City of Night

by Michelle West

  Because she knew that it would make no difference to Duster. Duster couldn’t be talked out of something she was unwilling to admit existed.

  This is what you wanted, her Oma said curtly, rearing up in memory as she always did when things were bad. You wanted to give her a present. You wanted to give her something tangible that she’d use. You wanted her to value this kind of thing.

  So live with it.

  Living with it, Jewel thought grimly, might not be the problem. “We can try pulling it with the rope. We can toss the rope over, see if we can get it that way.”

  Duster said, without meeting Jewel’s gaze, “I won’t step on the circles. It should be safe.”

  What was the worst thing that could happen? Duster could go flying and hit a wall? Jewel said, “Do it quickly.” And held her breath. It wasn’t hard to hold her breath; she often forgot to breathe when she was afraid. And she was, now. She couldn’t say why. She understood that it was, as they called it in the den, the feeling. And also understood and accepted that in spite of it, she was going to take the risk.

  But things often worked out so badly when she ignored her feelings.

  Duster jumped over the three circles. Her landing was awkward, because she was also afraid. She sprinted, head down, for the dagger, and reached for it without quite stopping. She missed. She slowed herself down by grabbing the edge of the damn coffin.

  Jewel bit her lip, to stop from crying out. Because the statue on the bier, the one that Duster was touching, had moved. Not a lot. But his fingers had moved around the curve of his helm. “Duster, damn it, hurry.”

  Duster grabbed for the knife a second time, and this time, she got it. She pivoted and made a running leap out of the circles.

  Jewel watched the statue for any other sign of movement, but it was still again. “Come to the wall,” she told Duster.

  Duster sheathed her knife, and followed.

  “What are they?” Duster asked, her voice low.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Magic?”

  “I think so. I know we’re not coming back here.” She waited for the I’m not afraid, but it didn’t come. Whatever these were—fancy golems, living statues, enchanted creatures—she didn’t want to meet them, speak with them, be seen by them. That was all she was certain of, and that was all she needed.

  “Jay?”

  “What?”

  “Are they sleeping?”

  Silence. Just like Duster, Jewel thought bitterly, to give voice to something that she herself had been trying damn hard not to think. She didn’t answer. Normally, that would have been enough.

  “Jay, are they—do you think they’re the—the Sleepers?”

  The Sleepers. Yes, damn it. She forced herself to shrug. “What are the Sleepers, anyway?”

  Duster didn’t know. “End of the world,” she finally said, with a shrug.

  “End of the world?”

  “Yeah. When the Sleepers wake.”

  “It’s just a saying.” And it was. When the Sleepers wake meant, pretty much, never.

  “Yeah. Just.” Duster cast a glance at the cenotaphs, and then shivered and turned away.

  “Tunnel or door?” Duster asked, her voice subdued.

  Jewel hesitated. Out of habit, she had begun to walk to the familiar dark patch that suggested broken stone and possible tunnel, but she stopped against the curve of a wall. “Let’s try the door,” she said at last.

  “Problem?” Duster asked, after a minute.

  “It doesn’t have a handle.” She shoved the cut glass magelight into the inside of her shirt and looked at the door. “Duster, is this glowing at all to you?”

  Duster shook her head. She nodded toward the third exit, and the darkness, and Jewel almost said yes. Opened her mouth to say it.

  What emerged instead was “No.”

  They both looked a little surprised. Duster said, “All right, then.”

  But Jewel felt that particular shock that comes with strong intuition; the cold of it, and the certainty, made her ball her hands in fists. “We have to get out of here,” she said, dropping her voice. Looking, as she did, at the cenotaphs, and the vaulted ceiling above them. At shields that were, in her vision, strangely blurred; at faces that made a hollow mockery of beauty, because they were beautiful, but somehow terrifying as well.

  She turned her attention, and her body, toward the closed door. Unlike the figures, and the room itself, it wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t grand. It was just a door. But as she touched it, both of her hands spread, palm out, against its sturdy, unremarkable surface, she felt warmth, saw light.

