City of Night (13 page)

But the longing is like a hunger, like the hunger the beggars expose, day in and day out, in the shadow of the Common, except it’s worse—there’s nothing at all that will satisfy the ache. Nothing. Not even the next weed, or the next, or the next—and he knows, because damn it all, he
tries
. He has to try. He doesn’t know why. If someone asked, he’d probably hit them.

But no one asks. They never do. Maybe they think he’s stupid enough to try to eat them; some weeds, you can eat, if you’re hungry enough. Not these, but it doesn’t matter; it’s not about the damn weeds. His hands are shaking and his arms hurt and he’s cold and bone-tired and it’s like he’s falling, and the only thing he can grasp to slow his fall are the weeds themselves, and he
tries
.

Because he knew who he was, when he last did this. He knew who he was, and what he was supposed to do, and what he believed in, even if he never thought about it much. Because he has fallen into
this
life and he doesn’t want it, and he wouldn’t be here if—

If—

His mother hadn’t died. He should have stayed. She wasn’t the one with the sword, and he
should have stayed
. But he didn’t.

And when he hears the voices—the voices—when he hears the shout, broken mid-word into something like a whimper, his hands freeze at the base of another useless plant; his fingers are dark with dirt, and shaking as he rises. He sees the people moving away, hears the taunting, the brief curses, the orders. Boys’ voices, so like his, so unlike his.

He’s in the City again; the streets coalesce around him, emptying just to one side of two buildings that form an alley. He knows what he sees, but he sees it askew: Boys with clubs and daggers. They aren’t using the daggers, but they don’t need them; their victim is already on the ground, and she’s not putting up much of a fight.

He recognizes them, knows where he is: This is the twenty-fifth holding. They’re Carmenta’s den. He’s run from them before, skipping fences and almost eating dirt in his rush to be gone. But the dirt beneath his nails—it’s like an anchor. For just one moment, everything is clear: the cathedral, the weeds, the mud, the den—and the woman on the ground. An old woman, because it’s always the old women who stop to talk to Angel. Maybe because they sense that he’s lost; maybe because they’re old and they’ve lost everyone else and they need to talk, too.

It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter.

He doesn’t have a sword with him; it’s at Terrick’s, under the bed. But he doesn’t need a sword here, and if he didn’t have a dagger, it still wouldn’t matter. He sees the old woman, and he finally understands. She’s not that far away. They’re not that far; the road in the twenty-fifth isn’t wide. His legs lose their cramped ache as he stretches them, breaks stride; he doesn’t have to push other people out of the way, and for that, he’s grateful.

He doesn’t even shout as he hits the first boy, and the second; they don’t shout until they’re tumbling because they don’t see him. Clumped together like this, the only thing they listen for is the metallic sound of a passing patrol, and right now? There isn’t one.

Just Angel.

Angel is enough. The sheer surprise of him, the unexpected strength of one. They cluster together, shoulder to shoulder, and three go down; the other three swear as they stagger, shout, one snarls—and then he stops, and he looks, and he finally sees Angel.

This is when Angel should run away, because he still can, and if he doesn’t, he won’t be able. But he’s done with running. He’s finally done with running. This is a place to stand, and if he stands here long enough, maybe their victim will crawl away. Maybe she’ll call the magisterial guards. Maybe she won’t—but it doesn’t matter. He’s not doing this for her, not really.

He hefts his dagger, he uses it as they close, he even draws blood and a snarl of surprised rage. He feels good. He feels beyond good. The cold is gone. He has no rage and no fury; he thinks clearly, now, sees clearly. It’s clarity he wants, has wanted. He knows the pain will come.

The bleeding boy pulls back, still snarling; his words are syllables devoid of meaning. The den circles him, and he counts them again: six. To one. Not bad odds—impossible odds. He knows it.

But the moment stretches, time seems to slow; everything is so clear.

 

“Arann, Finch, go!”

Everything is
so
clear.

