The Hidden City (64 page)

“There has to be justice,” Jewel said quietly.

“Justice is as simple as death?”

Jewel said nothing.

“The boys who injured Lefty—do they deserve death? Or did they learn to cause injury
because
they were injured, and became twisted the way Duster is twisted? Why are you willing to keep the one, and throw away the other?”

“Duster saved Finch,” she said quietly. Clearly.

“And in her time, she may well have killed—or maimed—other children. Very much like Lefty was maimed.”

She said nothing again.

“Answer me, Jewel, if you wish my aid in this.”

“I'm not the Kings,” she told him. “I'm not a magisterian. I'm not justice-born. I'm not a judge.”

“If you're willing to kill, you are. And you feel yourself worthy to
be
that judge.”

Some of her reserve left her as she leaned forward, her cheeks flushing. “Don't you? Don't you think they should die? Didn't you kill those other men—”

“It may have escaped your notice,” he said sharply, “but they
were
trying to kill me at the time.”

“It didn't. It doesn't. I don't know why you're doing this,” she added. “But it doesn't matter. Lander's trapped inside himself. I can't get him out. Maybe Duster can.” Her voice was low. “You killed those men. I
didn't care
that you killed them. I saw their bodies. I stepped over them. I saw the blood. And I didn't care.

“I cared about us. I cared about the us that were trapped in those damn rooms, or chained to the walls. I cared about Finch. I cared about the people that—” She stopped.

“Go on.”

And closed her eyes. “I hated the bodies,” she said quietly, her voice almost breaking. “I hated that they had to die. But if I had
seen
their deaths clearly, if I'd truly
known
it, it wouldn't have made a damn difference.

“You've killed men before,” she added, opening her eyes. “And you can live with it.”

“I wasn't ten.”

“I'm almost eleven.”

He didn't call her a liar.

“It's better,” he told her, rising, “not to have to live with it.”

“If you have the choice.”

“You always have the choice.”

“But some people
don't,
Rath. What choice did Finch have? What choice did Lander have? Even Duster—”

He lifted a hand, a bitter, angry gesture. “Enough.” Thinking about Amarais, his sister; about the starving orphans who had evoked in her not pity but a cold and enduring anger; about House Terafin, whose siren call had beckoned her, fanning her ambition and depriving Handernesse of its one true hope.

About war in all its guises, the simplest of which was strangers with weapons who tried to kill each other because to do less was to die.

“I do not know,” he told her grimly, “if I
can
find the information you ask for. It will be both costly and dangerous, and it is not something that can be done overnight, if it can be done
at all
.”

But her shoulders had slumped just a little, and the high color was slowly receding from her face. Her hands looked small and frail as she reached up and shoved unruly dark curls from her eyes. She looked so unlike his elegant, graceful sister it almost made him smile.

But the smile would not come; he had already made his decision. “If Duster has names, it would be helpful. I doubt she does,” he added.

He was wrong.

Sigurne Mellifas looked up from a solitary desk upon which her reflection, around the neat stacks of vellum, could be glimpsed. In these chambers, high above the grand and almost opulent halls into which visitors were conducted, she worked and lived, and they reflected the complexity of that life: cases, glass doors carved with geometrical precision, the panes hinting at clarity, although they were themselves opaque.

The papers by which the Order governed, and was governed, were in tidy stacks, in descending order of import. The largest pile, querulous voices compressed into lines of varying widths and varying legibility, petitions and complaints from the various members of the Order itself, demanding, some in supercilious tone and some in bald outrage, her attention to perceived slights. The second pile, the results of various ongoing investigations in which the Magi of the Order played some part. The third, the writs by which magic—in the streets of the Empire—was governed. Ah, and a few admission notices, a few resignations, scattered among the whole.

The Order of Knowledge was, for many who journeyed through its doors, the end of a pilgrimage, rather than the beginning; those for whom this became increasingly clear would discover it in the months—or years—of their tenure as students. Many, some with the talent to master magic, some without, would reach this conclusion and depart.

They could not, by law, be required to unlearn what they had learned; nor could they be compelled not to practice it, inasmuch as such practice was legal. They could, however, be watched with care; this was the purview of some of the more fastidious of the members, of which Sigurne was simply one. She glanced at the list of names; the glance was cursory.

The Order was not a Guild, although it served in that capacity for the men and women who wished employment—and the concurrent income that arose from such—elsewhere. The mages themselves were oft fractious and argumentative, sometimes for the sheer joy of it. Sigurne, more practical, found little use in pointless debate, and her entrance into such discourse often signaled its abrupt end.

She watched the surface of the desk for some moments, frowning at the glimpse of her own reflection, wreathed in a light so pale it would have been hard to determine the color. But as it was Sigurne who had cast the spell, the color was obvious to her, and she set aside her papers and rose, feeling the chill of the air in the heights of the lofty stone tower. Had it not been so important that she occupy these rooms—rooms that came with the power and authority of the title she wielded—she would have gratefully set them aside and dwelled below with the students; the rooms in the main halls were never so cold.

But she would lose, without isolation, the privacy upon which she had come to depend. She caught the edge of her outer robe and drew it up from its mantle of chairback, donning it as she walked toward the door.

Not young, she was not yet so old that she was forced to bow or stoop; she did both, because she found the appearance of age useful. Still, the mild aches in her hands and knees were no act; the damp of the Winter sea air set her teeth on edge. She paused at the door, its dark, stained wood framed by peaked stone, curving upward in a recessed arch that seemed pretentious, given the space.

It was not, however, impractical.

