“What?” She looks up, and there’s a moment before she recognizes me. “Oh. Yes. I thought … it was the least I could do.”
“Go back and get some rest.” It feels strange to be giving advice to this girl several years my senior, but she looks so lost.
“I will.” She gives another halfhearted nod and wanders away.
Grandma is cleaned up and behind her desk, leaning back and staring at the cracked, cobwebbed ceiling. At first I think she’s fallen asleep like that, but without looking down she says, “Did you see the new girl?”
“I did,” I say. “She seems a little shaken.”
“She’ll be all right in the end.” Grandma rolls her head, wringing a series of cracks from her neck that make me jump. “It would be a kindness if you would check up on her from time to time. When things are calm, anyway.”
“I will,” I say. Though when that will be I don’t know. “Hasaka said you wanted to see me before I left?”
“I did.” She sits up and looks at me. Her face is drawn, very pale, exhaustion kept in check only by her iron will. “Got something for you today. A letter.”
“A letter? From who?”
“Don’t know. Some street kid dropped it off.” She produces an envelope, sealed with unmarked white wax, and pushes it across the desk. “Tori” is written on the outside in a neat hand. “I don’t want to pry into your affairs. But if there’s some kind of problem, just tell me, you understand? I have friends, we’ll take care of it.”
I nod, dumbly, as I pick up the letter. The paper is startlingly white. Expensive. It’s the kind of thing I’d expect to see back home in the Second Ward, not here.
“That’s all,” Grandma says. “Go and get some sleep.”
* * *
A few minutes later, I’m in the back of a cab, rattling up the military road toward the Second Ward. The passes and identification I carry are enough to make the Ward Guard at the gates snap to attention, and a coin or two encourages them not to ask questions. Normally I try to get home earlier than this, and the thought of my sleeping mat is already pulling at my eyelids.
I resist the urge to doze in the carriage, though, and turn my attention to the letter. When I break the wax seal, I find several folded pages inside, written in the same well-tutored hand.
Tori,
I hope this letter doesn’t cause you any alarm. Your secrets are in no danger, I promise. After our meeting, I asked around the neighborhood for anyone who matched your name and description, and from what I was told the best place to reach you is at Grandma Tadeka’s hospital. I pray that the Blessed allows this to find you.
We met in an alley behind the High Market, where you saved my honor—and very possibly my life—with an exceedingly brave deception. I admit that it has taken me some time to work up the courage to pen this. But, ultimately, I felt that if I let this chance meeting slip by, I would regret it for the rest of my life.
I must be honest with you. I am not a native of the Eleventh Ward, as I pretended to be. My name is Marka Garo, and my family resides in the First Ward. My father is an Imperial Minister of the Fourth Degree, and I am his oldest son and heir.
I break off reading for a moment, surprised. I’d guessed the boy that I’d rescued wasn’t a commoner—he wasn’t fooling anyone, really—but I hadn’t thought he was a Marka. They’re a noble family, and not an insignificant one, either. A Minister of the Fourth Degree is high up the Imperial bureaucracy, only one or two steps removed from the Emperor’s inner circle.
Why had I given him my name?
I take a breath to calm my beating heart. All he knows is that I work at Grandma’s, and anyone who lives near the hospital could tell him that.
I know that you are no commoner, either. Your breeding shines through, however you might try to hide it. Rest assured I will make no efforts to discover your identity. Hearing about you from the people of the Eleventh Ward, it is evident that you have been doing for years what I have only recently and hesitantly tried to put into practice—helping those who truly need assistance.
I must see you again. I have given you my name, and I am at your mercy. Choose a place and a time, whatever you need to feel safe, and I will be there. Please. You can leave a note for me with the proprietor of Walka’s noodle shop, and I will receive it within a few days.
Your devoted admirer,
Marka Garo
I let the letter fall into my lap as the cab pulls in through the Second Ward gate.
Well. Rot.
* * *
“Oh, Blessed above!” Kosura’s voice is a high-pitched squeal, and I frantically motion her to keep quiet.
We’re on the second floor of the hospital, in the back, working at stripping and rolling up some old sleeping mats so the whole area can be cleaned. It’s far enough from any patients or other assistants that I judged I could risk showing her the letter, after swearing her to secrecy on the direst oaths I could think of.
I had to show someone. Kosura seems like the best choice in a field of one—I don’t want to trouble Grandma, and I can’t trust anyone back at the Second Ward house.
“Would you be quiet?” I hiss.
“Sorry.” She looks over the letter again. “It’s just so…”
“I know!” I shake my head.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was playing a prank on you. ‘Your devoted admirer’?”
“Who talks like that? Writes. Whatever.”
“Nobles, I suppose.” She shakes her head.
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Do?” Kosura looks at me sharply. “You’re going to go meet him, of course.”
“Why ‘of course’? It seems like the dumb move to me.”
“Because he’s obviously madly in love with you. You can’t just ignore someone when they’re madly in love with you.”
“Why not?”
She sniffs. “It’s rude.”
“Anyway.” I feel a flush creeping into my cheeks. “He can’t be madly in love with me. He only met me for a couple of minutes!”
