City of Night

by Michelle West

  It had been the only thing he could do for his parents: survive, when they hadn’t. Help the others survive. It was what they’d wanted; the last thing they’d probably even thought. It was also the only thing that his Free Town parents and the volatile, violent Duster had in common: They’d paid the price for his passage.

  The den made it to the river, and then, along the riverside to the magelights that girded the river side of the street on their thick poles. It was cold enough that no one was playing in the water; it wasn’t cold enough that people weren’t trying to wash things at its banks.

  They stopped just to one side of Taverson’s. “Arann,” Angel said quietly, “go in. Find Jay; ask her what she wants us to do.”

  Arann hesitated, and Angel added, “I’ll keep watch out here. One of us has to.”

  “Send Teller.”

  Angel shook his head. “Go. If we have to, the rest of us can scatter.”

  “And you can run faster without me.” No question there. Arann took a breath, wincing, his hands holding his side.

  Angel kicked the door open, and Arann moved just enough to catch it before it slammed back on its hinges. Angel watched him leave, and then turned his gaze to the streets, his hand on his dagger, just as Duster’s often was.

  No one spoke. Jester scanned the street as well; Finch and Teller huddled together, Teller’s arms clutching that damn box as if it were a baby. He’d taken it; he’d left the cat. Judging from the look on his face, he’d actually had the time to make that choice. Angel touched his shoulder briefly.

  “Where will we go?” Finch asked. It wasn’t directed at Angel; it wasn’t really directed at all.

  “Let’s see what Jay says. If she’s still here.”

  Finch nodded. After a pause, she said, “This is where Jay found me. Taverson’s. I was running. That way.” She lifted a slender arm, and pointed more or less into the middle of the busy street.

  “It saved your life,” Angel replied, for he’d heard the story before. “Let’s hope we get lucky twice.”

  The tavern door swung open, and Carver stood in its frame. He glanced at them all. “Duster?” he asked Angel. His gaze skirted the streets, and the people moving through them.

  Angel shook his head, realized that Carver wasn’t looking at him and couldn’t see the gesture, and spoke instead. “She’s not coming. Is Jay—”

  Carver swore. Two brief words. “Get in,” he told them. “Now.” He turned on his heel and vanished back into the tavern.

  Angel held the door just long enough for Finch, Teller, and Jester to slip inside, and he followed them, wondering who—or what—Carver had seen.

  Jay stood to one side of Arann, or they would have missed seeing her at all. Arann turned as they pressed around; he was white, and the single gash was livid; his eyes were also bruising. Carver glanced at Arann, but otherwise ignored him; his lips were thinned, and he spoke tersely.

  “Jay, we’ve got to run.”

  Jay forced herself to look away from Arann. “I know. Did any of you bring the box?”

  Teller stepped around Arann, and lifted his arms; the box was still nestled there, and it clinked as he shook it slightly. He was rewarded by the sharp exhalation of her relief; she had no joy to offer any of them.

  “Good. We’re going to need it. We’ve got to get a carriage.”

  Angel’s eyes widened—and they weren’t the only ones. Jay and her den didn’t do carriages; no one who lived in the twenty-fifth holding did. Carriages did pass through, although they weren’t as common as wagons, and Angel knew that some of the older people did call them and did climb into their cramped, odd cabins; none of those people had ever been den.

  No one, however, said this.

  Jay turned to Arann, her voice dropping. “Arann, can you run?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.”

  They turned to head out into the streets. They stopped before they’d gone five feet.

  Standing in the door, blocking all light—or perhaps absorbing it—stood a man that Angel recognized. Old Rath. His gaze scanned the crowd—and for midday in the holding, it was crowded—before settling on Jay. On the den.

  Jay did not, by any stretch of the imagination, look happy or relieved to see him.

  She cursed under her breath, which was all the breath she spared for useless words. Her hands went to the daggers she hardly ever used. She squared shoulders and took a step to the side, her gaze never leaving Rath’s face. Angel drew a dagger, motioning Finch and Teller to someplace behind Jay. Jester went as well, shadowing Finch, as he often did when there was trouble.

