The Hidden City (98 page)

The ghost of his past was his sister, at that moment, his sister and her pale face, her abiding anger, her slow determination.

I did not understand you, Amarais,
he thought, bitterly.
And if I understand you now in some small measure it is because of Jewel Markess. An orphan in the poorest part of this city.

She had been hurt, and he knew why. Knew that in the end, Waverly was simply a tool. Knew, as well, that the hands that had wielded him had not yet been fully revealed; there was work to do.

He would dedicate his life to doing it, because only by doing so would he be free of the image of Jewel standing in her torn and bloody dress, her bruised face silent and still. And perhaps not even then.

Epilogue

MAGELIGHTS IN DARKNESS. No moon, no sky, no lamps to hold them aloft. Held, instead, in cupped hands, carried with care and worry, they lit a small path, revealing cracked stone, fallen pillars, rocks with sheared edges that might have cracked centuries ago. Or days.

No snow here, and no rain; no weather to trouble the undercity. The only movement that could be seen was theirs; the den's. Jewel watched them, her hands empty. She had given her stone to Finch. She could not hold it herself.

But hold it or no, she followed where the light led, finding comfort in its presence. There was secrecy in this place, and in secrecy, a promise of safety. But more, there was history, and beauty, that lay untouched and undisturbed. The walk through the streets above had been cold and numbing, and she had welcomed that.

Duster walked by her side in utter silence, and trailing her like shadow came Lander, his shoulders black in the shadowed light, and not the red of blood. No one spoke. No one touched her. No one offered her words of comfort. This, too, was a blessing. She was shaking, and could pretend that this was because she was cold; they let her be.

Carver offered her his coat, and she shook her head; she had one, and she wore it. It hid much. Had she eaten, she might have thrown up.

But instead, she followed and led, surrounded by her den, the kin she had chosen, and the kin who had chosen her. She did not find the path into the undercity; Lander did. And Lander led only as far as the entrance, before giving way in silence to Arann. They entered it as they left it, aware of the things that had changed.

So much silence. The silence of the dead. The silence of a city that might be filled with ghosts, all mercifully still. The silence of fear, of regret, of anger. Too much silence.

The voice that broke the silence was hers. In the future, she thought, it would always be hers. But here, in the now, she had to struggle to break it, and when she did, she found surprise and some flicker of memory that was both attenuated and strong enough to cling to.

“I want to show you something.”

They stopped walking, as a group, and turned to face her, and she realized she was at the center of a circle. It was a good circle, if a bit lopsided.

Teller said, “Here?” and light bobbed in his hand.

She nodded. Even managed a smile. There were so many things to cling to, all of them memory. But too many of those memories could be shared only with words, which were all that were left.

This one, this was different.

“Come,” she told him, told them all. And they nodded.

She didn't remember the way, not consciously. Maybe her feet did. Or maybe she could
see
it in a way that did not give her nightmares. But she found a path over the cracks in the stone; paused once or twice so that they could navigate the more treacherous byways. She was not afraid here. Fear would come later, if it came at all. Accidents did not frighten her, they had now become so impersonal. There were worse things.

She looked once or twice to see if Duster was with her; Duster failed to meet her eyes, failed to meet anyone's eyes. But she followed, and that was enough for now.

You got what you wanted,
she could hear her Oma say, in her bitter voice.
Didn't I tell you to be careful of what you want?

No answer. She wasn't sure what the right answer was. No. That wasn't true.
It doesn't matter
, she told the past.
It happened; I can't change it.

Her Oma's ghost seemed to shrug at that, to offer something like a smile, twisted and laced with both anger and a grudging approval. That had been her Oma, in life, and in death, her voice was still strong.

You be practical, be a practical girl
.

Jewel nodded. But it wasn't the practical that led her, in the end, to the tall face of a building she had seen only once. She heard Teller's sharp intake of breath, and said, “More light, Teller.”

He looked at her, and she spoke a word, and the magelight flared in his hands with its cold fire. The face of the building grew sharper and clearer as the light blazed up from his hands—from all their hands—at once.

“Someone lived here?” he finally asked.

“Maybe. No one lives here now. Come.”

And she led them into the terraced stone of the Maker's Garden, as she now thought of it, and she led them among the flowers that age and seasons did not wither.

“This is a secret place,” she told them, and it was easy to speak in a whisper because no other voices intruded. “This is Rath's place, and he—” She shook her head. “And he'll share it with us, for now.”

She bent to touch a petal, her hands drawing webs as she pulled them back. “It never ages,” she said quietly. “And it never changes.”

“It's—” Finch, now. Finch, kneeling with as much care as she would have had the flowers been real. “It's like magic.”

Jewel nodded. It was. But she couldn't feel it, here. She could feel it in memory. Perhaps you couldn't go back. Or perhaps you could only have it once, and that once—she wanted it for these people.

But they failed you
.

She closed her eyes, let the words echo, hating them. Hating them, believing them, denying them.

And Duster said, in a voice that was quiet in this quiet place, and so unlike her own that Jewel almost couldn't recognize it, “I don't deserve this.” Laying herself bare.

Or blossoming, in a way the stone couldn't.

