Gabriel's City

by Laylah Hunter

  When he glances sideways, Gabriel is smiling at him. “You like it here,” Gabriel says. He sounds pleased, and sweet, not at all like a killer or a madman.

  “Don’t you?” Colin asks. “There’s so much going on.” He hadn’t realized it would already be so busy this early in the day. Most times it’s past midday when he comes into the city for fun.

  Gabriel nods. “That makes things much easier, doesn’t it? Come on. There’s a bakery up the street a bit that puts their wares out front.”

  They make it most of the way across the square, and then Gabriel stops again, pulling Colin with him as he shrinks back against the wall. “Actually, you should wait here.” He reaches up to pet Colin’s hair fondly. “Someone might notice you.”

  He doesn’t wait for an answer, just slips into the growing crowd, the urchins and house servants and townswomen come to buy the fresh food their households will need. It’s the chance Colin’s been waiting for. He doesn’t see any carriages for hire in the square itself—a few private ones, but those won’t do him much good.

  But there’s no help in cursing the cards once they’re dealt, and besides, it shouldn’t take that much searching to find one. Colin keeps his head down and weaves his way through the crowd, out of the square and onto Market Street itself. From somewhere up ahead comes the snort of a horse and the jingle of harness, so maybe when he reaches the next turn—

  “Very clever,” Gabriel says, falling into step beside him. “Now walk quickly, but not too quickly. And take this.” He presses something sticky into Colin’s hands. “We’ll turn as soon as we reach the bridge.”

  Colin blinks and looks down. Gabriel has brought him the honey cake he asked for, slightly flattened in the center by a thumbprint but warm and so sweet-smelling that it almost makes up for the fact that he’s stuck with Gabriel again. “Did you steal this?” he asks, and then feels silly. Of course Gabriel must have, or they wouldn’t be fleeing, would they?

  “Mnh,” Gabriel says around an outrageously large mouthful, then swallows. “Morgan never gave me the second half of my money, and his boys didn’t have much. Not a good time to go wasting pennies.”

  “I would have thought,” Colin starts, and then doesn’t finish the sentence. He would have thought someone like Gabriel wouldn’t need to worry about money, but if that were true, then Gabriel wouldn’t live in a single blighted room at the bottom of Cypress Street. And he’d have a coat for nights like last night. Colin considers his stolen breakfast and takes a guilty bite.

  It’s possibly the best cake he’s ever tasted, drenched in honey and rich with butter. The first taste makes him realize how hungry he is, and then he’s stuffing the rest in his mouth with no better manners than Gabriel. He devours the entire thing before they’ve gone a full block.

  Gabriel laughs when Colin’s reduced to licking the honey off his fingers. “Hungry dragon. Should I get you more?”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Colin says, though his stomach still feels empty. “You shouldn’t go back there right now anyway, should you?”

  “I’d manage,” Gabriel says loftily. “I’m tricky. And I wouldn’t want it said that I didn’t give proper hospitality to a dragon.”

  “I’m sure nobody would say such a thing.” If this were a children’s story, now is about the point when one of them would turn out to be a prince in disguise, and the other would be rewarded according to his courtesy. And Gabriel’s been by far the more generous of them, hasn’t he? Colin’s coin purse feels heavy in his pocket. “No. You’ve—you’ve been very kind already. Why don’t you let me, ah, buy you some sausages or something? To thank you for your hospitality last night.”

  The hunger on Gabriel’s face is almost hard to look at. But it only lasts for an instant, and he sounds almost formal when he says, “I’d be honored, Drake.”

  “It’s nothing.” Colin takes his bearings quickly. “Up this way, a bit past the bridge. Have you—” and then he realizes how unlikely it is that Gabriel frequents the Bloodied Boar, so he doesn’t ask, just explains. “There’s a place up Bank Street that I’ve always liked.”

  If Gabriel finds it odd that a dragon would have a favorite place to go for sausages, he doesn’t say so. He walks along beside Colin, sucking the last traces of honey from his fingertips, his stride easy and confident. He acts like a prince of the city, for all that he looks dirty and underfed.

