City of Night (19 page)

 

Jay was waiting for them; they didn’t even have to crawl out of the basement to reach her.

“How’s Rath?”

“Enraging,” she replied. It was a terse word, and didn’t invite questions. But as she climbed down to join them, Jay made a face and added, “I apparently don’t ‘retain enough.’ He’s frustrated.”

“He been out at all?” Carver made room by flattening himself against the nearest wall. Which was mostly very wet, very dense dirt.

“Not during the day,” Jay replied with a shrug. “I have. I apparently take either too long or not enough time, depending on his mood. Which is near to foul.”

It didn’t much surprise Carver that Rath was not a good patient. “What’ve you been doing?”

“Reciting lists of names.”

“Which names?”

“All of them. I mean
all
of them. Swear to the gods he’s going to expect me to list the name of every damn ratcatcher in the City some day soon.”

Duster snorted, which was her version of laughter.

“The Ten,” Jay said, as she made her way down the tunnel. “The guilds, and the guildmasters. The churches. The gods.”

“What, he thinks you don’t know the names of the gods?”

Jay shot Carver a look. Duster snorted again.

“Okay. So . . . maybe you don’t know the names of all the gods.”

“The Merchant Authority. The names of the officers of the Authority. I didn’t even know the Merchant Authority
had
officers. Let’s see . . . military ranks. I drew the line at House crests.”

“Did he ask you for the names of all the ruling lords of the other noble houses?”

“Please don’t give him any ideas. He’s capable of making me totally miserable with the ones he already has.”

Duster snorted for a third time, which was about as much mirth as Duster ever showed.

“You sure you want to do this tonight?” Carver asked. Even in the scant light, Jay didn’t look great. She was tired.

“There is no day or night in the undercity. And we’re broke.”

Which more or less settled that.

 

Duster liked the maze.

Given that there were no fights to be found here, and nobody that had to be taken down a peg, this surprised a lot of the den. Duster knew it, and mostly didn’t care. Lander had asked her why she liked it, because he was probably the only person who could.

She couldn’t answer. Maybe she didn’t want to. Liking things? It made you vulnerable, if people knew about it. But she liked the secrecy of it, the hidden things, the fact that everyone who had ever lived here was dead. And she liked the fact that Jay almost never came here without her. Even though there was no need for muscle, no need for Duster’s known skill.

She didn’t particularly mind if Carver came along as well; he could carry the rope. But she led. These days, when they reached the maze proper, it was always Duster who led. Duster had a better memory than Jay, and sometimes she thought she could
feel
familiar streets beneath her feet. She didn’t share this. Not with words. Not any way but this one: she walked, and they followed.

“Where do you want to start?” she asked Jay. She always asked Jay.

Jay shrugged. Duster could hear the movement in the rustle of cloth; she didn’t bother to turn around to see it. She felt restless, but she knew it was late and Jay was tired. Two weeks of Rath would make anyone tired, except maybe Teller. Still, she wanted to go somewhere different. See something different.

So she began to walk down the streets of the maze. She could see the facades of buildings disappearing into the constant darkness, but they had two stones tonight; she had Jay’s and Jay had Rath’s. She could afford to walk ahead a little.

She heard Carver’s voice, heard Jay’s, didn’t pay much attention to the words. They were quiet; no panic, no anger. Nothing she had to worry about. They liked to talk. Duster didn’t. But she no longer hated it when everyone else chattered like insane animals. That was something, wasn’t it? And unless she was actively angry, they didn’t shy away from her; they didn’t look at her as if she were insane and dangerous—and that was something, too.

But sometimes it was peaceful, to be here. With Jay, who didn’t care. With Carver, the only other person she was sure she could rely on in a fight. She paused, touched a wall. It was part of a row of buildings, with narrow fronts—for the maze. The buildings in the maze all seemed to be wider than the ones on the streets above.

“That one?” Carver said.

