The Hidden City

by Michelle West

  She listened for the sound of retreating steps, aware that she was the only one who did. It had not occurred to this man—would probably never occur to him—that his careless, casual command might be disobeyed.

  Duster had hated Jewel. This was the truth.

  The fine woolen cloak she had draped so carefully over her servant’s sleeves trailed the edge of the leaves that had failed to catch her attention as she walked away from Lord Waverly.

  Hated her, yes. Hated what she could offer from the comfort of her easy, easy life. Hated the fact that somehow, for Jewel, Rath had been there, offering her both food and shelter in return for—nothing. For nothing at all.

  She had hated the fact that the others had deferred to Jewel, had listened to her, and had treated her as if she were somehow important. Resented the fact that Jewel, who had suffered so damn little, had so damn much.

  In the dark of night, when Jewel slept, she had wondered what Jewel might be like, left alone with Waverly. No; wonder was the wrong word; her imagination was vivid, lurid, angry. In the silence of the small room, kept warm by distant woodstove and breath, she had imagined just what Waverly would do to an idiot like Jewel, had laughed at how easily Jewel would break, at exactly how she would come to truly understand what life was like.

  And it was here, now: a gift. A daydream, a night thought, come true. Offered to her by a fool, handed to her without any scheming or planning on her own part. The robe draped so carefully over her arm slipped beneath her feet, and she tripped over its hem. Stopped herself from cursing, because cursing here would draw attention that she didn’t want.

  She hesitated, just outside of the glassed-in room, taking refuge behind plants that were almost overpowering, they were so sickly sweet. She could hear Waverly’s voice. Could not fail to hear it, although memory gave it words and cadences that were absent in fact. When he had been introduced to Duster, he had not bothered to hide what he was behind this civil mask; in the holdings, he had paid a great deal of money to dispense with pretense. He had come with her jailers, and he had treated her like a dog, like less than a dog.

  And his laughter had been almost gentle. She could hear it now. What was he saying to Jewel? What was Jewel thinking? Did she even understand the danger she was in?

  No, she expected rescue; her whole life had been one damn rescue after another. She didn’t have to lie for it, or beg for it, or pay for it in any of the ways with which Duster was painfully familiar. She could afford to be high and mighty; when had anyone ever let her fall?

  Duster reached up and tore a leaf in three pieces, absently destroying the peaceful arrangement. Wanting many, many things; seeing in the light just another way of casting shadows. Enjoying the possibilities of suffering that wasn’t her own.

  Duster had hated Jewel.

  And if it weren’t for Jewel, she wouldn’t be here. If it weren’t for the fact that she had saved Finch—to spite the damn demons, nothing more—she wouldn’t be here. If Jewel didn’t trust her, she wouldn’t be here.

  Her grip tightened around the slender knife her servant’s clothing hid. Hating was easy. It came as naturally as breathing. Contempt came that way too; and anger, and irritation. Even fear, although she would never admit it where anyone could hear it.

  If you had had Jewel’s life, what would you be?

  There. She’d asked it. In this place, leaf bits strewn in her shaking lap.

  It wasn’t the same question as, If you had what she had, what would you do with it? She knew, because she’d considered stealing most of it from the moment she’d first entered the old man’s apartment. It was a different question.

  Duster wondered what she would be, with friends and guardians and people she could trust. People who wouldn’t sell her out, wouldn’t sell her, wouldn’t casually beat her to show others how strong they were.

  Would she be Jewel? Could she? Could she have cared for some sniveling wreck like Lefty, some flighty girl like Finch? Could she have shopped and cooked and cleaned and argued and tried to make some sort of family out of a bunch of losers without killing one or two of them to make a necessary point?

  No.

  Honest answer. Even if she had had Jewel’s life, she wouldn’t be Jewel. None of them would. And who was to say that the inverse was true? Who could really say that if Jewel had had Duster’s life, she’d end up being Duster?

  The demons had said Duster was special.

  Not death, not for Duster. Not freedom, either. But something else. In the shadows. In the darkness they could see in her.

  If darkness was what she had, why not use it?

  Because they win, she thought. And no one beat her.

  But she sat there, in the Arboretum, listening, and dreaming, and knowing that part of her wanted Jewel to suffer at the hands of Waverly. Because she would enjoy it.

  “Yes,” a soft voice said, above her, “you would.”

  She looked up, then.

  Ten feet away, in clothing that spoke of riches and finery, stood a man she had never seen before. But his eyes—the darkness of them, the lack of white—were familiar.

  “You are a resourceful girl,” the man said, examining his gloved hands with care. “And I admit that you eluded the lesser of my kin.” He wore dark colors, black with a hint of purple, a hint of coal gray, and cold gold around his neck. He had very little hair, but the lack didn’t speak of age.

  He was also taller than Arann.

  “You are far more resourceful than we had assumed, but it does not displease me, Duster. You have had some time to contemplate your past; contemplate your future now. I assume,” he added, his voice growing so soft it might have been a purr, “that you intend to have a future.”

  She was not chained now, not bound; she was no one’s captive. But standing ten feet from this stranger, she could not say she was free.

