House War - The Hidden City Part 89

"Kill him," Jewel said quietly. "But understand the difference between an execution and . . . what he does. What he did. Be an executioner," she added. "Be my executioner. But only that."

"That's-that's Rath talking!" Duster almost spit. But the knife did not cut again; she was held there, staring.

And Rath said, "No," in a quiet voice. "I would leave him to you."

Finch had turned away, and Teller was staring at his feet. Carver, by Jewel's side, had not moved an inch, but she could not see his face in the shadow of his hair. Arann, silent, was expressionless. Lefty could not be seen. But Lander? Lander, silent and voiceless, came out of the shadows. Lander moved across the room as if the invisible boundaries which split it into so many disparate pieces did not exist at all. As if Duster was beside him, beside them.

And he knelt, and Waverly must have recognized him.

But it was not to Waverly that he looked. Not to Waverly that he lifted his hands slowly. He did not touch Duster. No one did. But in the air between them, the movement of his fingers made his gestures spinnerets, and a web of simple words formed that even Jewel could read.

Do what she says.

Duster could not answer in kind without losing her knife and her grip, without surrendering the power she had gained. She used words instead. "I promised you," her voice was low now, "I promised."

And because Lefty's slow labor was not yet up to the task of the discussion, because the den, in spite of their delight in their own secret tongue, did not yet have a signal for something as weighty and defining as promise or vow, he spoke.

"You promised you would kill him," he told her. "Kill him. And come home."

"But I-"

"Cleanly," he told her. "Because Jay is right. You don't have to do this."

"I want to do this."

"Yes. But you don't have to. You are not Lord Waverly."

So many things had broken this evening. So many silences. So many beliefs. "I am."

There it was: the despair. The thread of it. Jewel wanted to catch it and hold it, because this was the only hope that she held for Duster, and she accepted it. She had not known whether or not Duster would come home with her at the evening's end; she hadn't seen it. She could not clearly see it now, and if she had called the sight a curse, she wanted to be cursed, truly, forever.

She hadn't known, until this moment, whether or not she wanted Duster. And she knew now, and this, too, she accepted.

So she said, in Torra, in a language she knew Duster would understand, "You aren't judged by what you want. If we were, you and I would be no different. It's only what you do, in the end, that counts.

"It was easy for me. That's what you want to say. It was easy. Let me say it for you. It was. It's not easy now. And maybe . . . Kalliaris' frown, maybe I had to learn what it is that you-what hard means.

"And it doesn't matter whether it's easy or not." Breath was cleaner, clearer. "That's your trap. You think it's only about what you want. You think you only want one thing. You can only have one, but that's not the same." She turned to look over her shoulder. "We don't have much time. Decide."

Rath closed his eyes. It was brief, this momentary denial; it could have been a long, slow blink. But for just a moment-for less than a moment-he could not look at Jewel. He could meet her eyes; he could force himself to do that much, could mime neutrality and distance. He could pretend to be unmoved, for the moment, by what held him fast: the sight of her, the words that she had just spoken.

For as long as he lived, he would remember them clearly, not because she had spoken them-but because of when, because the context itself made them almost incandescent to a man of his age, to a man who had made the choices he had made in angry ignorance. He wanted to apologize to her, but apology itself was a thin and pale thing, and it felt hollow enough that he could not bring himself to say the words.

Or perhaps, he thought bitterly, he had never been capable of speaking the words. Apology and pride were at opposite ends of a long life, and having chosen the one, he could not now lower himself to the other. Or, in this one moment, elevate himself, rise above himself. Become, he could see this clearly, like her. Like Jewel.

Like Amarais.

Duster was silent, as silent as Rath. Rath understood all the nuances of that silence, and he thought-although he could not be certain-that Jewel did not. That Jewel did not understand how much of what had pa.s.sed here had pa.s.sed because of Duster, her choice, and her bitter, ugly envy, her hatred, her scarred and twisted thoughts.

If you understood her, if you truly understood her, he thought, would you offer her this much? Would you take her in?

And looking at Duster's face, which now concealed nothing, he knew that word for word, it was her thought, and her fear. But it was also her hope, who deserved none. He wanted to kill her.

And knew, even as the desire was mastered, that it was misplaced; that it was not Duster, in the end, who had failed, but Rath himself. He had laid out a clever and sophisticated trap; it was a simple one. But he had not seen clearly enough, and if in the end, the trap had closed, it had closed in ways that only the foolish or the s.a.d.i.s.tic would be glad of. Rath was neither.

He would have killed Lord Waverly himself. He would have given him the death he deserved. He saw, for just a moment, that Duster was like a mirror; something he could look into. Liking what he saw was not even in question. He had always understood her.

And yet.

