there was no test, no measure taken. Only when he attempted to draw it from its sheath did the blade resist. He heard no voice, no commandment; it was a weapon.
But it was a weapon he could not draw.
“So there is something to it, after all,” Arrendas observed. “Too bad you can’t use axes.”
Angel grimaced as he put the whole of his weight into his hands; the right on the sheath, the left on the sword’s hilt. Try as he might, he could not separate the two.
“Try a different sword?” Torvan suggested.
“No. It’s this sword, or no sword.” Angel was not seer-born. He couldn’t speak with the certainty that lifted Jay’s pronouncements from the realm of the merely stubborn. But he felt that this was not mere ego on his part. This sword was meant to be his.
But not yet.
He knew what he had to do. He took the ax—which had no sheath—and tucked the sword into his belt. “I’ll leave you both here,” he told the Captains of the Chosen. “I have to head into the city.” He began to walk toward the door, but Torvan called his name, and he halted and turned.
“You are not one of us,” Torvan told him. It was not said with any disdain. “You would never surrender yourself to the Chosen. Arann did. The Chosen serve The Terafin; we exist for no other purpose. But in serving The Terafin, there are rules, regulations, there are hierarchies. The Chosen are a unit. But we are aware of you, Angel. We know what you mean to her. We know what you offer her—even when she doesn’t see it herself.
“The Terafin is not a woman who likes to be beholden to others; nor is she a woman to whom rule comes easily. The Chosen are part of Terafin to your master. They are inextricably linked. Where she goes—and I see, by your decision here, that she will go—the Chosen cannot follow.
“I will argue for it,” he added. “I will demand that she take at least a handful of the Chosen with her. I do not think in the end I will be successful.”
Angel said nothing. He waited, knowing that Torvan had not yet reached the end of a speech that was difficult for him to make.
“You are, therefore, the only one of us who will accompany her.”
“I am not—as you said—of the Chosen.”
“Not hierarchically, no. But in spirit, you are equal to the very best of us. Perhaps you are better. We are proud of the Chosen, Angel. We are proud of what we are in her service. You exist as hers without rank. She will tolerate you. Where she walks, she will take no one but you, if I understand her intent at all.
“We will guard her seat in her absence. We will protect Finch and Teller as if they were The Terafin herself. We will do everything in our power to prevent a House War in her absence; we will hold the home she has vowed to both rule and protect. There is nothing more that we can offer her, and indeed, nothing she would value as much.
“We will do this because it is all she will allow us to do. You will, therefore, stand in our stead.
“Bring her back to us,” the Captain of the Chosen commanded.
13th of Fabril, 428 A.A. Port Authority, Averalaan
Terrick Dumarr was a man of middling years, with more gray than color in hair that had been pale to start with. He had taken on the ruddy complexion of a man who lives by wind and sun, and if his position behind the open window of a wicket in the Port Authority was not unassailable, it was not because of his demeanor; he was still a man whom the Port Authority guards found intimidating if he did not approach them with care.
It was not that he was large or threatening, although with ease he could project size and danger; it was his origins. He was, in their eyes, a friendly barbarian: a man from Arrend, the country of Northern barbarians. Time had softened the edges of the accent with which he spoke Weston; time had given him the experience—and knowledge—with which he might better blend with Averalaan society. But in truth, he had no desire to blend in. He spent some time each weekend in the Temple of Cartanis, and he spent six days a week in this wicket; he spent six days a week eating lunch in the