House War - The Hidden City Part 79

"And you will fear him," he added. "Even if you do not fear him now. How your fear is expressed will define everything.

"How you dress, and how comfortable you are in that dress, will not matter; he will expect you to be both ignorant and nervous. I believe it will amuse him. Defiance," he added, "will likewise amuse him, because he knows why you are there; he may well expect that you will not; that you will be nave. I think that this approach is best; if you are confused and you lose your way, he will again interpret it in a fashion that fits his view of the situation."

Haval rose, and set the cup aside. "At no time must your fear be for anything other than yourself. At no time must you pay heed to the presence of either servants or guards."

"Guards?" she said sharply.

"He'll have guards there," Duster whispered. "He won't send them away."

Haval closed his eyes for a moment. "No," he said at length. "For humiliation is important to men like Lord Waverly, and anything done in private will offer him less of what he craves."

"If we're to kill him," Jewel began, "we're going to have problems with guards."

"Oh, indeed. And I a.s.sure you that some thought has been given to the matter of the guards. It is not clear how many-"

"Two," Duster said quietly. Too quietly.

Haval did not pause. "Two guards, then. You will be attended by guards, and by Duster. But to Duster you will not look, do you understand? She will not be in the room, in any case, for the worst of it. You may look at the guards as chaperones, initially, and I consider this wise; you may treat their presence as safety.

"Do not make the mistake of believing it."

Jewel swallowed, throat dry. "Where will Rath be?" she asked him, her voice almost too quiet to be her own.

Haval closed his eyes for a moment, but his expression was thoughtful, not fearful. When he opened them, he said, "I don't know. It is not for your Rath, as you call him, that I am concerned. He has survived worse than this.

"And in my opinion, it is better that you not know. Fear has an edge when it is genuine. Were I younger, Jewel, I would accompany you. You are-neither of you-the children I would have chosen for a ruse of this nature."

"We're not children," Duster said.

"To me, you are," he replied. "Experience alone does not change this fact." He rose. "I will leave you both to think about what I have said today; I am weary, and I have not finished the work that will actually pay me."

Fear was a constant companion from that moment on, but really, when in their lives had it been absent? They were aware of it, and Duster, aware that she had somehow been exposed. This vulnerability was worse for her than for Jewel; Jewel took a blunt pride in her ability to accept the truth. If she hadn't developed that skill early on, she would never have survived a woman as sharp-tongued and clear-witted as her Oma.

But if Duster was ever to learn, it wasn't now. Her silence was heavy, twitchy, a nervous and caged thing. What would spring from it-and Jewel felt certain something would-would not be pleasant.

"I'm using you," Duster told her as they walked.

Jewel shrugged.

"Don't you care?"

"Not much."

Steam streamed from Duster's slender nostrils as she snorted. "People use each other," she said. "What are you using me for?"

Jewel shrugged again. "Don't know," she said quietly. "I don't think about it much."

"What do you want?"

"Impossible things."

"Like what? Money? Power?"

"Safety," was the curt reply.

"You don't get safety without money or power," Duster snapped back. She was spoiling for a fight. Would have to be; she'd been so d.a.m.n attentive for Haval, it had to come out sometime.

"Money and power just get you attention," Jewel snapped back. Better her than Lefty. "There are a lot of dead people who had money and power."

"You get more safety with than without."

"You never have safety," Jewel answered. "It's just something to want. Like happiness," she added, squaring her shoulders. "Or peace."

"Peace?" Duster stopped walking, her hands by her sides, bunched into incongruous fists around folds of loose skirting. "What kind of drivel is that?"

Jewel shrugged for a third time. "You don't want the answer, don't ask. You don't like the answer? Tough."

"Do you even understand what could happen to you? Do you have any idea what Waverly can do?"

"I can guess," Jewel said bleakly. "I'd rather not talk about it, but I can guess."

"I know."

"If you didn't, we wouldn't be meeting him."

Duster nearly shrieked, and Jewel felt slightly guilty; she was almost enjoying this. Almost. "I could die in the snow," she told Duster, before Duster could let loose again. "I could freeze to death, the way Teller's mother did. I could be Teller, finding her there. I could starve to death, the way Lefty almost did. I could have drowned on the riverbanks if the rains had come early and Rath had never found me.

"Dead is dead," she added quietly, willing herself to believe it. "And everybody dies sometime."

