The Hidden City

by Michelle West

  But safety was not a concern, couldn’t be—there wasn’t room for it. Someone was running through these streets the same way she was—but dressed so poorly for them, his feet had passed over the bridge between pain and numbness. He didn’t notice. Jewel did.

  She had to. She had to. She was Jewel. The stranger—the boy?—was not. His fear was overwhelming, and hers couldn’t be. Couldn’t be allowed to become so. Different fear, she told herself. She wasn’t running through the streets in growing terror. She wasn’t searching for—

  The dead.

  Arann skidded to a stop, snow spraying airward in his sudden halt. Carver stumbled. “Jay?” Urgent question.

  “He’s lost,” she whispered. Hard, to whisper or to speak, her throat felt so thick.

  “We’re not much better,” Carver told her, looking around him at the tall buildings that were wedged together in narrow peaks, like a man-made gully.

  But Arann said only, “What is he looking for, Jay?”

  And she answered before she could think of finding different words. “His mother.”

  Lefty and Arann exchanged a glance. They left it to Carver to ask. “She’s dead?”

  Jewel nodded.

  “He knows?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet,” she whispered. “Not for sure.” She felt so cold it seemed strange to see mist rise from her lips. “But he’ll know. We have to find him,” she added.

  “We got that.”

  She hadn’t run like this when she had lost her Oma, or her mother. She hadn’t run like this when she had faced her father’s death, her last link to family and the bloodline that her Oma had placed all trust and faith in. She had felt the fear, but it was a fear that was imbued with certainty. No hope was in it; no room for hope. She had known. Her father was dead.

  She had waited. She hadn’t run like this. She’d had a lifetime to get used to knowing.

  When her Oma had passed away, her life had become so silent. Not even her mother’s tears could be heard, although they could be seen, touched, and even tasted. Her father had been absent, away at work—because work wouldn’t wait and it didn’t come often enough.

  “She’s gone to join your grandfather,” Jewel’s mother had said, rubbing her eyes with the mound of her palms, spreading her tears, with dirt, across her cheeks. Those cheeks, lined, had been pale.

  Jewel had been six. Or seven. It was hard to tell; hard to mark the passage of time by something as singular and final as death. That would come later.

  “How can you tell?” she had asked.

  Her mother said nothing, holding her grandmother’s hands. Those hands had shrunk and dwindled with the passage of time. It was the High City fashion to be slender, but in the streets of the hundred holdings, and especially in the poorest of those holdings, it was a mark of poverty and hunger.

  Her mother struggled for an answer. Jewel recognized the expression; her mother’s words were heated, but unlike Oma’s and her father’s, they were few, and chained to the service of the practical. Not for Jewel’s mother the flights of fancy, the lively delight of the old, grim stories that her grandmother had so relished; not for her mother the steady, fanciful optimism of her husband.

  After a while, she said, “I just know it, that’s all.”

  And Jewel, tainted by the gift and the curse of the foresight her grandmother had called thunder and lightning, saw nothing, knew nothing, except this: her Oma was gone. She would not smoke a pipe or sit in the corner chair again, would never offer her lap, her stories, her bitter advice. That she would never again raise her hand in anger was no comfort.

  The apartment was quiet when they had at last taken her body away. Jewel had never asked where it had gone.

  She knew that it was consigned to flame; that there was marker and no grave. And she knew why. They were poor.

  One day, she vowed, but quietly, that would all change. She would be rich. She would have money. She would buy a big house—on the Isle—and everyone she loved could live there with her, even if they were poor.

  This boy, this stranger, this impulse who had as yet no face, no name, nothing but a growing frenzy too strong to be simple worry, was poor. Poorer, Jewel was suddenly certain, than even her family had been. She could almost see him, for a minute; could almost see his home, small and narrow, defined as it was by only one other person.

  He wasn’t Jewel. He couldn’t be certain his mother was dead. There was hope, but it was a hope of dread, of terror. There were some certainties that were almost more than she could bear, but she understood at this moment that uncertainty was worse.

  And in the Winter, with death hovering in the air, it was a bitter gift, and came wrapped in memory. She accepted the memory; it was strong and it kept the cold at bay.

  The first time:

  “Mommy?”

  Jewel’s mother had stopped beneath the huge bower of the ancient trees that lined the Common. Her basket half-full, she had frowned, turning to the side to let people pass her by. The trees provided some cover, but in truth, not much; it was a market day, and while there was sun, there would be crowds.

  Her mother’s frown had deepened. “Jewel, what is it now?”

  Jewel pointed. “The dog,” she said. “The dog will get hit by the wagon.”

  Her mother looked, and failed to see, the white dog across the crowded thoroughfare. Market flags flew above the crowd, and the crowd moved, one long, loud mix of color, voice, height. “There’s no dog,” she said at last, grabbing her daughter’s hand and holding it too tightly. “And if we don’t get to the farmer’s stall soon, all of the good vegetables will be gone, and we’ll be left with the spoiled.” No need to add what would happen in that case.

  But Jewel looked over her shoulder, seeing the white flash of fur, the triangular head, the big, dumb, friendly face of the old dog. “He’s there,” she said, pulling against her mother’s hand.