  “Carver,” Jay said grimly, “get going.”

  Her grim was not a match for Carver’s. “No.”

  “I said, get going. I’ll take care of this.”

  “No. Duster couldn’t do it. You can’t.”

  Unspoken truth, there: Duster had always been their best in a fight. Always. Carver? Second best, by a notable margin. Angel was almost Carver’s equal, although they had different styles of fighting.

  Carver, therefore, drew a dagger. The innkeeper, who wasn’t Taverson at this time of day, hadn’t noticed yet; he would soon. This much steel? But Jay came here often, and they knew her well enough not to actually pay much attention until there was a real fight.

  Carver stepped in front of her, aiming himself at Rath; he didn’t run to him, and didn’t otherwise move, but his intention was clear. Angel looked at Arann, at Jay, at the rest of the den. At Carver.

  Time, he thought, to stop running. He lined up behind Carver, and Jay grabbed his arm, pushing him to the side. He stumbled; Teller caught his sleeve, drew him back, almost dropping the box in the process.

  Jay opened her mouth. “Fire! FIRE IN THE KITCHEN!” Her voice was high and clear, the syllables knotted by the very obvious fear she felt. Using the fear, fanning a different fear in the men and women who might have been onlookers, and who, by her words, became instant participants.

  Angel winced. They were so screwed if the innkeeper caught them.

  But if that occurred to Jay at all, it didn’t slow her down; she reached out, kicked the side of Carver’s knees hard enough to make him stumble, and dragged him around, holding him as people began to look for smoke. The more timorous of the inn’s occupants didn’t bother with looking; they leaped from their seats, and began to stream toward the entrance.

  Toward Old Rath. They were a moving wall, and they weren’t a particularly peaceful one either; everyone knew what a fire could do in this part of town, and they knew how damn fast it could do it.

  Carver righted himself, and looked at Jay; his ferocious focus broke into a very slight grin. He nodded. “Back alley?”

  She shook her head. “They’re not stupid. Come on.”

  She led them—quickly—through the kitchen and up the back stairs that Taverson’s maids and wife used. Above the tavern were a few rooms that could, and did, double as guest rooms if people were willing to pay for them; she hadn’t gone that route. Instead, she’d pushed herself through the doors and up the much less accommodating stairs toward the small rooms in which Taverson, his wife, and their children sometimes lived.

  “Roof?” Carver asked.

  Angel had never been up this way, and judging from other expressions, neither had most of the den.

  Jay nodded. “We can climb down from there, if we have to.” She didn’t point out that the alley was a bad place to be caught, if a pursuer was too damn close. They all knew it.

  Carver glanced at Arann, and lifted his hand in brief den-sign.

  Jay didn’t reply. She didn’t need to.

  But Angel signed to Carver, and Carver nodded; they looked at Arann, and said nothing.

  They came up a very narrow set of stairs, through a door that barely looked like it was built for one—but it opened, as Jay and Carver had said, onto the roof. The roof itself was mostly flat; it sloped very gently to the streetside and the back road. Water pooled unevenly along the
edges to either side, an artifact of the time of year. Eaves lined the roof, and creepers twined around them, climbing from unseen cracks in the stones across the face of brick and wood.

  Carver flattened himself against the roof, and inched his way across it until he could see over the edge, alley-side. He lifted his hands; signed, Pursuit and pulled back much faster. It’s Rath, he mouthed.

  Angel crouched; he didn’t drop, didn’t flatten himself out. Couldn’t fight on his stomach, and didn’t relish the thought that he’d be caught out that way. But he listened. Someone was climbing the wall.

  Rath?

  Angel glanced at Jay; she was utterly still, and her face was winter white. She didn’t say a word; she barely seemed to breathe.

  Carver leaned out over the alley-side edge of the roof, drew a dagger. Angel started to shout, stopped; it was too late. The dagger flew from Carver’s hand.

  “Cartanis’ blood.” Carver pulled back again; his hand, empty now, was shaking. He was about the same color as Jay—and it suited neither of them.