  She could never have said what color the light was, not then, and not after. But she felt it almost as gold; the gold of harvest and plenty, not the gold of the banker.

  She gave the door an experimental push. “Duster?”

  “What?”

  “You said you lived in the Mother’s temple for a little while.”

  “When did I say that?”

  Jewel rolled her eyes; it was safe, as Duster couldn’t see them. “I don’t remember when—next time I’ll take notes. Look, it isn’t an accusation. I don’t care where you lived.”

  Duster hesitated; it was almost physical. But after a moment she gave a very noncommittal grunt.

  “I went there with my mother and father a few times. Not often,” Jewel added softly, “but a few times.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because—don’t laugh—it reminds me of that.”

  “What reminds you of what?”

  “The door. It reminds me of the Mother’s temple.”

  Duster’s hands joined hers, and Duster came to stand beside her, her narrowed eyes examining the wood grain as if it were writing and she had actually bothered to learn it. “You’re crazy,” she finally said.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Jewel replied.

  “It looks like a door, to me.”

  Jewel bit her tongue, hard. A thousand sarcastic words jammed themselves into the backs of her teeth, and stayed behind closed lips by the sheer dint of will. “It is a door. It’s a wooden door. How many of those do we see in the undercity on a normal run?”

  None, of course. Duster knew the answer, and didn’t offer it.

  “But this one is standing. This one is still here. It feels solid, but old.” The pauses could kill a person. “It’s either been replaced, been oiled and repaired, or it’s magical. Which of the three do you think is most likely in a room like this?”

  Duster grunted. After a few minutes, she realized that Jewel expected her to carry at least a small portion of the conversation. Looking harassed, she said, “Not the first two.”

  “Right. So. Do you remember anything you were taught in the temple?”

  “Why the Mother’s temple? It’s a door.”

  “I don’t know,” Jewel said, and then, forcing her voice back down from its brief climb, added, “it’s what it feels like, to me.”

  Silence. It was always like this when you asked a question Duster didn’t expect; she had to examine it to see if she could figure out what your game was. Only if she couldn’t—because in Duster’s world, that meant there wasn’t one—would she risk answering. “Yeah, some.”

  “Do you remember any of the prayers?”

  “Prayers? Are you serious?”

  “Yes. I only know street prayers, and those are all short and to the wrong gods.”

  Duster shrugged. She was uncomfortable. If Jewel had missed Carver, she was glad she’d sent him home now.

  Jewel waited. She waited while the hair on the back of her neck rose. The only warmth in the room emanated in some measure from the door, and she didn’t lift her hands. But neither, she noticed, did Duster.

  “Some,” Duster finally said. “There was a lot of stuff about food.” She hesitated, but the hesitation was different, and when Jewel looked at the side of Duster’s face, framed by black hair, she saw that it was the effort to remember, a
nd not the fear of mockery, that held her tongue.

  “There was some other stuff. About health. I think there were things about babies.”

  “Were they all Weston?”

  “The ones I could understand, yeah.”

  “Were there other ones?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you ever have to—to recite them?”

  “Only one.” Duster’s lips had thinned in annoyance.

  “Often?”

  “Every day.” Very thin.

  “Could you repeat it?”

  “Jay—”

  “I’m not asking because I’m bored and it’ll kill time,” Jewel said softly, each word distinct and low.

  “It’ll kill me,” Duster snarled. Her eyes were that particular shade of dark they got when they narrowed, but she didn’t snap. Instead, she took a long, slow breath. In the first year, she’d have tried to stab the door. “Why do you need me to do this?” She spoke each syllable carefully and precisely.

  Jewel exhaled. “I know this is going to sound stupid—”

  “Good.”

  “—But I don’t think the door will open if you don’t.”

  Duster turned to look at her den leader. Jewel waited.

