“This one is. The others were not.” He frowned. “I have always disliked the idea that servants are to be invisible in precisely this fashion. The entire manse is no doubt riddled with narrow back halls—all of which cannot be guarded.”
Haval inclined his head. “It is a problem faced in Avantari, as well. Thus far, the Kings have failed to be assassinated by their servants—or those who attempt to infiltrate their ranks. They have also notably failed to die when assassins have attempted to utilize those corridors.”
“Thank you,” was the unappreciative response. “I assume your career as a tailor means you no longer play in those corridors.”
“I never played in those corridors, Andrei. You are concerned, one assumes, for reasons that are not obvious to anyone who pauses to think for half a second?”
“I am. The woman in this room is your wife, is she not?”
“She is.”
“Were she mine, I would have her moved.”
Haval offered no argument. “Do you consider the danger theoretical?”
“All danger before the fact is theoretical. If you intend to involve yourself in Terafin affairs, be concerned, Haval.”
“I am now concerned. What do you fear?”
“Let us return to Hectore. I wish to ask The Terafin for permission to open this door.”
Haval did not point out that permission had not been necessary on any other occasion. “The right-kin’s books.”
“Those as well.”
* * *
Hectore, Jewel decided, would be amused and jovial on a battlefield. His momentary discomfiture upon hearing that Haval was in residence in the Wing might have been a trick of a tired imagination; he greeted Haval as if he were an acquaintance of long-standing. His was one of the richest merchant houses on the Isle, and he was a powerful member of the Merchants’ Guild. Yet he did not cleave to the social distinctions that both Avandar and Ellerson so prized; not for Hectore the invisible, nameless servant.
“Andrei?”
Andrei, thus named, seemed to favor Ellerson’s school of thought: he winced when Hectore addressed him. Having been thus addressed, however, he could not slide into the comfortable anonymity of a servant. Jewel felt a twinge of sympathy for him; she knew the feeling well. Of course, in her case, she had desired the Terafin title—a position that all but guaranteed lack of anonymity.
He turned to Jewel and offered her a deep, graceful bow. Nor did he rise until she had bidden him do so. “Terafin.”
“Within these rooms, we seldom stand on ceremony,” she began.
Avandar cleared his throat. Loudly.
Andrei bowed in turn to Teller. “ATerafin.”
“Andrei,” Hectore said, with more than a touch of impatience. “What, exactly, have you found?”
“I require your permission—and the aid of either your House Mage or your domicis—to remove three books from the right-kin’s personal collection. I have—without permission, removed two items from the rooms of Finch ATerafin; I do not intend to keep them or destroy them, but if I have overstepped the bounds of the examination, I will return them immediately to your keeping.”
Jewel felt a twinge of unease. She had been off-balance for all of the day, with the possible exception of the last half hour in the meeting of The Ten. She had no vision to guide her—not in this. Never in this. She resented her talent deeply on those occasions when ignorance was a danger.
It was a danger now.
“I also feel that the entirety of the desk in the right-kin’s personal rooms requires replacement. I will—with your permission—arrange for the replacement. In size and shape, the desk will be roughly similar. In function, there will be no notable difference.”
Teller opened his mouth and shut it again, because Haval lifted his hand and signed. It was den-sign. It was wrong. It was a language that did not belong in the hands of men who had not lived—and lost—in the streets of holdings so poor life was often a matter of staving off death for as long as one possibly could.
Ellerson, Jewel knew, could read den-sign. But his great dignity and his pride in his role as servant had prevented him from speaking in the silent tongue.
Haval seldom angered Jewel. He made her uneasy, he made her feel stupid, he made her feel insignificant and sometimes incompetent. But anger? No. She was surprised, then, to feel angry now.
But she said—and did—nothing, although the desire to lift her own hands and pointedly offer her opinion in den-sign was searing, it was so strong.
“That will, of course, be acceptable,” Teller was saying. “I am less sanguine about the