House War - The Hidden City Part 3

"A home," she whispered. "A place of my own."

He nodded. "You have one more question."

"Half a question."

"Ask."

She shook her head. "I'll save it," she told him. "Can you-can you let me out?"

"I could. But it's not safe in this holding at this time of night."

"I have a knife."

"Do you know how to use it?"

"You saw."

"Good point." He was a d.a.m.n fool. He should have known better than to lay food out for a stray. Should have known better than to coax her here, to his stronghold, his place of impermanence. Well, he would be gone soon enough. "I have a favor to ask of you."

Her eyes once again darted through the arch. To the bedroom, which was at least as messy. Anger, unwelcome, almost made its way to the surface of his words.

"If you live to be sixty," he told her curtly, "that will never be something I ask of you. Do you understand? I realize you mean no insult, but I am insulted, and I am not a man you wish to offend."

She said, "I don't understand you."

"No, child, you don't." She didn't even bridle at his use of the word. "And I doubt that you ever will. I can hardly be said to understand myself these days. If I thought they would find you a decent home for a few days, I would turn you over to the magisterial guards."

She knew, by that, he wouldn't.

"I work alone. I have worked alone for most of my life, and I admit there was a time when I resented it. I was younger then. But never as young as you."

She still waited, her palm on the flat surface of his door, a few inches beneath the final bolt.

"You cannot live with me," he continued, "for reasons that might, if you are very unlucky, become clear to you. But tonight, I would like you to stay."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to go out again, and I don't wish to find your body in the streets. I don't want to go to the bridge and find it abandoned. In the morning, you can leave."

All of her hesitations were almost linguistic. He could read them, but slowly, as precisely as if they were words being formed with care.

She nodded, and let her hand fall from the door. Her eyes were ringed with dark circles; she looked pale. Too pale. He rose and went over to her; he touched her arms and her hands, but not her face.

They had gone from the cold of the river to something just slightly too warm. He cursed under his breath. Lifting her, he carried her to his bed, and shoved aside the pile of clothing that occupied the center. "Sleep here," he told her.

"But it's your-"

"That wasn't a request. I have not yet finished my study; it will be a few hours yet before I require sleep. I have a bedroll; I am not always situated in such luxury." The irony was lost on the girl.

She closed her eyes.

It was dark enough in the room that he could pretend she wasn't crying. "There's no door," he told her. "If you need me, call. I'll hear you."

"I won't-"

"In the morning, if you are still ill, we will go to the Mother's temple."

Her eyes widened, then. She caught his hand in hers, crus.h.i.+ng-or attempting to crush-his palm. There was more than a little strength in the grip, but not nearly enough.

He disentangled himself and rose. Paused beneath the arch. "I smoke," he said, "when I work. Do you mind?"

She didn't open her eyes. Didn't nod. But he knew she was not yet asleep.

Chapter Two.

HE DID NOT TAKE HER to the temple, although she burned with fever. She would know, from that, how much of a liar he was. Being a liar had never bothered him. It bothered him now only because it might set up expectations which he could not possibly fulfill.

And as that was, in general, the purpose of a lie, Rath took no comfort in the momentary flicker of decency. Although he seldom maintained a residence for longer than a year at a stretch, although he could wear four different faces in the course of a single day's work, although he could speak three languages fluently, and seldom frequented any establishment enough to be considered a regular, Rath disliked change. As there was so little about himself that he considered fundamental, he was facing a sea change now.

Ignoring that fact took a bit of effort. But being with the child at all took effort, and he buried the one in the other.

Rath took care, while she slept, not to touch her face; her hands were hot enough that he had no need. Her breath was shallow, but clear; her skin was free of rash. She needed water, he thought. He found water, poured it into a wineskin, and dribbled it between her lips. She woke, her eyes wide and almost wild; they saw someone else. They did not see him.

He knew this because she smiled, and the smile was so desperately open, so entirely unfettered by the caution that had marked all of their interchanges, it was almost painful to watch. She reached up and clutched the wrists of the hands that held the skin, babbling in Torra, and at that, in children's Torra, the broken beginnings of adult language in the making.

