House War - The Hidden City Part 60

"The dead would have heard it, had they bothered to listen."

She looked at her hands; brought them to her lap. They were fists. "If it weren't for Lefty, it wouldn't be so bad."

"Why? She questions your authority constantly."

"I don't want authority," Jewel told him quietly.

But his expression was odd as he met her gaze; she couldn't quite place it. "Don't you?"

"No."

"Why?"

"I don't want to tell other people what to do."

"You already tell them what to do."

"I don't-"

"You do, Jewel. Jay, then, if you prefer." He rose, pushing his chair back. The pacing he had denied Jewel, he kept for himself. "You tell them what to do, and they listen. Even she does."

"She doesn't. She won't leave Lefty alone. If Arann hadn't almost hit her, I would have."

"And she wouldn't have stabbed you. Next time," Rath said quietly, "hit her."

Jewel had no difficulty with the idea of hitting people who misbehaved; she'd certainly felt her Oma's hand often enough that she'd lost count. But she wasn't their Oma. "I can't."

He shrugged. "You don't understand Duster. Let me explain only this small part of her: she understands that life demands a victim. She understands that dens demand one. She understands that there is always a victim, and she's trying to ensure that it isn't her.

"Lefty is the obvious choice."

"Lefty wouldn't hurt her."

"Lefty wouldn't hurt a mouse. He sometimes tries to feed them," Rath added, with mild disdain. "It makes him ideal for her purpose."

"But she's not like that with Lander."

"No," Rath conceded. "She is not like that with Lander."

"Why?"

"Because Lander has earned her pity. Or her sympathy. With Duster, I think the two are the same. She knows what he's suffered; she suffered it herself. The fact that it broke something in him might be worthy of contempt in different circ.u.mstances-but she has Lefty here."

"That's not fair, Rath," Jewel said quietly, still clinging to the sides of the chair. "I don't think she'd treat Lander that way if there were no Lefty." She drew breath, and then said, "if she hadn't saved Finch, I wouldn't have taken her with us. I probably wouldn't have wanted to go there at all.

"I'm glad I did," she added, seeing for a moment the fire that had consumed the building. Feeling the heat as if it were her own. "She saved Finch," she added, turning the words over, revisiting them in the light of Rath's room.

"Yes." It was a grudging syllable.

"And I think she wants to help Lander." She looked at Rath carefully.

Rath, however, was not fooled. "What does she want, Jay? What did she ask you to ask me for?"

"Information."

"What information?"

Jewel hesitated. She could see Lander's blank face in the magestone; the light was like the color of day off his unblinking stare. She was afraid to touch Lander. Afraid to wound him. Aware that at the moment these two things were the same.

But Lefty had reached him, somehow. And Duster? Duster, who was always so d.a.m.n cruel to Lefty it almost made Jewel want to kill her, could sit in front of Lander, speaking the silent language of shared experience. Ugly experience. All of it painful. Jewel had been spared that fate. By her Oma, her mother, and her father after them; by Rath.

"Duster wants to help Lander," she said at last.

Rath said nothing.

"Duster's not-she doesn't-" Jewel shook her head, and said in a strained voice, "She saved Finch, Rath."

"And you saved Finch. It doesn't make you the same person."

"No. It doesn't. But it gives us something good in common. I can't change who she is. I don't think-I don't even think I want to." The last, defiantly.

She didn't; he could see that. It should have disturbed him. But after his brief visit to the Terafin manse-its gates cold with rain and dark with lack of sun-he felt that nothing would.

He should have seen it. He should have understood it clearly. Jewel, Jay, this poor urchin, the weight of her odd morals still burdening her in the face of starvation, had looked, had spoken, so differently he had allowed himself the false grace of illusion. Now, it was gone.

He could see the ghost of Amarais in Jewel, and it haunted him; would haunt him, he thought, forever. He was not a young child now; not a young man; he would never be the younger, naive brother to Jewel Markess. And because he was not, he could see her clearly.

It was bitter, this clarity, this vision.

She did not tolerate Duster because she could pretend that Duster was someone-or something-she wasn't; she tolerated Duster because she felt, on some primal level, that Duster could be of use.

"What does she want?" he asked quietly although he thought he knew the answer to the question.

"Names," Jewel said flatly. "And places." She paused, and then added, "We'll do the rest." The edge in her voice was sharp, but it was hot. Untempered.

He did not pretend to misunderstand her.

"Do you think this will help Lander?" he asked softly.

"I don't know. I don't think it will hurt him," she added. Her voice had fallen, trailing into something that was barely louder than a whisper. She looked up at Rath, her chin steady, her dark eyes clear. "Those people-those men-deserve to die."

