House War - The Hidden City Part 68

"You cannot be certain that you can keep this one. Do not make it. I don't demand it."

"But you do."

"I value my privacy, but you've already destroyed that. No," he added, seeing the shifting lines of her expression, "I destroyed it. And I accept the consequences of my choice. We have between us enough money to see us through the Winter, and beyond that, we will see."

"You haven't gone hunting in the maze again."

He said nothing for long enough that she realized the subject was a closed one. "Go back to your Teller, Jay. And your den. See that they're fed; see that they're warm, or as warm as they can be. He will feel the loss of his mother, and feel it deeply, as the days pa.s.s. But in this, you are building a family of sorts, and perhaps that will counter what he feels."

"Rath-"

There was a knock at the door. It was not a timid knock; it was a demand. Because of this, Rath knew who was on the other side. And from the way Jewel stiffened, so did she.

"Answer it," he said curtly.

Duster glared into Rath's inner sanctum. It was not a place that she saw often; in fact, Rath was certain she had not seen it at all. What she expected, he could not say, but he was certain that she noticed everything; all the little details. The papers, the ink, the desk with its closed drawers, the clothing that denoted both rank and its utter lack, strewn across chairs and bedding.

"Duster," Jewel began, "now is not the time-"

"But it is," Rath said quietly. "Duster, please, come in. Do not touch anything, or I will have you removed."

"By who?"

"I don't need aid." His tone made clear that the possibility of fatality was not low.

She was not a child to show fear. She did not surprise him by showing vulnerability either. But her gaze wandered for just a moment to Jewel's before she crossed the threshold, and this surprised him.

She trusts you, he thought. Even this one trusts you, inasmuch as she can.

"You may sit, if you desire it. You may also stand." Rath himself took a chair, but Jewel didn't; she sat on the edge of his bed. This caused Duster to tense, but whatever she thought she would see in Jewel's face was utterly absent. Rath would have found her suspicion amusing had it not been so insulting.

Duster stood.

"I have made the inquiries that I agreed to make on Jewel's behalf," he said with care. "And I have reason to believe that the names you were given were, in fact, real names. The men to whom they belong are men of both power and social standing; your presence alone would cause them grave personal difficulty. Do you understand what this means?"

Duster shrugged.

"That is not an answer," he replied coldly.

"They'll want me dead," she said sullenly.

"Good. You understand then that what you propose to do-or what Jewel proposes to do on your behalf-"

"I don't need her help. I just need the places."

"You need me," Jewel said quietly, and with a ferocity that volume should have made impossible. "Or I tell him to shut the h.e.l.ls up. He won't give you what you want."

"I don't need your help-"

"You will need a good deal more than that," Rath broke in quietly. "They are not men who are accustomed to going unescorted anywhere; even when they visited you, it is likely they had their guards stationed close by."

She said nothing.

"Understand that were you to take your complaint to the Magisterium, it would be treated with the utmost gravity."

She frowned.

"They would treat it-and you-seriously. What these men did is in no way legal."

"They have enough money to buy their way out of trouble."

"Not all the money in the world would do that here," he replied. "If some of the magisterial guards are not above bribes-and human nature dictates that some are not-the G.o.d-born are entirely incapable of that mendacity. The men would be summoned, and they would be questioned by those to whom they cannot lie."

Duster said nothing.

"I offer you this alternative. If you want these men stopped-"

"I want to kill them," she replied quietly. "I don't give a d.a.m.n what they do to other people."

Jewel flinched, but said nothing. And Rath was content with this; let her see Duster clearly, if she had not already done so. But seeing her stiffen, he doubted that Jewel was capable of the self-deception required to see in Duster any charity.

"Very well. I thought that would be your answer, and I am willing, against my better judgment, to aid you as much as I can."

She looked at Jewel again, and then back. "Tell me where," she said.

"Not so quickly," he replied. "I will tell you that I know where three of these men can be found."

"You know where they live."

"Oh, indeed. But that is not where you will find them if you wish to kill them. I will start with whichever of the three you choose. But I will give you the location and relevant information for one man at a time. Not more, and not less. If this does not suit you, you are free to leave to pursue your vengeance in your own way.

"But if you require aid, you will compromise."

Duster glared at him, and Jewel rose, taking Duster's arm just as naturally as she had taken Rath's. Duster started to shrug her off, aware of Rath's observation. But she hesitated. Interesting.

"He's right," Jewel said quietly. "I didn't go through all the trouble of rescuing you to lose you to anger. We need to plan."

"That is exactly what we need to do," Rath told them both. He turned to the headboard of his bed and extracted from a long, narrow ledge a rolled length of paper that, when unfurled, would cover his desk. This he cleared with care, handing the magestone holder to Jewel while he placed weights on the corners.

Duster stared at it for a moment. "What is this?" she asked, almost in spite of herself.

"A map," Jewel told her quietly. "These lines are streets. And these are street names. This is the Merchant Authority," she added, choosing the right building with care. "It's like what you'd see if you were a bird."

Duster tried very hard to look unimpressed, and succeeded well enough that Rath thought there was half a chance it was genuine. But her words undercut her. "And that?" she said, with contempt. "Priest scrawls?"

"I told you," Jay said, her words developing some heat, "that you didn't have to learn to read if you didn't want."

"And let that one-handed gimp lord it over me?"

Jewel's lips compressed into a thin line. This, Rath thought, was interesting. "Rath," she said, her eyes never leaving Duster, "Duster and I need to talk for a minute."

He understood that she was asking for privacy in his personal quarters. She must, indeed, be very angry. For all her caution, she had a Southern temper, and burying it hadn't killed it. Although this, too, was interesting, it was less amusing. He did not hesitate, however.

