House War - The Hidden City Part 12

"It's the thirty-fifth," he told her. This didn't seem to have the same meaning to Jewel as it did to Rath, and he let it go. Instead, as he pushed the board aside just enough that there was room to squeeze through, he said, "Part of this building is rotten. The joists were worm food decades ago. No one lives in the west half, unless they're very, very desperate."

"There are a lot of desperate people in the holdings," she said quietly.

"Desperate people don't usually have the wherewithal to get medical help when the floor disintegrates and they break a leg-or worse. Trust me. There are mice, rats, a dozen c.o.c.kroach clans-but no people." He paused and then added, "Don't even think it. The river is a lot safer, and it's a lot more pleasant."

"It's more exposed," she told him.

"Depends. The roof has collapsed over there." He pointed. "You get rain and sunlight. They've rewalled the east half of the building; it'd cost more than it's worth to try to recover the west." He began to gingerly slide himself between the board and the ground; Jewel looked at him, her fingers a fist around the smooth magestone.

"It's safe enough below," he told her. "More or less."

"You-you want me to follow you?"

A dozen sarcastic replies tried to jam themselves between his gritted teeth. "Yes."

She nodded. She'd gone that particular shade of pale that meant she was afraid, and given what he'd just said, this showed that she was sensible. He seldom resented sensible people so much.

Funny, how even the untrustworthy wanted to be trusted. "Don't climb down until I call you."

She nodded again. "Shouldn't you take this?" She held out the magelight; it looked like a flat stone in the light of day, a thing of no value to anyone who wasn't five. Or ten.

"Not here. I know the way."

Easy to say. He took a deep breath and caught the edges of the chute in both hands, and then lowered himself the rest of the way down; he dangled for a moment, his fingers closing reflexively before he forced them to open.

She heard the dull thud; he saw her face in the light of the s.p.a.ce between slat and chute. Reorienting himself, he said, "Now. Put the stone in your pocket. Or your mouth, if you don't have one; I don't want to lose it." To her credit, she didn't hesitate; she struggled through the opening-and made it look difficult, which, given she was half his width, would have been risible in other circ.u.mstances-and then froze, her hands holding her weight high above the ground.

"I'll catch you," he told her. "Let go."

She hesitated for another beat, and then, for just a moment, she was falling. His arms were wide, but it had been many years since he had caught anyone; he was clumsy, and a little too rough, as if she were an object, and not something that needed to, say, breathe.

As if she were a rare object, something of value.

He thought he knew, as her head hit his chin, who she reminded him of, and for just a moment, he froze, thinking of sunlight, of trees, of a vast estate. Of himself, in younger years, when he had had a n.o.ble name, and the course of his life had seemed so straightforward.

"Rath," she gasped. "I need to breathe."

Almost word for word, as if she could see memory. But he realized that he was holding her tightly enough that breathing might actually be a problem, and he let her drop gently to the ground. He couldn't see her face; his eyes were still acclimatized to sunlight and open street.

He was thankful for it, because it meant she couldn't see his.

It took him a minute to find his voice, to find words, to remember that that life and this one were separated by many, many things. But it took her more than a minute to fish the magestone out of her s.h.i.+rt, and by the time she had, he was ready.

"This way," he told her, holding out a hand.

She took his, without any hesitation. As if she had stepped, new, into a different life. Smart girl.

He led her down the rough incline. "There's a break in the floor here," he told her, when he stopped short and she thudded gently against his back. "And we have to go down again. It's a bit more tricky, and there's less light. Can you hold the stone up?"

"Yes."

"Good."

"How do you do this when there's no one to hold the light?"

"In the dark," he replied, with a shrug. "I know the way," he added. It was half bravado, and half truth; he seldom entered the underground from this building. It was too exposed.

But Rath had always had a memory for geography. For the feel of the ground beneath his feet; the feel of stone, or the smooth, polished slats of hardwood; the feel of broken cobblestones; the feel of gra.s.s, and where gra.s.s had gone wild, undergrowth; the nubbled width of great tree roots that lay exposed to sun and air. He could navigate the grounds around his home with his eyes shut by the time he'd turned four, and he sometimes did, to show off. He wondered if he were giving in to the same desire now.

Either way, it didn't matter. If he was showing off, it was for the benefit of a girl whose home had long since vanished beneath the weight of poverty and loss; what harm could there be in it?

