City of Night

by Michelle West

  “He was joking,” Angel said.

  “I know. But it’s not really a joke. If these dreams can be trusted—if we can even figure out what they mean—what can we possibly do about them? I can’t even protect my own,” she added bitterly. “And gods aren’t likely to give a damn about something as insignificant as one den in Averalaan.”

  “We won’t have to say anything,” Teller told her. “If the gods do anything, the god-born will know. They’re not a den in the twenty-fifth; when they speak, the Kings will have to listen.”

  Everyone nodded. Everyone.

  She wanted to leave the table. Instead, she put her hands across it and splayed the fingers wide. “She’s there,” she said, waiting for Teller to start writing. He did, and she continued, feeding him the stream of her words. “She’s red and black; she’s taller than Arann. She has a sword, in this one,” she added softly. “And a red dress that’s all of one piece.”

  “Sleeves?”

  “I don’t think so. Does it matter?”

  “You could ask Haval.”

  She could, at that. She probably wouldn’t. He’d just ask her why she wanted to know, and that led places she wasn’t willing to go with him.

  Instead, she concentrated, because the dream might slip away. “Long sleeves, or at least they look like sleeves; they’re so close to her skin they might as well be skin. Did I tell you she’s tall?”

  “Yes.”

  “But she’s not.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In the darkness,” Jewel replied. “It’s—it looks like the undercity darkness, not the streetside night.” A shudder took her, momentarily robbing her of words. “But it’s not the undercity; that’s not what the darkness is. I think I can see the moons, but they’re warped and twisted, and they look summer red.

  “They’re not moons.”

  The silence contained only the movement of Teller’s hand, and this, too, came to a close.

  “They’re eyes,” Jewel said softly. “And suddenly the woman is way too short, and thing towering behind her is—the size of nightmare. And it speaks, and I hear it, and I can’t understand what I hear—but I try to plug my ears. Doesn’t help. Nothing does.”

  “Where are you?” Teller asked, gently.

  “Alley, I think. Some place with walls on either side. I turn to run. There’s nothing I can do but run, and I know this.” She drew a deeper breath, raising her hands to push her hair out of her eyes. “But . . . I run into trees, of all things, into forest, and . . . someone is waiting for me.”

  “He steps into my path. There’s moonlight here, but he’s hard to look at, and I realize it’s hard to look at him because he’s constantly changing. He’s always tall,” she added, forehead briefly creasing in frustration, “but his body shifts in place. I can’t describe it,” she added. “But it’s strange, not terrifying.

  “I try to move past him, but he lifts a hand, palm out, and I stop. I look over my shoulder,” she added. “I can’t help that.

  “But he knows. He tells me that: I know what you’re running from.”

  Duster was restless. Out of the corner of her eye, Jewel could see the glint of steel in her hand.

  “He’s a god, Duster,” she said, more sharply than she intended. “I can’t exactly tell him to drop dead.”

  Duster shrugged.

  “He says, ‘I know what you’re running from. And you know that you can’t run from him, in the end; there is nowhere safe to go if he is free.’

  “And I tell him that I can’t do anything else, and he says, ‘I know. Understand, now, that you cannot do anything to fight him. You are not, yet, armed, if you will ever be. This fight is not your fight, and you must have the humility to accept this as truth.

  “ ‘But it is mine. Lead me out of this forest, lead me into your grove of standing stone and dead wood and stunted tree, and I will stand where you cannot.’

  “I turn back, then, but it’s all damn trees as far as I can see.

  “ ‘Find a way,’ he says. ‘Only you can.’

  “But I can’t. I can’t even see the City anymore. I can just hear the screaming.

  “And I know that everything—everything—that I care about is dying, or will die, and I can’t do anything—” She lifted her hands to her face.

  Teller finished his writing, then. He added this third slate to the others, making a careful pile of them. “Rath?” he asked her softly.

  She lowered her hands, and nodded.