  “Jewel, I can’t see a dog, and even if it’s there, there is no wagon. Now come.” She had dragged her daughter from the shade of towering trees and into the crowd, holding her carefully, balancing the weight of one hand against the weight of the other, basket laden with some of the food they depended on.

  On the walk back to their apartment, Jewel saw the dog again. Across his body, in furrows, the long mark of wagon wheels.

  Her mother saw him this time as well. She looked at her daughter’s face, her own pinched with worry. “Don’t,” she whispered, as Jewel tried to free her hand. “It’s too late.”

  “But—”

  And her mother shook her head again. “I told your Oma,” she whispered, shaking her daughter’s hand. “Do not speak of this,” she told Jewel in a louder voice. “Never speak of this. They’ll call you bad names, here. They’ll blame it on you. They’ll say you caused it.”

  But Jewel knew she hadn’t.

  She just hadn’t been able to stop it.

  Not the first time that she’d failed. Not the last time that she’d tried. But that one stayed with her, like a scar. Her Oma had had scars. On her wrists, on her arms, one on the side of her neck. They fascinated Jewel; they were always white, even when her Oma’s skin was at its most sun-dark.

  Her Oma, smoke spraying from the corner of her mouth, had snorted. “These? Feh. These aren’t scars,” she told her granddaughter. “They’re marks, that’s all.”

  “But how did you get them?”

  “How does anyone?” But the old woman had lifted her wrists to the light, and her expression shifted, the way it sometimes did when she was about to tell a story. “These,” she told Jewel, “are for the Lady.”

  “The Lady?”

  “Aye. In the South, we call the Lady. In the North, you call the Mother. They’re almost the same.” She shrugged. Inhaled acrid smoke and closed her eyes. “Sometimes if we bleed—if we choose to bleed—it’s enough. We offer the Lady our thanks that way. For life,” she added. “For our lives.”

  “But the scars—”

&nb
sp; “You’ll learn, girl. These aren’t scars. They’re nothing. The scars you carry with you? The ones that never leave? They’re all in here.” She’d tapped her chest. “Regret,” she said softly, “for the things you didn’t do. Or the things you couldn’t do. They haunt you enough, and you see things like this,” and she put her hand to her neck, “and they mean nothing.”

  “What things do you regret?”

  But smoke answered; smoke and silence. The old woman had finally smiled, but it was a bitter smile. She pulled Jewel into her lap. Held her there.

  And Jewel, curious, knew better than to speak. But it frightened her anyway; until that moment, she had always believed that her Oma could do anything.

  Oh, the boy made it hard to breathe. She had never, ever felt vision as strongly as this; it was as if they were joined by experience—by lack of experience—and nothing would separate them. She was weeping, and she was not; she was breathing too heavily, too shallowly, for the running. Her legs were numb with cold, her feet worse; the shadows the sun cast, short, were all that she could see.

  When her mother had passed away, Jewel had been older, but not by much. The air in the room had been cold and damp; the windows, open to Winter, let in the sounds of the street below. The room was close to the market.

  Her father, unemployed now that the port was closed, had been with her mother, with them both. He was grave and silent.

  “Will she go to see Oma?” Jewel had asked him.

  He had nodded quietly. “Oma,” he said, “and her brothers.”

  Jewel had never met the mythical uncles of whom her mother had so infrequently spoken.

  “How do you know?” she had whispered. She couldn’t talk in more than a whisper; the Winter fog was in her throat and chest, and her breath was weak, a rasp. Her mother’s had been like this, but worse.

  He placed a hand on her head, pushing aside dark curls; he left it there, as if she were an anchor. “Mandaros,” he said quietly, “is the god who sits in judgment, and he loves his people.”

  “Who are his people?”

  “The dead, Jewel. He lives in halls so large that the entire City could be built between the first columns, and he sits on a throne that can be seen for miles.”

  “Like Averalaan Aramarelas?”

  “Like the High City, yes.”

  “Is it beautiful?”

  “It is beautiful,” he told her quietly. “But sometimes it is very far away.”

  “As far away as the High City?”

  “For us? As far,” he said. He smiled. It was not a happy smile. His hair was wild, fringed in white, his cheeks hollow. Cold Winter, and lean. His sweater was threadbare. Oma had done all the knitting, all the mending, and all the scolding for the family, and when she had died? Her mother had tried.

  “For some of us,” he continued softly, “the throne is so far it takes years and years to reach. We walk,” he added, ruffling her hair, “and sometimes we run. But it is distant, that throne.”

  “And the god?”

  “He waits.”

  “Is he angry?”

  Her father shook his head. “He is seldom angry, Jewel. He is often sad.”

  “Will he be sad for Momma?”

  “He will be sad for you,” he told her. “And for me. But not for Momma. She was very tired.”

  “Did he take her away?”

  “No.”

  “Will he keep her there?”

  “He will let her stay by his side for as long as she wants,” he replied.

  “Will she wait for you?”

  His brows drew close together. He paused a moment, and then said, “She will wait for you.”

  “Why?”

  “How could she not? She will miss you, and even if she can never come back to you here, there’s a place where you’ll meet her again. You have to be good,” he added.

