The Hidden City (16 page)

“Jay?” the farmer said, looking as surprised as Rath chose not to.

She handed him the coins. Silver lay nestled among the copper; it was not a small amount. The farmer's brows rose and fell in one sweeping motion, adjusting the tenor of his expression. Before he could speak, however, she lifted a slender hand.

“It's not for me,” she told him quietly.

Whatever he had thought to say was lost as her words penetrated his thick skull. He was certainly capable of suspicion—Rath had experienced this firsthand on the day that he'd met Jewel—but he seldom offered that suspicion to Jewel. It hovered on the edge of his face, seeking purchase and finding none.

When he did not speak, Jewel pushed her hair out of her eyes. “It's for the others,” she said quietly.

“What others?”

“The other children like me.”

His smile was genuine, and if it held a trace of bitterness, the bitterness did not work its way into his voice. “There are no other children like you,” he told her fondly.

She had the grace to redden. But not to retreat. In Rath's growing experience, retreat was not a word that Jewel understood. Not in any emotional sense.

“You help,” she told him quietly. “It's not just me.”

The farmer was silent.

“I want to help, too. I have a job now. I have money.”

“You should save it,” the farmer began.

She cut him off. “I want you to keep this. Use it, when you see children like I was.”

He hesitated, and Rath could see instantly that she knew she'd won. She put the coins in his hand—a hand that dwarfed hers in every possible way.

“Aye,” the farmer told her. He didn't count the coin.

“One day,” Jewel told him firmly, “I'm going to live on the Isle. One day.”

The older man smiled. “I hope I live to see it, lass.”

“You will,” she said firmly. Child's voice, teetering on the edge of a determination that wasn't passive; that didn't wait.

 

But as they walked back from the market, as they passed beneath the flags of the Common, and crossed the long shadow cast by the Merchant Authority itself, Rath watched the girl who dogged his steps. He had invited her into his life. He had made that decision.

He regretted it briefly. What he could say of Jewel—that she did nothing by halves—had been said of Rath himself, many, many times.

Looking up, she saw his expression, and her step faltered. “What have I done this time?” she asked. The words were more defiant than the tone they were couched in. She was slender shadow, cast by sun, against the perfect stones.

“Jewel—”

“Jay.”

“Jay,” he corrected himself. “Why did you do that?”

Her turn to look confused, but she wore confusion openly, as if it were a promise. “Do what?”

“Why did you give that farmer your money?”

“It was mine to give,” she said.

“I'm not accusing you of a crime,” he replied, aware that he was half lying. Aware that she knew it. She was too perceptive by half, this girl, this sometime stranger.

They were silent for another three blocks, weaving in and out of foot traffic and the occasional empty wagon with the occasional tired horse to give it right of way.

“The money's yours,” Rath finally said. “And you don't have a lot of it.”

“Some people have less.”

He was tense now. “A lot of people have less. What of it?”

“What's the point?” she asked him, stopping, her hands finding their perch on what existed of her hips.

“The point?”

“Of
having
the money.”

“Not starving,” he replied. “Not freezing, if the Winter's bad. Not running around half naked because you can't afford clothing that fits you.”

“And I'm not. Doing any of those things.”

“You were,” he said darkly. “And you may well be, again.”

“But I'm not
now
.”

“Now is nothing,” he snapped.

“Now,” she countered, “is all we have. All we can be certain we have.”

“Jay—”

“It's
my
money. And if I can't help people in any other way, I can at least do this.”

Faded echoes of other arguments. He looked at her, down at her, seeing in her youth the fire that had once burned him. Had once hurt the whole of his family, in ways that an impoverished girl from the holdings could
never
understand.

“And what of the people who care about you?” he asked bitterly. “What of the people who need you?” And then he stopped.

Because she was staring at him, her eyes slightly rounded, as if she could see through him. She said, “I don't understand.”

And Rath, cursing himself, started to walk faster. It often worked; she had to work to keep up, and much of her words were lost to the effort of breathing. But not, alas, today.

“Rath—what did you mean?”

“Nothing.”

“The people who cared about me—the people I loved—they're all dead.” She hesitated. Reached out for his sleeve, the elbow pressed tightly against his upper body. His hands were fists; she wouldn't touch those. Not now. “Except for you.”

“And I care about you?” he said, turning on her, his words so sharp she stopped following.

He had to listen to catch her reply.

“Yes!”

Not worth the effort. He crossed the invisible boundary between the thirty-second and the thirty-fifth holdings before he relented, not trusting the streets. Or their occupants. “Yes,” he said, although it sounded like No. “I should have known,” he added softly.

“Should have known?”

“You remind me of someone. I didn't see it, because you look nothing at all like her. If I had, I would have left you by the river.”

“But—but why?”

It was a fair question. Rath was not of a mind to be fair. “Because you
are
like her, Jewel.”

“Did you love her?”

He laughed. “We all did.”

She hesitated, and he almost appreciated the tact. Coming from Jewel, it was rare.

“Did she die?”

His laugh was bitter, ugly, something that he had thought himself long past uttering. “No.”

He let her attach herself to his shirt. “I don't like her.”

