House War - The Hidden City Part 64

"And if I could choose a child, I have doubts that it would have been this one," he added, "given how we first met. But it matters little. I came because of her."

"And what is she, to you?"

"An orphan," he replied.

"You have no doubt seen countless orphans in your life."

"Yes."

"And this one?"

"I owe her my life. Once, possibly twice. I consider my life to be of considerable value," he added.

"No doubt." She graced him with a dry smile. "And it is because of this debt, in its entirety, that you chose to dare the tower height?"

He met her eyes. "You've cast a spell," he said, keeping accusation firmly out of the words, and making of them an acknowledgment by dint of that effort.

"It is unwise to lie, or to attempt to lie, but it is unwise to be here at all; yes, I have cast a simple spell. It will tell me only what you believe to be a lie, however; the lies that you believe are truths, it will hide."

"And my answer?"

"I would say," she said slowly, "that it is an answer that is not without truth; it is not the entire truth, although you may have believed it before you set foot in my tower. Not, given your reputation, a bad start."

"But not enough."

She was silent.

"She did not come from a bad family, in the less ambitious sense of the word 'bad.' She was, I think, attached to it, and in some fas.h.i.+on, she has begun to build a replacement for it. She has gathered-and G.o.ds help me, I have allowed it-some handful of children her own age; like she, herself, they are without family.

"And one of these children, the demons kept. She is . . . unpleasant in most ways. I would not have allowed her through my door in any other circ.u.mstance."

"And you allowed it because?"

He said nothing for a long moment, and then lifted his head, which had sunk into his hands, supported by the bend of elbows against armrests. "I don't know. I have asked myself little else these last few days, and there is no answer that I find satisfactory."

"The girl whose name you fail to mention; the girl the demons kept-"

"She rescued her, yes. She rescued them all."

"With help?"

"With help, yes; she's not yet eleven-" He stopped. "Even that, I would not have done a year ago; if you had asked me, if you asked it now, I would tell you I would not do it."

"You begin to understand the lack of efficacy of such spells as I have cast. If it helps, Ararath, I would have believed it had you said it. You have the air of a man who is uncomfortable with entanglement and responsibility. And yet you are here, and against your better judgment.

"And the girl is there. Against your better judgment. This says something about your judgment. Why this orphan, this other girl?"

He met her gaze, held it, and thought-for a brief moment-that his life was not worth the only answer he now suspected she would accept. Had his life depended on it, he would have sworn that he would accept death before speaking; that was the way of supposition. He faced death-and if it was a clean death, it was still death.

He was old, he thought, and bitter. He had pride-had always had pride-to sh.o.r.e him up and sustain him through all the long years after the shattering of the only thing, short of his own life, that had mattered to him.

And he understood, as he watched Sigurne Mellifas, that that period of his life had come abruptly to an end. He had not made the choice, not consciously; he had simply reacted to something that he had chosen not to fully understand. That safety was gone, now: He understood, clearly, his own marked hesitations, his own foolishness, his own inexplicable decisions. Saw that she understood it as well.

"She is like my sister," he said, the words cold and curt. "Like my sister was before she betrayed and deserted us."

"And do you now hope to guide her so that she will be something other than your sister has become?"

He could not answer the question. He rose instead, propelling himself out of his chair as if its spindles were the bars of a cage that was slowly closing around him, too small, too confining. A different type of death.

"I will not answer any further questions about this," he said, in the same brittle voice.

She waited for a full moment, and then slowly inclined her head; her eyes seemed silver in the light, the way that polished blades seemed silver. "What, then, will you do about the other girl, the darkling child?"

"I had not decided, Member Mellifas. But I will tell you this much: she sent-" He almost used Jewel's name. Almost. "The other girl to me with the names of her tormentors, and asked only that she be allowed to kill them."

"Who asked it, Ararath?"

He lifted a hand. "And I," he said, not answering, "am left with the decision of whether or not to allow it. If I can be considered a vengeful man, my vengeance has taken the form of absence; it is seldom bent toward killing. But I have not suffered what this girl suffered, and perhaps, by killing, she will be free."

"If you believed this, you would not have come."

He nodded. "I don't believe it." This was neutral.

"And the other child?"

"I don't know what she believes." Rath began to pace the perimeter of the tower, forgetting one fear-the familiar, the old fear for survival-under the shadow of one less familiar, and far less welcome. "She understands that the girl is-what she is. The girl has made no lie of it, and even if she tried, it would fail utterly.