He rose and headed toward the door, hearing the hiss of breath escape Jewel's clenched teeth. He opened the door quickly, and closed it in the same fashion, but not in time not to hear the distinct sound of a slap.

He hesitated now, torn between the desire to protect the orphan he'd dragged away from the banks of the river and its slender roof of bridge, and the desire to let her begin as she must continue. But he knew that he'd kill Duster if she hurt Jewel, and this was too much knowledge.

Children or no, they could play deadly games, and their sense of consequence was not yet profound. In some, it would never be.

Jewel knew that Duster wore a dagger; she also wore a white hand's imprint on her cheek. Jewel's Oma had been quick to anger, and Jewel herself had often felt the sting of that open palm. It hadn't hurt much, not physically, but it was humiliating.

And Duster did not take humiliation lightly.

But Jewel was past caring. She'd found Teller today. Lefty had helped. She'd found Lefty first, and his vulnerability, his utter dependence on Arann, had not yet left him. He'd opened up, in her house; he'd learned to talk and to leave his hand out of the sheath of his armpit. Until Duster had come.

Until, Jewel thought, she had brought Duster in.

It was enough. Duster was staring at her in mute and growing anger; her hand had fallen to the hilt of her dagger, clenching it until her knuckles were white.

"There are rules here," Jewel told her quietly. Had to speak quietly; the words that were straining to leave her lips would start a war she couldn't quell. It almost didn't matter. "I want you here," she added, still speaking in measured tones, and choosing her words with painful care. "And I made you a promise I intend to keep. Rath has helped; we couldn't do it without him.

"But you aren't the only person I promised to help. No one else has asked so much," she added, "and I accepted what you asked of me. But Lefty belongs here as well, and if you make his life miserable, it doesn't matter how much I think we need you. You're free to go. I won't keep you. I'll give you whatever information Rath is willing to part with. But you go on your own. And you don't come back."

"You think I won't go?" Duster snarled back. "Because it's cold and there's snow on the ground? You think I'm so desperate I'll suck up to-"

Jewel had lifted her hand; it was bunched in a fist. "I don't care," she said, abandoning quiet. "I don't care if you go. I care about the den, and if you're part of it, you have to care, too."

"No one cared about me," Duster shouted, and the knife left its sheath.

Quiet settled into Jewel, or perhaps it spread out from the core; she couldn't say. "I cared," she told Duster. "Enough to go back, to put us all in danger."

"You didn't know me."

"I knew that you saved Finch," was her quiet reply. "How is Finch so much different?"

Duster said nothing for a moment; the dagger didn't waver. But Jewel saw it, understood its presence, and let it be.

"If you saved her to spite your captors, you still saved her. It's not why that counts, Duster. It's what you did. Find that, here."

"They're not here."

"Aren't they? Why are we here, then? Why are we looking at this map, and waiting for Rath? Why are we-"

Duster drove the knife into the tabletop. Rath was going to be so p.i.s.sed off. But the table was better than the alternative, and Jewel acknowledged this truth in the only way she could.

"You said they thought they could make something out of you, and you didn't like it. I don't know who they were," she added, "but it's pretty d.a.m.n clear they like pain. Yours, ours, anyone's. You need to spite them? Spite them, then. Don't be that person. Don't cause pain." She paused.

"I know you think there always has to be a victim; I know you don't intend it to be you. But Lefty's important to me-to us, Duster-and in this house, there are no victims."

"You don't slap Lefty," Duster said.

"No."

The wild girl smiled almost crookedly. "So even Saint Jay has limits."

"A lot of them," Jewel replied. "But Lefty's been hurt enough, and he doesn't need more of it. Leave him alone. You need to snap? Snap at me. I had an Oma with a tongue sharper than your knife; I can take it."

"But I need you. For now."

"Now," Jewel said, "is all we ever have. I'm going to get Rath," she added.

"He'll be worried about you." The words were a sneer with syllables.

Jewel shrugged. "I worry about him sometimes. It's fair."

She started toward the door, and Duster said, "The new boy."

Jewel stopped.

"Why did you bring him home? He wasn't there. At the house. He didn't-"

"He found his mother's dead body in the snow today," Jewel replied, snow in her voice. "And he would have frozen there with her, trying to get her to move."

Duster said nothing. She didn't snort; she didn't make a gibe.

"Arann carried his mother to their home, and we waited for him. I brought him here because I need him here," she added. "Same as you."

"He's nothing like me."

"No. I'm nothing like you. Arann's nothing like you. So what? If we were all the same, I'd only need one of us."

"He's never killed."

"He's never had to."

Silence. Duster tried to remove her knife from its place in the table. And Jewel, aware that she had barely managed to skirt a crisis, said nothing. Nothing more. But whatever she had said was enough for now. Duster needed to hate something. Jewel had found enough of it to hold her, for now.

And now, as she had told Duster, was all they could be certain of.

Rath didn't even acknowledge the exchange when he returned. He looked bored and slightly frustrated. He failed to notice-and this took no little effort-the deep gouge in the table that happened to also coincide with a slash in the delicate map's surface. He wasn't certain what had been said-what could be said-but knew, as he entered the room, that it had been enough.

And it was not his job or his responsibility to add more.

"You are both aware that I spend much of my life cultivating different appearances."

Jewel nodded. Duster nodded as well, but there was an edge in the way she looked, once again, over the contents of his room. "You are both untutored in the art of a.s.suming a different station in life, and this is unfortunate. I am not by nature a patient man, and I am not a teacher. There is a man who taught me much, and I wish you to meet with him. He will explain the art of appearing to be something you are not.

"You will learn everything he is willing to teach," he added quietly. "I am willing to help you in your errand, but I am not willing to send you into a combat unarmed and ignorant."