Battle: The House War: Book Five by West Michelle

Author:West, Michelle [West, Michelle]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: DAW Hardcover
Published: 2012-12-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

10th of Fabril, 428 A.A.

Avantari, Averalaan Aramarelas

THE HALL OF WISE COUNSEL was, in all ways, a remarkable room. Most of the characteristics that made it unusual were not immediately obvious to a casual visitor. It was an audience chamber fit for the Crowns, a huge room the height of which instantly dwarfed any who walked through its doors. At any time of day or night, the room was brightly lit. The windows, stained glass, and almost of a piece with the intimidating architecture, shifted hue in keeping with external light, implying natural elements that did not, in any way, reach the room.

Various protective enchantments had been laid against both windows and walls; the floor was a mosaic of magical color if one knew how to look. Sigurne Mellifas did. She was intimately aware of perhaps three quarters of the enchantments; she would never be given leave to examine them all. Nor had she need.

What the hall lacked in an appreciable sense was silence. The doors and the walls did not permit sound to travel beyond their perimeters—but within the room itself, the acoustics carried spoken word, enlarging it.

When the steward opened the doors to the hall, raised voices escaped. Sigurne exhaled. She did not ask the steward how long the Kings had been resident in the hall; nor did she ask to remain outside while the heated discussion continued. It would not, in the past two months, be the first time voices had been raised in this room.

Today, there were several. The Kings and the Exalted were not seated upon their thrones; they stood in a tight group, made wider by the obvious divergence of opinion. The Queens were present, but they were excluded from the debate. Sigurne had some small hope that she would be likewise spared.

It was a vain hope. Before she had reached the halfway point of the room, the Lord of the Compact turned. Duvari was not a man to raise his voice in anger; he lowered it, in times of duress. He reminded Sigurne of nothing so much as a guard dog; the barking, one could safely ignore; the growling, at one’s peril.

“Guildmaster,” the Lord of the Compact said.

“Lord of the Compact.”

“—And may I remind you again, brother, that we are not beholden to the gods’ every whim; we are mortal, and mortals rule here.” King Reymalyn’s voice echoed in the ceilings above.

“So you have said. Nor have I disagreed; the decision is not in the gods’ hands; it is in ours. But the gods have made clear the danger a single citizen poses to the rest of the Empire. They have a history—”

“It is a history that has been offered us piecemeal, and it is irrelevant. The Terafin has not contravened the laws of this land. If we are to execute—or assassinate—every person who poses a possible threat, there would be no city when the Lord of the Hells at last approached the gates!”

“The nonexistent gates, surely?” the Exalted of the Mother said to King Cormalyn.

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