City of Night

by Michelle West

  But the thing is, Oma, you are.

  Stronger than her father, whose voice was now so silent. Stronger by far than her mother. It was her Oma who chided her, berated her, and offered her whole new ways of looking at guilt.

  Guilt.

  She let her legs drop again, restless. She wanted to walk, and after a moment, she swung those legs round to the other side of the seawall and hopped down. She was so damn tired. Tired of waiting. Tired of watching. Tired of searching because they’d searched everywhere, for a whole damn week, skimping on laundry and everything that wasn’t food or water.

  She’d gone with them. She’d directed the searches. She’d helped with the ropes and the gaps. She’d carried waterskins, called stops, retreated in defeat, and returned the next morning after breakfast. Her den had followed in silence, and they’d broken the silence only to call his name: Fisher.

  He hadn’t answered. And the calls had gotten softer and more strained.

  Jewel kicked the wall she was walking along in momentary fury. Helpless fury, but it was better than kicking an actual person.

  What had Rath told her?

  Leave the damn maze alone. Go with them, if you go.

  And what the Hells had she been doing? Reading gods-cursed books and trying to add pointless numbers together. Or multiply them. Or divide them.

  Fisher wasn’t coming back. They talked with dwindling hope, they pointed out all the things that could have happened. But hope was never the same damn thing as belief, and they didn’t believe any of it. They looked to her. They had always looked to her.

  Hadn’t she dreamed of Finch? Hadn’t she saved Arann? Hadn’t she found Teller? Yes, damn it.

  Yes, she had done those things. And here, and now, in isolation under the relentless clarity of summer sky and the bright baubles, ribbons, and flowers of The Gathering, she accepted the bitter truth: she had failed them. Her gift had failed Fisher. She’d had no sign, no warning, no feeling. Nothing.

  He had gone to the undercity to forage, and he had not come back.

  She had never been one to cry in public, and she could not cry at home, because—because—

  If she did, it meant he was gone.

  And Fisher? He’d never spoken much. Ever. What words of his would come back to haunt her? What voice would invoke him when the memory of his taciturn face faded at last, submerged by numbers and daily necessity?

  No, Oma, she told her dead grandmother. I never want to forget.

  17th of Aeral, 410 AA Twenty-fifth holding, Averalaan

  It came back to money. It always had.

  Jewel opened the iron box, and took just what was needed for the early fall market, no more. But truthfully, there wasn’t a lot more to take. In the two and a half months since Fisher had disappeared, they had used the money the last piece from the undercity had brought in.

  Arann and Angel worked Farmer Hanson’s stall, when he had work; that covered some—not all—of their food. The farmer had introduced them to a few of the other merchants who worked in the same section of the Common, and they had picked up a day or two that way, but the handful of days’ work would not keep the den going.

  “Jay?” Finch poked her head around the door. The sun wasn’t high enough for encroaching rays to touch her, but Jewel smiled anyway, because Finch was, in some ways, like morning birds.

  “Sorry,” she said, rising from her crouch and shutting the box firmly. “I was just thinking.”

  If sun couldn’t touch Finch, shadow could; her expression lost some of its light. But she was kind—she was almost always kind—and asked nothing. Instead she waited, her own little imperative, until Jewel left the room. She closed the door behind them.

  She hadn’t even finished buying winter clothing. She’d started; over half the den would be fine. But Arann? She grimaced. Angel? It was cooler now than it had been, but it wasn’t cold by a long stretch. And at least Farmer Hanson had said he didn’t think it would get really cold this year. No snow. If they were careful, maybe they could sit the winter out.

  Because they weren’t burning wood, this year.

  Farmer Hanson noticed, of course. Because she bought less food. He said nothing, offered no advice and no encouragement beyond his usual friendly handshake. But he had already started to worry.

