City of Night

by Michelle West

  After a pause in which Weyrdon accepted silence as the only answer he would be offered, the son of Cartanis spoke again. “You will speak with Terrick. Understand him, Angel, and perhaps you will have more of an answer than either I or Alaric can give you.”

  There was respect in those distant words. Respect, and something else, but not anger, not disapproval. Something softer, or sadder. Angel couldn’t identify it.

  “Would you—would you take Terrick’s service now if he offered it?”

  “He will never offer it,” Weyrdon replied.

  “But if he did?”

  “That,” Alaric said, taking Angel gently by the shoulder and turning him toward the stairs, “was as much of an answer as Weyrdon will give. You are not of the North, boy, although the North has touched you.”

  Angel followed; Alaric’s hand did not leave the boy’s shoulder, so he had little choice. But as they reached the bottom of the short flight of stairs, Weyrdon spoke again.

  “I cannot command you, not yet,” he said, as both Alaric and Angel slowed. “But I ask that you do as your father did. Leave what I have spoken of on these decks.”

  Angel straightened his shoulders. Nodded. He did not look back as Alaric began to walk again. He did not look back until he had reached the bottom of the gangplank, and Averalaan once again reigned.

  But when he stood, alone, upon the empty dock, he gazed up to see Weyrdon’s eyes, robbed of color by distance, and he lifted a hand, not in salute, but not—quite—in farewell.

  The Port Authority was not yet a press of angry people; it was crowded, by the standards of Evanston; by the standards of Averalaan, however, it was sparse enough that the air, farther away from the doors and the scant breeze that wafted in, still felt like air when one took a deep breath.

  Angel stood in the line that led to Terrick’s wicket. He could see the Northerner, his height lessened by his position on a stool and the framing window of the wicket itself; could see the way his hair darkened in the internal light of the building. He could see his eyes, from this distance, although he couldn’t clearly see their color; he could see lips move, although no sound carried this far back. Paper came and went, as if it were coin.

  The line shortened as Angel waited, thinking now of gathering eggs from the hen house. Thinking, as well, that he might never have that chore again; he had seen no farms in the City itself, and where there was land for the gardens one tended for one’s own family, there was no food; just grass, and flowers, and trees.

  He had come from Evanston, walking in the heat of summer and resting when the heat was at its worst; he had asked for directions from passing merchants, found the road most traveled, and following it, had arrived in Averalaan. He had dreamed of the Ice Wolf, and he had dreamed of death.

  But he had walked and waited, waited and walked. He wasn’t ready to walk into the nowhere that his life now led, not yet, and he could not turn back to the ship. So he stood in line until the last back before him broke away. He watched it recede, seeing folds of a deep blue that looked almost purple as it caught light; seeing, as well, the salt stain white across its textured surface. He watched it as the minutes passed, and when the colors shifted as movement changed the caught light, he stepped forward.

  Terrick looked up. At this distance, his eyes were all of gray, the color of clouds just before thunder breaks.

  Angel started to speak, and stopped. He did this three times before he spread his hands, palms up.

  Terrick smiled. It was an odd smile, and reminded Angel more of pain than joy or amusement. “So,” he said, “You’re back.”

  Angel nodded.

  “And you still have—”

  “Hair, yes.”

  At that, Terrick chuckled. “Meet me when the horns sound lunch,” he told the boy. “Second lunch, as it happens; if you try to come into the back during first lunch, you’ll probably trip over Barriston. The man you first spoke to,” he added. “Barriston is very finicky, and very precise. He will no doubt eject you, possibly with the help of the guards.”

  They sat on either side of Terrick’s massive and cluttered desk. Most of the clutter, on the other hand, was lunch. “It’s not our custom to entertain guests in the back rooms,” he offered, by way of explanation. He was careful to keep his tone light and neutral as he once again broke bread, divided cheese and meat, and poured water.