  11th of Emperal, 410 AA Thirty-fifth holding, Averalaan

  Jewel went to Rath’s by street after the daily trip to the Common. She didn’t go alone, although she did, briefly, try. She took Carver, Duster, and Angel with her, but only after they agreed to wait outside. The slates hung on her back in a pack, but she had bundled them with as much care as possible; chalk smudged.

  No one talked much. Duster was silent, but she often was; Carver was silent, which was unusual. The silence of Duster and Carver silenced Angel as well, and Jewel was not up to shouldering the entire weight of conversation. She walked in silence, surrounded by the noise of the streets as they crossed invisible holding boundaries on their trek.

  When she arrived at Rath’s apartment building, Duster, Carver, and Angel, as promised, took up lounging positions to one side of the door. They looked clean enough—just—not to seem too threatening. She hoped.

  She still had keys to Rath’s place, and she used them all. It wasn’t the first time she cursed his locks, because in her opinion, one would have been more than enough, and the third one was still a little high. But she opened them, took a breath, and opened the door.

  She was very proud of herself; Rath was standing inches from the arc the opening door made, and she did not start or scream. Instead, she slid the pack from her shoulders and handed it to him.

  Rath’s hair was pulled back, which wasn’t unusual; it was shining in the magelight, which was. It was also darker than it had been the last time she’d seen him. His skin was the type of smooth and pale that only makeup could achieve, and she could only see his scars because she knew where to look. He wore a jacket that was mostly burgundy velvet to her eyes, and a shirt.

  “New jacket?” she asked, as he took the pack from her hands and stepped to one side to let her in.

  “Relatively.”

  “You’re going out?”

  “Not immediately.” He glanced at her face, and his tone softened. “Why are you here, Jewel?”

  She gestured at the backpack. “In there,” she told him. “Three slates.”

  “Ah.” His expression softened as well, and he turned and walked the length of the hall to his room. Jewel trailed in his wake like a slightly detached shadow.

  When he reached his room, he set the backpack on the bed, untied it, and carefully retrieved its contents. He unbundled the slates from the blanket with more care than Jewel could have managed, and then took them to the table. There, magelight shone.

  “Sit,” he told her.

  Nodding, she walked to the bed and sat on its edge. After a few moments, she eased backward, until she was lying down, staring at the ceiling. She could hear the slight clack of slates as they were separated; could hear a slightly different clack as he discarded them. When she heard it for the third time, she pushed herself up on her elbows.

  Rath turned in his chair. “When did you have these dreams?”

  “The past three nights.”

  “Three,” he said. He rose then and went to one of the boxes on the mantel; from this, he pulled his pipe. Jewel watched him line the bowl with leaves taken from the same box. She closed her eyes until the faint and oddly comforting aroma of smoke drifted toward her.

  “I don’t know what it means,” she said softly.

  He nodded. “This woman,” he said quietly. “Does she remind you of anyone you’ve ever seen?”

  “You couldn’t forget seeing someone like her,” was the quiet reply.

  “No. I don’t imagi
ne you could.”

  Jewel’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve seen her?”

  Rath, silent for long enough that Jewel thought he wouldn’t answer the question, finally nodded. “I have.”

  “Where?”

  He shook his head. That question, he would not answer. But after a moment, he added, “Someplace you will never be. I admit, however, that she does not obviously carry a sword or cloak herself in shadow.” His lips turned up at the corners in what might have been a smile.

  Jewel closed her eyes again.

  “It’s too much, Rath,” she whispered. “It’s too much for us. Do you know what it means? There were gods,” she added, raising her arm and settling it over her closed eyes.

  “I think,” he said, words drifting and mingling with that familiar scent, “I have some idea of what it signifies.” His voice was quiet and soothing, and she heard no lie in the words. “But you are right; it is not information that you, or your den, can use to any purpose.”

  “Can you?”