  “I am Patris AMatie,” he told her, inclining his head. “And I have lost a number of servants in the last month. It is not to my liking, and it leaves my household bare. You were to take your place among my servants,” he added, “later, rather than sooner; you were not deemed ready.”

  “And now?” she asked, hedging, knife still in her palm, her dry, shaking palm.

  “Now?” His smile was slight, like the edge of a sharp knife is slight. “You are mortal,” he replied with a shrug, “and few indeed are the mortals judged worthy of service to the Shining Court.”

  “And me?”

  “You are close enough now to make that decision. To prove your worth,” he added, “or to fail to prove it.” Again, he smiled. “But there is, in you, the darkness that beckons. You are almost with us,” he added. “This life, or the next, little one, and you will be among us, and mortality will be a simple illusion.

  “But you can be victim,” he said, voice colder, “or victor; the choice is yours. There will always be suffering; cause it, or be consumed by it.”

  Duster straightened. “I want Waverly,” she told the man evenly. “Give me Waverly, and I’ll serve you.”

  But the Patris shook his head. “Serve me,” he said, “and you obey me. That is the law of power. When you have power greater than mine, you may force me to surrender that which I hold. Only then.” And he reached out to touch her face.

  Ten feet? Five. Four. He had moved; she hadn’t even noticed. But his fingers felt like claws against her skin; claws beneath it, when he flexed them. Her cheek stung; she knew that she was bleeding.

  It wasn’t even a cut worthy of notice; she didn’t blink.

  “You came here with another child,” he said. “And you have been contemplating her fate as you sit here. You have been enjoying what you imagine.”

  She said nothing. She didn’t even ask him how he knew; she knew. We can taste it, we can sense it, we can see every thing about you that makes you almost . . . kin. “Waverly is there, but it is not of his death that you dream; it is of the pain he will cause. Is that not so?”

  She nodded grimly.


  “Then watch,” he said softly. “Take what you can. Waverly is mine; he serves my purpose here. Pass only this test, and his purpose will be yours as well.”

  “I want—”

  “And I will give him to you, when I am ready. We will see how creative you can be then.”

  Rath had approached the Arboretum with caution.

  He could. He had spent every favor owed him by those who inhabited the dim and forbidding reaches of the Magi’s tower; he had badgered Andrei, cajoling and threatening by turns, until he had obtained some of what he desired. He was not invisible—that, no amount of bribery would allow him—but he walked completely silently, and even his breathing could not be heard by anyone who was not paying attention. But the familiar cadences of a voice that he almost recognized had drawn him into the Arboretum; he had intended to skirt its edges, to go to Jewel, or as close to Jewel as he might come.

  And this, with Patris AMatie in attendance was as close as he could safely come. He had written his letters, had set his stage, had prepared for all eventualities he could think of. But this, he had not seen.

  He wondered, briefly, what had become of Marrett. Wondered how he had failed in his attempts at secrecy, how he had drawn AMatie here. He stared at Duster, at the answer that presented itself.

  If he had been a different man, he would have assumed that Duster had betrayed them all; he had trusted her so little that he had not explained all of his plan to either of the two girls. But . . . her carriage was wrong. He was a betting man, and he thought—reluctantly—that she was as surprised as Rath himself.

  He had intended, of course, to be present. To be where Duster and Patris AMatie now sat. And all of his plans, the knife’s edge of his deception, the risk of it—were made manifest. He was numb with it; beyond something as simple as fear.

  He had never trusted Duster. His first advice had been to have her removed. His last advice had been no different. And Jewel had remained unchanged. But beyond them, behind the glass walls whose adornments were living and growing plants, she might not remain so for much longer. And yet, in the end, he had given way to Jewel’s quiet determination; to call it demand was unjust. He had allowed her the freedom to choose, and with choice came consequence.

  He watched the Patris, and the girl who stood quietly before him in her perfect servant’s clothing, green flecks catching light as they nestled in the falling wrinkles of her skirts.

  Her hair was pale, her skin pale, she looked in all ways like a different child. But the Patris had recognized her instantly. She had not recognized him; Rath would have noticed that. But she either knew of him, or recognized something about him. She was not yet terrified.

  She was not angry.

  Nor was Rath; if anger came, it would come later; now, he felt cold, and even weary. Jewel was to be tested here; he had told himself that, and believed it still. But he knew that part of Jewel’s test was Duster. And so Duster, herself, was to be tested.

  But not like this.

  She had been with Jewel scant weeks. Before that, she had amassed a lifetime of specialized knowledge, and he could see it in her expression: Power ruled. Only power.

  And the Patris was powerful.

  Jewel, Rath thought, almost numb.

  “We shouldn’t be out here,” Finch said quietly, her breath hanging in the air before her slender face. Arann’s, a full head above her, came out in a silent cloud.

  “She said we could come,” Teller told Finch quietly.

  “She told us to wait.”

  Carver, following the trail left in snow that had not yet been obliterated by other footsteps, other pedestrians, shrugged. At this time of night, pedestrians were few, although the magelights still shone that guided them from one place to another.

