City of Night

by Michelle West

  Rath, avoiding Matteos’ gaze, took a pipe for himself, and when it was alight, he looked at Meralonne APhaniel. “Will you join the dance at all?”

  “I am not much of a dancer,” the mage replied dryly, “and as Member Mellifas is too kind to say, I can only afford to embarrass her order on a single front. As I have not yet done that this eve, I fear to waste the opportunity on the merely trivial.”

  “Meralonne.”

  “Sigurne herself does not often dance, although she occasionally likes to watch. Why,” the Magi added, blowing a perfect ring from pursed lips, “I honestly do not know.”

  “Matteos?”

  “I was not raised in Averalaan,” Matteos replied. “And were I, it would not have been among the wealthy.”

  Rath nodded, and smoked for a while.

  The music shifted in both tone and volume. “And will you brave the wine cellars again?”

  “I may. The chance that I will see them again before the storm is upon us is slim. Lord Cordufar is much occupied, and I believe his mistress is now by his side. They will, in the custom of Averalaan, open the dance.”

  “I believe that Lord Cordufar will open the dance with his niece.”

  The correction was clearly too trivial for Meralonne APhaniel, who merely shrugged and rose. “I will, perhaps, see you later,” he told them.

  Sigurne watched him go. “He is right,” she said quietly.

  “He’s just bored,” Matteos told her. He had not touched pipe, and he had a nearly full glass of wine in front of him. “I told you not to bring him.”

  “I could hardly refuse his request. Not when he went through so much effort to make it politely.” She rose as well. “Ararath?”

  Ararath left his chair, taking only a moment to douse his pipe. “It would be my honor.”

  In Meralonne’s absence, Rath and Sigurne drifted toward the dance. He had no intention of joining it, but found it oddly compelling. Jewel was not yet at an age where such a gathering could have been held in her honor, and even were she, she hadn’t the station. But he smiled, briefly, as he thought of what Haval might do to prepare her for a night such as this.

  And thinking it, his thoughts drifted, treacherously, to the night of Amarais’ presentation. He could see her in the long, cream silks that she favored at that age, her hair beaded and flowered so heavily it was a wonder it hadn’t overbalanced her. Just a fragment, a momentary image.

  But with it, the other memories.

  He had sat to one side of her bedchamber door, peering into a room that was a bustle of frenetic activity; he had watched her maids as they worked, brushing her hair, laying out her dress, her jewelry, her hair piece, and her combs. They had fussed over her fingers, her hands, her nails, they had polished her shoes, they had laid out so many small containers of powders and colors, each with several brushes of different length, width, and thickness, that they might have been artists.

  She was their canvas, but she was, as she had always been, a fractious, difficult one. She did not stand long where they told her to stand, and sitting was worse. Nor did they take this in stride; they cajoled, commanded, pleaded, and nearly wept. His mother had been intelligent enough to avoid the unruly scene.

  But Rath had watched, and admittedly, he had snickered. Amarais was composed, but not so perfectly that she hadn’t taken the time to throw something at his head; it was a small purse of the kind that one would never wear to a social gathering. He’d kept it for three weeks, because she’d always had a good aim, and it had hit him square in the forehead.

  He was not, of course, to be present for her presentation; he was too young. This had not stopped him from pleading for the privilege, and to his surprise, it had not stopped Amarais; they had had weeks between them to attempt to change his grandfather’s mind.

  His grandfather, however, had been resolute in his determination; he did not want his granddaughter distracted by her younger brother, and Ararath was not, in his grandfather’s opinion, well enough behaved to be the adult that Handernesse expected.

  But he was allowed to watch. So he had, taking up his position between the banister rails after he had changed. This was to be the first time he would watch alone. On every other occasion that he could remember—and at that age, he remembered much of the childhood his life had slowly eroded—he sat at his sister’s side, often attempting to push her head out of the way, no matter where she placed it. He remembered, absurdly, that he’d believed that wherever she was was always the best place to be.