Beauty,
Jewel thought,
in the things that never changed.
Whoever had made these flowers, those twining stone leaves, those trellises—they had captured a moment in time, and held it; you could almost feel the reverence in the creation itself. But they could not capture the beauty of the things that
did
change; only by being there could you see it, and only with memory could you hold it.

She turned, lifted the hands that touched petals and the webs that had been spun around them, and faced Duster who was crouched by her side like a wounded creature. “Maybe,” she said, with a shrug. “Maybe you don't. But who's to say that any of us do? We get what we get, most times. We just have to deal with it.” She paused, and said, “Judge what you have to judge. Change what you need to change.

“If you don't deserve it now, earn it.”

Duster was shaking. Just . . . shaking.

Her hair would grow out, the pale blonde edges eclipsed by natural darkness. Her skin would grow ruddy again, and no doubt her face would lose this wounded wonder. But Jewel would remember it.

For both of them, if she had to.

Teller whispered something to Finch; Finch said something to Arann, words crept into the stillness, like a breath of warmth and life.

Jewel reached out for Duster's hand, and she held it tightly for just a moment before letting go.

Duster raised that hand to her face, and the other hand joined it, and she sat there, huddling into her knees, her face now hidden.

It was the only way she would cry. It was something else they had in common, now, this need to gather and hide their weakness.

 

Rath sat in the Magi's tower, waiting. Hard, to sit, and wait. Hard to sit at all, to be confined; he had rarely been driven by the anger that drove him now. Anger was for the young, and he had spent it carelessly in his youth. Had spent enough of it that he had grown to realize how much energy and effort it took to sustain anger, to nourish it.

He had thought it left behind, like all else about his youth, and it was a bitter surprise to find that he could not shake himself free of its grip.

But then again, why should he? It was wed to guilt, here; to his absolute certainty of failure. That Jewel had somehow emerged, that she had proved to Rath that his testing had not been in vain—it galled him. It sickened him. She was a
child
, and he had given her a test that she should never have been given. Not even as an adult.

But he had thought of his sister, then. In the planning, and even in the execution—he had thought of Amarais, who had never been vulnerable. And Jewel had paid for that.

What Rath would pay had not yet been decided. That he would was not in question. Here, now, he understood that he had already chosen his fate, and if he could not clearly see where it lay, the ignorance made little difference.

He sat at the end of the long table that he had seen only once before, but he wore no messenger's garb, no disguise; he no longer needed one. Or perhaps he had passed beyond disguise to come to this point: he could not discern who he
was
anymore, and he did not wish to hide.

Upon the table, the daggers lay, dull and flat, their runes no longer glowing. Both daggers. He had used them, and as he had promised the Magi—and only a fool broke a promise given to a woman like Sigurne—he had come to make his report, and to return them. But that was not all he had come for, and sitting here, his hair in a warrior's braid, a hint of his year in the North, he faced those daggers, and he waited, and he longed to cut all waiting short, to take up sword or knife, to hit the streets fighting. To kill.

Long, long time, since he had felt such a pointless, visceral desire. But even so, the distance of years could not lessen it. Wisdom had failed him. Everything had failed him.

He had failed Jewel.

But she? She had not failed
herself
.

And because she had not, he could not now kill Duster, although the desire was strong. He remembered that anger was like this; like fire, it burned everything in its wake; it did not discriminate. Perhaps this was not true of other angers; perhaps Jewel, trusting, implacable urchin, was not possessed of this, and her anger was something that could be appeased, could be put out. Not so the anger of Handernesse, slow to wake, and impossible to quench with anything less than blood.

He heard the door open; it creaked. He took the sound as a courtesy, and not a lack of attention to the oiling of door hinges, and in this, he knew he was not wrong; that door could open so silently a man could die in this chair before he was aware that someone had entered the room.

But it was thus that Sigurne Mellifas announced her presence, and he rose at the sound, and turned to face her. She stood framed by peaked arch, and she seemed slight and frail as she saw who waited, even though she must have known who it was long before she made the onerous walk in the cold from the height of her tower to this room where strangers might meet in safety.

In safety for the Magi.

But she offered him no threat, and indeed, the courtesy of a nod, and he closed the distance between them and offered her his arm, his elbow bent at the correct height, his bearing, so often discarded, the bearing of the son of a noble family of old blood.

She glanced at his face, but made no comment; she did, however, accept the use of his arm, and she let it bear some of her weight. If she was not ancient, as she often chose to appear, she was not young.

But then again, neither were the trees that girded the Common from great height. She chose frailty as her mantle, but it was one she could put aside at will or necessity. And she saw no need, in this room, to do either. Not yet.

But she saw, as well, the daggers that lay in isolation across the perfect sheen of a long table, and her steps faltered. Her hand, in the crook of his arm, shook. He could feel it, although he could see none of it in the seamless neutrality of her expression.

Were all women of power so guarded?

Jewel, in her youth; Amarais in her prime, and this woman in her aged wisdom—they could have been kin, for a moment. He saw traces of each in Sigurne's face, and knew that he would search, in future, for such traces in Jewel's. But his sister, he did not intend to see again while he lived.

And for the first time, he regretted it; the bitter pride. But regret was not enough to break what had given his life meaning to this point. Now? He had to find a different meaning, for the anger he felt had shifted and changed. His sister's betrayal had become a shadow, a ghost; it no longer lived in him, and through him.