But in the dark, other things waited, and although the air was cool, it wasn’t cold enough that she could think about warmth instead. She thought about death as she walked; she thought about it a lot.
Everything she had said to Rath was true; she had seen him kill. She had stepped over bodies that hadn’t stopped bleeding, they were so new. And she hadn’t cared. But she hadn’t killed them either. She could accept responsibility for their deaths, could say that her hands weren’t clean—but in the end, it wasn’t the same thing. The desire to kill was a visceral thing, like a flash of rage; it came and went, so much daydream and idle intent.
This—this was colder, its conception darker and more deliberate. She was walking to an inn somewhere in the upper holdings. By the end of the night—if everything went according to plan—someone would be dead. That he deserved death wasn’t in question. He did. She would have smiled had Rath told her he had died, messily and horribly. But being told was different, and the sense that she could control the fear of it vanished with each step she took.
What are you afraid of?
Her voice, and her memory of voice: Oma. And when her Oma asked a question, she got an answer, one damn way or another. Jewel had no answer ready. She should have.
Was she afraid of failing? Yes. Of being caught? Yes. But what did failure mean now? That he survived, or that he died? She wasn’t certain; couldn’t define success well enough to know what failure meant. Could only be certain that failure felt a lot like this: walking toward the unknown, with a sinking heart and a growing certainty that she was not up to the task she had undertaken. The promise she had made.
Promises are not an accident of fate.
No, Oma.
They are an act of will. They are a responsibility. You are measured by the worth of your word, and if you give it, girl, you will keep it; break it and you break a blood debt.
Yes, Oma.
She looked at Duster, or at Duster’s profile; Duster was watching the ground with care, and placing her feet—in tight, uncomfortable boots—with deliberate weight along a road that was often cracked and broken. She did not share in the den’s wonder, or in their silent language; she had barely troubled to learn it, and then, only to speak with Lander. More often, she had chosen to just sit by him, to whisper to him; what she said, Jewel had never fully caught, but she could guess.
But she had taken that time. And it meant something.
“You afraid?” Duster asked, with an edge of contempt in her voice. She didn’t bother to look up to see the reaction her words had caused; she said them so carelessly, she must have been certain what they would be.
But Jewel said, quietly, “Yes.” And this did make Duster look at her. “But it’s just fear,” she added. “Haval said fear was good if you could control it; bad if you let it control you.”
“And is this a bad fear, or a good fear?”
“Don’t make me slap you.”
At that, Duster’s face did change, allowing for expression: she laughed. It was—for Duster—genuine laughter, shorn of edge, but not of surprise. And it ended quickly enough.
“It’s just fear,” Jewel repeated remotely. As if it were weather. But she knew, as they all knew: weather could kill. She didn’t ask Duster the same question; she knew what the answer would be, and didn’t feel like hearing it.
“Why did you bring them?”
“I couldn’t stop them.”
“You could have.”
“I could have told them to go home,” Jewel conceded, stepping over a large, cracked stone, something that looked like a fallen slab. “and yes, they might have done it. But it wouldn’t have been fair.”
“Fair?” The laugh was different, short, brutish. “You just wanted them here.”
Jewel shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe I wanted to know that they wanted to be here.” She stopped walking, faced Duster, and said, “We’re all we have. Each other. I let my father leave the day he died. I knew he would die, but I couldn’t stop him. He wouldn’t take me with him—and if he had, I might have saved him.”
“And that has what to do with them?”
Jewel shrugged again. She was growing angry, and there wasn’t much incentive to keep it to herself. “Everything, but I don’t expect you to understand that yet.” Wrong words, and harsh ones; they bounced off Duster. Angry words almost always did. “I don’t want them to have what I have: the guilt. The sense that if they had come—”
“They’ll just get in the way. Well, most of them.”
“You don’t know what they’ll do. You don’t know what will happen.”
“Neither do you.”
Which was true. There were whole days when Jewel hated the truth.
“They’ll be one more thing for you to worry about.”
“A better thing,” Jewel snapped back. And then she calmed, because there were also days when the truth was like a little bit of necessary light. “You don’t love anything that doesn’t make you worry,” she added softly.
“I don’t love anything.”
“Maybe not. But I wasn’t talking about you.”
She expected Duster to answer, but heard instead the stiff rustle of fabric, her shrug in the shadows and darkness.
Then, silence, and walking.
In the darkness, all nuance of expression was lost, all subtle gestures, the minute downturn of lip, the slight gathering of brow; everything silent was mute here, except where light was brought to bear. And given the nature of the road they walked, with its sudden cracks, its wide chasms, it was never brought to bear.
Jewel felt uneasy as she walked. Uneasy as they approached the wide gap in the road she recognized. Finch and Carver recognized it as well.
But Rath said, “Not this way,” as they approached it, looking for an anchor; he led them instead to the left of where they were standing, along the edge of the wide gap, until the gap narrowed. “We are not going to the Common,” he told her quietly.
