City of Night (26 page)

“What?”

“To bear the weight of the world’s hope.”

Rath chuckled. “You have no desire to be a hero, do you?”

She shrugged. “I did when I was four,” she told him.

“And you are not four now.”

“No. But—it’s hard, I think. To be the only hope the world has. And,” she added softly, “to fail.” She looked up at his stone face for some sign that he understood that burden. His expression, of course, didn’t change.

“He did not fail,” Rath said, looking at the same thing, although what he made of it, Jewel couldn’t tell.

“He didn’t succeed,” Jewel replied.

“No?”

“No. He wounded the god, but even gifted with the sword, he didn’t kill him. And so the god lives.”

“The Hells would be a difficult place without its ruler.”

“I don’t know. It’s the Hells,” she added. “How much worse could it get?”

He laughed.

Jewel, caught in the moment, said, “Maybe you’re right. Morel was human,” she added, using the simpler name. “Maybe humans just aren’t meant to kill gods. And if he didn’t kill the god, he weakened the god enough that he could be defeated.”

“By the other gods.”

“By the other gods combined.” She shrugged again. “Maybe it’s just about trying.”

“And not succeeding?”

“He wasn’t a god,” she told Rath again, slightly annoyed. “He did what he could. He did
everything
he could. And we’re still here,” she added. “So maybe it was enough. I hope he knew that, before he died. That he’d done his best. That he’d done enough.”

Rath was silent for long enough that Jewel’s gaze dropped from the statue’s face to seek his. She found him watching her in silence, his expression as remote as graven stone. “Would it have been a comfort?” he asked her softly, nothing in his face changing.

“I hope so,” she replied.

He reached into his tunic and pulled out a small bag. This, he handed to her.

“You couldn’t have given me this in the apartment?” she asked, hearing the familiar jingle of coin.

“I could,” he replied. “But I wanted to walk.” He did now, leaving the statue and its many untold stories to walk to the wall. She shoved the bag inside her own shirt, where it nestled against her stomach. Then she trailed after him, sparing Moorelas one backward glance.

“So, you came here with Duster,” he said, leaning on his elbows, facing the sea.

“Yeah. But it was morning, then.” She hesitated and then said, “The stone?”

He nodded. “The rune,” he told her softly, “was not, as you suspected, Old Weston. It was not,” he added, “in any language that was spoken by man.”

“How do you know?”

“I went,” he said quietly, “to the Exalted of Cormaris upon the Isle.”

She was speechless for a long moment. He was not the only son of the god to walk in the City, but he was the spiritual leader of almost all the others, and almost-brother to the King Cormalyn. The Lord of Wisdom. The first words that came, when words returned, were, “And he had time to talk to you?”

“For this, yes.”

“You didn’t go to the Order of Knowledge?”

“No. There are men and women there who might have been able to answer the question, but not with any secrecy.”

“But—but why—”

“A friend suggested that the god-born might know. I did not have the time or leisure to ask the Teos-born; they are not perhaps as civic minded, and they are not easily found when they are absorbed in their studies.”

Teos was the god of knowledge.

“What language, Rath?”

“They call it the Oldest Tongue,” he replied. “It was the tongue the gods spoke, when they walked the world.”

“But—but—”

He turned to look at her. “You understand,” he said softly.

 

“No. No, I don’t.” She climbed up on the wall, and crossed her legs there, facing his profile. “If this—this stone—was engraved in this tongue . . .”

“Yes?”

“What was it doing in the undercity?”

He chuckled. It was a thin, dry sound. “See? You
do
understand.”

“Rath, don’t make fun of me. I don’t.”

“You don’t want to,” he replied. But the amusement left his voice when he spoke again. “I think it not an accident,” he said, “that you discovered this, and that the hall from which it was taken was destroyed.”

“But, Rath—”

“The gods no longer walk the world.”

Jewel didn’t privately believe they ever had. If they had, how in the Hells had man survived? She started to say as much, but there was something about him that stopped the words from leaving her mouth. This man was not the man who had found her in the streets, and not the man who had insisted on nursing her back to health.

He was the man, she realized, who wouldn’t heed any warning or plea she might make.

He was the man who had insisted she learn about The Ten, and the Kings, and the gods themselves; about the guilds, and the ranks of the army; about the Merchant Authority, and the way it handled the currencies of different nations.

Recognizing him, she surrendered. “They don’t want people to know. About the gods. About the gods walking the world.”

Rath nodded.

“I don’t really understand why it’s important.”

“No more do I,” he replied. “But the fact that it
is
important may change things.” She heard the lie in his voice more clearly than she had ever heard it. And she could not call him on it, not here.

“Jay,” he said softly, “I think the time has come that you avoid the maze. Tell your den to do the same.”

“But we can’t—”

“If you’re careful, the money there will keep you for some time.”

She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t enough; they needed to eat, and they outgrew all their clothing; they needed a place to sleep, and things to sleep in. She wanted to tell him that he was wrong. She even tried.

But she understood why he’d brought her, by seeming accident, to the Sanctum of Moorelas. Because ever since she’d seen the crypts, she had been uneasy, and this was his subtle way of forcing her to confront that.

“Rath,” she said, staring out to sea, and seeing, in the bay, the height of the towers, the lights of the day. “What can we
do
that can support us? We live off the maze, and what we can find there.”

“I took the liberty of leaving a few books in your apartment. Read them. I will be less available for the next little while; do not use that as an excuse not to read. No doubt Teller has already discovered them. Or Finch. I left them in the kitchen,” he added, “where, I suspect, neither Carver nor Duster go, if not forced at knifepoint.”

