Chapter Thirty
Chapter
Thirty
Fitz and I stood on the roof a couple of weeks later, looking out at the night.
They were repairing things “from the middle out” in the city, but it was slow going—not for any lack of work or effort, but the surge in replacement parts needed for the city’s grid had caused a serious logistics chain issue, raised prices, and created bottlenecks.
Still, we could almost see the glow of lights from several blocks away.
Fitz shrugged a little deeper into his coat.
You could feel the extreme cold of the wind coming off Lake Michigan.
I was wearing my duster, because it made me feel a little weird to be out in the cold in a T-shirt when other people were bundled up.
I hadn’t been doing the regular upkeep on the spells that would protect me, and they were probably getting thinner than I should be comfortable with.
Well. It was probably time to start talking to Fitz about how to do static enchantments anyway.
I could work on my coat tomorrow and show him how to get started on his own first enchantment.
We’d been working on meditating in the cold this evening. Fitz was developing discipline fast.
“So, Maggie is at school all week?” he asked.
“Be back Friday afternoon,” I said. “Goes back Monday morning.”
“And there’s a bunch of supernatural kid types there?”
“Mmmm,” I said. “And the Accorded nations agreed to leave the place alone a while back. There’s several beings there looking out for the place. Now Mouse is included.”
“The dog?”
“Foo dog,” I said. “Near as I can figure he’s at least half an angel’s worth of protection. Good guardian. Kept the svartalves from coming at Maggie in their own damned home, so he’s pretty solid. He once got hit by a car, got up, and hit it back.”
“Oh, wow. I just thought he was a really good dog.”
“He’s mostly that.” I blew out a breath and watched the wind carry the warmed vapor off.
Mist was rolling up from the lake, as it sometimes did.
The view from the castle’s roof would soon be dim shapes and grey background.
“Could be that’s the more important, really.
Most days, you don’t need a ferocious guardian.
Hard to think of a day a really good dog wouldn’t add to. ”
“Huh,” Fitz said. He squinted at me. “You watched pretty close the first time I met Mouse, I noticed. It was a test.”
I shrugged. “Mouse has good instincts for people. He thinks you’re okay.”
Fitz frowned.
The silence stretched for a long moment, brittle.
I was careful to be still. Fitz was still half a wild thing, slow to trust. We’d been working together for months, but while he’d been cooperative and earnest, he hadn’t ever really opened up to me.
So I was quiet and patient. I let the silence go on.
“I don’t know about that,” he said quietly, at last. “You know where I came from.”
That was important. That he was volunteering something. “You had a tough start,” I said. “Me, too.”
“You turned out okay, though,” he said.
“Don’t know about that.”
“You got a big house. You got money. You take care of people.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess so. For now. Money might not last too long.”
“Oh,” he said. He frowned down over the battlements at the town. “Why do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Whole hero thing,” he said. “I mean. Seems like it costs a lot. Not money.”
“I don’t do the ‘hero thing.’ ” I sighed. “Look. I’ve got powers other people don’t. I’m strong in ways they aren’t. When there’s something that needs doing, someone in danger, sometimes I’m the only one who can do anything to help. That’s when I do…what I do.”
“People staying here,” he countered, “there’s other places they could stay. Other people who would feed them.” He looked back at me, his young face uncertain, green eyes searching. “But you’re doing it.”
“They’re from the block,” I said. “Their homes were burned down in the battle.”
“So?”
“So, they stay with me, they have the least disruption.” I shrugged.
“Seems to me a good man helps those that pass through his life. We all did that, help the folks that the winds of life blow through our own yard, the whole world would do a little better. I try to do that when I can. Right now, I can do more than usual. So I will.”
Fitz studied me hard. “Even if other people don’t?”
“Other people do,” I said firmly. “There’s a world of damned decent people out there, quietly doing good stuff. You don’t see much of it in the papers, on the news, probably not on the internet. Kindness doesn’t sell. Don’t mean it isn’t there.”
“I dunno, man.” Fitz sighed. “I got a life of experience says otherwise.”
“Streets are a hard place to live,” I said. “People got fewer resources. Fewer opportunities to step in without suffering badly for it. But you’ve seen better the past few years, haven’t you?”
“I guess,” Fitz said thoughtfully. He looked back out at the city, studying it, as if seeing some things about it for the first time. “Maybe so, yeah.”
“It’s hard to unlearn things,” I said gently.
“Skills you need to survive one kind of life are not the same as the skills you need to get out of it to something more solid. And those skills aren’t the same as the ones you need to make that life more consistent and better. You’re always learning new things.”
“Always?” Fitz asked.
