Oracle: The House War: Book Six (49 page)

She would keep Calliastra, who was walking, inevitable death to those who learned—however possible—to love her.

“I did not venture here to argue with you, sister,” the Oracle said, in her gratingly reasonable tone. “And I offer the warning as a gift to you, in your hour of need.”

Had Calliastra been Duster, the Oracle’s face would bear the marks of her hand. Or worse. And Jewel thought the Oracle knew this.

“You cannot possibly believe that
anyone
here has the power to harm me!”

“I did not speak of harm,” the Oracle replied. “But if it eases you at all, I will. Uncertainty is oft the bane of our kind.”

Calliastra spit shadow.

Jewel lifted a hand. “Oracle,” she said.

Both women—if they were that—turned to look at her. Only the Oracle was smiling.

“Calliastra does not require your warning or your concern.”

“Concern is not a requirement,” the Oracle agreed. “But it is mine to give. As with any gift, any true gift, what is given is gone from the giver; what the gifted chooses to do with it is beyond me. But you must understand, Jewel Markess, that you are Sen.

“There is a reason that the Cities of Man were feared, even by the gods.”

“I hunted in the
streets
of those Cities,” Calliastra said.

“Yes, sister, you did. But you did not—ever—hunt the Sen.”

And Jewel said, “But she did.”

 • • • 

She would have clawed the words back the instant they left her mouth, but that was impossible; they hung in the air as if they hovered on bright, sharp wings. Every eye was turned toward her; she felt, briefly, as if she had stepped into a familiar nightmare, and was now standing naked in the middle of the hall.

The Oracle inclined her head almost graciously at the correction. “So she did.”

Calliastra, however, was staring at Jewel.

“She is seer-born,” the Oracle said, answering the question that the daughter of Allasakar hadn’t asked.

“She sees less than you.”

“I am willing to entertain your polite fictions, and perhaps—if she survives—Jewel Markess will be likewise willing.”

“You think she’s the danger.” The words were flatter. And because they were, they carried far more threat.

“No, sister. Not directly. She is only mortal.”

Calliastra laughed. It was a bitter, bleak sound. It was—gods—Duster’s laugh. “I am the daughter of Allasakar and Laursana. I understand temptation; I understand the price paid if one surrenders to it; who else could understand it so well as I?” Her laughter was low, velvet, and angry. Jewel had heard angry laughter in her life—in politics it was often hard to avoid—but no anger was as raw as Duster’s. Or as deep. “You think that
she
could offer
me
anything that would tempt me to harm or destroy myself?”

The Oracle, perhaps wisely, chose not to answer.

And it was far too late, regardless. She’d insulted Calliastra. Calliastra was not Duster—but for just this minute, she might as well have been. “I am not afraid,” she all but snarled.

No, no, she wouldn’t be. Not of death. Not of pain. Not even of Jewel, not yet. If fear came at all, it would come—as it had for Duster—later. And all Jewel had to do was survive.

A bit hard, when the threat was a god. A bit hard, she thought, when she had so little to offer. Duster had at least needed food, clothing, a roof over her head. What did a god need?

“That, indeed, is the question, is it not?” the Oracle said.

Calliastra couldn’t look more incensed. She didn’t try. Instead, she turned to Jewel. “It appears our discussion will have to be postponed; the nature of all such discussions is private.” Her lips, full and red, curved in a hard, harsh smile at severe odds with the texture of that mouth.

“The Oracle,” Shianne unexpectedly said, “sees all. If it is secrecy you desire—”

“I do not care what the Oracle sees; she is so addled she is barely able to differentiate between reality and possibility.”

“She has no choice; she sees. I don’t think she has any way of averting her gaze.” Jewel was only slightly surprised to realize that the voice was her own.

“Do not think to tell me that she suffers,” Calliastra replied. “She who stands at the heart of all possibilities, and understands, before they occur, what their cost is, large and small.”

“She suffers,” Jewel replied. “She sees the end of all things before even the smallest beginning.”

