House War - The Hidden City Part 74

"Duster only wanted one thing, when we rescued her," Jewel said quietly.

"Finch told me."

"We're working on that."

Teller was silent. It was a long silence, and a drawn one. "You don't want anyone else to help you."

"No."

The force of the word would have stopped anyone else; it didn't seem to surprise the meek and compliant boy in front of her. "Why? Anyone here would help you in any way they could if you asked."

"I don't want their help. I don't want yours," she added, the words harsh. That would have silenced Finch or Lefty. Teller was unmoved. "I owe you my life," he whispered.

"Yes," she replied. "And I want you to have your life, and your life isn't Duster's."

"Neither is yours."

It wasn't what she expected. "It's mine, or part of mine," she told him quietly.

"Why?"

"Because it has to be. Teller-when I came home-the kitchen, the cooking-it reminded me of my home. When my family was alive. I miss them," she added, "And I want that for us. That home, that type of home. I want that more than I want anything else. And asking for this from any of you-it would change that."

"Will it change you?"

She closed her eyes. "I don't know," she said quietly. "But if you get involved, if all of you get involved, there's no way back. For me," she added. "Or for Duster."

He nodded. Just a nod. But it contained everything.

"I think I like it here," he told her, as he closed the book and handed it back to her keeping. "I want to stay."

"I want you to stay."

"I know. Don't change too much."

"I'll try." Her expression shifted. "You haven't been talking to Rath, have you?"

Teller shook his head. "Don't need to," he answered. "And besides, he never talks to anyone but you."

"You know that after two days?"

Teller shrugged. "I want to be able to read this," he told her, touching the book's cover. "With you. With them."

"You will."

He said nothing, and she felt the room as an empty place, a cold place. Premonition.

And Rath walked in.

Finch was shy; if Jewel had been asked, she would have said that Teller was shy as well, for they seemed alike in many ways. But Teller offered Rath diffidence without fear. And Rath accepted Teller's presence in his inner sanctum as if he expected to find him there.

"Haval will see us this evening," he told her, without preamble.

She nodded, but she saw that his gaze was not actually on her, although it skirted her face: he was watching the new boy's reaction. Whatever minimal reaction Teller had-Jewel would have said it was none-was exactly the right reaction.

"I offer you what sympathy I have for the loss of your family," he added, to Jewel's great surprise. "Loss of kin, in any way, is a blow. We're all defined by how we handle loss, and I think you may prove my better in this." And he bowed his head with genuine respect. Jewel remembered to shut her jaw. It kind of snapped.

"I have some work to do here, and I would prefer to do it without interruption. Teller," he added, and the boy nodded, "you may, if you handle them with care, borrow my books, save for only a select few. Jay will let you know which ones those are, if it is not obvious."

Teller nodded again.

"But I must ask you both to leave me."

Jewel was halfway out the door when Teller turned.

"Thank you," he said. Just that. But Rath smiled.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

HAVAL WAS WAITING for them when they arrived; it was dark, although the Common-and more important, his store-had not yet closed for the day. Magelights glowed brightly above the snow, lending it beauty and grace, neither of which deprived it of deadliness. Like Duster, Jewel thought, surprising herself.

He was at work at his counter, and glittering beads were spread out between needles and spools of thread that were colored and almost gleaming. Fabric covered the counter as well, possibly the length of a skirt. He was working with it when they entered.

His aide-Jewel couldn't quite think of her as an apprentice-approached them with her fixed and weary smile, and Haval motioned her back to her place with a nod of the head. "We'll want tea," he said.

This was clearly not the woman's regular job, and she frowned. Jewel jumped up. "I can make that," she told the tight-lipped woman. This did not endear her.

"I don't like this," the woman told Rath. "I'm happy enough that Haval sees his old friends, but I don't want him involved in your business. We have a respectable shop now, Rath. We have a real business."

"I a.s.sure you, Hannerle, that we have no intention of-"

"I don't want your d.a.m.n a.s.surances."

Jewel was surprised, but said nothing; this was Rath's problem.

"Very well. If they bore you, I will leave them for now. We are not here to involve Haval in anything that would require his absence from your establishment, and it is clear that the commission over which he labors is a significant one; he does not stop for much. No doubt he will be working as we speak," he added.

Hannerle snorted. "No doubt," she said. "It's the type of work I question. We're not young, Rath, and we've got something to lose. I don't want to lose it."

"Hannerle," Haval said curtly, "enough. Rath understands that I'm an aged, respectable citizen. He has not come here to tempt me back to a life of crime in the streets. He doesn't have that much money."

"He has enough influence."

"Hannerle."

Hannerle had the hair that Haval lacked, pulled back in an overly severe knot and fastened by a bronze pin. She also had lines worn into her brow and around her mouth and eyes, and it seemed that they were perpetually on the edge of a frown. Or, in this case, in the middle of one. "I'll show you the kitchen, girl," she said curtly.

