Chapter Eighteen

EIGHTEEN

Alex, first named Elena, returned to Azril as a heartbroken, furious teenager, dressed in a pair of stolen trousers and with his hair cut short. He had stowed away on a ship from Combes only to be discovered as the ship was making its way into the harbor.

Drawn in by the shouting, Vitrine, in the uniform of one of the harbor masters, came up to take Alex by the arm. At the captain’s protest, she cut him down with a cold look.

“This one is under my jurisdiction now, and as far as Azril is concerned, so are you.”

The captain, who wanted to see Alex hanged, pulled back in chagrin with a sullen yes sir, and Vitrine briskly marched her new charge into the city.

“Where are you taking me?” Alex demanded, trying to sound bigger than he was. “I’ll crack your head open, I’ll slit your throat.”

“Well, where would you like me to take you?” Vitrine asked, and he blinked, because now she looked like a middle-aged auntie, comfortable in the tunic, loose trousers, and shawl that were so common in Laal. Laal and her famous princess had recently awakened from a two-hundred-year sleep, and were finally trading with the world again.

“Let me go,” he said in sudden terror, and Vitrine did, causing him to flail back into a pretzel seller carrying her wares on a forked pole. When it looked as if he was going to do as poorly with the pretzel seller as he had with the ship’s captain, Vitrine stepped forward again, purchasing two pretzels from the irked vendor and handing one to Alex.

“There,” she said. “It’s good, and that’s the second time I got you out of trouble. That’s two more than most people get from me.”

Alex, half the pretzel already in his mouth, looked at her apprehensively.

“What happens if I get in trouble again?”

“If?” Vitrine snorted. “I don’t think if is the word you want there, my lad.”

They ate their pretzels leaned against a broken wall that had once marked Azril’s boundary against foreign mercenaries, where they had to surrender their arms if they wanted to gain the city’s center. Some of these walls had survived the angels, but there were fewer of them than there had been once. They’d been dismantled for stone, and now people used the old markers and boundaries as doorsteps and foundations.

“These are good,” Alex said reluctantly, and Vitrine smiled. They were, new and good both, and she was coming around to them.

“So what brings you to Azril?” she asked companionably.

“A promise to my mothers.” When he saw that that would not serve, he sighed.

“They told me that I must spend a year of my life here. I don’t know why, but I promised them. I promised them right before they—well. It was a promise.”

The grief was still new. Vitrine guessed that Alex was no more than sixteen. Sixteen was fragile, and she had never had much use for fragile.

“And what will you do with that promise?”

“Find some family, I guess. Mother said I had family here that would recognize her name and—”

“Oh, they’re gone,” Vitrine said, watching his face closely. “In the first week of the great plague, them and their household. There’s no one here for you.”

There was a brief shattering, a child so far from home that he could not take one step further without growing up all at once. Then he pulled himself back together, piece by jagged piece, looking more like Juana than he did Jinan, who had after all been loved every day of her life. No one loved Alex anymore, and Vitrine was still not sure if she would take it up.

“Fine, then there is no one here for me,” he said, nothing more than a welter of hurt feelings, and finishing the pretzel, he stalked off.

“He is going towards the Mazes,” the angel said with some asperity. “They’re going to slit his stomach on the off chance that he swallowed diamonds.”

“So he is,” she said. “If he comes out alive, I’ll find him a nice place to live.”

“You could find him a nice place to live now.”

“So could you.”

The angel gave her a dire look. He would be handsome in the new fashions from Laal, but he insisted on the long tunic and rope belt that the old ascetics wore. Honestly, hopeless.

“Give me some money,” he said at last, holding out his hand as if surely she would.

“And why would I do that?”

“Because I am not permitted to steal it, and I am not permitted to earn it,” he said sternly. “Because clothes and food and shelter cost money.”

“Why?”

He knew she was not looking for a lecture on trade and the violence of those who ate well against those who did not. He couldn’t quite meet her eyes.

“Because we loved Jinan, didn’t we? We saw her grow, and we saw her off. We’ll never see her again.”

The wings in Vitrine’s glass cabinet stirred, gently, almost shyly, and she pressed her hand over her chest to calm them. She imagined, briefly and disconcertingly, reaching up to do the same to the angel. She wondered what she might feel if she set her hand to the scarring over his heart, whether it would beat like a human’s or thunder like the sea or sing like a bird. Perhaps it would only be that stupid humming sound he made when he did not care to argue with her but still wished her to know he disapproved.

Vitrine dropped a scattering of silver and gold into his palm.

“For Jinan, then, and not for you, and not for that boy, not yet. He still has to impress me.”