Lifting her palm, she ran her hand across the smooth surfaces of those arches, her fingers trailing a pattern that not even eyes could see. These complicated wards were of her own devising; they were as comfortable as the hands that covered them, and almost as natural to Sigurne.

It had been perhaps two decades since she had taken the title of First Circle mage; it had been fifteen years since she had positioned herself as the head of the Order of Knowledge. The gray of her hair at that time had been the color of steel; it had whitened, and she had let it, as if the strain of governing the Magi naturally led to some premature aging.

But in truth it was less stressful than not governing would have been. She had come to
Averalaan Aramarelas
solely to do as she had done: to take the seat, to preside over the First Circle—and by default, the lesser circles in their turn—and to be vigilant.

The reward for her vigilance? She shook her head, lifted the hood of her outer robe about her face, and began her descent.

 

Rath was waiting for her when she entered the large room. It was narrow, this room, but the ceilings were high, the joists exposed, the windows—for it held windows of thick, colored glass along the eastern wall—poised to catch the sunrise hours hence. The view, he thought, would be magnificent at dawn; in the darkness it was less comfortable. Taking care not to touch the surface of the glass, he looked down to see the streets of the Isle; the magelights that lit the roads were bright and evenly spaced, and they marked the winding passage of flat stone so clearly the road might have been built of luminescent rock. Here and there, carriages could be seen, and the glint of bright breastplates indicated that men were on patrol.

Upon the Isle, they always were. Those crimes that could be committed in safety here were not committed on the streets or the causeways; they were sheltered behind the grand facades of the many, many mansions that stood almost shoulder to shoulder behind tall fences.

And perhaps in halls such as these, where the Magi gathered.

The doors opened slowly, their movement so perfectly smooth it seemed unnatural. Then again, much that happened in the Order usually did; Rath turned his back upon the windows, conveniently situated opposite the doors, and let his arms fall loosely to his sides, holding them in just such a way that it would be instantly clear that he was unarmed.

Sigurne nodded briefly and stepped into the room. The doors swung shut—just as smoothly, just as precisely—inches from the fall of her robes. Those robes were dark, a dusty black that no one could actually mistake for gray.

“You've carried a message?” she said, her eyes clear and cool. It was hard to judge their color; Rath thought they might be blue or gray.

He wore the tidy livery of an unidentified House; it was blue, with flashes of purple and gray—something that implied royalty, without the complicated illegality of actually mimicking it. Of all the clothing that Rath wore, this was possibly the most impeccably cared for; he brought it out in times of need. His early years in the presence of the rich and the powerful had exposed him to the hauteur of important servants—as opposed to those who must go unseen within the halls of a great House—and he had borrowed their posture, their distance, their hint of open disdain, quite liberally. His bearing was proud, and he had stretched himself to his full height; he did not mean his visit to pass unremarked within this tower.

But as Sigurne approached, she frowned.

“Member Mellifas,” he said, bowing gravely.

She might have pretended confusion or surprise, and he thought she would attempt it; her face was momentarily devoid of expression, as if she could not quite decide which one to wear. But in the end, she chose weariness, and turned away.

“You . . . used the daggers again?”

“Ah, forgive me. No, I have had no cause to use them.”

He saw her stiffen, and then saw the stiffness leave her in a rush; the loss made her look frail, as if in shedding worry she also shed strength.

The room, narrow as it was, was possessed of a great many window seats; these were not to her liking. It was not possessed of an obvious grate, but it was not chill; it held a long, narrow table, and at even intervals, chairs. They were simple chairs; heavy, but otherwise unadorned. They did, however, have armrests and cushioned seats.

“You will do me the grace,” she told Rath, “of allowing me to sit while you explain your presence here.”

He nodded, turning toward the windows again. This glass did not reflect light; he could see out, but any hope of watching the mage's movements without actually looking at her vanished.

“Ararath.”

He accepted the inevitable. With some quiet grace, he pulled a chair out for her and held it while she sat. When she was comfortable—or as comfortable as one could be in this oddly sparse room—he took a like chair.

“I've come to ask you questions,” he told her quietly, meeting her eyes. “I am aware that I have very little to offer in return; I am aware that I may leave these rooms without answers. I am also aware that I may never leave them, for it was clear to me when we met a week past that you have no desire to speak about the subject I have come to ask you about.

“But I have some hope, or I would have spared you the burden of visitors at this late hour.”

She nodded, her gaze appraising. Not unfriendly, but not precisely friendly either. She seemed bent, to Rath, but Rath was also adept at disguise, at wearing or discarding as much of the burden of age as he could.

“I have in my keeping a child,” he continued, when it became clear that only by continuing would silence be broken. “She was some days in the hands of the men who held her captive.”

“Those men?”

“As you suspect, Member Mellifas. They were demons, the two I killed.”

“The child is whole?”

“She was not uninjured,” he replied with care, “but injury was not, I think, their goal.” He had been wrong to sit; he desired the freedom to walk, to turn his back on this woman while he gathered thought. He had rehearsed his question with care, rephrasing it a hundred times, a thousand, while he made his way through the maze beneath the holdings. But as always, with such things, rehearsal had little bearing upon reality.

“Ararath.”

“I did not come to ask how the demons were summoned; in truth, I would rather not know. But in such writings as are left from the time of the Blood Barons—and I assure you, I have read much—it is clear that if demons were used, they were used as intelligent weapons; they were given orders, and they were kept on tight leashes.”

She nodded slowly.

“If the mage who summoned these creatures was within that building, I think we would have known it. Therefore, I have assumed he was not.”

“It is a safe assumption,” Sigurne said. She lifted a hand to her brow, massaging her forehead.