The Hidden City (56 page)

“What did he call himself?”

“Lander.”

“Why?”

“I think it was short for Alexander, or something like that. I don't know. I never asked.” Before Jewel could ask anything awkward, Duster added, “it was best not to know. Anything. Because anything we did know—”

“Could be discovered.”

Again, Duster gave her an odd look. “You weren't out on the streets for long, were you?”

Jewel shook her head. She had something to prove here, but it wasn't going to be proved by posturing, and it wasn't going to be proved in minutes, or with a few words. “I was lucky,” she said at last. “I tried to steal something from Rath.”

“Tried?”

Jewel shrugged.

“And he took you in?”

“I don't understand it either.”

Duster shrugged. “How do you pay for it?”

And Jewel, understanding the place that had been their prison, didn't even have the energy to bristle. “Not like this,” she said quietly. “Never this.”

“And would you?”

“I—I don't know.”

Duster's eyes widened slightly. “That's not a no.”

“It would have been, five minutes ago.”

“I know.”

“Oh?”

“Arann looks like he wants to hit me for asking.”

Jewel turned to glance briefly at Arann; he looked pretty much the way he always did to her. “I don't know what I'll be forced to do, to survive. But Rath says that the only thing that counts is survival.”

Duster nodded. “He's good,” she said quietly. And then she smiled. Jewel preferred it when she didn't. “He doesn't want me here. He doesn't trust me.”

Jewel shrugged. “He's willing to have you here anyway.”

“He must trust you a helluvalot.”

“Some.” She shrugged.

“I don't run with a crowd,” Duster told her. “I did, once.”

Jewel waited. Just . . . waited. And it was hard.

Lefty rescued her. “You ran with a den?”

Duster nodded. “You think I couldn't make it?” Edge in the question, but it was blunted; she clearly didn't think much of Lefty, but he wasn't a threat.

“Better than I could,” Lefty said, with just a hint of shame.

“Your friend with a den?”

“He's with Jay,” Lefty replied firmly.

“This your den, then?” Duster's face had become all angles; the line of her jaw sharp enough to cut. It was a challenge. Again.

Jewel gave in to the inevitable. “Yes,” she said quietly. “It's my den. You in or out?”

“Not much of a den,” Duster replied. “Maybe those two,” she added, nodding at Arann and Carver. “But none of the others.”

“Depends.”

“I've been in the streets. I know what it takes to survive 'em.”

“So have they.”

Duster turned to Carver. “What's the deal, then?”

Carver shrugged. He didn't blink. He looked to Jewel instead, making a point.

“What do you
do?
”

“We live here,” Jewel replied.

“To eat.”

“I've got some money. We find things,” she added, putting pauses between the words. “We give them to Rath, and he sells them.” It was more or less true. “He cuts us in.”

“You steal things, he fences them?”

“No.”

Duster shrugged. “Fine. You ‘find' them. What holding do you run in?”

“This one.”

“And your territory?”

Jewel said quietly, “This place.”

“I mean—”

“I know what you meant. Any idiot would. We're not thugs. We don't mug little old ladies by the well.”

“You ever gone into the fancy holdings?”

“Not farther than the Common.”

“But they let you in?”

“We buy things there.”

Duster shook her head. She would have risen, but the boy by her side reached out slowly and caught the hem of her tunic in his shaking hands. He didn't speak, but he didn't have to.

“I'm not an idiot,” Duster said, half crouched. “I know that nothing comes for free. You rescued us. I'll give you that.”

Sarcasm was not a good bridge. Her father had said that, when he was trying to teach her not to be like her Oma. Jewel bit back words her Oma could have said.

Duster seemed to have been waiting for what Jewel struggled to hold back. When Jewel won—barely—Duster shrugged and asked a single question. “Why?”

“Because you saved Finch,” Jewel replied evenly. “Just that.”

“And the others?”

“Because they were there.”

“But you knew.”

“Knew what?”

“Who held us.” It was almost a question.

Jewel said, quietly, “Rath had his suspicions. He must have, or we'd all be dead.”

“And you came anyway. Are you stupid?”

Jewel nodded. “And not,” she added, “your kind of stupid.”

“They had friends,” Duster said quietly. “In high places.”

“People like that usually do.”

“You don't want to meet their friends.”

“Not really.”

“But you will, if you're here. Or your friend will. They were
mages
. They had power. And they weren't working for themselves.”

Jewel gave up on the ask no questions approach. “How do you know that?”

“I met one.” Duster had stiffened; she held her ground, the small patch of floor over which she crouched by necessity. The boy had not let go.

Jewel nodded, because she heard the truth in the words. Knew that if Duster could lie to her, now was the time. She felt it clearly, as if it were vision. Curse and gift.

“If he was so powerful,” she said carefully, “we'd be dead. We're not. They are. Friends in high places aren't all on their side.” She paused, and then added, “We want to stop them.”

“Stop them?”

“From—from this. From taking—from this.”

“You can't even
say
it.”

“I don't have to.”

Duster shrugged. It wasn't a casual motion. “Your friend has something I want.”

“What?”

“Information. If he gives me what I want, I'll stay.”

“And if he doesn't?”

“I'll find it out on my own.”

Carver stepped forward, and Jewel lifted a hand. She couldn't look away from Duster's face, from the round darkness of her eyes, the absolute determination of her gaze. Even had she wanted to.

“What will you do with the information, if we can get hold of it?”

“None of your business.”

But Jewel already knew the answer. “Have you ever killed a man?”

“Once.”

“When?”

“In a fight. My life or his.”

“This isn't the same.”