The first words, a girl’s voice, more bark and urgency than language. He can pick them out of air, and he does it now. They make no sense; he has no context in which to understand them. He’s shifting on his feet, back and forth, side to side. Carmenta’s den is circling, and Carmenta, hair pulled back off a lean face, sun-dark except where the scars stand out white, stops, his head turning in the wrong direction. Turning away. What the den leader sees robs him of motion, but not of expression; there’s anger there, and just the faintest hint of fear.

He shouts and his den turns, and there’s just enough of an opening between their shoulders that Angel can see what they see.

 

Experience only heightens the moment: gives him names and personalities to pin to what he sees. What, he admits, he always wants to see, even if he hasn’t known it till now.

He sees Jewel Markess, her flyaway hair half in her eyes, even though it’s pulled off her face; her skin is flushed and her eyes seem both dark and luminescent. She’s short. Later, he’ll remember she’s short; he’s even peripherally aware of it now—but it doesn’t matter. She says two more words:
Carver. Duster.

He knows them as names because two people step out from behind her, as if they were standing in her shadow. One is a little taller than Angel, and about as thin, but his hair is a dark flap over one half of his face. Stupid, fighting like that. The other? A girl, almost Carver’s height, hair just as dark but longer, and eyes—her eyes make Carmenta seem friendly and sane.

They both have knives; Duster has two. They step toward Carmenta’s den, and as they do, Fisher and Jester—red hair gleaming in sun that’s already added too many freckles—join them, to the left and right. They’re armed as well. It’s all daggers. But that’s all Angel’s got.

Jewel has a dagger as well. She steps forward; it’s five to six.

No, Angel realizes, looking at his hand, still as Carmenta is still.

It’s six to six. It’s an even fight.

Carmenta can count, give him that.

And when Arann has helped the old woman to her feet, when Arann has handed her over to Teller and Finch, when he turns, face set, and towers over Carver and Duster?

Well, Carmenta can count him, too.

He lifts one hand, sharp and curt, and his den pulls away from Angel; a blond boy spits as he withdraws, the shape of their group changing from a circle to a line. Angel thinks about knifing him. Doesn’t. Instead, he watches as Carmenta begins to signal retreat, to back away. There are no dead, and the only blood that was spilled? A knife scratch to the forearm. Not much, not really.

Not like Evanston.

Jewel watches Carmenta. Duster starts to follow, and Jewel says a curt
No
. “We’ve got what we came for.”

“Take Carmenta out. Let
me
take some of them out,” Duster says. “He’s going to be trouble.”

“No. I’m not willing to risk you on garbage.”

Carmenta stiffens at that, and Angel waits; he can see how close it is. Carmenta’s like any other den leader—he can’t afford to lose face. His power? It’s carrion power. It’s tentative.

But Jewel Markess
isn’t
like any other den leader that he’s seen in the City—and he’s seen a lot, wandering through the hundred holdings, listening to old women talk. Jewel’s people? They stand, and Angel realizes that they’re going to stand if she tells them to stand, and fight if she tells them to fight.

He wants to see it. It’s visceral and painful, the desire to see it for fact. But he knows, as Carmenta says, “I’ll be waiting,” that he won’t. Not now.

Carmenta’s den back away, bristling. They don’t run. But walking? They’re running. Angel knows.

And Jewel hasn’t said a word; her eyes don’t leave them.

Not until the old woman mumbles something. Then, she turns.

“Can you walk?”

The woman nods, but she wobbles, and Arann breaks away. He’s taller than she is, and he offers her an arm. She takes it, no hesitation there, and Teller? He’s got her cane, and her basket, or what’s left of it; the side’s staved in.

Finch comes to stand beside her, and it’s Finch that she turns to, although she doesn’t let go of Arann’s arm.

“That boy,” she says, and she nods to Angel.

Jewel nods as well. “We’ll walk you home,” she tells the woman, and just like that, they form up, and they walk. It starts to rain, and the rain is cold—but it’s clean, this rain. It hits Angel’s face, travels down the spirals of his hair; he feels the hint of ice trail down his neck, and he doesn’t care.

