House War - The Hidden City Part 52

"Only until you fail it," he replied. "And at your age, I think failure is certain. Remember that. Remember, the first time it happens, that it is only one failure. And remember this as well: How you deal with that failure will define not only your life, but theirs."

He would have said more; he meant to. But he had come close to skirting the sharp edge of his own past, and the words that he had offered were not his words; they were his grandfather's words, come back to haunt him in the only way they could: from his lips.

And they were true-but Rath's truth was not, yet, Jewel's. It was bitter, and darker.

"Go," he told her, more harshly than he had intended. "I have business to attend to."

"Here?"

"I'll go out in an hour or two."

She nodded.

Duster wore a russet shade of brown, and it didn't suit her. The sleeves of the winter tunic were rolled up at least twice by the look of them, and the hood that hung from the shoulders seemed to have a spine, it stood so stiffly behind her messy hair. She wore pants that didn't match, but these were both tighter and shorter. Her feet were still bare. If Helen could be cajoled into parting with clothing that had yet to find a wearer, if she could be talked out of the need to use her measuring tapes and sticks, her wealth of straight pins, the cobbler wasn't so generous.

The other three were dressed in a similar fashion; the clothing was obviously meant for small adults, and little thought had gone into color or size; they were either green or brown. But it was better than what they almost weren't wearing, and they all knew it. They knew, as well, that clothing that actually fit would be waiting, soon.

They looked up as she entered the room.

"I'm Jay," she told them quietly. "Did everyone else introduce themselves?"

Lefty nodded, and then frowned. "This," he said, nodding to the redhead, "is Jester."

She raised a brow. "Jester?"

"What, it's worse than Carver?"

Jewel shrugged. He had a point. "I don't care if you call yourselves Mouse and Rat," she replied. "I don't care if you want me to call you Mouse or Rat. I don't care how you wound up at that place; it's gone, you're not going back. But if you've got someplace else to go back to, that's fine as well. It's awfully crowded here." She waited.

No one volunteered the location of a home. She hadn't expected they would, but had to make the offer anyway.

"Jay is my name," she added quietly. "It's short for Jewel." She lifted a balled fist in warning. "It's a Southern name, sort of. And it could have been worse. I wouldn't bother to tell you about this, but Rath uses it when he's annoyed. Which is often."

"Finch is my name," Finch said quietly. She looked lost in this crowd. Or almost lost. But her quiet had no fear in it, at least not for herself.

"Arann's mine. Lefty's not-"

Lefty kicked him. Arann didn't appear to notice.

Jewel turned to look at the other two boys. One, silent in a way that implied the remnant of defiance, finally said, "Fisher." His face was almost all jaw, and his eyes were small and bright; blue, which was a bit startling given the darkness of his hair. He wasn't tall, but he didn't give the impression of being small or underfed either.

Jester. Fisher. Duster. She turned to the quiet boy and almost turned away. There was food in his lap. The fact that it was there at all meant he hadn't touched it. Jewel looked at Finch, and Finch looked at the floor. As if his lack of appet.i.te was her failing, somehow.

Jewel made a note to herself: Don't put Finch on kitchen duty. But Finch was good in the d.a.m.n kitchen; she was neat and very tidy, and she organized s.p.a.ce; she also took up so little of it you could actually stand beside her without having to dance around the jut of her elbows. Jewel made no guesses about what she'd done when she'd had a family. She didn't even wonder how big-or how close to starvation-it must have been.

She just hated them blindly.

And if Finch did, she wasn't about to say it. Not yet. Maybe never. It was hard to tell-Finch had been on best behavior, at least by Jewel's standards-since she'd come to Rath's. Maybe in time, when she was truly at home here, she'd let go.

But maybe this was just the way she was.

The boy who was silent was also dressed in Helen's half-price castoffs. She wondered if he had struggled or argued or ignored what had been offered. Asking was awkward, so she didn't, but she stored that one for later as well.

"He's hurt," Lefty said quietly, nodding to the silent, motionless boy. "He just sits there, staring at the wall. He doesn't like loud noises," he added, as if that were helpful. As if it weren't obvious.

But loud noise had defined Jewel's life with her Oma, so maybe it wasn't.

"How hurt?" she asked softly.

Lefty glanced up at Arann. Arann's silent expression was enough of an answer. "We could take him to the Mother's temple," he said at last.

She started to say no and stopped. The Mother's temple, according to her Oma, was a place that you went when you had no other choices; when you were so down on your luck, all you had left was pride or death.

