But as they walked back from the market, as they passed beneath the flags of the Common, and crossed the long shadow cast by the Merchant Authority itself, Rath watched the girl who dogged his steps. He had invited her into his life. He had made that decision.
He regretted it briefly. What he could say of Jewel—that she did nothing by halves—had been said of Rath himself, many, many times.
Looking up, she saw his expression, and her step faltered. “What have I done this time?” she asked. The words were more defiant than the tone they were couched in. She was slender shadow, cast by sun, against the perfect stones.
“Jewel—”
“Jay.”
“Jay,” he corrected himself. “Why did you do that?”
Her turn to look confused, but she wore confusion openly, as if it were a promise. “Do what?”
“Why did you give that farmer your money?”
“It was mine to give,” she said.
“I’m not accusing you of a crime,” he replied, aware that he was half lying. Aware that she knew it. She was too perceptive by half, this girl, this sometime stranger.
They were silent for another three blocks, weaving in and out of foot traffic and the occasional empty wagon with the occasional tired horse to give it right of way.
“The money’s yours,” Rath finally said. “And you don’t have a lot of it.”
“Some people have less.”
He was tense now. “A lot of people have less. What of it?”
“What’s the point?” she asked him, stopping, her hands finding their perch on what existed of her hips.
“The point?”
“Of having the money.”
“Not starving,” he replied. “Not freezing, if the Winter’s bad. Not running around half naked because you can’t afford clothing that fits you.”
“And I’m not. Doing any of those things.”
“You were,” he said darkly. “And you may well be, again.”
“But I’m not now.”
“Now is nothing,” he snapped.
“Now,” she countered, “is all we have. All we can be certain we have.”
“Jay—”
“It’s my money. And if I can’t help people in any other way, I can at least do this.”
Faded echoes of other arguments. He looked at her, down at her, seeing in her youth the fire that had once burned him. Had once hurt the whole of his family, in ways that an impoverished girl from the holdings could never understand.
“And what of the people who care about you?” he asked bitterly. “What of the people who need you?” And then he stopped.
Because she was staring at him, her eyes slightly rounded, as if she could see through him. She said, “I don’t understand.”
And Rath, cursing himself, started to walk faster. It often worked; she had to work to keep up, and much of her words were lost to the effort of breathing. But not, alas, today.
“Rath—what did you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“The people who cared about me—the people I loved—they’re all dead.” She hesitated. Reached out for his sleeve, the elbow pressed tightly against his upper body. His hands were fists; she wouldn’t touch those. Not now. “Except for you.”
“And I care about you?” he said, turning on her, his words so sharp she stopped following.
He had to listen to catch her reply.
“Yes!”
Not worth the effort. He crossed the invisible boundary between the thirty-second and the thirty-fifth holdings before he relented, not trusting the streets. Or their occupants. “Yes,” he said, although it sounded like No. “I should have known,” he added softly.
“Should have known?”
“You remind me of someone. I didn’t see it, because you look nothing at all like her. If I had, I would have left you by the river.”
“But—but why?”
It was a fair question. Rath was not of a mind to be fair. “Because you are like her, Jewel.”
“Did you love her?”
He laughed. “We all did.”
She hesitated, and he almost appreciated the tact. Coming from Jewel, it was rare.
“Did she die?”
His laugh was bitter, ugly, something that he had thought himself long past uttering. “No.”
He let her attach herself to his shirt. “I don’t like her.”
“Don’t you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because she hurt you,” Jewel replied, with the ignorance and ferocity of a child’s loyalty.
There was no point denying it, although he longed to. He did nothing instead; it seemed safer. But safety was a different country now. Safety was, for Rath, a thing that existed solely in isolation. He had forgotten that.
Had chosen to forget it.
Jewel was here now, and for the moment, she was his.
But the act of determined generosity was the beginning of a long tale, and one he knew well.
“Who was she?” Jewel asked quietly.
“Her name? Her name was Amarais,” he replied. “She was the best thing that our House had ever produced; the child upon whom our grandfather showered all pride, all affection, and all hope. We loved her,” he added, because he thought it necessary. “And in her, my grandfather saw the rise of his House, and our fortunes; he saw the hope of political ascendance that had long since been eroded by lesser men.” His gaze skirted the streets; the coming shadows contained buildings that he had not seen in many, many years.
“What happened?”
“She left us,” he replied. Remembering, now, the long months that led up to that departure, and the long months that followed. Remembering the woman who was not this child.
“Why?”
“Why?” Bitter word. “Because she thought her duty lay elsewhere. Because she thought she could do great things, better things, for those in need.”
“Oh.” There was a very Jewel-like pause. “Did she?”
“It depends,” he replied, “on whose needs.” And then he lengthened his stride again, taking care not to dislodge the girl who shadowed his life. His expression made clear that he would answer no more questions; that he had already answered too many.
Chapter Five
RATH RARELY TOLD Jewel where he was going. He would disappear, usually when sundown began, and he would lock the door when he left. For the first ten days, he gave strict instructions about those locks, and they were pretty simple: Don’t bloody well open them.
