City of Night (42 page)

Whole days had been spent in this rhythm, hours in the darkness while streetside the sun slowly sank; whole days of work, knees against rubble and feet against rock, backs bent to move larger pieces to one side or the other. There was swearing because, inevitably, someone failed to move those larger pieces far enough to one side, and there was muted laughter or chuckling. Even Lander talked while they worked.

The den fanned out around the radius of light, kneeling, standing, moving a foot or two every few minutes, working carefully and deliberately.

“That’s my spot.”

“I was here first.”

Jewel grimaced, but the grimace relaxed into a smile. She knew who’d spoken, but it didn’t matter; echoes of the voices of every single one of her den could be heard in those words if you knew how to listen. She let them scuffle; as long as there was no actual shoving, it didn’t matter.

They moved when she called a halt, heading slowly down the road. Most of the streets closest to the city center were covered in rubble. But not all; when the streets became smooth again, they could see facades of old buildings, most of which vanished because the light cast by the magestone couldn’t chase them that far.

Buildings were often tricky, but this close to the center, the floors could generally be trusted not to buckle. Jewel whispered the light up, and walked, slowly, toward the nearest one.

It was fronted, as so many of them were, by the frame—the stone frame—of a door. Standing to either side of that frame, were statues. They were only as tall as Arann in height, which was taller than anyone present, and they stood on small, square pedestals. Teller walked closer to one, and reaching out, touched the cracks that had appeared in the rigid drape of long robes.

“You think this was a temple?” he asked quietly. He glanced at the face of the statue; it was a woman’s face, her hair bound above her head. She looked neither down nor up, but instead, off into the distance, her expression the serene, empty expression of stone. Her arms were at her sides—the gown was sleeveless—and her palms were turned toward the den.

“I don’t know. It’s not the first place I’ve seen statues, but most of the outdoor ones are broken.”

He nodded, and reached out to place his palm across her left hand.

Jewel caught his wrist before stone and skin made contact; he froze at once. This wasn’t den-sign, but it was visceral.

“Jay?” Finch asked.

“Don’t touch them,” she said quietly.

Teller lowered his hand without flinching. “Magic?” he asked her.

“Maybe. I can’t tell if it’s the stone or the magelight, but there’s something orange around her hands. I don’t think it was there before you approached her.” She no longer asked if the den saw what she saw; she knew. “Let’s skip this one.”

They nodded and withdrew, following Jay, although Teller cast a backward glance at the statue. They had always fascinated him; they were evidence of those who had long since abandoned this city, one way or the other. Carver had pointed out that everything was evidence—the buildings, the streets, the big damn piles of rubble—but Jewel understood why it wasn’t the same. Carver didn’t.

Carver wasn’t here.

“Come on,” she said. “There’s another quarry ahead.” It wasn’t really a quarry, but that’s what they often called the largest of the debris piles.

 

It had started so well.

She’d been so nervous, heading back into the darkness that had devoured Fisher whole. They had come down the chute so carefully, it almost felt like the first time—but the first time, she’d had Rath, and he
knew
the undercity.

She could remember that day so clearly, on this one. The first time she had touched the walls of the tunnels. The first time she had seen the stone walks that Rath said were probably the remnants of an old cloister or a courtyard. The Stone Garden. She didn’t walk that path on the last day she would ever see the undercity.

She walked a path less traveled.

Her den was around her, or all of it that wasn’t streetside, looking, in their own ways, for money. She watched them as she worked, moving stone with her feet while she held the magestone aloft. She heard their grunts, their whispers, the grind of stone against stone as they braced themselves on things that wouldn’t quite bear their weight. She heard their calls for light, or for more light, and responded with the ease of long practice.

She felt, for a moment, at home again. This place had been theirs, and some part of it still was.

And she should have known, then.

She should have remembered that home is something to strive for, but nothing to rely on. Hadn’t her mother, her Oma, and her father, gone, one person at a time, taking warmth and sound with them? In their wake, the familiar rooms, the old crates, even the walls, had moved beyond her, while she was standing in place. She should have known.

But she’d had warning, then, hadn’t she?

Her mother’s illness, her cough, her pale, sallow skin, her voice, harsh and quiet at the same time. Her Oma, in winter, still struggling to light her pipe, to sit in her chair, to be
of use
in the last hours remaining to them. And her father, who listened to responsibility and duty—who listened to his fear, for her, and for himself, in a city bereft of any other family.

She should have
known
.

Never trust the gods. Never trust a gift. Never trust a curse.

They worked, in the darkness. They chattered. They argued. They came up empty, but that had happened before, and when Jewel called a halt, they stretched, brushed stone dust off their clothing, and made their way to the exit, following the light she held. It took less time to leave than it had to find a site to search, but that was normal, too.

“We’ll come back tomorrow,” she told them, as they left the larger walks for the small tunnels and crawl spaces that led streetside.

She was wrong.

The tunnels narrowed. They always did, this close to the streets. The den walked single file, their words bouncing off cool stone, their hands brushing the same surface. Teller and Finch passed ahead of her so that the light could remain somewhere in the middle of the moving line.

But the light stopped as she did, shifting slightly as she turned to look back at the other three.

Lander. Jester. Lefty.