  Not on this night. Wherever she was about to be was not the best place. He watched her silent progress down the stairs, her hand touching, but not clinging to, the rails. He watched the stiff angle of her chin, the rigid line of her neck, the perfect fall of her dress, and the powdered even quality of her complexion.

  He watched her, and as he watched, she turned—carefully, as if motion would dislodge some vital component—to look at him. And he realized, then, that she was nervous. Amarais. Nervous.

  At any other time, he would have laughed at her. He recalled wanting to laugh. But she was so silent, he couldn’t. Because he knew, truly knew, that she would not throw anything at him; that she would not come thundering up the stairs to whack the side of his head; that she would not threaten to make him suffer later. There was no later. This was where she had to be, this silence, this poise. And those stairs?

  Those were the path to them. It was like walking into a cage. But it was a cage, conversely, that she wanted. Every other person of power and significance in the Empire lived behind those bars.

  He met her gaze, and then, hesitant, he smiled at her, nodding. Urging her to look away, to walk away, to become one with the intractable and frustratingly elusive adults at the bottom of those stairs. His parents were waiting. His father, his hands behind his back, his mother, her expression both strained and joyful. His grandfather, behind them all, serene and placid.

  She smiled. Just that. Smiled, and turned, and concentrated on descent.

  And he remembered it now, the last lonely vigil by the banister rails, his shadows part of the dim lights of the house in which the beautiful and the powerful were not welcome. He sat, he listened for her name. He listened for strains of music, and waited while Hectore of Araven—who should have known better, and probably did—slipped away from the crowd to bring him food and gossip, as he had done at every such ball in Rath’s memory.

  But the food and the gossip were wasted on Rath. Amarais had loved the talk; Amarais had peppered Hectore with questions; Amarais had held him at the curve of the rail until his wife had come, resigned but slightly impatient, to drag him away.

  “You haven’t lost her,” Hectore told the much quieter Rath.

  But Rath looked at the empty place by his side, and said nothing.

  He looked, now, at the men and women in their expensive dress, their makeup slightly caked in the heat that any crowd produces. He heard the music, as he had heard it that last night, for he had never again gone to the rails to watch in fascination and boredom.

  Amarais had never been nervous again. Not that way. Perhaps on other days, perhaps on the day she made the announcement of her adoption into House Terafin. But if she was, she didn’t show it, didn’t share it. She had become, in all things, the woman her grandfather had always claimed she would become. And she had broken his heart, for Terafin.

  Perhaps, had he lived, he would have had that heart returned to him when his granddaughter ascended the Terafin seat, taking it in the midst of a brutal war, against all other claimants. But he had not lived.

  Rath had.

  “Ararath?” Sigurne touched his sleeve, and he turned, smoothing the lines of his face into a gentle smile. “I am worried about you,” she told him gently, as if she were a grandmother or godmother.

  He shook his head. “It has been a long, long time since I have attended a social function of this nature. I was merely reminiscing.”

  “And in the way of men, choosing only th
ose recollections that are mournful or pensive in nature?”

  He raised a brow, but his smile deepened. “Indeed, Sigurne. In the way of a man such as myself.” He straightened, and bowed. “Will you join me?”

  Matteos’ brows disappeared into his hairline, and Rath laughed.

  “I do not dance,” Sigurne replied, with just a hint of an answering smile, which changed the lines of her face.

  “But I do.”

  And there she was, unheralded and unheeded until this moment. So, Rath thought, you are capable of subtlety when it suits you.

  “I am a guest of a guest,” Rath replied, bowing slightly before her. “And I imagine that there are many, many men of import who would be grateful if you favored them with your time.”

  Her eyes glittered. She did not smile, and she did not command; she merely waited.

