Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (22 page)

"You were always too clever by half," he said, the smile still lingering in the corners of a mouth that was usually caught in a thin line or a frown. "But let me turn it around. I have spent years waiting for you to resolve the complexities of a difficult answer."

Morretz nodded. "I have."

Expressions defined a man; Ellerson's, brow and lip lifted in something akin to mockery, was proof, if it were needed, of that truth. Time had gentled it, the way salt and storms will take the sharpest lines from harbor statues which possess no magical blessing, but it remained, a blending of skepticism, reproval, and a vague hint that approval could still, with Cartanian dedication, be won. It sometimes was. "That, in the end, is all that is required. Would you share that resolution with us?"

The class was silent. The stiffness of tables and chairs had given way over the years—when the students had proved their knowledge of the many idiosyncrasies the guild considered law—to an environment that was, in theory, less formal.

It was certainly more threatening.

"Understand," Ellerson added softly, "that that was a genuine request; I will not compel you to divulge what is private."

"But you asked."

"Yes. I am an old man." It hadn't been true, not then, but it was one of the many phrases he wore, masklike, in conversation. "I'm curious to know what it is you feel you have learned."

"If it was simple curiosity, you would have asked me in private."

"Perhaps," Ellerson had replied gravely, "your reaction to the nature of the request in the presence of your peers will tell me more about what you've gleaned from our lessons than the answer itself."

Morretz, sitting in the Great Hall as a visitor, as a man who had passed all the tests it was possible to pass, remembered that moment clearly.

He had reached for a cut crystal goblet; water sluiced up its side as he lifted it. The sun that filtered in through long narrow windows, cut by lead and colored by glass, was nonetheless bright enough to cut across the surface of the water in a sharp, bright spray of color, the glimmering of a deity seen through merely mortal eyes.

He took a breath and set the water down, seeing, as the glass passed into the shadows cast by his shoulders, some glimmer of his own reflection. He knew then that he would speak. After all, what he would say out loud in this room, in front of these men, would never be said again, although he would return to it, like a pilgrim, as the years tested his resolve with experiences, some very bitter. How could he speak of his own goals in such a direct fashion where his lord might hear them, without becoming akin to peer, rather than remaining a domicis?

And what, in the end,
was
a domicis, and was it—like parenthood was reputed to be—a thing that a man could only understand when he finally became one? Or was it something he made of himself? Was it something that was denned individually, between a lord and a domicis, in a privacy much like a marriage? None of the answers were as clear to him as he had always desired they be… but one thing was.

Commitment.

For a moment, in that hall, beneath the weight of questions that had plagued him for three years, he felt it, like a whisper of foreknowledge:
this
was what he would do with his life, and his life
would count
. Not by any accident of fate—for Kalliaris had been brutally unkind to him, and he did not trust her whim—but by his own determination; by the decision not to be deterred or distracted.

And what better way to confirm it than to speak it aloud to the only peers he would have, no matter how far they scattered in the isolation of their service? He was not without pride; he understood that to speak of one's goals in public was to risk humiliation if one failed.

But not to speak was to hide, a hedge against failure, a nod to that sense of possible shame; it served neither his goal nor his growing sense of what he would make of himself.

"I understand that the goals of any adult shift with time and circumstance. That the man or woman I choose to serve now may walk a path, a decade from now, that
without my service
would be reprehensible to me. But I'm arrogant enough to believe that with my service that path might never be walked."

"Oh? And you believe you will have that influence?"

"Yes. Why else would I spend three years of my life slaving as your student?"

Others in the room chuckled, their mirth little eddies in the undertow of his words.

"If you've learned to have that much influence in three years, you might consider replacing me at the front of the class," Ellerson replied dryly.

He heard another rush of chuckles, like wind in the leaves; he was the tree. Here, above stone floor, within stone walls, beneath beams cut from trees long dead, he was at the center of the life he had never thought, as a terrified and grief-driven young boy, to live. The screams of the dead were mercifully absent.

"I will serve a lord I admire. My years here have taught me that those men and women do exist in positions of power, although I would not have believed it in my youth."

On the steps of the guild, his hand on one of three doors, Morretz accepted the fact that he would never escape his youth; that it had fashioned him, in the way the maker-born fashion stone and wood—a simple statement of life, arresting in its detail, no matter how much pain went into the making. He wondered if the ability to capture
life
, and not its pallid fancy, was the real reason that Artisans—the most powerful of the maker-born—always went mad.

He accepted his past. No, he accepted the slaughter of his family, his friends, the burning of the farms in the township. He accepted the circumstances which had made an uneasy, a terrible, ally of the man he had sworn he would one day destroy.

Accepted it, then shied away from it.

He opened the door. Walked into the Hall of the Domicis.

An easy life would not have led him to the guild; a simple life would never have led him, in the end, to Amarais Handernesse ATerafin.

Amarais.

"I will find such a patris. And such a man or woman will understand that admiration is a burden, a geas they accept when they accept
my
services. Service such as we have been trained to perform is not a simple, one-way affair, not a simple exchange of money for goods."

For the first time, Ellerson spoke, not breaking the monologue, but adding to it, a harmony to the melody. "There is a reason the guild interviews those who choose to inquire about the services of a domicis; a reason why more than half of the men and women who come are ultimately disappointed. Go on. Go on, Morretz, of no family and no House save this one."

"I am not interested in
making
history." He rose, as if height gave strength to the words. Or as if it would give him strength to finish them. "But I
am
interested in history." He turned to the shadow; to the youth that had scarred him, had decided which path he would take and which he would reject.

