Read Online Oracle: The House War: Book Six by Michelle West - Free Book Online

matter with a grimace. He did
not
, in the usual run of things, choose to sit in the closed, stuffy chambers; he found the politics both irritating and boringly obvious. He knew in advance where each member would choose to offer their support; some were subtle, some like thunderstorms in the rainy season. He knew that they would talk until they were blue in the face, given half a chance, and he knew he would be forced to listen. Finch had made clear he would listen
obviously
and
attentively
, and added a trailing
please
after she’d made this request.
    Jay, to her credit, had never tried—but Jay had the smarts she was born with. Like Jester, she didn’t put effort into anything pointless; like Jester, she was practical. She was more obvious in her suspicion—but she was also capable of trust. It was a weakness. Jester knew it. Carver had spent his early years with the servants not just because he wanted to bed Merry, but because he knew they were the best source of gossip, and that gossip, if not entirely reliable, would be close enough to give the den warning, if necessary. Not all of the servants considered the West Wing a personal favorite, but many did. They knew where the den had come from; they knew that the den had none of the built-in advantages that birth generally conveys.
    They knew that, in part, the West Wing was, and had been, in their hands. They were invested in its success, and in the success of The Terafin—a woman of mean birth and no connections who had risen to prominence by her contributions to the House itself. She was like them, not like the patricians who generally climbed the rungs of House political ladders.
    The servants offered Carver quiet warnings, and Carver passed them on, stripped of all identifying marks, to Jay or her kitchen council, most of whom were willing to trust Carver’s take on the advice. Carver had, on the sly, checked out some of it himself—he had access to the back halls. Jester strongly suspected that the Master of the Household Staff knew this, but as she treated everyone with stiff disdain, it was hard to be certain. She made it difficult to access those halls on the best of days—but Carver liked the challenge, and the Master of the Household Staff had never taken her suspicions to The Terafin—either Terafin—directly. It was a game to both.
    Jester didn’t particularly like the Master of the Household Staff; he did, on the other hand, admire her. No rank—not even The Terafin’s—was proof against her ire or her suspicion. If she treated the new maids and servants like carpeting that needed to be thoroughly beaten and trod on, she treated anyone that way. She was not particularly fond of the West Wing—but she was not particularly fond of the House Council, either. He knew almost nothing about the Master of the Household Staff, and the servants were incredibly reluctant to talk about her at all—as if she, like ancient creatures of myth, were invoked by the mere mention of her name.
    But he knew about her small garden. He knew about what she grew there. He knew that, on three separate occasions, men—always men—had fallen extremely ill shortly after they had overstepped the bounds of their authority. He had not lied to Haval; none of them had been Household Staff. One had died. If The Terafin suspected foul play—and certainly the servants did—she had said, and done, nothing.
    But House Terafin harbored men and women of great ambition, as any House did, and she accepted the behavior that did not politically embarrass her House, either externally or internally. She, therefore, had many men of the caliber of Ludgar under her auspices. She had passed them on to Jay.
    It wasn’t Jay who had deposited Jester in the Council Chambers as Finch’s adjutant—it was the previous Terafin. He had spoken no more than a handful of words to the woman whose House Name he bore; he had spoken several thousand
about
her, but not in her hearing. She occupied a