“A couple of minutes where you saved his life.”
“I didn’t—”
“And you took off your shirt.”
“I didn’t take it off.” I snatch the letter back from her, cheeks fully red now, and she dissolves into giggles. “Are you going to help me or not?”
“What did you think of him?”
“I told you, I only met him for a couple of minutes.”
Kosura rolls her eyes. “Is he handsome?”
“I don’t remember,” I say, exasperated. “Maybe. I suppose.”
“You liar.” She grins. “You have to go and meet him.”
“And say what?” I cross my arms. “I have no plans to fall madly in love with anyone, so if that’s what he wants he’s going to be disappointed.”
“He says he wants to help people.” Kosura’s tone sobers. “Which is the same reason you and I are here, isn’t it?”
I give a reluctant nod.
“And if he really is the heir to the Marka family, he might be able to.” She cocks her head. “You know Grandma always says we can use more of everything.”
That’s true, now more than ever. In treating the victims of the riots, the hospital is running short of everything from bedclothes to bandages.
“If he’s sneaking out like I am, I doubt he’s going to be able to hand over a big purse,” I say.
“You never know. It’s worth the meeting, anyway.” Kosura claps me on the shoulder. “Just set it up somewhere nice and public. You’ll be fine.”
I let out a long sigh and look down at the letter.
“I’m going to have to do this, aren’t I?”
“Make sure to wear something slinky,” Kosura says, then runs away, laughing, as I look for something to throw at her.
* * *
A few days later, I’m sitting at a low table in Takabo’s dumpling shop, off the High Market.
I’ve been
in Takabo’s many times, but only on the bottom floor, where you order your dumplings from sweating men working behind the counter and eat them standing up, pulling them off the wooden skewers as soon as they’re cool enough to stomach. The upper floor is more refined, with individual tables, and correspondingly more expensive. Since my only way of getting spending money involves selling things from home—which always carries the risk that Ofalo will notice and accuse someone of the theft—I’ve always stayed down below.
For today, though, this place has several advantages. It’s above the draft checkpoints, so there’s no danger of Garo running into trouble again before he even gets here. And while the second floor is higher class than the first, it’s still a dumpling house, with no privacy screens or curtained-off nooks. Takabo and his staff are no strangers to altercations, and if Garo has anything ugly planned, I’ll be able to summon help easily.
So I hope, anyway. If someone with the resources of the Marka family wanted to prepare a trap, I’m sure he could manage it. Whatever Kosura says, this meeting is a risk. The only reason I’m willing to chance it is that my Kindre power should warn me well in advance of any ill intentions. Right now, the restaurant is the usual mix of everyday emotion, happiness and sadness, pleasant food, liquor, and conversation.
I’m wearing a colorful linen robe, sleeves rolled up, less formal by far than a kizen but still more obviously feminine than my usual disguise. No point in trying to confuse Garo on that score, and the thought makes me blush again. I try to fight it, but I realize I’m nervous, in spite of the tranquility of the minds around me.
It’s not just fear of some kind of trap. This whole situation isn’t something I’m comfortable with. Kosura is practically the only person close to my age I know well—most of the hospital assistants are much older, and I’ve never let myself get close with many of the patients.
What if Kosura’s right, and Garo has fallen in love with me? His note was certainly … intense. It’s all well and good to sigh about, but what do I actually do?
My fingers beat a fast tattoo on the table. One of the servers comes over, clearing his throat, but I wave him off.
I’m still trying to think when Garo arrives, coming up the stairs and looking hesitantly around the room. He’s wearing the same simple clothing as the last time I saw him, subtly too well-cut to actually belong to a member of the lower classes. His dark brown curls are a little more pronounced, and I wonder if he’s put some effort into them. When he sees me, his eyes go wide for a moment, and he nearly crashes into a server with a tray full of dumplings.
“You came,” he says.
“I said I would, didn’t I?” I say, trying for confidence.
“I wasn’t sure.” I don’t need Kindre to feel the relief pouring off him. “I wasn’t even sure I’d written to the right place.”
“Sit down, would you?” I glance at the surrounding diners. “We don’t need to make a spectacle.”
“Of course.” He sits, with the unconscious grace of someone trained from childhood in formal etiquette. “You look … different. If I’d seen you like this I wouldn’t have thought you were a boy—I mean, until you—that is, I—”
“Please stop.” I can’t help but smile a little. “Relax.”
“All right.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry. It’s just … you don’t know how much I’ve been thinking about you.”
“Thinking about me?” Now it’s my turn to look flustered.
“You saved my life.”
“Let’s not be dramatic,” I say, looking at the table. “Even if they’d taken you in, I’m sure your family would—”
“Nobody knows I’m here,” he says. “Certainly not my father. He’d have me beaten black and blue if he found out.”
“Well. I’m glad I saved you a beating, then.”
“It’s not just that. I—”
The server chooses that moment to reappear, getting down on her knees beside the low table to ask for our order. This appears to throw Garo completely off stride, so I intervene. I order two portions of each of my favorites: soup dumplings, crispy fish rolls, and the sort of fried pork dumplings that the street vendors charmingly refer to as “dead mice” for their vaguely rodent-like shape. Garo looks on as though I’m performing some great feat of scholarship, and leans forward over the table after the server leaves.