  Waiting, she attracted attention, and it was the type of attention that draws moths to open fire and their own brief immolation. He could see it, in the men who circled her. Another woman might have found their presence and their barely concealed desire distasteful or even threatening. She was, Rath thought, the very fire: she neither noticed nor cared. They spoke and she replied, but her gaze never strayed far from Rath’s face.

  He noted, however, that every word she spoke was a refusal.

  “If you are inclined to waste your time on one such as I, I would be honored.” His voice. He was surprised by it.

  He was not the only one. Sigurne’s fingers tightened, briefly, on his sleeve. She withdrew the hand, but Sor Na Shannen had noticed; she noticed, Rath thought, everything. And responded to very little.

  Rath offered Sor Na Shannen his arm, and her hands closed on it tightly. They were of a height, but had anyone asked, he would have proclaimed her the taller. She was bold, could be nothing but bold, and bold women often seemed, to his admittedly jaundiced eye, both delightful and graceless.

  She was neither. She did not seem young, to the eye; there was about her a solid power, an utterly unself-conscious presence, that denied youth its vitality. But she walked with the music as if she were of it.

  “I am not, I’m afraid, more than an indifferent dancer.” It was a confession.

  “No,” she replied, as if it were insignificant. She met his eyes, then, and her gaze said, I know that you know.

  He was not certain what his said in reply. Of the many things he had considered when he had approached Andrei with his request to be included in the Araven party, this was not one. He had assumed that he, like Meralonne, might be searching the grounds, with an eye to things belowground; that he, like Andrei, might be taking note of the servants—or guards—of the Cordufar manse with an eye to later investigation.

  “I am not,” she said, as the strains of music died and dancers left the floor, making room for those who would engage each other in the next set, “originally from the Empire. This,” she added, lifting an arm to encompass the whole of the floor—and perhaps, as well, the mansion and everyone in it, “is difficult in its fashion. I have learned some of your dances.”

  “You speak like a native.”

  “Yes.” She shrugged, as if speech itself were beneath notice. “All of my people do.” She held out her arms, and he placed one hand beneath hers, and one around her waist. Silk ceased to matter; he was touching her skin, and it was, for a brief moment, the only sensation he felt, and the only sensation that mattered.

  This, too, she knew. There was power in it, and she was aware, in all things, of power. Of the necessity of it, the desire for it, the wielding of it. What form it took was inconsequential. Power implied weakness.

  He had not lied; he was an indifferent dancer. Had he been more, he would still have failed to be other than indifferent. He would age, had aged, and she? Never. He saw that clearly: she would die, yes, if she was weak enough to be killed, but no other infirmity would touch her.

  He wanted to.

  But he had wanted many things in his life, and he smiled instead, accepting the weakness, allowing it play.

  She raised a manicured brow. “You do not fear me?”

  “I fear you,” he replied, allowing that as well. “But in the manner that I fear storms at sea or earthquakes. Lady,” he added, voice low, “you are what you are. You do not, and cannot change. I do, I can, I have.”

  This did not amuse her, but neither did it disgust her.

  He danced with death, understood it, and found that he could not fear it; fear, if it came, would come later, with pain: moth and flame.

  “Fear rules the world,” she said, when he thought she would speak no more.

  “Ah. And did it always rule yours?”

  She stiffened; he felt the muscles shift slightly beneath his hands, heard the sharp intake of breath, saw the narrowing of eyes that eclipsed almost everything else. But she said, in a cool voice, “You are bold.”

  “It is a failing,” he admitted. “But it is not always a failing; I have become adept at hiding over the years.”

  Her smile was astonishing and unpleasant; it was a potent combination. “And you do not seek to hide, now.”

  “I see little point in it.”

  “I see little point in your lives, they are over so quickly, but you guard them as you can.” Her lips brushed his ear, and he almost stumbled; it amused her. “Do you desire me?” she whispered.

