City of Night (73 page)

What surprised Haval enough that he did not ask Hannerle to hang the “closed” sign quickly and furtively on the front door, was the man’s companion, for he recognized the girl. Jewel Markess. Her lamentable flyaway hair was caught and tied back—as much as it ever remained tied back—and its auburn curls seemed to have collected dirt. Not dust, but actual, damp earth. So, from this distance, had her clothing, but she did not look bruised or injured; this detritus was not the aftereffects of a fight. Had Meralonne APhaniel not turned to speak to her, Haval might have assumed he had mistaken their association, although Haval very rarely made that kind of sloppy observational error.

Jewel was caught in the mage’s wake, or so it first appeared, but as Haval watched, he realized there was some verbal struggle between the two: the man with his obvious power and his intimidating talent, and the girl with her dirty clothing, her dirty hands, and her sudden, tight jaw. If she feared the mage at all, her temper had gotten the better of her.

The mage, however, did not seem to notice enough to take offense.

Haval raised a brow, and then set the beadwork aside. Jewel Markess, he thought, had come here deliberately; she was not merely following the casual yet decisive lead of Meralonne APhaniel. He hoped, briefly but fiercely, that Member APhaniel would remain outside—and was slightly surprised when
Kalliaris
deigned to smile.

He was also instantly suspicious, but Haval had made a life of the game of suspicion; the goddess would surely overlook this. “Hannerle,” he said, raising his voice. “I have a visitor, if you will watch the storefront.”

The sound of his wife’s energetic and quick movements momentarily occurred at his back, and the quality of those sounds told him that she was not—yet—annoyed. She came into the store’s front room, removing her apron and fussing with her hair, just as Jewel did, albeit only Jewel’s entry caused the bells to clamor in their high, tinkling voices.

Haval made no pretense of sewing or work as he stood to greet her. She made no sound at all. But she looked at him, her face pale beneath what look like suspiciously new trails of dirt. Her eyes were also the dark that comes with lack of sleep. “I can’t stay long,” she said, casting a glance through the window, where Meralonne APhaniel was now
leaning
against the glass and filling his pipe.

“I would offer you some method of escape,” Haval surprised them both by saying, “but I fear that if Member APhaniel was the one hunting you, you would not get far. Are you well?”

She didn’t answer. This was not—he saw this clearly—because she wished to keep secrets. But she couldn’t grope her way to words; she struggled in silence, and he came quietly to her rescue. Silence could be so awkward when it was unlooked for and unwanted. “If you have a few moments, perhaps we might step into the back?”

She glanced, again, at her companion, and then her lips pursed as she made—in her characteristically obvious way—a decision. She nodded and he led her to a room that was meant, in its fashion, to offer comfort. He gave her moments of peace and privacy as he set about clearing space in which they could both sit. “If you are not staying long, I will not offer you tea or general hospitality.”

“I’d stay,” she finally said, “if I could. But . . .”

“Understood,” he said quietly, although this was not entirely the case. “Sit, Jewel. Sit, and tell me what brings you to my store.”

She sat as if the only thing that had been holding her up was the lack of a chair; it was a graceless, exhausted motion. As she often did, she sat sideways, with one arm—her left—draped across the back of the chair. This time, however, she drew her knees up to her chest. It was a shocking display of vulnerability, or rather, the awareness of same.

“Jewel. Jay.”

She looked up at him, and the dark circles beneath her eyes seemed to swallow them. “It’s Rath.”

He turned from her then, but only for a moment. “Tell me,” he said. He did not take his own empty chair; instead, he crouched by her feet, his arms folded across his bent knees.

She did not meet his gaze. Her chin drifted toward her knees, and she spoke into them, her voice slightly muffled. “I don’t know his friends,” she told Haval. “I don’t know all of them. The ones I know—like you—I’m trying to speak with. But I—”

He held up a hand. “Do not explain more than you need. If you are asking me to take word to his friends, I will do so, Jay. Not for your sake, nor in the end for his, but for theirs.

