The Hidden City

by Michelle West

  As it fell, drops catching light across the corners of her mouth, her face, Rath wondered, idly, if this would be the year he finally died. This softness was not in him, had not been in him; he would have sworn it before the judgment-born, those golden-eyed spawn of the god who could not be lied to. Some lies were buried so deep, they looked like truth, tasted like it, lived like it. Until the moment they turned on you, biting, as her bright eyes bit, in hidden places. He could not move until she closed them. But she did, at last, giving in to exhaustion and fever. Only then did he pry his wrists free of her slender fingers to leave her side.

  The sun rose; he closed the shutters. He had curtains, but they were leftovers from a time when the state of his living quarters had been some part of his pride; he had not used them since he had abandoned a house in the middle part of town, where poverty such as Jewel’s was myth or debacle. That had been five moves past.

  “You can’t live here,” he told her, because she couldn’t hear him.

  He left her when the sun was high, and went to the market. He did not take his tablets; he took only a handful of coin, and with it, bought food. He took some small pleasure in the bickering that passed for negotiation between a poor farmer and an apparently hungry man, but did not linger; he was afraid that she would wake.

  Not that she could leave easily; she couldn’t reach the top bolt on the door without aid, and in her current condition, pushing a chair to the door would probably exhaust her. But if she tried to climb the chair, she’d probably fall, and he’d find her in an injured heap across his precious clothing.

  He’d have to clean it up, he thought, as he sidled his way through the market throng, satchel heavy by his side. He glared two thieves into invisibility, insulted a merchant selling what could be passed off as jewelry only to people who’d never actually owned any, and paused to buy wine.

  Then he was gone, leaving the Common to wend his way back to the thirty-second holding, his keys warming in his hands as he clutched them. Why this girl? Why this one? He shuffled through the static images that he called memory, trying to see some subconscious similarity between those people and this child. He failed utterly. His life, in youth, had had little to do with the lower part of the hundred holdings, and the girl’s dark, curled tangle of hair, her dark eyes, the dusky skin that spoke of Southern heritage, had been well beyond his ken. Not even the servants in the house of his once proud family had been born to Southerners; his mother had detested the way they looked. She found them dirty, and thought they were all probably thieves.

  He had detested his mother, in like fashion. In ignorance, he thought, with a shade of bitterness. Life had taught him much about his early self, and not all of it was valuable. He went in through the front doors of the building and made his way up the stairs, enduring the suspicious glance of the most elderly of his neighbors in the process.

  “No, Mrs. Stephson,” he said, for perhaps the hundredth time since he’d moved in, “I haven’t seen your cat.” The cat, legend in the tenement, had been missing for well over a decade, and she was certain that it was in someone’s room. It was a gray cat who answered to the name Belle, she told him, in that hushed confidential voice that was just one side of insanity—and at that, the wrong side. He’d once been tempted to tell her that he’d eaten it, just to shut her up. Luckily, the temptation hadn’t been as strong then as it was now. Magisterial guards hated to be called out for no reason, and Rath had no doubt whatsoever that she’d march straight to the nearest station to demand that they deal with him. And while he could probably assure them, after they’d spent more than five seconds in her company, that he had not, in fact, eaten her cat, there were things in his rooms that would demand more complicated explanations.

  He left her as quickly as he could, curbing his tongue, and unlocked his door, stepping into the relative safety of home. He locked the door behind him. The old woman was foolish and addled, and given half a chance, she’d follow him, her litany of woes growing with each step.

  She was, in every possible way, unlike the child he had let in.

  Jewel was where he had left her, but she was no longer sleeping. Nor was she fever-witted; her brown eyes were large and clear, her expression, made gaunt by lack of food, lucid. She had bunched the sparse coverlet in her hands, and she sat against the headboard, staring out at his strange world as if it were the only world she could see.

  She did not start or otherwise move as he entered the bedroom, but she looked at him. “My last half question,” she said, surprising him.

  “What of it?”

  “If you can’t answer it, does it count?”

  He almost laughed. “You have a life as a merchant ahead of you,” he told her. “Or a lawyer.”

  She said, “Can you find work for me?”

  He almost said no. But he looked at her carefully. “How strong are you?”

  She held out one bony arm. “Not very,” she admitted. “I think I used to be stronger.” Her eyes did all the pleading she would allow herself.

  “You can’t live here,” he told her again.

  “I know. You’re moving at the end of the month.”

  His brows rose. Pale brows, but that was the curse of his birth, and he hadn’t bothered to dye them this week. “I am, am I?”

  She nodded listlessly. “You won’t give notice. You’ll leave money in an envelope. For the landlord. No note.”

  “I will?”

  When she failed to answer, he left her, going to the kitchen to empty the satchel of its contents. He’d bought too much meat, too much fruit, too many things. The bread was fresh; he inhaled the pleasant aroma, held it in his lungs. There was nothing of death or sickness in it, and it was a long moment before he exhaled. From the safety of the kitchen, he continued to speak. “How do you know that?”

  “I just know.”

  “It’s not what people normally do.”

