The Hidden City (62 page)

And what if she did? What would she set free then?

Because she
knew
what the mages had seen in Duster. Killer. Death. How could she not? She'd seen it herself. She
knew
it was true.

So.

“You talked about that before. You asked me. If I'd killed.”

Jewel nodded.

“And I answered.”

Jewel nodded again.

“Did you like the answer?”

“Not much,” Jewel replied. “Did you?”

Duster's eyes rounded slightly. Which meant they rounded a lot, if Jewel could see it this clearly in the level of light she allowed the magestone. She shrugged. “I didn't hate it,” she said at last. “And I meant it.” Defiance in those words, and a helluva lot of pride. She was proud of what she'd achieved. Because killing, for Duster, meant not being killed.

No,
Jewel thought, seeing clearly in ways that she hadn't for some time.
It
had
meant not being killed.
What it meant now, she couldn't say with certainty.

“They thought they could turn you into their killer,” Jewel said softly.

“I would have killed,” Duster said, with a shrug. “I wouldn't have killed for
them
.”

“I don't think they would have cared why,” Jewel answered, seeing now, as she had been born to see, but in an entirely new way. “They would have only cared that you did. That you killed. Their way.”

“You think you know a lot,” Duster said slowly. Jewel could feel the anger and the contempt in those words. She'd done nothing to earn contempt, but she understood its source: Jewel had found friends. She had been
protected
. She could never have survived alone.

And Duster had.

Even in that place, Duster had survived. She hadn't gone mad; she hadn't given into despair, sinking slowly into herself until she could barely see what passed beyond her. Either were options, and neither were ones she had taken. Instead, she had nursed the anger she now held against Jewel as a shield.

“Do you know what they were?” Duster whispered, moving closer, threat in the subtle grace of her slender limbs.

“No.”

“I thought they were demons,” the wild girl told her.

Demons were Southern stories. Demons were nightmares. Jewel had seen men.

But she had seen men with eyes of shadow, who walked and spoke in a voice that she would have said only death could use. If death walked these lands.

“They said they could see my soul,” she added bitterly. “And they told me what they saw. How it changed, each time they gave me to someone. They promised that I would have a chance to kill my visitors.”

“And them?”

“Them?”

“Your captors. Your demons. Could you have killed them as well?”

“I wanted to,” Duster whispered. “But nothing could kill them.”

And Duster had learned, in the streets of the holdings, that you could join or die. Jewel couldn't offer her that option. It wasn't in her. It wasn't what she wanted.

“We killed them,” Jewel told her quietly.

“I know.” So much in that word. So much anger, so much malice, so much hope. Twisted, all of it, around death and killing. Had anyone else spoken those words, Jewel would have shuddered. Here, in her place, she couldn't afford to.

And her Oma had taught her how to be practical.

“We didn't come to kill them,” she added softly, not much caring that they had. “When we came to the—that place. We came for you.”

Duster spit to the side. “You came back for the others.”

“I didn't know for certain that there would be others; the only person Finch knew there was you. We came for
you
,” Jewel said again, forcing the word to have the strength of conviction.

“Then you're an idiot. A pathetic idiot.” Duster lay back against the blankets that rested on a flattened, old bedroll. She turned her back to Jewel, to the faint, pale light of magestone, and did not speak again.

But it was enough, for now. That she turned her back. That she could. That she considered Jewel—and Finch—so beneath contempt they couldn't possibly be a threat.

You had to start somewhere.

 

Lander spent only the first night with the girls, as the boys called them. After that, Duster led him to the room that housed Arann, Lefty, Carver, and Fisher, and she told him that it would be safe. She said other things, her lips at his ear, her face so close to his she might have been kissing him. He didn't appear to hear her, but he didn't try to stop her from leaving.

Maybe that was a good thing. It made their room more crowded, but the heat of bodies made up for the lack of other warmth.

 

Water was not in short supply. Rath had, reluctantly, purchased a rain barrel, and the trips to the well that afforded Jewel time with the people of the holding dropped sharply, which turned out to be a good thing. Rath made it clear that he was not precisely happy with the number of children she had chosen to take in, and he had also made it clear that he did not—yet—trust them enough to leave them unattended in his home.

His reservations were loudest—in that unspoken way he'd mastered long before she'd been born—when it came to Duster, and Jewel, often honest to a fault, couldn't bring herself to argue against his suspicion. Over the next three days, Duster had started two arguments and one actual fight.

She'd drawn a knife on Arann.

And Arann had refused to blink or step back. Had Duster intended to threaten Arann, and Arann alone, he would have given way instantly; whatever pride he had, it wasn't the stupid kind. But she'd taken an instant dislike to Lefty, with his obvious fear, his obvious insecurity, and she had pushed too far.

Arann, angered, had pushed back in one of the only ways he knew how.

In all, it was not a scene that Jewel wanted to dwell on. Which meant, of course, that she did. She couldn't force Duster to accept Lefty; she could barely force Duster to eat or sleep. Nor could she comfort Lefty; Duster had a cutting tongue, and between knife edge and word, Jewel was hard-pressed to choose the more palpable threat.

Duster enjoyed it.

Jewel hated it. But she let it play out because she had to
see
how far Duster was prepared to go. To know it, as fact, as something irrefutable. Duster was no idiot—she didn't push far enough that Arann would be forced to actually
fight
. But it was close, and in those cramped quarters, the others as witness, Duster earned anger and a growing dislike that bordered on hatred without quite crossing that boundary.

Because Finch could still reach her, and Lander—Lander, silent, almost insensate, could also reach out to touch the hem of her clothing. And he had, even when the knife glittered like the wrong kind of promise.