  They cross the bridge over the river, the water churning dark and slow on its course. The old stone of the supports is mossy, stained black up to the high-water line, where the winter’s rains will make it swell. They pass vegetable carts headed to market, children playing a counting game, shopkeepers propping open their doors. I killed a man last night, Colin almost wants to tell them. I saw men die, handled their bodies, and now I’m walking down the street with the boy who killed them. He thinks I’m a dragon. It sounds ridiculous, impossible in the bright light of morning. The sky is too blue, the air too crisp. Those dark, slippery streets feel far away.

  “What are you smiling about?” Gabriel asks.

  Colin looks up sharply. He hadn’t realized he was smiling. “How—how strange all this is, I suppose. It’s as though we’re in a different city today than we were last night.”

  Gabriel nods. “I think sometimes it does change. There are so many things you just can’t find if you go looking in the daytime.”

  “Like dragons?” Colin asks, before he can help himself.

  “And the Lady,” Gabriel agrees. “All the most interesting things come out at night.”

  Colin can imagine himself having said something like that to Anna before last night, and likely with that very same expression. What did he know, anyway?

  There’s a pack of bravos coming up the street from the other direction, the sort of flashy toughs that Colin sees around the gaming houses often enough. As they get closer, he thinks he may even recognize one of them by the neat row of Jua’zan tribal scars along his cheek—and as they pass each other, one of them grabs Colin by the shoulder and shoves him toward the wall.

  “Colin Harwood, is it?” the tough says. Colin pushes his hand away. “We’ve been looking for you.”

  “Rot and die,” Colin says. He hopes Gabriel didn’t hear his name. The brass knuckles are a heavy weight in his coat pocket.

  The tough who has him against the wall is grinning. He has a broken front tooth. His friends close in, putting themselves between Colin and any hope of escape. The last thing Colin sees of Gabriel, he’s wearing a detached, curious expression, as if he wants to see whether Colin can handle himself.

  “You talk big, boy,” the tough says. “Where were you last night when we came to call?”

  “That’s no business of yours,” Colin snaps. His voice shakes.

  “Isn’t it, when you owe our boss so much?” The tough’s ugly grin gets wider. His breath smells foul. “Last thing he said to us was that we ought to see about selling you for it, since you’re so slow with coin.”

  “You can’t do that,” Colin says, even though he’s less sure of that than he wants to be; it turns out all sorts of terrible things are possible. And there’s a little part of him that’s furious, hot and red beneath the fear: he knows what a slave is worth, and it’s far more than all his debts put together. “I need a little more time to get the money together, that’s all.” Why isn’t Gabriel stepping in? What’s he waiting for? “I’ll give you what I have now, and I’ll come up with the rest. Soon.” He reaches into his coat.

  The tough pretends to think it over. “I’m not so sure. Do we wait, and hope you’re as good as your word, or just take your pretty ass down to the docks for a southbound ship now? Barron’s already been plenty patient, what with you thinking you could talk such rot about a man who gave you so much.”

  They’re bluffing. They must be. If they really wanted to carry him off, they’d have just done it, instead of stopping to threaten him first. “I’ll get him the money, and a public apology, I promise.
”

  Gabriel is still there, beyond the pack of thugs. He must be waiting for Colin to prove himself, mustn’t he? Colin has to believe it. “All I have for you right now,” he says, and slides his fingers into the brass rings, “is—”

  Then one of the thugs makes a wet choking sound. Colin doesn’t look, doesn’t waste the moment Gabriel’s bought him; when the man in front of him glances over to see what happened, Colin throws a punch.

  The soft give of flesh and the awful crunch of bone underneath almost make him sick. But he doesn’t have time for that now, not when the others are pulling weapons too. He flinches back, trying to get out of the way of a knife, wishing he had more room to move—he can’t get past them like this, and even with two of them down, the odds aren’t good.

  Colin deflects a strike with his forearm, realizes that he’s taking comfort from Gabriel’s little hisses and snarls. He has an ally here, someone to help him fight his way free. Fates, what he’d give for some distance. His sleeve tears as he tries to block one of them, and then he’s left himself open, too exposed, and a blade bites along his side, a sharp, hot pain. He yelps, lashes out at the man who cut him, and this time the impact doesn’t bother him at all when he feels ribs crack against his hand. He sucks in a quick breath, and his wound stings—and down the street there’s the shrill blast of a whistle.