  “Mother’s blood, Jay!” She lifted a hand and pounded the door once. As if she were knocking. “What if I remember, and I say it, and it’s the wrong damn thing?”

  “Then we go out the way we came in.”

  “Why don’t we just go out the way we came in anyway?” But she knew the answer. Jewel didn’t want to go back. For some reason. And asking her why wouldn’t get answers; that wasn’t the way the strong feeling worked.

  “Duster, please.”

  Duster exhaled. Jewel, watching her, realized for the hundredth time that she could ask Duster to risk her life a thousand different ways much more easily than she could ask her to dent her pride. This, for whatever reason, was pride-denting in a big way.

  “I don’t know why I’m still here,” Duster told the door.

  Because the door’s closed. Jewel, however, kept that to herself.

  Duster began to speak. Well, to mumble. She had both hands on the door, and Jewel put her hands there as well. But Jewel also bowed her forehead, leaning it against the wooden surface. She waited, in silence.

  Nothing happened, and she winced.

  “There,” Duster said bitterly. “Satisfied?”

  “No.”

  Duster swore. “I’m not—”

  “Say it slowly again.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you need to teach it to me. I need to say it, too.”

  “What the Hells?”

  “We’re both in here. Whatever it is needs saying, it needs saying by both of us.”

  “Godsdamnit, Jay. You’d better be sure about this.”

  “Sure as I ever am.”

  Duster spat, which Jewel found shocking in the perfect white of the room. The shock cheered Duster immensely.

  She started to speak the unfamiliar syllables slowly. Jewel repeated them back. “How many lines are there?”

  “It’s three sentences,” Duster said. “If you could see ’em, you’d know that.”

  “You couldn’t read them.”

  “No, but they were carved on the damn wall.”

  “Look, I’m sorry. Give them to me slowly again. First line first.”

  Duster stared at her for a minute, and then she seemed to relax. It was a slow unwinding, but teaching Jewel the prayer, syllable by syllable, was leading her into unexpected terrain. Not back to whatever she had suffered—and if there was suffering to be had in the Mother’s temple, Jewel wasn’t sure she even wanted to know—but somewhere else, somewhere she had never expected to be.

  “Here,” Duster said, “sit down. Just close your eyes and listen.” As if she’d been told that, and had listened, once.

  Jewel nodded. She was afraid, now, and couldn’t say why. Didn’t want to know.

  But want or not, she felt the beginning of an answer beneath her: a tremor in the ground. She opened her eyes and looked at Duster, who had fallen momentarily silent. They waited. Silence.

  “Jay—”

  And sound. The distant fall of rock.

  Jewel swallowed. “Duster.”

  Duster nodded. Any peace the act of teaching had offered, and with Duster all peace was tenuous, was gone. She began again, her voice low, her lips very near Jewel’s ear. Jewel repeated the syllables, trying to feel them as rhythm and sound, trying to pick a pattern in cadence that would make it easier.

  The ground trembled again, and this time, it was stronger.

  Duster cursed, and Jewel caught her hand—the unburned one—and pressed her fingers into it. Touch sometimes upset her and sometimes steadied her. This time, it steadied; it was a familiar and unthreatening hand. She kept speaking, slowly, and Jewel, frustrated at herself, repeated what she heard.

  This time, when rock broke, it was undeniably closer, as if whatever was breaking it was moving, slowly, toward them. Jewel stood, and put her hands firmly against the door; it stilled their shaking. Duster did the same.

  “Try it,” Jewel told her. “I’ll try to follow.”

  Duster did. And Jewel tried.

  The door, however, remained shut. Frustrated, tense with fear, Jewel said, “Duster, what does it mean?”

  Duster looked at her. “Is that important?”

  “I think so. What does it mean?”

  “It’s just a prayer. We called it the orphan’s prayer.”

  “Which we both are. Tell me, if you remember.”

