The Sacred Hunt Duology (50 page)

Don't ever tell anyone about your “feelings,” Jay
, Old Rath had told her, years ago, when she'd first managed to convince him that they were real. She remembered thinking that it would make him happy; it made him strange and intense instead.
Don't tell them. If you're lucky, you'll just be ridiculed as a young child with an overactive imagination. If you're unlucky, they'll know what it means, and you'll be pressed into service, or forced into it.
He'd caught her by the arms, and his grip was as tight as it had ever been. Frightened her, too—but back then, she was easier to spook.

Why? Why can't I tell them? What does it mean?

Just don't do it. You promise me, girl, or I won't teach you anything else. Don't tell anyone.
She'd promised. Aside from telling her den-mates—who had a right to know the truth about who they were following—she'd kept that promise.

She could leave the holdings and try to sneak into the High City, maybe hook up with a member of the Order of Knowledge. She tossed her head in derision. That would be a great idea. Either she'd find an old, addled man who couldn't be pulled out of his books, or she'd find a power-crazed mage who'd be worse, in the long run, than the maze itself.

Her hair flew free as she shook her head. They wouldn't take her seriously if they listened at all. The same could be said of the Magisterium's sentries. Each of the hundred holdings was policed by three pairs of these guards; the merchants called them the magisterians, although it wasn't really an official title, and that had become their rank in the streets of Averalaan.

Well, in the common streets, it was.

And the magisterians weren't going to listen to a fifteen-year-old almost-woman tell them that three of her den-kin had disappeared into a mysterious maze beneath the city that they'd never heard of. They had more important crimes to worry about than runaways—and all of her den-kin were already that.

Even if they did listen, they weren't likely to be able to help. What real authority did a magisterian have? No. The maze needed someone bigger, or more able to deal with it.
Why?
She ground her teeth in frustration. She knew the answer, but not the question; it was always that way with the “feeling.”

Sighing, she got out of her chair. She'd thought herself round in circles and still come up with no answers. It was time to admit that she needed a little help. And admitting that was harder than cutting off her right hand—it just wasn't harder than the idea of losing another of her den—or of letting the three that were dead go unavenged. She walked out of the kitchen into the big room; five pairs of eyes focused on her at once. Arann and Jester were out near the market edges bringing—one hoped—the evening's meal.

“Well?” Duster said, getting to her feet and squaring her shoulders.

“You and Carver come with me. The rest of you, stay put.”

Duster rolled her dark eyes. “Look, Jay—what by the long night are we going to do about Lander?”

“There's nothing we can do. He's gone. Don't even think it, Finch,” she added, as she caught a restless movement to her right. “He's
gone
.” She squared her own shoulders as she met Duster's steel-eyed glare. Duster had the most vicious temper of the den and wasn't above letting a violent impulse get the better of her. Luckily, she was balanced by a fine sense of where her loyalties lay. It was only at times like this, with loyalties pulling in either direction, that she was hard to manage. “If he'd listened to me in the first place, we wouldn't have to worry. Now, it's too late for him.” She took in the silence, ground her teeth a bit, and then pulled her hair out of her eyes and rearranged her scarf over it. “Look, I've never given you bad advice about anything important. This is important.
Don't go to the maze.
”

Angel raised his head; a shock of white-blond hair was bound by spiraled wire into a long, tall spire. Jewel thought it made him look like an idiot, but at least he looked like a striking idiot. It wasn't an uncommon style in the street, and given that he was her own age, she couldn't treat him like a younger. “Fine. He's gone. But what are we going to do about it?”

“
We
are not going to do anything. I am going to see Old Rath.”

“Wait for Arann,” Teller said, speaking for the first time. He was small and slight for his age—thirteen, halfway to fourteen—and he spoke very rarely, which was why they called him Teller.

“Duster and Carver will do fine. Arann's got his hands full with more important things.”