“Ararath disliked complications and ties; his friends are scattered, and they are few. If you cannot make time to see the others that you knew of, rest easy. I know where word must be sent, and I know those to whom it will be less than safe to send it.”

She turned her face, and her brown eyes met Haval’s. What she saw, he knew—because he schooled his expression, changing the line of his shoulders as he did, drawing his height in and away, and offering her the sympathy of vulnerability. If she was aware that this was deliberate, her expression didn’t shift or change.

Her words were unexpected.

“You know.”

They were also so certain, Haval did not trouble himself with a lie. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I know.” Before she could speak, he added, “I did not know until you entered my store, Jewel. But when you did, I knew what you had come to tell me.”

She relaxed, then, turning her face back to her knees, and wrapping her arms around her shins. She rocked slightly back and forth on the chair in silence. He did not touch her. Had she been another child, he might have, but this one required space. He now gave her what she required, standing and stretching his legs.

He busied himself tidying the back room. “Ararath—Rath—chose this course. I tried to talk him out of it, but he is not—and was never—a man who listened to the counsel of others when he had already made his choice.

“You have not failed him, Jay.”

She looked up, again. He saw her eyes; they were reddened, but she was not weeping. That, he knew, took effort. “That obvious?” she whispered.

He smiled. “I am an observant man, and I have spent many hours in your company. Yes, to me, it is obvious.”

“Did you know who he was?”

Dangerous question. Dangerous ground. Haval looked at it dispassionately, surrounded by the chaos of a shopkeeper’s life. He, like Rath, had no distaste for, or compunction, about lying; it was an art, like any other. But lies served purpose, if they were used by an expert. Staring at this almost-woman, he could not discern or divine a good purpose for them. Not yet.

But she had come in the wake of Meralonne APhaniel, she had demanded, more or less, that she be allowed a few minutes to visit this one store, and in the end, it was Meralonne APhaniel who now stood outside of the closed shop door. Haval was not a young man, anymore. He had, with some regret—but with more determination—left the foibles and the trappings of his youth behind. He had married Hannerle; he had rented this storefront, and he had indulged in his obvious talent for clothing—the outer layer by which most of society judged either man or woman.

Jewel’s question hung in the air for a long moment, and in the end, he chose to answer it honestly. “Yes. I knew who he was.” He did not ask her what she knew, or how, although he was curious.

“I don’t know when he died.” She finally used the word.

“You found him?”

She lifted her head again, and this time, she unwrapped her arms, lowered her legs, and turned to face him. “He found us,” she whispered. “What was left of him. He—he sent me to House Terafin. He sent me to speak with his sister.

“And his corpse followed us.”

There was a story here. Haval knew that it was not a story it was safe to hear—but so many of the stories he knew weren’t, and he had accepted them all, looking at their edges and their colors and the ways in which they might unexpectedly overlap. If Hannerle had been in the room, she would have cheerfully strangled him. The fact that he had done nothing to encourage the telling of this particular tale would have earned him no mercy at all.

But then again, Hannerle understood him as well as anyone living could. “Where are you staying, Jewel?”

She hesitated.

“If you have been asked—or ordered—not to reveal that information, I do not require it.”

“I wasn’t. Ordered. Or asked. It’s just—it’s strange, and it’s scary. I’m working for The Terafin now, because of Rath. I
want it
. And I wish you could have told me how to earn it, Haval. I wish I’d learned more from you. I wish I’d asked you to tell me how to look smarter, how to sound more educated, how to command attention or respect when I
need
it.”

He raised a brow at the heat of the words. This girl, this was the girl he had observed with so much concern. This was the girl he had sent to Lord Waverly, now dead these past several years.

“Why do you need it?” he asked in reply. He folded his arms across his chest while he waited for her response.

She didn’t answer the question he’d asked. Instead, she said, “Duster’s dead.”

