City of Night

by Michelle West

  Jewel had some suspicion about what she’d see when she finally spoke to Rath, and she didn’t care to expose that to Duster, or she would have taken Duster with her.

  “Angel,” Duster said. It had taken the better part of three weeks before Duster was willing to use his actual name, but the months since then had made it natural.

  Angel glanced at Duster. Nodded.

  “You have a dagger?”

  “Always.”

  “Good.” She stepped back, joining Carver.

  “Carver,” Jewel said, “straight home. If you run into Carmenta, lose him.”

  Carver nodded. “Any message?”

  “Yeah. Save some of the food for us.”

  They dropped down an unused chute tucked between two of the standing merchant storefronts in the Common. The chute, once meant for the type of mundane delivery that came by dirty, common laborers, was recessed far enough back from the street that the more genteel and monied of the custom could safely ignore it. It was old; the type of deliveries that had been made here had long since ceased.

  Angel lifted the chute’s warped hatch and Jewel dropped to the ground ten feet below; he followed, and made less noise landing than Jewel had, although he was larger in all ways. She tried not to resent it as she dusted herself off and pulled the magestone out of the pouch she had strapped to her waist on the inside of her tunic. The pouch was leather; the tunic appeared to be mostly dirt. She grimaced, thought of the riverbank and the heavy stones they used to beat clothes clean. Oh, well.

  She picked up the backpack with the rope; they’d come back this way tomorrow or the day after and replace it.

  Angel almost never complained. She wondered, as she walked, if he felt that he couldn’t, in safety; although he’d been with the den for four months now, he had to know that everyone else had been together for years. On the other hand, he seemed comfortable enough with Carver; they argued, on and off, like brothers.

  Not that she had personally had any.

  She handed Angel the magestone for the next leg down, and caught it when he threw it after she’d landed. They didn’t come by this entrance often, but Angel didn’t seem to need to see anything more than once.

  Only when they had settled into the downward slope of actual stone did Angel speak. “What’s up with Rath?”

  Jewel shrugged.

  “You worried?”

  And nodded. “Some. He can take care of himself.”

  “But?”

  She shrugged again. “I worry. I’m good at that. Take the left,” she added.

  “Left?”

  She thought back a bit. “You haven’t come to Rath’s this way before.”

  “No.”

  “Left, sorry. I forget what you’ve seen and what you haven’t. We don’t have much in the way of secrets and anything I know, I assume everyone else knows.”

  “Any gaps here?”

  “Not this way. Well, maybe, but it’s only a couple of feet; we can step across it.”

  Except that it wasn’t, and they couldn’t.

  Angel stared at the fissure in the ground. He thought it was eight feet across, and it traveled to the left and right as far as the eye could see. Admittedly, given that the only light was the magelight, that wasn’t far. He glanced at Jay’s face before he spoke. “Did we take a wrong turn?”

  He could see furrows in her forehead, and counted the seconds until she shoved one hand up into her hair and pushed it out of her eyes. Usually she used both hands, but currently one of them was gripping the magelight just a little too tightly.

  Teller and Carver had both warned Angel that geography was not one of Jay’s strengths. He didn’t relish the idea of being lost in the undercity with only Jay as a guide, but as he studied her profile, he knew she wasn’t lost. And that she knew it.

  He looked at the fissure, sinking to his knees and laying his hands flat against the ground about six inches before it ended. “Good thing you brought the rope,” he told her quietly.

  “Can you clear the jump?”

  He nodded. “Unless the edges are fragile, yeah. Even if. It’s not that big a jump if you take a run at it.”

  “Good.” Her shoulders eased slowly down her back and she lifted her chin; she spoke a single word and the magestone brightened, casting both light and shadow across anything in its radius. “You run,” she added. “I’ll throw you the rope when you’re on the other side.”

  He shrugged, backed up. He hadn’t lied; it really wasn’t that big a jump, and he cleared it easily before he turned to look back.

  “I’m going to toss you the stone and the rope.”

  He nodded, waited. Watched her, and it came to him as he did that she didn’t want to make the jump. “Jay, are you afraid of heights?”

  Her reply: she fumbled a moment with the magestone before setting it on the ground beneath her feet, and wrapped the rope around her waist, crossing the ends and pulling them tight. Then she tossed him the rope. He caught the end, looped it around his waist, knotted. It wasn’t a good knot; a good knot would require that he hold all of the rope. On the other hand, hers was probably better, and he didn’t expect to have to use the rope.

  “Back up farther,” he told her quietly. The good thing about the undercity was that you never had to shout to be heard. There was no sound here, no sea wind, no other voices.

  “I can’t,” she replied, in a flat, tight voice. “Rope only goes so far.”

  He nodded. Waited for her to toss the stone across the chasm. It bounced five feet behind and to his right, skidding against the oddly smooth stone. He retrieved the light. Then he held it up, examining the fissure. “It’s narrowest here,” he offered.

  Her turn to nod. She took a breath sharp enough to cut, tensed, and then ran. He saw her eyes close just before she bent into her knees and pushed herself up and forward. It was a good jump; she cleared the crevice by at least a foot. Angel reached down and offered her a hand, which she took as soon as she could open her eyes.

