Andrei frowned. “Your information?”
“That is unlike you, Andrei.”
“There are things at stake that you are beginning to understand,” Andrei replied evenly. “Why do you feel the time is pressing?”
“We were hasty in our burning of the brothel,” was Rath’s reply. “And in the timing of other ventures. I do not pretend to understand the nature or goal of our enemies, but were I in their positions, I would not now sit idle. I would find me,” he added, “or those around me.”
“Not so easily done.”
“Nor so difficult as it would have been a few months ago. I will have to move,” he added softly, “before the month is out. But the fact that I cannot be found should be cause for concern.”
“It almost certainly is.”
“And such concerns are often enough to force a hand that might otherwise remain hidden.”
“You could wait,” Andrei replied.
“So you’ve said. Would you?”
Andrei said nothing, which was answer enough. “I’ve come with the information you requested. I do not think my inquiries have yet come to light.”
“But they will.”
Andrei shrugged. “It is hard to see how, but having seen what you faced in the market, I would not say anything was impossible. All of the men of whom you made your queries, save one, have had business dealings with the Patris.”
“And the one?”
“He is a friend—a cousin, I believe, once removed—of Lord Paletos. Who is involved in some fashion with the AMatie concerns.”
“Paletos is not one of the names I was given.”
“No.”
They watched the fire for a long moment, drinking idly as they did; they were somber, but men who drank in this room often were. Rath missed The Den, with its boisterous shouting, its offhand lewdness, its poor food, rich ale, and stacked games of chance. Inasmuch as he had a place, it was there.
But it had not always been there. The past was a burden that had bothered him so little in the last few years he thought it had been laid to rest; it woke now, to his very real regret. You could leave many things behind, but one of them was not yourself.
And who was Ararath Handernesse? He had not paused to ask himself that question for decades. And yet, had he never been worthy of the name, avenues of information that opened naturally at a single word would be not only closed but invisible.
“It’s the magery,” he said at last. “I understand blackmail as well as I understand any game that men play. But magic is no necessary part of those games.”
Andrei nodded. “You’ve spoken with Sigurne and Meralonne.”
“And Haberas, poor fool,” Rath said bitterly. “And although I cannot see how, or perhaps cannot see why, they are connected, this game and the games the Magi play. I feel that time is short, Andrei, and it does not run in our favor while we labor in ignorance.”
“What, then, would you do to alleviate that ignorance?”
Rath smiled and shook his head. “Faithful servant of my godfather,” he said, “there are questions which you know better than to ask.”
“It is not from the answer that I expect to glean information,” Andrei countered, the sudden stillness of a face that was never very expressive lending him a patina of a power that Rath had always felt, but had so seldom seen. “But rather, by the way you decline to answer.” He reached for the stone and placed his hand upon it, but did not remove it from the table. “You have never followed advice, Ararath, and I respect your choice, for in this we are somewhat alike. But I ask you now—as a favor for anything that I have done, rather than as advice: Do not do this.”
Rath felt surprise, but did not deign to show it. “Ask anything else,” he replied at length, noting that Andrei’s stone still masked their conversation.
Andrei looked down. When he lifted his face, it seemed aged. “I am not the man you think me,” he said softly. “Nor am I so young that loss does not grieve me. You will, of course, do what you feel you must.
“But you have given me leave to ask a question, and I will ask one. Why, Ararath?”
He began to say I don’t know, but caught the words and held them; they were not the truth, and he had offered, in an oblique fashion, truth if it were requested. “This must go no further,” he said quietly.
“Do not feel the need to insult me, Ararath.”
“It is not need, but habit,” Rath replied. “And accept my apologies for it. You saw the girl in the alley the night you came to my aid.”
Andrei nodded.
“She lives with me, and has since I found her. Were it not for her interference, I would already be dead.”
“For her, then?”
“Yes. And no, Andrei. Nothing is ever that simple. For her, I would wield sword and kill if the act were required—but it would be a blind act, an instinctive act. It would require no planning. She is special. She is aware of the ways in which she is special—but she is also unaware of the ways in which she might be more.”
“And you are not.”
“No, to my regret, I am not. I see much in her, and perhaps I, too, am old—addled by the past that has always decided my future. Her future is tied into these demons, as the Magi called them.” He watched his godfather’s servant for any flicker of surprise the word “demon” might cause; there was none.
Andrei said, “And you know this—how?”
“I have answered the one question you asked,” he replied, thinking of the statue that had flared to life in the undercity, and thinking as well of Amarais, the sister who had deserted him for reasons he had not—then—been willing to understand. “Trust that I know it. She is part of this, and if she is to survive, I must know more than I now know.”
“My information—”
“Not even the Astari have the information that I believe I will be able to obtain.” The silence that the single word caused was textured and heavy. Ararath, like Andrei, knew when to keep his peace; it was in the abandonment that all risks were taken, and some less wise than others.
“I see,” Andrei replied. “I will aid you as I can.”
“I know. And I know to ask is to burden you. But I can achieve two goals in our meeting with Patris Waverly.”
