The Hidden City

by Michelle West

  She cried out the name a third time, her whole body shaking with the single syllable, the weight of it, the need to have it answered.

  But if Jewel’s single scream, curtailed, went unnoticed by any save Duster, the clear cry of Jay’s name did not.

  Patris AMatie noted it, and understood it for the denial it was. He approached Duster as she rolled to her feet in her dirty, awkward clothing, her pale hair—false as everything about her had been false, was false—mired in petals and soft soil.

  “They failed me,” he told her softly, moving like a cat moves, a great cat, a hunting beast. “They failed me by allowing you to escape. You were so very close to the choice; so close to making it, and becoming one of ours.

  “I do not have the time, in this life, to fashion more out of what I see in you. But you will return, and I will see you when you do; we will begin again in earnest, because, little one, when you do return, we will once again rule over these pale lands, and the world will be ours.”

  “The world that is yours,” a new voice said, “is not this world.”

  Duster recognized the voice, but it was cold and hard, and in its way, it was as terrifying as the Patris. It was not as terrifying as the silence that followed—that still followed—Jewel’s single cry.

  Rath stood in the room, framed by an arch that was covered with vines that drooped flowers. He was tall, and well-dressed; he was also armed. But armed, he appeared to be at ease, as if this were simply an unpleasant conversation, a trifling negotiation.

  “Duster,” he said, without once glancing away from the Patris, who had stopped and pivoted to face him, “I do not know what part you have played in the plans that have gone awry, but you are not needed here, and you are not wanted here. Go where you must go, and do what you must do. The Patris and I have matters that cannot be discussed openly.”

  “There will be little discussion,” the Patris replied, and he seemed to grow taller and wider as he spoke, as if he were shedding the patina of vulnerability—such as it was—that he had worn throughout the evening.

  “Rath—I—”

  “I don’t know,” he said, his voice lower. And she knew that he suspected, and that she would pay.

  And the price seemed almost like a promise of peace, although it was death. She who could deal death could recognize at least that much.

  She struggled to her feet, shoving broken things from her lap, her arms, pushing her hair out of her face. With it came makeup, the color that Haval had chosen; beneath the surface of powder, swept away in a gesture, she exposed her true face.

  And then she turned and ran, and once again, she lifted her voice, crying out a single name, as if by uttering it she could cling to it.

  You wanted this.

  Gods. And what gods could forgive, what gods could understand, what gods could care for someone who could? They would never forgive her, the others, Jay, this Rath who would be her death.

  And tomorrow, if she somehow survived her awkward flight, she would find excuses and reasons and she would make them walls so tall she would never see over them again. Because she had seen over them in this room, and what she had seen had hurt her far more than even Lord Waverly and the demons who had given her to his care.

  Across the building, Carver lifted his head so quickly, his hair flew, revealing the eye that was almost always hidden. He froze, his hand dropping to the dagger he concealed in the width of Winter clothing. He ran into Arann’s back, and felt the stiffness there as if it were a slowly burning heat.

  Teller, letter clutched in hands that had balled into fists, was white and silent; Finch was shaking. They had heard Jay’s name, and in the white of bright light and beautiful floors, walls, ceilings, they saw the bars of familiar cages.

  Cages that Jay had opened, so that they could live.

  Lander was shaking. Lefty was utterly silent, his hands still. Finch could not see what Jester and Fisher were doing; she didn’t care. She recognized the voice that uttered the name so strangely it sounded strangled and horrified.

  “Duster,” she said, her voice a whisper. They were frozen for just a minute; the whole damn place was so big.

  But before they could move, or run, or shout, someone cut them off.

  Not now, Finch prayed. Kalliaris, not now. Goddess, smile, smile please. We’ll bear your frown later; we’ll pay. But smile now.

  Gods didn’t answer prayers.

  But Kalliaris was a god of whim and if she chose to listen, if she chose to find amusement in this overdressed, undermonied den of misfits and orphans, Finch could only offer gratitude.