Teller's gaze was measured; she met it firmly and then looked away as she realized that he had been testing her choice, and that he'd taken out of her answer the information he'd been looking for. Of all of her den, only Duster or Carver had ever been forced into a position where they had to kill.

• • •

Old Rath lived in the thirty-fifth holding, a scant ten blocks from the holding that Jewel's den called home. But ten blocks in this part of the city could make a difference. Out of a hundred holdings, only three were considered dangerous to the wary passer-through—and the thirty-fifth was one of those. Rath liked it that way; Jewel was never certain why. Today, she didn't care.

Usually, when she wanted to reach Old Rath, she ducked into the safety and anonymity of the maze. That wasn't an option anymore, and it made travel much more interesting. Jewel hated it when life was too interesting.

Duster and Carver kept their attention on either side of the streets, where buildings that had seen better days gave way to the occasional burned-out husk. It was the duty of the various magistrates who governed the city to see to the leveling of such public hazards. Only in the thirty-fifth, thirty-second, and seventeenth holdings did the magistrates mysteriously turn a blind eye.

Not even the magisterians that were assigned here could be relied on; if they were good, they were transferred. Or at least that's what Old Rath said. Jewel preferred not to meet magisterians face-to-face, so she didn't have any basis on which to judge “good” or “bad.”

Or she wouldn't have, had she not wandered the streets of the thirty-fifth. It told her all she needed to know about the magisterians in charge. The damaged buildings and the dirty streets, combined with the chill of the day and the lack of heavy traffic, gave the holding an air of subtle menace that the twenty-fifth didn't have.

She turned to see that Duster and Carver were just as spooked. They kept a close eye on the roads, and more particularly on the recessed doorways and long, flat steps that were peopled by men and women who fell silent as they approached.

“Great place Old Rath lives in,” Duster said, trying to be jaunty. She failed, and she rarely failed.

Jewel didn't answer. Everything on the street had taken on the heightened crispness of form and color that danger always brought on. She saw the same doorways and stairwells that her den-kin did, but they were harsher, and somehow robbed of the shadows that usually pooled there. Standing out in this stark vision were men and women lounging beneath the mage-lights that lined the street in pairs. She could see their daggers and the bulges that signaled throwing knives; could see the scars across their faces or exposed skin; could even see the slight narrowing of eyes that indicated interest of a sort that she wanted to avoid.

She walked neither too slowly nor too quickly as she passed by them—this was
a trick that Old Rath had taught her when she'd first met him years ago.
Too fast and you look frightened, too slow and you look suspicious.
You didn't want to stand out in the streets.
Of course, if you have to choose one of the two, choose suspicious. Frightened makes you a victim.

Twice, when nearing a certain intersection or a certain alley, she was forced to make a detour, and it lengthened their journey by a good half hour. But Duster and Carver were used to her strange commands, and knew better than to question them in a foreign holding. Well, Carver did—and Duster wouldn't cause trouble in the thirty-fifth.

“
Real
nice holding,” Duster said quietly, as they passed what must have once been a live cat. She grimaced as the smell hit her nostrils and stuck there.

“Shut up, Duster,” Carver said, out of the corner of his mouth. Jewel had once again veered off the street, only this time with a look of intent purpose. Carver lengthened his stride and caught up with her. “This the place?” he asked softly as they came to an easy stop in front of a building.

She nodded. “I know it doesn't look like much on the outside.”

Carver raised a black brow. “You can say that again.” He shook his head as he looked at the flat, rectangular two-story building. It had once had windows, and those windows were—from the looks of the rusted bolts—barred from the outside. Maybe, before that, they'd had shutters; the paint around the windows didn't look the same as that around the rest of the . . . hovel. The wooden supports—they had to be wood from the way the building appeared to be dangerously tilted to the right—had seen better days. He hoped.

“Come on. We've—we've got to hurry.” She could hear Old Rath telling her to slow down—but something a lot stronger than his memory and his teaching was telling her
speed up.

“You okay, Jay?”

