Gabriel's City

by Laylah Hunter

  Colin shoves his feet into his boots. “You’re going to get money at a hanging. You pick pockets?”

  “And cut purses. It’s also a good chance to see who’s run afoul of the guard lately, and that’s an important thing to know.” Gabriel stands up and stretches. “Come on, Drake. It’s a long way off.”

  The clouds haven’t completely cleared from the night’s rain, but there are a few patches of blue in the quilt of gray. The holes in the street have become puddles, mirror-still until Gabriel kicks pebbles into them, and the air smells cleaner than usual. They cut north and west toward Raven Square, a place Colin’s heard plenty about but never actually gone to see. People are already gathering in the street leading up to it, lining both sides of the way between the prison and the square. It feels like the start to a festival, people waiting for something exciting. This parade won’t be anything like the midsummer celebration of the Mother’s bounty, though—it’ll end in Raven Square, up ahead of them, where a triple gallows waits.

  Gabriel ducks out of the press of the crowd, stopping at one of the dozen or so handcarts around the edges of the square. He buys half a dozen jam tarts, and Colin stares.

  “How?” he asks, as Gabriel offers him a stack. “I thought you had no coin.”

  “I didn’t,” Gabriel agrees, the words muffled by his first bite of breakfast—fully half a tart at once. “It’s a good thing we came here, isn’t it?”

  Colin retraces their path in his memory, trying to pick out a moment when Gabriel could have found the chance to lighten someone’s purse. He can’t figure it out.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” Gabriel asks. “Because I’ll eat yours for you if you’re not.”

  “No!” Colin protests, pulling his tarts out of reach. “I mean, I am.” He takes a bite of the first tart, blackberry jam oozing out onto his fingers as the pastry crumbles. He still feels a little self-conscious, bolting his food on the street like he doesn’t know any better, but it bothers him less than it could, and anyway, nobody here is gentry enough to care. “Thank you,” he says between one tart and the next. “These are good.”

  Gabriel beams. “We’ll eat like lords tonight,” he promises. “Meat and spices, something really fit to grace your table.” He polishes off the last of his breakfast and licks his fingers. “Now you stay here, and be careful of your purse once the show starts. I’ll be back when it’s done.”

  Colin still has a mouthful of tart, so he can’t even manage a coherent protest before Gabriel is off, slipping into the thick of the crowd. It makes sense—of course he’d have an easier time cutting purses without Colin shadowing him—but that doesn’t make it any more comfortable. The whole crowd has a bloodthirsty feel to it; everyone is waiting for the spectacle to start, and Colin thinks he’d feel better with Gabriel’s knives to depend on.

  He loses track of Gabriel in the crowd within moments—just one more thin, dark-haired urchin, when the place swarms with them—and tries to distract himself studying the other people who’ve come to see the hanging. He doesn’t spot any of the gentry, but just about all of Casmile’s other types are there, beggars and sailors and merchants, dun-colored Casmilans and darker-skinned islanders and even a few blond northmen scattered through the crowd.

  The midmorning bells ring, the sound carrying from the river, and when their peals die away, noise erupts from the street where people are waiting. The crowd surges back, trying to clear the way as the guardsmen’s procession advances toward the square. Captain Westfall rides first, dappled stallion tossing its head, his eyes sweeping the crowd. Colin’s stomach tightens in a moment of pure awful terror, and he tugs his borrowed hat down to better hide his face. The captain’s gaze doesn’t linger, thank the Fates. He’s safe for now. This macabre show has nothing to do with him.

  Behind the captain comes the cart with the condemned, drawn by two huge black draft horses. The prisoners are chained to a frame in the cart, standing, on display. The crowd gets louder as they pass by, and a few people throw things at them. One of the men spits back.

  When the cart passes by him, Colin sucks in a sharp breath. They’re the same men who attacked him a few days before, the ones he and Gabriel fled from when the guard arrived. The men Barron sent after him. They weren’t nearly that battered when he saw them last, though—now they’re bruised and bloodied, filthier than he remembers, their clothes torn. One of them keeps nodding, as though he can barely keep awake. Colin tries to tell himself it wouldn’t have gone so roughly for him if the captain had taken him in, but he’s not sure he believes it.