  “It’s him,” Jay whispered. “It’s Rath.”

  “The knife. It—it bounced.”

  Her breath was so sharp it cut. “Everybody, north side. Now.”

  If the roof had been a ship, Angel though, it would have teetered with the sudden redistribution of weight. Jester looked at the eaves, the trellises, the lips of the windows that the creepers crossed. He glanced at Jay; she nodded. Jester wasn’t the one who was afraid of heights. The tavern was only two stories tall, and they could drop from one full story without breaking anything. He went over the edge.

  Finch hesitated as she watched him climb; Jay said nothing, but it was a loud, desperate nothing. Angel stepped in front of Finch, sheathing his dagger for the climb; he motioned Teller over to Finch’s side as well. “Step where I step,” he told her. “Unless I fall.” He grinned.

  Her grin was a faded, nervous echo; Teller’s was sharper; he clung to the iron box until Carver reached over and plucked it from his hands. But he led, and they followed; they moved as quickly as they could. He looked up halfway down, to see Arann struggling with the same climb. Arann’s body was shaking with effort or pain. Probably both. Angel flinched as Arann missed a hold twice, but he managed—barely—to keep himself from falling. He had Carver just above him, and Carver could climb these walls in his sleep; he could climb them one-handed, and he more or less did, juggling the iron box between the two.

  So could Angel; it was possibly the only thing that Angel had over Carver in terms of raw skill. But Angel was with Finch and Teller. Carver spoke to Arann; the sense of syllables drifted down, but the talk and the sound of street noises drifted up, canceling them.

  Jay was still at the top of the roof, looking down, when Carver was halfway home. He looked up at her, lifted his hands—both of his damn hands, the bloody show-off—and signed.

  She signed back, but her hands were shaking enough that Angel couldn’t read them. Come on, Jay, he thought, as he jumped the last eight feet to the ground. You can make it. Come on. Teller and Finch were already down when she started to climb, and they were pressed against the wall, looking up—at Arann. Their arms were raised, hands open, and Angel joined them; he didn’t tell Arann to jump or let go, because in Arann’s case the landing would hurt him.

  Jay headed down while they huddled near Arann. Her arms were stiff as boards, legs trembling as she moved them to place her feet. She missed more often than Arann, but like Arann, she didn’t fall.

  And just before she let go and leaped down the last few feet, she shouted in frenzied relief, and pointed.

  A carriage—significantly, an empty carriage—was pulled into view by two horses that looked like they’d seen better years. Jester ran to flag it down, while Jay shouted.

  It was a good thing Jay, Finch, and Teller were so damn small, because the cabin of a carriage wasn’t meant to have this many people cramming themselves into its small doors. The driver opened his mouth to say as much, but the den moved fast.

  Jay plucked the box from whoever now held it—in the press of bodies, it was kind of hard to tell—and she flipped the lid wide, scattering the coins beneath the driver. “It’s yours. It’s yours,” she added, glancing out the window, “if you move now.”

  The gods knew there wasn’t much in the box; they also knew it was enough for one damn carriage ride to anywhere. Apparently so did the driver. He nodded, looking none too pleased.

  “But pick ’em up.”

  Jay did that, and the den—well, Finch and Teller, because they could reach more easily—helped.

  “Where are you going?”

  She swallowed, and ran her hand along the folds of her sleeves. They sounded like paper to Angel. “To the estates of Terafin.” She looked at Arann, then.

  Angel and Carver looked out the windows; the carriage hadn’t started to roll yet.

  But they saw two things. The first: that their pursuer had gained the height of the roof, and stood there looking out. Looking down.

  The second: he jumped. He didn’t bother with the climb; it would have only slowed him down.

  But everyone heard the landing; it sounded like it had just cracked the stones that were road in these parts.

  The driver, apparently, heard this kind of noise all the time; he shook the reins and the horses began to move. It wasn’t a smooth damn ride, and it wasn’t a fast one. Rath—or whoever it was—unfolded, stood, and began to run after the carriage.