  They ate in silence. Angel ate the way calm men breathe; slowly, naturally—and continuously. But when he spoke, he surprised Terrick. Even now.

  “What will you do?”

  Terrick could have pretended to misunderstand the question, and had he been asked it a day earlier, would have. But he met the boy’s steady gaze with his own. “Work.”

  “Garroc is gone.” He spoke as if Garroc and his father had been two different men. Fair enough; to Terrick, they were. But they were both dead. The loss was new to Angel; to Terrick it was not so much new as finally acknowledged. He drank his wine the way the boy ate, and stared, for a moment, into the distance of writing and paper and furled sails.

  “He is.”

  “I’m not Garroc.” He set his food aside, and looked up at Terrick. “I’m never going to be Garroc.”

  “No.”

  “Were you waiting for him?”

  Terrick said nothing. But he gave up the pretense of food, and set aside the wine. “Do you serve Weyrdon?” The question was direct and clear, for all that it was spoken softly.

  There was a pause, but Angel didn’t look away, and in the muted light of the office, his eyes were almost gray. At last he said, “I don’t know.”

  There was so much about the boy that was foreign and frustrating. Terrick had time for neither, but it was a struggle. “Did you offer him your service?”

  “No.”

  “Then you do not serve him.”

  “No, I guess I don’t.”

  “Your hair—”

  “He said I had the right, in my father’s name, and for my father’s service,” Angel replied quietly.

  “For his service.”

  “I told you, he was asked to leave. He did what Weyrdon asked of him. I’m not of Weyrdon. I imagine that if I were living in Arrend, I would have a very short life unless I never left that ship.”

  “And what did he ask of you?”

  Angel’s eyes widened in surprise; his skin flushed slightly. “He asked me not to speak of what he said,” he answered quietly, and for the first time, his eyes slid away from Terrick’s. And then they slid back, and the boy’s jaw tightened. “But I will,” he said, in the same low tones, his eyes blue now, his gaze steady. “Because I know you never will.”

  Terrick listened while the boy talked. Listened, seeing Garroc in him, and seeing, as well, the wife and mother that Terrick had never—and would never—meet. But the boy’s slow, quiet words were not Garroc’s words, and the intensity with which Garroc burned in his youth was also absent.

  How it must have angered Garroc, to know that he had failed, and that he would remain, to the end of his days, an exile in these lands. And how it must have weighed on him to place that task on the slender shoulders of a boy who had never seen battle.

  And who had, even now, only seen one.

  “What will you do?” Angel asked, when the last of his words had trailed into silence.

  “Work,” Terrick replied.

  “I mean, what will you do now?”

  “Work.”

  “But why?”

  Terrick shrugged. “Because I can. Because Garroc is not coming back. Because I don’t choose to serve another. Not yet. Maybe never.” He shrugged, and then added, “Work is something to do while you wait. If you can’t find answers, if you can’t find direction, it puts food on the table, a roof over the head.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “It’s not what I wanted when I was young, but we seldom get what we want.” He watched Angel’s face for any sign of comprehension. When he found none, which was oddly comforting, he
said, “What will you do?”

  Angel’s smile was wan. “Work,” he replied. “If I can find it.”

  “And you will not search?”

  “How can I?” Bitterness, faint but unmistakable, seeped into the boy’s words. “My father at least had the Kings’ Challenge on which to stand when he looked for someone—anyone—worthy. I have nothing; no money, no family, no land; I can hardly use a sword, and I don’t have many useful skills.

  “Even if I knew what to look for, I have nothing to offer. If this worthy lord has guards, I wouldn’t get close to him.”

  “You will not always be this young,” Terrick began.

  But Angel frowned, and the words fell away. The silence was pointed and cool.

  “But you won’t leave the City.”

  Angel shook his head.

  “Neither will I.” Terrick rose. “Lunch will end soon. If you need a place to stay while you settle in, I’m not moving.”