"That's your Oma again, isn't it?"

"What if it is?"

"Everybody dies sometime. I want to be old when I do it."

"So do I. So did Teller's mother. What we want doesn't matter. Doesn't always matter," she added. Thought about it a bit, and said, "No, that's not true. It does matter. It's just not everything. You want to kill Waverly. We're trying to. We wouldn't be trying if it wasn't what you wanted.

"But after that-have you thought about after?"

Duster shrugged. Which meant no. And almost meant she wasn't about to start.

"Think about after," Jewel told her, hoping to divert her anger.

"I'll get there when I get there."

We'll get there, Jewel thought grimly. She said nothing else. Let Duster fume. Let the cold of the walk bleed off some of the heat of her anger. Jewel shortened her stride, drawing her shoulders down her back and lifting her chin as Haval had taught her.

"What the h.e.l.ls are you doing now?"

"Practicing," Jewel told her. "Rath hasn't given us a day. He hasn't given us a place. But when he does, we have to be ready."

Rath was seldom home, and when he was, he was not in a mood for company or discussion. Jewel was, but she wanted Rath's. In his absence, however, she arranged the early outings to market, she stocked the cupboards, and she fetched the boots that had finally been finished from the rather truculent cobbler. In bits and pieces, the children in her care became less gaunt and less cold; Fisher even ventured a few words here and there, although he would never be much for talk.

Only Lander's silence was persistent, a reminder of the things that lay both in the past and the future.

At the end of the ninth day, Haval told them he thought they had come as far as they could under his tutelage.

"So we come to the last and the least of things," he told them, and he headed toward an armoire against the west wall, one that had never been touched or opened in their presence. "Appearance. It is easy to alter appearance," he added, "but harder to live in it. What I have taught you will carry you through much; you can suggest training and birth by carriage and speech, and if you must spend any time under scrutiny, that subtle suggestion is more powerful than all of the dyes and superficial artifice in the world.

"But the world is superficial, and now that we have come as far as we can in the time we have, I will teach you how to alter your appearance."

"Your appearance," he said, turning to Jewel, "is unfortunately distinctive. Especially your hair."

She said nothing. Distinctive was not the word that was usually used to describe it, but mess was nothing she wanted to offer as an alternative when Haval had that particular expression on his face.

Everyone gaped in their own special way when Jewel finally opened the door, took a breath, and walked in. Duster was almost skulking behind her. There was a loud moment of silence that was broken by Finch.

Unfortunately, Finch didn't exactly say anything.

Rath, watching in silence from the door to his room, which had remained slightly ajar for the better part of the two hours they were late, was surprised to find that he was jarred, as unsettled for a moment as the rest of the children here, although he'd been witness to far more spectacular transformations.

If there was one thing that defined these two-besides their ability to curse in Torra-it was the fact that they were who they were. Duster, capable of lying when it suited her, also loudly proclaimed the fact, whittling away at any possible gain subterfuge might lend her. And Jewel? Practical in the extreme, she barely paid attention to what she was wearing as long as it was either warm enough or cool enough to suit the weather. Her hair, which had always been a tangle of curls, was like a visual punctuation to the statement of who she was.

And neither of them looked precisely like themselves.

He recognized them, of course; would have recognized them anywhere and under any circ.u.mstances. But Duster's sleek hair had been both cut and dyed; it was a pale, almost platinum blonde. Her faced had been powdered, and were it not for the color of her eyes, she would have been able to pa.s.s for a cold Northern servant. Were it not for her eyes and the way she was uncomfortably crowding behind Jewel, her shoulders hunched inward as if expecting a blow.

Jewel herself? Her hair had been ironed. Rath was aware of the custom; had seen it several times in his youth. But Jewel's hair was actually quite long when it was straightened. Haval had not chosen to change its color; it was the same auburn that it had always been. But it reached for her back, and in the dress she now wore, it was striking. Her eyes, Haval had also left alone; he had powdered her skin, paling her natural complexion, but he had done little else.

Yet what he had done was enough; she looked only slightly less wary than Duster as she confronted her group.

But she was still Jewel; something caused her to look past her den down the hall; to see Rath as he stood in his open door. To say, "Sorry we're late. Haval insisted."

