House War - The Hidden City Part 82

"Carver-"

"No." Carver's arms had folded across his chest, and he no longer leaned against the nearest wall. His eyes-well, the one you could actually see-were slightly narrowed, and his lips thinned; he was angry. And he was afraid. Then again, being afraid made him angry, so no surprise there.

"We could send Finch back with the others," Arann offered. Lefty kicked him. "Or not."

Duster stared at them all, and then she looked at Jewel. There was, for just a moment, a hunger about her expression that Jewel couldn't look at for long. "We might die," she told them bluntly, using words that Jewel had so carefully, deliberately avoided. "And if you're there, if you're anywhere near, you might die.

"Don't you follow her because she saved you? You want to throw that back in her face? Throw it away?"

"Without her," Carver said willing to face Duster down where even Arann was not, "I'd still be alive. Don't bother trying that with me."

"Then why do you care?" Duster shot back. Her hand had fallen to her hip.

"Because she does," Carver said steadily. "She wants us, we'll come. No, never mind, we want to be there, and if she'll let us, we will be."

Rath said, "It is up to you, Jewel, but decide quickly."

Jewel nodded. Her throat felt tight, which was stupid. "Come," she told them all, even Lander. "I don't think we'll need help-but right now, I don't know."

And she had not been allowed to follow her father to work the day he'd died. You're not their parent, she told herself, but the words didn't take, couldn't hold her.

As if, in the end, he had expected no less, Rath nodded. She didn't understand him; she was certain she never would. But as she glanced sideways at him, it came to her that he was testing, yes, but this one-this one was not for her, and not, in the end, directly about her. It was for them, for the den that she had told him, time and again, was special.

She wondered if they had pa.s.sed or failed; nothing in his expression gave the answer away. "I don't want anyone to follow who doesn't want to be here, Carver."

"Everyone wants to be here."

"Can they speak for themselves?"

"Why? You speak for us most times. I'm speaking for them. Do they look like they're being forced?"

She looked at them all, and they all met her gaze and held it, even Lander. So she nodded. "It's fair."

Rath paused and then said, "I suppose these will be useful." And he pulled, from his pocket, three magestones. "They are mine, and are to be treated as if they are mine. But distribute them; we are too long a line to have only two such lights."

Success or failure, he had antic.i.p.ated them.

Rath watched as Carver gave a stone to Teller, Finch and Lander. Finch and Teller, Rath could easily see as wise choices; he could also understand why he did not choose to grant that responsibility to Arann, their only giant. But Lander? That took perception or kindness, or some mixture of both.

But Carver alone had not come to Jewel through vision; he had aided her, and he had followed her, his past veiled and less threatening than the past of the other children. He was not a calm child, and he did not have Teller's obvious penchant for quiet but intent observation. Yet he must have observed what Rath himself only guessed at. Lander stared at the stone for a long moment, and then nodded quietly. He kept his hand out, extending the gift of that light to those around him.

Rath did not carefully observe the words they exchanged in their hurried odd movements; they spoke only with their hands. A secret language, he thought, and it pained him, for his sister and he-as children-had devised so many, and it was a reminder to Rath of both his own childhood, and the fact that these were still children, although they bridled at the word with the obvious arrogance-and ignorance-of youth.

Having given Rath back his own magestone and distributed the other three, Carver kept for himself only his daggers, and not even both of them; he handed one to Arann who nodded grimly-for Arann-and accepted it. Just as the others had accepted the gift and responsibility of light.

Jewel was not surprised, or did not appear to be surprised; she merely nodded her thanks to Carver as he approached her. But where the den had spoken with their hands, as if words would somehow break or damage the spell of the undercity, Jewel chose-as she often would-words.

"Keep an eye out," she told him. "Both now and then. If we don't come back, get them home, if you can. Get them out somewhere crowded and safe if you can't."

He nodded. Interesting. That she had chosen Carver, and not Arann; that he accepted.

They traveled more slowly than they might have had they been just three; Jewel couldn't be certain if Rath was annoyed or not. He set the pace, however, and he held her back when she tried to forge ahead. He didn't show them the stone garden, or anything else that Jewel would have shown them had she had time; those wonders, like quiet promises, lay in the dark, waiting.

