City of Night (34 page)

She cursed. More loudly than Carver had called her name. “Why didn’t you say something?” She started to head to their right, lingering only to hear the reply.

“Lefty noticed as you passed us.” He turned to Angel. “You want to stay here, or should I?”

“Either way.”

“Stay.” He walked back, away from the crevice, and approached it at a run. He cleared it by at least two feet on the opposite side, landing in Duster’s shadow.

Duster passed him the stone without comment, and he hesitated before holding out his palm to catch it. They left, and Angel watched them until there wasn’t anything to watch.

 

Jewel didn’t light another candle. No point. She wasn’t working, so she didn’t need that type of light. The light from the street and the light from the moon were good enough.

She sat in her chair, and she waited.

She had always hated waiting.

It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. Carver knew it, and knew as well that Duster needed reminding. Because he held the light, it was his face that was exposed, but even in the shadows it cast, he could see enough of her to know. She was tense as a bowstring. Her hand had found its perch on her dagger’s hilt, and nothing would separate them. Carver didn’t try. He followed her, held the light, saw the buildings and the crevice and the fallen shards of stone that lay across the street, taller than a man.

Neither of them raised their voices; they called Fisher’s name every few feet, and they checked the rubble and fallen rock, although it was pointless. If more rock had fallen, this close, they would have heard it. And felt it.

They walked to the end of the crevice, or rather, to the last passable point; here, slabs of rock had fallen across it. Had they been flat, or even, they would have formed a bridge; as it was, they formed a small mountain.

Duster started to climb, and Carver called her back.

She said nothing, but her lips were compressed in a line so thin they were almost white.

“He’s the laziest member of our den,” Carver told her. “No way he’d try to climb anything.”

Duster snorted. But she nodded, and she turned back, following the light and the edge of the crack in the world.

 

Three times they went back and forth. Angel traded places with Carver, and he followed Duster as she searched. The search grew longer, and wider, but they found no sign of Fisher. No sign that he had fallen—and even the taciturn Fisher would have made some noise if he had. No sign that he had stopped to wait. They broke, walked with Lefty to the far left, where the chasm, as Duster noted, was narrower. It was a long trek, and they would have left Duster standing there to mark the spot, but Lefty wouldn’t agree to that.

“No one stays alone,” he said, almost inaudibly.

Duster opened her mouth to snarl something, and shut it again hard. The snap of her teeth was audible.

“Mark it with stones,” Angel told her. He picked up a few loose rocks and began to make a standing pile on an open patch of ground. Duster watched him for half a minute, and then she joined him. They didn’t take their time, but the pile was big enough and irregular enough that they could easily find it on the way back.

They got Lefty across, put the rope into the pack that hung, slack, across Carver’s back, and then began to search in earnest.

 

The sky changed color, and the moons paled, and Jewel sat in her chair. It was an anchor, it was what she knew and what she did when her den was not gathered under the safety of this roof, when they weren’t all sleeping in bedrolls and blankets across the length of the floor, like a human carpet.

Had they ever been gone this long? In silence, she could expose the heart of her worry. She could poke at it, prod it, test it against other worries, other fears. She could lob facts at it, as if trying to pierce it somehow. As if, in so doing, she could suddenly shake loose the knowledge and the
certainty
that was both curse and gift.

But nothing came, in the slow graying of darkness.

Not the
feeling,
and not her den.

 

They did not separate again.

Carver held the magestone, and Lefty stayed at his side, as if he were Arann. Angel and Duster moved ahead, fanning out as far as the light would reach, and circling back in silence. And it was silent. They spoke, when they spoke at all, with den- sign and movement: the curt shake of a head. Whether it was followed by the trail of moving dark hair or the sharp spires of white didn’t matter; it meant the same thing. No luck.

And, goddess, they wanted luck. If they didn’t speak, they thought the words: Her name, and a plea that the face she showed was her smile.

The only word that broke their self- imposed silence was a name, and it echoed against fallen and standing buildings, whose occupants had long since vanished. They widened their search, narrowed it, crossed the same ground again and again; they listened for any sign of movement, huddled together around the light.

They didn’t so much lose track of time as ignore it, as if by ignoring it they could buy more, or could—even better—turn it back to the moment when Fisher casually turned to follow in Duster’s wake.

But after hours, they regrouped. This time, they whispered, argued, held on to both their tempers and their fear. No one wanted to leave, not because they felt their presence would suddenly change things, but because they would go home, without Fisher, and find Jay waiting.

No one knew what they could say to her, or even what they would say, but in the end, home is where they retreated, gathering and guarding each other as they took their light and its foreign illumination from the undercity that had, in the space of one night, become as unknown, as mysterious, and as uncontrollable as the City that rested above it.

 

Teller woke when the sun’s light lay across his brow and eyes. He rolled over so it was on his neck, but that didn’t help, and eventually he sat up, blankets falling away from his chest. He pushed his hair out of his eyes—a gesture they’d all picked up in their years of watching Jay. No nightmare last night, he thought with relief, and he turned to look at Jay’s bedroll.

