City of Night (57 page)

She told herself that, and she believed it.

And she would make him pay.

She woke up the next morning. The money hadn’t, thanks to Carmenta, increased. The night had been cold enough that the coins—the few that were there—hurt to touch for long. Hurt for other reasons, as well. Those, she kept to herself.

She led the den to the market and led them home in a grim silence. Everyone knew that Lander, like Lefty and Fisher before him, would not be coming back. They might have grieved openly, had Jewel given them time for more than a painful, painful silence—but she didn’t. Her anger was bright and hot and focused—and she hid behind it, holding onto it as tightly as she could. She’d lost
three
. She’d promised them some kind of home. She’d promised them some kind of safety.

And she’d failed. She’d failed them, and they were gone. Dead, she thought, and finally
knew
it. But the rest? She would
never
let go of them. She would never let them disappear again. She was going to talk to Rath, the minute she could get food home, and she was going to demand the answers she should have demanded when Fisher had first disappeared.

She was going to make him tell her everything he knew about the maze and she was going to make certain that whoever had taken her den-kin would never be in a position to do it again.

How? How will you do that?
Her voice. Her Oma’s voice. Both bitter and slightly sarcastic.

I don’t know,
she replied.
Doesn’t matter how. I can’t fail them again. I can’t. I get to be the next person who dies. Just me.

As if it were a privilege, to die first. But wasn’t it? Wasn’t it better than being—than always being—the one left behind?

No one else,
Kalliaris
. If she had to lead them to the Free Towns as farm laborers, she would do that instead.

 

She took Carver and Duster with her; left everyone else in the apartment. Finch was talking quietly to Arann, but Lander wasn’t Arann’s problem in the same way that Lefty had been. Lander had been Duster’s. Jewel considered, briefly, leaving Duster behind—but Duster had never been a berserker. She had a foul temper, and a tongue to match, but she wanted, first and foremost, to
live
. She wasn’t stupid enough to start a fight she couldn’t win. She could be vicious; she’d probably be
more
vicious, if there was opportunity for it.

But today? Jewel wasn’t certain she’d even try to stop her. She wanted—they
both
wanted—someone to suffer for this loss.

And Jewel needed her. If Carmenta was out on the streets—and this was early, for his den—she needed Duster beside her. Duster and Carver.

“Angel?” Carver asked, but she shook her head.

“I want him here.”

“Why?”

“Because if anything happens here, he can think on his feet.”

“You’re expecting something to happen
here
?”

“No.”

But Duster and Carver looked at her, and so did the others, or at least the ones who’d heard.

“Jay?” Angel said quietly.

She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she finally told him. “I’m not—I’m not certain. I don’t
know
. But—I don’t have a good feeling.”

That was enough for Carver.

It was enough for the rest of the den, as well. They were silent, but they would have been silent anyway; Lander was gone. She knew they were looking at each other and trying to memorize everything, because they didn’t know who would be
next
. But so far, everything had happened out
there
. This was a safe place.

No, this
had been
a safe place.

“Just—be ready for trouble,” she told them. It was lame, but Angel nodded.

They didn’t have a lot of stuff here, but it would hurt to lose the bulky things: the bedrolls, the blankets. On impulse, she pocketed the magestone.

She glanced briefly at Arann, and Carver nodded. They left the apartment and took to the streets, blending in with the crowd. If Carver and Duster took the opportunity to rifle a few pockets, so much the better—for a twisted meaning of the word better—but she didn’t slow down much.

 

Duster walked the cobbled streets as if her footsteps could crack stone. Or as if she wanted to, and she did. She didn’t talk much, because there wasn’t much point. Jay was closed up like a bank, and Carver wasn’t a whole lot better.

Lander was gone.

Lander was dead. Jay hadn’t said it, but Duster knew her well enough to read it off her expression, to read it off the things she
didn’t
say. She was angry, and Duster understood anger. What Duster didn’t understand was how to let it go. How to bleed its edge. Lander was gone.

