The Hidden City (22 page)

They ran. Lefty's gait was awkward, and Jewel could tell, from the way he favored his leg, that it wasn't only his arm that the ragged boards had caught. Still, it wasn't broken, and if he looked strange in his bobble, he still
moved
. He was crying. Not weeping; that would make noise. All of his breath was visible, he was so thin.

She was angry.

It wasn't the last time she would be angry like this, but it was almost the first. She didn't know how old he was, and she had no time—or breath—to ask; she only knew that he
felt
young to her. A child. Someone her Oma would have curbed her tongue around, and protected simply because he needed protection.

He's not a bad boy,
she could almost hear her Oma say. Smell of familiar pipe smoke, like an echo of time, was a physical memory; the rain didn't wash it away.

Instead, it washed dirt away, made exposed stone slippery. Rath was surefooted as a cat; Jewel stumbled once or twice. She righted herself with difficulty because she was holding onto Lefty's hand. His good hand. His fingers were white as they clutched her palm; had he had any strength at all, he would have crushed it. And she would have let him.

Rath was pale and wet; he was also frustrated. Jewel knew it because she'd grown to know all of his silent moods. She wondered if Lefty would notice, and decided she didn't care, which took effort. Her hand was cold. When Lefty slipped, she tightened that hand, half-dragging him to his feet.

“I won't let you fall,” she told him, her lips almost pressed to his ear. Felt the words more than heard them. As if, she thought, they were distant thunder.

He looked at her.

“He'll be okay,” she told him. Meaning it.

“You can see that?” he asked.

She wanted to lie. Really, really wanted to lie. But she'd never been good at it, and even for comfort's sake, she couldn't do a decent job; this time, it was Jewel who looked away. Pulled him along, moving as fast as he could, but not faster.

“Jay,” Rath said.

She stopped instantly. His voice was quiet. As cold as the coming winter. If snow were a man, it would be Rath at this moment.

“Lefty,” Rath added, his back toward them both, his shoulders a perfect line, his right elbow bent so that his hand could lie casually atop his sword's hilt, “this is the street?”

Lefty nodded.

“He says yes,” Jewel told Rath's back. She didn't ask why he'd asked. Instead, she gathered Lefty, as if he were something precious she could carry. The whole of his slender body was pressed against hers, back to chest, rain wet and shaking. He was shorter than she was.

His right hand was juggled loose from its mooring; she could see that it was missing fingers. Blunt stubs had been scarred—seared, she thought, to stop bleeding. She didn't cringe. She didn't ask. But she bit her lip, and the skin between her teeth broke.

Lefty wasn't talking.

Rath wasn't talking.

But in the distance, someone was. At least one person. Maybe two. Ugly voice, either way, heavy as if with drink or anger. There was a certain humor that was almost indistinguishable from fury, and it was an ugly, primal sound. Jewel's body tensed as the noise reached her ears, and Lefty's tensed as well. He backed up, as if to flee, but there wasn't any place to flee
to
; she had him, and intended to hold on.

Rain, more rain. Jewel hated the rain.

Her teeth chattered with it. Her vision blurred. Her hair grew weighty and dragged its curls into her eyes. One day, she was going to shear her head. Baldness had a certain appeal.

As did nervous thought, any thought, that had nothing to do with Rath.

He had a room in which he had two sticks, a carpet, and a whole lot of nothing else. He made her practice with those sticks until her arms were shaking with their weight. It was one of the few times his mouth never stopped moving, and all of the words he uttered were sharp, curt, and disapproving.

But although he had called it sword practice, those sticks and this sword were so utterly different she had never truly appreciated the connection. Didn't appreciate it now as the right hand tightened around the black hilt of the long, double-edged blade that hung from the leather strap encircling his hips.

All noise was the noise of steel against steel; the mouth of the scabbard scraping the edge of the blade as the two parted. Rath's stance changed; she could still see his back, but beyond it, now, the distant figures of large men. Younger than Rath. One of them wider. None of them taller.

