House War - The Hidden City Part 42

"Jay. Jewel. I think your involvement in Finch's life is now maximal. Does it matter where she came from?"

It wasn't the answer she was expecting. She wasn't certain what she had been expecting, but this was wrong.

"It matters," she told him, keeping her voice even, "because whoever her pursuer was, he must have known where she'd be. He went to wherever it was-he probably didn't expect her to run. Not the way she was dressed. He was going to kill her, Rath." She paused. "They," she added in a much quieter voice.

"They failed. She's here. I think it unlikely that they will find her again. I have work," he added politely. But his eyes never left her face.

"It's just-"

"Just what?"

"Whoever they were, they must know. They must be there."

"Where?"

"Where she was. The place she escaped from."

The eyes closed. "Jay-"

"I'm right. I want to find out where she was. I don't want her to go back-but I think, if she tells you what she can of the place, you'll know where it is."

"I doubt-highly-that she will volunteer that information."

Better than Jewel had expected. But not by much. "She'll tell you."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Because she wasn't the only prisoner." Prisoner. The word left her tongue so easily, she knew that was exactly what Finch had been.

"She told you this?"

"Not-not exactly."

"Jay-"

"Look. It can't be legal. Whatever it was. It can't be. We can get the magisterians-we can send word. They don't have to know it comes from us-"

He lifted a hand. She stopped.

"Must you interfere in everything?" he asked quietly.

"Not everything, Rath. But they were going to kill her. And if they couldn't kill her, they might settle for someone else who's trapped wherever she escaped from. You know that."

"Yes. I do."

"Why? What could she possibly-"

"I don't know, Jewel. I don't know, and at this point, I am not entirely certain it's safe to know." He rose. "Do you know how you get to be old in these holdings, doing what I do?"

She shook her head.

"By knowing what to avoid, and when. This is something to avoid."

"But they're after you as well," she told him.

"Yes." The word was bleak. "And it's not just me. I'm of little consequence, but not none. They cannot find me; if they could, they would never have attempted to take me in the Common. Here, there's safety."

"Only for us."

"Only for me," he replied, the threat in the words absolutely clear. "Leave it be, Jay."

But he knew she wouldn't.

Or couldn't. He could not say with certainty what drove her, although he'd done nothing but observe her for weeks. He'd taught her some simple dagger throws, and some very simple unarmed combat, but she was not the most apt of pupils in that regard; she was small, and if she was flexible, she had little strength.

No, her strength lay in what she called instinct. She should have died, in the alley.

He had no special sight, no talent, no gift of birth-but he knew, far better than she, that she should be dead. And Rath? He would be left with the body, and a few odd memories; he would be left with her flotsam and jetsam, the children she was making a responsibility of the type he had a.s.siduously avoided for all of his adult life.

That she hadn't died was a miracle. And it was entirely hers. The others? If they had such gifts, they had yet to evince them-and Rath very much doubted they ever would. Yet she had dragged two of them, a girl probably a year, maybe even two, younger than she, and a boy her own age by look-he was lanky in the way that the young are-across the tunnels in a blind and desperate run.

To reach his side.

To save his life.

He pulled the chair out from under its place at his desk, and unlocked the writing flat, lowering it gently while it creaked. Dark green leather bore faint marks, faint impressions, the occasional dark stain of ink gone wrong. He covered it with paper.

She was half right. That there were men with either talent or very illegal magical equipment in the lower holdings was a threat that could severely curtail his activities. He had not survived, as he had intimated, by ignorance. If he had no intention of tangling with them again, if he had every intention of following Andrei's oblique advice, he could not do so blindly.

But the weight of her years-her lack of years-was almost more than he could carry. He had seen the two only when Andrei had intervened. Had seen, for himself, that Jewel was not hampered by their invisibility, their lack of visual substance.

And had seen, last, what reminded him most of his sister, his treacherous sister, in the curve of her spine, the straightening lines of her shoulders, the trembling of her slender arms, as she had drawn her own daggers and entered the alley, bypa.s.sing him with ease because she was so slight.

Odd.

To see his adult sister in the much smaller spine, the much slimmer stretch of shoulders; to see her patrician face in the ruddy complexion of a child who was half Torra by birth, and all Torra by personality. She had drawn the daggers she could barely wield, had dragged the children into a danger only she could sense, because of Rath.

That was the heart of his ill-ease.

That, and the fact that, without Andrei's intervention, he could do nothing to save her. He had saved her life, he reasoned-if such feeble and pathetic attempts at justification could be graced with such a word-when he had brought her home, to this one and the one they had abandoned. He had fed her. He had, against all better judgment, gone through the streets of the holding wielding his sword, to save the small giant and his maimed shadow.