  Fair enough. So had she. She’d started worrying when Fisher vanished, and she’d never stopped. None of her den had gone back to the undercity. Duster wanted to, being Duster, but she hadn’t put up much of a fight. If she was never going to be kind, she had curbed cruel just enough to sit on most of the words.

  “How much do we have?” Angel asked quietly on the way home. He walked to her left; Duster, to her right.

  Jewel didn’t answer. She tried, but the words—which were going to be lies anyway—wouldn’t leave her mouth; they sat there like ashes.

  “Jay,” Angel said, pressing the point. He could always just find out for himself; there was no real lock on that box, and she knew it. But she also knew that he wouldn’t; that he would wait until she was too desperate for lies. For anything, she realized, but fear.

  She turned to face him, and stopped walking. Around her, the den slowed, but the rest of the City streamed past.

  “A week,” she finally told him. “A week, maybe ten days if we’re really, really lean.”

  Duster gestured to Carver, and Carver walked over to where she stood. They talked briefly, and only in den-sign. Duster kept her back to Jewel for the whole of the brief conversation. The others caught some of what was said, but not a single one of them interrupted. Instead, they glanced beyond Duster’s shoulder, and when Jay began to walk, they followed her.

  They didn’t talk about the undercity. They didn’t talk about foraging in the maze. That would have been easier, because they had signs for that.

  But when Jay had pulled far enough ahead, Duster said, “You, me. Maybe Jester; he’s never really said.”

  Carver nodded briefly. “Jester. You. Me. Jay won’t like it.”

  Duster shrugged. “She met Rath because she’d cut his purse from his shoulder and run away. She knows what we need to do to survive. You think she’ll try to stop us?”

  Carver hesitated for a moment, and then shook his head. “Let’s hope we’re not as rusty as we probably are.”

  “We’re not.”

  “You don’t care, do you?”

  Duster shrugged again. “Not really. What we had—it was good. But good things never last. That’s why people like me exist in the world,” she added, with just a touch of bitter pride. “Because good things never last.

  “Rath taught us all how to pick locks, how to hide in plain sight, how to run the Hells away. You think he did that for nothing? He knew what we might have to do. And Jay learned,” Duster added quietly, “because she knew it, too.” She kicked a stray rock, and added, “She’ll do it. She’s practical.”

  And then, shoving hands into pockets, she added, “It’s not that I didn’t like those years. It’s not that I won’t miss them.” She spoke softly, and in a voice that was almost entirely unlike her normal voice. “I was good enough for her, when things were good and she didn’t need me. I was good enough to share everything else with. She didn’t ask me to do anything—anything—that she wouldn’t do. She won’t ask now, either.

  “But I don’t want her to have to do them. It’s stupid.”

  Carver said nothing, but it was a quiet, listening nothing.

  “I hated her, when I first met her. I hated her even though she saved me, tried to set me free. I wanted to hate her,” she said, speaking now to the cobbled streets, the yellow weeds growing between stones. “I just—wanted to hate her.

  “But after Lord Waverly, I didn’t want her to hate me.”

  Carver started to speak and Duster lifted a hand. Den-sign. Shut up.

  “You’re going to tell me I don’t have to say any of this. I already know. Just save it.

  “Most of the den?” She shrugged. “They weren
’t worth the time. I didn’t hate ’em because they weren’t worth it.

  “I don’t hate ’em now. Sometimes I remember why I used to. Sometimes I don’t care. When we went back, when we went home that first night, I never thought I’d last. It’s been more than three years, Carver, and I didn’t think I’d last three weeks.”

  He didn’t ask her what night she was talking about. He knew. Anyone who’d been there would.

  “But I lasted. I made three weeks. And then four. And then five. Every damn week another struggle. Not to snap at Lefty. Not to smack Jester. Not to spit in Rath’s face because he’s so damn condescending. Not to take the damn money she leaves lying around by her bedroll and just run someplace where there weren’t so damn many rules.”