Her nod was curt and quick—and it was as much a “no” as she dared utter.

“What is it?” Duster whispered. “What's wrong?”

But of course she couldn't say. She didn't know. She walked down the small flight of stairs to a grimy, but obviously functional, door. “Down here. Quick.” It was a tribute to Old Rath that the stairwell was empty.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I'm doing?” Jewel said, as she bent down in front of the door and began to retrieve her limited equipment from her inner vest pocket.

“It
looks
.” Carver replied smartly, “like you're going to try to pick Old Rath's lock. Have you lost your mind?”

Jewel didn't answer. The lock was a fairly simple one, if you knew what you were doing. She knew it as well as Rath had taught her.

“Can't we knock?” Carver spoke again, nervously shifting from foot to foot. Old Rath was old, but he wasn't weak, addled, or—more important—particularly
tolerant, and Carver had been on the wrong end of his temper a time or two. “Jay, can't—ouch!”

“Shut up, Carver,” Duster said, her words quiet and chilly. “And keep your damned voice down.”

He muttered something under his breath about
girls
, and they both ignored him. Duster watched the road, looking as nonchalant as possible as she leaned casually back against the wall. After a few seconds, Carver joined her, but his nonchalance looked a shade petulant.

The lock clicked, cleanly and coldly.

“Come on,” Jewel said tersely. “Get in.” She took the precaution of locking the door behind them.

• • •

“This another of your feelings?” Duster asked, the minute the door was shut.

Jewel nodded almost absently as she scanned the hall. It was a short, narrow passageway that opened out into the room that Rath used for Mother knew what. His bedroom was the first door to the right, a kitchen of dubious cleanliness was the second, and to the left was the great room that he used for limited training. How he could afford this much space, when all of Jewel's den lived in something a third the size, Jewel didn't know. And she was smart enough not to ask.

She knew her way around; she'd been here often enough. There was a basement—a catch-trap beneath the training room—that led to a subbasement, and in that, there was an entrance to the maze. Wasn't easy to get to—it was two crawl spaces and a shaky platform away—but that suited everyone just fine.

Until now. “Carver, check out the kitchen for anything unusual. Duster, check the room to the left.” She chose for herself Old Rath's bedroom.

Although the rest of his home was uncluttered and almost stark in its simplicity, his bedroom was the repository of anything that he considered worth keeping. It wasn't, given his age, that much, but it was cluttered enough that Jewel had to watch where she stepped as she made her way to the bed.

Old Rath could read, write, and force a pleasant tune out of hand-pipes; he could sew after a fashion, cook, and wield a mean long knife. He also owned not one, but two, swords, although she'd never seen him carry either.

Rath was a friend—probably the only one she had who wasn't also a responsibility. As such, he was highly valued, although she'd never have said as much to him. To anyone, really. Well, maybe on a good day she'd have told Teller. Didn't matter.

Rath understood her well enough. He was impressed that she knew how to read and write, and he'd done everything he could to encourage and foster those skills. He taught her how to manage her den-kin and their infighting; taught her how to handle the enemies that she'd made in the other holdings; even taught her
how to use the long dagger she carried, given that she wasn't very large or very strong.

But he'd taught her a little bit more than that: He told her how the city ran—or how it was supposed to run—and, more importantly, who ran what.
Because
, he'd say, in that serious voice of his,
you can't stay on the streets forever, Jay.

You have
, was the first answer she offered.

She tried not to remember what he'd replied.
You think I'd stay here if things had worked out differently?
He laughed, and it was the bitterest laugh she'd ever heard.
This is all I've got, Jay. But I made it, and I'll hold it with everything I own. Still, there's no damned reason why you should. You've got potential, and you'll waste it or lose it here.

The bed—it was years since Jewel had slept in a bed, and it pained her to remember the last time—was made; it was obvious he hadn't left in a rush. She smoothed a wrinkle out of the ice-blue counterpane, and then very gingerly pulled the covers back.