But in the dark, other things waited, and although the air was cool, it wasn't cold enough that she could think about warmth instead. She thought about death as she walked; she thought about it a lot.

Everything she had said to Rath was true; she had seen him kill. She had stepped over bodies that hadn't stopped bleeding, they were so new. And she hadn't cared. But she hadn't killed them either. She could accept responsibility for their deaths, could say that her hands weren't clean-but in the end, it wasn't the same thing. The desire to kill was a visceral thing, like a flash of rage; it came and went, so much daydream and idle intent.

This-this was colder, its conception darker and more deliberate. She was walking to an inn somewhere in the upper holdings. By the end of the night-if everything went according to plan-someone would be dead. That he deserved death wasn't in question. He did. She would have smiled had Rath told her he had died, messily and horribly. But being told was different, and the sense that she could control the fear of it vanished with each step she took.

What are you afraid of?

Her voice, and her memory of voice: Oma. And when her Oma asked a question, she got an answer, one d.a.m.n way or another. Jewel had no answer ready. She should have.

Was she afraid of failing? Yes. Of being caught? Yes. But what did failure mean now? That he survived, or that he died? She wasn't certain; couldn't define success well enough to know what failure meant. Could only be certain that failure felt a lot like this: walking toward the unknown, with a sinking heart and a growing certainty that she was not up to the task she had undertaken. The promise she had made.

Promises are not an accident of fate.

No, Oma.

They are an act of will. They are a responsibility. You are measured by the worth of your word, and if you give it, girl, you will keep it; break it and you break a blood debt.

Yes, Oma.

She looked at Duster, or at Duster's profile; Duster was watching the ground with care, and placing her feet-in tight, uncomfortable boots-with deliberate weight along a road that was often cracked and broken. She did not share in the den's wonder, or in their silent language; she had barely troubled to learn it, and then, only to speak with Lander. More often, she had chosen to just sit by him, to whisper to him; what she said, Jewel had never fully caught, but she could guess.

But she had taken that time. And it meant something.

"You afraid?" Duster asked, with an edge of contempt in her voice. She didn't bother to look up to see the reaction her words had caused; she said them so carelessly, she must have been certain what they would be.

But Jewel said, quietly, "Yes." And this did make Duster look at her. "But it's just fear," she added. "Haval said fear was good if you could control it; bad if you let it control you."

"And is this a bad fear, or a good fear?"

"Don't make me slap you."

At that, Duster's face did change, allowing for expression: she laughed. It was-for Duster-genuine laughter, shorn of edge, but not of surprise. And it ended quickly enough.

"It's just fear," Jewel repeated remotely. As if it were weather. But she knew, as they all knew: weather could kill. She didn't ask Duster the same question; she knew what the answer would be, and didn't feel like hearing it.

"Why did you bring them?"

"I couldn't stop them."

"You could have."

"I could have told them to go home," Jewel conceded, stepping over a large, cracked stone, something that looked like a fallen slab. "and yes, they might have done it. But it wouldn't have been fair."

"Fair?" The laugh was different, short, brutish. "You just wanted them here."

Jewel shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe I wanted to know that they wanted to be here." She stopped walking, faced Duster, and said, "We're all we have. Each other. I let my father leave the day he died. I knew he would die, but I couldn't stop him. He wouldn't take me with him-and if he had, I might have saved him."

"And that has what to do with them?"

Jewel shrugged again. She was growing angry, and there wasn't much incentive to keep it to herself. "Everything, but I don't expect you to understand that yet." Wrong words, and harsh ones; they bounced off Duster. Angry words almost always did. "I don't want them to have what I have: the guilt. The sense that if they had come-"

"They'll just get in the way. Well, most of them."

"You don't know what they'll do. You don't know what will happen."

"Neither do you."

Which was true. There were whole days when Jewel hated the truth.

"They'll be one more thing for you to worry about."

"A better thing," Jewel snapped back. And then she calmed, because there were also days when the truth was like a little bit of necessary light. "You don't love anything that doesn't make you worry," she added softly.

"I don't love anything."

"Maybe not. But I wasn't talking about you."

She expected Duster to answer, but heard instead the stiff rustle of fabric, her shrug in the shadows and darkness.

Then, silence, and walking.