She forgot to breathe.

Lander. Jester.

They saw her face, her chin brightest because it was closest to the source of light. Everyone looked pale, in that light.

Jester saw her expression, and Jester turned first. Lander almost ran into her. But he saw what Jester had seen, and he turned as well.

No one was following them.

Her hand closed in a red fist. Jester and Lander flattened themselves against the nearest wall as she walked past them, smothering the light they all needed. She was breathing; she must have been breathing. But she couldn’t feel air pass her lips. She couldn’t feel anything except the silence. Not even her boots against cracked stone made enough noise to reach her ears. She walked, following the tunnel, aware, peripherally, of when it fell away and she stood on the border of the actual city proper.

Standing there, in the windless, sunless silence, she forced her fingers to uncurl. Light, then. Small, diffuse, insignificant light. All the shadows it might have cast were absorbed by the shadows that lived here.

She was dreaming. She must have been dreaming. And in the dream she could see, laid out against the impenetrable darkness of the undercity’s sky, familiar ghosts: Lightning. The pause of storm. Thunder.

There were no clouds, here. No rain. No flash of the light that both illuminated and terrified. No sound at all.

No warning.

 

They came, then.

Finch. Teller. Jester. Lander.

They didn’t touch her. They didn’t speak. They stood almost as she was standing. Minutes passed. Jewel might have been a statue, much like the one she had told Teller not to touch, her arms locked in the habitual position that kept the magelight exposed. She couldn’t breathe.

She didn’t want to breathe.

Because if she did, if she
could,
she would have to talk.

And she knew, at this moment, in this darkness, that to get
to
words, she would have to get past what waited for breath, first: a scream. And if she started, here, it might never stop. It might go on and on and on, swallowing her words forever.

She screamed in the silence, waiting. In the apartment, sitting in her chair, the table flat beneath her forearms, her hair in her eyes. Shoulders slumped but tense, jaw locked. Waiting.

They had asked. She didn’t remember the exact words because she didn’t want to remember them. Lander had started forward into the darkness. Jewel had grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back. No words left her lips, but she lifted one hand, den-sign.
No.

So many things she would never forget, and he added a new one: his face. His expression.

Lander, who loved sign, had picked up words instead, and they were wild, heavy words, carrying sudden and unexpected emotion into familiar channels: Confusion. Anger. Fear.

He had shouted at her, and she had stood, like stone, in the rain of words, watching him, pale, his body shaking with too many things. And still, one-handed, she signed,
no
.

He had
hit
her, shoved her, both hands palm out; he had grabbed the front of her shirt, jostling the magestone from the cup of her palm. It fell, rolling between her feet and beyond them, and she, who knew the importance of light in this place, had let it.

Finch had bent, retrieving it before it traveled on ahead.

Jewel said nothing. Just that silent
no
.

And Lander said everything that Jewel couldn’t. Everything that she would have said, if she could.
We have to find Lefty! We have to go now! Don’t you even care?
All words were scattered, lost, like beads when their necklace string has snapped; she’d find them again later, but finding them? They’d never be the same.

So she absorbed his words instead, and only his. No one else spoke.

Why didn’t you
warn
us? Why didn’t you
see?

Flinching, as she had not flinched then, she lowered her head to her forearms, settling in to wait.

Because Arann would be home. Not soon, but it wasn’t dark yet. He would walk through the door, with Angel in tow. He would walk into
this
room, into their home, and he would know, instantly, that
there was no Lefty
.

He would never say what Lander had said.

He would never raise his hand against her. He would ask her if they could go searching, as they’d searched for Fisher, and she would tell him no. And he would know that the person he cared most about in this godsdamned world was
gone
.

Lefty and Arann.

Arann and Lefty. The two boys that Farmer Hanson had worried about. The first of her den. The first to trust her. To help her. To bring people noises into the empty and silent life she’d led at Rath’s.

Why had she brought them here?

Why had she promised she could keep them?

So that she could sit here, in the waning light, to tell Arann that he had trusted her with Lefty and she had utterly betrayed that trust?

What she had not been willing to do for Fisher, she did now, her face hidden by her sleeves and the distance the others kept. She wept. Because she had to be done with tears before Arann arrived; she had no
right
to them. Like anything else in life, they had to be
earned
.

R
ATH SURVEYED THE CROWDED ROOMS that had been opened, by Lord Cordufar, to his various associates in the Merchant Authority, on one pretext or another. The pretext itself? The presentation, to the Averalaan patriciate, of Lord Cordufar’s niece, a young woman Rath had never seen, and had heard of only when the announcement of this particular ball had caused Haval several sleepless nights. Haval, aware of Rath’s interests, and aware, as well, of Rath’s intent, had seen fit to bring it to his attention.

“By all accounts,” Haval had said, “Everyone who is anyone will be in attendance.”

“The Kings?”

Haval’s frown was brief. “Not the Kings, of course, and not The Ten, although I would be surprised if at least a few of The Ten do not make an appearance. Lord Cordufar has spared little expense, if gossip is to be believed.”

“Do you believe it?”

“If one tenth can be believed, it is still impressive.”

“I will have to inquire into this ball.”

Haval, needle between his lips, had nodded and reached for a bead.