  Gabriel would have faced exactly this.

  He shouldn’t care so much, shouldn’t worry when Gabriel is plainly able to handle himself just fine, but the thought makes him queasy all the same. Fates, he nearly feels sorry for Barron’s men as they’re dragged up onto the scaffold to have nooses fitted to their necks. They attacked him. They broke into his parents’ house. They could have hurt his sister. That last makes him want them to get what they deserve, at least, even if he’s still not sure he wants to watch.

  He expects a speech of some kind when Captain Westfall climbs onto the scaffold himself. The condemned men fidget as the ropes are drawn up and secured, and the crowd slowly goes quiet, waiting. Anticipation knots Colin’s stomach, heavy and cold.

  “For murder,” the Captain says, his voice pitched to carry as if he’s on a stage of a battlefield, “and for brawling in the streets, the law demands that you hang.” Whose murder? Were they already wanted for something else? Did they kill someone on their way to being captured? He and Gabriel were the only ones who did any killing in that fight.

  The captain steps closer to the first prisoner, the one who was nodding off, and Colin waits for him to deliver the rest of the lines—asking for the condemned man’s last words, or at least commending him into the arms of the Three—but all he does is smile and pull the lever for the trapdoor. The rope snaps taut and the prisoner dangles, barely kicking before he goes limp and just sways there. The crowd cheers, and Captain Westfall bows to them. Colin’s heart pounds. The man makes it look easy. How does it become such a simple thing to take a man’s life?

  The second man bares his teeth when the captain turns to him. His lips move as he says something, likely a curse, but the crowd’s making too much noise for Colin to catch it. The captain’s answer is likewise lost, but he smiles the same way he did when he was telling that awful rumor about Gabriel and the Lady. He gestures as though he’s explaining something entertaining, and the prisoner lunges for him like a dog on a too-short leash. The captain steps back, just out of reach, and eases the second trapdoor lever down almost gently.

  It’s no kindness at all. The prisoner jerks and struggles like a fish on a line, twisting, gasping horribly for air. The crowd jeers and howls, and Colin feels sick, but he’s not looking away any more than they are. The man’s face swells as he hangs from the noose, darkens past red to an awful, blotchy purple, and a spreading wet spot darkens the front of his trousers.

  After too many minutes, when the body has gone still and the noise of the crowd begins to die down, someone off to Colin’s left says admiringly, “I’ve got five shillings says he’ll do the last one like that.” Colin pushes his way through the crowd, away from the gambler, before he can hear whether anyone takes the man’s bet. He sure wouldn’t.

  The crowd nearly quiets as Captain Westfall steps up to the last man. The prisoner doesn’t disappoint them, either—he raises his head and spits, “The Lady take your eyes, you rotten bastard.”

  That provokes more shouting and even a few cheers from the crowd. The captain waits, like an actor who knows better than to deliver his lines when the applause will drown him out. When the crowd hushes, no doubt curious, he says with obvious relish, “She’ll have yours first.” He drops the lever to the sound of cheering.

  Colin’s had about all of this he can stomach. He turns away from the spectacle as the final prisoner starts the last fight of his life. If thi
s is what Casmile is really like, then maybe Gabriel’s right after all. Gabriel’s Casmile and Colin’s Casmile aren’t the same place, and there’s only one of them whose rules he knows. He searches through the crowd, trying to catch sight of a familiar, sharp-angled face, but his luck isn’t with him. Gabriel’s too good at disappearing.

  Something brushes against his thigh, too intimate a touch for a crowd full of strangers. Colin reaches down instinctively to deflect it, and catches the bone-thin wrist of a boy who’s trying to pick his pocket.

