The Hidden City (41 page)

He hesitated, but only briefly, and then he, too, followed. They all ran.

And at their back, she heard Taverson's loud exclamation, wordless in the rumble of too many voices, and she knew that he'd noticed that someone had started a fight.

Hoped that she hadn't killed too many people before it ended, and prayed that one of them wasn't Taverson.

Chapter Twelve

JEWEL REACHED FOR the storeroom door. She'd seen Rath do it a dozen times, but her hands still shook. The storeroom was open, which was good. At this time of night, it was
also
likely to be used, which was bad. She pushed Finch through the door, waved Carver in, and stepped in herself, shutting the door as quickly as possible. At this time of night, quiet counted for nothing.

It was dark; she could hear Finch and Carver breathing, but neither spoke. The door muffled the sounds of shouting, but didn't quell them entirely, and she leaned against the rough wood, fumbling in her pocket for the only thing of value she owned: the magelight.

Its weight in her palm, she spoke a single word, and light gradually illuminated the sacks, the walls, and the faces of two strangers.

Carver whistled.

Finch, still pale, only stared. She lifted a slender hand almost without thought—and dropped it to her side again when thought caught up with her.

“I'm Jay,” Jewel told her softly. “And we can't stay here.”

“There's not much way out,” Carver began grimly, but she lifted her left hand, palm out, the universal “shut up.”

She led them to the second storeroom's door, moving as quickly as the light allowed. “Here,” she told Carver. Can you open that?”

He frowned, approached the door, and knelt. She snorted. “It's not locked,” she said. “Just—open it, will you?”

Gaining his feet again, he pushed the door, and it gave. “Go in. You, too, Finch.” She followed them. “Close it,” she added, as she stepped through.

Carver snapped a salute.

She might have hit him, but not yet; not when Taverson's was still so close. Death receding, they listened. She wondered how much they would fail to hear once she had them in the tunnels. Worrying about what Rath would say when he saw Carver was so far down the list—

“Jay?”

She had listed to one side, seeing light, window, shadow, a dark blue dress at an odd angle. Shaking her head, she flinched.

“Jay?” Carver said again.

She said something very, very rude in Torra.

And Finch, silent until then, said sharply, “What is it? What's wrong?”

Jay looked at the pale girl then. “You speak Torra?” she asked, almost surprised. And in Torra. The girl nodded quietly. Jewel's use of the language seemed to comfort her—probably because she'd never met Jewel's Oma.

“Follow me now,” she told them. Trying not to see windows, and the odd slant of night sky; the tilting of moon, round and full. Seeing some of it anyway, imposed across the orb in her hand, as if moon and magelight were, for a moment, one.

She led them to the heavy boards. “This is sort of a trapdoor,” she said, and it sounded lame, even to her ears. “I can go first, but someone has to hold the light.” It wasn't what she'd meant to say; she didn't want to be parted from the stone. Not only was it Rath's gift, but it was life: they wouldn't make it through the tunnels without it.

Carver stepped up and held out a hand. Carver, the strange boy with a dagger—a dagger he hadn't even tried to use. Bar stool was better, though, she had to give him that. The stone? She hesitated for just a minute; he ignored the hesitation, waiting.

“Where are you taking us?” he asked, as she pushed the board out of the way. It would have made more sense to give the damn thing to Finch, who was smaller, and less likely to be of help. But she hadn't, and, as was so often the case, made do.

“Does it matter?” she countered, sliding the wood across the floor and listening to the labored sound of her breath. Of metal against metal. Of something that might have been laughter, had it not been so cold.

Rath
.

What was it? Why now? Since she'd met Rath, Jewel would swear everything about the cursed gift that marked her had gotten so much
worse
. She shoved her hair out of her eyes, and then shoved the board as far back as she could. There was just enough room.

“No,” Carver said at last, and she remembered that she'd asked him a question. Didn't remember what it was.

She looked into the darkness. “Here,” she told Carver, pointing at exactly where she wanted him to stand. “Hold it here.”

He nodded, and kneeling beside the hole in the floor, he held out his palm, just as she had done. “There's floor there,” he said at last, but he sounded doubtful.

“We either go there,” she told him grimly, “or there.” And pointed to the door. To what lay beyond it.

He didn't even try to tell her that their pursuer was just one man. Nodding, he sidled over, keeping his hand steady. She caught the edge of the floor in her hands, and swung herself down.

“Okay,” she said. “Drop the stone.”

He did. Just like that. Just as she had, when Rath had first taken her into the maze of tunnels that lay beneath the city streets. She moved to one side. “Finch next,” she told him.

Finch didn't hesitate. Possibly because she was worried that Carver would push her if she did. Hard to say—what did Jewel know of the girl, after all? That she would die if no one tried to help her. Not a lot to risk a life on, really.

But she had. Finch landed awkwardly, but she weighed so little, it probably didn't matter. She fell, stepped on the hem of her shift, and stumbled again. Even with the light, it was awkward here. Carver landed perfectly on his feet. His bare feet.

“There's rope there,” she told him. “Beyond the hole. It's in the pack—can you carry it?”

He nodded. “You planned this?”

“Well, it didn't get here by itself.” She wouldn't need it. She knew the way. But she couldn't quite bring herself to leave it behind. “Can you drag the boards across the hole?”

