my apologies in advance. The Ten meet in Avantari on the morrow, and the office of the right-kin is in transition. If I were not certain to receive both messages and visitors that the House cannot safely dismiss, I would retreat from the office and call upon the House Council. That luxury at the moment is not given to any member of this House.”
Rymark bowed. Before Jewel could pass him—and it would have been hard, as the Chosen hadn’t budged an inch—he rose. “I wish to speak with you at your earliest convenience, Terafin. I have much to say.”
If he offered to turn evidence against his father in the House Council, Jewel would kill him herself. Or, worse—far worse in some ways—she would allow him to be killed. She would allow it to be arranged. She’d even ask that it be done. The grief at losing Gabriel faltered at the sudden incandescence of her rage; her hands, hanging loosely by her sides, stiffened. For a full three breaths, she found no reply to tender, because speaking—at all—would have alerted any occupants of the waiting room behind the closed doors of her utter loss of control.
“Make an appointment,” she finally managed to say.
He stepped back. “The information,” he said, his voice still soft, his posture still shorn of the edge of arrogance, “involves the Shining Court.”
Before she could reply, he turned and left, and she let him go because the enormity of his statement left no room for thought. When thought returned, she was once again in a hall that was empty of anyone save herself, her domicis, and the Chosen. And Angel, who had watched Rymark’s back until a corner carried it completely out of sight.
Avandar, he said the Shining Court, didn’t he?
He did.
Her hands curled in fists, she approached the office doors. Avandar opened them for her, and she entered.
* * *
The waiting room was not as crowded as she had expected, given Rymark’s appearance in the hall. It was not, however, empty. Three Priests, in the robes worn by the most senior members of the Cathedral of the Triumvirate on the Isle, were seated. They had no attendants, and given the colors of their robes, this was unusual. Two men and one woman rose as she entered. She offered them a deep bow. They had eyes of brown—brown and blue. They were not god-born. But they served the Exalted directly.
Torvan had said that among the casualties inflicted by the Kialli before his sudden flight, there had been Priests. She therefore approached the Priests seated in waiting with quiet, but obvious respect. She didn’t really love the Priests, and she didn’t understand the varied layers of the hierarchies of the Cathedrals on the Isle—or off the Isle, if it came to that—but in this case, that understanding wasn’t necessary. If Priests had been injured—if Priests had, as Torvan reported, died at the hands of the demon lord—they suffered the loss of a colleague, and quite likely a friend.
It was a loss she understood, but could not directly address, not yet. She bowed, instead. A bow was not a strict necessity, but she made it serve in the place of the words she could not, without a formal report, utter. The Priests rose as she did. They did not wear robes of uniform color; nor did they wear the usual dress robes seen on the customary official visits. One wore robes of earthen brown, one wore robes of neutral gray, and one wore robes the color of rust.
It was the man in earthen brown who spoke. “Terafin.” He bowed, just as she had done. He was not a young man; she thought him perhaps Gabriel’s age. The symbol of the Mother hung from a thick chain around his neck, falling across the robes just beneath his collarbones. There, in gold, wheat lay across two open palms. They were the same open palms that, empty, designated the bearer a member of the Houses of Healing, a reminder of the Mother’s mercy. “I have been sent at the behest of the Exalted of the Mother.”
Jewel nodded. “Will you join me in my office?”
“It is not necessary, Terafin. I am to convey a message, and I am to wait for your reply.”
She glanced at the silent Priests who stood behind him now, like points of a triangle. “Do you also carry messages from the Exalted?” They nodded. “The same message?”
“Yes, Terafin. Your presence is requested in the Hall of Wise Counsel on the