And none of them armed with a sword.

They hadn't noticed Rath. In fact, they seemed not to notice much; they were standing in a loose circle, and they looked to be doing an ugly, visceral dance composed almost entirely of jerky leg motions.

Kicking. Stomping.

They were ruddy in color, at least from this distance; they wore old clothing, but it seemed to fit them. The clothes were dirty, and some torn. Gray, brown, a hint of green flashing—these, the poor light was still capable of revealing. Morning light, edging toward noon. No sun. Little shadow.

She couldn't see their faces; she could see the backs of their heads. Hear their voices, unrestrained now. The street was almost empty, but not quite; men and women were pulling children, or themselves, to either side of the street, toward buildings, doorways, and away from violence.

Once, she would have been one of them.

She was ashamed of it.

Because she could see, as Rath strode forward and she followed at a safe distance—at a distance that Rath would never have considered to
be
safe were it not for his presence—that Arann was stretched across the ground. His back was turned skyward, his arms pulled around his face in an attempt to protect his head. She could see mud across his exposed skin, where the torn edges of a too small tunic ended.

His hands were red and bloody, and red was a startling color, here, where there was no color.

What little light there was was not enough to make Rath's steel glint. His steps were quiet, and he did not speak a word. They didn't seem to notice him.

Not until Lefty did the unexpected: He screamed.

Jewel froze; the scream went through her; she could feel it almost as clearly as she could hear it, and her arms tightened. Good thing, too; Lefty suddenly erupted in a frenzy of motion, kicking and flailing, the right hand's deformity forgotten. Had he been a little larger, he would have broken free.

As it was, she could hold him. She
did
. She spoke soothing words, nonsense words; had she been able to free a hand, she would have slapped him just to get his attention. She'd seen that done before; seen it work.

But here? She just held on. He scratched her face, her cheek, his palm smacked her left eye, hard. She almost bit him.

Didn't. Because as she looked up, she could see that his screaming had silenced all other sound. Had stilled all motion except Rath's.

The street to either side of the road went on forever in Jewel's vision; the buildings, squat and low on the east, taller and in slightly better repair on the west, were like a broken frame. Weeds flattened by rain and heavy feet provided color, and the pocked stone of what had once been a solid road formed the base of the tableau; above it, the heights were gray.

In the center, five men turned slowly to see who had made the noise. Lefty stopped struggling now that he had the attention he didn't actually want.

That attention was scant; if they noticed Lefty, it was cursory. Rath's sword was out; he held it across his chest. She could see that much. Could almost—but not quite—tell what stance he had adopted.

Five against one.

Rath's lessons, his harsh words, overlay the silence as Jewel watched, Lefty in her arms. They were his audience; the five men who also watched were different: they were his enemies. Two against one were bad odds, but in the right circumstance, they weren't impossible.

Three against one was a guarantee of death, unless the one was an expert and the three were incompetent. Anything else? A quick, fast run.

But Rath wasn't running.

Some part of Jewel wanted to scream at him to do just that; some part of Jewel was tensed to sprint. Had she not been holding Lefty, she would have. But had Lefty not come to her at all, Rath would be in his study, with whatever it was he'd managed to cut out of the heart of his beloved maze. And she would be in her rooms, or in the kitchen, struggling in a different way with the language and the lessons that Rath insisted she work through. There would be no rain. There would be no death. The walls would be pale, and dry, and clean. Not a cage, but a fortress.

One of the men spoke. He didn't step forward. But he did draw a long dagger. It was not the equal of Rath's sword. Jewel, no weaponsmith and no expert, could see the truth of that comparison anyway.

“We've no business with you,” he said, nodding to the others. They pulled away, forming up in an awkward line, their shoulders almost touching as they also drew the weapons they carried. Weapons that they hadn't used against Arann, or he'd be dead.

