roads were and where they would lead. I can offer warnings—and I will, should you instruct your household to heed them. I am not, as you have always understood, mortal.
“But if I feel no particular attachment to mortals as a concept, or mortality as a condition, it is my desire to hold this city while Sigurne lives. I can, as you suspect, offer aid to your kin; there is, as Viandaran suspects, a danger. But I am more subtle than the Sleepers, and I am awake.
“The action is not without cost to me. Were I to accompany you on your journey, I might see and know the truth of your offer; I will not. Bring me some proof that your intent is not the daydream of a foolish girl, and I will do everything within my power to preserve this one, mortal life.”
“I need you to do it now,” she said, voice low. “I can’t wait—”
“You can. You have little choice in the matter. You do not trust me, and in this, you are to be commended. I, likewise, do not trust you. I trust your intent. I believe you to be Sen in the most ancient of ways known to man. But these lands are not likewise ancient, and you are not what man was when the Cities of Man ruled the vast majority of your kind.
“I will remain in residence in your library in your absence. I may spend some time patrolling your forests, if that is also acceptable. I believe there have been some mundane difficulties within the House and its environs, and I will make myself available should the right-kin require advice or the services it is legal for members of the Order to render.
“Matters of the Houses—and even the Kings—have no bearing, for the moment on this book, the statuary in Avantari, or the whole of your library. I am therefore at liberty to pursue the continued survival of your House in a manner that will offer no cause for complaint.”
She stared at him. Carver. “ . . . Is there anything you require? If you wish to move your belongings from the Order—”
He waved a hand. “I will, of course, move belongings of significance to me. I do not require Terafin baggage handling—or babysitting.”
“Jewel,” Haval said, lifting his arm.
This time, she bit back anger and pain and hope, and she accepted the wordless command.
* * *
Haval did not speak a word as they walked through the public galleries. He did pause once or twice to glance at a painting, as he walked in the slow, stately way an elderly man of patrician bearing would. Jewel was forced to match his pace; to stop when he stopped and to walk when he continued to move.
She found it frustrating, and was certain he knew it. Shadow found it boring. Haval acknowledged his boredom with a smile and a grave nod, neither of which ruffled the cat’s feathers. She had originally asked Shadow to remain with Meralonne; Shadow practiced selective deafness. He failed to hear the request.
She failed to make it a command. There was very little Meralonne could do in the library that would threaten her House. Or rather, very little that he would. The time might come—would come, she feared—when that would no longer be the case.
Haval led her to the West Wing, and she was almost ashamed to find his presence a necessary comfort. She could not stop her hand from shaking.
She was a coward. She did not want to go to her den, to call kitchen, and to tell them what she had seen. She did not want them to face the days—the weeks—of waiting. They had done this before, in the darkest of the shadows of her past: they had lost Lefty, lost Fisher. In House Terafin, they had been safe from those disappearances, those shadowy losses.
She had brought them back.
“Jewel,” Haval said softly.
She nodded; she didn’t meet his gaze. She took deep, even breaths, forced her shoulders to fall, and lifted her chin. She was The Terafin, until she reached the West Wing. She was Jay when the doors closed at her back—but not until then. Nor did Haval otherwise admonish her. He served as an anchor as she returned to the West Wing.
* * *
When the doors opened, Jewel froze beneath their frame. Shadow, bored, nearly knocked her over as he pushed her to the side. “Why are you standing there?” he asked, as he sauntered over to the only