  “I can. And if not I, the Magi of my acquaintance. It is important information; I do not mean to lessen its significance. But it is something that they will be both familiar with and competent to analyze, if you will allow me to retain the slates.”

  “You might as well. We haven’t been using them much.”

  “You mistake me. Which you do not often do. Take mine in their place; I will keep these.” Smoke eddied as Jewel removed her arm and slowly opened her eyes. “If you will allow it, I will take responsibility for what they contain. You may, of course, feel free to attempt to further interpret them.”

  She shrugged. “I’ll see what the others have to say.”

  “If anything they say strikes you as interesting, write it down.”

  She nodded again.

  “You’re upset, but not about the dreams,” Rath said. He had always been too damn perceptive.

  “I am,” she whispered. Then, aware that she was not to lie to him in his own home—the first rule he had established—she added, “There’s something else, as well.”

  He waited in silence while she tried to find words. The ones that finally came out were, “We lost Fisher.”

  What the dreams hadn’t done, these words did; he was utterly still for a moment, his face that mask that meant his expression would show exactly—and only—what he wanted it to show. “What do you mean?”

  These words were harder to force out. She didn’t manage before he asked one question.

  “Where?”

  “In the undercity.”

  “While you were there?”

  No lying to Rath in his own home. Jewel stood. They’re not my pets and they’re not my children. I can’t just keep them locked up in the apartment, waiting on my permission to even breathe. She was angry, and it was like a summer storm; she shook with it. But she did not say the words.

  Because she only wanted them to be true.

  If he had shouted at her, it might have been easier. Because then, she could have shouted back. Instead, after the silence, heavy with unspoken words, had gone on too long, he said, “Who was with Fisher?”

  She exhaled. “Duster, Carver, Angel, and Lefty.”

  “They heard nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “And saw nothing?”

  She nodded.

  He rose. “When?”

  “On the eighth of Emperal. Or maybe really late on the seventh.”

  “I will not lecture you,” he told her quietly, walking over to the mantel and opening the box again. “I can’t say anything to you that you haven’t already thought.”

  She opened her mouth and closed it again. “Is he dead, Rath?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No. I felt nothing. I saw nothing.”

  Rath’s back was turned toward her; she couldn’t see his face. But after a silence, he offered what he could. “He is almost certainly dead.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, and this time he did turn. “I have to leave soon, Jewel. You can remain here, if you want.”

  “I can’t. Carver, Duster, and Angel are outside, waiting.”

  He raised a brow. It was the same dark that his hair now was.

  “We don’t go out in the streets alone, if we can help it. And I wasn’t sure I could make it here on my own if I—” No. That wasn’t true. What was true was this: she was afraid to go into the maze. “The streets of the undercity have changed.”

  “Yes,” he said. Just that.

  He let himself out of his apartment quietly. He did not linger by the door, and did not listen for her familiar, if slightly heavier, footfall. Her gift and her talent made it very difficult to lie to her, but Rath had the advantage of knowledge and experience. He had not spoken a lie. But he had acted one. He had been quiet, reasonable, suggesting a calm acceptance of the three dreams that he in no way felt.

  Fisher had helped, in this. A better man would have hesitated to take advantage of her pain, her guilt, and her fear. But she needed to be quit of this, and he needed to be certain that she was. That he left her with guilt and desolation was insignificant in comparison; he wanted her to remain alive.

  Rath had intended to visit the Order of Knowledge with the candelabra that Jewel had given into his keeping. Because of the destination, he had made the effort to shave his face, dye his hair, and mute the white of his scars. He had also dressed in a way that suggested moderate wealth, but not in a way that suggested power.

  Jewel’s visit did not change his destination, but he went quickly, and his mind was no longer on the candelabra that would, at one time, have been a marvel. A lucky find, even in the undercity. It had been many, many months since he had felt the thrill of discovery, and he knew that the time for that had passed.

