then turned to Torvan and said, “Shall I work out the guard details?”
When Torvan failed to reply, he continued. “She is right, as are you. But she is The Terafin.”
“She is taking an unnecessary risk.”
“She is taking a risk she feels is necessary.”
The other Chosen were content to let their captains speak in their stead—but their stance and expressions made clear that they were in agreement with their captains.
“We are not The Terafin; we serve her. If she is committed—and Torvan, she is—we put our energy into minimizing the risks she feels it necessary to take.”
Torvan opened his mouth, but this time he closed it without ejecting further words. He then left the room with Arrendas, and after forty-five minutes, four Chosen entered the room and took up their positions around the mouth of the splintered closet. Jewel had forbidden its removal, although she feared the way would never be open again—not through that door.
It was not as hard to sleep in a room full of armed guards as she feared it might be; they were hers, after all, and she had spent half her life sleeping in far more crowded rooms.
Shadow, however, was not amused to see them, and made it known.
* * *
Avandar was waiting, and at Avandar’s side, one of the servants, an older woman whose name escaped the fragmented memory dreams left in their wake. Shadow was on the bed. He wasn’t precisely sitting on her, but he was sitting on the counterpane, and she couldn’t easily move. It was a blessing.
It was a blessing she couldn’t afford.
“Shadow,” Avandar said.
Shadow nonchalantly climbed down. He did not, however, stray far from Jewel’s side as she slid out from beneath the covers and into the waking world. The closet door—the door Avandar had splintered in his haste to make room for the Chosen—and himself—to follow her into the darkness, had not yet been replaced; its splintered ruins were a reminder she didn’t need.
Four of the Chosen were standing in front of it.
“It is a closet,” he told her quietly. “No more.”
She stiffened. She stiffened, but did not immediately run to the closet. Instead, she put herself into the hands of a woman who was not Ellerson, understanding what Avandar did not say: she was to meet with the Kings and the Exalted this morn, and if by some small miracle her death was not instantly demanded, she would spend the rest of the day fencing with The Ten.
Carver.
She inhaled. Exhaled. She moved to the dresser where the servant was waiting in a starched silence not even Ellerson could maintain. She put her appearance into the hands of a stranger as Avandar laid out the layers of clothing she was expected, as Terafin, to wear.
The knock at the door surprised her; the Chosen answered.
Teller was let into the room after clearly stating his business.
“Is there word from Avantari?” she asked, facing the mirror while her hair was tortured, with steam and oil, into an entirely unnatural shape.
He shook his head, and met her gaze across the reflective surface of silvered glass. She raised her hands in careful den-sign. His remained by his sides.
She was The Terafin. He was her chosen right-kin. They were to meet with the Kings as near-equals, and it mattered. But not in the way she imagined it would. Carver was gone. Her only comfort—and it was scant—was that she did not, as she had in the case of Lefty, know that he was dead. Her peculiar instinct, the talent for which she was so highly prized that she had been adopted into Terafin and made a member of its House Council at the age of sixteen, told her nothing.
She was afraid that nothing was the best she could hope for.
Teller handed her a small stack of papers, which, given the ministrations of her attendant, she couldn’t actually read. “Beyond the expected, is there an emergency buried in this stack?”
“No. There are some concerns with The Morriset’s recent ventures and the Royal Trade Commission; Darias has filed paperwork with the Port Authority about ‘irregularities’ in the manifestos of two of our shipping partners.”
Jewel nodded. Neither of these difficulties were substantial enough to justify a full Council meeting in the Halls in Avantari. Teller knew it as well.
“The last reports,” he said, “do not involve trade concessions, demands, or accusations.”
“So they’re worse.”
“They’re worse.”
“Avantari?”
“It was surprisingly difficult to acquire accurate information about the structural changes within the palace; the pillars and the foundations are, however, visible to any