"Jewel is correct," he heard himself say quietly. Every word measured, because it had to be, for Jewel's sake. Perhaps for his own. "You have little time. I think the boy-" He shrugged. "If you are here when the magisterial guards arrive, it will go ill with you."

The death of Patris AMatie would never be traced, if it was even discovered at all; what did fine ash mean, to the magisterians? Fire, perhaps, or something equally inexplicable. They might summon their mages, or even those who could bespeak the Lord of Judgment, but in the end, he thought they would do no such thing. Lord Waverly was not a man well-loved or well-respected.

But he was a lord.

What will you do, Duster?

Duster was afraid.

She could not-at this moment-remember a time in her life when she had not been afraid. Afraid of pain, yes. Of loss. Of starvation, which in the end made everything else look so much more appealing. You could force yourself to do almost anything to stop the hunger.

But there wasn't very much you could do to stop the pain. Pain was something that other people caused. And pain was something that other people-like Duster-could learn from. Like a lesson, like the most valuable of lessons, the right pain taught you everything about life you needed to know.

Everything about power.

Power was supposed to be the guarantee. When you had power, the fear belonged to someone else. Fear existed like that; it was always there. Somebody had to bear it. She knew this. She had won. Waverly was here, and he was hers.

But the triumph she had felt-and she had felt it, and she tried to cling to it as it burned to ash-was crumbling. She knew she'd won; it wasn't her blood on her hands. Or her face. It wasn't her who was whimpering, pleading, it wasn't her who- She had suffered. He deserved to suffer.

And Jay understood that, now.

But she stood there, still stood there, holier than thou, offering with one hand and demanding with the other. She understood what Duster had suffered, and she had let it go.

Duster should have hated her for it. She wanted to hate her. She almost ignored her; she could do that, here. She understood Jay, or thought she did, and she knew that if she made the choice, Jay would just walk away, same as she had just walked in.

And the bad part was: Duster didn't want her to leave. She had, she had told herself she was quit of Jewel once she'd gotten what she wanted. And here it was, but she wasn't certain that it was what she wanted. No, she was certain she wanted it.

But there was something else here that she couldn't-didn't dare-put into words, not even in the privacy of thought, where no one but the G.o.ds, curse them all, could hear her if they bothered to listen at all.

Jewel had seen, and understood, and Jewel was waiting. She was waiting for Duster. She was offering her something that Duster had never had and had always said she never wanted: a home. A place.

"What-what do you want from me?" she managed to say.

"I want you to kill him quickly and come home," Jewel replied.

"No," Duster said. "Not that. I don't mean that. If I-if I come home, what then? I'm not going to work in your kitchen. I'm not going to cut your vegetables. I'm not going to run your errands. I'm not good at that." She looked at Jewel, the words heated and angry.

"You don't have to be," Jewel replied steadily.

"Then what? What am I good for?"

"I don't know," Jewel told her softly, still quiet in the face of her flash of anger, her teeter across despair's edge. "But I don't know what I'm good for either. I know that I'm not good for this. I know that I don't want you to die here, or to die in a jail, or in the shadow of the gallows. I know that you can do things that I can't."

"Like this?" Duster asked bitterly.

"Like this," was the serene reply. "But what I need from you now, what I need to know now-the rest can wait-is that you can walk away from this when you need to. No," she added, holding up her hand, stemming the words, "that's not fair. I need to know that you can walk away from this when I need you to.

"We won't always live where we live," she added, and her eyes changed, s.h.i.+fting almost imperceptibly into something darker and rounder, something like black but warmer. "We won't always be safe."

"You call this safe?"

Jewel winced. She should have looked away. But she didn't. "Yes," she whispered. Hard to say the word. Duster knew the tone. But she said it. "This is safe compared to where we will be, later.

"And when we're there, you'll know. Finch is never going to raise a sword in my name or in my defense, and if she did, she'd only cut off one of her legs. Teller will never be able to do it either. You can," she added. "You're like a walking sword. But you've got no sheath, Duster, and you need one."

The urge to say something lewd came and went. "You want me to be your muscle?"

"Something like that."

And that, Duster understood. As much as she could understand anything about Jewel, she could understand that.

The rest could wait, would have to wait.

Because whatever it was Jewel could see in Duster, whatever it was she wanted, was not what the demons had seen. It was different.

It was something that Duster wanted, for a moment, to believe of herself. And there was only one way she could do that, and that one way, that narrow path, was standing there like Judgment, waiting on an invisible throne.

She swallowed.

She said, without thought, without the desire to hide, "He hurt me. They always do."

And Jewel flinched, and nodded. And said, "I know." And her voice broke on both syllables, and her eyes narrowed, and Duster could almost taste the desire that was so much like her own-Ah.