“I see the end of all things,” was the bitter reply. “And none come to me seeking solace, advice, or wisdom. None come seeking company.” As if becoming aware of the words that had just left her, she straightened. “And I require none of these things.”

Jewel said nothing. The Oracle was likewise silent, her words having had their effect. Calliastra was rigid for another long, held breath, and then she slowly relaxed. “You do not intend to leave us immediately.”

“No, sister; I have come for a purpose, and I have not yet fulfilled it.” She had inserted herself between Jewel and the daughter of darkness; how or when, Jewel could not later say.

Jewel glanced at Kallandras; he was silent and watchful. So was Shadow. Jewel found only one of these disturbing. She didn’t enjoy being told she was stupid—but the silence was unnerving. It was loud in all the wrong ways.

The great, gray cat rippled in place, bright sheen of fur traveling out from Jewel’s hand as if he were a pond into which she’d dropped a large stone. This was more disturbing than even his silence; she withdrew her hand.

He growled until she returned her hand to its resting place.

“I do not understand cats,” she whispered.

“Because you are
stupid
.” He added, his voice a rumble, “Your stupidity is not
our
fault.”

“It
is
,” Snow said, from somewhere above the ground. “It is
your
fault.” His voice was not notably deeper.

“Her
ignorance
, maybe,” Shadow conceded. “But her
stupidity
is her own.”

Calliastra’s eyes had become rounder with each growling insult. She looked above Shadow’s head to meet Jewel’s gaze. “Why,” she asked, as if admission of curiosity was being dragged out of her against her will, “do you tolerate this if you have any choice? Do not tell me ‘because they are cats.’ This is not the first time I have encountered your cats, and it will not be my last—that blessing does not exist in any world or time.”

Shadow was rock steady—and silent.

Snow and Night, however, were indulging in the type of rambunctious catcalls that were safely made at a distance. It was embarrassing. But given her early life, and given the suspension of rules that now governed her current one, Jewel could live with embarrassment.

“Were the cats different?”

“They were, no doubt, different when you first encountered them, were they not?”

Jewel almost couldn’t remember. “They were stone,” she said slowly. “But . . . they weren’t different until they were in the presence of the Winter King.”

“And then?”

“They were silent.”

“Exactly. If you cannot force them to alter their base behavior—and you are only mortal, after all—you can force them to conform to your status as their lord.”

“I have my doubts.”

“It is precisely because you have those doubts that they are free to run roughshod over any dignity you might otherwise possess. And you will require that dignity, Jewel Markess. You have very little else of value in this place.”

“I wasn’t aware that mortal dignity had value.”

“Ask Viandaran.” She finally condescended to look directly at Shadow. “Why, Eldest, have you condescended to serve a mortal?”

Jewel, behind Shadow’s face—and exposed fangs—couldn’t tell if he reacted at all. He certainly didn’t answer. “You can,” she said, in the lowest of voices, because she was curious to hear the answer herself.

“He doesn’t
want
to,” Snow shouted down.

“They are brave,” Calliastra said, “when they are at a safe remove.” She lifted one white, shadowed hand; her fingers were long and graceful; they lacked the calluses and the scars that Jewel’s shorter, stubbier hands had picked up over the years. “Come here.”

“Don’t
want
to,” Snow replied. “
Make
me.”

“
Make
him,” Night agreed, swooping in low.

“With your permission?” Calliastra now said, to Jewel. Jewel was so shocked she had no words. The silence intensified when Calliastra brought her arms down in a sudden lunge that apparently ended with wings.

Great, rising pinions and arches that seemed all of black or obsidian glittered in the uneven light and the falling shadows of pillars.

Snow and Night hissed. Shadow was silent. So was Jewel, but she expected the reasons for it were vastly different. Calliastra had always been compelling. She caused heat to rise in all the wrong ways just by speaking a syllable or two. She promised—everything. The implication of that promise made even the inevitable death that followed seem trivial and inconsequential.

Jewel had met her only twice, and it had been true both times.

This was different. As the wings grew, so did their owner, becoming, as she unfolded, something that could never be mistaken for human. She was—had been—statuesque; she was not, and had never been—except when she took on forms and shapes that weren’t hers—small.