Angels did not roll their eyes, but this one came close.

“I’ll let him know,” he said, disappearing after Alex into the narrow twisting alleys.

The angel kept Alex alive, and observing from the dark corners and deep doorways, Vitrine could see that that was no easy trick. Fragile, she had thought him, and there would always be something fragile about him in the heart, apt to break, and so cheap he would hand it to almost anyone.

In a mostly futile effort to protect that frail heart, the angel put a sword in his hand, and in the cramped courtyards of the Mazes, under the jeering of the returned pigeons and the girls swinging their bare legs out the windows, he taught him how to use it. Sitting with her arm slung around the shoulders of a girl who would put the whole of the city on its back for her skills on the stage, Vitrine considered the strange pair circling each other below, Alex too eager, the angel already resigned to correcting another foolhardy lunge.

“He’s more patient than I thought he would be.” Vitrine watched the angel haul Alex to his feet yet again. There seemed to be no end to the number of times he was willing to do it.

“You weren’t here yesterday,” the girl snugged up to her side said. “The little idiot tried to do some kind of silly jumping lunge and nearly ran himself through. His master turned the air red with curses.”

Imagine, an angel cursing. Vitrine gleefully put it away to hold over his head later. Below, Alex went down on his knees, the angel’s own sword flicking up to touch his throat, then away. Without hesitation, Alex rose, and the way he called for the angel to come again was nothing short of a command.

His master, the girl had called the angel, but Vitrine doubted it. The angel was no one’s master, no matter what fire danced at his fingertips.

Almost as if he had heard her, the angel raised his eyes to find Vitrine sitting on the windowsill, her red silk wrap trailing down the dirty brick like a spill of blood. The part of herself she’d put in him shone, and with a shout of triumph, Alex locked the angel’s blade with his, shoving him back two paces and forcing the angel to meet him with a startled cry.

“There,” Alex cried, sounding even younger than he was. “And when was the last time anyone forced you to yield?”

“Never save once,” the angel replied, turning away from Vitrine decisively. “Here. It doesn’t mean anything if you can’t do it again.”

Alex never could, but he quickly found that fighting men or creatures that pretended to be men was far easier than fighting an angel. The first time he killed someone he ended up puking out his guts in the alley with the angel standing guard over him. On his other side, Vitrine looked him over critically, taking in his bent back and the sweat on his brow.

“He’s not very good at this.”

The angel bristled.

“Why must he be good at this? What sort of monster should he be that he takes joy or ease in such a thing?”

“Well, perhaps he’d be like you.”

“Angels do not take pleasure in slaughter.”

It had been some time since they’d spat at each other like this. Vitrine found she had missed it, and she eyed him with a sharp grin, rubbing Alex’s back as he heaved.

“No? We take pleasure in what we are good at, and I have seen you excel at little beyond the ending of lives.”

“You know nothing of the purpose I fill.”

She pursed her lips prettily, and she lifted her hand from Alex’s back only to bring it back down silvered with claws, long ones, hooked, that she had borrowed from one of the deadly smilers, the great cats that haunted the plains of the south. The blow came within a hairsbreadth of the back of Alex’s head but the angel snatched her wrist and held it in an iron grip, the look of shock and fury on his face so funny she laughed. Vitrine shook him off, stepping back and sweeping out her skirts like a girl well pleased with the one who’d had her against the wall.

“Look at what a good little nursemaid you are. How skilled, and how caring.”

The angel growled, a sound like lions, but Alex moaned, staggering up and wiping his mouth shakily.

“Who are you speaking to? I thought I heard someone—”

“You heard nothing worth hearing. Here. Drink some water.”

Alex staggered to the fountain and drank gingerly, nodding when he kept it down. He’d have the scar from the cut scabbing over on his neck the rest of his life. He’d always hear the other man’s last gasping breath in his dreams. He would never really feel safe again. Still, he was the same boy, and Vitrine felt a new pang of affection for him. Her city was always her city no matter what had happened to it, and this was still Alex, no matter what had happened to him.

Vitrine put a slip of paper in the angel’s hand along with a scatter of stars made of hammered gold. She’d found them when they were digging out the foundations for a new hospital on the north end of the city. She didn’t know whose throat or wrist they had circled in the great long ago, but they were beautiful, gleaming gently in the angel’s palm. What an impossible sky he would make, solemn without any hint of dawn or dusk to threaten his constancy. With a night like him, no one would worship the day.

“Here. Take him to this address. He can get food and some sleep in a proper bed for once.”

The angel gave her a suspicious look.

