hung between them, an accusation that had never been given voice. It was Ellerson who looked away, looked down at his hands as if he had been asked to complete a surgeon's most delicate work long after the steadiness of youth had deserted him.

  "I will think on it, Morretz."

  "Ellerson."

  "I said—"

  Morretz lifted a hand. "Years ago, I answered your question."

  "Which question?"

  "You asked me why."

  "Why?"

  "Hide behind your age with someone who has time and less wit."

  "Ah." Ellerson's smile was sharp, brief. "That question. You're wrong, of course. You didn't answer my question; you answered your own."

  "You asked it."

  "Did I?"

  "Yes."

  "Memory," the old man said softly, "is tricky. I have learned two things from it. One: that without meaningful memories, there is no life. Two: that we are desperate for our lives to make sense, to have meaning—and at a great enough remove, all memory is malleable.

  "Perhaps I asked you a question. Perhaps I asked you the question you remember so clearly.

  "But perhaps I ask that question every year, day in and day out, looking over the rolls of students who I know, from the moment they enter those doors," he inclined his head toward not the right or the left, but the center, and his lips curved slightly when his gaze returned to Morretz of the Guild of the Domicis, "will fail. Perhaps I ask it, and every student answers it, and that answer has meaning and purpose to them, and them alone.

  "Or perhaps to their peers as well. I have taught so many, my memory blurs the boundaries of students from year to year." He began to rise.

  And to Morretz' surprise, a hand prevented him from leaving the long chair. His own. His skin was pale; protected, as The Terafin was protected, from the vagaries of sun and wind. It looked odd against the deep, brown-green of Ellerson's attire. He had seen those robes year in and out, but he had never touched them before.

  You don't remember? He felt, for a moment, that part of his life was unraveling, like a tapestry whose story has become merely long, faded thread. He had defined himself in some ways by that moment. "What of you, Ellerson? Why have you chosen to serve?"

  A darker hand covered his; lifted the fingers from cloth that should have remained untouched. "I answered that question in my own time, for my own teacher," the older man said sternly. "And there is a reason that I told you, when you chose to answer publicly, that the answer was yours, to give or to conceal."

  He rose, unhindered. "You showed courage; I have always been impressed by either your stupidity or your commitment. Perhaps both, Wait here, Morretz, if you can. Wait an hour."

  "But I—"

  "Wait."

  22nd of Scaral 427 AA

  Terafin Manse

  Finch worked in the kitchen. She worked at the table, the lamp burning, the papers stacked neatly in a row of escalating urgency. The ink blotter was almost unmarked, the quill unsavaged by a too heavy hand, the desk unstained by the spill of a hundred different bottles. In every possible way it was the opposite of Jay's desk.

  But it was the only space in the wing that reminded her of Jay; the only place in which Finch felt her presence. If she could have summoned that familiarity from the comfort of her own rooms, she would have; she had chosen, four years ago, a desk that she loved when a carpenter's rich client had declined it because he didn't quite care for the stain he had chosen. This craftsman's masterpiece had places for paper, for quill, for ink; it had three small locked drawers in which she might keep sensitive information; it had a shelf, built with a ridged lip, upon which the few volumes Finch now owned might be carefully placed. Arann and Angel had almost broken their backs carrying the desk into her room; the workmen had offered their help, but she didn't feel comfortable having strangers in the wing. Old habits; she was half afraid they would steal something.

  Kalliaris knew that she would have, more than a decade ago.

  But it didn't matter; that desk, which was her pride, was in her room, and this table, the table that had always been the center of the war room—the kitchen—was where she had chosen to take up pen; t
o read agreements, to attempt, in as much as it was even possible, to be Jewel ATerafin's aide, not Jay's little urchin.

  And Jewel ATerafin's aide sat looking at a lovely invitation from Elonne ATerafin. It had not yet been placed in a pile; it sat in the space between hands placed palm down on the wooden tabletop in an attempt to still their shaking. Elonne's handwriting was so perfect it might have been an act of enchantment and not pen and ink; her paper was fine and smooth, her seal exact. It was almost impossible to believe the seal was the same as the one Finch was entitled to use—-did use—it was so perfectly proportioned when it rested in blue wax.

  Elonne was one of the House Council. Finch was one of Jay's den. They never talked, except in passing, and there hadn't been much of that; Elonne handled a different part of the House affairs, and she and Jay were about as different as two people could be and still have anything in common. The House. Gender.

  You can't say no, Teller had said.

  You can't say yes, Carver countered. You know Haerrad's been watching us all like a hawk. He only needs an excuse.

  He didn't need much to have me run down.

  Yeah, well, he didn't have you killed. Jay was here. He wouldn't have dared.

  They wouldn't be asking any of us for anything // Jay were here.

  They want you to sell her, Angel said at last, a part of the discussion because he was as much a part of the den as Jay herself, but apart from it because he'd chosen not to be ATerafin, and he could afford to ignore the politics.

  They'd looked at her. She'd wished, then, that she wasn't sitting in Jay's chair. Promised herself she'd never do it again. It was hard to fill that damn chair, and the chair itself was hard on the butt.

  She hadn't answered.

  They, cowards all, left the decision hanging.

  And it still was, the perfect words of the invitation an accusation of either cowardice, incompetence, or both.

  "Jay," she said, out loud. "Jay, damn you, damn you damn you. Tell me what to do. I don't know this woman, and she might rule the damn House if we can't be careful enough. If you don't come back. Jay, help me."