Jewel nodded and followed her. "I won't be a minute," Haval said, to her retreating back.

"She will," Hannerle snapped back.

But Jewel understood Hannerle, so much like her Oma in her distrust of strangers, and she felt oddly comforted by the woman's presence here. "He's your husband?" she asked, when the door to the shop had been closed firmly behind them.

"Aye," Hannerle said wearily. "And he's as dishonest as the day is short in this season, but for all that, he's got a good heart, when he can be bothered to find it.

"He was in another line of work when we met," she added, her expression grim, but softening as she spoke. "And I adored him for it. I was young and foolish then.

But not so foolish that I'd tie my fortunes to his if he didn't make a few changes. He has talent," she added, her anger relenting to a grudging pride, "and an eye for detail that can't be matched. We've built a clientele in the Common that would belong in the High Market on the Isle if we could afford the taxes and the rents there.

"He built it," she added. "I don't know why you're here, girl, and I don't know why Rath brought you. But Haval won't say no to Rath."

"Why?"

"He owes him too much, he says. He won't tell me why; believe that I've asked. But if he wasn't entirely honest, he was almost entirely honorable, in his own way. He means it. Nothing I say is going to change his mind. So I'm going to ask you not to destroy our lives for the sake of a simple favor."

Jewel nodded quietly, taking the responsibility that the older woman handed her as if it were food, and she were in need of it.

"This," Hannerle said, "is the kitchen."

It looked very much like the counter at which Haval was working. "I'll help you," the older woman added grudgingly. "Don't touch those bottles; they're expensive dyes and you'll be dark blue for months if they spill."

Jewel nodded again. She was accustomed to taking care when walking among the things other people treasured. Rath had taught her that much. Hannerle donned an ap.r.o.n, and offered one to Jewel as well; it was far too large, but she took it and put it on anyway.

They worked in silence, until Jewel said, "I won't let him do anything to hurt himself, or you." She spoke gravely.

The woman's facial lines were still etched there, but they were transformed by a weary smile. "Rath has a good heart," she said quietly, "but he never lets go of anything. He could have been a Patris on the Isle, did you know that? He could still go back, if he wanted."

"He doesn't talk about his past, and if he doesn't, I can't."

"Smart girl."

"Sometimes."

"I can give you something for your hair," Hannerle said, when Jewel had shoved it out of her eyes for the fiftieth time.

"Won't help," Jewel replied. "It's been tried. My hair is just like this."

"Rath doesn't usually involve himself in the lives of strangers. But you're too young to have any sort of links with his past. You're not the child of a friend?"

Jewel shook her head. "I'm just an orphan he found in the Common," she said quietly. "I was new to the streets. It was warmer then."

"And he took you in?"

Jewel shrugged.

"Then maybe he's changing, too, and high time. He's never married," she added. "And I doubt he will, now."

Jewel nodded. "He won't," she said softly, and as she said it, the knowledge took sharp and sudden root, and she was paralyzed with a sense of foreboding. She forced herself to pull out plates, cups, to tend to Hannerle in spite of the sense of unease. No, of dread.

It would pa.s.s; it had nothing to anchor it. No vision, no image, nothing at all.

"Why are you here?" Hannerle asked, as she set water to boil and dried her hands on her ap.r.o.n.

"I'm not sure. Rath says Haval knows things he can teach us. That's all."

"What things?" Sharper question.

"Observant things. He says Haval can tell you almost everything about a person just by watching them for a few minutes."

"Aye, that's true."

"And he thinks we need to learn some of it. Whatever we can," she added. "But that's all."

"What does he want you to learn?"

"I don't know." She was entirely honest; she didn't. But she had a guess or two. "But it's important enough that we will learn whatever it is he's willing to teach us. We don't have much time," she added, "and we won't bother you much, I promise."

"It's not you that worries me," Hannerle said, setting the cups on a tarnished, silver tray. "But you've a solid head on your shoulders by the sound of you."

Jewel wondered. But not aloud. Hannerle didn't ask her anything else, which was a kindness. But she made Jewel carry the tray, which was not.

"You both carry the streets in you," Haval said without preamble, cup in his hands, silk-or so he said-making a blue spill on his lap. "Rath does as well, but he can either embrace it or cast it off. We will begin, today, by studying your speech patterns. Tell me a bit about yourselves," he added, looking at the two girls. Rath, sitting across from Haval, was silent; he offered no warning and no guidance.

Jewel, knowing that Duster would not speak first-and might not speak at all-began. She spoke of her family life before she'd lost her family, and spoke a little, and more hesitantly, about the days in which she had wandered the streets, without a familiar roof above her head.

"Where did you end up?"

"By the river, under one of the bridges," Jewel replied. "It was hotter, then, and I needed to be clean."

"Practical. Don't use the word Oma," he added.

"Why not?"

"It marks you as lowborn here."