“His death?”
“That, yes, but it is not his death that is of interest to me now; it is the manner of his death, and only that. A test,” he added quietly. “What I do from that point on will be determined by whether or not the test is passed or failed.”
“Assume that it is passed.”
“I will join the AMatie circle. Jewel’s presence, as a gift to Patris Waverly, will be a sign of my intentions.”
“His death will surely cause some difficulty when they question your sincerity.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I chose Waverly for a reason,” he added.
“And if the test is failed?”
“I will live as I have lived,” Rath replied. “It will be a welcome—and peaceful—change.”
But Andrei knew which of the two outcomes Rath now desired. He lifted the stone, palming it. His hand seemed to tremble, as if the act were final. “You should have stayed with Handernesse,” he said quietly. “You doubted yourself much in your youth, but I see in you now a Patris that might have lead the House to glory.”
“Had I, I would never have met the girl,” Rath replied, and he said it without rancor. “She shows me much that I refused to understand in my youth; had I stayed, I would have been a bitter—and weaker—man. I will never return to Handernesse; it is no longer my home. But I regret its passing now, in a way that I did not; all thought, then, was for what I had lost.”
“Many a man would have thought, instead, of all that he had gained, for your sister would have inherited the title and the responsibility had she not left.”
Rath nodded. “I understand her better now than I could then, and in a fashion, this is all the apology I will ever be capable of making.”
“And she
will never know of it.”
“No,” he said quietly. “If pride is a sin, I am still a creature of sin.” He, too, rose. “It will be difficult to arrange a meeting with Patris AMatie, and in truth, it concerns me; I am not entirely certain I will pass unrecognized, for all my skill.”
“That is your only concern?”
He nodded. “I will linger in the outer circle if possible. Thanks to his generosity in the purchase of a few broken pieces of stone, I have funds with which to entertain the men I despise. They will last some time.”
“Then I will find the information you requested.”
Rath had never doubted it.
Chapter Twenty-four
IF DUSTER HAD ever considered herself an accomplished liar, Haval’s lessons wore away her sense of confidence. Jewel could see it clearly in their long, slow walks through the Winter streets. Even Duster’s anger, ever ready, had dimmed beneath the weight of her weariness. She was like and unlike Jewel; Jewel wondered, as they walked in silence toward home, what Duster would have been like had she had an Oma, and a home, where warmth was not simply a matter of wood and the clothing one could steal.
Or an uncle she had been forced to kill.
She was even too tired to continue her constant sniping at Lefty, and a strange peace descended upon the crowded rooms in which the den huddled. Jewel wished she could be home more often to see it or enjoy it.
But when she was home—as she was now—she was absorbed with the duties she had undertaken: she taught them how to read. The writing was hard. From Lefty, she expected no less, and was surprised at how he struggled to master what should have come easily to anyone else; of her students, only Finch and Teller worked as hard.
No, if temper frayed in the den, it was Jewel’s. She snapped at Carver and Jester when their attention wandered. She cursed liberally at the absence of anything she wanted—water, wood, even the food that was her responsibility.
And in the end, on the way to Haval’s house, it was Duster who dared to bring it up. She said, “You’ve been a real bitch the last couple of days, you know that?”
Jewel stopped in the street and stared at Duster as if she’d lost her mind. “I’ve been a real bitch?”
“That’s what I said.”
“You’ve been sulking in the corner and doing almost nothing, and I’ve been a bitch?”
“Pretty much. If you slap me again, I’ll break your arm.”
But Jewel hadn’t even begun to raise her hand. She glared at Duster, and Duster shrugged. “No one else will say it,” she told Jewel. “But it needs saying. Everyone else is worried about you,” she added. “Me, I just wonder what in the Hells your problem is.”
They had stopped walking, and Jewel, realizing how highly Haval prized his punctuality, began to stride down the streets, leaving heavy prints in snow that only barely paused its fall.
But Duster hadn’t finished. “You’ve got everything,” she said coldly. “Rath adores you, even if you’re too dense to take advantage of it. The others do anything—or would do anything—you asked them. You’ve got a place, you’ve got food, you can afford to buy clothing that fits all of us. You’ve never had to do anything you hated in your life, just to get by. You’ve got anything any of us could ever want. So what is your problem?”
Jewel had no answer. She was busy seething. But Duster’s barbed words found their mark. And the words she offered next put Jewel off her stride enough that they were to be late to meet Haval. She said, “If it’s the killing, I don’t want your damn help.”
Jewel swiveled, snow dusting her feet. Her hands were bunched in fists.
“Without my help,” she said, the words almost a hiss as they escaped a clenched jaw, “there’s no killing. Isn’t this what you wanted?”
Duster shrugged. “Maybe,” she said at last, and looked away. “Maybe this is what I wanted. But not like this. Look, I don’t think I’ve ever liked you; you’ve always been too good for me. But this . . .” she shrugged. It was a common gesture. “I don’t like it.” She said the words as if they were strange, and given how much she disdained, this was a surprise. “The others—I thought they were weak and stupid. And some of them are, and I don’t give a shit what you think.