In the darkness, all nuance of expression was lost, all subtle gestures, the minute downturn of lip, the slight gathering of brow; everything silent was mute here, except where light was brought to bear. And given the nature of the road they walked, with its sudden cracks, its wide chasms, it was never brought to bear.

Jewel felt uneasy as she walked. Uneasy as they approached the wide gap in the road she recognized. Finch and Carver recognized it as well.

But Rath said, "Not this way," as they approached it, looking for an anchor; he led them instead to the left of where they were standing, along the edge of the wide gap, until the gap narrowed. "We are not going to the Common," he told her quietly.

"Where are we going?"

"To an inn, of sorts."

"And we can reach it from here?"

"We can reach most of the City from here," he replied. He paused, aware that she was surprised by what he had said, although he had hinted at it strongly many times. "I should have showed you the ways."

Jewel shrugged. "I probably wouldn't remember them."

"No. You wouldn't. I think Teller might."

She looked at him; he was a silhouette. A shade. "You like him, don't you?"

"I don't know him," Rath replied.

"You're hedging."

"Perhaps. If one hedges, best to use truth where possible." He undid the top b.u.t.ton of his jacket. It was not nearly as fine as the clothing he had provided for Jewel, and not, in the end, as fine as the servant's garb that Duster wore. If she had wondered how far he intended to lead them, she had her answer the moment she saw what he wore. But she had hoped. Still did, if she were truthful.

"Be careful of those stairs," he said, looking back. "They are not as solid as many of the others, and they will likely not bear Arann's weight well."

She turned herself to see light bobbing around the facade of a building that did look-from this distance-to be solid. It was like and unlike the ma.s.sive old buildings that girded the Common; it was not overly decorated with statues or carvings or bra.s.s plates that shone in the morning light. But she couldn't see the height of the building as it crept into invisibility above.

"What was it?" she asked Rath.

"I don't know," he replied. "I don't know what most of these buildings were. There is little enough left in them to indicate what use they were put to."

He walked past it, as if it were of no interest, and because he did, they followed.

"How did this get here?" Teller asked.

Rath's smile flickered briefly in the glow of magelight. He did not hold it; she could not be certain how long it lasted, or even if it were there at all. She could see him smile or frown when she closed her eyes.

"I don't know," he replied. "I imagine that there was a cataclysm of some sort that plunged this city into darkness."

"But we-"

"It is very old," he added softly. "Old enough, I think, to be forgotten. No one lives here anymore," he added.

"Were there bodies?" Jester's voice.

"There are some," Rath replied carefully. "Not bodies, but bones. Old armor. The armor itself is worth a great deal, where it is found; it is seldom found." His tone made clear that they were not to start looking now. "And when it is, it must be handled with care."

"If it's lasted this long-"

"Idiot," Duster snapped. "He meant sold with care."

Jester stopped talking. Duster always had that effect; her contempt bred silence, and there was usually a lot of it.

Rath led them down a broad, broad road, and Jewel knew that she had never walked it before. From this vantage, it was a night city, with guttered magelights instead of the ones that girded the streets of Averalaan when the sun began its slow fall. But there were no stars and no moons above. There was cloud, if one wanted to pretend, and air that tasted of dry dust.

"Here," he said quietly, "we turn right. The road will narrow significantly, and it will bank sharply when it goes up."

"Where does it go?"

"Out." Final syllable. But Rath relented and added, "You'll see. Practice patience."

And out it went, out and up, into-of all things-a yard, a stable yard, with wagons in various states of repair. Some were missing wheels, and some missing axles; some seemed almost worthy of travel, if not capable of bearing a load. They were bunched together like refuse.

"What is this?" Jewel asked Rath; she was the only person who spoke as they at last returned to the land of ice and snow, with its cold, damp air, its clear night sky, the stars bright, even beside the pale face of the full moon; the pale moon could not be seen.

"These are the old yards that were once used by the Merchant Authority," Rath replied. "They are still used during the Festival Season," he added, "and during the Kings' Challenge. At all other times they are as you see them now. Do not," he added, "attempt to use this exit-if you can find it-when the Kings' Challenge is in progress; there are royal guards posted everywhere at that time, and they are not idle or lazy."

Now, however, they were absent. A small group of children could easily make their way between the press of wagons, leaving footprints in the snow.

"This is close enough now," Rath said quietly, "that some caution would be wise. But they will not be looking for us here."