The Hidden City Page 7

  “These halls,” Rath said quietly, “are they wood?”

  “They are now.”

  “And before?”

  “Dirt. Stone. I don’t know. I bought the building from someone who had a few gambling debts he couldn’t pay down fast enough.”

  Rath didn’t ask. The man offered no more about the former owner, but he did continue to speak in his grating rasp of a voice. “There are only these rooms, in the basement. There are windows,” the man added, as he stopped in front of a solid door and pulled out an ostentatious ring of keys. “But they’re not good for much. I’ve had them barred,” he added.

  Rath doubted that the bars would be any good. He’d have to examine them from the outside. “No neighbors?”

  “The ones above you.”

  Better. “How much do you want for the place?”

  “I get paid by the week,” the man said. “Five silver crowns.”

  “Four.”

  The man shrugged. “Four and a half.”

  Rath said nothing; the door slid open. It didn’t creak; it was in good enough repair. “These rooms—they don’t have an exit of their own?”

  “They do. We don’t use it much,” the man added, his eyes shifting to the side. “The frame’s warped, and the door needs to be leveled. It takes an ox to pull it open. Or two.”

  Rath nodded. He walked through the open door and into a small hall. The hall—in repair that was only slightly better than the one that led from the stairs—contained four doors, two to the left, one to the right, and one at the end. “Four rooms?”

  The man shrugged. “The fourth’s not much. It’s storage.”

  “You use it?”

  Again the man’s eyes shifted sideways. “No.”

  Rath liked men whose expressions gave almost everything away; it made them easy to read, and easy to predict.

  The air in this place was cool. And Summer was hot enough that this appealed to Rath. “What’s in the storage room now?”

  “Old furniture,” the man said, just a shade too quickly. His voice had gone slick and oily in the scant syllables. “Look, use the three rooms, and I’ll give them to you for four crowns. The storage room’s unfinished.”

  “You could have—”

  “There are floors there, flooring, but it’s old and rotted. My nephew broke his leg falling through them. I wouldn’t suggest you try.”

  “What’s beneath the floor?”

  “Dirt.” Again, the man spoke too quickly.

  Rath kept his smile to himself. He tried to make a mental map of the building, tried to gauge the depth of the basement. “Four crowns,” he said quietly. “When do the rooms become available?”

  “They’re available now.”

  “Good.” He pulled his satchel off his shoulder and made a show of fumbling with its buckle. The man drew closer, the ring of keys rippling in the lamplight. He seemed eager, which was generally a bad sign.

  “Two weeks up front,” Rath said.

  “Fair enough.”

  “Do you have a curfew?”

  “What, do I look like your mother? Don’t make a lot of noise, don’t bring your business here, and don’t cause problems with the magisterians. That’s all I ask.”

  Rath put eight coins in the man’s key hand. “Don’t bother,” he said, as the man looked for some place to set the lamp down. “Leave the door unlocked; I’ll want to change the locks myself.”

  “You leave me copies of the keys.”

  Rath stared the landlord down. “I’ll pay a month up front,” he countered. “And I’ll pay per month ahead of time.”

  All men were merchants if you dug deep enough; some required only the barest of surface scratching. The landlord bickered and whined, but his heart wasn’t in it; he went through the motions because to do otherwise was to imply that the rooms were empty for a reason.

  Which, clearly, they were. Rath didn’t ask, largely because he didn’t expect an answer that would be either truthful or useful.

  When the landlord collected his money, he gave Rath what would pass for a friendly nod in a bar brawl, and retreated. “Don’t change the lock to the building’s front door,” he said, “or I’ll call the magisterians.”

  Rath nodded absently; he doubted that the locks of the front door were even in passable working condition.

  He’d left Jewel alone for most of the day; had to. He stopped at the Common farmers’ market, and then forced himself to go to the well and wait in line, avoiding bored boys with buckets. He filled two waterskins, spoke pleasant, empty words to one of the two grandmothers who minded children far younger than Jewel, and then departed.

  Jewel was waiting for him when he opened the door.

  Her eyes were sleep-crusted and heavy; she rubbed them as he slid bolts back into place and looked at the neat and empty rooms. “I’ve called for a carriage,” he told her quietly.

  “You called a carriage here?”

  It was a reasonable question. He approached and touched her forehead; she grimaced. It was not a wince; it was a child’s complaint. “You’re still running a fever.”

  “Why do they say that?”

  “What?”

  “Running. A fever.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Possibly because people get hotter when they run for too long. You’re still hot. Is that better? Here.” He handed her a waterskin. “I’ve brought food as well, and I expect you to eat it. I’ll be moving things into the carriage while you eat.”

  “No one calls a carriage to the thirty-second holding,” she mumbled.

  It was true.

  “Is it because of me?”

  She would always surprise him. This was the first time he realized it, or perhaps accepted it. But because she wouldn’t believe him if he lied, and because the only reason to lie was to put her at ease, he nodded.

  She looked pained. Was, he realized, in pain. Fever pain; her skin was probably prickling at every touch, every contact. Her stare was slightly glassy. Rath looked out at the sun, and down at the shadows it cast. Evening was coming. He’d waited too long.

