The Hidden City (6 page)

“And you were left with your father.”

She nodded.

“What did your father do?”

“He worked. When he could. Sometimes he worked at the port. Sometimes he worked in the warehouses near the port.” Her lids were veined, fine, pale jade against the surprising white of skin. She didn't close her eyes often in sunlight, he thought. “He died in an accident. At the port. His friend brought me the last of his pay.

“While he was alive, I took care of him,” she added softly. “I went to the market. I kept our home clean. I tried to fix his clothing, when it needed mending.” She glanced toward the shuttered windows, as if seeking sight of escape. As if there were anywhere to escape
to
. “He taught me, in the evenings. Before he started, when my Oma was alive, we used to listen to her stories. When it was cold, we'd build a fire. When it was very cold,” she added. “I like your pipe.”

She was such an odd child.

“After she died, the stories died with her. My mother tried, but she'd never liked them much. My father didn't know them. So he—he taught me to read. Instead. He told me that I could find stories that way. By reading.”

“If you have the money,” Rath replied, without thinking. “Books are expensive.”

She nodded bitterly. “I found that out.”

“What else did he teach you?”

“To write. To handle numbers, at least a bit.” She let go of the blanket and spread her hands flat, palm down. “To use a knife. To kick a man. To run.”

“In your apartment?”

“In our home.”

“He didn't expect you to run very far, then.”

She didn't answer his momentary smile with a smile of her own; she was guarded again. Against hope, he thought.

“Yes, I'm leaving.”

She nodded; she didn't flinch, didn't ask him why.

“But I'm curious. How did you know?”

Her eyes were flat as slate, dark and lifeless. “I know,” she said, shrugging. “I saw it.”

Were he a different man, he would have assumed that she had gone through his things in his absence—but he knew what he owned, and knew as well that there was no sign among the piles of cloth, the bottles and unguents, the dyes and even the quills that he kept for his own letters, few though they were, that would give her the information she possessed.

“You won't take me with you,” she added.

He was an accomplished liar. Truth, he used seldom, because it almost always caused pain. “No,” he said quietly. “I can't. Eat.”

She ate. “I can't pay you for this,” she told him, around a mouthful of meat. She ate the meat first.

“No.”

“You don't care.”

“Not much.” He watched her. The light would persist for some time, even with the windows shuttered; the shutters were broken, and he hadn't cared enough to have them replaced; there were bars across the panes.

“You're not eating.”

“I'm not hungry,” he told her.

“Yes, you are.”

His genial smile was becoming a bit of a chore; he let it slide free of his face, discarding it. What was left, he couldn't say. He watched her. She ate. There was a lot of silence, and in it, he saw that she was, at last, afraid.

But it was fear that had an odd texture to it; she was not afraid for herself; not afraid of him. He was not accustomed to children, and the lack of familiarity had never galled him before; it did now, because he found that he could not read her expression clearly.

And that he wanted to be able to.

“You can stay for another night,” he said at last, giving up.

“Can I leave?”

“If you—” He cursed. “No.”

And she surprised him by smiling. It was a glimmer, like light, that changed her face. “Was that stupid enough to be my last question?”

He stood suddenly, and turned away from her. It was easier to speak when he didn't have to watch her face change with each word, each sentence.

“I won't be leaving for another two weeks. And you won't be well for another three days, if I'm any judge. Stay.”

“Why?”

“You had your question,” he said sharply. “And unfortunately, I've wasted most of the day in the Common, and not to my own ends. I have a matter of some urgency to which I must attend.”

“I didn't ask you to—”

“No. If you had, you wouldn't be here.”

“I don't understand you.”

His laugh was curt. “That makes two of us.” He walked over to the table, lifting his leather backpack. Thinking, as he slid it over his shoulders, that she
would
weigh less. That she did.

“My Oma told me something,” she said, while his back was turned to her.

“Only once?”

She laughed, and then coughed; she must have been halfway through a mouthful of something. “You have no idea,” she said, when she could talk. “More than once. A hundred times. Maybe a thousand.”

“What was it?”

“That we don't leave our debts unpaid. And if we can't pay 'em, we don't accept them either.”

“That sounds like something an old woman would say.” He turned toward her, fixing his cuffs. He should change, and knew it, but also knew that it would make her skittish.

“So . . . I can't pay for this.”

He was a
very
accomplished liar. “I'm almost an old man,” he began.

She snorted. “Don't tell me you're lonely,” she snapped. “Or that you want company. Because you
hate
company.”

“Do I?”

She was mutinous in her silent response. Fire there. Spirit.

He shrugged. “I hate complications,” he said, correcting her. “Company, I can take or leave. If it's decent company. And Jewel?”

“What?”

“It's not nice to accuse a man of lying.”

“It's true.”

“Truth is not an excuse for bad behavior. I have to go. I'll be back, but late. Don't wait up.”

She folded arms across her ribs, sinking back against the headboard, her face slowly graying. Fever, he thought.

“Drink the water.” His voice was rougher than he had intended. “Drink all of it. Do
not
try to walk. Do
not
try to unlock the door.”

“And if someone comes?”

“Ignore it. Unless they break the door down, in which case, you have my permission to extemporize.”

“To what?”

“Improvise.” He frowned. “Ignore everything else I've just told you and make it up as you go along.”

“Do I need your permission to do that?”

“You need my permission to breathe while you're in that bed. Or in my home. Is that understood?”

She nodded. “Yes. Yes, Rath. I understand.”

Then maybe,
he thought, as he reached for the highest of the bolts,
you can explain it to me.