So much in those two words. Too much. But they were true, and if they were true, and Jewel could stand there and be Jewel . . . then the rest just might be true as well.

What rest? What else? She could mock herself in the silence of thought. Deride herself. Call herself weak where she'd kill anyone else who even started the syllable.

But she could find just enough to believe, and she wanted that belief so badly it terrified her.

Jewel said, "It's always harder when you have something to lose."

"What do I have to lose?"

"Us."

"I don't give a s.h.i.+t about any of you."

"Then choose, Duster, and we're gone."

And Duster did choose. Eyes closed, hand trembling, the future opening before her like a pit from which there might be no escape. She slit his throat cleanly and quickly, and if her hands were drenched in the sudden gout of his blood, she barely noticed. Because when she opened her eyes, when she could see the world again, it was wavering.

And Jewel was pale as a ghost, and her eyes-she was crying. Not sobbing, not that-but there were tears now across her cheeks which had not been there five minutes before.

"For him?" Duster said, feeling anger's bite. Something like jealousy.

"For you," Jewel told her softly. "Because it's hard, what you did, and I didn't know if you would. I knew that you could, but it's not the same thing." She held out her hand, her bruised arm, and Duster stared at it.

Stared at it until Jewel took another step forward, hand still outstretched.

So many choices, to be here. To be in this place. Duster had not lied to Jewel. She didn't care about "us." Whatever that was. But she had nothing against lying anyway.

Was it a lie, then, to reach out for Jewel's single hand with both of her own? Was it a lie to pull back just before they touched, because her hands were so red and slick with a dead man's blood she was-for just a moment-afraid that all that would remain when she pulled her hands back would be that blood, that death?

But Jewel didn't allow her to find out. The blood, she ignored as she could; the single hand became two as she caught Duster and pulled her to her feet. It was awkward, with Lord Waverly between them; Duster stepped on him by accident, as if he were a c.u.mbersome and broken bridge.

"Rath," Jewel said, without looking away, "we need to leave quickly. We need to go home."

Carver took command then, but quietly, his words so short and pointed he could sign them. Lander had been standing outside of the door, as if death and only death waited there, but when they came out, following in Carver's wake, Rath had not moved an inch. "Take the tunnels," he told her quietly. "Go back the way we came. Don't stop, Jewel. Tonight is not the night for a tour." And then he stopped, and covered his hands with his eyes as if he were greatly weary and ached with it. "No," he said, his voice soft. "You have the magestones. Use them, and take the time you need.

"You've seen enough tonight. See as much as you want, as much as you think you can manage. And then go straight home, and stay there. Don't answer the door. There shouldn't be anyone at it."

By which, Jewel understood that he meant to join them through the streets of the undercity, but later. She didn't ask what he was going to do. She didn't want to know. She was herself in pain, and walking was hard, at first. Breathing was painful.

But the other sharp sensation was both painful and joyful, and it was the latter that she clung to, as hard as she could. Duster's hand. Duster's choice. This was the better way: to find joy, to find the single beam of light in the darkness; to see it, know it, absorb it. To know that it was just as real as the bad things; that the bad did not destroy all good.

And it was hard.

She thought about the undercity, and she walked out of the room, still clinging to Duster's hand, as if afraid that at any moment Duster would change her mind, withdraw, and be gone. But even if she left now, she had made a choice that she would never have made before, and that was its own hope, and Jewel lived on hope.

What had she said to Duster? That it was always harder when you had something to lose? Maybe. But was it really easier when you had nothing at all?

She looked at Finch, at Teller, and they met her eyes, searched them, did not, this time, look away. They were afraid for her, afraid of what she might be feeling, and she was their den leader. What she felt now, she felt; what she showed them of that, she chose.

And she would have to choose wisely.

She almost b.u.mped into Lander, who was standing there, waiting. He looked at her, but it was a glance, no more; almost all of his attention was on Duster.

Duster started to speak, and then she said, "Let go of my hands."

Jewel shook her head, and Duster added, "Just for now, then. Let go of them for now."

And understanding came to Jewel, and she did as Duster had asked. Not commanded, not demanded, but asked. Her hands-both of their hands-were red and wet, but Jewel didn't care. She watched as Duster lifted hers, the evidence of her deed there, darker where the lifeline ran.

Those hands moved slowly, the fingers shaking as she did the small dance in the air with deliberate care.

Lander understood the two words. He closed his eyes.

Duster did not immediately return to Jewel; instead, she stepped forward, and Jewel watched as a girl that demons would foster-in their cruel, terrible fas.h.i.+on-now touched both shoulders of a boy who had been mute for so long. That she left the imprints of blood on either shoulder should have felt accidental, but it wasn't; Jewel could see that Duster now made a deliberate choice.