"Given what he's done, I'm surprised you arrived before dawn," Rath replied. "You look . . . different. Both of you." He took a breath, like a pause, and held it. "The timing is not, perhaps, poor. I have some business that will keep me away this eve, and some part of tomorrow, but I believe that tomorrow night, or the day after, we will be ready."

Jewel nodded. Her nod was entirely her own; it was all business. Duster, behind her, said nothing. And Teller, watching as Rath watched, offered no words, but he turned and met Rath's gaze with something akin to disapproval. It was not a bold glare, such as Duster would have offered; it was not-quite-an invitation to argument. In fact, it invited no response at all, and Rath was almost at a loss for words. Which, considering how often he spoke with Jewel's den, was just as well. He retreated, leaving them, and returned to his room, where the letters he had written lay unfinished. They were in various stages, and no single one of them had been left untouched or unmarked; he had sifted each word for tone and weight, choosing first one and then another. Tonight, however, at least one must be finished and sent, and before it was posted, he had one more visit to make.

The Den-the bar-was dark and noisy when he arrived; this was not his preferred time of day, but he was not there to enjoy the rather unfortunate atmosphere. He was there to speak with the men of The White Lady. Northerners all, they sometimes referred to themselves as sea wolves, an incongruous term that nevertheless suited them.

Here, with snow in the air and on the ground, they were beached and stranded; the port itself was nothing short of hazard, for it was not the job of the port authority to maintain pa.s.sages in and out of the shipyards when the ships themselves were in harbor for the season.

And among those, of course, Harald.

The smoke was thick, but the scent of ale and the sweat of men too smart-or too stupid-too remove their winter vests, was almost as tangible. In a youth that troubled him enough he seldom dwelled on it, he would have shuddered just pa.s.sing the doors. And now, a world away, he felt at home here, where death was evident, and manners not layered so thick that they could hide it easily.

Harald was quiet; this was not unusual; he joined Rath by the simple expedient of glowering his way through the crowd. Reputation-in context-was always valuable; it obviated the need for Harald to actually injure the fools who might otherwise stand too long in his way to prove a point. He sat and Rath waved one of the brothers over; the man came and plunked two mugs across a table that had already seen at least one good spill.

Rath nodded; Harald nodded. That was all the time left for social intercourse when the bar was busy.

"Well?" Rath said, as they bent over their drinks. The question was casual, but it held weight. Harald did not answer immediately, which was usually a bad sign; when he gathered his thoughts, rather than his weapons, things were often slow.

But Harald only looked like a thug; had he been, in fact, no better than an ill-tempered warrior, he would not now be alive. "The report handed to the Magisterium by the magisterial investigators spoke simply of a cooking fire," he said at last.

"A cooking fire."

"Aye."

"And the dead?"

"Trapped in an old building. Probably drunk; it was morning, after all."

"The Magi were not summoned?"

"No."

Rath was silent. "The investigators?"

"Their names were attached to the report," Harald said quietly. And he removed a sheaf of papers from within his cloak. "This was costly," he added.

Rath nodded and handed him a small bag. The tinkle was lost to the crowd, but it didn't matter overmuch; no one would think of taking the money by force when Harald would gamble at the tables sooner or later. No one smart, at any rate.

"They thought a kitchen fire started in the grand hall?"

"They imply that little enough was left standing; the fire spread."

"Incompetence?"

"The magisterians are not my domain, Rath. If they're anyone's here, they're yours. You tell me." He paused. "You made a report?"

"I sent rumor with a runner," Rath replied. It was an evasion. Harald clearly expected no less. "But there were other witnesses in the streets; mage fire was clearly used there."

"They didn't speak with your witnesses then," Harald replied. "If any of them are still alive. You gave names?"

"I failed to retrieve names," Rath said. "It did not, at the time, seem necessary."

"Then perhaps no one was willing to come forth."

"I told you-"

"Beyond your rumormonger," he added.

But they were both disturbed. The use of battle magic in the streets was not a daily event; it was perhaps an event witnessed every decade or two, and that with both dread and fear. Mages were feared; they could, by dint of both birth and training, do the impossible. It was only the iron grip of the Kings, and the watchful eye of the Magi themselves, that kept that fear at bay.

And it had slipped here, and slipped badly.

"You expected this?" Harald asked, draining half his mug. He was still stone sober.

"Not this," Rath replied, drinking less heavily. "But something, yes. I would not have said it would be possible to . . . prevaricate to this extent."