So Duster remained in the cramped quarters of Rath's home. Only when they left as a group to go to the Common did they emerge into what could laughingly be called sunlight; endless stretch of gray that was colder with each passing hour. The ships in the far harbor could be seen, flags and great sails furled as if they were leaves out of season, waiting their chance to bud again. The ocean itself was choppy with wind, and when the rain began to freeze, Jewel wondered—as she so often did—why the sea itself didn't stop its endless motion.

Lander did not speak during the three days that passed beneath ground; he ate when food was brought, and slept when the lights—such as they were—were doused. But he slept poorly, and often loudly, and there were grim circles under the eyes of the boys by the end of the second night. Even Jester—Jester, red-haired, freckled, his skinny long face perpetually turned up in an almost fey smile—found the nights difficult, and his humor developed an edge that amused only Duster.

Fisher was mute in sleep, but spoke a few words here and there when Jewel prodded him to see if he
had
a tongue. He didn't speak about the great house, and she didn't ask.

She couldn't speak to these newcomers as easily as she had spoken to either Lefty or Arann; couldn't plan with them, as she had, without thought, begun to plan with Carver or even Finch; they were strangers to her, and beyond her; she did not know how to draw them out.

On the morning, the third morning, after the great fire, she walked into the boys' room—the door was open, a signal that visitors were either welcome or desperately needed, Finch her shadow. What Duster was, Jewel still wasn't certain, but Duster followed as well, making room for herself just by walking. She wasn't much taller than Jewel, and she wouldn't surrender her age—which probably meant she didn't know it exactly. Duster considered almost everything a weakness, and it was still important
not
to be weak.

Lefty was sitting by Lander's side; Arann was sitting against the wall, watching them. Lefty wasn't speaking—he seldom did, when strangers were present—and had he been, Duster's shadow would have caused his jaw to shut so fast you could have heard its snap from Rath's room. But he was doing something with his hands.

It must have been important; he was using both of them. His right hand and his left, one short a couple of fingers, were moving above Lander's palms. And Lander appeared to actually be
watching
him. His own hands didn't move in response, but his eyes—the eyes that had been so vacant for all of the three days he'd lived here—flickered back and forth at the dance of Lefty's hands. Lefty was tapping his palm, left hand to right.

“Jay's here,” Arann said quietly. In this room, with the single exception of his explosive shout at Duster, he always spoke quietly. He understood, without the need for words, what
was
needed of him. And he was willing to give it.

Had Jewel seen that in him, the first day, or the second? Had she failed to see it? He was the oldest of them, she thought. Certainly, if age could be judged by size. But he was more than that; she realized, at this moment, that he was also the
best
of them. What they could all hope to be, had they patience and grace.

And grace was a word that had seldom been used by her Oma.

“Lefty,” Arann added. “Jay's here.”

Duster crossed the floor, passing Jewel before Jewel could reach out and grab her arm. She knelt beside Lefty, and Lefty cringed, flinching as if her mere presence was a physical blow, a thing to be dreaded and feared.

Duster snarled at him, but wordlessly, her fangs hooded a moment by figurative lips. The contempt that she turned on Lefty at a moment's notice was never present when she looked at Lander.

But Lander's eyes were caught by Lefty's hands, or rather, by their sudden absence. If Lefty had been brave enough to risk approaching the strange boy—and Jewel admitted it didn't take much courage, given Lander's state—he was nowhere near brave enough to do it with Duster six inches away.

Finch crept up behind Duster, and stopped two feet away. This was safest, although Duster also seemed to have some sort of weak spot—no, that was the wrong word—tolerance for Finch. Finch didn't frighten Lefty, and she gently squeezed herself into the almost invisible space between Duster and the maimed boy.

“What were you doing?” she asked Lefty, without meeting his eyes. Which would have been impossible unless she laid herself out on the slats, faceup.

“Just—hand stuff,” he answered lamely. Quietly. “He doesn't like voices,” Lefty added. “But sometimes—sometimes he'll answer other things.”

“Answer what?” Duster snapped.

Lefty snapped in a different way.

Jewel sighed.

But Carver, quietly sitting with his back to the corner of the room, stretched his legs and stood. “Lefty's been trying to teach him to talk with his hands.”

“Lander can't talk?”

“He can talk. He won't.” Carver's eyes were lined with dark circles, and he appeared to have lost weight. Or gained height. “But he responds to some things. We were talking,” Carver added, “yesterday afternoon. Jester thought it would be useful—”

“I said neat,” Jester interjected.

“Useful,” Carver continued, “to be able to signal, between ourselves. He says other dens do it, when they're afraid of making noise or drawing the wrong type of attention.”

“He did?” The fact that Carver had used the word den—and that Jewel had let him—escaped everyone's notice.

Jester nodded almost gleefully.

“You've been listening to too many stupid stories,” Duster said, with easy contempt.

“They don't have to be stupid,” he replied, completely irrepressible. “So we started to come up with one or two. We've got a really good one for danger,” he added.

“What kind of danger?” Jewel asked, curious in spite of Duster's growing look of bored contempt.

At this, Jester slowed down. “What do you mean, what kind?”

The bored contempt flared into something a little more testy, but Duster held her tongue; she was still seated in front of Lander.

Jewel shook her head. “Later,” she said. “Go on.”

“Anyway, Lefty kind of made up something that goes like this—” He lifted his palm in the universal gesture for stop.

Jewel failed to notice Duster's expression, but it took work; any expression on Duster's face was always hard to ignore.

“And Lander kind of lifted his hand. Both hands. In the same gesture. One after the other.”

“Why both hands?”

“Lefty doesn't like to use his bad hand, and Lander was making the gesture with both because it can be done with either. I think,” Jester added. “I think that's why he did it. He didn't exactly say.”