He let her. He did not intrude upon the delirium by trying to answer any of her questions; he continued to drip water into her mouth.

As it fell, drops catching light across the corners of her mouth, her face, Rath wondered, idly, if this would be the year he finally died. This softness was not in him, had not been in him; he would have sworn it before the judgment-born, those golden-eyed sp.a.w.n of the G.o.d who could not be lied to. Some lies were buried so deep, they looked like truth, tasted like it, lived like it. Until the moment they turned on you, biting, as her bright eyes bit, in hidden places. He could not move until she closed them. But she did, at last, giving in to exhaustion and fever. Only then did he pry his wrists free of her slender fingers to leave her side.

The sun rose; he closed the shutters. He had curtains, but they were leftovers from a time when the state of his living quarters had been some part of his pride; he had not used them since he had abandoned a house in the middle part of town, where poverty such as Jewel's was myth or debacle. That had been five moves past.

"You can't live here," he told her, because she couldn't hear him.

He left her when the sun was high, and went to the market. He did not take his tablets; he took only a handful of coin, and with it, bought food. He took some small pleasure in the bickering that pa.s.sed for negotiation between a poor farmer and an apparently hungry man, but did not linger; he was afraid that she would wake.

Not that she could leave easily; she couldn't reach the top bolt on the door without aid, and in her current condition, pus.h.i.+ng a chair to the door would probably exhaust her. But if she tried to climb the chair, she'd probably fall, and he'd find her in an injured heap across his precious clothing.

He'd have to clean it up, he thought, as he sidled his way through the market throng, satchel heavy by his side. He glared two thieves into invisibility, insulted a merchant selling what could be pa.s.sed off as jewelry only to people who'd never actually owned any, and paused to buy wine.

Then he was gone, leaving the Common to wend his way back to the thirty-second holding, his keys warming in his hands as he clutched them. Why this girl? Why this one? He shuffled through the static images that he called memory, trying to see some subconscious similarity between those people and this child. He failed utterly. His life, in youth, had had little to do with the lower part of the hundred holdings, and the girl's dark, curled tangle of hair, her dark eyes, the dusky skin that spoke of Southern heritage, had been well beyond his ken. Not even the servants in the house of his once proud family had been born to Southerners; his mother had detested the way they looked. She found them dirty, and thought they were all probably thieves.

He had detested his mother, in like fas.h.i.+on. In ignorance, he thought, with a shade of bitterness. Life had taught him much about his early self, and not all of it was valuable. He went in through the front doors of the building and made his way up the stairs, enduring the suspicious glance of the most elderly of his neighbors in the process.

"No, Mrs. Stephson," he said, for perhaps the hundredth time since he'd moved in, "I haven't seen your cat." The cat, legend in the tenement, had been missing for well over a decade, and she was certain that it was in someone's room. It was a gray cat who answered to the name Belle, she told him, in that hushed confidential voice that was just one side of insanity-and at that, the wrong side. He'd once been tempted to tell her that he'd eaten it, just to shut her up. Luckily, the temptation hadn't been as strong then as it was now. Magisterial guards hated to be called out for no reason, and Rath had no doubt whatsoever that she'd march straight to the nearest station to demand that they deal with him. And while he could probably a.s.sure them, after they'd spent more than five seconds in her company, that he had not, in fact, eaten her cat, there were things in his rooms that would demand more complicated explanations.

He left her as quickly as he could, curbing his tongue, and unlocked his door, stepping into the relative safety of home. He locked the door behind him. The old woman was foolish and addled, and given half a chance, she'd follow him, her litany of woes growing with each step.

She was, in every possible way, unlike the child he had let in.

Jewel was where he had left her, but she was no longer sleeping. Nor was she fever-witted; her brown eyes were large and clear, her expression, made gaunt by lack of food, lucid. She had bunched the spa.r.s.e coverlet in her hands, and she sat against the headboard, staring out at his strange world as if it were the only world she could see.