“ Only a meal and some sleep?”

“Well, that depends on what he likes. There’s plenty there. Perhaps you will get what you like as well.”

“I doubt it.”

“If only you could be pleased by something as simple as a brothel. Go on.”

The angel might have protested, but Alex looked around in confusion.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look like that before, old man. What moves?”

Vitrine, close enough she could have leaned in to kiss Alex’s mouth, smiled with all her teeth bared.

“I do. In the shadows, in the river. In that heart you’ll give away over and over again and the pride that you never will. I move, Alex.”

The angel snorted, taking him by the shoulder and turning him away from her decisively.

“Come on. You need a meal and some sleep.”

She watched them go, absently ducking under the dark winged thing that had come to collect Alex’s victim. What a wonder it might be if only the angel could be eased and comforted at a brothel. What the world might look like then.

At the mouth of the alley, Alex glanced over his shoulder, not for one last look at the sorry scene, but because he thought he had glimpsed out of the corner of his eye the motion of a hand, first tipped upright and then languidly laid down, palm up, like a drawbridge. It was a thrown kiss, and the place where the other man had cut him stung suddenly.

Then his priest tugged him back into line and he hurried after, and he never thought about that hand or that kiss again.

In truth, she never intended to look in on Alex as much as she did. She had matters to attend to as Azril grew tall again, ships to send out, building plans to inspect, people to keep or send away, but again and again, she looked around and there he was. It was hard to miss a young swordsman with an angel at his heels, and whenever she sent over a drink or a meal, she made sure it was carried by some interesting, dangerous thing that was sure to capture Alex’s attention and to make the angel despair of his charge’s chances of living until morning. By the end of Alex’s year, he was strong and swaggering, pretending to be the best sword for hire in the city and mostly getting away with it. These days, there was plenty of opportunity for swords and bloodshed. Gold poured into Azril, enough to pay for city guards and mercenaries alike, and Alex flirted with their company as if he was always on the verge of falling in love.

“Well?” asked the angel in exhaustion. He was so tired that he didn’t even protest the picture they made, the worn-out mendicant friar sitting down in the tavern with Vitrine in her fine courtesan’s dress. His hair was as dark as ever, but she liked to imagine gray threaded through the black, some outward sign of his harried, harrowed year.

“Well?” she echoed, sipping delicately at her drink.

“Well, will he do?”

“Do what?” she asked with interest. “I only asked Jinan for a year with her child. It’s been a year. And it looks like he’s going to pick a fight with that big man from Yfs. That’s going to go poorly for him.”

The angel rose from the table with a weary totter, but laughing, she sent the man from Yfs on his way.

Alex came strutting to the table, taking the third chair and giving Vitrine what he likely considered a seductive look. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good yet, either.

“Well hello, bright eyes,” he said, leaning in. “Is my old priest taking good care of you?”

“Let’s not talk about your dull old priest,” she said, giving him a slow and feline blink. “Let us talk about what you want instead.”

“Everything,” he said grandly, and it made Vitrine laugh, because she could tell he didn’t mean it. When she looked into the chambers of his heart, his wishes were homelier than those of either of his mothers. He wanted comfort and pleasure. He wanted people to know him as a dangerous man, one worthy of respect and fear. He wanted to come home over and over again and to find it just the same as when he left. That last was an impossible thing, and Vitrine set it aside to call for wine and for fish stewed in a clay pot with garlic, sugar, and imported ginger.

“I like the way you talk,” Alex said much later, the tavern empty and the pot of fish demolished between them. His dark head rested on the table, his nose just inches away from where the letters AEV were carved deep into the wood. AEV had been very bold and clever, gambling with the city cats for their secrets. She’d lost her right eye on the first throw of the dice, and the smallest finger on her left hand on the second, but on the third, she had won all their eyes for her own. Instead of taking them, she’d left them in the heads of the tabbies, the selves, the calicoes, and the tortoiseshells. Whatever they saw, she saw, and she made herself very rich and very dangerous with her hundred eyes.

“Do you? What else do you like?”

“Everything,” he said again, and this time it was somewhat closer to the truth. Heart with a wide-open door, poor thing, and as she held the fishbones up to tease the tavern cats, she considered.

“What do you think?” she asked the angel, who sat with his arms folded across his chest. In the light of the banked hearth, his head slightly bowed, he might have been drowsing, but of course he did not sleep. What wonders she might have seen if she had demanded his eyes instead of his wings, but she could not have borne to leave them where they were.

“I think he is drunk, and I think you already know what you want to do.”

She started to retort that she had merely asked for his thoughts, not his reproach, but it occurred to her that he was right.