Now, she towered. She was ten feet—maybe twelve—in height; her wings, as they snapped open, were double that, taken tip to tip. She was night’s daughter, here; one could not see the influence of the other parent at all.

And Jewel understood, viscerally,
why
people followed
Allasakar
to their deaths. If he was even a tenth as majestic and compelling as his daughter, what choice would one have?

Jewel’s fingers curled around Shadow’s fur—which had risen. He hissed, which brought her instantly back to herself. No, she thought, as Calliastra lifted her perfect face toward the heights of these endless halls, she
was
herself.

She had met gods before.

She had met gods in the Between, where gods and mortals might safely meet. Until today, she had never understood why the word “safely” was spoken in that context. But the air enfolded raised, black wings, bearing the scion of gods aloft, and Jewel had to force herself to breathe again at the sight of her flight.

Shadow growled.

“Oh, shut up,” she told him, still captivated—as all must be—by the sight of Calliastra in flight. “It’s not as if she can catch them.”

“She is
dangerous
,” Shadow replied, his voice rendered less lovely by comparison to Calliastra’s. “She is dangerous to
you
.” He exhaled and shook her hand off, padding away. When he was three or four yards distant, he lifted his head and roared. It was as if he’d swallowed a dragon.

He took to the sky as if attacking it.

“Shadow!”

The Winter King was amused.
You are afraid that he will damage her?

No—but—

He has no sense of his own dignity, and consequently none whatsoever of hers. It is the reason that cats are oft despised by those who have the power to survive their constant companionship. Only the powerful and the focused can force them to behave in ways that are unnatural to them.

Then why did she seem so surprised that I couldn’t?

Ah. She was surprised at the
extent
of the insolence you allowed. Even mortals were capable of forcing almost acceptable behavior when the cats were in their presence. You are their lord while you live—and they might as well have
no
lord, given the respect they show.

And she’s going to teach them respect?
The goddess—and she could think of no other word that suited her at the moment—moved as if she were ebon lightning. Snow was not the strategist that Shadow was; nor was Night. She understood why Shadow had taken to air when he dove
into
his pale brother an instant before Calliastra’s wing bisected him.

And it would have.

She thought of the Warden of Dreams, then.

You seemed certain that she could not kill the cats
.

I was. I
am
.
But certainty in the face of Calliastra in this here and now seemed a very, very tenuous thing; it was hard to hold.

Night avoided her wings, which should—given their size—have been easy. It wasn’t. She needed no weapon in the air—the wings were deadly. The Warden of Dreams had wounded both Snow and Night—with ridiculous ease. That had been in the dreamscape.

That was, and is, his seat of power
, the Winter King replied.
In these halls, or in the Deepings, he would have posed little threat. Here, she is his equal in that place. Perhaps his superior.

Jewel turned to Kallandras. Before she could speak, Celleriant did.

“No,” he told her. “If you mean to ask him to ask the wild wind to intercede on behalf of your cats, it is unwise.”

Since Jewel had meant to do exactly that, she fell silent.

“Kallandras’ control of the wild wind is very like your control of your cats. He cajoles. He encourages. He plays.”

“I don’t do any of those,” Jewel pointed out.

“You do not
command
, except when your reflexes overtake your thoughts. It is my belief that you could—but only for short periods.”

“They would make my life a living hell if I did.”

“Yes, lord. So, too, the wind. It will accept brief orders, brief controls, brief entrapment—just as the cats do—but the wilderness has its own sense of pride and dignity. Calliastra is in the air, now. She commands. Disobedience is only barely possible—and reminding the wind of its helplessness is never wise.

“Reminding any immortal of helplessness is never wise.” He glanced at Kallandras, but felt no obvious need to remind the bard of the basic facts he now offered Jewel. Then again, the bard probably didn’t need it.

“She is angry,” Celleriant continued, voice softer, face raised. “I have only once seen her in full fury, and it was long, long ago.” His eyes were almost literally alight. “I feel young again, in this place; it is almost as if it is the ancient Deepings in Summer.”