  “I stayed for the winter. That’s what I told myself. The first year,” she added. “I didn’t want to freeze my ass off in some broken-down hovel with three walls and half a roof while the rest of you were warm and fat.”

  “That’s what you told the rest of us,” Carver said, shrugging almost exactly as Duster had done.

  “Yeah, well. You never called me on it.”

  “Not calling you on it now.”

  “Bullshit.” She glanced at him. “When Carmenta had us boxed in, you could have run. He was after me.”

  Carver shrugged again.

  “I never asked you why you didn’t.”

  “You didn’t need to.”

  “I need to now.” She turned, shoulders hunched; she looked smaller than normal. Felt it, and hated it.

  Carver was not big on fancy words or speeches. It was one of the reasons she could talk to him at all. “You’re kin,” he finally said. “I figured we’d see worse, sometime. I knew you could fight. I know I can. I knew we wouldn’t have to stand for long.”

  He didn’t ask her why she hadn’t run. He wouldn’t. That was the other reason she could talk to him.

  “After that,” she said, “it was easier. It was just easier. To be in that place, with everyone else. I can take care of myself,” she added, trying to keep the defensive edge out of the words, trying to make them simple fact. Learning from Teller. Gods. “I always knew I could take care of myself.

  “But sometimes I forget. Sometimes it’s too easy, being there. I go out. I get into fights.” She shrugged, trying to get out from under the weight of the words she hadn’t yet said. “I tell myself I don’t have to go back. But I do. I know everyone thinks it’s because of her—it’s just Jay.

  “Sometimes,” she added, “it is. But sometimes it’s more. It wasn’t Jay who stood at my back when Carmenta and his den cornered me. It was you. It wasn’t Jay who talked me into coming back, that first night—it was Lander. It isn’t Jay who cooks the damn meals or washes the damn clothes half the time—it’s Finch or Teller. Jay’s got no sense of humor. Jester can make me laugh. Or piss me off.

  “Fisher isn’t coming back.”

  Carver nodded.

  “I thought that would break her,” Duster told him, her voice rougher. “And I wanted that, once. Maybe I want it now. I don’t know. I don’t know.” She shoved her hands through her hair. “It hasn’t. She’s still Jay. She’s still there. But this?” She swallowed. “I don’t want her to do what I’m willing to do. Maybe—maybe I never did. I want her to be what she is. I think we need her to be what she is. She gets too far away from it, I don’t know what she’ll become. And if she changes, I don’t know what we’ll be either.

  “She’s so goddamn annoying.”

  Carver shrugged again. “We’ve got a week,” he said. “Maybe ten days. We’ll figure something out.”

  “What does she want from us, anyway?” Duster said, as she turned in the direction of home.

  “Family,” he replied.

  “Family is supposed to make you worry this damn much?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know what it’s supposed to do. It’s just what it is. And what it’s going to be if Angel eats all the food again is violent.”

  Duster snorted, but they both sped up.

  After dinner, though, the den did talk. Jay didn’t call a meeting, but even without the formality of the kitchen table, they could still get things done. They sat on the floor, or lay across it. Lander and Lefty were against the window wall, side by side. They didn’t talk much, not out loud, but their hands were flying.

  Arann watched them from across the room. He was just outside the crushed circle the den made, against the wall. Lefty looked up, caught his eye, asked him if everything was okay. Arann, who didn’t sign much, nodded.

  But it wasn’t, and they both knew it.

  “A week,” Jay said. She’d picked up a couple of slates, dropped one of them in Teller’s lap and set the other in her own. Her hair, slightly red with the sun the way it always was at the end of the summer, she’d shoved off her forehead by tying a cloth band just beneath it. It wasn’t holding. In the humidity of the warmer seasons, nothing kept that hair in place.

  And even if it had, she’d have pulled it half out by shoving her hair out of her eyes. She always did, even if it wasn’t in her eyes to start with.

  “I can go down to the docks,” Angel said.

  Teller cringed slightly, but said nothing.