He was taller than she was, but not as tall as either Rath or Arann; he had to struggle, and it took a long time. But he managed. And the tunnels? They were quiet. The tavern suddenly seemed like it was in a different holding.

She held the stone she'd retrieved with care. “Follow me,” she told them quietly. “It's safe here.”

“Where is here?”

“Tunnels. More dirt than stone, but still there. I think—I think there's stone there as well.”

Carver touched the rough earth that formed the wall here. “How far do they go?”

“You'd be surprised.”

“Good surprise or bad?”

“Good. I hope.”

And Finch turned to Carver. “I'm Finch,” she told him gravely.

“I'm Carver,” he replied, raising a brow. Maybe both; Jewel could only see one. “Jay came here tonight to save your life.”

“You didn't come with her?”

“I came with her,” he said, and his stomach growled. He failed to notice, and Finch failed to notice; Jewel didn't ask him why he hadn't eaten. “But I—”

“We met each other in an alley,” she told Finch, “Just outside of the thirty-second holding.”

“When?”

“About an hour ago.”

The
is she sane
look crossed the younger girl's face, but it didn't linger. It would probably be followed in quick succession by
how did she know
and
was she involved in this
. Not that Jewel cared. She started to walk and they followed.

 

She knew the way home. She had done this run a half dozen times. But she had never done it so quickly; she was so far ahead of Finch and Carver that she heard one of them hit the ground with a thud, and realized that the light went where
she
did. When she turned back, she saw Carver rubbing a knee; he looked at her and said nothing. Not even loudly.

“Jay,” he said, as she waited for them with dwindling patience, “where are we going?”

And she meant to tell them
home
. But what came out instead, and that in a rush of syllables—was, “The Common.” The minute those words left her lips, she
knew
. And knew, in a different way, that she had never made the run—if there was one—to the Common from any part of the tunnels.

There had been wonder, for her, when she had first ventured after Rath into these mysterious byways. There had been more, and quieter, on her second journey. She had thought—when she could think of anything other than the possibility of failure—that she would have the time and the opportunity to offer some glimpse of that same wonder to Finch. Well, and Carver, too, now that he was here.

But a darker understanding was working its way through her now, as she stood, the stone granting light in her shaking hand. What the tunnels meant to her, what they might mean, was lost to urgency. There was no magic here, no otherness, no sense of wonder—there was fear, and it overshadowed everything less primal.

“This way,” she told them both.
“Hurry.”

 

She led them over broken stones, fallen walls; she led them between four pillars that had been sheared off at the height, and rested in darkness above. She led them down open roads, across which lay the crumbling ruin of what might have been a walkway, the light in her hand shifting too softly to give her any hint of what type of stone it might be. Gray was everywhere, and if it was broken by the occasional glint of something brighter and more colorful, it didn't matter. She heard Finch's brief Torra, more prayer than curse, and there was wonder in it.

She banked left, and then right, into a narrower section of what she thought of as street, given the ground that she walked on. Stopped once, along a crack that was three feet in width. Enough to jump easily, at Carver's height, or so she hoped.

He stopped and looked at her. She didn't tell him to jump.

“Rope,” she told him softly. “There's a thing sticking out from that wall. What is it?”

Carver, standing close to the “thing” in question, turned to examine it briefly. He proved himself to be no Rath; he shrugged. “It looks like a bowl. You know. In the wall.”

“Does it come off?”

He pulled.

“Just—sit in it.”

Carver did as she ordered. He sat. “If it comes off,” he told her, his butt conforming to the cold stone hollow, “it's not coming off with my weight.” He didn't add that he was the heaviest person present because it was pretty damn obvious.

“Good. Rope,” Jewel said again.

He
was
bright. He shrugged the pack off his slender shoulders, pulled its straps free of an extra yard of cloth that threatened to twist there, and set it on the ground. She came back so that he could see the knot he had to undo, but it was a waste of her time. “You can jump that?” she asked him.

“If the rest of the road is as solid as where we're standing, yes.”

She nodded. “Finch,” she told the younger—and smaller—girl. Her tone changed as she met wide eyes. “You've got to be able to jump this. Can you?”

“I—I don't know.”

“Take the other end of the rope. Carver, tie one end to either yourself or the bowl—I don't give a damn which. If she falls, you have to hold her weight.”

Carver nodded again. He hesitated, and then tied the rope around his waist in a knot that Jewel wasn't certain would hold. Neither, it appeared, was he; he caught the slack in both of his hands, and waited while Jewel looped the rope around Finch. Hers was a better knot, but she'd had Rath standing over her shoulder and frowning in that despicable silence of disapproval as she'd struggled to learn how to tie the damn thing.

She'd hated him for it until this moment.

“Finch,” she said, when she gave the knots a tug, “we
need
to get to the Common. We need to get there quickly.”

Finch said nothing; her nod was a pale movement of white skin and mousy hair. Delicate chin, delicate cheekbones—she was a bird, Jewel thought. But she couldn't fly. Jewel led her to the edge of the gulf. And then led her back, as far as the rope's play would allow. It was a long rope. “Take a running jump at it,” she told the girl, touching her by the shoulder.

Feeling the tremor that Finch hadn't—wouldn't—put into words. The words she said, so quietly that Carver couldn't hear them from where he stood, were unexpected. “Are you going to save someone else, like you saved me?”

“Gods, I hope so,” Jewel whispered back, liking the girl. Unable not to like her.