Duster frowned. She headed toward the short flight of steps that led to the door. The steps were stone, and they took her weight. But not much else in the place looked like it would. She backed out and shook her head, and they continued walking. Walking, stopping, checking the buildings.

They also looked at what lay in the streets, lights bobbing as they navigated their way around chunks of fallen stone. They saw, as they often did, the writing that Jay called Old Weston, but it was all attached to stone that the whole den working together wouldn’t have had a hope of moving.

They kept walking. The streets widened, and Duster took the second left, veering off from the central maze. They sometimes had better luck on the narrower streets, although the buildings were often barely standing.

“Have we been down this street before?” Carver asked her.

She shrugged, and then thought about it. Took a few steps, testing the ground. There were places in the maze where it wasn’t entirely safe to walk, but this felt firm enough. It didn’t feel familiar, though. And she wasn’t about to put that into words. Instead, she said, “Don’t think so.” Which was safe.

Carver stopped walking and set the pack down. He pulled the rope out, and tossed one end to Duster. Duster hated ropes. But she knew why they were necessary, and it was either wear the knots, or give the lead to Carver, who didn’t hate them.

She chose to wear the rope, today; Carver held the other end. Jay was like a shadow, but she accepted Duster’s lead. Here, in the dark places of the world, who else but Duster? The street narrowed as Duster walked it, testing it for cracks, for breaks. Here, the facades of buildings had fallen, and the parts of those buildings that were not stone had rotted away, leaving only the detritus of their fall.

Duster stopped.

“Dead end?”

“No.”

“What?”

“I think I can see past the blockage.”

Carver said, “How much blockage and how much can you see?”

“A lot, and a little. Jay?”

Jay slid past Carver, stepping almost exactly where Duster had stepped, and stopping about five feet from Duster’s exposed back. Duster didn’t expose her back all that often.

“See it?” Duster asked softly.

Jay, squinting in the light of two magestones, hesitated. “Yeah,” she finally said.

“See what?” Carver asked.

“Something shiny.”

He whistled. “Worth it?”

She drew a breath so sharp it was almost a whistle. “Maybe,” she said. To Duster it sounded almost like no. They must be
really
broke. “I think there’s a chance Duster and I can get through the gap—if nothing falls on us when we move things. You won’t fit.”

“Teller or Finch?”

She hesitated. Lifted a hand in den-sign.
No.

“Jay—”

“Go home, Carver. We’ll check it out.”

He clearly didn’t like it, and he waited a few minutes.

“Carver.” She turned, sliding her hands up to her hips, where she perched them.

“I don’t like it,” he told her. Which was obvious, but sometimes Carver was like that.

She shrugged. “I don’t like it much either, but—we’re good. Go get Lander; the two of you can scout elsewhere.” She covered her mouth as she yawned, destroying her posture. “Or, better yet, get sleep. We’re good.”

He handed her the rope, and she handed him the magestone.

 

Jewel tied the rope in a knot around her waist. She sometimes tied it around her arms, but it took longer and it was less convenient. Duster, used to this, was busy shining light into the cracks that always existed when large chunks of rock fell on top of one another. When Jewel was ready, she gave the rope a tug. Duster stepped back immediately.

“Just hold the light up, let’s look at what’s on top.”

Duster nodded, and opened her hand; Jewel spoke a simple word and the light the stone shed increased. In the dark, it seemed blinding, but it wasn’t; magelight was weird that way. Jewel could increase the brightness by quite a bit, but she never chose to do so; light could attract unwanted attention.

Rath had taught her that, and even when Lander had sensibly pointed out that the brightest of lights, here, was unlikely to disturb anyone, Jewel had thanked him, and continued to keep the light down.

“It’s straight to the top from this angle,” Duster finally said. “But I think if we head to the left a bit, we might have a chance at climbing. You want to try climbing?”

She didn’t; she hated climbing. Duster, on the other hand, was good at it. “I’m not sure we can get through the cracks here. What’s to the left?”

“Narrower, at least to start.”

“Anything look like it’s likely to fall on us if we jiggle it?”

“Not here.”