And he was coming to realize just how much that would mean if she died.

How far did her talent extend? He had never mentioned his suspicion, his growing certainty that she was seer-born to anyone, and if Andrei guessed, he would keep it to himself. But in failing to mention it, he was depriving himself of information; the information he had gleaned had been from story and near-myth. Who had a seer? Who could answer the questions that threatened to propel him into a fight he had no hope of winning?

And if he found a man-or woman-who was capable of answering his questions, would he still manage to keep Jewel hidden from them, from their use?

He wrote a letter slowly, thinking of these things.

And thinking, too, that Jewel would not be content to remain here while she sensed a different threat.

Perhaps, he thought grimly, he should have waited until the cold had truly set in; until the loneliness and fear had resolved itself, at last, into the desperation that truly made orphans in the streets. She might have been broken then.

But seeing her, that night, with no hope of victory, he thought instead of futility. She was, in the end, what she was.

And he had lost one such woman to House Terafin.

He had no desire-he admitted it, the quill digging deep furrows in the soft paper-to lose another.

He finished his letter, and folding it, rose.

It was time to talk to Finch.

Rath fit in the room.

Jewel reminded herself of this fact a dozen nervous times. She'd been in more crowded rooms. Her father's friends had sometimes come home with him from the docks and the s.h.i.+pping yards, pulling up the crates and boxes that served as chairs when company was present, and jamming themselves around the table, as much as they could.

But Rath was different. He took up more s.p.a.ce than any four of those men, just by standing in the doorframe.

"Jay," he said, although he used the tone of voice reserved for the more formal-and therefore more despised-Jewel. "This is Finch?" His gaze traveled in a small arc, and landed more or less on the right person.

It was a polite question, since he d.a.m.n well knew the answer. And polite, from Rath, meant something. Not usually something good.

Finch nodded.

"Jay tells me that you managed to escape from . . . someplace."

Her second nod was a good deal more hesitant than the first.

"Do you know which holding it was in?"

She frowned. Which Jewel took as a no. Rath, no idiot, interpreted it correctly as well.

"Where were you living, before you ended up there?"

"Twenty-eighth," she said promptly.

"With your family?"

The silence that followed the question was terrible.

Rath lifted a hand. "Finch," he asked softly, "how did you get to where you were . . . held?"

"Walked." To Jewel, and in Torra, she added, "Make him stop."

"He understands Torra," Jewel replied quietly. She hesitated. Carver had stiffened unexpectedly, and this probably meant he understood it as well. First time he'd given a sign. "Finch-you left someone behind. There's a chance we can help them."

The younger girl's shoulders had folded in on themselves, the new weight of clothing suddenly far too large for her frame; it was as if the heavy cloth was swallowing her without a fight. "I didn't know her before I-before that place," she said softly. "I still don't know her name. She was-I think she was your age. Maybe older. Dark-haired. She had a scar-" she stopped for a moment, lifting a hand to her mouth. Jewel hoped dinner wasn't about to be wasted.

"She told me-the boys and the girls-some of them are just disappearing. I'd only been there two days-I-"

Jewel slid an arm around her shoulder, standing now between the girl and Rath. "She helped you." No question there.

"Yes. I don't know why," she added. "She told me when to run. I think-I think she knew the man. Or recognized him." She paused. "There's always a guard. Sometimes two. It depends on who . . . " She looked up, her face so pale Jewel thought she might faint. But she didn't. "On who's visiting."

"How did you get past the guards?" Rath asked, his voice softening.

"Her."

"You don't think she's still alive."

Finch, again, offered silence.

"Rath-"

"I need to know where," he said grimly.

"Is it a-"

"Yes. Sometimes they're called brothels. They're highly, highly illegal."

As if that mattered, here. No, Jewel thought, here, in this room, it did matter.

"It's new?" he asked Finch, bending his knees and reducing his height, as if by changing his posture he could diminish the threat.

"I don't know."

"In a house?"

"A big house."

What big meant to Finch was not clear. It meant something to Rath, and Jewel hoped it meant the same thing. Language was tricky, that way.

"Not one of the tenements? Or the courtyard buildings?"

She shook her head. "A house."

"It has to be new," he said to himself, rising. "Finch, I'm sorry-but I need you to help me now."

"I'll go," Jewel added.

Carver said, "We can all go." He failed to notice Lefty. But Lefty failed to say a word.

"Out of the question," Rath told them firmly. "One of you, maybe. Arann. Jewel. But not all of you. You'll be noticed by anyone with an eye, never mind two. And at the moment, we're not going anywhere.

"I need to know as much as possible about the lay of the land."

They all stared at him, except for Jewel.