“It's worse.” Duster's words were almost a growl. But there was implacability in them. And Jewel knew that she herself would go to Rath, that she would ask; she could see this clearly, almost as clearly as she could see how it would end.

“I'll ask him,” she said quietly.

Duster waited. “You want something.”

“Everyone does.”

This seemed to suit Duster, who shrugged more comfortably, if you could do that and still bristle. Jewel was reminded of the fact that her Oma had also hated anything perceived as charity. As pity. What Finch had accepted in silence, what Arann and Lefty had accepted with gratitude, what Carver accepted without thought, Duster would abhor.

“What?”

“I want to go with you, when you go.”

Duster's face crinkled a moment, lines of confusion lessening the anger that was so bleak and powerful. “When I go?”

“To find him,” Jewel said.
To kill him
.

The confusion didn't so much ease as deepen, until it looked very much like anger.

Before Duster could give voice to it, Jewel added, “I won't ask him, if you don't promise.”

“I don't need your help.”

“I wasn't offering to help you.”

“You wouldn't be able to.” The contempt in the words caused Carver to take a half step. Before Jewel could lift a hand, he stopped himself.

“No. I wouldn't. But . . . I won't stop you,” she added quietly. “And in the end, that's almost the same.”

“It's nothing like the same.”

“No one helped you,” Jewel told her quietly. “And you ended up there. If one person—or two, or ten, Hells, I don't know—had, you wouldn't have. The people who watch and turn away—they didn't actually
hurt
you; they didn't—” She shook her head. “It wasn't their hand that held the knife. My Oma used to say that,” she added. “But if they had lifted a hand before it had started, it
would never have happened
. I'm going to be there with you. I won't try to stop you. You'll do what you have to do. Not doing anything? It
does
matter. It
is
the same.”

“If it were,” Duster said, her voice as low as Jewel had yet heard it, “I'd have to kill them all.”

“Them?”

“Whoever you're talking about. Those people. The ones who watched and did nothing.”

“I think,” Jewel said, choosing her words with as much care as she could, “most of them are already dead.”

Duster's shoulders dropped an inch or two.

“Finch ended up in the same place,” Jewel continued quietly. Hard to speak quietly. “And Fisher. Lander. Jester.”

“They're not the only ones. You think you've saved them? You think you can give them a better life?”

“Better than that? I already have.”

“For how long, Jay?”

“For now. Now is what we have,” she added bitterly.

“You sound like a damn Priest.”

“There are worse things to sound like. You promise?”

“I'll think about it.”

“You do that.” She paused, and then turned to Arann. “You, Carver, the other three—you sleep in the drill room. We'll sleep here for now.”

“Rath's okay with that?”

“We worked something out.”

Arann's frown appeared slowly and gradually, like the waning of sunlight. It was as unlike Duster's as a frown could be.

“No,” she said more softly, “seriously. We worked something out and
I'm happy with it
. He took me in,” she added, seeing from the solid state of his expression that he needed more. “He took me in when I was sick. He nursed me back to health. He's asked me for nothing. If it weren't for Rath, we couldn't have rescued Finch. If it weren't for Rath, you'd be crippled or dead.

“I don't know who he was,” she added, lifting a hand. “I don't know what he did, or what he had to run away from. But whatever it was, it didn't include—” she took a deeper breath, “selling children. Or letting them sell themselves.” She paused and then added, “Arann, I
know
this, okay?”

And those words, those last words, were enough.

But she felt odd, having to say them. Felt as if they had a texture and weight that not even her Oma would have granted them. And she felt, as well, some strange prickling in the corners of her eyes, her wide eyes.

Duster must have seen it all; she didn't miss much. But she snorted, and her snort was less angry than it had been. “You're all crazy,” she said, to no one in particular.

Lefty surprised her by saying, “It's a good crazy.”

“It's still crazy.”

“You helped Finch,” he shot back.

“Arann?”

“Leaving,” Arann said, catching Lefty by his right arm and dragging him out the door that Carver held open. Jester followed quickly, and Fisher, a little less so—but Lander didn't move.

Duster swore. She swore impressively; it made Jewel feel like a Priest. Or her Oma. “He can stay,” Duster told Jewel. It was, yet again, a challenge. And Carver was standing in the doorway, waiting.

But as challenges went, it was a feeble one as far as Jewel was concerned. She looked at Lander, and nodded. “He's probably seen worse than us,” she added quietly. She looked up at Carver, and saw him frown; clearly, whatever he was used to in a den—and she had no doubt he'd been part of one—it wasn't this easy shift of command.

But command didn't interest Jewel; it never had. Well, not since she'd turned five.

Duster nodded. Lander still held the hem of her tunic, and she didn't even bother to try to release it; she crouched there, knees bent, eyes as dark as any color Jewel had seen eyes get.

 

Rath left when it was quiet. He considered using the storage room's exit into the undercity, but the existence of these maps disquieted him. He had managed to keep that to himself, largely because Jewel was too afraid about the fate of her orphans to be perceptive. He doubted her ignorance would last, but doubted, as well, that it would be alleviated any time soon.

The sun was on its way down. He dressed with care, although he had less clothing to choose from than he had had a mere handful of days previous to this one. The cloak he had worn on his ill-advised raid was only good for rags now; there was too much blood and too much tearing to make repairs that wouldn't suggest old battles, and not of the winning variety. That and the singed edges would make him look too much the thug.

He had taken care to wash both face and hair; the face required some work. As he knew his hair would be under a hat for much of his walk, he was less scrupulous about its cleanliness. That, and he was weary. The mirror's reflection in magelight paled his skin, and made him seem ghostly, almost translucent. It wasn't a welcome reminder of mortality, but then again, little was.