“She is afraid,” the Patris said quietly, standing beneath the fronds of large, smooth-barked trees, as if he were the entirety of the shadow they cast.
Duster knew who he referred to. She didn’t ask how he knew. Instead, she shrugged, and was rewarded with the edge of a smile that was almost approving.
“You will wait here,” he told her. “And I will wait with you. Judge for yourself how strong—or weak—your little friend is. She was there, was she not? She was present when you chose to leave us.”
“I never chose to join you,” Duster told him, defiant now, the hand around hilt a comfort, even if it was almost useless.
“You were not ready, then,” he replied. As if he had always intended to grant her some measure of choice or respect. She tried to remember the chains at her ankles, the bare room, the bed itself meant for anything but sleep. She wanted to kill him, but then again, she wanted to kill almost everything that lived or moved and had ever crossed her path.
“It is not in death you will find your salvation,” Patris AMatie told her, as if he could hear the thought. “Death is too simple. It is in pain that you derive power, or will. Pain, fear. Especially fear.” He drew closer. “Do you fear me?”
And she met his gaze. Held it a moment. There was only darkness there, in the lights of the Arboretum, and it was a darkness that was familiar. Desirable. It was so like her own, she felt an echo of herself in its depths.
“No,” she told him. “I don’t. I don’t fear death.”
“I told you—”
“It’s still death,” she replied.
His frown was not slight, and it was not pleasant. It changed the shape of his face, and he straightened to a height that Duster would never reach. He was close to her now, as she sat, and he touched the side of her face. A sharp touch, and shallow; she felt it burn. Knew she was bleeding.
Knew that this was nothing at all but a caress and a warning. “What you desire,” he told her softly, “you cannot hide.”
“I’m not trying.”
“You want her to suffer.”
It was true.
“Suffer as you did. And be broken as you were not.”
All true. It didn’t even make her squirm.
“I myself would like to witness it,” he added, his hand, slightly crimson along the edges, drawing away. The blood would never show unless you knew it was there; knew what to look for.
“Why?”
“Her friends have caused me some difficulty,” he replied. “And in ignorance. But ignorance is not an excuse. Do you know where the others went?”
Duster shrugged. “Do I care?”
He smiled again. “We want them back,” he told her.
“I could find them for you.”
“I suspected as much. Find them,” he told her, but his glance strayed over her, past her, and to the walls of glass, their lead bars spread to contain transparent color, a hard tapestry, a mosaic of a type.
She nodded.
“Then let us wait.”
She had little choice in the matter.
It was choice that had always confounded her. She made the wrong ones, over and over again, and she paid. She had scars—ones she could see, ones that were hidden and therefore worse—as proof of that. She had wanted power for herself because only with power was there any chance of safety.
And safety meant? Freedom. The freedom to cause suffering rather than to experience it.
She thought of them, then: Finch, Fisher, Jester. They were ridiculous, stupid, happy in Jewel’s illusion of safety. They wanted to call it home.
Her hands were moving in her lap, her fingers dancing slowly, even around the hilt of her knife. Familiar movements, this odd dance, although it took her a moment to realize what they were: Lefty’s language.
Lefty’s attempt to speak to Lander.
No, she thought. Worse than that: they were her words. Her silent words, her own way of conveying her meaning and her intent to the silent boy whose tongue might as well have been cut from his mouth by what he had suffered.
She said, “I saved the girl to spite them.”
And he laughed. “I know. I know you well, Duster.”
Her name, from his mouth, had a power and a resonance that Jewel’s thin voice would never, ever give it.
“And the girl might even believe that you cared about her life.”
Duster shrugged. “Only if she’s stupid.”
“The beauty of humanity,” Patris AMatie replied, “is just how stupid it can be in the face of fact.” He paused, and then added, “Do not be stupid here.”
She nodded. Waiting for the first scream, the first crack in the silence. Waiting now in the shadow of a man who could give her—she knew it—everything she had ever desired.
They approached the building with dwindling confidence; it was large and fine, and it boasted a gleaming fence that even snow did not dare to cling to for long. There were guards in livery at those gates, men with swords and armor. Not one of the children who called themselves Jay’s den had any fondness for armed men.
“What do we do now?” Finch asked softly.
Teller drew his shoulders back. Instead of making him look taller, it made him look younger; he was all bone, and his skin was Winter-white, pale with lack of sun. And pale, as well, with fear.
But it was a fear they all felt; these men were not their deaths, but they were obstacles that might never be passed at all.
“Do we go in?” Carver asked. “I don’t think that was the plan.”
“What plan?” Teller replied. And then he added, “It wasn’t Old Rath’s plan, no. But we were never a part of that; we have to make our own.”
“Great. Standing in the middle of the street and freezing to death isn’t much of a plan—” Arann grabbed Carver’s arm. Tightly. And Carver’s thoughts caught up with his mouth as he remembered a frenzied run through streets newly white and unwalked. Remembered his first sight of Teller, and the body over which he lay like a blanket that was too small and too slight to provide warmth.