But she'd never seen anyone like this boy before either. She started to ask another question, and then stopped. Duster had crossed the floor; Duster now knelt by the boy. Jewel wanted to grab her by the shoulder and drag her away, and curbed the impulse with difficulty.

She didn't trust Duster.

But Duster had made clear how much of a burden she thought trust was. How much of an insult.

"He was there for longer than I was," Duster told them all, her eyes on the boy's profile. His hair was a pale gold, and his eyes were a more natural blue; his cheek was bruised, his lips were slightly thick, and purple to one side.

"What was he like, when you first saw him?"

Duster looked up. The warning in her expression was sharp as a knife. Then again, everything about her was.

Jewel accepted the criticism; she'd broken one of her own rules, without thinking. What he had been didn't matter; what he was, did. She nodded quietly at Duster, and Duster's response to the silent apology was an odd frown; it was a tightening, a whitening, of lips. An expression of pain. She hovered there, as if it were the only place she was at home. "He tried to help me," she said, after a long, long pause. "I owe him."

"What did he call himself?"

"Lander."

"Why?"

"I think it was short for Alexander, or something like that. I don't know. I never asked." Before Jewel could ask anything awkward, Duster added, "it was best not to know. Anything. Because anything we did know-"

"Could be discovered."

Again, Duster gave her an odd look. "You weren't out on the streets for long, were you?"

Jewel shook her head. She had something to prove here, but it wasn't going to be proved by posturing, and it wasn't going to be proved in minutes, or with a few words. "I was lucky," she said at last. "I tried to steal something from Rath."

"Tried?"

Jewel shrugged.

"And he took you in?"

"I don't understand it either."

Duster shrugged. "How do you pay for it?"

And Jewel, understanding the place that had been their prison, didn't even have the energy to bristle. "Not like this," she said quietly. "Never this."

"And would you?"

"I-I don't know."

Duster's eyes widened slightly. "That's not a no."

"It would have been, five minutes ago."

"I know."

"Oh?"

"Arann looks like he wants to hit me for asking."

Jewel turned to glance briefly at Arann; he looked pretty much the way he always did to her. "I don't know what I'll be forced to do, to survive. But Rath says that the only thing that counts is survival."

Duster nodded. "He's good," she said quietly. And then she smiled. Jewel preferred it when she didn't. "He doesn't want me here. He doesn't trust me."

Jewel shrugged. "He's willing to have you here anyway."

"He must trust you a h.e.l.luvalot."

"Some." She shrugged.

"I don't run with a crowd," Duster told her. "I did, once."

Jewel waited. Just . . . waited. And it was hard.

Lefty rescued her. "You ran with a den?"

Duster nodded. "You think I couldn't make it?" Edge in the question, but it was blunted; she clearly didn't think much of Lefty, but he wasn't a threat.

"Better than I could," Lefty said, with just a hint of shame.

"Your friend with a den?"

"He's with Jay," Lefty replied firmly.

"This your den, then?" Duster's face had become all angles; the line of her jaw sharp enough to cut. It was a challenge. Again.

Jewel gave in to the inevitable. "Yes," she said quietly. "It's my den. You in or out?"

"Not much of a den," Duster replied. "Maybe those two," she added, nodding at Arann and Carver. "But none of the others."

"Depends."

"I've been in the streets. I know what it takes to survive 'em."

"So have they."

Duster turned to Carver. "What's the deal, then?"

Carver shrugged. He didn't blink. He looked to Jewel instead, making a point.

"What do you do?"

"We live here," Jewel replied.

"To eat."

"I've got some money. We find things," she added, putting pauses between the words. "We give them to Rath, and he sells them." It was more or less true. "He cuts us in."

"You steal things, he fences them?"

"No."

Duster shrugged. "Fine. You 'find' them. What holding do you run in?"

"This one."

"And your territory?"

Jewel said quietly, "This place."

"I mean-"

"I know what you meant. Any idiot would. We're not thugs. We don't mug little old ladies by the well."

"You ever gone into the fancy holdings?"

"Not farther than the Common."

"But they let you in?"

"We buy things there."

Duster shook her head. She would have risen, but the boy by her side reached out slowly and caught the hem of her tunic in his shaking hands. He didn't speak, but he didn't have to.

"I'm not an idiot," Duster said, half crouched. "I know that nothing comes for free. You rescued us. I'll give you that."

Sarcasm was not a good bridge. Her father had said that, when he was trying to teach her not to be like her Oma. Jewel bit back words her Oma could have said.

Duster seemed to have been waiting for what Jewel struggled to hold back. When Jewel won-barely-Duster shrugged and asked a single question. "Why?"

"Because you saved Finch," Jewel replied evenly. "Just that."