When she started to look mutinous—not at the instructions, which were sensible enough, but at the tone in which they were delivered—he stopped telling her. But he didn’t say where he was going, and aside from that one journey into the undercity, he didn’t ask her to accompany him. If that’s where he was going at all.
Her first vision, fevered, had shown her nothing of the underground; it had given her the sound of a dark voice, and a glimpse of Rath being hunted, no more. She didn’t know for certain what he did when he was gone.
Jewel accepted this. Partly because she didn’t want to know, and partly because, for the first month, she was desperately trying to be good. And useful. Either of these would have kept her quiet at home. But home wouldn’t have been this empty place, these blank walls. Only pipe smoke lingered in Rath’s absence; although there was dust in plenty to be found among Rath’s personal things—and Jay knew, as she cleaned them all, much to his dismay— they hadn’t been in the dank basement rooms for long enough to let much gather otherwise.
She had three buckets, one for cleaning and two for water; she had a wide slat, with ropes, across which she balanced those buckets when Rath at last decided she knew her way around the holding and let her go, unsupervised, to the well. She had a broom, several rags—most of these old clothing that Rath had discarded when they had become too damaged to be useful in other ways. The holes and rips were always of interest to Jewel, but their stories lay fallow; he gave her that don’t ask look,
and she was compliant. She didn’t.
But she didn’t have her Oma. Her father. Her mother was dim enough in memory that absence didn’t linger in daily tasks; the reminder came in the dark, when she lay aground in the sleeping clothes that Rath had given her. Then, it was harder.
But during the day—when he was awake—Rath began to teach Jewel things that he thought she should know.
There had been scant argument offered, and all of it from Jewel.
“You won’t always live here,” he told her quietly. It wasn’t meant as a threat. It was hard not to take it that way. “You’ll move. You’ll have to.” He paused, his smile grim. “One day, I might not come home. Have you thought about what you’ll do then?”
Every night.
Every night when he didn’t come home. When the locks were quiet, the hall silent, the night too ominous in its stillness.
She could go back to the river.
But it would be better if she could go back later. And because she knew it, because she had always tried to be practical, she began to learn what he offered so brusquely to teach her.
How to pick a lock.
How to pocket small items without being noticed.
How to read—more, and write—more. These last, he was particularly aggressive about.
“I know how to read,” she told him.
Kindness was no part of Rath’s vocabulary. He’d handed her a book. She’d taken a look at the stylized letters, the odd brush strokes, the way they glittered in the right and wrong light, and she’d haltingly tried to tell him what she saw.
Hated the smug silence that followed, but swallowed it anyway, and began to work harder.
Numbers, in the third week, followed letters and locks. She had only a very basic understanding of numbers, and he was distinctly unkind about her abilities.
But he left her with her studies, left lamp oil, lamp and candle. He knew, without asking, that she would lay awake until the door opened.
When it didn’t, she would watch the sun rise through the window wells. The light was slow to reach the floor, dribbling across flat, worn slats with a kind of wary brightness that never alleviated all of the shadows of her daily life.
On one such day, she rose. There was some bread that was hardening nicely—if you wanted a rock that was easy to lift—in the kitchen, but not much else. The water was cool, but safe to drink, and she did that, waiting, her hands dripping over the bucket.
She swept the floors. She played with the inkwell. She fingered the covers of Rath’s many books. Without Rath standing over her shoulder, they didn’t hold much of interest; they weren’t stories, after all. Just faceless words with the occasional brilliant picture and letters that were almost pictures in and of themselves.
The waiting was hard.
No, the waiting was impossible. And because she’d done with it, and her body was stiff with uncertainty, she dressed, pulled boots—Rath’s gift—over her feet, and found her father’s money box. That there was money in it was also Rath’s gift.
“We won’t always have money,” he told her softly. “But if we have none for the next six months, we’ll still see the Winter in and out without worrying for the cold.”
She took a handful of silver coins out of the box, and counted them carefully. She had always liked to play with coins; to line them up, to stand them on edge, to make them spin, while their sides caught light. She had also often liked to bite them or put them in her mouth, and this was a habit that was strictly frowned on by her Oma. You don’t know where that coin’s been, the old woman would say, rapping Jewel’s forehead sharply with the flat of a bony palm.
In my mouth.
You don’t know where else it’s been.
She was no longer that child, and she didn’t put coins in her mouth. Instead, she put most of them back. But not all. She needed some of them for the market.
She disobeyed Rath for the first time. Not the last; that would come much later. Climbing up on a chair to reach the highest of the bolts, she opened it, and then opened all but the last.
Hesitating for a moment, she returned to his newly swept room, his precious paper, his ink. She picked up the quill that was hers—identifiably so, because the end was chewed so badly—and scrawled a quick note.
And then she let herself out.
The bolts were beyond her current skill, but the lock itself was fairly simple; she pinned it shut. She didn’t have keys, but didn’t worry; Rath did.
“Lefty.”