  The hesitation was very small; it was there, but necessity made it easier to step around. “Mother, guide and guard your children as they walk the longest road. In darkness, hunger, isolation, in the lee of war and death. Mother hear us, lost and wandering, lead us, lead your children home.”

  Jewel took a breath and closed her eyes. Those words, she could remember. They were way too long for street prayers, but she promised the Mother that she would say them every bloody night if the Mother would only hear them now.

  She sucked in air, and then said, “Okay, Duster, again.”

  And rock fell, closer now. The ground shook with it, accompanying the sound.

  “Kalliaris,” Duster whispered. “I think the hall is coming down.”

  Jewel nodded. “Duster,” she said.

  Duster began again, and this time, while Jewel followed her, pronouncing each syllable, she mapped them: the meaning and sounds. The door against her palm grew warmer, and the sense of harvest and hearth, nearer. She held them as she could, because the ground was now shaking beneath her feet and in the distance, she thought she could hear more than just the roar of falling stone.

  A different roar; an ancient voice.

  She didn’t raise her voice, but Duster did. And it helped. She needed Duster’s lead here, needed to concentrate, needed to give the lead to someone who knew what she didn’t know.

  And it was hard. It was always hard. Didn’t matter.

  Duster spoke clearly. Jewel, less so, but Jewel’s words were distinct. She felt heat now, as if the door’s warmth had spread throughout her entire body. For a moment, the warmth was stronger than the fear; for a moment, she felt cocooned and safe, and the tremors at her feet and back, the sound of crashing rock, receded; they were outside.

  She saw her hands beside Duster’s hands, and knew she would remember them for a long time.

  And then the door dissolved, and both she and Duster fell through the arch where it had stood.

  They got to their feet in silence. The breaking of stone had either stopped, or they had stepped somehow beyond it into a familiar, silent darkness. Duster reached into a pocket and pulled out Jewel’s magestone, holding it in one palm. Jewel whispered the word to brighten it, and then remembered the heavy glass she carried against her stomach, in the folds of her shirt. She pulled this out as well, although she could not change the brightness of the light it shed
.

  “We’re not coming back here,” Duster said, echoing Jewel’s earlier words.

  Jewel nodded. “Not that I could find it again, without you or Carver,” she felt compelled to add. Duster snorted. She reached for the sheath at her hip, touched the familiar hilt of a new dagger, and then relaxed a little. But when she turned to look back, she stopped.

  Jewel, caught by the quality of her silence, turned as well.

  In the frame through which they’d both just fallen, stood a door. No, not a door; two doors. Nothing about these doors was familiar. They were tall, and they stretched from ground to a ceiling that magelight did not quite illuminate. Across the seam where the two doors met was a symbol, a complicated symbol encircled by a spiral that started at its center. It was glowing with gold light, and as they watched, the light slowly faded.

  They watched it until it could no longer be seen, even as an afterimage. Then they turned and began to make their way down the hall.

  It was a long damn hall, and there were no doors to break it; there were also no junctions. They walked slowly in the magelight, and Jewel only tripped once on the bulky rope that wouldn’t quite stay in a convenient wreath. They didn’t speak, partly because they were listening, and partly because they were examining the ground.

  “Rope?” Duster asked her, when they’d been walking for a few minutes.

  “I think we’re good. There are no cracks at all in the stone.”

  “There might be soon.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m not even sure we’re anywhere near the room we left.”

  Duster shrugged. The door was so clearly not the same door to her eye that she couldn’t argue. Besides which, neither of them particularly liked the confinement of knots. They walked for several minutes and came, at last, to stairs.

  The stairs were not wide, but they weren’t that narrow. They were stone, and they headed up into darkness in a slow, curving spiral. Up was a good sign. Duster took the lead.

  She put her weight slowly on the second step up, testing it.

  And jumped back down almost instantly.

  A clear note had sounded in the darkness. It was not something you normally heard when walking up the stairs. Bending, Duster brought the magelight closer. The step, to her eyes, and to Jewel’s, was solid rock.