  Angel nodded, his shoulders turning down toward the ground, the years falling away from his pale face. His hair was awkward; far too stiff, too defined, for his age. “I have to try,” he said in a low voice. “For my father’s sake. I have to try.”

  “I know,” Terrick replied, equally quiet. The lunch horn blew, low and loud like a flatland cow. “Stay here if you want. Or meet me after my shift ends.” He turned, not expecting a reply, and made his way back to his wicket.

  He didn’t know how long Angel would stay.

  But he knew that he would wait for the boy. For Garroc’s son. He had waited, day after day, the Port Authority consuming his life in the slow march of hours, for Angel, although he hadn’t known it; he knew it now. What Angel had told him he understood in some small measure, and he resolved to practice with swords again; to build the type of endurance that battle required.

  To be ready to face the endless night when Garroc’s son, the last of his line, finally returned to the Authority and bid him leave it.

  Chapter One

  Angel

  A MOMENT IN TIME, fixed and unchanging. He can return to it, and often does, trying to make sense of his life.

  More often, it returns to him, sometimes as a whisper, sometimes as a shout, sometimes as a slap in the face. He’s never sure when it will come, and when it will leave, and sometimes it’s damn inconvenient—but not now.

  5th day of Morel, 410 AA Twenty-fifth holding, Averalaan

  Angel opened the windows. Which meant, in this case, grabbing faded strips of cloth—from an old shirt, maybe; it was kind of hard to tell—and tying them ’round both the shutter and the hook in the wall. It had to be done four times. There were actually two windows in this room, but the apartment had been old before Angel’s father had been born, so the shutters were warped; they liked to close. It’d be a lot easier if people would move, he thought. But if he were trying to be fair—and given this was the third shutter, he didn’t much feel like it—he’d have to acknowledge that there wasn’t much room to move in. Jay wanted the entire den in one room. They did fit, but not easily, and as usual she wanted everyone as close to the kitchen as possible. So they’d all congregated in one room, finding floor space to sit on or wall space to lean against—the wall was safer, unless you liked to be stepped on. Sadly, the windows were part of the wall, which made the chore harder.

  He would have given up, but no one else cared, and Angel liked being able to breathe.

  Now, people were talking in that half-shout they used when there were too many other people talking; the room, which wouldn’t have been large back home, was crowded with people sounds and people smells. Obviously, some idiot had told Carver to cook, because one of those smells was something burning.

  Angel moved toward the bucket in the corner, just in case, and stood idle, leaning against the wall. This should’ve taken more thought than it did, but, well. It was Carver, and Carver was trying to cook. Which meant he was trying to own part of the conversation, an effort which demanded more of his time than the stove and the pot on it. Anyone who let Carver cook when it was this crowded expected to put out the occasional fire.

  “Want me to watch?” Finch asked, standing on her toes and shouting in the direction of his ear; her breath tickled his collarbone. She’d probably asked the question at least four times, but the noise of colliding conversations was so damn loud it was easy to miss her. She didn’t have much of a voice, not compared to the rest of the den. Only Teller was quieter, but he had other ways of making himself heard.

  Angel shrugged and watched her hover. Her eyes were so dark a brown, the dim light made them all black, but it was a warm black, infused by an immediate and urgent desire to be helpful that was so strong it was almost its own color. He liked Finch. It would have been damn hard not to like Finch, and in this, at least, Angel was lazy.

  Jester muttered something, and his words made a wave in the eddies of other conversations, other gambits for attention; laughter followed, enveloping everyone except the sullen silence that was Duster. Duster habitually sat beside Jay, or stood by her shoulder, her hands in fists at her sides. She seldom smiled, and the only time she laughed? Not worth the cost. Today, everyone was crowded around Jay, and while Duster had her own special way of staking out space, when people started laughing, they pressed into it.

  Angel didn’t understand Duster, and mostly, he was certain he never would. But sometimes—sometimes he thought he might, and that was worse. It made him uncomfortable.