  For a panicked moment they just stare at each other. The boy is tiny, skull plain under taut skin, his black eyes huge in his face. There’s a bright, angry sore on his lip. “I’m sorry,” he says. His voice hasn’t changed yet. He tries to pull free, and Colin lets him. Enough people have been killed this morning. Colin’s in no hurry to hand over someone else—or get caught himself.

  They’ve attracted attention, though, their stillness making the nearest spectators turn toward them. “Here,” a woman says loudly as the boy takes a step back, “he’s picking pockets!”

  “Run,” Colin breathes. The boy doesn’t wait to be told twice, turning to shove his way through the crowd. The charge gets repeated, other people taking up the cry, the way the entire pack will start to bay after the first hound catches the scent. Some of the guards look their way from the gallows, and Colin’s heart hammers in his chest. If he’s recognized here and caught—

  He pushes through the nearest knot of people. “After him!” he calls. “Don’t let the brat get away!” Some of the more bloodthirsty members of the crowd move with him, and Colin fights his way through the throng, keeping his head down. Two of the guard are coming down off the gallows to investigate. Colin falls back, letting some of the other pursuers take the lead so he can ease sideways out of the hunting crowd.

  “What’s happened?” a man asks him as he pauses to get his bearings.

  Colin shakes his head. “Someone says there was a pickpocket loose.” He prays it’s the Maiden watching him now, and not Gabriel’s Lady.

  “Good luck finding him in this mess,” the man says, and Colin spares him a quick smile.

  “Don’t have to tell me, but my friend’s run off after him. Excuse me.” The lies come easily enough, and he’d rather flee trouble than stand around waiting to see if anyone else is set to die. He slips through the press of the crowd toward one of the alleys that lead off the square. Behind him there’s a roar of voices—sounds like they’ve found someone to be their thief—and he thinks it must be true that the Maiden can’t care for all men at once.

  He slides into the alley, takes a few steps into the shadow, and leans against the wall. Gabriel’s back there somewhere, but Colin isn’t sure he dares to go search for him, not with the captain on the prowl and already in a killing mood. He’d have terrible odds of finding Gabriel in that mob anyway, wouldn’t he? He could probably make it back to Cypress Street on his own by now, for all the good it’ll do him if Gabriel isn’t headed there too.

  He’s still trying to choose his next move when Gabriel slips out of the crowd and into the alley. He looks so focused, so worried, that Colin nearly panics all over again. “Did someone spot you?”

  Gabriel stops dead, staring at Colin. He squeezes his eyes shut, opens them again, and his shoulders sag in relief. “Drake,” he says. “You didn’t go away.”

  This could have been his chance, Colin realizes. He could have found himself a carriage while both Gabriel and the captain were occupied. It didn’t even occur to him to try.

  “I was waiting for you,” he admits. “I only came this way once the guard started hunting the thief.”

  Gabriel nods. “Clever. I saw you go, and I thought you were leaving again. But you shouldn’t. Not when I finally have the money to give you things as fine as you deserve.”

  Even if Gabriel has cut a dozen purses in the last half hour, Colin doubts it could amount to enough coin to provide him the luxuries he was used to at home. “Thank you,” he says anyway. He wonders what sort of finery Gabriel imagines he deserves.

  “You’re welcome,” Gabriel says seriously. He starts down the alley away from the square. He doesn’t look back even when he reaches the corner, like he’s just expecting Colin to follow him.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Colin does.

  He starts to suspect after a few minutes that Gabriel isn’t going anywhere in particular; Gabriel’s routes through the city are always capricious, but this is even more random than usual.

  “This way,” Colin suggests when they pass a corner he recognizes, mostly to see if Gabriel will let him make the decisions.

  Gabriel turns. “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know.” The clarity that Gabriel woke up with this morning is lasting longer than usual, as if even someone as dangerous as he is needs to keep his wits about him when the city itself is mad for blood. “Down by the riverside, I suppose.”

  “Mmm.” Gabriel nods. “Keep to the left, then. There’s a good spot up by the Wren Street Bridge.”

  It’s near enough to having some control, Colin decides. And Gabriel does know the city better, so it’s not that hard to follow him.