Jewel cursed softly. “Let me try going in.”

Duster nodded and handed Jewel the magestone. One day, when they were very rich, they needed about eight of them. Preferably attached to chains you could hang around your neck. She adjusted the rope, turned sideways, and began to inch her way, with care, around the ragged edges of stone. She hit one snag, and scraped the skin off her shoulder, when the very minuscule opening veered sharply to the right and she had to both stretch and flatten herself against the rock in order to navigate herself free.

But after that, it opened up enough that she could walk, rather than sidle, and she turned back, positioning the magestone. She gave the rope two tugs.

“It’s tight,” she said, pitching her voice back the way she’d come. “But you can stand in it; there’s no crawling.” Which wasn’t always the case. “It looks clear, here; we couldn’t see much because of the bend.”

Duster came through. It took her about ten minutes to scrape herself round the one sharp corner, and she made certain that any listening god got an earful while she was doing it.

“Never heard that one,” Jewel told her den-kin when she at last pulled free.

Duster snorted. And swore. “I left half my skin on that damn rock.”

“I left half mine on the inside of the shirt I’m going to have to pound clean.”

“Why? No one can see the inside of your damn shirt.” Duster snorted again. “Let’s hope we can get out; I’m not going back that way.”

“I can probably push from this side.”

“Not and live.”

Jewel laughed. Her shoulder stung, and she noticed the skin around her wrist was also raw. “Let’s go find gold. Or something we can sell.” She started to head out, testing the rope to make sure it was secure.

 

The space between fallen chunks of rock never narrowed as badly again, and in places the path was wide enough that Jewel could see the street, or what had once been street, beneath her feet. She bent once or twice to examine the ground, and Duster bent with her; it was odd. It wasn’t flat stone—Rath had told Teller, on one of their many runs into the undercity, that the larger chunks of rock were probably from fallen causeways—and it wasn’t the oddly cobbled stone that the engineers of the narrower streets had employed. Here, without sun, and without much in the way of water, nothing grew between the stones. Bats sometimes flew in the air above their light, but if Jewel were honest, the only other living things she’d glimpsed tended to scuttle. Quickly.

She shook her head, reached out, and tracked grooves, deep grooves, in the rock just in front of her boots. She’d mistaken the rock for very large cobblestone, but it was all of a piece, and she traced the curve with her fingers until her fingers hit the edge of sheared stone. “I think these are letters,” she told Duster.

“Old Weston?” Duster had never been willing to sit and study Old Weston. Truth to tell, only Teller and Jewel had put in the time; Finch was interested in it, but she preferred to get the concise version, and Rath was never concise while teaching.

“I think it must be—there’s not enough visible here, but maybe once we get out.” She looked left and right, and saw the irregular edge of sharp rock in both directions. She wanted a glimpse of the buildings that had once stood in their place, because that would tell her how wide this particular street had been. If it even was a street. Rath had once pointed out the cloisters of a building that must have once been a towering cathedral; since not very much of the building remained, what was left suggested alley. And wasn’t.

Jewel stood and began to walk forward again; it helped that there wasn’t any other direction to walk in, because back was all Duster. “You know the part where I said it all looked clear from here on?”

Duster swore. She was useful, that way.

 

It took about half an hour to clear the rocks. In the last stretch, they did, in fact, have to crawl, but the crawling was easier because nearer the ground, the space was at its widest. Small slivers of stone that had probably never been disturbed lodged themselves in Jewel’s palms and knees, but Duster, flattened almost entirely against the ground, left off cursing for a bit to save breath. “I am
not
going back that way,” she said, in that tight voice that meant she was talking through her teeth. “So there’d better be another bloody way up.”

Jewel, for once, had nothing to say.

After Duster was no longer practically biting Jewel’s boots, neither did she.

They emerged into a room. Into, in fact, what looked like a giant hall. The ceilings here had not been sheared off by the fall of stone and other buildings, and they rose and rose until their heights could only be glimpsed by almost falling over. Which Jewel did.