House War - The Hidden City Part 44

"What is it? Is it us? Have we done something wrong?" Finch was shaking. Quiet. "Are you going to be in trouble?"

Jewel forced herself to laugh. It was awkward. "I'm always in trouble," she told the younger girl. "You take this. Get Arann to help you and tell him if he cuts the board again, I'll hit him." She let the knife go, and it clunked against the counter as the carrot rolled.

She made it to the open frame, and stopped there. "Finch?" she said, without looking back.

"I don't want to go back," the girl whispered. And then, to Jewel's relief, added, "But I will, if you're there."

"I'll be there." She left them then, and went to Rath.

He wasn't sitting. He was standing in the center of the room. His shoulders were tense, and his back was toward the door, but he clearly expected Jewel, because he didn't jump or turn when she entered.

"You found something," she said.

He nodded. "Finch-"

"She'll go, Rath."

He turned, then. "She was sold," he told her quietly.

"I'd guessed." The words were just as quiet. Bitter. Hers. "Maybe she had a lot of family. Maybe they were starving." Her words as well, and she couldn't believe she was saying them.

Clearly, neither could Rath.

"They're poor," she told him, as if that were a defense. A defense against her own anger, her own helpless rage. "And it doesn't matter, because I want her. I'll never sell her. I'll never give her up."

"Given what we risked, you'd better mean that." He lifted a hand to his forehead. "Given what we will risk, you'd better remember that."

"I'll go with her."

Rath nodded, almost absent. It was d.a.m.n cold in the room. "At dawn," he told her quietly. "Have her ready."

"The others-"

He met her gaze. Held it. And after a long, long moment, he looked away.

He was giving in. Jewel was almost shocked. But chasing shock, other emotions followed. "You don't think we're only going to find one other person," she said, softly.

He stared at her for a minute, and some of the stiffness left him. She wasn't certain it was an improvement. "I would never have taken you in if you were stupid," he told her, almost fondly. Almost angrily. "But there are days when I wish you were. No, I don't think it's just one person. And no, I don't know what we'll find.

"But you were right; Finch would have run from me. And if I'm right, we're going to need people that children won't run away from."

People. More than one.

Rath had three sets of boots.

He surrendered one to Carver. They didn't fit. But not fitting, they were still far better than the bare feet the cobbler couldn't cover for another two days. The boots were old, and soft; worn at the heels and in other places. They were covered with dried mud. Jewel knew where he wore them.

But if Carver were quick, he'd know, too. She had almost suggested he stay here; his expression had stopped her. It wasn't like Rath's; it didn't have his arrogance or his particular certainty. It held, instead, a different kind of certainty, and beneath it, a desperation she didn't understand. Might never understand, if the G.o.ds were kind.

His fingers trembled as he struggled with the eyes and the laces, crossing them in the wrong way as Rath watched. Rath seemed to have that effect on everyone.

Everyone but Arann, who, dressed, was grim and silent. There had been a bit of an argument between Arann and Lefty, and Jewel could guess what it had been about. But Lefty, hand shoved into a pocket instead of his armpit, was quiet in his jittery defiance.

Where Arann went, he would follow. He clearly didn't think Arann was ready for this. And Arann, just as clearly, didn't care.

"You can use that?" Rath asked Carver.

Carver looked blank for a minute, and then he hesitated. "If I have to."

"Good. It's the only time you should ever even be considering it." His gaze was cool as it lingered on Carver's hair. Jewel almost felt him stifle the coming lecture. "Jay told me about the bar stool. That was clever."

Carver didn't beam. Didn't even smile. But he did straighten out a little, and that was something.

"We're going to meet a number of men. They'll all be armed. Some will be in armor, depending on how their gambling went; some won't. None of them are your friends." He gazed around the room at the handful of boys, at the two girls. "But if you run into trouble, let it chase you to where they're waiting. Got it? They won't talk to you. They will fight for you." He paused. "I'd prefer you wait outside, if we find the place we're looking for.

"But if you don't, I'll accept that as well. You've all seen the streets. You've an idea of what they mean. I don't know how much death you've seen. I don't know how much real fighting. You follow us in, and you will. Do not attempt to join the fighting. You'll find that in the chaos, you probably won't be able to tell who's on our side and who's not.

"Understood?"

They nodded in unison.