  For the person that approached them was perhaps a handful of years older than they were, and he was pale, his face pinched with indecision and worry. Fear, maybe, but it was not of them, and there was no contempt when he reached Carver’s side.

  Carver said, “We’ve come for a friend.” All pretense, all lie, even the official and officious letter that Teller now held as if it were garbage, forgotten.

  And the man—the boy?—said, “I’m sorry.” It was the whisper of a word, two words. “I think you may be too late.”

  Rath was not dressed for the political; he was not dressed to impress. He was—barely—well enough turned out that his presence in the inn would be tolerated, and at that, only in the off season when business was poor.

  The Patris was, of course, finely attired. His clothing was dark, and perfect, and it stretched a little too much at the shoulders and chest as he faced Rath, shedding now even the pretense of humanity. Of mortality.

  “You should not have come here,” the Patris said, and he smiled, and his teeth glinted, long and strange in the bright light of the inn. Too bright, Rath thought, to contain what he saw. “But I offer my thanks for your consideration, Wade. I have lost a number of my servitors to your intervention, and had almost considered hunting you myself.” His expression darkened as he spoke the words, and the nuance in them was not lost on Rath.

  Rath knew, both instinctively and intellectually, that he had no advantages here; in this fight, height or speed were lost him, and he did not doubt that the Patris was capable of fighting. That he carried no sword and no obvious weapon were of little concern; he expected Rath to provide him with amusement.

  Not pain, and certainly not death; not his own.

  Rath shrugged. “I am always willing to be of service,” he replied, his tone neutral. “And perhaps had we had this conversation at a different time, or in a different place, we would not now be adversaries.”

  The Patris’ frown was thin. But he was not stupid; he understood exactly what Rath intended.

  “The child,” the Patris said, “suffers.”

  To anger him. To goad him. All the old tricks, the old warnings that had informed so much of Ararath Handernesse’s early training, were brought to bear now; had to be. He could not fight on uneven ground when he was either afraid or enraged—and he was very much both.

  He could see Duster darting away, and he spared her no more thought than this: If Jewel’s hurt, I’ll kill you myself.

  Duster followed the marbled floor, broken by metal into something that made it look almost cobbled. She trampled on the flowers that Jay had been so damn careful to step around; she did not bend to see them, to smell them, to touch them. They were just plants, and she didn’t give a damn about them one way or the other.

  She would have said—would still say—that she didn’t give a damn about anything that wasn’t Duster. But she ran, and her knife was out and glinting. She knew where Jay was; she’d left her there. Left her, forgot about food, and kitchen and plans. Left her to dream about—to think about—

  She wanted to throw up.

  The nausea hit her like a physical blow to the stomach. Her breath was noisy and uneven, as if she were gasping at air, as if even air was too clean and too pure for her to take in, to swallow.

  And she broke through the archway, careening into plants and the steel that they so artfully twined around, clutchin
g at them to steady herself, cutting her own hand in her haste. Physical pain here was good. It brought her back to the now. To the room.

  To Jay and Lord Waverly, the chairs that had fallen to one side or the other, the table that shadowed them both as they struggled, each in their own way.

  She didn’t have time to think anymore; she leaped across the room, cursing skirts and everything else that had led her to this point: her whole life. The life she didn’t much care if she lost now.

  She could even remember the chains that had bound her, physically, in the presence of this man; could barely remember the fear and the humiliation that had been all he had left her. The only impulse she had—at this moment—was to separate them: the man who she had wanted so badly to kill, and the girl that she had wanted so badly to see broken.

  And she would be, Duster thought, and again, nausea caused the walls of her throat to collapse. Jay would be broken, as everything in Duster’s life had been broken in the end—by her own failure, her own desire, her own actions. The demons—she could not think of them as anything else—were right, had always been right, about what they had seen in her. Darkness, death, cruelty beyond measure.