  “Forget the food,” he told her roughly. “But drink the water. Drink both of these,” he added, handing her the second skin. “Now.”

  She lifted her arms; they were shaking. He could not bear to watch her fumble with the stopper, and opened the skin himself. Water dribbled down the corners of her mouth, and from there, down the front of her rumpled shirt. He almost shouted at her, then. To be careful. To drink carefully.

  But the cloth of her shirt darkened, and he saw the way it clung to her ribs. He hated poverty.

  “Jewel,” he said, his jaw stiff, “I won’t be in your debt.”

  “What?”

  “You’d better survive this.”

  She said, “If I don’t, do you think my father will be waiting for me?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “I know that. I mean, in Mandaros’ Hall. In the long hall.” Her dark eyes were a little too wide.

  “I don’t know, never having been dead,” he said curtly. He did not speak of gods, and of his general contempt for people who relied on them; if she took comfort in their undeniable existence, he was unwilling to part her from it. “And I don’t intend for you to find out. You can die on someone else.” He started to say something, thought better of it, and lifted the heaviest of his chests. This one was the oldest, and it was also the finest, although the humidity of the years had caused it to bow slightly with age. Grunting, he made his way to the door.

  “You locked it,” she said.

  He cursed.

  “You locked it for me,” she added, her voice dropping.

  It was true; he had. He’d been thinking of her. “If you apologize,” he said, through gritted teeth, as he unlocked the bolts, “I swear I’ll hit you.”

  “You swear a lot.”

  “Not until I met you.”

  She snorted. Choked. But she was drinking, and that was enough.

  She was
the last thing he carried down to the waiting carriage. That the carriage had waited spoke more of the expense of its hire than it did of the driver; the man was clearly nervous this deep into the holdings.

  His nerves didn’t get any better when he saw what Rath carried; Rath had bundled Jewel up in the counterpane, but her bare feet dangled free of its edges; it had been done in haste.

  “I didn’t pay you to gawk,” Rath snapped. “And I certainly didn’t pay you to ask questions.”

  The driver did neither, or attempted to do neither; he managed not to ask questions.

  Rath carried Jewel into the coach and slammed the door, juggling her negligible weight in his lap. She was barely conscious, but she frowned as the carriage started its creaking, bumpy motion through the streets.

  “I always wanted to ride in one of these,” she said. “But it’s not very comfortable.”

  “You will find, with time, that very little that you want is comfortable. At least, not when you’ve achieved it. Now hush.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can barely hear you over the wheels.”

  She nodded and settled against his chest. It was almost dark; the magelights above were beginning to shed brilliant light in a hazy glow. The streets were misted; they tasted of the sea.

  “We’re going to live in the dark,” Jewel told him.

  He didn’t ask her how she knew this. He brushed the hair from her eyes instead, so that she could see him nod.

  Some items of furniture could not be conveyed by carriage; he had left bed and mattress in the now empty rooms that had, a day ago, been home. But he had brought bedrolls and sleeping bags, one of which had seen some use in the North. He ceded that one to Jewel, and laid her out against the floor of the smallest, and emptiest, room. The landlord hadn’t lied; there were window wells just below the height of the ceiling, and they fronted the building’s east side. The bars—he had had the gall to call them bars—were a simple, rusted net, something meant to keep garbage out. Where garbage was not a determined thief.

  Rath would fix that over the next few days.

  The waterskin was almost empty. “Drink this,” he told the child. When she didn’t answer, he opened the skin and dripped water into her mouth, watching as she swallowed. At night, her fever was at its height, burning its way through flesh.

  He thought she was asleep. She caught his hand, dispelling that comfortable illusion. “Rath,” she whispered, the word dry and almost silent. “Will you go out tonight?”

  “Not tonight.”

  She nodded, and did not speak again.

  He did, but the words were soft and foreign, and interlaced with their cadence was the beginning and end of an old song his nanny had favored.

  The next three days were—in the usual rhythm of Rath’s hectic life—quite boring. Ordinary. Things that he had, in a foolish, distant youth, disdained.

  He left Jewel sleeping on the first day—when she would sleep—and saw to the fitting of new locks and new bars. The man responsible for the work was an old friend.

  “Don’t like the look of the neighborhood,” he said, as he worked.

  Rath shrugged. “It suits me.”

  “It suits you, yes.” The bars were thick, but they were harder to place than normal, given where they were situated.

  Rath rolled his eyes. “What is it, Taybor?”

  “Last I heard, you had sworn off women.”

  “Sworn at them, as I recall. So?”

  “And I’ve never heard it said that you had much interest in children.”

  Ah. “You think so little of me?” he said softly.

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” Taybor grunted as he worked a bolt into the outer brick. Rath would not live in a building that had no brick; the bars were too easy to dislodge, otherwise.

  “Yes. As always. Not that you’re doing the work for free.”

  “The wife wouldn’t like it.”

  “She wouldn’t like being used as an excuse much either, unless you’ve got a new wife I haven’t met.”

  Taybor’s laugh was a short burst of sound, just shy of a snort. But there was genuine affection in it. “Same old wife,” he said, with the hint of a smile. “Same old shop.