  He laughed. “Does it matter?” he asked, moving to the music, leading in only the technical sense of the word. “Does it matter, in the end? You can kill me, I’ve no doubt, with your bare hands; what I desire, what I repulse, are inconsequential.”

  Her brow lifted again, and the expression that rippled across her perfect, hard features was almost—almost—confusion.

  “You will not kill me now; for your own reasons, you and your confederates play a game—I think it a long game—and my death in the middle of this dance floor would necessitate a great many other deaths at a time and place not of your choosing.”

  “And this makes you feel safe?”

  “No. You are only barely controlled, even knowing this. It is precisely because it is not safe that it is interesting at all.”

  She chuckled because this she understood well. But there was, again, a flicker that crossed her face, changing her countenance. “That is not all.”

  “It never is.”

  She lifted a hand from its place on his shoulder, and she ran one fingernail lightly across his cheek. He felt the sting of it; knew that it bled. He laughed again, and this drew attention from other dancers. But he had their attention, wanted or not, because of his partner.

  He spun her, in time with the music.

  “Do you think you love me?” she whispered.

  So much, this eve, to make him laugh; so much that was unexpected. The laugh was bitter, but genuine; she’d surprised and amused him. Nor was she delighted to have done either.

  “What, to your kin, is love, that you can even ask?”

  “It is not what love is to me, but what it is to you: A lie, a thing you tell yourself to hide your ugly truths.”

  “Very well. I have ugly truths, and no great desire to hide them, Lady. I find you fascinating; I would never claim to love you. But I admit I am now deeply curious. What is love, to you?”

  She stiffened, at that, losing music, separating herself from both the rhythm of the song and the dance that it enveloped. She drew herself up, and in, acquiring height and radiating presence as if either were the plumes of a threatened peacock. For just a moment, Rath thought he would die, here.

  If he did, however, with all of Averalaan society watching him, that would serve his purpose. That would be a death that he could, in some irony, live with.

  But if he had spent much of life learning how to taunt or enrage his enemies, he had done so deliberately. And he was, at the moment, possessed of the almost physical memories of life in this society and on this floor. He offered her a half bow, as she stood in her towering, compelling rage. “Lady,” he said, as he ro
se. “I mispoke. I did not mean to offend; I did not mean to accuse you of either weakness or the vulnerability of weakness.”

  “What do you—what can you—know of love?”

  Sigurne had said, in a distant tower, on a night entirely bereft of music, light, and society, that demons could see a man’s soul. And if this one could, what matter hiding? What pretense could he offer, what words could adorn and ultimately distract her from the shoddy state of the effects of this life?

  He thought of Amarais. He thought of Jewel. He thought of the ways in which he had failed both. He accepted that love, his version of it, had always been flawed and narrow; it had always been selfish.

  “Nothing,” he whispered, offering her that much.

  Even this was not mollifying; it was not enough. She reached out with both of her hands, cupped his face in either palm, held his gaze, although she would have held it, regardless. Music quelled around them; movement ceased. It would start again, soon, or it would never start.

  Rath did not much care.

  “I will kill you for this,” she whispered. He felt her nails against his skin, stroking it lightly, biting it on the edge of sensation that was not—quite—pain. “Will you not struggle? Will you not plead?”

  “No.” Silence, and then, softly, he said, “I have already said that I do not love you. What struggle and what plea could I therefore be moved to make?”

  She withdrew her hands slowly as the music started. Some of the fire left her eyes, then. “You will understand, in time, the answer to your question. Even you will understand, who clings to a love that you do not even believe is of value.”

  He bowed to her, then, and he offered her his arm.

  She stared at it, stared at him, and then glanced around the floor upon which men and women had begun their slow overtures. Wordless, she spun, and wordless, she parted the crowd in her wrath. The envy and the petty jealousy, the attraction and the heated desire, that she had spent the evening evoking at every opportunity, she left behind, as if seeing—as if reminded, by his careless words—how unworthy these merely mortal vessels were of such a benediction.