“Where are we going?”
“To an inn, of sorts.”
“And we can reach it from here?”
“We can reach most of the City from here,” he replied. He paused, aware that she was surprised by what he had said, although he had hinted at it strongly many times. “I should have showed you the ways.”
Jewel shrugged. “I probably wouldn’t remember them.”
“No. You wouldn’t. I think Teller might.”
She looked at him; he was a silhouette. A shade. “You like him, don’t you?”
“I don’t know him,” Rath replied.
“You’re hedging.”
“Perhaps. If one hedges, best to use truth where possible.” He undid the top button of his jacket. It was not nearly as fine as the clothing he had provided for Jewel, and not, in the end, as fine as the servant’s garb that Duster wore. If she had wondered how far he intended to lead them, she had her answer the moment she saw what he wore. But she had hoped. Still did, if she were truthful.
“Be careful of those stairs,” he said, looking back. “They are not as solid as many of the others, and they will likely not bear Arann’s weight well.”
She turned herself to see light bobbing around the facade of a building that did look—from this distance—to be solid. It was like and unlike the massive old buildings that girded the Common; it was not overly decorated with statues or carvings or brass plates that shone in the morning light. But she couldn’t see the height of the building as it crept into invisibility above.
“What was it?” she asked Rath.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I don’t know what most of these buildings were. There is little enough left in them to indicate what use they were put to.”
He walked past it, as if it were of no interest, and because he did, they followed.
“How did this get here?” Teller asked.
Rath’s smile flickered briefly in the glow of magelight. He did not hold it; she could not be certain how long it lasted, or even if it were there
at all. She could see him smile or frown when she closed her eyes.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I imagine that there was a cataclysm of some sort that plunged this city into darkness.”
“But we—”
“It is very old,” he added softly. “Old enough, I think, to be forgotten. No one lives here anymore,” he added.
“Were there bodies?” Jester’s voice.
“There are some,” Rath replied carefully. “Not bodies, but bones. Old armor. The armor itself is worth a great deal, where it is found; it is seldom found.” His tone made clear that they were not to start looking now. “And when it is, it must be handled with care.”
“If it’s lasted this long—”
“Idiot,” Duster snapped. “He meant sold with care.”
Jester stopped talking. Duster always had that effect; her contempt bred silence, and there was usually a lot of it.
Rath led them down a broad, broad road, and Jewel knew that she had never walked it before. From this vantage, it was a night city, with guttered magelights instead of the ones that girded the streets of Averalaan when the sun began its slow fall. But there were no stars and no moons above. There was cloud, if one wanted to pretend, and air that tasted of dry dust.
“Here,” he said quietly, “we turn right. The road will narrow significantly, and it will bank sharply when it goes up.”
“Where does it go?”
“Out.” Final syllable. But Rath relented and added, “You’ll see. Practice patience.”
And out it went, out and up, into—of all things—a yard, a stable yard, with wagons in various states of repair. Some were missing wheels, and some missing axles; some seemed almost worthy of travel, if not capable of bearing a load. They were bunched together like refuse.
“What is this?” Jewel asked Rath; she was the only person who spoke as they at last returned to the land of ice and snow, with its cold, damp air, its clear night sky, the stars bright, even beside the pale face of the full moon; the pale moon could not be seen.
“These are the old yards that were once used by the Merchant Authority,” Rath replied. “They are still used during the Festival Season,” he added, “and during the Kings’ Challenge. At all other times they are as you see them now. Do not,” he added, “attempt to use this exit—if you can find it—when the Kings’ Challenge is in progress; there are royal guards posted everywhere at that time, and they are not idle or lazy.”
Now, however, they were absent. A small group of children could easily make their way between the press of wagons, leaving footprints in the snow.
“This is close enough now,” Rath said quietly, “that some caution would be wise. But they will not be looking for us here.”
No one asked who “they” might be.
“We will proceed to the Common from here,” he told the den. “The Common is poorly patrolled at this time of year; it is, however, patrolled. We will leave the Common and head toward the upper holdings, but our destination is not far from there.”
He glanced at Jewel.
She stopped, then, and before Rath could rearrange her dress, she hugged them each in turn, holding them a little too tightly. She had nothing else to say to them, nothing that she could put into words. They didn’t ask, and they held her, briefly, just as tightly—all save Lander, who retreated again into silence when they breached the invisible barrier between what lay hidden by the streets, and what lay upon them.
To Lander, then, she made a few gestures, visible in the bright moon, and after a moment, he offered a tentative response, his hands rising, his palms turning, his fingers twisting—all with a grace that surprised her.
This might be good-bye, and this was all she allowed herself. Then she turned, as Rath waited, and followed where he led, taking Duster with her, and leaving the rest behind in the cold of the growing night.
