freely in their presence. They were still wary of the House Guard, but that made sense.
Angel returned from his room with two things he’d failed to bring to the kitchen: the first, a sword. The second, a companion. The companion looked only vaguely familiar to Jewel. He was tall, wide, bearded; his hair was pulled back from his face in what she presumed was a Northern braid; he had the look of Arrend about his jaw and eyes. He carried an ax, on the other hand; it was a sizable and impressive weapon, and it did nothing to make him seem harmless.
“With your permission,” Angel said, in Weston that sounded far too formal, “Terrick will accompany us to the shrine, and then, to the library.” His smile folded into an awkward expression. “That ax came from the armory that used to be an office. He won’t use it until he sees where it came from.”
Jewel nodded, made awkward and stilted by the presence of a stranger. Angel wasn’t likewise encumbered. But Terrick walked behind, with the Chosen; Angel walked by her side. Shadow, she sent off to Ariel’s room, because she knew the girl would desperately miss the cat when they left.
She just didn’t consider it wise to leave the cats behind if she wasn’t present.
* * *
The walk to the House shrine involved walking past the three shrines erected to the Triumvirate: the shrine to Cormaris, lord of Wisdom, Reymaris, lord of Justice, and the Mother. Tonight, Jewel stopped to say a brief prayer at each, although she knew that the words she spoke wouldn’t reach the gods. Angel waited, but did not offer like prayers. He looked slightly nervous but also determined.
She wondered what it was about.
But when she climbed the stairs to the altar at the heart of the small House shrine, she knew. He removed his scabbarded sword from his belt beneath the well-tended lamps that provided light, and he laid it upon the altar.
“My hair,” he said, “marked me as a retainer of Weyrdon. My father was Weyrdon’s man. He was sent into the Empire to fulfill a quest that Weyrdon himself didn’t fully understand, and I—I was meant to take it up when he died before he had completed it.
“And I did. And I have.”
“What—what quest?”
“To find, in the Empire, a worthy Lord. A Lord for whom I would lay down my life gladly and without hesitation. When The Terafin offered us all the House Name, I wouldn’t take it. I told you then—”
“That you wouldn’t become ATerafin until and unless I was The Terafin. I remember.”
“Yes. Because I’d found the only person I was willing to follow.”
“Angel—”
“I know. You know. You’ve always known. But even if I knew, I couldn’t let go of the Weyrdon crown. It defined me. It was part of who I was.”
“And now?”
“Nothing of me belongs to Weyrdon. I know I’m not always impressive,” he added, but without self-consciousness, “but I understand you. I know who you are and what you want. I won’t always agree, but blind obedience isn’t part of service.” He dropped to one knee, which Jewel found painfully awkward.
“Angel, don’t.”
“I have to,” he said gravely. “Terafin, I, Angel, son of Garroc, offer you my oathsworn service.” He said it without a trace of embarrassment, the gravity of his perfect tone eradicating his unnatural position. Closing his eyes, he took the scabbard and hilt in separate hands and drew the blade.
It was black.
Beneath the lamps in the shrine, it reflected no light at all.
Avandar was not at Jewel’s side, but she felt him stiffen at a distance. “That sword came from the war room.”
Angel nodded. It didn’t, to his eyes, look like much of a sword at all; it looked like tarnished, neglected silver—but worse. “Until tonight, I’ve been unable to draw it from its scabbard.” He hesitated, and then, without expression, drew the edge of the blade across his palm.
No matter what the sword looked like, its edge was sharp enough, clean enough, to cut. “I don’t know what the House Name requires,” he said. “But in the North, such an oath is made—and affirmed—in blood.”
Jewel wasn’t from the North. Neither, in any real sense, was Angel. But Terrick waited at the foot of the shrine, watching, his gaze hooded and nearly unblinking. There was a story in his presence here; Jewel felt that he had come to bear witness.
And it was not, after all, the first time she had accepted an oath such as