  The time for much had passed, was passing, even as he walked. Old Rath, he was called, and although he had done much to lessen the visual impact of age, he felt it keenly in the summer air. The streets that he walked were crowded, but that was not unexpected at this time of day; he nodded and smiled at those he passed, occasionally taking care to lift his hat. The crowds dispersed as he approached the footbridge that led to the Isle and vanished by the time he’d paid its onerous tolls.

  He crossed the bridge, and made his way to the Order of Knowledge.

  Sigurne looked particularly frail when she met him. He retrieved a chair for her and held it while she sat, before taking one of his own. The room, with its large and perfectly waxed great table, was otherwise empty; light flooded in through the bank of windows that took up most of the surrounding walls.

  “I almost dread these meetings,” she told him softly. Her hands lay across her chair’s armrests, and he could see the way her fingers curled slightly into the wood.

  “I know. I have other business here,” he added, “but this would not wait.”

  “What, then, have you come to tell me? Have you come to return more daggers?”

  “No. I’ve been careful of late, and have spent more time socializing than fighting.”

  She raised a brow, but did not ask.

  “It is almost time, I think,” Rath told her quietly, “to play the only card I hold. I wished, however, to ask you if, in your researches, you have come across any descriptions or depictions of Lord Cordufar’s mistress.”

  She raised a brow. “The current Lord Cordufar?”

  “His father,” Rath replied. “I have briefly seen the current Lord’s mistress.”

  She stiffened. “You believe they are the same woman.” It was not a question. “Why?”

  He seldom rehearsed speech. Today, he had, in the silence of his walk. But those words, whatever they had been, deserted him; he grimaced as they fled. “I have an acquaintance,” he said at last.

  “You have many. What makes this particular acquaintance significant?”

  He straightened, words teetering on the edge of his lips as he tried to find a way to steer them between truth and lie. “Th
ree dreams,” he finally said.

  “Three.”

  He nodded.

  She did not tell him that this was impossible. He appreciated the tact. “I will assume that these three were consecutive.”

  “Yes.” He hesitated. With Sigurne’s conversational guidance, it was difficult to say too little, and entirely too easy to say too much. She understood that he habitually lied, that he hid, almost unconsciously, most of what he knew. He therefore read her expression with care, and found information wanting. Still, old habits were difficult to break. “It is not the first time in our history that men and women of unknown significance have been visited with the dreaming Wyrd.”

  Her expression shifted slightly, but it did not sharpen, and he was not entirely certain—yet—that he had said too much, or spoken too clumsily. “As you say. Let us assume that these three dreams are indeed such a Wyrd. Fate,” she added, a hint of bitterness in the word, “has seldom taken care to be kind. Tell me of the dreams.”

  “The element the three dreams had in common was, if I interpret them correctly, Lord Cordufar’s mistress; the dreams offered no name, of course, but the description is exact. I no longer believe she is human.”

  Sigurne nodded.

  “Sigurne, what happens if what we are facing is not, in fact, a rogue mage? All of our plans, and all of our investigations, have assumed that we are dealing, at base, with another Ice Mage. But if Cordufar’s mistress has been here for two consecutive generations, the man—or woman—who summoned her must have been barely out of childhood when he did so.”

  Sigurne closed her eyes. “Or she is not leashed.”

  “Or, as you say, she is no longer enslaved.” Rath set his hands upon his legs, palms down.

  “I will be careful, in the future, to wish wisely. I dreaded word of another demon, and the return of another quenched blade.”

  He waited for a moment; because she looked so weary, he felt a sharp hesitance to add to the burden he’d placed on her shoulders.

  But she was the head of the Magi. Fragile, even delicate, yes, but there was steel in her that time could not touch. “There is more.”

  Sigurne lifted a hand. She rose, as she often did when she was troubled, and she walked the length of the room, passing the table to come to the windows which overlooked the quiet City. There she stood, framed in light, and exposed by it.