"But she is willing to ask it. She is willing to come to me and speak of murder on behalf of this foundling, this feral girl."

"And you do not trust your own child-forgive me, but as you will not use names, I will choose attribution of my own devising-to withstand the temptation of such an action? You believe that your child will turn to murder, in the end, as a solution?"

Rath was silent, grimly silent. He tilted his head up toward the ceiling, so that he might have no sight of her eyes, her watchfulness; so that he might see no unwelcome change of expression.

"I believe," he said quietly, "that my sister, in her war for her House, had many men and women killed. That she knew they must die, and that she-like you, yourself-was worthy to be judge of who, of how." The words escaped him, all the words, twisted, bitter, and utterly true. He had hated her for years for abandoning their line, but he had never stopped believing in her. He faced that fact, and had it been something as simple as a mirror, he would have shattered it with a fist.

Nothing was ever to be that simple again. "I believe that my child-as you call her-understands, at a remove, the need for this. The need to have someone who can kill, when killing is required.

"I do not believe she will ever desire death or suffering. But she will accept its necessity in time. And I came to you because I wanted to know that the girl for whom she will accept this truth, this knowledge, is not somehow cursed or controlled by demons.

"And perhaps you have given me the answer to that question, and in the end, it is no answer."

"Then let me give you a different answer. The demons do what they can to twist a life; it is the only measure of permanence they are allowed. What they destroy-if they can-they color for lifetimes. But theirs is not the only hand that can be so lifted. We are not divine, Ararath, and we are none of us without flaws; we cannot see at the outset where the path we walk will bring us, no matter how neatly we plan, how cleverly we lay out stones."

"And you think that my-that the child is somehow poised to push back the darkness? When she can accept it?"

The look she gave him was oddly gentle. "She accepts what is," she told him. "But she is young, and I think she is not without ambition, even if it does not wear a shape you recognize. She understands that all things that live can change, and believes-in the arrogance of youth-that that change might be affected in this darkling child you so fear.

"But it is not of your child that I spoke, Ararath. I will not keep you here longer. I am satisfied, for the moment, with what you have said. And troubled by it, as well; I fear that we are not looking for a single mage, but many. If fate is kind, you will have no cause to use the daggers placed in your care." She rose. "But you must make peace with your past, Ararath."

He watched her go, aware that in his past, there was no peace to be found. Aware, now, how much of his past haunted him, like a baleful shade, an inimical ghost.

Jewel.

Amarais.

Chapter Twenty.

IT SNOWED IN THE CITY. Across the whole of the hundred holdings, rich and poor alike were greeted with the cold ice of winds laden with frozen water. Streets were made new, white, pristine; buildings were adorned, from roof to street, with inches of brilliance. At a remove, the City had been made, overnight, one thing: cold, pure.

To Jewel Markess, waking to an oddly transformed patch of light, cold made itself felt; she rose, her feet bare against floors that had never felt so bitter. Finch was curled into a sideways ball, adorned by blankets that had never been meant to fend off this deep a chill. To Jewel's surprise, Duster also slept. She slept with her hand curled round the hilt of a dagger, but her breath was deep and even. Almost, she looked content.

Jewel's breath hung a moment in the air. She looked at the small, forlorn box in which all her money lay, no doubt now painful to the touch; she would have to buy blankets-if blankets could be had for a decent price. Merchants were famed for their ability to profit from the unexpected-and in Averalaan, snow was always unexpected. Maybe once in six, even eight years, it fell, bracketed on either side by the rain that made s.h.i.+ps stay in harbor.

She made her way to that box, moving completely silently. She'd been in this place long enough to know which boards creaked, and which only groaned, and she chose her steps with agonizing care.

And yes, d.a.m.n it, the money was like ice. She picked through it; there was a lot there. If it wasn't spent.

Rath had chosen this place for a variety of reasons, but the one that most interested Jewel at the moment was the wood stove. Her family had owned such a stove-or rather, the apartment in which Jewel had spent the longest part of her life had-and although it had been used sparingly, at such a time as this, it would have been used. Her Oma had despised the cold; it reminded her that her home was no longer in the South of her distant birth.

Given what she had often said about her home, Jewel wondered why the reminder would be so bitter. She had never been allowed to ask.