Lander, who she’d promised Waverly’s death. Lander, who had told her to do what Jay asked—to kill him quickly and cleanly—and
come home
. Lander who had been the
only
reason she had learned the stupid den-sign, because if not for his silence, it would have been a kid’s game, and Duster had never been a child. But Lander wouldn’t talk any other way at the beginning, and besides Jay, he’d been the only person she cared enough about to make an effort. Lander had suffered almost exactly what she had suffered. It had nearly broken him.

The others—Arann, Lefty, Teller, Carver, Angel—they’d come from different places.

But it was Fisher and Lander that Duster grieved for, and the only safe way to express that grief was to walk as if she could shatter the street.
This
was what caring for people got you. Pain. Loss. She wanted to punch something, or to stab it, over and over again, because maybe if she caused enough pain to someone
else,
hers would leave her the Hells alone.

She should have known better. Life hurt you, it always hurt you, if it thought it could get away with it.

No more,
she thought.
No more.

 

The thirty-fifth holding was one of the worst holdings in the old City, and of course, that’s where Rath lived. Jay took a few detours, and Carver and Duster followed, wordless, as she did. She had that look on her face and she didn’t slow down for a second.

Carver glanced at Duster once or twice, and Duster forced herself to shrug. But she was uneasy; they both were. Jay wasn’t even paying attention to the streets anymore. Duster had started off angry, and that was fine, but somewhere in between home and here, anger had been edged out by something like fear: Jay was in a hurry.

You couldn’t argue with Jay when she was in a hurry, and Jay in a hurry was always a bad sign. Something was coming. There were three of them. Jay wasn’t bad in a fight, but she wasn’t Carver or Duster.

But nothing came. No Carmenta. No other nameless, faceless den intent on carving its rule in their flesh. The air was stale, breath was too damn short. Lander was dead.

They reached Rath’s, and Carver headed up the steps to the main entrance, but Jay caught his arm, shook her head. They went down the steps, instead, to the old door that led directly into Rath’s place. He never used it. Hells,
they’d
never used it. Carver glanced at Duster again, and he muttered something about knocking; Duster kicked him before he’d finished.

Jay opened the door, and it scraped along the frame as she dragged it.

 

Jay went straight to Rath’s room. Carver split off to search one room, and Duster, the other. They didn’t expect to find anything, although if they’d tripped over Rath’s corpse, it wouldn’t have surprised Duster much; Jay was that damn tense. Jay had told them to search the apartment, and Duster suspected this was an ill-thought attempt to get them out of the way while she rifled through Rath’s real room.

Duster briefly glanced into the kitchen, and then made her way to the room that she had shared with Jay, Finch, and sometimes Teller. She entered the room; it was now mostly storage, and even then, mostly empty. There wasn’t much here to steal, and if there had been, she wouldn’t have bothered. This wasn’t home anymore, but it had been, and while Rath had never liked her much, he’d let her stay.

Because of Jay.

She walked farther into the room and crouched by the wall, touching the floorboards.

This was where she had lain the first night she’d come to the den. That night, hand on her dagger, she’d pretended to be asleep, evening out her breathing, thinking of stealing the money Jay left lying around in her unlocked iron box and making a run for it. Wanting it, Duster thought, but never enough to
do
it. Jay had known, and Jay hadn’t cared much.
Now,
Jay said,
is all we have
.

And what if what you wanted was more than now?

She closed her eyes for a minute; leaned her forehead against the wall. It was cold.
Lander. You wanted this, for us. For me. I never asked you why.

And never would. Even if he were still here, she knew she wouldn’t. Wasn’t in her. Never had been. But here, in this empty, quiet room where everything had started, she wanted to know. She wanted, for a minute, to be the kind of stupid person that could care enough to ask.

The floor creaked, and she rose, hand dropping to dagger as she turned.

Rath stood in the door, watching her. His eyes were dark and cold, and his lips were turned up in a half smile that seemed oddly—wrongly—familiar. Something about it. He was still tall, but his expression, even with that cool smile, was so remote and so watchful she froze.