"Your job," he continued, "is to try to guide or help the children who might run out of the building while the fighting is going on. They won't go near my people; they won't go near their guards. Or any of the other adults on the premises. If they don't run, we can do something for them, maybe. If they do . . ." He shrugged.

And Finch said, in a quiet voice, a steel voice, "Some can't run."

Rath nodded, as if he expected no less. He took one more look at them, and then he made his way to the door.

"Don't talk," he told Jewel. "Tell the others: don't speak. What they're doing isn't legal. What we're doing isn't either."

"But we're doing the-"

"Right thing?" He grimaced. But he said nothing else until they had filed out of the apartment, past him; until he'd locked the door at their backs. "Maybe," he told her softly. Just that.

Day felt like night, as they walked.

People did not quite crowd the streets; it was a little too early for that. But buckets borne across bent shoulder and straight back alike were beginning to make themselves seen, and the sun's light, faded, pearl and gray, colored clouds moved by wind. This was dawn, in the rainy season. The clarity of the day had pa.s.sed, and the morning was cold.

Cold against cheek and exposed hand, exposed throat. Cold in other ways. Jewel looked at Rath's back as he led them; he walked more slowly than was his wont, but did so with a grace that belied impatience.

She trusted him, and in ways that she had never thought to trust her father, when she had lived with him in the quiet and illusionary safety of their home. She could never have asked him for this. When her Oma had lived, she might have asked for a story that contained it, no more; she might have imagined, in the dark, humid confines of an evening bed, those ancient arms around her, that she could live in those stories, and be of them.

But that was dream, and the waking was harder than she could have imagined. In dream, she was a great leader, an intrepid explorer, a woman revered for her heroism by the faceless, adoring ma.s.ses. In dream, she could save not only lives, but baronies and kingdoms; she could sit by the right hand of the Kings themselves, or even between them; she could rove across the windswept sands of desert that glittered like golden death for as far as the eye could see.

That was her Oma's gift to her: the ability to dream. And yet . . . without it, she would not be here. She would not think of being here.

Here was a place of death, or the fear of death. Here, Rath ahead of her in dark clothing, the finery of jacket set aside in favor of the absolute length of blade, she could imagine losing him, in ways that she had not-until the end-imagined losing her father.

She had asked for this.

Not in so many words. Never that. If she were entirely honest, she could say that he had decided it, and she merely followed.

But if she hadn't learned how to lie to Rath's satisfaction, it was because she was simply no good at lying: she knew he would not be in this street, on this chill morning, without her. Carver walked by her side, to the left; to the right walked Finch. She wore clothing very much like Jewel's-it would have to be, coming from Helen, as almost all clothing did-but she didn't look at Rath's back as she walked; she looked at her feet. At the weeds that pa.s.sed beneath them. At the s.h.i.+ft in the road as Rath turned a corner. There were no real shadows cast, not in this light-but had there been, Jewel was certain she would have looked at those as well.

Rath paused. "Jay?"

She whispered Finch's name. Finch hesitated a moment, and then nodded. "I think this is the right way."

Rath's nod was both the same dip of chin and entirely different. There was a curt certainty to the motion that spoke of purpose, not fear.

Jewel wanted to be Rath, for a moment. To be older, to be that certain. She was his shadow, instead, and it galled her. But not so much that she was made stupid by envy or inadequacy. She couldn't afford to be. He'd made that clear.

So much else was unclear.

Her father would have died before he'd parted with her. Her Oma would have killed him, had he tried to sell her; to bargain for her as if she were a thing, and not his blood, his kin. They would have starved, all three, and almost had, time and again-but they had done it together.

Finch . . .

She seemed so quiet, so fragile. Jewel had seen old women who seemed the same-but the fact that they were old, in these streets, said something; spoke to some part of her that understood how strength was measured. Was Finch that strong?

She certainly didn't seem it, to Jewel. Her steps were shaky and small; she moved so slowly, Jewel wanted to tell Arann to pick her up and carry her. Maybe another time. Maybe never. Because Finch was walking, and maybe that's all that Jewel could ask of her.

Carver's hand was on his knife. He was taller than Jewel, and he looked older-but his eyes were dark and a little too round. He knew-probably better than Jewel herself-what they might face. And he had no reason to want to face it. He was an accident. Something that her curious vision hadn't granted her.

