Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King by The Uncrowned King Page B

might've forgotten that you're to spend half of tomorrow with the Flight."
    "With," Avandar said quietly, "the three Commanders."
    "Yeah. Eagle, Hawk, and Kestrel." Jester smiled, his teeth a flash in the lamplight.
    "Jewel—"
    "Jester."
    "Fine." He held out his hands and surrendered with about as much grace as she expected. Sadly that was about three times less grace than Avandar considered acceptable. "But that's what everyone else calls 'em."
    "If
you
call them that, I'll pick it up. If/call them that, I'll kill you."
    Angel laughed. It was nervous laughter. He scraped his chair along the kitchen floor as he rose. "Jay?"
    "What?"
    "Are we going South or staying?"
    She loved these men and women. Everything was obvious, and nothing had to be spoken in more words than were needed to get the point across.
    That fact that she rose, turned, and left the room without an answer was lost on no one. Especially not on Jewel herself.
    She went to the shrine, of course.
    Not immediately; at first she returned to the dubious comfort of her bed and pulled the comforter up to just under her chin, burying every part of her body beneath its folds. She even closed her eyes, willing her hands to relax the firm grip they had on the thick, dry linen. She'd become an optimist over the last decade.
    Or an idiot.
    With something that was decidedly less quiet than a sigh but more heartfelt, she pushed the comforter to one side and then groped around on the floor for her shoes. She thought of changing from bedclothing to real clothing, and decided, practically, that no one was going to see her anyway; she took a large cloak as a compromise, intending to drape it across her shoulders until she'd cleared the wing and the halls of the manse itself.
    Somehow it never quite came off her arms, which was unfortunate, because it made her look not unlike a servant woken for some household emergency at a late hour.
    And at a late hour, at such an obvious disadvantage, was not how she would have chosen to meet Rymark ATerafin.
    Of the Terafin Council, he was the man she least trusted— possibly because he was, in Finch's estimation, the prettiest, and Jewel had never been one to trust a pretty face. She almost managed to avoid him, but the cloak was heavy and more cumbersome than anything else she normally carried from one end of Terafin to the other, and it didn't fit into the convenient alcove beneath the torch rings that separated the wing that had been her home for fifteen years from the main hall. That hall, wider from side to side than the small tenement in which she and her den had once lived, was well lit, with silvered glass and towering windows at even intervals from end to end.
    If you didn't want to be seen, the great hall was not the place to be. Unfortunately, it was also the fastest way to get out to The Terafin's private grounds, and the four shrines that it harbored.
    She knew that he'd seen her when she saw him approaching her. And she knew who he was because he had a distinctively graceful way of walking; he was almost as catlike as Devon ATerafin could be. And a helluvalot less pleasant.
    "Why, Jewel—what a pleasant surprise. I'd hoped to be able to speak with you before the next Council meeting." He crossed his chest with his hand in a civil greeting that lacked nothing. He even bent his head, granting her a measure of respect that she could only dream he'd show her in an actual Council meeting. Lamplight made the sheen of his greying auburn hair look like warm, contained flame.
    Fire. She shuddered in spite of herself and rather too obviously; his face took a chill expression for a moment. But only a moment. He stepped closer, smoothing his thin-lipped silence into a friendly one. "Have I… interrupted an assignation of some nature?"
    "Yes."
    The curt, short word stopped him cold; it was not the way people with rank or station often responded to innuendo. If she were honest with herself, it wasn't the way Jewel usually responded