  “No. If they leave without notice, they don’t usually pay. Why do you?”

  He thought about lying, because it was what he was accustomed to.

  “No lying in your home,” she said, as if she could hear the thought.

  “No lying from you,” he replied, almost pertly. He put the food in a basket. He hadn’t lied about the lack of plates or cutlery, and perhaps he should have; honesty was a habit, like any other addiction. “What I choose to say in the comfort of my own home is entirely my own affair. It’s a privilege I pay for.” He walked back into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed; it creaked under his weight. Although he wasn’t large by Imperial standards, he was not a small man; he could make himself look smaller than he was in subtle ways, and in Jewel’s presence, he usually did. He dispensed with that pretense for the moment; he wanted to appear vaguely threatening. There was safety in that. “Here. If you can, eat.”

  “Why?”

  “Is that your question?”

  She shrugged. Her hands shook. The food she had eaten the night before had blunted the edge of her hunger, but she was growing. To his eye, not enough. “How old are you, Jay?”

  “Ten.”

  He nodded.

  “What did you do before you decided to live under a bridge?”

  The question made her brow furrow. “What did I do?”

  “That’s what I asked.”

  “You mean—like work?”

  “If you worked, yes.”

  She curled in on herself. Her attempt to make herself smaller was entirely unconscious, and he let it pass, although the posture was enough of an answer. “I helped my mother,” she said at last. “I helped her at home. I went to the Common with her. I helped sew our clothing,” she added, “but not the important stuff.”

  “Important?”

  “My father’s clothes,” she said, her voice softer, low enough that he had to lean over to catch the words. “My father worked,” she added. “My mother sewed when she could find the work. My Oma took care of me before she got sick.”

  “And after?”
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  Jewel bunched more fabric beneath her birdlike fingers; the sun-faded blue seemed rich and dark against the color of her. “After, I helped my mother.” Wooden words. “She died less than a year later.”

  “And you were left with your father.”

  She nodded.

  “What did your father do?”

  “He worked. When he could. Sometimes he worked at the port. Sometimes he worked in the warehouses near the port.” Her lids were veined, fine, pale jade against the surprising white of skin. She didn’t close her eyes often in sunlight, he thought. “He died in an accident. At the port. His friend brought me the last of his pay.

  “While he was alive, I took care of him,” she added softly. “I went to the market. I kept our home clean. I tried to fix his clothing, when it needed mending.” She glanced toward the shuttered windows, as if seeking sight of escape. As if there were anywhere to escape to. “He taught me, in the evenings. Before he started, when my Oma was alive, we used to listen to her stories. When it was cold, we’d build a fire. When it was very cold,” she added. “I like your pipe.”

  She was such an odd child.

  “After she died, the stories died with her. My mother tried, but she’d never liked them much. My father didn’t know them. So he—he taught me to read. Instead. He told me that I could find stories that way. By reading.”

  “If you have the money,” Rath replied, without thinking. “Books are expensive.”

  She nodded bitterly. “I found that out.”

  “What else did he teach you?”

  “To write. To handle numbers, at least a bit.” She let go of the blanket and spread her hands flat, palm down. “To use a knife. To kick a man. To run.”

  “In your apartment?”

  “In our home.”

  “He didn’t expect you to run very far, then.”

  She didn’t answer his momentary smile with a smile of her own; she was guarded again. Against hope, he thought.

  “Yes, I’m leaving.”

  She nodded; she didn’t flinch, didn’t ask him why.

  “But I’m curious. How did you know?”

  Her eyes were flat as slate, dark and lifeless. “I know,” she said, shrugging. “I saw it.”

  Were he a different man, he would have assumed that she had gone through his things in his absence—but he knew what he owned, and knew as well that there was no sign among the piles of cloth, the bottles and unguents, the dyes and even the quills that he kept for his own letters, few though they were, that would give her the information she possessed.

  “You won’t take me with you,” she added.

  He was an accomplished liar. Truth, he used seldom, because it almost always caused pain. “No,” he said quietly. “I can’t. Eat.”

  She ate. “I can’t pay you for this,” she told him, around a mouthful of meat. She ate the meat first.

  “No.”

  “You don’t care.”

  “Not much.” He watched her. The light would persist for some time, even with the windows shuttered; the shutters were broken, and he hadn’t cared enough to have them replaced; there were bars across the panes.

  “You’re not eating.”

  “I’m not hungry,” he told her.

  “Yes, you are.”

  His genial smile was becoming a bit of a chore; he let it slide free of his face, discarding it. What was left, he couldn’t say. He watched her. She ate. There was a lot of silence, and in it, he saw that she was, at last, afraid.

  But it was fear that had an odd texture to it; she was not afraid for herself; not afraid of him. He was not accustomed to children, and the lack of familiarity had never galled him before; it did now, because he found that he could not read her expression clearly.

  And that he wanted to be able to.

  “You can stay for another night,” he said at last, giving up.

  “Can I leave?”

  “If you—” He cursed. “No.”

