The Hidden City (44 page)

Wondering what the cost would be, if she stayed here. Not to her—but to Rath.

She finished cutting bread, apples, hard cheese. “Take these,” she told him.

He took the basket.

“Stay in the room, with the others.”

“Where are you going?”

“To talk to Rath.”

He waited another moment. “My name,” he began.

“I don't care.”

“I want to—”

“I
don't care,
Carver. Whatever you've done to survive, you've done. Telling me isn't going to change a damn thing.” She swallowed, turned to look at him, at this accidental boy who had hit death in the face with the seat of a bar stool. “What you do
when you're here,
I care about. That's the only thing that matters. That, and tonight.”

His gaze was odd. She watched it waver, wanting to be elsewhere. “I'm not part of a den,” he said at last.

“Good.”

“I'd be part of yours.”

“I told you—I don't have one.”

He nodded, then, just before his stomach spoke. Embarrassed, he retreated.

Jewel waited until she heard the click of the door; her room, occupied by four strangers, and shut against the world.

Then she walked to Rath's room, and knocked.

The door slid open; he hadn't really shut it. He was sitting, jacket still shreds across his back, in the chair in front of his desk; the magelight was in its stand and a quill was moving steadily in his right hand. Paper's edge curled to either side of the words that seemed to anchor him. He often wrote at night.

And she often let him.

This night was different. She entered his room and shut the door quietly—and carefully—behind her. His pen continued its quiet scratching. She walked past him, to the cupboards above the chest he kept locked. She pulled out two small jars and a long, white roll of something that reminded her of cheesecloth.

He looked up as she approached him in silence, the jars and the bandages in her hands. There was no accusation in his face; there was nothing in it at all; it was closed. Intimidating.

But she'd come for a reason. She touched the shoulders of his jacket, avoiding what she assumed would be his glare. To her surprise, he let her remove it, and began to unbutton the shirt—also ruined—that lay beneath it. Blood was a red conversation on that shirt. The rest, the welts and cuts, were shallow enough that they didn't expose bone and sinew. She'd seen worse.

But these were personal in a way that even Arann's broken ribs, bruised eye, swollen lips, hadn't been. She removed the lid from one of the jars, and with shaking hands, she dressed each wound. His pen stopped at some point, but she didn't mark it; there was something compelling and soothing about the dressing of these wounds.

“The bandages won't stay,” he told her quietly, as she began to play out the long strip. He caught her hand, sticky with unguent, before she could touch his cheek. His eyes were lined and dark, his face gaunt.

Old Rath, he'd called himself, the first day she'd met him. And he'd seemed old to her—but not the way he was now. It frightened her. She could see the bones beneath his skin.

“Do you know what you're doing?” he asked her softly, holding that hand. He would not let her touch his face.

“Disinfecting the cuts,” she replied. But it was the wrong answer. Or perhaps the right answer to the wrong question.

She wanted to touch him to make certain he was real. And alive. She couldn't tell him that. She couldn't have said that in her old home either, when her mother and father had been alive, and her Oma had been at the center of the universe.

“How many, Jewel?” he asked.

She knew what he meant. “I don't know,” she answered, just as softly. “I only meant to save Finch. That's all.”

“I know.” The words were uninflected. “I've seen it before. In someone else. But not like this,” he added, lifting his cut arm. His smile was almost bitter. “Then, it was all theory.”

“It's worse,” she told him.

“The seeing?”

She nodded. “Since I met you, Rath.”

His gaze fell to the words he'd been writing. His cursive script was both strong and almost illegible. “Four,” he told her quietly. “Will you keep them all?”

“Will you let me?”

“For now, Jewel.” He shook his head, and his smile was strange; she didn't understand it. It was shorn of both sarcasm and edge, but it was also shorn of mirth, or joy. It cut him, she thought. Knew it was true, and didn't know why.

“You'll find others,” he told her.

“You're seeing things, too?”

“Just you, Jay. Jewel Markess. Just you.” He paused, and then let her hand go. “And perhaps myself, clearly. You're like a mirror,” he added, “and it is not a kindness.”

She wanted to ask him what he meant. But she knew the rules, even if he seldom bothered to put them into words. What he didn't offer, she couldn't ask for. Not here and now.

“Go back to your den-kin.”

“They're not my den.”

But his smile was still there, shifting in the light, gathering different shadows that showed the many lines that edged the corners of his lips.

She went.

Chapter Thirteen

JEWEL HAD NEVER lived in a
quiet
room with this many people before. If she were honest, she had no memories of the time in which she'd lived with this many people at all, although her Oma had often spoken about them with some pride. She was always proud of the things she'd done, and the words had survived, some echo of that dim voice, when the memories themselves had been devoured by age and time.

It was crowded, but it was less crowded; the arguments that time had worn into patterns—between her father and her Oma, between her father and her mother, between Jewel and either of her parents, or sometimes both—had been a part of the house in a way that the quiet here had never been.

Her first task, in the foreign quiet of this new morning, was a visit to the Common. She took Finch and Carver, and after a moment's hesitation, asked Arann and Lefty if they wanted to come, too. Arann had been told not to move much, but it was getting damn cold, and the cold couldn't be good for him. Just to the market, for clothing. Just that.