  Jay even started to say no, but stopped herself. “For what?”

  “Loading. Unloading. There’s always work there, while the port’s open.”

  “More work than at the Common?”

  Angel nodded.

  “What kind of work?”

  “Moving boxes, mostly. Moving cargo.”

  “They don’t have their own people for that?”

  “On ship, they have some; they sometimes pick up hires to speed things up. It’s busy, this time of year.”

  “Only lifting?”

  “More or less.”

  Arann watched. Arann knew how her father had died. “I’ll go,” he said. “I’ll go with Angel.”

  Angel said nothing, waiting. After a minute, Jay nodded. “Carver?”

  He looked up. Shook his head.

  “Not yet,” she told him softly. “We’re not that desperate yet.”

  “We will be,” was his quiet counter. “A week, Jay. If we’re smart, we won’t touch what’s there.”

  “We don’t have a choice.”

  “It’s not cold yet,” he added, as if she hadn’t spoken.

  Even Lander and Lefty fell silent, hands dropping into their laps.

  “But it will be. Having no money when it’s warm isn’t nearly as bad. Let me go back to some of my old haunts.”

  “No. You’re not working this holding alone.”

  “I won’t be alone. And it probably won’t be in the twenty- fifth. This isn’t where I camped, before.”

  She wanted to say no. Everything about her already did. But she held Carver’s gaze, and he didn’t look away. In the end, she did.

  She nodded.

  21st of Aeral, 410 AA Twenty-fifth holding, Averalaan

  Among the other things that came home with Carver and Duster on one of their foraging sprees was a deck of worn cards and four dice. “We left him his shoes,” Carver added, when he emptied his satchel. “And his clothing.”

  If he meant this to be comforting, it wasn’t. “Cards?” she asked.

  He shrugged. Duster looked at him and snorted. “Wasn’t my idea.”

  They did bring back money, though. It wasn’t a large amount, but it would cover a day’s worth of food.

  The first night out, they’d come back with more, but Carver had also come back with bruises.

  Angel and Arann came back with less, because even if the port was busy, it was still difficult to find people who would pay them. People who would agree to pay them once they’d done the work could be found—as they discovered to their great annoyance—with some ease. Getting the coin, however, was much harder. The Port Authority guards were not, after the fact, their friends.

  Arann, however, was fascinated by the ships and their flags; he was f
ascinated by the Port Authority itself. He didn’t care for the miles’ worth of very tired and irritated people who often walked the docks on their way from those ships to the Authority building but, like Angel, he learned to stay out of their way. He was off in the corner now, talking to Lefty. Lefty, boxed in, was listening as Arann told him about the ships and asked him about ship words.

  Which, of course, no one in the room actually knew. Not even Jay. “We’ll ask Rath,” she told him, the third time he asked. “He’ll probably know.”

  They were, by Teller’s count, only a day and a half behind. Jay checked his numbers.

  A week later, they were four days behind.

  Two weeks later, and they were just barely even.

  It was growing dark earlier, but the nights weren’t cold; Jewel worked by magelight at the table, reading the same passages over and over again because she couldn’t keep her mind on the words. Tomorrow, she thought, staring at Weston but seeing, instead, the blackened inside of an almost empty iron box.

  She couldn’t do this. She’d spent three years building a safe place, and it was going to crumble—was crumbling now.

  For years, she’d been angry and upset at her father, but she understood his death now. He had to work. Because if he didn’t, this is what they would have faced.

  This is what he would have faced, alone in the dark; he had no magestone, and every other form of light cost money. He hadn’t believed her, when she’d warned him that he would never come back. But he hadn’t wanted to believe either. Because if he failed to show up at work, they’d replace him, easily. And then he’d be here. With no money for rent. Or for food. And with a child who needed him to have both.

  On the seventh day of Maran, the ninth month of the year, Jewel woke, went to the Common with what remained of their money, and then headed home in silence.