Oh, the lies. The lies he could tell himself and believe.

He lowered himself down, through this second hole. It was larger than the first, but more jagged; the wood was old, and splinters lodged themselves in his clothing, sc.r.a.ping the skin of his chest, his shoulders. He should have brought rope.

But then again, had he thought to bring it, he would have been thinking, and it was unlikely that he would now be here, with a stranger. This, after all, was his.

When he landed, he landed on stone. The stone was cracked, but the crack was clean, and the stone itself hadn't crumbled. He reached out, felt nothing but air beneath the flat of his extended palm. The halls here were wide.

Wide enough, easily, for two. It wasn't always the case. He looked up; he could see Jewel clearly; the magestone was in her hands, and its light traveled up the underside of exposed skin; her chin was tilted toward her neck.

"Can you see me?"

"I . . . think so."

"Good. Throw me the stone. Don't worry; if you're not good at throwing, it'll bounce-but down here, there's no way to lose it."

She swallowed and nodded. She was, as it happened, not terribly good at throwing, but not so bad that the stone bounced off Rath before it struck ground; he considered himself lucky. He bent, retrieved the stone, and dropped it between his feet; they were planted apart.

"Now," he said calmly, "throw yourself down as well."

"But I-"

"Don't try to hold on to the edge of the floor-you'll get a dozen splinters in your hands, and the floor will fold anyway."

She nodded.

"You can close your eyes if you want."

The nod froze. Clearly, at ten, she disliked obvious coddling. "I want to see," she whispered.

"Then look. But you can't sit up there all day; I can't get back up that way."

Her eyes rounded, and he almost laughed. He must have smiled, because she frowned in return, looking like the little princess of defiance. Her lips thinned, she took a breath, held it, and jumped.

He was ready for her the second time, although the distance was greater. Maybe because it was greater. Or because there was no sunlight, no hint of blue sky, to invoke unwelcome memory. Here, he was Rath, and she was-Jewel.

"If you can't get back up," she said, from the perch of his arm, "How are we going to get out of here?"

He did laugh, then. "Wait," he told her. "Wait and see." And it occurred to him that although he'd long ago left childhood and its lie of a promise behind, some part of him retained the desire to share secrets. It was absurd; a secret, once shared, was utterly broken.

But they were both broken in some fas.h.i.+on, this child and he. He let her go, and bent, retrieving the stone for a second time. He handed it to her, wordless, and she palmed it in the same fas.h.i.+on.

He didn't tell her that this was something that shouldn't be spoken of; he didn't forbid her to speak of it. He knew, looking at her face, that he would never have to. She was good at hiding truths, and the bigger they were, the better the chance that they remained hidden.

"Come," he said, as he might once have said to another girl, decades past, "I want to show you something."

And oh, her face.

He had let her hold the magestone for her own comfort-or so he'd told himself-and he even believed it for a few yards. But . . . her face. It was pale in the unnatural light-the only light-and her dark eyes, rounding so perfectly they might never have a different shape again, made him see the world as if it were new; as if he had never walked these stone halls before, never touched their scored surfaces, never paused to examine the runed Old Weston along some of its unbroken edges.

Wonder woke in her face, her bedraggled angel face, as if she, too, were awakening; as if descent were all of her reality. He waited for the questions; they were slow in coming. Words had deserted her, and they were caged only in the lines of her expression. It was an odd gift.

He led her down the hall; it was a long hall, but not an endless one. He thought, from the feel of the stone that had gone into its construction, that it had once been open to sky, perhaps an enclosed cloister; it would never see day again.

But he acknowledged the fact that he might be wrong; there was, in his estimation, magic in these stones; magic to withstand the travails of weather, of storm, the pettiness of simple erosion. The great cracks that girded walls and floor were clean, and in evidence almost everywhere; they could be crossed with ease, and Rath was fairly certain they had occurred centuries past.

He had often wondered what great cataclysm had broken these halls; had driven them down, into the depths of earth, and away from the sight of a city that numbered in the tens of thousands. When he could, he had tried to glean information about Averalaan before the ascension; before Veralaan the Founder, whose name the city still bore, had returned from the land where G.o.ds and mortals might meet, two sons by her side, to reclaim-to remake-the Empire.

But in truth, if the information existed, it existed in fragments of Old Weston, kept under lock and key by the most pompous of scholars the Order of Knowledge had the misery to train, and no amount of persuasion or money could grant him the easy access he desired.