He watches them walk away, his knife in a hand that’s slowly relaxing. But . . . they walk slowly, and they look back, in ones and twos, and Teller, mousy-brown hair, pale face, touches Jewel’s shoulder; says something that doesn’t travel. Carver says something as well. That, Angel can catch, but he can’t hear the words.

He knows, in the now, that Lander and Lefty are home—and he knows, in the now, that the apartment had better be
clean
when Jay gets back, or there’ll be noise. But what he sees, even now:

 

Jewel turns. “You,” she says. “What’s your name?”

“Angel.”

She raises an auburn brow, and shoves her hair out of her eyes. “Are you an idiot?” Half smile on her lips, and in her appraising glance.

He shrugs. He knows what she’s talking about. The old woman, on the ground. Six of Carmenta’s den. One boy. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I’m sure that’s what all the suicides say in Mandaros’ Hall.” She shakes her head, adds, “My kind of idiot. You have some place to stay?”

He has Terrick’s.

But he shakes his head. No.

“You have one now, if you want it.” She pauses, and then adds, “It’s not much, but it beats the rain, and we even have food. Some. You eat much?”

He lies.

She snorts; she doesn’t believe him. But she motions toward the retreating group.

Maybe, he thinks, as he starts to walk, gods don’t answer prayers, and anyway, he didn’t pray. But maybe they hear it all—all the things you don’t have, and can’t find, words for.

“Hey,” he says, and she stops; he catches up.

“Yeah?”

“Why did you—”
save me
. He can’t bring himself to ask the question.

She doesn’t need to hear it. “Don’t know. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Were you born here?”

“Free Towns.”

“You’re a long way from home. You’ve got family?”

He shrugs, falls in beside her. She takes quick, short, staccato steps.

She glances at the side of his face, and then away. Her breath is a short mist. “Yeah,” she says. “Mine are gone, too.” For a minute, she looks older, but the creases in her forehead ripple into smooth skin and the expression’s lost as she glances at the rest of her den. “They’re my family, now. They’re my home.”

“And me?”

“If you want,” she says. “But if we don’t move, there won’t be any food left.”

And . . . he wants. So he follows.

“Angel?”

He blinked. Finch turned her wrist and touched his forehead, beneath the locks of white that trailed just above his brows.

“I’m not sick.”

“Just checking. You’re really quiet today.”

He shrugged. “I don’t like shouting.” And smiled when she grimaced. His point. He put the knife down, took a look at what he’d been cutting: cheese, some sausage—which was more or less not meat—and the very crusty bread that was so common in Averalaan. You could cut your mouth eating it, but at least it didn’t much matter if it was stale, because you couldn’t really tell the difference when you were trying to chew it. Too early yet for decent fruit, and what there was was damn expensive. Later. Summer food. There were also potatoes and carrots here, the latter bitter; they were cooked. Some of them were
very
cooked, but none of them were black; Angel wondered, briefly, what Carver had burned.

There was never going to be enough room at the table for everyone to sit and eat, which was good because there weren’t enough utensils; on a bad day, there weren’t enough plates.

But only on a very bad day was there not enough food, and this? Not a bad day. Not yet.

Picking up plates, he stepped his way across a few legs. It wasn’t easy, and Carver cursed him, but that was fair; he’d stepped on Carver deliberately. He handed both of his plates to Arann, because Arann had the longest reach, and left them there, making his way back to the kitchen. He avoided colliding with Teller, and picked up more plates, stopping a moment at the edge of the kitchen to look out into the room.

And there they were. His den: Arann by the window beside Lefty, who was sitting directly beneath the eastern one, his extended legs butting Jester’s elbow; Lander on the floor between the windows, on the other side of Lefty. Neither Lander nor Lefty were talkers, but they signed almost all the time, and days like this, it even seemed smarter; Teller, walking toward the kitchen, and Finch, in whose hands the plates looked much larger; Carver and Jester sprawled out in the middle of the floor, arguing about something; Duster, sullen—or bored, it was hard to tell the difference—arms folded across her chest as she leaned at a slant against the wall. Fisher, to one side of Carver, was most of the way through his food before Angel managed to find some floor to sit on; Fisher didn’t eat so much as inhale.

In the center of them, Jay.