  “But I’ll tell you, Rath, if she were here helping out, she’d tan your hide.”

  “I am not involved with a child.”

  “No. But she’s here, isn’t she?” And he nodded to the window beneath the bars he was erecting.

  “She’s here.”

  “Why?”

  “Do I ask you about your business?”

  “Frequently.”

  “That would be considered making polite small talk in other parts of town,” Rath replied. “It’s not as if I actually care.”

  Taybor laughed again. He was a short man, almost as wide around the chest as he was tall, with a shock of hair that would be called red in anyone’s estimate. None of the girth could be called fat, although his wife, Marjorie, often did. She was, on the other hand, the only person who could without suffering for it.

  “Marjorie would probably approve,” Rath added.

  “Oh?”

  “The girl’s ill. No, I don’t know with what. It’s not the usual Summer diseases—at least not the ones I’ve seen.”

  “You’ve not caught anything?”

  “Not yet.” He would have coughed, but he didn’t trust Taybor’s humor to extend that far. In the Summer, the crippling disease was not a joking matter, and many healthy men were suspicious of anything that could lead to it.

  “So . . . you’re being a nursemaid, now?”

  “Business is slow,” Rath said, with a shrug. “Good work,” he added, as he made show of examining Taybor’s bars.

  Taybor snorted. The sound was not unlike Jewel’s snort, except for the nose that emitted it. The older nose had been broken at least once that Rath personally knew of. “That slow?”

  Rath shrugged. “I found her by the river. She was living under a bridge.” He paused. “She’d stolen some money.”

  “Yours?”

  “Would I care if it were anyone else’s?”

  “Not usually, no. Then again, you wouldn’t usually bring a thief home and put her to bed either.”

  “I should have blackened both her eyes.”

  “Marjorie wouldn’t have complained much, if you explained why.”

  “Hah. You’ve forgotten your wife’s temper.”

  “She does have a bit of a soft spot for starving children. Comes from all that work in the Mother’s temple, I imagine. You want me to take the kid?”

  Yes. Yes, Rath wanted that. But the word that came out was No.

  “You’re going soft, Rath,” Taybor said, as he stretched his shoulders and stepped back to examine his work. He stood on the bars; they took his weight. “Door, too?”

  “Same as usual.”

  It was too much to hope that the conversation had ended, although Rath did try to steer it in a dozen other directions. Taybor was a good locksmith, and a passably good blacksmith as well—but he was ferociously focused; once he’d glommed onto something, he let go when he was good and ready. Rath had seen bulldogs with less of a grip.

  “If you’re going soft,” Taybor said, as he examined the single lock on the door, “you should be about ready for another line of work.”

  “That is getting dangerously close to the thin line,” Rath replied.

  The lock being examined was beneath Taybor’s contempt. He spared it a cursory, damning glance, and then set about disassembling it; Rath held the magelight. There wasn’t enough to work by otherwise.

  “Thin or no, Rath, I mean it. If you’ve taken this girl in, you’re changing. If you’re about to tell me you’re not, I’ll believe you—but in that case, it’s no life for a girl.”

  “And life under a bridge, starving slowly, is?”

  Taybor’s friendly face folded a moment in what passed for a thoughtful expression. “No,” he said at last. “I assume she’s
got no kin?”

  “None that are living.”

  “She told you?”

  “More or less.”

  “No siblings?”

  “None that she mentioned.” He paused and then added, “She is feverish, Taybor.”

  “Meaning you haven’t asked.”

  “As a rule, I don’t ask more than I need to. Information is—”

  “I know, I know. The Mother’s temple—”

  Rath shook his head.

  “Look, I know you don’t hold much with the gods. I’m fine with that. But the people there do good work. Marjorie—”

  “Let it go.” Rath leaned up against a wall. “It’s not as if I intend to keep her.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Do I look like an orphanage?”

  “Not much.” The lock disassembled—along with the doorknob—Taybor looked up. “What do you intend to do?” Friendliness had ebbed from the tone; what remained was steel. Taybor was good at working with that.

  “I intend to see her healthy,” Rath replied, choosing his words with care. “I want her out—but I’m not going to turn her into the streets of the thirty-fifth when she can’t even walk.”

  Taybor’s gaze was unflinching and unwavering. He stared at Rath until the silence was long past uncomfortable, and then shrugged his broad shoulders. “Be careful, Rath. Children grow on you.”

  “So does fungus.”

  Taybor chuckled and began to reassemble the door with a different locking mechanism. The bolts would follow. “Never thought I’d see the day,” he said.

  Rath didn’t deign to reply. If the only bad to come of Jewel was laughter at his expense, he could live with it.

  But he heard her cry out, and tried to look casual as he leaped past Taybor and into the hall beyond his bent back.

  “Jewel,” he said, throwing the door wide.

  She was sitting, her eyes wild.

  He caught her as she struggled out of the sleeping bag and stumbled blindly toward the door, as if he were invisible. She didn’t struggle; as her feet left the floor, she stilled instead. She was hot.

  “What is it, what’s happened? Are you in pain? Do you need to throw up?”