The boy who belonged to the name looked up. He had to, if he wanted to see the face of the man who’d called him. The man—a big, bald farmer who was almost famous for not calling the market guards too often—knew Lefty well enough by now not to try to say much to him.
Lefty almost liked him; he didn’t know the farmer’s name, but then again, barely remembered his own. He nodded, and the farmer smiled. It wasn’t a mean smile, but it seemed, to the young, gaunt boy, a sad one.
He didn’t understand why. The farmer was obviously well off. Had to be, to have that big wagon and all that food. He had sons and a daughter who often helped him sell when the market was busy. Lefty knew this because for months they’d only dared to sneak by the wagon when it was busy. And the daughter was pretty, besides. She wasn’t always nice, but that suited Lefty. It was often the nice ones that were the most dangerous.
“Where’s Arann?”
Lefty shrugged, nervous now.
The farmer’s smile changed. “It’s all right,” he said, speaking in his loud buy-my-stuff voice. “I can see him now.” The farmer had also noticed that Lefty didn’t like quiet voices.
Arann came out from between the stalls. Lefty smiled and ran to meet him, fitting himself into the larger boy’s shadow. He lifted his hand and pointed to the farmer, and Arann nodded.
“There you are,” the farmer said. He now looked relieved, which made sense to Lefty; it was how he felt when he saw Arann. Arann was the only person in the holdings that Lefty trusted.
“Farmer Hanson,” Arann said, nodding.
The farmer smiled in reply. It was a different smile. Sad, yes, but stronger. “You’ve grown,” he told Arann. Most people—the ones who talked to them at all—said that every time they saw him.
Arann shrugged. “It’s the clothing,” he told the farmer. “It’s shrinking.” He paused and then added, “You have work for me?”
“Tomorrow, if you’ll come by. I’ll tell the market guards.”
Arann smiled. “We’ll be here.”
“Wait,” the farmer said, as they turned to leave. Arann turned instantly, and just a little too quickly. The farmer handed Arann a basket. “Eat. Bring it back in the morning.”
Arann nodded. He never questioned the farmer’s gifts. Because he didn’t, Lefty knew they were safe.
“Come on, Lefty. Let’s go home.” Clutching the basket tight now, large hands cradling it against his chest.
Jewel made her way to the market. Out of habit, and because it was almost on the way, she stopped by the old well when she saw a familiar bent back. The woman to whom it belonged looked up, her facial lines beginning to harden into what seemed a perpetual frown.
But the frown froze, and the lines shifted as the woman squinted. “Is that Jay?”
Jewel nodded. “Can I help?”
“Where’s that young man of yours?”
As Rath was old enough—easily—to be Jewel’s father, she snickered quietly. Elsie was a tad hard of hearing, so this was safe. “He’s out working,” Jewel said, in a much louder voice.
“It’s good that he’s found work. I worry about you, you know.” But the old woman handed Jewel the heavy bucket and preceded her down the street, as if she owned it. She walked on hard canes, and those canes could be used to startling effect if someone was actually stupid enough to come too close.
Jewel had seen it half a dozen times. Had almost been victim to it once.
“You’re certain you’re all right, dear?”
Elsie said, when they reached the narrow building she called home.
“I’m just going to the Common,” Jewel replied. In truth, the bucket was damn heavy, and she was struggling with it; her arms were shaking when she set it down. “To buy food. Should I buy anything for you?”
“No, my useless son will do that.” Elsie sniffed. “And he’ll come home with yesterday’s vegetables, mark my word.”
“They’re cheaper.”
“Not when he buys ’em, they aren’t. If I were younger, I’d go to the Common myself and give those thieving farmers a piece of my mind.”
As Elsie often gave away pieces of her mind, it was a small wonder she had much of one left. Jewel, wise in the ways of this particular type of woman, kept that opinion to herself, because not only did Elsie have a mind of her own, she had a temper to go with it. She said her good-byes and turned toward the great trees that marked the Common so visibly, even at this distance.
Her hands were in her pockets when she left, and silver cooled her palms. She knew that some of the farmers weren’t above a little game of merchant trickery, but she also knew who they were and how to avoid them.
And when it came right down to it, there was really only one farmer that she ever wanted to see.
He smiled broadly as she approached his wagon, and his sons dispersed when he barked at them. Jewel had become accustomed enough to his voice that she could—barely—make out which rapid barks meant what.
“I swear,” Farmer Hanson told her, as she stopped in front of the wagon, pushing herself between the small gap two larger people left, “you’ve gotten taller.”
“It’s just you,” Jewel said with a grimace. “I’d’ve noticed.”
“Aye, and maybe it’s just that at my age, you only get wider and shorter.” He laughed. “What’ll you be having today?”
Jewel was eyeing his vegetables as the question floated past her. He didn’t tell her not to touch; he’d long since given up on that. When her Oma had come to the Common, she had inspected everything, and her sight—as she’d explained in a rather annoyed tone—wasn’t all it used to be. Everything was touched, lifted, looked at, sniffed.
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