Haval disliked surprises. He disliked, in particular, to
be
surprised. Jewel Markess’ expression was normally so open one had to work carefully not to read it. Now? Expression had drained from her face, with color, as if for the moment she had been reduced to bare fact. Duster was the only other member of her den that Haval had trained. Duster, in almost any way that mattered, was Jewel’s opposite. And yet, in the end, Jewel had undertaken her role in the Waverly affair for Duster’s sake.

“How?” His voice was harder than hers.

“Demons.”

He did not turn away. He gave her nothing; no mockery, no disbelief, no horror. Haval had always told her that faces were masks, that expressions were, like anything else, best manufactured with truth, or as much of it as you could find. He had not told her that expressions were also like armor, and sometimes you gave
nothing
away. It was a lesson, and a free one.

But if it was, she did not appreciate the gift; did not, in fact, appear to notice it at all. “Lander’s gone. Lefty. Fisher. Duster. They’re dead,” she added, staring into the space past his left shoulder as if he were no longer in the room. “Don’t tell me I didn’t fail
them
. Rath chose what he chose. I can accept that—because I
tried,
Haval. I tried, with him. He
wouldn’t listen
.

“Rath was a friend. I trusted him. But he was never one of mine.

“The others
were
. Even Duster. They were all mine. The only choice they made was to
follow me
.” She looked at him then, her eyes dry, her voice flat and hard. She offered him no excuses, and he knew it was because she’d tried them all, and they offered her nothing. “I almost lost Arann,” she continued, when he failed to speak. “I almost lost him. He was dying. He was so far gone—” and at this, she did stop, her eyes closed, and she lost words.

He would not have been surprised had she left in silence after this. But she struggled with breath, forcing it from its uneven thinness to something steadier. “The Terafin saved him. Because The Terafin
could
. I promised I’d work for her, if she gave him back to me. It was the only thing I wanted.

“That was then. Yesterday.” She spoke the last word as if it were a year. “But House Terafin has
everything
. Money. Guards. Mages. It has everything, Haval. And I’m living there, right now.”

“In the manse?” he asked softly.

She nodded. “They’ve got a lot of room. I think most of the manse must be empty. We have a—a domicis. I think that’s what he’s called. And servants, apparently. I don’t know for how long.” She looked straight at him, then. “I don’t know for how long.

“But I think—if I work things
right
—I can make it as long as we need.”

He said nothing. He did not tell her that it was very,
very
unusual for her den to be given rooms within the manse itself; that The Terafin had hired a domicis for her was unheard of. Most members of House Terafin itself did not reside upon the Isle, and many, many men and women would have paid much for the privilege. That that privilege had been, however temporarily, given to an orphan from the poorer holdings would be noted by anyone who had not been given similar privileges in the past—but it would also be marked and noted by anyone who had, and this, in Haval’s opinion, was worse.

He watched her bleak, desperate expression, and he almost told her to moderate it; to hide it. But that was not what she had come for, in the end, and she was likely to misinterpret the criticism.
Aie, Jewel.
And then,
Did you expect this, Ararath? Did you expect that Amarais would give this child what you yourself could never guarantee?

“I can’t—I can’t bring anyone else back. I can’t even go out and find their bodies. If I weren’t with Meralonne APhaniel, I don’t think I would have dared to come here at all.” She stood. “But I won’t fail them again. I won’t lose another person. Whatever I need to do here, I’ll do.”

“You intend to remain in House Terafin?”

“I intend,” she said quietly and grimly, “to
be
ATerafin.” She ran a rough hand over her eyes; it smeared dirt across her face, but there were no mirrors here in which she might have seen it.

He saw it. He saw the set of her pale jaw, the dark circles that dirt didn’t explain beneath the width of her eyes, the way her feet were planted against the floor as if she expected to be hit, and was willing to stand her ground anyway. He heard the anger in her voice, understood that it was aimed, almost in its entirety, at herself, and he let it be. She was Jewel Markess, and he had taken her measure years ago.