She surprised him, but then again, she always had. He had not thought she would put into words the whole of her intent. He almost told her how unwise it was. But Amarais was there again, in the straight, stiff spine, the width of determined eyes, the purse of lips.

Jewel hadn't the vision of his sister; she had never had the breadth of wealth and education that would give her that. The vision she did have was both more powerful and in the end, less ultimately useful in the situation she found herself in now.

"Do you deserve to kill them?" He asked her quietly, all motion ceasing as he knelt beside her chair, bringing their eyes almost into line.

She could have told him that she wouldn't be the one doing the killing. He waited for the words, expecting them, readying his reply. But he waited in vain; they didn't come. He felt a twinge of something that might be either pride or pain. If they could be separated.

"There has to be justice," Jewel said quietly.

"Justice is as simple as death?"

Jewel said nothing.

"The boys who injured Lefty-do they deserve death? Or did they learn to cause injury because they were injured, and became twisted the way Duster is twisted? Why are you willing to keep the one, and throw away the other?"

"Duster saved Finch," she said quietly. Clearly.

"And in her time, she may well have killed-or maimed-other children. Very much like Lefty was maimed."

She said nothing again.

"Answer me, Jewel, if you wish my aid in this."

"I'm not the Kings," she told him. "I'm not a magisterian. I'm not justice-born. I'm not a judge."

"If you're willing to kill, you are. And you feel yourself worthy to be that judge."

Some of her reserve left her as she leaned forward, her cheeks flushing. "Don't you? Don't you think they should die? Didn't you kill those other men-"

"It may have escaped your notice," he said sharply, "but they were trying to kill me at the time."

"It didn't. It doesn't. I don't know why you're doing this," she added. "But it doesn't matter. Lander's trapped inside himself. I can't get him out. Maybe Duster can." Her voice was low. "You killed those men. I didn't care that you killed them. I saw their bodies. I stepped over them. I saw the blood. And I didn't care.

"I cared about us. I cared about the us that were trapped in those d.a.m.n rooms, or chained to the walls. I cared about Finch. I cared about the people that-" She stopped.

"Go on."

And closed her eyes. "I hated the bodies," she said quietly, her voice almost breaking. "I hated that they had to die. But if I had seen their deaths clearly, if I'd truly known it, it wouldn't have made a d.a.m.n difference.

"You've killed men before," she added, opening her eyes. "And you can live with it."

"I wasn't ten."

"I'm almost eleven."

He didn't call her a liar.

"It's better," he told her, rising, "not to have to live with it."

"If you have the choice."

"You always have the choice."

"But some people don't, Rath. What choice did Finch have? What choice did Lander have? Even Duster-"

He lifted a hand, a bitter, angry gesture. "Enough." Thinking about Amarais, his sister; about the starving orphans who had evoked in her not pity but a cold and enduring anger; about House Terafin, whose siren call had beckoned her, fanning her ambition and depriving Handernesse of its one true hope.

About war in all its guises, the simplest of which was strangers with weapons who tried to kill each other because to do less was to die.

"I do not know," he told her grimly, "if I can find the information you ask for. It will be both costly and dangerous, and it is not something that can be done overnight, if it can be done at all."

But her shoulders had slumped just a little, and the high color was slowly receding from her face. Her hands looked small and frail as she reached up and shoved unruly dark curls from her eyes. She looked so unlike his elegant, graceful sister it almost made him smile.

But the smile would not come; he had already made his decision. "If Duster has names, it would be helpful. I doubt she does," he added.

He was wrong.

Sigurne Mellifas looked up from a solitary desk upon which her reflection, around the neat stacks of vellum, could be glimpsed. In these chambers, high above the grand and almost opulent halls into which visitors were conducted, she worked and lived, and they reflected the complexity of that life: cases, gla.s.s doors carved with geometrical precision, the panes hinting at clarity, although they were themselves opaque.

The papers by which the Order governed, and was governed, were in tidy stacks, in descending order of import. The largest pile, querulous voices compressed into lines of varying widths and varying legibility, pet.i.tions and complaints from the various members of the Order itself, demanding, some in supercilious tone and some in bald outrage, her attention to perceived slights. The second pile, the results of various ongoing investigations in which the Magi of the Order played some part. The third, the writs by which magic-in the streets of the Empire-was governed. Ah, and a few admission notices, a few resignations, scattered among the whole.

The Order of Knowledge was, for many who journeyed through its doors, the end of a pilgrimage, rather than the beginning; those for whom this became increasingly clear would discover it in the months-or years-of their tenure as students. Many, some with the talent to master magic, some without, would reach this conclusion and depart.