“Don't you?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because she hurt you,” Jewel replied, with the ignorance and ferocity of a child's loyalty.

There was no point denying it, although he longed to. He did nothing instead; it seemed safer. But safety was a different country now. Safety was, for Rath, a thing that existed solely in isolation. He had forgotten that.

Had chosen to forget it.

Jewel was here now, and for the moment, she was his.

But the act of determined generosity was the beginning of a long tale, and one he knew well.

“Who was she?” Jewel asked quietly.

“Her name? Her name was Amarais,” he replied. “She was the best thing that our House had ever produced; the child upon whom our grandfather showered all pride, all affection, and all hope. We loved her,” he added, because he thought it necessary. “And in her, my grandfather saw the rise of his House, and our fortunes; he saw the hope of political ascendance that had long since been eroded by lesser men.” His gaze skirted the streets; the coming shadows contained buildings that he had not seen in many, many years.

“What happened?”

“She left us,” he replied. Remembering, now, the long months that led up to that departure, and the long months that followed. Remembering the woman who was
not
this child.

“Why?”

“Why?” Bitter word. “Because she thought her duty lay elsewhere. Because she thought she could do great things, better things, for those in need.”

“Oh.” There was a very Jewel-like pause. “Did she?”

“It depends,” he replied, “on whose needs.” And then he lengthened his stride again, taking care not to dislodge the girl who shadowed his life. His expression made clear that he would answer no more questions; that he had already answered too many.

Chapter Five

RATH RARELY TOLD Jewel where he was going. He would disappear, usually when sundown began, and he would lock the door when he left. For the first ten days, he gave strict instructions about those locks, and they were pretty simple: Don't bloody well open them.

When she started to look mutinous—not at the instructions, which were sensible enough, but at the
tone
in which they were delivered—he stopped telling her. But he didn't say where he was going, and aside from that one journey into the undercity, he didn't ask her to accompany him. If that's where he was going at all.

Her first vision, fevered, had shown her nothing of the underground; it had given her the sound of a dark voice, and a glimpse of Rath being hunted, no more. She didn't know for certain what he did when he was gone.

Jewel accepted this. Partly because she didn't want to know, and partly because, for the first month, she was desperately trying to be
good
. And useful. Either of these would have kept her quiet at home. But home wouldn't have been this empty place, these blank walls. Only pipe smoke lingered in Rath's absence; although there was dust in plenty to be found among Rath's personal things—and Jay knew, as she cleaned them all, much to his dismay— they hadn't been in the dank basement rooms for long enough to let much gather otherwise.

She had three buckets, one for cleaning and two for water; she had a wide slat, with ropes, across which she balanced those buckets when Rath at last decided she knew her way around the holding and let her go, unsupervised, to the well. She had a broom, several rags—most of these old clothing that Rath had discarded when they had become too damaged to be useful in other ways. The holes and rips were always of interest to Jewel, but their stories lay fallow; he gave her that
don't ask
look, and she was compliant. She didn't.

But she didn't have her Oma. Her father. Her mother was dim enough in memory that absence didn't linger in daily tasks; the reminder came in the dark, when she lay aground in the sleeping clothes that Rath had given her. Then, it was harder.

But during the day—when he was awake—Rath began to teach Jewel things that he thought she should know.

There had been scant argument offered, and all of it from Jewel.

“You won't always live here,” he told her quietly. It wasn't meant as a threat. It was hard not to take it that way. “You'll move. You'll have to.” He paused, his smile grim. “One day, I might not come home. Have you thought about what you'll do then?”

Every night.

Every night when he
didn't
come home. When the locks were quiet, the hall silent, the night too ominous in its stillness.

She could go back to the river.

But it would be better if she could go back later. And because she knew it, because she had always tried to be practical, she began to learn what he offered so brusquely to teach her.

How to pick a lock.

How to pocket small items without being noticed.

How to read—more, and write—more. These last, he was particularly aggressive about.

“I
know
how to read,” she told him.

Kindness was no part of Rath's vocabulary. He'd handed her a book. She'd taken a look at the stylized letters, the odd brush strokes, the way they glittered in the right and wrong light, and she'd haltingly tried to tell him what she saw.

Hated the smug silence that followed, but swallowed it anyway, and began to work harder.

Numbers, in the third week, followed letters and locks. She had only a very basic understanding of numbers, and he was distinctly unkind about her abilities.

But he left her with her studies, left lamp oil, lamp and candle. He knew, without asking, that she would lay awake until the door opened.

When it didn't, she would watch the sun rise through the window wells. The light was slow to reach the floor, dribbling across flat, worn slats with a kind of wary brightness that never alleviated all of the shadows of her daily life.

On one such day, she rose. There was some bread that was hardening nicely—if you wanted a rock that was easy to lift—in the kitchen, but not much else. The water was cool, but safe to drink, and she did that, waiting, her hands dripping over the bucket.

She swept the floors. She played with the inkwell. She fingered the covers of Rath's many books. Without Rath standing over her shoulder, they didn't hold much of interest; they weren't stories, after all. Just faceless words with the occasional brilliant picture and letters that were almost pictures in and of themselves.