this with blood of her own. “You will be ATerafin?”
“While you live. Only while you live.”
She held out her hand. In the light of the shrine, against her palm, she could see the single line that was Celleriant’s oath; white, healed, but part of the geography of her palm. Angel offered her the sword’s hilt; she took it. The hilt was wrapped in leather; it was warm, but simple. She hoped that the sword did not feel the need to cut off her hand; she was far more aware of Meralonne’s opinion of the blade than she had been when she had given Angel almost nonchalant permission to go into the room and find a weapon that suited him.
She made the cut, and he brought his left hand down upon hers. As their hands joined, the sword began to glow. The black surface of its flat vanished, like shadow destroyed by strong light. It was not Meralonne’s sword; not Celleriant’s. It didn’t look like an impressive, magical blade. But in the instant that Jewel pronounced Angel ATerafin, in some odd blend of Northern custom and House custom, it looked whole, new, perfect.
“Does it speak to you?” she asked, as she lifted her hand.
“Not yet,” he replied, as he took the hilt from her. He drew a cloth to wipe the blade’s edge clean, and frowned. There was no blood on the blade.
There was, Jewel saw, no blood on his hands—and none at all on hers.
“I am so grateful,” she said, quietly enough that it barely carried to Angel, “that I won’t have to choose one of those damn weapons.”
* * *
Terrick said nothing.
He said nothing when Angel drew the blade he had been, until that moment, unable to draw. He said nothing when Angel cut his palm and extended his bleeding hand. Nor did he speak when The Terafin took his weapon and made a like cut in her own. He might have pointed out to Angel that the customs of the South did not include—and did not privilege—blood; that instead binding oaths were legal documents.
He didn’t. He listened. He bore witness. He remembered his youth. He remembered standing, as Angel now stood, before Garroc—a man he had detested on first sight; a man he had been so loath to trust. Yet in the end, Garroc had become the center of his life: the man he was willing to follow and to serve.
Garroc had not, at that time, found a Lord he was willing to offer such a binding oath. And when he had, Terrick had been angry. Angry and, yes, a little afraid. He was sworn to Garroc; what would become of Terrick when Garroc was absorbed into Weyrdon’s service?
He remembered Garroc’s oath of allegiance; he remembered Garroc’s hour of cursing the first time he had attempted to tend his own hair, to style it in the Weyrdon crown. Garroc had been fastidious about braiding—unbound hair was a hazard in combat—but the Weyrdon hair? He vented his considerable spleen at the pretension of it. At the stupidity of it. But he accepted it as a necessity if he wished to make his allegiance known. And he did, in the end.
But he had taken his hair down to leave Weyrdon and begin a fruitless quest in the Southern Empire of which Arrend was only theoretically a part. He had walked away from public honor and public oaths. He had walked away from everyone.
Only Terrick had followed, but he could not follow Garroc into Kalakar; he could not follow Garroc into the Southern skirmishes, although he tried. Nor could he, in the end, follow Garroc into exile in the Free Towns.
And it was exile. Garroc found a woman, married her, and began to farm. The great quest that had caused his public disgrace—and the private disgrace of failure—was abandoned. He could not return to Weyrdon as a failure.
Garroc died a failure in the Free Towns at the Empire’s borders. And his only child, Angel, arrived in Averalaan, wearing the Weyrdon crown on his head, and on his sleeve, an anger and resentment against Weyrdon that was second only to Terrick’s. Terrick had feared the consequences of the presumption of styling himself of Weyrdon. But Weyrdon had—against all hope—accepted Angel’s hair as a profound gesture of respect for Garroc. For Garroc and his quest.
Years, Terrick had waited. Years, he’d worked behind the wicket of the Port Authority, growing older and more gray as the time passed. Garroc’s death had not released him;