She did not start or otherwise move as he entered the bedroom, but she looked at him. "My last half question," she said, surprising him.

"What of it?"

"If you can't answer it, does it count?"

He almost laughed. "You have a life as a merchant ahead of you," he told her. "Or a lawyer."

She said, "Can you find work for me?"

He almost said no. But he looked at her carefully. "How strong are you?"

She held out one bony arm. "Not very," she admitted. "I think I used to be stronger." Her eyes did all the pleading she would allow herself.

"You can't live here," he told her again.

"I know. You're moving at the end of the month."

His brows rose. Pale brows, but that was the curse of his birth, and he hadn't bothered to dye them this week. "I am, am I?"

She nodded listlessly. "You won't give notice. You'll leave money in an envelope. For the landlord. No note."

"I will?"

When she failed to answer, he left her, going to the kitchen to empty the satchel of its contents. He'd bought too much meat, too much fruit, too many things. The bread was fresh; he inhaled the pleasant aroma, held it in his lungs. There was nothing of death or sickness in it, and it was a long moment before he exhaled. From the safety of the kitchen, he continued to speak. "How do you know that?"

"I just know."

"It's not what people normally do."

"No. If they leave without notice, they don't usually pay. Why do you?"

He thought about lying, because it was what he was accustomed to.

"No lying in your home," she said, as if she could hear the thought.

"No lying from you," he replied, almost pertly. He put the food in a basket. He hadn't lied about the lack of plates or cutlery, and perhaps he should have; honesty was a habit, like any other addiction. "What I choose to say in the comfort of my own home is entirely my own affair. It's a privilege I pay for." He walked back into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed; it creaked under his weight. Although he wasn't large by Imperial standards, he was not a small man; he could make himself look smaller than he was in subtle ways, and in Jewel's presence, he usually did. He dispensed with that pretense for the moment; he wanted to appear vaguely threatening. There was safety in that. "Here. If you can, eat."

"Why?"

"Is that your question?"

She shrugged. Her hands shook. The food she had eaten the night before had blunted the edge of her hunger, but she was growing. To his eye, not enough. "How old are you, Jay?"

"Ten."

He nodded.

"What did you do before you decided to live under a bridge?"

The question made her brow furrow. "What did I do?"

"That's what I asked."

"You mean-like work?"

"If you worked, yes."

She curled in on herself. Her attempt to make herself smaller was entirely unconscious, and he let it pa.s.s, although the posture was enough of an answer. "I helped my mother," she said at last. "I helped her at home. I went to the Common with her. I helped sew our clothing," she added, "but not the important stuff."

"Important?"

"My father's clothes," she said, her voice softer, low enough that he had to lean over to catch the words. "My father worked," she added. "My mother sewed when she could find the work. My Oma took care of me before she got sick."

"And after?"

Jewel bunched more fabric beneath her birdlike fingers; the sun-faded blue seemed rich and dark against the color of her. "After, I helped my mother." Wooden words. "She died less than a year later."

"And you were left with your father."

She nodded.

"What did your father do?"

"He worked. When he could. Sometimes he worked at the port. Sometimes he worked in the warehouses near the port." Her lids were veined, fine, pale jade against the surprising white of skin. She didn't close her eyes often in sunlight, he thought. "He died in an accident. At the port. His friend brought me the last of his pay.

"While he was alive, I took care of him," she added softly. "I went to the market. I kept our home clean. I tried to fix his clothing, when it needed mending." She glanced toward the shuttered windows, as if seeking sight of escape. As if there were anywhere to escape to. "He taught me, in the evenings. Before he started, when my Oma was alive, we used to listen to her stories. When it was cold, we'd build a fire. When it was very cold," she added. "I like your pipe."

She was such an odd child.

"After she died, the stories died with her. My mother tried, but she'd never liked them much. My father didn't know them. So he-he taught me to read. Instead. He told me that I could find stories that way. By reading."

"If you have the money," Rath replied, without thinking. "Books are expensive."