  “Yes,” she told him, as she stood and began to unknot the rope, “I hate heights.” She was trembling. Angel tried not to notice. Instead, he dropped her magestone into her palm, all business. Thinking that this crack had been six feet narrower the last time Jay had come this way, and wondering what had widened it. He couldn’t come up with an answer, which was just as well; he had a suspicion that any answer he did come up with would be worse than not knowing.

  “Next time Carver complains about rope,” she muttered, as she began, once again, to lead the way, “remind me to tell him about this.”

  The rest of the way to Rath’s was clear, or as clear as the undercity ever was. Jay frequently let the den forage in buildings or around the edges of them, but not today; today she was in a hurry. Angel knew they were short on cash, which meant they’d have to come back to the undercity soon, but something was eating at Jay, so he separated soon from now and followed.

  Jay entered the subbasement that led to Rath’s, and pulled up short. Angel bumped into her, but not hard; they could never move quickly in these basements because they had to walk hunched over, even Jay, who was never going to be tall.

  She crouched, folding into her knees, and brought the magelight to ground level.

  “Angel,” she said quietly, “tell me that I’m not seeing a line of white salt on the ground here.”

  Angel obligingly looked. “I don’t think it’s salt,” he said, at last. “Or sugar. It looks like . . . dense ash.” He crouched closer to the light and reached out; Jay caught his wrist.

  “Don’t touch it.”

  “Why?”

  “Just . . . don’t touch it.” He could see her grimace in profile, and whistled slightly under his breath. She elbowed him backward.

  “You seeing something I can’t?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Not—it’s not feeling or knowing. It’s—there’s light there, and it’s golden.”

  To Angel it looked like white powder. Whatever light she coul
d see, he couldn’t. But that was Jay; she could see things that none of the rest of the den could. She unfolded. “Step over it carefully; don’t scuff it.”

  “Poison?”

  “Not to us.”

  “Then who, rats?”

  “Probably something like that.”

  Jay, Angel thought, taking a very large step over the fine, slender line, and leaving it as unbroken as Jay had, was the world’s worst liar.

  They made their way, much more slowly, toward the trapdoor and the crawl space. When they opened it, Rath was waiting. Funny, how neither of them was actually surprised to see him.

  Jewel pulled herself onto solid floor with little help from Rath. Angel pulled himself up the same way, and when he was clear, Rath let the trapdoor drop. Then he stumbled, and leaned heavily against the wall.

  Even in the darkness of the basement, Rath didn’t look good. Jewel opened her fingers, and the magelight brightened in her palm as she whispered a word above it.

  Rath’s hair had always changed color with the help of hennas and dyes. At the moment, however, it looked a natural shade of brown. And gray. His skin was pale, and his face, in the light, look discolored, although it was hard to say how. But his left arm was in a sling, and his hand—or what could be seen of it—was purple, black, and yellow. He was standing.

  But then again, he was leaning against the wall while he did.

  “Rath,” she whispered. “What happened to you?”

  Rath didn’t answer. From the forbidding quality of his silence, she knew he never would. And also knew that she was breaking one of the few rules that, unacknowledged, had governed her life with him.

  “Angel,” Jewel said. “Help him to his room.”

  When Angel hesitated, she cursed. “Just do it now and try not to step on the crap he’s left lying all over the floor.” She walked down the hall and into the kitchen. It was a larger kitchen than the den now claimed, but it wasn’t cleaner, and it wasn’t as well organized.

  It was, however, familiar, and it was—as it often had been—lacking certain amenities.

  “Jewel,” Rath said, his voice traveling down the hall like a little blast of winter wind. “Why are you here?”

  She ignored him. “Angel, I’m going to the well. I’ll be back as soon as I can; try to get him to rest.”

  “I was resting,” Rath replied, with a certain amount of annoyance, “when someone chose to attempt to sneak into my home.”

  “So go back to resting. I’m just getting water.” She hesitated, mentally counting change. “And food.”

  He started to forbid it; she could almost hear the tone of his silence. But . . . Rath had always tried to teach her to be practical, and he was, in Jewel’s opinion, standing only by dint of sheer, stubborn will. “Don’t take the tunnels,” was his compromise.

  “With buckets?” she snapped back.

  “Jewel, I have very little patience at the moment. Try, please, not to tax it.”

  “Yes, Rath.” She opened the three bolts that any Rath door always had.

  “I’m leaving Angel with you. Don’t argue.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of doing so, given the remote chance it would have of changing your mind.”

  Jewel snorted, opened the door, stepped into the hall, and tried very, very hard not to slam it shut behind her.

  To Angel’s surprise, Rath did not immediately return to the bed.

  It was hard to tell what Rath’s version of resting meant, because his bed wasn’t exactly clear of debris; clothing lay across it in piles of texture and color, and paper seemed to nest at the upper corner, closest to the wall. Books occupied the floor near the bed, and also stood in precarious stacks on the desk; there was a table in the room, and across it, curling in on itself, leather parchment.

  It was to the table Rath repaired, while Angel hovered.

  “Sit down, boy, if you’re going to wait here.”