“Sorry,” he says again. “This is all a little new to me.”
“What is?”
He waves a hand. “You know. All of this.”
“Restaurants?” I say it half-jokingly, but he gives an earnest nod.
“At home we’d be served in our chambers, or in the hall if we had guests.” He looks around at the other patrons. “Do you know when we’re supposed to pay? Is it before we eat, or after?”
“After.” I stare at him for a moment. This is the point at which Isoka would say rotting aristos, especially if she thought I wasn’t listening, but I’m more bemused than anything. Obviously, I didn’t go out to restaurants with Ofalo, but … “What are you doing here?”
“It’s a fair question, I suppose.” He sighs. “What I want to be doing is the same thing as you. I think.”
“What do you think that is?”
“Doing something for these people.” He lowers his voice again. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You work at the hospital.”
“I do,” I say, cautiously.
“Back home everyone talks about helping the people. My friends do, anyway.” He shakes his head. “A bunch of … of rich layabouts, sitting in silk robes eating off silver plates, wondering how they can help. Every so often they’d find some beggar who the servants had vetted to make sure he was clean and worthy, and make a great show of sending him off with a bag of gold. Then everyone would congratulate each other.” Garo takes a deep breath. “I may be … inexperienced, but I know that isn’t going to solve any problems.”
I nod. We pause, for a moment, as a pair of servers lay the table with wooden plates covered in steaming dumplings. Garo looks intrigued, and grabs a soup dumpling immediately.
“You want to wait a little bit,” I say, “or—”
He gives a squeak as he bites into it, and I sigh.
“Or you’ll burn yourself.” I pour him a cup of tea. “Here.”
“Sorry,” he mumbles. “Again.”
“So,” I say. “Why are you and your First Ward friends so worried about people down here?”
“I…” He looks worried. “For some of them it’s … fashionable, I suppose. You know, the sort of thing people talk about at dinner.”
“For the sake of argument, assume that I don’t,” I say, fighting back a grin.
“It’s like … the Plight of the People.” I can hear the capital letters. “The Moral Decay of Modern Society. And how it’s our duty to Give Back, and to Lead by Example.” He squares his jaw. “I used to laugh at all that, you know. When I was younger. But then I started reading about what actually happens down here! Families crammed into tenements, thick with fleas, nothing but rice and weak soup for dinner.…”
He trails off, and I realize my incredulousness must show in my expression.
“Of course,” he says, looking down at the table. “You must think I’m ridiculous.”
“I don’t.” Not entirely, anyway. I take a few moments to sort through my feelings.
What I want to say is, it’s so much worse than you can imagine. Where I grew up, people killed one another over a half bowl of rice, or a place to sleep, because that rice or a bunk in the warm for a night could mean the difference between making it through another winter or not. Every spring, when the snow melted, we’d find street kids in the alleys, frozen as hard as icicles.
Where I grew up, my sister taught me to stay away from anyone who offered me food, because the kidcatchers would use scraps of bread to lure children off on their own. And if they caught you, that meant rape and sale to a slave brothel somewhere, or just a slit throat if they thought you we
ren’t worth the trouble.
It meant waking up to find your sister’s knife at your throat, and seeing the tears in her eyes, and knowing exactly what she was thinking. And half-wishing she’d do it, just to make an ending.
I can’t say any of that to Garo, of course.
Cautiously, I open myself to his mind. There’s a hint of the citrus taste of embarrassment, the twinkling shimmer of anxiety, even—unless I imagined it?—a hint of the rapid drum-hammer of attraction. But under and around all of that, drowning it out, is sincerity, a brassy trumpet note like a clarion call.
He’s staring at me.
“All right,” I say. “You wanted to help, and you were fed up. So you came here?”
He nods. “I thought … I don’t know. I thought it would be simple, somehow. Everyone always talked about fixing our problems like it would be easy, if only the right people got together. I should have known better.” He gives a bitter laugh. “I didn’t even know where to begin. And then the guards started chasing me.”
“Because you ran away from a draft checkpoint.”
“I didn’t know they wanted me to stop.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Guards shouting at me is … another new experience. I ran into the alley, and you … distracted them.”
“Okay.” I don’t want him to dwell on that part. “So what do you want with me now?”
“I want you to teach me.” He puts his hands on the table. “I’m not too proud to admit I don’t know what I’m doing. And you … when I asked about you, they said you’ve been coming here for years. You can’t have been more than ten years old at the beginning!”
“Eleven,” I say, which is rounding up just a fraction. For some reason I don’t want him to think I’m that much younger than him.
“You were eleven years old and you were just doing what I’d only talked about for so long. Making a difference to actual people.”
“I suppose.”
“Will you let me be…” His brow wrinkles awkwardly, an oddly adorable expression. “Your apprentice, I guess?”
I snort a laugh. “That isn’t something I ever thought someone would say to me.”
City of Stone and Silence Page 10