Chapter Twenty-six
THE COMMON AT NIGHT was not Jewel’s favorite place. One chance meeting with would-be assassins had changed it, as events often changed the meaning of a place. It was linked, now, with a terrified run through the undercity, two strangers by her side—one that she had set out to rescue, and one that had come to her by the grace of Kalliaris’ smile, and had stayed. She looked back once at Carver and Finch, and smiled; her smile was lost to shadow, but it lingered a moment.
They had not quailed or argued; they had not doubted for a moment that wherever she was going was someplace she had to be.
And they didn’t doubt her now.
She doubted, but kept it to herself; there was no point in sharing. Rath would hear her, or Duster would, and either of these would be bad.
But as she emerged from the scattered wagons, some sitting like the cavernous bodies of beached ships on the drifts of Winter’s bitter white snow, she shook herself, straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. No, she thought, changing posture again, that was wrong. She lowered her chin slightly, and she let her nervousness show—and knew that that was better. She could almost hear Haval’s voice guiding her movements.
But she had always heard absent voices. They were often clearer than the voices of those who walked with her; they became some part of her thought, some part of her way of looking at the world. Crowded head, hers. Her Oma’s voice was mercifully silent. She didn’t try to call it back. She had been a grim woman, in her way, and her sense of justice was acute and profound; she would no more allow a man like this lord to live than she would a cockroach found crawling near the food.
Jewel clung to that belief, and no argumentative voice came back to pry it from her.
She could breathe, here, and the air was sharp and cold; it was also so clear it felt as if she’d stepped into a different country. The night was piercing, almost beautiful, as it hovered above the city; the magelights were glowing softly. No missing stones here, and no long gaps between the poles; this was a place where people who had no fear of starvation lived.
They weren’t lords, she thought, looking at the houses on their small parcels of land. Whether or not the lawns were bright and well tended she couldn’t say; the snow covered all in one forgiving blanket. But the snow on those lawns was clean; no wheels cut into it, and very few footprints muddied or sullied it.
But they owned no horses, no great carriages, the people who claimed these houses as their own. They had fences, but they were short, and not the grand fences that had all but fallen over in some parts of the old holdings, where legend said great men—and women—had once chosen to live.
Not even their ghosts remained. And here? No hint of ghosts at all. The houses rested upon the earth and above the snow, unaware of the history that lay beneath them in silence and darkness.
But it was not to these houses that Rath led them; he walked the road, pausing here and there beneath the magelights. Patrols were not infrequent, but Rath merely waved as they passed, and was rewarded with a curt nod—or sometimes a friendly one—as he did. Duster kept her head down when they passed, but this, too, was appropriate. Jewel thought Haval would be pleased with her, but didn’t say as much. No telling what Duster would say in response, and they didn’t really need a fight here.
But Jewel found the patrols unnerving.
“They are here for our protection,” Rath told her grimly. “And only that. You have nothing to fear from them unless you bolt.”
Jewel nodded. She understood every word, but some part of her didn’t believe it, and she had to squelch all the noise it made. With effort.
“Do you know where we are?” he asked at length.
Jewel shook her head. Duster was mute, which was pretty much a No. That was just her way.
“This,” he said quietly, “is where the foreign merchants have housing when they are forced to Winter here. The houses are often owned, not by the merchants, but rather by the companies they work for, or through; they are sometimes owned by the owners of the Kings’ charter.” He waved briefly to one side. “This is the Northern quarter. The Southern qu
arter is just beyond this.”
“Is that where we’re going?”
Rath shook his head, but not with impatience. “Some merchants do not work with larger companies; they own little land here. But they find homes or rooms in some of the inns built for that purpose.”
“We’re going there?”
He nodded. “To one of them, yes. It is quite large, and during the height of the trade season, it is full. At this time of year, it is almost empty.” He paused. “And therefore houses men who are perhaps less reputable. But innkeepers require some sustenance, and as long as the occupants break no laws, they are vastly less strict in the stormy season.” He led them down blocks of Winter street, until they were pulling their heavy cloaks around their shoulders and hunching their bodies against the inevitable cold.
“Here,” he said quietly, and stopped. He handed Jewel a letter. “Do not open it. It is for Lord Waverly,” he told her, although her hands were now shaking enough that opening it would have been a challenge. Dresses of the kind she now wore were not designed for warmth, or rather, they were designed for people who didn’t have to contend with the damn cold. And she told herself it was only the cold.
“I must go. I may not see you, but I will be there.”
“Rath—”
He waited. She knew that she could, even now, turn back, and part of her wanted to. But only part.
“You will arrive,” he told her softly, “and you will wait for Lord Waverly.”
She nodded. Nodding was easier than speech.
She entered the inn, Duster at her heels, Rath nowhere in sight. Haval’s lessons were firmly entrenched in her bearing, but they hadn’t prepared her for what she would see: The floors were made of marble that gleamed in the evening lights. Magelights, adorned by glass sculptures, in pale hues that made light their heart. She was still a moment, tilting her head up, and up again, toward the tall and rounded ceilings. They were pale, and the shadows diffuse that lay against their surface.
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