The Hidden City (90 page)

And tonight, she had to sound like a native.

She was, of course, afraid, and she remembered clearly what Haval had said about fear. Coming here, in the cold that was so familiar it was almost like kin, it had been easy to believe that she could channel fear; in this bright room, this beautiful, impossible place, belief faltered.

But the boy who was leading her—and he was a boy, although older than she by a few years if she was any judge—now offered her a pained smile, a hesitant one. “Lady,” he said formally, “your host is waiting.” And in his tone she heard the words he wanted to say, and didn't: that this host did not like to be kept waiting.

“Of course,” she said, in a pale, thin voice. “It's—I'm sorry to keep you.” But hadn't Rath said she would wait for him? He was early. Lord Waverly was early. Jewel was well aware of how their plan could go wrong—but all of the disasters she'd imagined, and she'd done little else, did not include this.

He shook his head. “In the Summer, hardly anyone notices the Arboretum. But in the Winter, it's different. It's almost like a harbor.”

“Do you come here often?”

“Me?” He laughed. Caught himself and folded laughter into awkward silence. “No. The Master Gardener would kill me if I so much as dribbled water across his precious flowers.”

She laughed, and her laughter sounded almost natural. “I can almost understand why,” she told him. “I'm not very good with plants.”

“He doesn't call them plants. He has names for all of them,” the boy added.

“Flowers have names.”

“He calls that one Fossie.”

“Oh.”

“But if he saw you touch them, he couldn't say a word. You were careful,” he added, “and you—appreciate them.”

“We don't have flowers like this.”

“No, not unless you sleep in a flower bed.” He began to walk, and then slowed. Turned to look at Jewel. And to look away. It was painful and awkward, and she wanted to tell him, “It's okay.” But her own words wouldn't come, maybe because she just didn't trust them to be the
right
words.

That was the problem with lying,
she thought;
you had to have the knack of using the right damn words at the right damn time.
She had the knack of using the wrong words at the right time on a good day.

“If you—” he smiled, but it was the ghost of a smile—something that might once have known life, but now knew only cold and fear. “There are bells—” He stopped again. “Do you—have you met your host before?”

“He's a business associate of my father's,” she replied smoothly. “I haven't met him yet, but I'm told I'll like him.”

He said nothing at that. But the smile was gone, and he was pale and cold, like the Winter outside. Even the passing garden—and it still existed all around them—leeched color from his face.

“The dining room here is part of the Arboretum,” he said formally and stiffly. “The walls are made of special glass. Your host has—the Arboretum is his for the evening. There will be attendants to serve dinner,” he added, “but they will leave when the lord commands them.”

She nodded.

Nothing else to say, really.

 

Rath made his way to the spacious and—given his experience—the surprisingly clean kitchen. As it was Winter the staff numbered four; during the busy merchanting season, when the port was not occupied by empty ships, there were at least triple that number. He knew this because it was not the first time he had used this fine inn for business transactions. Admittedly, the tour of the kitchens that he had insisted on making had been entirely secondary to his goals, but the role he had taken for that particular job had required no less.

He glanced around the large room and frowned. There were two aproned cooks—a woman of Rath's age, and a young man; the man who ruled the kitchen could be seen nearer the large stoves that occupied the far wall. But the man he had come to see, briefly, was nowhere in sight.

The woman, however, rose as Rath paused. She eyed him dubiously. But if she was brisk, she chose to be polite; it was, after all, a sparse season, and everyone needed to eat.

“Here,” she said. “You've taken a wrong turn. These are the kitchens, and they're no place for guests.”

“My apologies,” he said. “I serve as a courier for Lands-don's, and I was instructed to carry a small parcel for Marrett. His daughter's been unwell,” he added.

She frowned. “Aye,” she said after a long pause. “She has, at that. But maybe whatever it is that made her unwell has also caught Marrett—he's not come into work today.” She lowered her voice and added, “and the Cook's fit to be tied; we've an important guest for the off-season.”

“I beg your pardon,” Rath said, running a hand through his hair. “But you said he hasn't been in this evening? Perhaps I have the wrong shift.”

“Oh, no, you've got the right shift. But he's not come in, and he's sent no word.” She shook her head. “Maybe you should take that parcel you're carrying off to his home; he might find it more useful there.”

Just like that, the world shifted. Rath was a practiced liar, a practiced con man. He nodded briskly to the woman and apologized, just as briskly, for the interruption, before retreating from the kitchen.

 

But if the Arboretum was a surprise, the man who waited, at a long, perfect table, was no less of a surprise. Jewel had, she realized, built an image of him in her mind, and that image and the man clashed horribly, the one shattering like the glass walls wouldn't.

She had expected someone who looked like Rath's friends—tall, forbidding, and very dangerous. She had expected someone handsome and cold, with dark hair, dark eyes, and an obvious penchant for cruelty. She hadn't really thought of his age, of how old he must be, or how young—but this man could have been her father. Or someone's father. He was not tall, at least he did not look tall, and he was not so lean and scarred as Rath's almost unnamed friends. His hair was shot through with gray, and he had a beard that was almost unkempt. His hands were thick, like carpenter's hands, although the rings were out of place, and many. She looked at him as if, by making this list, she would understand what she saw.

Understand, perhaps, the difference between what she saw and what she had expected to see. She had expected guards; Duster had been
so certain
there would be guards; there were none. But Haval had been certain as well—and that meant Haval could be wrong.

It should have comforted her: this stranger, this unexpected man, shorn of guards, no obvious cruelty in his expression.

Her Oma had always told her that life was a series of lessons, and most of them were harsh. It was a pride to the old woman to have survived so much hardship, and she was never so happy—in a grim sort of way, pipe cooling in the corner of her mouth—as when Jewel swallowed either fear or disappointment with a grim child's acceptance. Not cowed, never that, but not broken.