"I am interested in a history that does not repeat itself for me, for mine, for those who, helpless, were like us, and are like us now."

He bowed his head. "There exist men and women—besides the Kings—who have at heart that goal; who understand the life I lived and the lives I lost; who will work against such a loss with a skill I do not possess." There. Spoken. Out loud.
A skill I do not possess
. "And when I find that person, I will make them strong; I will be shield if they choose battle, and I will be healer if they are injured by it. I will give my life to their life so they can give their life to their cause."

Ellerson bowed his head a moment; it shocked Morretz into silence.

But when his teacher raised that familiar face, his smile was a shallow curve of lips. "There is one problem, of course."

"Sir?"

"By strict guild rules, it is the guildmaster who will choose the lords you may serve."

Morretz's smile was shallow for a different reason, although the expressions, young and old, were similar. "Of course. But by guild law, the right of refusal is mine."

"Indeed. And you may say no to Guildmaster Akalia— but I will warn you in advance that
I
never have."

Days later—maybe weeks, as at this remove the passage of time had become a stream rather than a discrete measure—the guildmaster had summoned him.

Akalia was not a pretty woman; not a patrician woman. But she was a power in her own right, and only a fool could have failed to accord her the respect she was due.

He had been foolish at times as a student, but had never been a fool.

He had been offered the service of three members of the patriciate, all born to power, and all within the ranks of The Ten; none at their head. He had refused two by the simple expedient of asking Akalia for her assessment of their goals.

But the third…

The third had been so intriguing. She came and interviewed
him
, and then adjourned, saying that she wished— with the permission of the guildmaster—to conduct the remainder of the interview at the heart of her small home. That had been humor, although he had failed to note it at the time. She had tested him, showing, by such a test, that she understood that if she offered, and he accepted, her contract, it would be binding; permanent.

Service. Loyalty. Duty.

He made his way not through the halls in which he had lived and studied, but to the halls in which he might meet the men and women who had passed whatever tests were set them by their inscrutable or irascible instructors.

There, he took a seat, staring into the knots and dyes of a tapestry that told the story of someone else's life.

He rose from the comfort of soft leather, his hand raised in greeting, as the older—almost old enough to
be
old— man approached. At some point in his life he had become the unthinkable: this man's peer. In a classroom a lifetime away, the thought that they would be peers had never occurred to Morretz, although with the simple application of reason and logic, it should have seemed inevitable. Which brought him quietly to this conclusion: nothing in life was simple; all answers were arrived at the way Morretz himself had learned to arrive at any conclusion: in the grace of uncertainty, in the balance, intricate and unending, between the experiences of the past and the changing goals of the future.

Unending? As the older man drew close Morretz, domicis to Amarais, The Terafin, realized that even that was inaccurate.

"Morretz," Ellerson said quietly. "I received your message."

"You are looking well."

The man considered by most to be the future head of the guild frowned. "Your manners are impeccable. Either that or your eyesight leaves something to be desired, a certain sign that you've finally begun to approach the age of reason. I had occasionally despaired of that possibility."

Morretz smiled. It had been years since he had offered anyone this particular smile; too many. The Terafin's life did not lend itself to such ordinary affection.

The smile dimmed.

"You know I've retired."

"You've retired before."

"I'm not currently teaching."

He started to say something light and clever; the words didn't even reach his lips. Everything on which a lifetime was founded had shifted, and not to his liking. "Not teaching? May I ask why?"

"No."

He expected this answer; in truth, he had asked the question only to buy himself time. "You know why I'm here."

"No, although I assume you want to waste my time with a request I'm going to turn down. People seldom visit just to be social."

"You would have them hanged for wasting your time."

It was the old man's turn to laugh. "I've almost missed you, Morretz. Our brightest always seem to choose a contract more binding than marriage."

"You never did."

"I was never considered among the brightest," was the dry reply. "But I have found satisfaction in the people I have served, and I have learned much."

"Enough satisfaction that you might be willing to do so again?"

"Serve? Perhaps you're not as bright as I thought. Does the expression 'retire' or the infinitive 'to retire' mean nothing to the young?" His eyes harrowed. "Is that why you've come?"

"Yes. But you knew that."

Ellerson shrugged. "Perhaps. But my stated intent—retirement—should be treated with a modicum of respect. Who do you feel merits such service?"

"Someone you may or may not remember." If he ever forgot anything. "Not a person of power. Not a leader; not technically a person at all."

For the first time since he'd sat so heavily at Morretz's side, Ellerson lifted a brow. "Not a person?"

"No."

"I see… You are a guild member. You are aware of the rules that govern the organization. Not a person?"

Morretz nodded.

"Although there are no rules against accepting the contract of something nonhuman, I must assume, given your current involvement in Terafin, that you are not asking me to serve something demonic—and anything else, if it exists outside of children's story—does not require service. Therefore I must assume that you are asking me to serve an institution."

Morretz shook his head. "I may have foolishly decided to go beyond these walls decades ago, but I did not entirely take leave of my senses. I do not ask you to serve a House, except as I have done: as it serves the interests of those you serve.

"I ask you to consider serving a… family."

"Morretz."

"I would ask another but I am bound by two considerations. First, the family in question is difficult. The last stranger that was thrust upon them from the outside took five years to gain their trust. If they are to—to prosper, they will not have that time."

"Second?"

"You are the only man who would consider accepting this task. I asked them to choose from among themselves an individual whom I could present to the guild as a possible candidate for the service of a domicis. Their response was unanimous: No. They have a leader who has already been accepted, and they will do nothing to supersede her."