“Good,” Rath replied, stepping forward, the motion graceful, deliberate. His sword didn't waver. His voice didn't either. It was low, the single word; low enough it shouldn't have carried. But Jewel could hear it so clearly she knew that it had. “I've come for the boy,” he added.

“He's not for the taking,” the man replied. Ugly man. Face scarred, chin thick, lips rising over a prominently chipped set of teeth. From here, she could see them.

“No,” Rath replied quietly. “He's not. Step aside.”

The man snorted. He said something Jewel didn't care to catch, and Rath stepped forward quickly. It wasn't a run; it was a leap.

Jewel stayed her ground. She couldn't draw dagger— and knew that Rath would only be distracted if she did, because he'd
know
. The best she could do—the only thing she could do—was to stay far enough away that she wasn't something to worry about.

Or something for Rath to worry about.

That, and hold on to Lefty.

“He's alive,” she said, in Lefty's ear.

There was motion then. Five men. One man. Everything happened quickly. Jewel had never seen Rath fight before. Everything he had taught her so far had been about
not
fighting.

And she was sure, watching him, that this
was
a fight. He seemed to know exactly where to be, exactly where not to be, exactly where to thrust sword; he never stopped moving once he'd started, but every step seemed so deliberate it was like a dance.

He offered them no warning. Made no threats. He didn't posture.

Instead, he killed. And this, Jewel had never seen either. She watched not his blade, not his feet, not his hands, but his face when it was turned toward her; pale and composed, it was shorn of any emotion at all. His eyes were wide and clear, almost gray in the clouded day, as if they were mirrors and reflections, nothing more.

Yes,
she thought numbly.
Yes, Rath.
Nodding, his words made real only by this act: the falling of bodies, the gout of arterial blood, the sudden screams of voices that were horrible in the silence that followed their end.

Three men ran. The leader was not among them.

The green flash of cloth that had been tied round his forehead was still green; it was forest green, she thought, because of the rain. The water. Hunter green.

The second man had fallen across Arann.

Only when Rath wiped his sword across his sash and sheathed it did Jewel let Lefty go. They both stumbled as her arms loosened, as if they had held each other up.

But Lefty kept stumbling, the awkward motion propelling him toward the body that was slumped over Arann. Over the only person in the world that Lefty trusted.

Rath said nothing as Lefty approached. He didn't try to meet the boy's eyes; he didn't try to touch him. Instead, he grimaced, bent, and lifted the body he'd made, rolling it to one side with an audible grunt.

Jewel approached as Lefty knelt in the mud, his knees absorbing the dirt. And the blood. He was touching Arann's arms, Arann's back.

“It's time to leave,” Rath told Jewel, without looking at her.

She almost shrugged. “It's the thirty-second holding,” she said, as she watched Lefty, and only Lefty. “If anyone bothers to call the magisterians, they won't be here for a while.”

“Count on Kalliaris to frown,” Rath replied grimly. “She's smiled on your boy—on both of them—and that's the most we can expect from her in one day. Tell Lefty to get out of the way.”

Jewel looked almost dubious. “Arann's big,” she began.

“Move him, Jay.”

Jewel nodded, and crouched beside Lefty. “We need to leave,” she told him, as gently as she could. “We don't want the magisterial guards to ask us how these two died.”

Lefty didn't answer. In fact, from his expression, Jewel would have bet that he hadn't heard her at all. She cringed and then reached out to grab the smaller boy's shoulder.
“Lefty.”

He looked at her then, and she was sorry she'd touched him. His eyes were round, red, almost wild; he looked like a caged, injured dog. She'd had enough experience with injured animals to know danger when she saw it.

She pitched her voice low, kept it soothing, and carefully lifted her hand. “He's not dead,” she told him, putting as much force as she could into the words without changing their cadence or tone. “But if we don't move him, he will be. It's cold, it's wet, and he's injured.”