But if Teller was offended, it didn’t show. Finch watched him, watched his face, realized that she was holding her breath. A white wreath escaped her lips, rising upward like a ghost. Teller was not Jay, and not Arann; he wasn’t Carver. But although he was as quiet as Finch herself, although he found the same comfort in the kitchen that Finch did, although he seemed to have more in common with Lefty than with anyone else, he was not Lefty.
“I have a letter,” he told them all.
They stared at him. “You wrote a letter?”
“I didn’t say I wrote it,” he replied. “But I have one.” And he pulled, from the inside of a jacket that Jewel had paid for, an envelope with a red wax seal.
“That’s Old Rath’s—”
Teller nodded.
“You asked him to—”
“No. He would never have agreed. I have no idea what’s in it.”
“You took a letter—”
“From his desk, yes.”
“When?”
“Does it matter? He’s been teaching us all how to take things when we need them. I was practicing.”
“And we need this.”
Teller nodded. “It’s official. To look at, it’s official.”
“It’s got a name on it.”
Teller nodded. “That might be a problem. But not yet.” And shoulders still stiff and straight, he made a direct line for the guards at the gate.
After a moment, the others joined him, Lefty bringing Lander into Arann’s orbit and holding him there. Lefty had not spoken a word since they had reached the building; his language—not a movement of hand or lip—was in his eyes, in the way he watched Arann’s face and back.
“You should wait,” Teller told them calmly.
“Hell with that,” Carver replied. “We all go, or we all wait.”
“We can’t wait,” Teller said. “But it’s going to look suspicious if there are seven messengers.”
> “We’ll take that chance.”
“Rath is going to be angry,” Finch told no one in particular.
“Rath is always angry,” Arann replied. His way of making it clear that he, too, had no intention of being left behind.
“What would Jay say?”
“Go home,” Carver answered. “She’d tell us to go home or go back to the compound and wait. But she’s not here, and we are.”
“But she’s—”
“She’s in there,” Fisher said, speaking for the first time. “She’s with one of the—” he couldn’t bring himself to finish. But after a moment, he said, “She came for us.”
And that was that.
Teller approached the guards carrying his very official looking document. The guards looked up as he approached, and their hands fell to their weapons, but they looked—if anything—both cold and bored. They counted without counting; numbers of this type came naturally to them. Finch could see it; she could feel the gaze sweep over her without really stopping.
“We’ve been sent by my uncle,” Teller told them, the letter in his hand unwavering. “We’re to deliver a message. It’s a surprise,” he added. “It’s my cousin’s birthday, and she and her father are guests here. She likes it here,” he added, speaking with sincerity that never once faltered into either fear or obsequiousness.
“We’ll see about that. You’ll speak to the innkeeper before you go anywhere.”
Teller nodded, and the guards parted. But he kept the letter as he walked between them, and the others followed in silence. Aware that they were clothed now, and if the clothing was not fine, if it was not grand, it was still new and clean.
Aware of both this and the fact that Jay needed them.
Chapter Twenty-seven
JEWEL HAD ALWAYS been aware that money could buy almost anything. She had seen it, and envied it, at a distance, her Oma’s disapproval quelling any words she might have spoken. Her Oma had been a staunch believer in knowing one’s place. That, and living up to it.
This place was not Jewel’s. She knew it, and knew better why her Oma had been so harsh in her judgment, so quick to be cutting.
When Jewel had lost her home, and it had been both slow and instant, she had learned that having no money was kin to death, but slower and less dignified. She understood, dimly, that there were things she could sell. Herself, her services. And that, in the end, they were hers to sell, if she were desperate enough.
She had never despised the women who did; she had been close enough to death and starvation, even with a family, that she, like her Oma, had refused to judge their desperation. Nor did she judge it now, a stranger’s hand creeping across her thigh, light glancing off glass that would allow anyone who passed by to see everything.
Instead, she pitied it. Because she was certain it was men like this to whom they sold what they could. At ten, she had never shown much interest in boys; some of the girls who lived in her building had started to, but Jewel was still more interested in shoving them into the bushes and taunting them than in anything else.
She was certain, now, holding her breath, trying not to be overwhelmed by nausea and—yes—fear, that she would never be interested in men. Not like this. That she would never want them touching her, or holding her, or owning any part of her time, or her attention.
And yet, she thought, stiffening, unable to relax in any way, she was here by choice. Duster, Finch—all of the others—had had none. And this man? He hadn’t cared. He had cared about money, and about what he wanted; the fact that they didn’t want it meant nothing.
Or maybe, she thought, as she noticed the shifting lines of his expression, it meant something. She wanted to be ill. She almost was.
But her Oma’s voice was there, steadying her with its harsh anger. She had chosen, and not in ignorance, and she could abide by the choice. You put your hand in the fire, it burns. You live with the pain. You pray there are no scars. She meant to. She honestly meant to.