Arann nodded instantly, a sure sign that the “rest” was finally driving him insane. Lefty looked at Arann. He had momentarily lost his voice in the presence of Carver; Finch didn't seem to scare him.

Then again, Jewel couldn't imagine Finch scaring
anyone
.

Rath was either sleeping or out. His door was closed, and she didn't knock on it because she didn't want to know. Disturbing Rath was never a good idea anyway.

The skies had lost their clarity; the open face of the sun once again obscured itself with clouds. But the air was distinctly chillier than it had been, and it hadn't been all that warm to start.

Finch, in thin shift, was almost shuddering when they reached the outer door and threw it open. Jewel had offered her clothing, and Finch had—much to her surprise—mutely refused to take it. She was here, and she obviously trusted Jewel at least enough to stay—but the rest might take time, and Jewel wasn't certain how much of it they had.

“Finch,” she said, her voice inflected with an echo of her Oma, “I'm already minding one sick person. I
do not
need another. Is that clear? Put this on. It doesn't fit, and yes, it's ugly, but it's not exactly warm outside.” She held out one of Rath's many jackets, aware of how small it would make Finch look. How much smaller. Rath's training was good for something; she could hold her arm out in that position for a long damn time.

She had to prove it, and the silence as she did was damn awkward.

Finch eventually gave way, without once breaking it.

“Why was that man after you?” Jewel was breaking the one cardinal rule about the past, and she knew it. The past, as she had told Carver, wasn't her concern. And it shouldn't have been. But in the clear light of sun, it
was
.

Finch shook her head.

“You were alone?”

And nodded. The nod was wrong. Everything about it.

Carver said nothing. His visible eye was narrowed, and he turned to glance at Arann, who said more nothing. Lefty shoved his hand further into his armpit. If they'd been walking slowly enough, he would have shuffled, his shoulders stooped and his head down.

Jewel inexplicably wanted to hit them all. Not hard, and not to cause damage—more to get their attention. Well, maybe not Finch. Her Oma had had that habit for all of Jewel's waking memory. But, she reminded herself, she wasn't her Oma. And hitting them wouldn't do much good.

“Why are you wearing a dress?”

More silence. But this time, Jewel wanted to hit herself. She did not ask Finch where her parents were. Or who. In fact, given that Finch now looked like a prettier, skinnier version of Lefty, she thought it might be best if she never asked another question again. In her life.

Carver gave her a
look
.

Arann deliberately didn't.

But Finch said nothing at all, and that was worse; it was in her eyes, and her face, her unbruised face.

Given how she felt, Jewel surprised herself, and not in a good way. “Where were you, when you met that man?”

Silence.

“Could you get back there?”

Carver's eye widened and he shook his head; his hair slid across his face, and beneath it, his skin was both pale and unblemished. He really was almost handsome; his face was like the face of a storybook patriarch's son. But his feet were bare.

Finch had stopped walking entirely, which caused them all to stop, stillness radiating outward slowly, like the opposite of ripples in still water when a stone falls.

It was Arann who said, and very gently, “She doesn't mean to take you back there.”

Finch looked at him—looked up at him—her neck stiff, her eyes slightly rounded.

“She went to get you,” he added, in his reasonable Arann voice. More of his voice, Jewel thought, than either Finch or Carver had yet heard. “It sounds like she risked her life, even. You think she did all that to take you back?”

In a low voice, Finch replied, “They'll pay.”

“Oh, they'll pay,” Jewel said, her voice bright as new steel.

“She meant money,” Carver told her curtly.

Jewel shrugged.

“Why do you want to know?” Carver's hand had fallen away from his dagger. Jewel wasn't certain when it had started to reach, and Rath would have been really annoyed at the lack of awareness.

“I think—I think it's important,” she said at last, and lamely.

“Why?”

“They—he,” she corrected herself, “came from that place, somehow. It's a connection.”

“I saw him.
You
saw him. You want to
ever
see him again?” Carver's gaze was intent, intense.

“Not that way, no.”

“Then leave it alone.”

But she couldn't. Not yet. The Common trees were drawing closer as they resumed their walk. “Were there others, where you were?” Pressing, pushing the point, when she knew better.

Finch closed her eyes, which was answer enough.

“See?” Jewel said to Carver, or to Arann, or to no one in particular.

Carver looked at Arann. “Is she crazy?”

Arann shrugged. “Good crazy, maybe.”

“Look,” Carver began. “How exactly did you
know
where she'd be?”

And Lefty spoke his first words to the strangers; he said, “She had a nightmare.”

Jewel closed her eyes.

In the market, they were good children. Which meant silent children, hands out where everyone could see them. The guards at the gate stared at Carver's feet long before he'd actually reached their disapproving glares, and Jewel was tense for a moment because she was preparing an argument.

It wasn't necessary. At this time of day, the guards were harried enough that they were willing to let the merchants fend for themselves, and although they issued a curt warning to the group, they let them go, crushed in a press of moving people who didn't have the time or inclination to stop for the simple suspicion of a couple of armed and armored men.

“We're going to the cobbler's?” Lefty surprised them all by asking.

Jewel nodded. “That, and Helen. She'll want to see Arann. She said so. And it can't hurt to bring Finch and Carver, too.” But the words came out on their own, and without much thought; Jewel was occupied with other concerns.