“But not all of them. And they don’t need you to be me.” Her laugh was bitter, but restrained. “No one needs me to be me,” she added. “Except me. But they all need you to be you.”
“And that’s your business now?”
“You made it mine,” Duster told her. “I didn’t ask for it, and I don’t even want it. But no one else will tell you what you need to hear.” She laughed again, and again, the laughter was familiar in its bitterness. “You said you needed me,” she told Jewel, the words both a taunt and an accusation. “I didn’t know you’d be right.”
Jewel wanted to hit her.
But the desire escaped, and the anger went with it, slowly draining into the winter streets, the cold of the air, the damnable snow of this horrible season. She tried to see herself as the others might see her, or even as Duster obviously did, and the glimpse the effort gave her was more than she wanted.
“It’s not enough that I have to do this,” she said, her bitterness an echo of Duster’s. “I have to be cheerful too.”
“Or not. You’re not exactly cheerful, normally.” Duster shrugged. “I’m not having fun either,” she said. “This servant shit—it’s hard.”
“If we don’t do it—”
“I know. The old guy may be a smug bastard, but he’s not stupid.” She hesitated, and then added, “He thinks if I screw up, you’ll die. We both will.”
“You’re not afraid of death,” Jewel said, trying to keep the edge from her voice. Trying to think of Duster as someone who could care enough about anyone else to say something like this.
Duster shrugged. “Not afraid,” she said, evasively. “But not exactly rushing toward it with open arms.” She paused. “He doesn’t like me.”
“Haval?”
“Yeah. Haval. Rath doesn’t either.”
And you care? But the words would have been said to wound, and Jewel bit them back with effort.
“They think this is my fault.”
“It’s not your fault.” The edge slid back in, and Jewel didn’t bother to struggle with it. She caught Duster’s arm. Duster stared at her hand.
“No one tells me what to do,” Jewel added, removing her hand. “Not you, not them.”
“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even try.”
“Maybe not. Does it matter? If it weren’t for you—”
“Finch would be dead. I’ve heard it before.”
“Still true. It’s my decision.”
“And you’ll live with it. Yeah, heard that too. But you—”
Jewel lifted a hand. “I’ll try harder,” she said, meaning it. Angry, but meaning it. “To keep it to myself. But nothing that happened there was your fault. And nothing that happens now is your fault either.”
“Unless I screw up.”
Jewel nodded.
“And we’re late.”
She cringed.
Haval was, indeed, annoyed when they arrived; he kept them waiting by the door for twenty minutes while he puttered about his counter, absorbed in either his work or his annoyance.
Aware that they’d earned it, Jewel was content—barely—to stand and be ignored. To breathe warmer air, in a quiet place. The fact that an angry man sat at its center wasn’t much of a concern. She’d grown used to his type of anger.
Eventually, however, satisfied with their apparent compliance, Haval rose, his pale brow a gathered line across a sour face. “If you ladies are ready?”
They nodded, and Duster did not even look sullen.
“Then today we will learn about fear.”
“I think we understand fear,” Jewel told him.
“Good. I note, however, that Duster has not chosen to speak.”
And didn’t.
He moved around the coun
ter, calling his wife to take his place. She came, looking slightly harried, and also slightly disgusted; he really wasn’t the neatest of craftsmen. “We will be in the back for the afternoon,” Haval told her, “if an emergency arises, you may interrupt us.”
“Fear,” he said quietly, “is something we all face. We face it in different ways. Sometimes we deny its existence. Sometimes we thrive on it. In either case, the fear itself isn’t necessarily the defining factor.” He paused. “Understand that men like Waverly live on the fear of others; it keeps their own at bay. Understand as well that he is never without fear. Men with much to lose will never be without it.”
“And you?”
“Fear is a constant companion,” he replied, his expression so serene it was hard to believe the words. “Believe that no life is lived without fear. When you are too tangled up in your own, and especially when you are young—” he allowed them to express their quiet outrage at being called “young” in that particular tone that implied ignorant, “—it is easy to believe that no one who does not obviously show fear feels any.”
“And what are you afraid of?” Duster asked, and not perhaps in the servile tone of voice she had been practicing so damn hard.
“Funny you should ask that today,” Haval replied. “Today I am afraid that I will fail you both. That anything I can teach you will be superficial at best; that you will learn to behave in the appropriate ways only in my presence, and that it is my presence alone that anchors your efforts.”
Duster glared at him.
Almost wearily, he added, “You will be able to perform here, where in the end it doesn’t count.”
Jewel nodded. “It’s easier here,” she told him quietly. “For me.” She glanced at Duster; Duster was silent. In all, better than she usually hoped for. “I can watch your face. I can hear your tone of voice. I know when I’m doing something right, and when I’m doing something wrong.” She paused. “But I think I’ll have that anywhere else as well.”
“Do you?”
She nodded. “Other people will react. Not the way you do, not exactly—but they’ll be expecting something of me, and if I do the wrong thing, I think I’ll be able to tell. And fix it.”
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