  Her legacy. Hers.

  She leaped past the trellis that she had all but torn from its moorings, trying to ignore the sounds here that were so famliar they were almost suffocating. Hearing in the whimpering and the anger and the fear the only thing she recognized as her own.

  It was such a short distance to Lord Waverly’s back; his exposed back. Such a short distance to the disarray of his clothing, half on, half off, the expanse of white, heavy flesh, the bulk of him.

  He had not removed his shirt; his collar was stiff and she almost straddled him—straddled them—as she grabbed it, bringing her knife at last to bear against the underside of his throat.

  He froze as he felt it; she let the edge cut into his skin. She could end his life here, cut his jugular, let him bleed. But that was not what she wanted. It was too easy, too quick, and too painless. She wanted him to know who he was facing, and why—even if some part of her, wild and howling behind the silence of compressed lips—was no longer certain why.

  He moved so very carefully as she yanked him to his feet; his face reddened as his collar cut off the breath that was heaving in both directions from his mouth. He was ugly, in all ways, but ugliest in a way that Duster recognized for her own.

  Jay had no part in this.

  But without Jay—

  No. No. No. She tried not to see Jay, pressed against the floor, her dress torn, her skirts in disarray. She tried not to look at her face, at the intimacy of this forced contact, this humiliation, this helplessness.

  “Get up,” she snarled, her voice guttural and low, barely human.

  And he obeyed—he obeyed—as her knife hugged the side of his throat.

  As he lifted his bulk, Jay rose as well, gathering her dress to her as if it were armor. Her face was pale, her eyes wide—she had passed beyond fear to a place that nothing might reach again.

  Now you understand, Duster thought, with a painful self-loathing. Now you understand my life.

  “Remember me?” Duster whispered softly. “You and I met in the thirty-second holding.” She let him turn—slightly—the knife bearing into flesh again, the blood beading slowly, the cut was so shallow and clean—to see her face.

  His look of confusion enraged her.

  “You have delved into places where you should not have delved,” the Patris said quietly. Everything about him was contained and quiet; he was in control here, and knew it.

  Rath’s weight was on his back leg; he was ready to move, to dodge, to feint. But the Patris did not approach him; not yet. Instead, he smiled. “You have come too late,” he continued. “And whatever you keep from your expression, you cannot keep from me. You know what I am,” he added.

  Rath nodded. He could not think of Jewel here. He could not think of Duster. In the end, the moment was defined by something that was not human, not mortal, not afraid of whatever it was that Rath could bring to bear in his own defense.

  The Patris drew himself up to a height that Rath had not imagined, his robes flowing around him as if they were liquid, not cloth; as if they were shadow, and bent to his will as naturally as all darkness should. But out of the back of his robes, unfurling like a dark cloud, Rath recognized the dim shape of wings, leathery wings that had never known feathers or grace.

  His arms lengthened, his hands extended, and from each of his fingers, claws grew that were longer than the daggers Rath now held in either hand. Even his face lengthened, changing in shape until it was almost unrecognizable.

  “You do not understand what you face,” the Patris said, and his voice was thunder’s distant rumble. But the lightning had come and gone, and voice alone was not enough to kill Rath. “And you are privileged to witness it.”

  Rath shrugged. It was habit, and it was not a habit that he had any desire to break. “We must agree to disagree on what amounts to privilege,” he said, in his lazy drawl. “I have seen things more fell than you in my life.”

  These last words were not pleasing to the Patris—if he could be called that with any truth anymore—and the wings that had seemed so insubstantial in the clouds solidified. “I will eat your heart.”

  “You will have to find it first,” Rath replied bitterly.

  “Believe that it is a trivial matter,” the demon replied.

  And then there was no more time for words. What had been still and almost—almost—majestic, became a frenzied blur of motion.

  Rath knew when to accept a blow; he knew when to take the lesser wound in order to strike the greater one. But this creature moved so quickly, the lessons that had become instinct failed him; he dodged, and felt claws rake his back; knew blood blossomed there, in red and black, like a dark flower.