  “Jay told you to rest—”

  “And when I have at last taken leave of my senses and I’m sleeping in the same room with five other members of your den, I will, with alacrity, obey her commands.” He tried to unroll the parchment, and after a tense minute said, in perfect, clipped tones, “take the other end of this.”

  Jay is going to kill me, Angel thought, but he did as Rath ordered, because it was very hard not to obey Rath. Carver, Angel, Duster, and Fisher came by Rath’s place when Rath had time. Since Angel had joined Jay’s den, that had been twice. But Carver had pointed out that in the early days it had been twice a week.

  He had taught them to fight, then. You missed the important stuff, was how Carver put it. What Rath had done, when Angel had gone with them, was something less martial. He had taught them to vanish. Or rather, he had criticized them for their inability to vanish. His criticism was muted when he spoke to Duster, but to Angel’s eye, Duster was better at losing people. Probably because losing her was safer.

  “Hold the map steady for just a few moments, and then help me move the paraphernalia from my bed. I’ll be lying down by the time Jewel returns.” He ran a hand across his brow, and it came away red.

  Angel was silent, but the silence was different. He did exactly as Rath asked, noting what Rath marked on the parchment, and noting the fact that the parchment seemed to glow in response. Magic.

  Then Angel did clear away the clothing, handling it all with care under Rath’s pinched direction. Rath settled into the bed, adjusting his weight and shifting his arm into a less uncomfortable position; from the look of the arm, the choice was between less uncomfortable and painful.

  “When she returns,” Rath said, closing his eyes, “tell her to take the unguent from the top shelf over the mantel. She can dress a few wounds; it will make her feel useful.”

  “It won’t stop her from worrying.”

  “Nothing short of death will stop Jewel Markess from worrying,” was the quiet, bitter reply. “And I will thank you not to repeat that.”

  Jewel came back two hours later, carrying two buckets that dangled from a slat across her shoulders. Only one of these was filled with water, and it had been a good deal fuller when she had started the trek back to Rath’s place. She opened the door, which no one had locked behind her. That fact told her more than she wanted to know about Rath’s current condition.

  She wasn’t Rath; she couldn’t easily find a doctor. Even if she knew where one worked or lived—and she did, at least in the twenty-fifth holding—finding one that would let her across the threshold when she wasn’t actively threatening to die in the door by, say, something as obvious as bleeding, was next to impossible. That, coupled with Rath’s almost legendary dislike of strangers—of anyone—knowing precisely where he lived meant food and water were all she could safely do.

  She was Jewel Markess; she did what she could.

  But it was hard, to open his door, to close it, to pick up the bucket and march it into the kitchen; it was hard to empty the food she’d managed to negotiate from Farmer Hanson out of the second bucket. It had been years—years—since she’d lived with Rath, but sometimes this place, this empty quiet space, still felt like home.

  She was not, now, the girl she had been then. She was not as frightened, not as uncertain. She could read, and even Rath grudgingly admitted she read reasonably well; she could handle enough of numbers to budget, and living on her own, with an iron box of constantly diminishing coin, had made clear to her that budgeting was not optional. Rath had taught her that, picking up the strands of her father’s earlier lessons; he had taught her how to read, how to write. He was—when he saw her at all—teaching her how to speak, and given that she knew damn well how to speak, this said something. Teller and Finch often accompanied her for these lessons, although neither of them appeared to enjoy the constant outburst and argument that some of his instructions provoked in Jewel.

  Rath, on the other hand, liked Teller and Finch. He was quiet with them in a way that he was not quiet with the other members of her den; it was
a silence of appraisal, but with no edge, no cutting judgment. Where, with Jewel, he was curt and sometimes heated, and with the others, dismissive, with Teller or Finch he was more measured in his reply, and he often took a few minutes to consider the questions they asked as if the questions themselves were inherently worthy of thought.

  Jewel, on bad days, envied this horribly.

  But, she thought, as she began to put wood from a noticeably tiny pile into the stove, that was a different type of bad day. Because on one of these bad days, she would have been sitting in her room, in silence, listening and waiting and wondering. Would he stay in bed? Would he recover? Would he go back to wherever it is he’d come from so injured? Would he never come home at all?

  And as she thought it, she looked down the hall. Stupid, to waste the time. She found a pot, started water boiling, found some rags that did not look conspicuously dirty, and headed toward his room, trailing water from the bucket she had cursed so roundly at the wellside.

  Angel jumped slightly when she opened the door. Whatever he saw in her face didn’t instantly make him relax, and she grimaced, trying to school her expression. “I’m only here for a couple of minutes while the water boils.” She saw his pale, raised brow and added, “Soup. He didn’t open his mouth enough that I could see that he had all his teeth.” She kept the words light, on purpose.

  But he nodded gravely, and instead of returning to the chair over which he’d draped himself with a characteristic floppy grace, he walked over to the wall above the mantel, and stretching to his full height, he pulled a jar down.

  She grimaced as she saw it; she couldn’t quite help herself.

  “Bad?” he asked, as he handed it to her.

  “It’s the smell,” she replied, as she struggled to remove the lid. “And the texture.”