  He spares a glance—Barron’s thugs are tripping over their fallen comrades as they scramble for the alleys—and realizes it’s not just any of the guard; he’d recognize his rescuer by that dappled stallion alone. Colin sags against the wall in relief.

  “Drake,” Gabriel calls, his voice tight with panic, “run!”

  Colin bolts before sense catches up with him. What must it take to make Gabriel sound that frightened?

  “That way,” Captain Westfall barks as another guardsman rides up. “Don’t lose them!” That sounds like— Does the captain think they’re to blame for this? Colin doesn’t stop to argue, just follows Gabriel, tearing down a narrow side street after him. His boots skid on the cobbles and he slides, nearly falls, catches himself on his hands just in time to see Gabriel turning a corner into a tiny alley. His side aches and his shirt clings to his skin, wet through.

  When he turns the corner, he doesn’t even see Gabriel. “Here,” Gabriel calls, and Colin looks up. Gabriel’s on the roof of a building halfway down the block, where a bare-branched skinny tree must have given him a way up.

  “Why are we running?” Colin pants as he reaches for the first branch of the tree. “We didn’t start it.” His hands slip, stinging against the bark, and he grits his teeth as he tries again. “I know Captain Westfall. If we just told him—”

  “We were winning,” Gabriel says, reaching down and grabbing him by the wrist to haul him the rest of the way onto the roof. “That makes us guilty too.”

  “That’s—” stupid, Colin’s about to say, or not how it works, and then a crossbow bolt cracks against the shingles beside him. “Arhon’s bones,” he says, looking back down.

  Captain Westfall is already snapping another bolt into place. “Bad company you’re keeping, Harwood. Bring him down, and it’ll go easy for you.”

  Colin hesitates. “What’ll happen to—” he almost says Gabriel, and then catches himself in time “—to him?” He presses a hand to his side, where it hurts, and his stomach lurches at the wetness soaking through his coat.

  “I’m not going,” Gabriel mutters, like he wants Colin to have warning.

  “He’ll get no worse than he deserves,” the captain says coolly. As if that makes it any better. Captain Westfall might not believe in Gabriel’s legend, but he’s still a killer. In the eyes of the law, what he deserves is to hang. “Come down, Harwood. You don’t belong here.”

  Colin swears he can feel it the instant before Gabriel moves, a tension gathering in the air and then snapping as Gabriel scrambles over the peak of the roof. Captain Westfall fires again, and Colin doesn’t see the bolt strike home but he hears Gabriel hiss.

  He moves without meaning to, without thinking, his bloody hand slipping as he grabs for purchase. He should be doing as he’s told, giving in, but instead he’s heading after Gabriel, his heart pounding in his chest. Behind him the captain is cursing him and all his line, but in front of him Gabriel’s beckoning him to hurry, and he does.

  “Get your boots off,” Gabriel says as Colin slides down the roof beside him. His trousers are wet with blood down the left side. “They’ll slip.”

  “Are you mad?” Colin asks, tugging his boots off anyway as Gabriel does likewise.

  Gabriel smiles, quick and wry. “People seem to think so.” He picks up his boots and takes off running again, sprinting along the roof to gain speed and then leaping the alley to land with a thud on the other side.

  He must indeed be mad, and Colin must be mad to follow, but all the colors are brighter, the sounds crisper than they should be, and Colin’s blood sings in his veins with the thrill of being alive. His bare feet don’t slide on the shingles as he runs, gathers himself, and jumps. There’s a second of pure terror, so strong he can taste it sharp and stinging in his mouth—and then he’s landing, awkward and off-balance, scrabbling for purchase and trying not to drop his boots at the same time.

  When he recovers, Gabriel is waiting. He nods once and takes off again, up the roof’s slope. The idea that Gabriel is taking care of him seems so bizarre that Colin would laugh if he had the breath to spare.