But she knew he wouldn't run. Not here, not yet. Maybe not ever. She wanted to ask him why. Or why not. But she didn't.

Nor did she ask Arann, but it didn't occur to her to ask Arann; he was almost as tall as Rath, and he was so utterly solid as he walked, Lefty to his left, the open street to his right. He watched Rath, but not the way Jewel herself did; his gaze often slid to the people that were beginning to fill the street, to make their walk less solitary.

She almost tripped over Rath because she was looking at Arann. Rath's pinched expression was all the admonition he allowed himself, but she felt it keenly.

"Be on your guard now," he told her, as she righted herself.

She started to ask him why. Stopped. The answer was there, in the streets, creating as it walked-as they walked-a widening circle of silence and flight.

Armor didn't gleam in this kind of light, and besides, it wasn't that kind of armor; it was pitted and dented and tarnished; hung in rings that could be seen through the gap of overcoats and over the thick, undyed padding beneath it. There were flat plates across the chest of one man, a man who wore an eye patch across a scarred face. His hair was the color of sand on the white beaches at summer's height, and his skin was sea skin.

He was the leader, she thought.

She put out an arm; Carver walked into it, and stopped moving. Finch had stopped a few steps back, and Arann now towered over her, without a word, Lefty also cringing by his side.

"Gentlemen," Rath said, and Jewel privately thought a Weston word had never been so misused. "Well met."

The pale-haired man with the odd beard and a single eye spit to one side. "I've seven," he said grimly.

"And the eighth?"

"He'll recover."

Rath shrugged. It wasn't friendly; Jewel guessed he knew who the eighth man was, and didn't much care whether he recovered or not.

"Who are these?" The stranger said, almost snorting. Like a bull. Or a stir-crazy horse.

"They know the holding," was Rath's evasive reply. "And they may prove of some use." He paused, and when the man's face failed to s.h.i.+ft into something like acceptance, added, "They're mine."

The man's shrug was almost the same as Rath's had been.

These are the people we're supposed to hide behind if we need protection? She almost said it. Had to bite her lip to stop the words from tumbling out, one over the other in a heated rush.

But she put a hand on Finch's shoulder, and Finch stilled. No one spoke.

"Well, they're quiet enough."

Rath said nothing. He might have been one of these towering, ugly strangers. Except for the dirt and the obvious scars.

"Finch," Jewel whispered.

Slowly, Finch began to walk.

Chapter Fourteen.

ARMOR MADE NOISE. The wrong kind.

Jewel had to speak loudly in order to be heard, and as she was speaking to Finch, she had the tendency to lower her voice, not raise it. She wanted to tell the men to either go away or stop moving for a minute, but when she turned, Rath's sharp look made her teeth snap shut.

Finch, however pale she was, nodded. To Jewel. And to Rath. Rath listened to her quiet voice, reading her lips and their motion; there was no way the sound could carry to where he stood. But what he gleaned was enough; he turned to speak curtly with the man who wore the eye patch, and the man in turn barked at the others.

If they were supposed to be approaching quietly or without notice, it was an utter failure; the streets were now empty for as far back as Jewel could see-which, given the bodies of armored men, each taller than she was, wasn't perhaps as far as usual-and as they rounded a corner, it cleared in front. Sort of like the movement of a gigantic broom.

She hated to cause that fear in children, because she knew it so well herself. Her gaze grazed Lefty, but Lefty was almost Arann's shadow; she couldn't see his face, and his hands were still shoved in pockets. By no means did all of Helen's tunics have them; Helen must have noticed the way Lefty tried to hide his right hand.

Carver seemed a little less lost than she was, as if he knew the neighborhood. Given the expression on his face-or the utter lack of one-Jewel guessed that whatever he knew wasn't worth sharing. She'd told him his life before Taverson's didn't matter, and inasmuch as she could, she'd told the truth. But she was curious. Rath said it was both her strength and her weakness, and he hoped she lived long enough to be able to tell exactly when it was one or the other.

She had seen Rath draw his sword once. She had seen him fight twice. She was aware, as they walked, that she really didn't want to see a third time. The stories of old-her Oma's grand stories of life in a sea of sand-had somehow failed to mention the brutality and the swiftness of death. The glory of causing it, yes, because that was Right. Funny, how wrong Right felt when she could actually see it.

Her dagger hadn't managed to cut skin. She'd tried.