“Oh, Carver’ll go—but we can’t afford to have him burn the building down around our ears.”

Rath chuckled, and then stood. “I’m serious, Jewel. The maze, unless there is no other alternative, is done.”

She was silent, but he was not yet finished. He caught her by the shoulders, and held her firmly, but gently, as she sat on the seawall. “Tell me that I’m wrong,” he said. “Tell me that you think I’m wrong. Say it, and I’ll let you be.”

She tried. She honestly tried.

 

And he watched her, and he knew. But she had grown, and she was not always kind, this Jewel, this den leader. “What are you afraid of, Rath?”

He let her go, withdrawing more than just his hands and the intensity of his demand. He had almost hoped she could do what he had demanded, which was a fool’s hope, a wayward dream.

“Afraid of? The usual things,” he replied.

“The usual?”

He glanced at Moorelas’ face. “Come, Jewel. Home. It’s late.”

She said, “Rath, the gods—” and stopped.

He turned, and he felt, in that moment, the certainty of his own death. Here, across the carvings that detailed the myth and legend of mankind’s greatest warrior, he stepped across the winged backs of the demon-kin, above the blazing swords of the
Kialli
, and he wanted to turn and walk away; to leave Averalaan, to leave Jewel Markess.

She said, her voice shallow, her eyes in that peculiar wide gaze that he had come, with time, to recognize, “The gods will walk.”

“I’ve been told,” he said softly, “that that’s impossible.”

She didn’t hear him. She didn’t answer.

Answer enough. He did not leave her, and he did not leave the City, but he waited until she could breathe again before he walked her home. She asked him no more questions about the gods, then or ever; he asked her no more questions about the gods, then or ever.

But she had spoken his fear, not her own.

D
USTER LEANED AGAINST THE GIRTH of a great tree, and folded her arms across her chest. She hated the damn heat, and she hated the damn humidity, because the shade wasn’t much good against humidity. She didn’t particularly love the Common; it was too damn crowded all the time. But she liked eating, as long as she wasn’t doing the cooking.

She watched Jay at the farmer’s stall. Angel, with his ridiculous hair, shadowed her, keeping an eye on the crowd. He was the only member of this misfit den that Duster hadn’t known for years, and she could never quite figure him out. He’d only gone to Rath’s a couple of times, but he knew how to handle a blade; he even knew how to handle a sword, which Rath noticed, although he hadn’t said much.

Jay had her basket, and beside Jay, almost lost in the crowd, Finch had hers. They filled them methodically but slowly; there was always so much damn
chatter
at the farmer’s wagon. Fisher was with Finch, but it was hard to tell if he was paying attention. He hadn’t been one to talk much when they’d first come to Jay, and unlike the rest, time hadn’t loosened his tongue.

It’s not that he didn’t talk; he was just lazy.

She let her hand drop to her dagger when a couple of kids a few years younger wandered close. They had that clothing- found-in-a-gutter look; everything too large and mismatched. They had shoes that wouldn’t see the end of the season, although they were still mostly in one piece.

The kids left, looking for easier pickings. Duster watched them, just to make sure. She was restless.

Aside from three run- ins with Carmenta’s gang, only one of which included Carmenta, things had been quiet in the twenty- fifth. Quiet, that is, everywhere but home. Home was always loud.

But it was the wrong kind of loud, these days. Jay was worried. Well, Jay was
always
worried. But this worry? Money. They had money, at least for a few months, courtesy of Rath. Well, courtesy of Duster and Jay’s expedition to the undercity. Usually, when they had a few months’ worth of money, Jay relaxed.

Jay was not relaxed now. The first thing she’d done with the damn money was march them all, in shifts, to Helen’s. Helen had been surprised to see them, but not unhappy; she liked practical people, and she nodded while Jay gave instructions about, of all things, clothing. From there, she went off to the cobblers, with a similar set of instructions. They
had
decent clothing. They didn’t need to fuss about it now.

But Jay had insisted they fuss while, as she put it, they had the money. This was new, and it was unwelcome. When Finch asked her why, Jay had avoided answering the question. Which meant that Finch stopped asking.

Duster started, instead.

“We’ve got money
now
. But we won’t have a lot of it if we spend it all.”

“Then we go and get
more
.”

Jay had said nothing.

“Look, what is your problem? If we run out of money, we go on a run. We don’t have to leave it as late as we did last time. We can borrow money from Rath. He knows we’re good for it.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, we don’t borrow money from Rath.”

“So, we don’t borrow money. We go to the undercity—”

“Leave it, Duster.”

Duster glanced at the rest of the den. The rest of the den glanced at each other. It was awkward. Even Jester, prone to sticking his neck out for the sake of a badly timed joke, had been silent.

It was Teller who said quietly, “You don’t want us to go into the undercity.”

Jay hadn’t answered. Enough of an answer, from Jay; she liked to talk. But she didn’t say no. She just didn’t say anything.

At the end of three days, it became clear that she wouldn’t, either. The subject was closed, as far as Jay was concerned.

But Duster was pissed off. Her hand had stopped hurting, and the scarring wasn’t bad; she hadn’t lost any fingers, and she hadn’t lost sensation. She hadn’t been afraid of anything they’d found, and if she didn’t particularly like being dumped on her butt in front of Moorelas’ damn statue, it hadn’t broken anything.

They’d gotten
out
. They’d gotten out with something good enough to sell on their first go.