It was empty.

Finch was still asleep a couple of feet to his right, but Duster was already up; her space was conspicuously empty. Which was unusual; Duster didn’t like morning much, and she had to be dragged into it, which was only a little less risky than waking Arann. Arann, on the other hand, was awake; Teller could hear the boards creak in the other room, and they only creaked that loudly for Arann.

Teller rose, found his clothing, and slid into it. He opened the door carefully, and stepped into the main room. Jester and Lander were still sleeping against the wall. Arann was . . . pacing. He paused when he saw Teller, and something about his expression caused Teller to look at Jay’s table.

Jay was still on her chair, her arms wrapped around her upper body. He couldn’t see her face, but he looked at the rest of the room, then. Carver, Angel, Fisher, and Lefty were missing.

He opened his mouth, closed it, and tapped Arann’s arm; when Arann turned, he signed.

Arann shook his head.

Arann’s gaze flickered to the window and back.

No nightmare, Teller thought, but this time with no relief, and with a curious hollow sensation that had nothing to do with hunger. No nightmare, no second dream, because Jay hadn’t slept yet.

Duster was often out at night, and she was good enough to wait until Jay was in bed before she left. But only Duster. Not half the den. And even Duster didn’t stay out all night unless she’d managed to get into a fight that involved injury, running, and hiding.

This was the time they usually began to assemble a crew for the Common. Teller didn’t bother; he knew they wouldn’t be going anywhere until everyone returned.

He turned back to the bedroom to wake Finch.

 

Finch was never a heavy sleeper. She might have been at one time, but years spent sleeping in the same room as Jay had destroyed that. Like Teller, she hadn’t been expecting a full night’s sleep; like Teller, she’d expected Jay to wake them all in that state of panic that followed those dreams that weren’t quite dreams. She hadn’t expected sleep; she’d expected the odd dread that came from spending too much time in the darkened kitchen, while Jay spoke and Teller captured her words.

But unlike Teller, she felt no relief at the sight of morning sun, because the first thing she saw was his face. “What?” She whispered. “What happened?”

He lifted a finger to his lips, and she lowered her voice, although she hadn’t spoken loudly to begin with. “They didn’t come back last night.”

He slid out of the room while she changed, and she joined him and Arann in the main room. Then she woke Jester and Lander, finger to lips, and waited until they were dressed. They looked at each other, and fingers flew as they glanced at Jay’s bent back.

Lander nodded, and he and Arann went to the well, taking Jester with them. Even with the streets busy, Jay hated anyone to travel alone unless there was pressing need. Only Jay and Duster did.

 

Water returned in buckets and silence. Arann entered first, glanced around the room, and then set the buckets to one side in the kitchen. He approached Jay, but he didn’t speak.

There wasn’t much point. They couldn’t go into the undercity without a magestone; that was death. They had candles, but candles were almost useless unless you didn’t plan to actually move; they had no lamp, and lamplight cost money. Finch came to draw Arann away, and he went, but he looked at her once and she had to turn away from his expression.

It said, naked, all the things that everyone was afraid to even think.

They were sitting in the center of the room when the door opened. They looked up—all of them, even Jay—as Carver entered. He walked over to the kitchen table and set the magestone flat upon its surface. But he didn’t meet Jay’s eyes.

One by one, they filed in: Angel. Duster. Lefty.

Lefty went straight to Arann’s side and stood one step behind him, as if they were alone again in the City, and he didn’t know, and didn’t want to know, what to do.

Gods, Finch thought.
Kalliaris.

Jay stood. Her eyes were dark with lack of sleep, and dark with something else as well. But she asked the question they were all silently asking. “Where’s Fisher?”

And she got the answer they were all silently dreading.

“We lost him. In the undercity.” It was Angel who spoke, not Carver, not Duster. The words were flat, and he bowed the odd spiral of his hair slowly, lifting a hand to his eyes.

Jay hit the table with both hands; it was the only sound in the apartment. Then she rose and she headed to the other room, slamming the door behind her.

 

Fisher did not come home.

Not then. Not later. Not ever.

D
USTER DID NOT DARE THE UNDERCITY. She left the magelight in the stand on the kitchen table, surrounded by the flapping tongues of books; the sea breeze was heavy, and the windows were open. She thought about tying them shut. It wasn’t raining. It wasn’t her job.

Her job.

Glancing around the room, she saw the den. Saw the awkward space and silence that surrounded each person. Even Lander’s hands were quiet in his lap, as if he’d forgotten all forms of speech in this daylight room. She looked away before he could meet her eyes. Hells, she looked away before anyone could, as if their gaze was painful. As if it would burn. And in this tight little constricted cage of a space, it was just pain and suffocation. She
had
to get out.

To get out of here.

No one tried to stop her. Not Jay. Not Lander. No one else would’ve dared. She said nothing as she made her way to the door. Maybe it took her a little longer to open the damn thing than it should have. Maybe she stayed in the frame, listening for something—some sound, some word, some question. Whatever it was, it either wasn’t coming, or it would take too damn long, and Hells if she’d wait.