Information would, but that would lead to this, and this was not something he wished to surrender. The only time in his life that he had regretted his decision not to pursue the scholarly arts had been when he had first discovered these tunnels, and even that regret was not enough to grant him the endurance necessary to pa.s.s the exams and examinations required to become a member of the Order of Knowledge.

He knew roughly where he was; he had explored tunnels like this one for the better part of five years, gathering and h.o.a.rding knowledge. He had never drawn a map, because that might be discovered; he was well aware that anything he owned could be confiscated, either by magisterial guards or thieves, and he would be d.a.m.ned if he made their lives richer or easier. Let them find what he had found the hard way, if at all.

And yet . . . he glanced at Jewel again. She was lost, and willing to be lost, and the look she gave him said all of this clearly.

"It's not a dream," he said, more gently than was his wont. "It doesn't vanish."

She reached out and placed her hand against a wall, following it with her fingers. Traced the crack that broke what seemed, to the eye, to be otherwise seamless stone.

"Yes, it's real." He walked slowly now. "The ground here is solid," he told her. "But up ahead, you have to be careful; the cracks in the floor are wider than your thighs, and if you don't pay attention, it's easy to break a leg."

"You haven't."

"My thighs are lamentably wider than yours."

"Oh." Magic had robbed many a grown man of a sense of humor; she was a child. He smiled, but she didn't notice, and therefore didn't bristle.

"Where does this go, Rath?"

She had found her voice.

"Everywhere," he replied softly. "It's not all hall. In some places, the surfaces are rougher; in some places, the walls give way to cavern. I think," he added, reaching for her hand both to steady her and warn her about the upcoming gap in the floor, "that the caverns used to be open s.p.a.ce. The halls-like these-were either parts of buildings or causeways."

She was quiet, absorbing the words. Trying to make sense of them. He almost told her not to bother.

But she crooked her head to one side and said, "Who lives here?"

It wasn't quite the question he'd been expecting; it certainly wasn't the first one he'd thought to ask. "No one."

She frowned.

"Jay?"

"I think . . . I think someone must," she said at last, hesitancy punctuating the sentence in a way that grammarians would have loathed.

He stilled. "Why do you say that?"

She shrugged. There was something less than casual about the movement.

"Jay."

"I don't know," she whispered. He knew, then, that if he asked again, the words would be the same, but louder. He didn't ask.

But it had been so empty here, so devoid of life and life's complications, that it had truly never occurred to him that anyone could actually live in these s.p.a.ces. And the thought wasn't a welcome one.

He led her, at last, to the end of the hall they'd followed in such careful silence. The wonder that had briefly transformed her face still lingered, but curiosity's sharper edge had grown as well. "Can you read this?" she asked him, kneeling briefly. In the corner that ground and wall made, she had found a long stretch of runic engravings.

Before he could answer, she said, "This is the same. As the writing on the stones."

"It is not the same."

"The same language." She corrected herself without hesitation. "The same forms. Look."

Bright girl. He nodded, and when he realized that she hadn't looked up, added, "Yes. It's the same."

"This is Old Weston?"

He nodded again.

"What does it say?"

"I'm not certain. It's too fragmented. I am not a scholar," he added quietly. "There are those who are; they could tell you what the words might be. But even the scholars could only give you their best guess."

"Because there's not enough of it?"

He nodded again. "They work by context. The greater the number of words, the greater the likelihood that they'll be able to tell you what the pa.s.sage means. The language is ours, or was, at some point. Come," he added softly. "There is more to see."

She nodded, and rose again.

He led her into the cavern. It was, in his estimation, the easternmost point of this underground city, this vast mausoleum in which all history lay fallow. The cavern's rise was rough and uneven; great points of stone jutted from it, visible only as the magelight brightened, and leached of color by shadow. Bats lived there; he'd seen them take flight once or twice in his early treks through the streets. They were silent now. Sleeping. As if, even without the sight of sun's light, they lived by rhythm of day and night.

"You . . . found those tablets here."

"Not here, but close."

She looked up, and up again; he thought he'd have to catch her when she overbalanced. Nor was he wrong. He'd fallen himself that way, once or twice, losing his bearings, his sense of the earth beneath his feet, to the glory, grim and dark, of the heights that pa.s.sed for sky.