As if she could hear him, she spoke. “The man you're going to see,” she whispered.

He could hear her. But not well. With a resentment that was vastly more natural than charity he turned and walked back to the bed.

She had shrunk. The bed dwarfed her. The threadbare counterpane seemed miles wide as it stretched to either side of her spindly legs. “He'll have you followed,” she told him. “If you come here, he'll know where you live.”

His brow rose a fraction. “Who is he?”

“I don't know. I don't know his name. He's big. And bald.” She was wrong on two counts. He did not correct her. “He wears dark clothing. Two knives, but I don't think they're both obvious. I don't know who he is. But he'll have you followed.”

“Interesting. Do you know why?”

She shook her head, as if she was already caught out in a lie. “I think it's the tablets,” she added, voice dropping into inaudibility.

“Who?”

“I told you, I don't know—”

“Who will follow me?”

And her eyes widened a fraction, her voice losing some of its quiver. “I don't know,” she told him. He cursed roundly, and reaching out without care or subtlety, he placed his palm flat against her forehead. She was burning. He had seen this before; fever came and went at its own pleasure. Sometimes, in the end, it came to stay. He could not be certain, with Jewel, that that wouldn't be the case.

Maybe the delirium of fever made her talk.

But he was a man who had survived by trusting his instincts; fever or no, he had to ask more. “How do you know that he'll have me followed?”

“Because he orders someone to do it,” she answered, sliding away from him, although she did not try to avoid his touch.

“And does he give any other orders?”

“I don't know.” After a moment, she repeated the words, but they were louder, and they bristled with pain and anger.
“I don't know.”

“Enough. Enough, Jay. Promise that you'll stay here.”

“Unless someone breaks the door down.”

“Unless someone else enters my home.”

She swallowed. “My Oma used to say—”

“That you shouldn't make a promise you couldn't keep.” When her eyes grew wide, he almost laughed, but it would have come out in anger. “She was right. Promise that you'll wait.”

She swallowed. Her lips were cracked. He wondered if she'd keep the food down. “I promise,” she said.

And her voice was a little girl's voice. A lost voice. It cut him, and he had exposed enough of himself—carelessly, ignorantly—that she
could
cut him, just by speaking.

He left as quickly as he could and tried not to look back.

 

The streets of the thirty-second holding were shutting down almost imperceptibly. The sun was still high enough that some children scattered their sticks and stones throughout the street, their voices raised in laughter, a mix of joy and mockery so common he might have been anywhere.

But their parents were at the windows and doors that girded the street itself, and one by one, those children were being called inside. For dinner. Or safety. Women were beginning to leave different doors, in gaudy dresses and ugly, garish paint. They would not linger here; this was home, and very few of their customers could be found in the thirty-second.

He was not, and had never been, among them. Because of this, he could smile, or nod, and they would return this pleasantry. He did not treat them with diffidence, but he didn't treat anyone with diffidence, and they knew it.

“You look a right mess,” one of the women said.

“And you, Carla, like a vision.” His grin was brief, answered by hers, although she took care not to show her teeth; she was missing a few too many.

He checked his satchel; it was a nervous habit. The streets were long and narrow when he departed the main road, and they were framed by alleys and tall buildings, neither of which held any friends. Rath had killed men on streets such as this, without hesitation or noise.

But in truth, he didn't relish the opportunity. It was a messy business, the killing of men, and he had seen, time and again, acquaintances who had slid from the precipice of necessity into something darker. He had taken care not to become them. Not through any particular moral conviction; he'd long since given up on those. No; the magisterial guards were clever, they saw well, they found the bodies, and it was hard—if one continued to add to the dead—to avoid their detection.

The Common was closing down by the time he reached its outer perimeter; he made his way past boarded stalls, saw flags coming down their poles as their weary owners closed up for the day. Morning started before sunrise, and they had some distance to travel before they ate; they paid only enough attention to assess any threat he might offer.

He, of course, offered none.

He walked past the lengthening shadows cast by the Merchant Authority, and banked right, a sharp right that would lead almost instantly to the row of buildings, glass windows like an unholy temptation, that housed the city merchants properly. They were adorned by the usual guards, and where guards were not present, the magisterial patrols were frequent. Here, the source of the taxes that ran much of the city was at its most dense; only across the bridge on the Isle itself was more money gathered.

He seldom crossed the bridge.

Had he not already made the decision to move, he might have traversed it this eve, and made his way by carriage to the Order of Knowledge upon the Isle—but any negotiations that involved the truculent scholars and mages upon that Isle took weeks. Oh, the money was better—and no doubt, the man to whom the tablets were eventually consigned would go there himself—but if money was time, it was not, in this case, time he could afford.

He tipped his hat to guards; they were not familiar to him, but they were familiar enough with his contact that they nodded in turn. Bored nods, all, which was as it should be. Had they looked at all tense, Rath would have back-tracked quietly and returned on a different day; merchant guards were like personal weather vanes, and Rath was allergic to trouble.

He paused at last in front of a set of old doors; they were wooden, with large glass panes. A ridiculous name in gold leaf traced a half circle at eye level.
Avram's Society of Averalaan Historians
. Avram was an Old Weston name. Like the man who purported to own it, it was pompous; unlike that man, it was succinct. The sign itself was lettered in mock-ancient style, which made it hard to read. Rath had never understood the point of having a sign that was difficult to read.

Signage, however, was not considered one of his areas of expertise, and as he wanted money from the man who had commissioned it, he kept his opinion to himself. He knocked twice and waited.