Nor had she been encouraged to ask about the price of wood, and the cost, to the family, of spending money on wood when so much else was needed. Bitter choices, her Oma had said, made stronger people. In Jewel's opinion, it also made for broken people. Her mother and father had hoped to spare her the truth; her Oma had cursed them all for fools. Because the girl has to learn, she said, could still be heard saying, and if those that love her don't teach her, who will? She'll have to make decisions far worse than this in her time, and she'd better start now.

But then, the weight of all decision had been borne by her parents. Now? Rath, if he was not still angry. Jewel, if he was. Perhaps both.

She opened the door; it was stuck.

On Lefty's foot.

She heard his bark of pain, and the door-which, admittedly, she'd put most of her weight behind-flew wide, b.u.mping into Arann. Who grunted.

Carver, on the other hand, had either the grace or wit to be standing in the narrow arch between hall and kitchen; he was uninjured enough to find it all funny.

"What," she asked, as she carefully shut the door at her back, "are you doing?"

"Waiting for you," Carver replied. "We thought it likely you'd head out to the Common today, and we wanted to join you. You'll need help," he added, glancing at Arann.

She started to argue-out of habit-but her thoughts caught up with her tongue and she shrugged instead. "I don't know what we'll find," she told them all. "If the snow's been heavy, we won't find much; the wagons won't pa.s.s the gates."

Carver lifted a brow in Arann's direction. "I told you," he said nonchalantly.

"You knew it would snow," Arann said, when Jewel turned her glare on them both.

"I knew it would snow sometime. I didn't expect it this morning. If I had, I would have bought everything already." She paused. "It did snow, didn't it?"

Lefty nodded. "It's still snowing," he told her. "You can come and see it, if you want. We've been out a bit. Streets are real empty; if it weren't cold, it would be pretty."

"But it is cold," she said quietly. "And pretty, in this case, is death."

"He knows that," Arann said, with the extra heat he reserved for defending Lefty. He'd been more p.r.o.ne to show it, this last week. Jewel looked at her closed bedroom door, and made a decision. It would be good to be out of the house, with these three. Living with Duster was like living in a special cage. She felt it most when Duster was anywhere near Lefty.

She nodded. "I know he knows. I was just talking Oma talk. Is that all you're going to wear?" she added.

Arann smiled, the tension easing off his face. "I told you, we already went out for a bit. Our stuff's by the door on the chair. Or under it," he added, looking at their feet.

"Is Rath awake?"

"Who can tell? We can't even tell if he's in."

She nodded. "That would be no. Or as good as no." Just a brief hesitation.

"You want to leave Duster here if Rath's not?" And thank you, Carver, she thought grimly, for putting that thought into words.

"She's going to be here one way or the other," she said quietly. "Might as well begin as we mean to continue." She put a hand on Arann's arm. "I know it's hard," she told him. "But bear it. It'll get better, if she stays."

"If?"

"I'm not sure she will," Jewel replied. And this, the moment she said it, was true. "But if she leaves with the money, I don't think Rath will hold it against us for too long. If she leaves with his stuff, we won't be alive for long enough to regret it. Come on; it's not going to get any warmer."

"Well, if there's sun-" Lefty began.

She cuffed the side of his head gently.

It wasn't windy. The cold was no surprise, but the lack of wind in the early morning made the City seem a hushed, new thing, adorned in a blanket of white. Chipped paint, warped wood, broken boards-all of these things were blessed by snowfall, forgiven the signs of age and decay; they were, and could be, forgotten for a moment.

Jewel's breath came out in a dense cloud that hovered above her head; it was joined by Arann's, Lefty's, Carver's. They stood a moment in the open door, staring; it was Lefty who moved them, leading them in a sudden whoop of high delight into the streets, his boots leaving the prints that the falling snow would soon hide.

For snow was falling, but driven as it was by no wind, it fell like a drift of soft, cold fluff. Jewel reached out with her hand, and then, casting off the shadows, with her tongue, her face turned toward the sky. Snow melted across her cheeks, clinging last to lashes; she heard Arann's m.u.f.fled shout, and turned to look at his face. More snow adorned it, and Lefty was off in the street, bending unmindful of his knees to scoop it, pack it.

"I'm only laughing until it hits me," she shouted, shoving her hands into her pockets.

"You're not laughing," Carver pointed out.

"Well, no. Standing too close to Arann."