“Stop learning, start dying,” I said seriously. “Why I’m a big believer in reading. Any kind of reading. Even reading pure wild fiction, you learn about what someone else feels life is like. Get a different perspective than your own.”
“Stop learning, start dying,” Fitz murmured. He smiled out at the rising mist. It was already making the cars at street level look soft and vague. “I like that.”
“It’s a little metaphorical,” I said. “But largely true. Try to keep growing your whole life, kid. You’re the only person on the planet you can really change.”
Fitz’s mouth took a bitter little twist to one side. “Yeah. Learned that one a few times.” He glanced aside at me. “I’ve been meaning to thank you.”
“For what?”
He waved his hand back at the castle. “This. All this.”
“Sure,” I said.
He nodded awkwardly. “Okay, then.”
“You know how you pay me back, right?”
His shoulders tensed a little. “How?”
“One day,” I said, “when you’re standing where I was, when some kid is standing in front of you, needing your help, I want you to give it to him.”
He frowned more. “What?”
“I don’t want to be paid back,” I said. “I want you to carry it forward. And you teach that kid the same thing.”
Fitz frowned harder. He stared out at the mist, which had made the cars into blurs now, and had swallowed the one-stories across the street. “Why?”
“It’s what a good man would do,” I said. “It’s one way to be one.”
Fitz thought about that for a moment. Then he said, “The people from the neighborhood. It’s not like you ignore them or anything. But mostly you’re just talking at dinner and game night. You don’t get real personal.”
“Don’t have a lot of personal resources,” I said.
“With me, you get personal,” he said.
I grunted.
“And you had less of them when I first showed up.”
I bobbed my head to one side, a noncommittal gesture.
“Why?” he asked.
I thought about the answer for a while. “Because when I was in a similar spot, someone showed up for me. If they hadn’t, I’d have had a bad end in not long, I suspect. Didn’t want that for you. Didn’t want to spend time thinking how I’d let it happen.”
“You didn’t want to feel guilty?”
“More guilty,” I corrected him. “But it’s about more than that, too. People ought to get something in the vague neighborhood of a fair shot at life. I had a chance to try to help make that happen for you. And don’t forget, you helped me when I was in a bad way, too.”
“Bad way?” he said, grinning. “That’s what you call being all but dead, huh?”
I grinned. “ ’Bout the worst I’ve ever felt, yeah. I was lucky I ran across you.”
His mouth twisted in wry amusement. “Haven’t ever heard those words said in a good way,” he noted.
“Little brother,” I said, “I was lucky to have the chance to help you out. Getting back to basics has been helping me, too. Get back on my own feet.”
He nodded. The mist crept up the walls and had begun to ooze through the crenels, the spaces between the merlons of the castle wall.
“Can I ask you something?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“I hear people talking sometimes,” he said.
“That foreman for the construction guys. Will. Some of the other folks who come through. They talk about ‘she’ and ‘her’ and you and they all know who they’re talking about.
They get quiet when they do, too, like maybe they don’t want someone overhearing them. ”
“Probably talking about Lara Raith,” I said.
“No, they say ‘Lara’ when they talk about her,” he replied.
“Oh,” I said.
“Who are they talking about?” he asked.
I was quiet for a moment.
The kid had opened up to me. Just a little.
I had to repay him in the same coin. He had to see me act in good faith.
Even if it cost me something.
Then I said, “Murphy. Karrin Murphy. She died in the battle.”
Just said it. Out loud.
That she was dead.
The mist rose and poured over my hands, colder and wetter than the evening air.
“Oh,” he said. “I remember her. You two were…?”
“Yeah.”
“How?” he asked quietly.
“Shot,” I said. “Neck.”
“Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “She was a fighter. She went out fighting. As dying goes, it was quick.”
It was likely the mist that made the distant lights blur in my vision. Sure.
“I miss her,” I added. My voice was rough.
Fitz was quiet for a long moment.
But I had showed him what to do. I’d set the example.
“I had an older sister,” he said, his voice somehow smaller, younger. “Before you met me. Caught between two gangs. She got hit in the stomach and bled out in an alley.” He blinked his eyes several times and couldn’t quite stop a tear from falling. “I miss her, too.”
I looked aside at him. Blinked a lot.
He was looking up at me, his expression serious. “I mean, if you ever need to talk about it,” he said. “I feel you.”
I hadn’t talked about it much.
Not even in my quarters in the evenings.
She’d been gone for more than six months.
Maybe it was time to do the healthy thing.
Maybe it was time to start letting go.
Maybe it was the best thing for me.
“Maybe another night,” I said quietly. “Go get some rest. See you at breakfast.”