  He ran damn fast.

  “Jay, we’ve got a problem,” Angel told her.

  “On it,” she muttered. She slammed her fist into the roof of the cabin, and, holding onto the edge of the window, leaned out and shouted. “You’ve got to go faster. What kind of lousy horses are these? Look—a man on foot can keep up!”

  “Don’t get cheeky with me.”

  Jay pointed in the direction of the road, and in the direction of the man who, on foot, and only barely bothering to avoid pedestrians, was gaining. Easily.

  The carriage picked up speed, then. Whatever cheek Jay had offered the driver had stung his pride as well. Rath fell behind.

  And behind, and behind.

  They weren’t really thinking of where they were going; they were thinking, instead, of the fact that they’d escaped. The entire cabin erupted in shouts and high, clear laughter. It was the wrong kind of laughter to Angel, but it didn’t matter. They weren’t dead.

  They weren’t all dead.

  But one of them didn’t join in the noise, and didn’t seem to notice the cause for celebration.

  “Arann, are you all right?” Jay’s voice was louder than it would have been anywhere else; the wheels made a lot of noise, and if they hadn’t, the horses and their driver would have.

  “I’m fine.” He looked at her. Looked at all of them. His eyes were almost like window glass. You could see through them. You couldn’t see much of Arann.

  Jay flinched. She touched his face. Reached out, and wiped away the trickle of blood that was falling from the corners of his lips. The carriage ride was not gentle.

  “Tell me if it gets to be too much.”

  “I will.”

  Angel had never been across this bridge. None of the den had.

  They quieted as they approached it, as if silence was a better bet. Which was stupid; you couldn’t hide this many people in a carriage. Or at all, really. The driver slowed as the bridge guards signaled.

  Angel and Carver bracketed the windows, and they listened to the brief and cursory exchange of words, followed by an equally brief and cursory exchange of money. The tolls.

  But if there were laws that prohibited the poor from seeking access to the streets of the Isle, the guards seemed to be ignoring them today. They asked the driver where the carriage was bound, and they nodded when he answered.

  Jay was as tense as the rest of them, but most of her attention was now turned inward, and it extended as far as Arann. Her hand stroked his brow and brushed stick
y strands from his forehead; they touched the darkening bruises around his left eye; they lingered, briefly, beneath his jaw, where the pulse—when it existed—could be found. All this, in silence, as if silence would stop the rest of the den from worrying.

  Angel glanced at them from time to time. He felt almost guilty, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the passing streets. Here, on the Isle, the very richest of the nobles lived. On the Isle, the Guild of Makers worked, and the mages toiled in the Order of Knowledge. On the Isle, the Exalted lived, speaking to their parents: Cormaris, Reymaris, and the Mother.

  And on the Isle, the Twin Kings ruled from Avantari.

  Golden-eyed, all, beloved of the gods. Angel wondered what it was like.

  There was no answer, but as they drove, the spires of the three cathedrals came into view against the cool of azure. Flags rippled from the tower heights, and gold caught sunlight, brightening it.

  There were fine carriages and armored guards in the streets, but very few pedestrians—at least compared to the Common and the streets of the holdings with which Angel was familiar. There were buildings behind fences, here. They were not as large as some of the estates the carriage had passed on the mainland, and Angel didn’t know enough about city versions of gardens to judge whether or not the smaller grounds were somehow finer.

  But he knew that, among all the nobles, The Ten lived here. Their lands were their own, and not leased from the Kings or the Crown Estates; they were guaranteed a home upon the Isle. Rath said the rest of the patriciate was not so lucky; for the rest, it was only money or political power that mattered.

  Jay explained only a little of what had happened with Rath. Where a little was a curt, “He’s dead” and not a lot else. But that was enough, for Angel. Teller wanted to ask questions; he could see that clearly. But Teller was good at silence, good at waiting. Both were needed here.

  Duster. Angel glanced toward the mainland, although it couldn’t be seen; here the buildings were tall, and they weren’t sparse. He must have said her name out loud; he hadn’t intended it.