“What are you doing here?” he asked softly.

She shrugged. “We let ourselves in. You were out,” she added.

“Obviously. You’re not here alone.”

She shrugged again, and this time, his eyes narrowed as he stepped into the room. He caught her arm—her dagger arm—and his fingers were tight enough to bruise. The hair on the back of her neck rose; she almost tried to break free.

But she didn’t. Rath was clearly in a mood, and only Jay could fix that.

 

They found Carver first. Rath was even less amused to see Carver in the drill room than he had been to find Duster. He grabbed Carver with his free hand, and dragged him out. The two of them trailed in his wake as he walked down the hall to the rooms that had always been off-limits to anyone but Jay, and sometimes Teller.

“I guess you can’t go home,” Carver said, with a grimace.

Duster said nothing, but she noted, with grim satisfaction, that it was Carver Rath released in order to open the door.

 

“Jay,” Duster said softly as they were more or less pushed, by the shoulders, into Rath’s room. It was as much of a warning as she could offer. Jay, back to the door, didn’t take it.

“What’s the problem?” Jay touched the papers on Rath’s table. Duster remembered that he’d worked there, rather than at the desk.

“I was hoping you could answer that,” Rath said, pulling whatever conversation there was out of Duster’s hands. “What are you doing in my place?”

Jay froze for a second. Then, lowering her arms and taking her hands away from Rath’s precious letters, she turned, slowly, to face him. To face all of them. Four people in the enclosed space made the room feel smaller than it ever had.

Jay must have felt it, too. She folded her arms tightly across her chest, planting her feet across the floor as if she expected to be hit, and needed the balance. “Came to talk to you.” Duster glanced at Carver, but Carver, brow furrowed slightly, was watching Jay.

“And it was so important you had to pick the lock instead of waiting?”

“Yeah.”

“And these two?”

“Look, you know the situation with the maze. I had to come here
on foot
. I don’t do the thirty-fifth on my own. No one smart does.” She looked as if she might say more. Didn’t. This time, when Duster glanced at Carver, he glanced back. Lifted his hand in a brief flutter of fingers.
Jay’s worried. Something’s wrong.

“What was so important?”

Jay flinched. “Lander’s gone as well.”

Rath didn’t look surprised. He didn’t look anything but pissed off. “When?”

“Yesterday. Early evening.”

“And?”

“We—we think he was followed into the maze. Carmenta’s gang.”

“I see. Were you there?”

“No. Carver was.”

Duster glanced at Carver as Rath removed his hands from their shoulders. Duster’s fell to her dagger. The gift she hadn’t wanted. The gift she wouldn’t let go of, ever. They’d all been there then: Fisher, Lefty, Lander. Watching while she swore. Waiting for her to come back after she’d stormed out. They’d known. And this wasn’t some cheap, rusty castoff. It was a damn good knife. It had cost them. If they’d never bought the knife, they’d’ve had a few more weeks. But they wanted
her
to have it.

She wanted it now, as well.

Rath turned to Carver. “Carmenta’s den is?”

But Jay answered instead. Her voice was clear, and it was like ice; it made Duster frown. Then again, sunlight on the wrong day could make Duster frown. It just didn’t make her cold. “Twenty-sixth holding. They nest above Melissa’s place, near the Corkscrew.”

“There’s no maze door near the Corkscrew,” Rath said quietly. His eyes were narrowed, and nothing that had happened so far had taken the edge off his expression. Duster had always known he was dangerous. But this danger felt different.

She glanced at Jay; Jay wasn’t looking at anyone but Rath, and her expression made clear that she saw—or felt—what Duster did.

“You’d know,” Jay told him as she shrugged. Stiff shrug. “But it doesn’t matter. If they know about the maze, they’ll be in it like a pack of rats. We’ll lose our advantage. And you know Carmenta. Word of the maze’ll hit the streets like rain in a sea storm.” She tightened her arms across her chest and watched him.