  The Patris, in this room with its grand ceilings, its boast of height, had the advantage: he was not confined by as simple a thing as gravity, and his reach was the greater reach. Had he been human, the fight would have been over before it started; he left himself open, he moved with contempt and an easy arrogance, a certainty of victory that would have been misplaced given his knowledge of his enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. Rath knew this well; he’d taken advantage of it many a time.

  Honor, his weaponsmaster used to say, is for the idle, and the bards. You want to survive. If survival means playing to their stupidity, play that hand.

  But his enemy was not human, and in spite of appearances, had never been close.

  Rath had not expected the Patris to be present.

  But nothing in Rath’s long life had ever gone according to plan, and part of planning was the attempt to second-guess himself. To have contingencies, something in reserve in case of emergency.

  Today was no different than any other day.

  And it was horribly different. He struggled with all knowledge, and paid: Claws cut his shoulder, laying it open to bone. He was not as fast as he had once been.

  But neither was he as callow, as easily disappointed or frightened. He bore the wound as if it were a simple fact of life; bleeding was. But if the Patris, or whatever it was he was now called, seemed arrogant beyond ken, he was fast, and the opening that might have existed, eluded Rath.

  And it couldn’t. Because in order for Rath to execute the plan that had been weeks in the making, the Patris had to die, here, before he could speak to another creature, human or otherwise.

  “Too late?” Carver grabbed the young man’s arm, and the young man winced. But he did not withdraw. “What the Hells does that mean?”

  “She came to visit—a patron. An important man. Here.”

  Carver’s eyes narrowed. Only his eyes. The rest of his face was utterly still. There had been anger and even desperation in the way that he’d grabbed the finely accoutred arm, but it bled away as the words sunk in.

  “He rented the entire Arboretum,” the young man continued, oblivious to Carver’s g
rip, Carver’s unusual stillness. “And ordered it cleared.”

  Carver had no idea what the Arboretum was, and he didn’t give a damn. It could have been a dungeon.

  “Take us there.”

  “I can’t.”

  Finch tensed. Teller tensed. They were standing side by side, and they could almost read the meaning of their own stillness, it was so strong. But when Carver’s free hand dropped to his side, the tension melted from Teller, replaced by the urgency of movement. He caught Carver’s arm and when Carver turned slightly to look at him, shook his head.

  No knives here. No daggers. No threats. Short sentences, all of them spoken in the sign language Lefty and Lander had made their own; the language that had spilled out of their communication, and into the rest of the den, gaining strength at first by the pleasure of secret communication.

  No pleasure here.

  They’ll make us leave. They’ll call their guards.

  Jewel. Leader.

  Teller spoke, his hands stilling. “You can’t lead us there. We won’t ask. But tell us where it is. We’ve never visited this building before, and we may not get there in time—”

  The boy struggled a moment, not with Carver, but with himself. His indecision was a quiet rictus that transformed his features, causing them to pale further, which shouldn’t have been possible. Shame did that. “I’ll show you,” he said at last. “I’ll show the way. But I can’t go there myself. I’ll get sacked.”

  The words made so little sense the rest of the den ignored them. But Arann’s shadow was very, very close to the young man, and he was taller and wider.

  “Show us, then,” Carver managed to say. “Take us as far as you can; forget you ever saw us after we’ve left.”

  The young man nodded.

  This, Finch thought, was cowardice. But it was a cowardice tainted by courage or decency, and she felt no anger or contempt for him. She looked to Lefty and Lander, both silent; caught Jester’s eye before he could open his mouth. Fisher’s silence was the only silence she could not read.

  But she saw only determination in all of their faces, and wondered if she was seeing something she wanted to see, or something that was real. It didn’t matter. When the young man moved, they followed, as if together they had become a cloak that was too long, and dragged in his wake.