They could not, by law, be required to unlearn what they had learned; nor could they be compelled not to practice it, inasmuch as such practice was legal. They could, however, be watched with care; this was the purview of some of the more fastidious of the members, of which Sigurne was simply one. She glanced at the list of names; the glance was cursory.

The Order was not a Guild, although it served in that capacity for the men and women who wished employment-and the concurrent income that arose from such-elsewhere. The mages themselves were oft fractious and argumentative, sometimes for the sheer joy of it. Sigurne, more practical, found little use in pointless debate, and her entrance into such discourse often signaled its abrupt end.

She watched the surface of the desk for some moments, frowning at the glimpse of her own reflection, wreathed in a light so pale it would have been hard to determine the color. But as it was Sigurne who had cast the spell, the color was obvious to her, and she set aside her papers and rose, feeling the chill of the air in the heights of the lofty stone tower. Had it not been so important that she occupy these rooms-rooms that came with the power and authority of the t.i.tle she wielded-she would have gratefully set them aside and dwelled below with the students; the rooms in the main halls were never so cold.

But she would lose, without isolation, the privacy upon which she had come to depend. She caught the edge of her outer robe and drew it up from its mantle of chairback, donning it as she walked toward the door.

Not young, she was not yet so old that she was forced to bow or stoop; she did both, because she found the appearance of age useful. Still, the mild aches in her hands and knees were no act; the damp of the Winter sea air set her teeth on edge. She paused at the door, its dark, stained wood framed by peaked stone, curving upward in a recessed arch that seemed pretentious, given the s.p.a.ce.

It was not, however, impractical.

Lifting her palm, she ran her hand across the smooth surfaces of those arches, her fingers trailing a pattern that not even eyes could see. These complicated wards were of her own devising; they were as comfortable as the hands that covered them, and almost as natural to Sigurne.

It had been perhaps two decades since she had taken the t.i.tle of First Circle mage; it had been fifteen years since she had positioned herself as the head of the Order of Knowledge. The gray of her hair at that time had been the color of steel; it had whitened, and she had let it, as if the strain of governing the Magi naturally led to some premature aging.

But in truth it was less stressful than not governing would have been. She had come to Averalaan Aramarelas solely to do as she had done: to take the seat, to preside over the First Circle-and by default, the lesser circles in their turn-and to be vigilant.

The reward for her vigilance? She shook her head, lifted the hood of her outer robe about her face, and began her descent.

Rath was waiting for her when she entered the large room. It was narrow, this room, but the ceilings were high, the joists exposed, the windows-for it held windows of thick, colored gla.s.s along the eastern wall-poised to catch the sunrise hours hence. The view, he thought, would be magnificent at dawn; in the darkness it was less comfortable. Taking care not to touch the surface of the gla.s.s, he looked down to see the streets of the Isle; the magelights that lit the roads were bright and evenly s.p.a.ced, and they marked the winding pa.s.sage of flat stone so clearly the road might have been built of luminescent rock. Here and there, carriages could be seen, and the glint of bright breastplates indicated that men were on patrol.

Upon the Isle, they always were. Those crimes that could be committed in safety here were not committed on the streets or the causeways; they were sheltered behind the grand facades of the many, many mansions that stood almost shoulder to shoulder behind tall fences.

And perhaps in halls such as these, where the Magi gathered.

The doors opened slowly, their movement so perfectly smooth it seemed unnatural. Then again, much that happened in the Order usually did; Rath turned his back upon the windows, conveniently situated opposite the doors, and let his arms fall loosely to his sides, holding them in just such a way that it would be instantly clear that he was unarmed.

Sigurne nodded briefly and stepped into the room. The doors swung shut-just as smoothly, just as precisely-inches from the fall of her robes. Those robes were dark, a dusty black that no one could actually mistake for gray.

"You've carried a message?" she said, her eyes clear and cool. It was hard to judge their color; Rath thought they might be blue or gray.

He wore the tidy livery of an unidentified House; it was blue, with flashes of purple and gray-something that implied royalty, without the complicated illegality of actually mimicking it. Of all the clothing that Rath wore, this was possibly the most impeccably cared for; he brought it out in times of need. His early years in the presence of the rich and the powerful had exposed him to the hauteur of important servants-as opposed to those who must go unseen within the halls of a great House-and he had borrowed their posture, their distance, their hint of open disdain, quite liberally. His bearing was proud, and he had stretched himself to his full height; he did not mean his visit to pa.s.s unremarked within this tower.