  And she surprised him by smiling. It was a glimmer, like light, that changed her face. “Was that stupid enough to be my last question?”

  He stood suddenly, and turned away from her. It was easier to speak when he didn’t have to watch her face change with each word, each sentence.

  “I won’t be leaving for another two weeks. And you won’t be well for another three days, if I’m any judge. Stay.”

  “Why?”

  “You had your question,” he said sharply. “And unfortunately, I’ve wasted most of the day in the Common, and not to my own ends. I have a matter of some urgency to which I must attend.”

  “I didn’t ask you to—”

  “No. If you had, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  His laugh was curt. “That makes two of us.” He walked over to the table, lifting his leather backpack. Thinking, as he slid it over his shoulders, that she would weigh less. That she did.

  “My Oma told me something,” she said, while his back was turned to her.

  “Only once?”

  She laughed, and then coughed; she must have been halfway through a mouthful of something. “You have no idea,” she said, when she could talk. “More than once. A hundred times. Maybe a thousand.”

  “What was it?”

  “That we don’t leave our debts unpaid. And if we can’t pay ’em, we don’t accept them either.”

  “That sounds like something an old woman would say.” He turned toward her, fixing his cuffs. He should change, and knew it, but also knew that it would make her skittish.

  “So . . . I can’t pay for this.”

  He was a very accomplished liar. “I’m almost an old man,” he began.

  She snorted. “Don’t tell me you’re lonely,” she snapped. “Or that you want company. Because you hate company.”

  “Do I?”

  She was mutinous in her silent response. Fire there. Spirit.

  He shrugged. “I hate complications,” he said, correcting her. “Company, I can take or leave. If it’s decent company. And Jewel?”

  “What?”

  “It’s not nice to accuse a man of lying.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Truth is not an excuse for bad behavior. I have to go. I’ll be back, but late. Don’t wait up.”

  She folded arms across her ribs, sinking back against the headboard, her face slowly graying. Fever, he thought.

  “Drink the water.” His voice was rougher than he had intended. “Drink all of it. Do not try to walk. Do not try to unlock the door.”

  “And if someone comes?”

  “Ignore it. Unless they break the door down, in which case, you have my permission to extemporize.”

  “To what?”

  “Improvise.” He frowned. “Ignore everything else I’ve just told you and make it up as you go along.”

  “Do I need your permission to do that?”

  “You need my permission to breathe while you’re in that bed. Or in my home. Is that understood?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Yes, Rath. I understand.”

  Then maybe, he thought, as he reached for the highest of the bolts, you can explain it to me.

  As if she could hear him, she spoke. “The man you’re going to see,” she whispered.

  He could hear her. But not well. With a resentment that was vastly more natural than charity he turned and walked back to the bed.

  She had shrunk. The bed dwarfed her. The threadbare counterpane seemed miles wide as it stretched to either side of her spindly legs. “He’ll have you followed,” she told him. “If you come here, he’ll know where you live.”

  His brow rose a fraction. “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know his name. He’s big. And bald.” She was wrong on two counts. He did not correct her. “He wears dark clothing. Two knives, but I don’t think they’re both obvious. I don’t know who he is. But he’ll have you followed.”

  “Interesting. Do you know why?”

  Sh
e shook her head, as if she was already caught out in a lie. “I think it’s the tablets,” she added, voice dropping into inaudibility.

  “Who?”

  “I told you, I don’t know—”

  “Who will follow me?”

  And her eyes widened a fraction, her voice losing some of its quiver. “I don’t know,” she told him. He cursed roundly, and reaching out without care or subtlety, he placed his palm flat against her forehead. She was burning. He had seen this before; fever came and went at its own pleasure. Sometimes, in the end, it came to stay. He could not be certain, with Jewel, that that wouldn’t be the case.

  Maybe the delirium of fever made her talk.

  But he was a man who had survived by trusting his instincts; fever or no, he had to ask more. “How do you know that he’ll have me followed?”

  “Because he orders someone to do it,” she answered, sliding away from him, although she did not try to avoid his touch.

  “And does he give any other orders?”

  “I don’t know.” After a moment, she repeated the words, but they were louder, and they bristled with pain and anger. “I don’t know.”

  “Enough. Enough, Jay. Promise that you’ll stay here.”

  “Unless someone breaks the door down.”

  “Unless someone else enters my home.”

  She swallowed. “My Oma used to say—”

  “That you shouldn’t make a promise you couldn’t keep.” When her eyes grew wide, he almost laughed, but it would have come out in anger. “She was right. Promise that you’ll wait.”

  She swallowed. Her lips were cracked. He wondered if she’d keep the food down. “I promise,” she said.

  And her voice was a little girl’s voice. A lost voice. It cut him, and he had exposed enough of himself—carelessly, ignorantly—that she could cut him, just by speaking.

  He left as quickly as he could and tried not to look back.

  The streets of the thirty-second holding were shutting down almost imperceptibly. The sun was still high enough that some children scattered their sticks and stones throughout the street, their voices raised in laughter, a mix of joy and mockery so common he might have been anywhere.