But when his hands touched her face, cupping her cheeks, her body reacted before she could confine it; she shoved his hands away and almost fell back off her chair in her haste to put distance between them. Any distance at all.
And she had been right about one thing; although his expression mimed a frown, there was something in his eyes, something etched in the weathered lines of his face, that was like . . . glee. Glee made dark and personal, where there should have been light and life.
He said, “You don’t understand why you’re here, do you?”
She rose quickly, trying to put table between them; he was slower, but more assured. She said nothing.
“Come here.”
And held her ground.
“Your father’s future depends upon what you do. It depends upon my goodwill. Come here.”
There was no Rath in this room. No Duster. No one to interrupt them; hadn’t there been a plan? Food? Something drugged? It was hard to recall, now. Now was Lord Waverly, a man with the power and money to make a cage of even the most beautiful of rooms.
And she had walked in through the door, in this dress, with that letter, determined to be what she had to be. Determined to somehow give Duster a choice. She had not thought—had not honestly thought—that she would have none beyond the first act: walking in. Sitting down.
She could not bring herself to obey him.
And she saw that this was both the right thing and the wrong thing to do. He was not ill-pleased with her refusal, but his words were ugly, ugly words. In her rising panic, the only ones she understood clearly were teach you something you will never forget.
And she knew that he was right; that he could do this; that she could do nothing but remember.
Patris AMatie stiffened slightly, lifting his chin, exposing the underside of a jaw that seemed so smooth it might have been made of glass. Or steel. His eyes were wide and so dark they did not reflect light, or the life that grew fettered in pots and dirt.
Duster sat by his feet, felt his hand brush her shoulder gently, possessively. But her eyes were on the plants, on the place where their stems and trunks emerged from, yes, dirt. They were beautiful, they were expensive, they were cared for in ways that she had never been cared for—and yet they relied for their beauty and life on . . . dirt.
And she was dirty.
Jay had said something. Sometime. Someplace that was not this fine, fine building, with its glass, its impossible ceilings, its paintings and tapestries. Someplace that did not offer privacy to men who—
She heard it, then. What she had longed to hear.
Short, muffled, but sharp as dagger’s edge: a scream. A high scream. It did not linger. It did not echo.
And yet it did, and Duster understood something about desire, and hated herself for the understanding.
She did this for me.
I didn’t ask her to do anything.
You did. You asked. You demanded. And she did it.
And without thought, thought was too harsh and too ugly, she rose, shedding the Patris’ hand in a smooth movement learned in the streets of the poorest quarters of this horrible city. Bringing the dagger she clung to to bear, cutting his skin.
Cutting skin that did not shed blood.
She was away before he could grab her; away before he even seemed to notice what she had done; he seemed mesmerized by what they had both heard. But if he seemed caught in a trance, he was not slow, not clumsy; he was not weak enough to be caught off guard.
He simply didn’t care about her dagger.
She’d seen enough fighting in her life—enough death—to recognize this immediately. And she knew what to do to preserve her life. Knew it intimately, she had done it so often.
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it here—that required thought, acting, planning. It required caring one way or the other whether or not she survived.
He reached out as casually as Duster might have were she to crush a bug. And Duster traveled halfway across the room, tumbling through the stal
ks of slender plants, crushing fragrant blossoms. Finding dirt in her face, and beneath her hands.
“Do not,” he said, although he didn’t even look at her, “disappoint me.”
Even now, she had a chance. A chance to preserve her life. A chance to take back the dream of power and twisted, bitter justice.
But it wasn’t a dream—it was a nightmare. This is what she had so loathed when she had been chained in the crumbling manse, visited by guest after guest until all touch and all sensation blurred into pain and humiliation.
Herself. She had loathed herself. Because she had known, even then, what they hoped for; she would grow stronger and angrier and darker until only the killing lust remained. Then, only then, would she be free to move and act.
And she had told Jay what it was that frightened her. Why? She couldn’t remember.
Only that she had told Jay.
And that Jay had told her she would be judged by her actions. Oh, she had hated the answer, had known it would come, had despised the pathetic attempt at comfort.
But—and this was another lesson, another terror—she had wanted it as well. The bitter double edge of desire.
And she stood on it now, bleeding in so many ways that her time in the manse now seemed a distant blessing. Because in that room, chains around her, she had had no choice. And gods forgive her—if there were gods that could—she had had a choice here.
“Jay!” One strangled word. A name.
The Patris approached her as she scrambled through the foliage, breaking it, destroying it, bringing it at last to just dirt, to her own level.
“So,” he said softly. But the softness filled the room, rebounded off the ceiling, off all the broken things that lay beneath her and within her. She was still free of him, her dagger twisting in the air before her as she tried to make a wall of its edge. It had worked before, a time or two. It had failed just as often.
It would fail here, she saw that.
She cried out louder, louder now. A name. Not hers.
And if it did fail? If it couldn’t protect her?
It would be over.
She was wild with panic, and fear, and neither of them were familiar to her; they were all wrong.
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