  When he was uncomfortable, he remembered. A month, two months—no, maybe six now. Or seven. Whatever. The time didn’t matter; it just marked a boundary. Before it, this room and these people didn’t exist as part of his life, and after? Well, he was the one standing beside the damn bucket.

  So he leaned against the wall, not that there was a lot of wall to lean against; he folded his arms across his chest, let his chin tilt forward toward his heart, as if it was the center of gravity. Who knows. He wasn’t a doctor and he wasn’t a healer—maybe it was.

  Angel

  A moment in time.

  Where does it start?

  Not in the Port Authority. Not in Terrick’s apartment, although the heat of the smithy permeates every memory of that place. Not in the Common, and not in the shade of its giant, unnatural trees (trees which, he has been assured, are entirely natural). For some reason people like to talk to him about the trees: the magisterial guards, the merchants coming to their stalls, the old women who seem to gird the Common with their daily presence (and if there’s a better way to tell time than Mrs. Gallaby’s tapping cane, he hasn’t seen it yet).

  Maybe it starts with money. Or with having no money.

  Maybe it starts with the job he also doesn’t have.

  Maybe it starts with the streets of the City, because they stretch out forever, longer than fields, with no fields in sight. Yeah, maybe it starts there.

  Angel knows what hunger feels like. But he’s never lived in a place where you can’t even grow your own food because there’s no land at all that isn’t part of your windowsill—if you even have that much you can call your own. He knows that most of your land is used to grow things that other people want—but having nothing that other people want? It’s something the City teaches him, daily. He doesn’t like the lesson.

  There are other things he learns.

  He learns that having no family is hard—he knew it, but he learns it again, over and over. He forgets, for minutes at a time, that his mother and father are dead. He forgets, for the same minutes, that he’ll never hear their voices, or see their expressions, or feel their arms, and when those moments pass, and he is alone again, he regrets bitterly the embarrassment he felt at his father’s open affection. I’m not a child echoes in the empty room when Terrick is at the Port Authority.

  Sometimes he hates the echoes enough that he leaves. He goes exploring, as if he were a child again, without the strength to help his father in the fields.

  The City is larger than anything he dreamed of as th
at child. There’s a river that cuts through the City, but it’s surrounded by buildings and bisected by bridges. People live on its banks when it’s warm. They fight there and die there as well. Far enough downstream, people don’t even blink when a body works free of the mud and rises, dragged along by the current. He’s seen it, once. He doesn’t want to see it again.

  He discovers that there are a hundred holdings. He asks the old woman who tells him this how she knows which ones are which—and how he’s supposed to—and she shrugs. People just know, she tells him, nodding sagely. He doesn’t. There are streets all over the place, and the boundaries of the holdings crisscross them, claiming one part for the twenty-fifth, and one part for the thirty-fifth in a way that makes no sense.

  But the boundaries mean something to the people who live inside them. As if these patches of city, invisible to Angel’s eye, are their fields, they roam the boundaries in packs, like feral dogs. They’re called dens, here. Angel doesn’t know why—it’s a stupid word for what they actually are. What they are? Dangerous. He watches for them, but the buildings and the alleys get in the way; he’s spent some time running from them as a result.

  There are some days his life seems to be all about running.

  Sometimes that makes him angry. It’s better than crying. It’s better than staring at walls and trying to figure out what there is to do in this smelly, hot, crowded, noisy corner of the Hells.

  He spends a month being angry. He spends two months being angry. In the City there are so many things to be angry about, walking down the street is an exercise in fury; it’s like he’s wounded and every single thing he sees rubs at the wound, catching its edges and making it bleed more.

  He can remember the first fight he gets into; he can’t remember why it started. Because after the first fight, there are so many of them. He does remember Terrick’s silence, and that’s harder; Terrick is silent the way his father would have been silent, at least to start. But Terrick isn’t his father, and the second time, the third, he starts to try to teach Angel the things his father didn’t.