She had cautioned Jewel to be suspicious of all things, especially appearances: the appearance of wealth, the appearance of poverty, the ways in which children would pretend to be crippled to swindle money out of the foolish. She cautioned Jewel not to be led astray—
never
to be led astray—by the whim of a foolish heart, a stupid kindness. But she also waited for the inevitable, because Jewel was her father's child, and it
did
happen.

So you've learned something,
she would say, and then slowly pad the bowl of her pipe.
And you're still alive. You're not bleeding. Nothing's broken. You've no scars and you've lost nothing important but stupidity.
Not a kind woman, her Oma, never that.

Now, Jewel looked at this man, sitting casually in a chair at a table that was neither too long nor too intimidating. Certain, watching him, that he had children, and that he was even kind to them.

Had she been another person, she might have looked back at Duster, looked askance, demanded acknowledgment that
this
was the man who had so hurt her. But she was Jewel Markess, and before she could do any of those things, she understood what she was supposed to learn here.

She swallowed, and then offered the man a formal half-curtsy. “My father,” she said, in a quiet girl's voice, “asked me to deliver this letter.” And she walked toward him, slowly, as if aware of his importance. His title.

She was. She hated it with a ferocity that did not banish fear, but deepened it. It was harsh and unexpected, and her hands were shaking as she extended them, Rath's carefully sealed letter the bridge between them.

He nodded genially and took the letter with care. But he didn't open it immediately. Instead, he said, “How old are you, girl?”

“Fourteen,” she replied carefully. In the dress and the cloak, it might even be true, but it was a young fourteen.

He raised a brow, not believing her, and there was genuine amusement in the smile he offered. “Fourteen,” he said. “Almost an adult.”

She nodded hesitantly, stiffly, letting her fear inform her movements. Working with it, as Haval had taught her. When he returned her smile, he looked almost gentle.

Almost.

“Please,” he told her, lifting a hand, palm up, and gesturing around the table as if he owned it, “take a seat. It is cold outside, and you've traveled some distance; join me while I eat. Your father is waiting?”

“I am to call a carriage,” she replied, “when I'm ready to leave.” Lifting her chin, now, and striving to look the elevated age of fourteen.

This seemed to amuse him, and she remembered dimly that amusement was often one way of stemming rage, of averting danger. It had been so when she had been a child in her Oma's home. But what amused this man?

She did not look at Duster when Duster came and retrieved, in perfect silence, her winter clothing; the fine cloak, the gloves, the scarf that Rath had taken pains to arrange so carefully.

“That will be all,” Lord Waverly told Duster, in a tone of voice that was both cool and dismissive. “Your mistress will call for you when she requires your service. Wait in the servants' quarters until you are summoned.”

Jewel had not believed that Duster could come here and be unrecognized. Haval had promised her that she would pass unnoticed, and she had accepted his word as truth—but she hadn't truly believed it until this moment. Duster was beneath the lord's notice, here.

And Jewel was increasingly aware that she was not.

She didn't want Duster to leave. But she nodded in silent agreement with the officious command. To do anything else might be to lose this unexpected miracle of anonymity. It might be the only miracle of a long evening.

She listened for the sound of retreating steps, aware that she was the only one who did. It had not occurred to this man—would probably never occur to him—that his careless, casual command might be disobeyed.

 

Duster had hated Jewel. This was the truth.

The fine woolen cloak she had draped so carefully over her servant's sleeves trailed the edge of the leaves that had failed to catch her attention as she walked away from Lord Waverly.

Hated her, yes. Hated what she could offer from the comfort of her easy, easy life. Hated the fact that somehow, for
Jewel
, Rath had been there, offering her both food and shelter in return for—nothing. For nothing at all.

She had hated the fact that the others had deferred to Jewel, had listened to her, and had treated her as if she were somehow important. Resented the fact that Jewel, who had suffered so damn little, had so damn much.

In the dark of night, when Jewel slept, she had wondered what Jewel might be like, left alone with Waverly. No; wonder was the wrong word; her imagination was vivid, lurid, angry. In the silence of the small room, kept warm by distant woodstove and breath, she had imagined just what Waverly would do to an idiot like Jewel, had laughed at how easily Jewel would break, at exactly how she would come to truly
understand
what life was like.

And it was here, now: a gift. A daydream, a night thought, come true. Offered to her by a fool, handed to her without any scheming or planning on her own part. The robe draped so carefully over her arm slipped beneath her feet, and she tripped over its hem. Stopped herself from cursing, because cursing here would draw attention that she didn't want.

She hesitated, just outside of the glassed-in room, taking refuge behind plants that were almost overpowering, they were so sickly sweet. She could hear Waverly's voice. Could not fail to hear it, although memory gave it words and cadences that were absent in fact. When he had been introduced to Duster, he had not bothered to hide what he was behind this civil mask; in the holdings, he had paid a great deal of money to dispense with pretense. He had come with her jailers, and he had treated her like a dog, like less than a dog.

And his laughter had been almost gentle. She could hear it now. What was he saying to Jewel? What was Jewel thinking? Did she even understand the danger she was in?

No, she expected rescue; her whole life had been one damn rescue after another. She didn't have to lie for it, or beg for it, or pay for it in any of the ways with which Duster was painfully familiar. She could
afford
to be high and mighty; when had anyone ever let her fall?

Duster reached up and tore a leaf in three pieces, absently destroying the peaceful arrangement. Wanting many, many things; seeing in the light just another way of casting shadows. Enjoying the possibilities of suffering that wasn't her own.

Duster had hated Jewel.