She wanted Alex to have the city, and Vitrine decided that she would give it to him.

Alex took Juana’s family name, Lorca, and in a year or so, he managed to catch up to his own reputation. He recruited a mercenary company from his companions in the Mazes, and he fed them well enough that they were only occasionally tempted to bite him. They were savage, and Vitrine was often happier to see them out of the city than in it. Alex ranged inland where his mothers had gone to sea, offering his services to this city or that one, always returning to Azril, which he called the only woman who ever had his heart.

“He’s just like you,” the angel said in exasperation. “Have you heard his latest poems to Azril’s towers?”

“Terrible, simply awful,” Vitrine said happily. “And yes, he loves this city almost as much as I do.”

Every time Alex returned to Azril, after he had washed off the blood and grit and seen his gold deposited safely in the new banks, he went to the coffeehouse on Marigold Street to meet with his old priest and his first patron, a glamorous and mysterious courtesan.

“You two never change,” he said, eating the bowl of rice noodle soup. “Why is that?”

“Would you like us to?” Vitrine asked in amusement, but the angel scowled.

“Why should we?” he asked. “It is enough that you do. You have grown thinner since you were home last, and look at the scars on you.”

“I never change, I will always be this strong, this vicious, and this alone,” boasted Alex, and because he was her favorite, Vitrine reached out to touch his chin, turning his head to see the woman coming in the door.

She was small and brown, unremarkable in every way save for how relentlessly unremarkable she was. She had taken pains to make herself so, and the business that had brought her to Azril was a bloody one. She was vengeance’s daughter, and the knife strapped to her leg, easily grasped through a slit in her pocket, was very sharp.

Then she looked up, meeting Alex’s gaze. That alchemy that Vitrine suspected sparked, and fate shifted in its banks.

Forgetting his patron and his priest in a moment, Alex stumbled to his feet, almost tripping over his sword.

“Marry me,” he said, and vengeance’s daughter laughed straight in his face. Vitrine liked that laugh a great deal. The angel frowned.

“What will you give me?” she asked.

“Anything. Anything at all.”

She looked him over closely, and her eyes lit on his sword.

“Are you any good with that?” she asked, and he puffed up like a singing bird.

“The best there’s ever been.”

“Well,” she said, “buy me dinner. We’ll talk.”

“Oh, no,” the angel said. “This will only end in—”

“With good luck and kind fate, it might never end at all,” Vitrine said, running her fingers along the bloody threads of the girl’s quarrel. “But come along. We’re not wanted here.”

They weren’t, and the angel followed her into the street.

“You can’t keep him from every danger,” she reminded him. “You never could.”

“You don’t care about him at all. That girl has blood dripping from her skirts.”

“And he leaves bloody footsteps wherever he goes. It’s a good match, I think.”

“For him or for the city?”

“For me, it’s the same.”

Vitrine sighed when the angel looked mutinous.

“I shouldn’t have to give you of all things a lecture on playing favorites.”

He looked abashed at that, and he was not seen in the city for a handful of years. It was fine. Vitrine had things to do, and there was the blood and intrigue that vengeance’s daughter would spin around Azril like a spiderweb, giving it a hard and garnet glitter.

Be vicious, be loved, and be lucky, read the words Alex had chiseled over the mansion he built on what used to be Clayborn Street, and largely, they were. When they grew older, they sank into a respectable middle age that they took to quite well, and from the exploits of their younger days, they had a fortune, a share in a fleet of ships, and a pack of children, saved or given or salvaged.

“It’s quite a lot,” Vitrine said, playing the adoring auntie that of course they all remembered. “Do you have a favorite?”

Alex gave her a wink, holding the youngest on his knee.

“They’re all my favorite.”

“Are they?” she asked archly. “I thought Azril was your favorite.”

“Of course it is. Just like every child is my favorite, and my wife is my favorite, and you are my favorite.”

He paused.

“You didn’t bring my old priest with you this time.”

“No, he is even less constant than you are. But tell me, if you wanted one of these children for your heir…”

“One of these children for Azril, you mean,” he said, and she nodded.

“All of them.”

“Well, of course all of them,” she said. “But is there any single one—”

He shook his head abruptly, and she saw the specter of his early years in him still, when she had told a sixteen-year-old that there was no one in Azril who loved him.

“If there must be one, then you choose,” he said. “And please never tell me.”

She climbed to her feet, taking his hand gently. It was his left, where the joints had grown stiff in the previous year. When he died, he would barely be able to move it at all.

“All right,” she said. “Thank you. You won’t see me again.”