  “I was good. But she died anyway.”

  He said nothing to that. Nothing at all.

  Jewel had never seen a ghost, and she didn’t believe in them. Her father hadn’t either. Her Oma had—but her Oma’s voice was still, this day. Still, cold, distant; death had silenced her. Jewel wanted to believe in ghosts. Even angry ones. She had seen all of her family angry at one time or another, and if she hadn’t enjoyed it—and she hadn’t—it would still be better than this: silence.

  She had lived with her father for years. He had struggled to teach her what he thought she should know: How to read. How to write. How to count, how to meld one number into another, as if they were liquid. He spoke sometimes in Torra, her mother’s tongue, and sometimes in Weston.

  It was hard, to be alone.

  She learned to cook, and to mend, where it was possible. She learned to keep the room clean, for when her father returned from his day’s work. She learned many things, in this place. The names of the gods. The names of the days, so like the gods; the names of the months, so different, that passed, one after another, in slow concert. This was time.

  But as the years passed, she learned that there were things her father could not teach her; things he feared to speak about. Her strange vision was one of those things. Only Oma had listened, had cared to listen. Only Oma had given her advice when it could be offered, and even Jewel’s mother had been uncomfortable when she did—but no one argued with Oma. Not and won.

  The sight came and went, like seasons, but less predictable. She learned not to speak of it; not to her father, not to anyone. She learned to keep things hidden, to keep them secret.

  Five days before her father died, she knew.

  She sat in bed crying, disconsolate, and her father had come to her side; they shared the room, after all. It was only a few steps. He was not sick, not as Oma had been, not as her mother had been.

  Her father had taken her in his arms, drawn her up across his lap, found a place for her beneath his chin, although she was ten, and too large to fit easily. She had babbled into his chest, and he had cradled her, rocked her, whispered into her hair. About nightmares. About fear.

  She had tried to tell him. That she knew. What she knew. He had both listened and failed to listen.

  He is a man, her Oma’s memory whispered. He’s not one of us; he can’t be. He is not a bad man, but he is not a woman. And because he wasn’t, she knew that he would hear nothing.

  Jewel knew how to count. And she counted the bitter passage of days. She cooked for her father, and cleaned, and wept; she begged him not to go to work. But the words were poor words, and useless. It’s just one day, she said. If I miss one day, he told her quietly, they’ll find someone else to take my place. Hush. If it’s death, it’s a faster death than starving. Work was life, in the twenty-fifth holding.

  It’s death, she tried to tell him, and when she met his gaze on that last day, when she ran to him, hugged him, squeezed the words out of his lips, she thought he must know.

  But he kissed the top of her head, disentangled himself, and left her anyway.

  She had waited in the cavernous, empty room, the table clean, the floor clean, her few possessions gathered on the far corner of her bed in disarray. She had slate, and some chalk; she had clothing, three days’ worth, before it had to be beaten with stone and soap. Food? Not much. And no money.

  The knock came at the door. She rose to answer it.

  A tall man stood in the frame, hat in hands, his face grave. “Jewel Markess?” he said. Her whole name. She looked up, and up again, until she saw the end of his beard.

  She nodded. She didn’t ask him to come in, because she knew he wouldn’t. She’d seen it, seen this.

  “I’m sorry, lass,” he said, bending, his broad shoulders folding slightly, his beard drawing closer. “There was an accident at the port. A timber beam fell.”

  He must have thought her cold, uncaring. She had nodded, but she hadn’t said a word. She’d listened, but the words had already been said, already been heard.

  She didn’t ask about the money. He gave it to her anyway; three days’ pay.
Her father’s. This man, bearded, tall, was a good man; he could have kept the money.

  But he looked beyond her into the empty room, and his face twisted. He mumbled something. Gave her an address. Told her to come to him if she were ever in need. They weren’t empty words. Not yet.

  But they would be, come Winter. He was married, and he had several children. She waited for him to leave, and after the door closed, she looked back.

  Thinking about the sounds that she had once heard, here. The things she had seen. The people she had touched, and the people who had loved her. Everything was gone; soon enough, the room would be gone, too, home to another family, a larger one. Home to people who could pay the rent.

  And Jewel?

  She ran to the windows, threw them wide, looked down into the streets below. They were busy; carts and wagons rolled past, men and women shouted at each other, children played in the lee of the building opposite hers.

  If she had a home, it was there.

  She didn’t weep; she didn’t cry; she didn’t pray. She just watched people pass by, as if this were any other day, as if her father had not died across the distant city, within sight of Averalaan Aramarelas. After some time had passed, the shadows growing, the sunlight fading, she returned to her bed and began to pack the things she owned into a sack.

  Then she found the other items that she thought she might need: old needles, half-balls of carded wool in the least expensive of colors, the single-edged knife that her father had used for carving when the Winter was cold. She bound these in cloth, depositing them with care into her sack. Last, she took a box, her father’s box, from its hidden place beneath the false bottom of a dresser drawer. Old and tarnished, it had become the center of their lives in many ways; it was where he put the coin he earned. She opened the lid with care, and put three days’ worth of pay into the hollow, dark interior.