  Taking the roofs was a good idea, he realizes quickly. As they head south from the river, the houses grow closer together, and they’re more or less of a height, so there’s no point that’ll force them to come down. They can change direction almost anywhere, crossing from one house to the next, and the cramped streets will make it hard for the guards to follow them on horseback. Colin makes another leap—he’s lost track of how many that makes, or where they’ve turned, only that the gray-blue of the sea is nearly always on his left. He stumbles on a landing and has to stop as spots swim in front of his eyes.

  “You’re all right?” Gabriel says, almost a statement but not quite.

  Colin shakes his head. “I got cut.” He presses his hand to his side again and holds it up to show Gabriel the blood. How much can a man bleed before it becomes truly dangerous? He has no idea.

  Gabriel hisses through bared teeth, his brow furrowing. “Come on, then. We should get down before that gets any worse.”

  He peers down at the street, checking for pursuit, and nods decisively. Then he turns right, leading Colin away from the harbor, and stops at the edge of the next block, where an old oak grows by the edge of the road, its leaves turned brown and paper-dry for the winter. Gabriel climbs from the roof into the branches, and Colin clumsily follows him. The pain in his side is getting worse without the thrill of the fight to buoy him up anymore. He drops his boots as Gabriel shimmies down the trunk, because there’s no way he can manage this climb without both hands free.

  By the time he reaches the ground, cursing the roughness of the bark and the dizzy swimming of his head, Gabriel is already stamping his feet into his boots again.

  “There you go, Drake.” He pats Colin’s arm. “That was the hardest part.”

  Colin picks his own boots up off the street. “You’re hurt too, aren’t you?” Gabriel is leaning on the wall, not putting any weight on his left leg, and Colin would swear the bloodstain on his trousers is worse than it was only a few minutes ago.

  “It’s not so bad. I’m more used to it.” He meets Colin’s gaze very seriously as Colin straightens up. “You’ll get used to it too, if you stay in Casmile. It’s nasty here, not like in your fancy castles.”

  “Caverns,” Colin says, and then regrets it when Gabriel smiles; the last thing he needs is to encourage all that dragon nonsense. “You said caverns last time.” He looks away. “Used to it or not, we’re both bleeding, Gabriel. We need to—”

  “We need to hurry.” Gabriel’s tone is sharp, and Colin falls silent. �
�We’re on our way to get help.”

  “Oh.” Colin feels stupid. Gabriel might seem a little touched, but he’s had enough sense to stay alive so far, hasn’t he? “Do you know a doctor, then?”

  “Something like that.” Gabriel turns to start down the street. He’s limping, but he still moves fast. “Mama Deirdre is at least as good as a doctor.”

  “Deirdre?” Colin echoes. He presses his hand to his ribs, trying to think of anything but the pain as he walks at Gabriel’s side. “That’s an uncommon name, isn’t it? Is she a . . .” But he doesn’t know if he’d give offense, calling her a barbarian, and who knows if Gabriel even notices the difference between the men of Casmile and the north?

  “Yes,” Gabriel says, as if Colin had finished the question. “She is.”

  Gabriel’s path through the streets feels random, as if he’s still trying to shake pursuers, or expects to be followed at all times. But he must know where he’s going, because they never turn down a blind alley, even when they cross into the fire-damaged southern quarter and the houses are falling to ruins. Their pace slows, though, as Gabriel’s limp gets worse.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Colin asks.

  “You’re too kindhearted, Drake. Where did you learn a thing like that?” He stops at a house with a patched roof and crooked shutters, blue paint peeling off the front door. He raps on the nearest window, and the glass rattles.

  For a moment there’s no response, and Colin’s heart sinks. As far from ideal as it is to rely on Gabriel’s acquaintances for help, it would be worse to have none at all.

  But then there’s sound from inside the house, the hollow tread of footsteps, and the curtain in the front window twitches. If he were on the other side of that door, Colin thinks, he wouldn’t open it to let them in. Deirdre must be more forgiving than he is, though, because she throws the bolt with a thunk and opens the door.

  “Deirdre,” Gabriel says, hunching his shoulders and scuffing his boot against the paving like a boy ten years younger. “We’re in trouble.”