  Lander had followed; he was silent now. The words that had come to him in the undercity had deserted him the moment he left, and only Lefty had the composure to speak to him in the silent gestures of their moving language.

  Fingers danced in the cold, shaking slightly; Lefty used both his hands, and the absence of two fingers seemed right, here. They spoke of loss, but also of healing. He would never have them back; what he might have, instead, was a lack of shame at the mutilation that he had never asked for.

  “Old Rath’s not going to like it,” Carver said quietly. But as Carver was leading them, they only nodded. He wasn’t going to like it, and they had chosen—mostly—not to care.

  “You know where we’re going?”

  Carver shook his head.

  But Teller spoke up. “I know,” he said quietly.

  They all stopped to look at him, but with a lot of gaping. Teller shrugged. “He was writing a letter,” he said, finally. “A lot of them. They were on his desk. I saw them. I saw the addresses.”

  No one asked how much rifling it took to see those addresses; better not to know. There was only one important question to be asked, and Carver asked it. “And how do you know which one of those addresses is the right one?”

  “There was only one in this part of town,” he said, “or close to it.” He looked at the streets, the empty, wide roads with buildings that were not actually packed into each other’s armpits. It might as well have been a foreign country, and they all knew it.

  “But you don’t know the city—”

  “He’s been teaching me. To read his maps.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I asked,” Teller replied, with a hint of question dragging his tone up at the last syllable. “I don’t know. I—I like his maps.” It was lame. He knew it was lame. He didn’t care.

  Then again, neither did anyone else. Jewel had taught them that strangest of things: hope. They now took it as they found it, and they clung to it as they began to move.

  Not even Finch asked the question they all kept to themselves, although it was hard. What are we going to do once we get there?

  “Your father understands business,” Lord Waverly was saying. He had said a variant of this about six times over the course of a very uncomfortable ten minutes, and each time he said it, moving a word around and changing its tone, as if the rearrangement somehow added weight or meaning, he drew slightly closer to where Jewel now sat.

  She had taken care to mind her posture, and her spine was stiff and straight. Her hands were folded in her lap, as Haval had taught her, and she pressed them into her legs to stop them from shaking.

  “I don’t know very much about his business,” she said, for perhaps the fourth time.

  “No, no, of course you wouldn’t,” he replied, which would normally have annoyed her. It was clear that he expected her to be stupid. At any other time, she would have done what she could to correct his assumption; now, she wanted to hide behind it.

  Because she knew—of course she knew—why she was here. Knew that he knew it, that he expected her to be ignorant. That she very much wanted to be ignorant.

  He poured her a glass of a pale, yellow liquid, and placed it on the table before her, very close to the glass he then filled for his own use. “I appreciate a canny man,” he told Jewel quietly, lifting his glass. “And should your father choose to ally himself with my business interests, I assure you your family will be well taken care of.”

  He waited for a moment, and Jewel understood that she was meant to lift her own glass, with its fine, slender stem. Which meant she would have to raise her hands. “I—I don’t drink very much,” she said, apologetically.

  Still, he waited, and his smile seemed to freeze in place, becoming not so much a frown as an ill-fitted mask. A warning, there. She understood it as such, and also understood that he would, if pressed, put that warning into far less pleasant words—and she was not yet willing to see him stripped of his facade of pleasantry.

  She took the glass.

  His smile became fluid again as she lifted it to her lips and took a small sip. The wine—if it was wine—was almost bitter to the tongue; it was neither sweet nor sour, but acrid, biting. Haval’s lessons stopped h
er from spitting it back out.

  “So,” he said, “you are fourteen?”

  She nodded, drinking only enough to taste. The motion, she could mime, and she wondered—briefly—if the liquid would kill plants, and if she could discreetly experiment. He really didn’t look away at all.

  “Fourteen,” she said quietly. “Do you have children?”

  “Three.”

  She waited, but the subject did not engage him. The awkward pauses in adult conversation had seldom been filled by her, and she struggled. “The plants here are very lovely.”

  “They are, especially in this cold season; it is for that reason that I often spend time here.”

  “You like flowers?”

  “I like,” he said quietly, “all things that are delicate and lovely; they seldom remain so, and it is best to appreciate beauty while it lasts.”

  Before you destroy it, she thought. Before you consume it. The anger was brief and intense, and her lips were closed to prevent the words from escaping. No escape, here.

  “You don’t find the wine to your taste?” he asked her, after a moment.

  “I don’t drink often,” she replied. “It is only this past season that I have been invited to spend time at the table with my father’s visitors. He doesn’t approve of my drinking.”

  “Ah,” Lord Waverly replied, his voice lowering, softening. “Then we shall keep this between us; a secret if you will. The forbidden is often enticing.”

  No, Jewel thought. It’s just forbidden. And she meant it, and again, she swallowed the words, remembering Haval. Remembering why she was here. There would be food, soon. Duster was supposed to help with that, to help just enough.

  But Duster was nowhere in sight, and Lord Waverly was much, much closer than he had been. Walls of glass, she thought, and leaves, and flowers. Surely, here—

  His hand touched her leg; his palm was warm.

  And Jewel was very, very cold.