  They come north and west to the river and skirt down along Bank Street, mostly silent. This morning’s fresh horror is starting to settle in Colin’s mind; not only the way that people treat the hangings like free theater, but the way that Captain Westfall encourages them to do so. It’s almost hard to believe—the sort of thing that should happen in the northlands, or on the far side of the mountains, somewhere distant and barbaric. Not two miles from where Colin grew up. No wonder Casmile needs villains like Gabriel, if its protectors are so vicious themselves.

  The sky is dark and threatening again by the time they reach the bridge, and Gabriel steps off the street to climb down a rough, muddy path toward the water. Colin almost asks what’s down there, but decides it isn’t worth the bother. It won’t matter what the answer is; he’ll follow anyway.

  Gabriel’s path leads under the bridge, where the stone supports form a shelf just wide enough to sit on comfortably. The pillars have crude drawings and badly spelled insults scratched into them. The water churns by, smoke-dark, only an arm’s length below.

  “What,” Colin teases, “we’re under the bridge, and there’s no troll?”

  Gabriel laughs, as though that was far more clever than it was. “There used to be,” he says. “Black Tom, his name was. But he didn’t like me coming down here, and we had a fight.”

  He should have known better than to ask, Colin thinks. Now he’ll likely lose Gabriel to fancy again. And yet, he thinks he can make out enough of the truth through Gabriel’s telling of it. Perhaps Black Tom was another street tough, or a madman taking shelter here from the weather. It doesn’t really matter; it rarely does, when people start fights with Gabriel. “So you vanquished the troll?”

  “Well, you don’t see him here now,” Gabriel says. He sounds proud of himself. “In early summer, in the dry season when the river runs low, sometimes you can see the stone he turned into, out there.” He points into the middle of the river, and Colin squints at the dark water even though he knows better. “Not right now, though. Not with all the rain we’ve had.”

  “Looks like it’s picking up again,” Colin says, peering out from under the shadow of the bridge. The rain’s just started, a slow patter that’s gaining speed, making the surface of the water shiver to dull stone gray. “Hope it doesn’t last too long.” Before now, he’s always had warm places to go when he wound up outside in Casmile’s winter rain. He wonders if the little potbelly stove in Gabriel’s room is safe to use, and how much it would cost to buy some coal for it.

  “Does it rain much, where you come from?” Gabriel asks, sitting down with his legs folded under him. He pulls his spoils from his pockets, loose coins and little cloth purses, piling them on the stone in front of him. Right now it seems more like he’s the dragon, hoarding his pittance of treas
ure.

  “I’ve told you, I’m from—” Colin stops when Gabriel raises an eyebrow. “It’s a lot like here,” he says instead. In the right light, it’s true. He speaks the same language and knows the same seasons, but he can’t honestly say he’s ever lived in Gabriel’s Casmile. He sits down, trying to ignore the chill of the stone through his clothes.

  Gabriel makes a thoughtful noise, emptying the purses to count their coins. “That’s sort of a shame, isn’t it.” He looks up. “I sometimes think I’d like to see snow, instead of just having Deirdre’s stories. Listening to her, sometimes it almost sounds like it can’t be real.”

  Colin reaches for a half shilling in the pile, the sharp edge cut through the mountain crest of Deradan. “You can believe in trolls and dragons, but not in snow?”

  “I’ve seen those,” Gabriel says. “I’d believe in snow if I could see it, too.”

  “It’s pretty enough. You’d want a good fire to sit beside, though. Maybe someday—” Abruptly Colin realizes he’s about to make an absolutely ridiculous offer. “You’ll get a chance to see it,” he says instead.

  “Maybe so,” Gabriel says. His smile is calm, satisfied, like he could hear what Colin almost said. He’s quiet for a minute, sorting through the last of his coins, and then he says, “We should celebrate.”

  Colin laughs weakly. “What do we have to celebrate? Escaping with our lives from that awful display?” He thinks of it again, the desperate kicking of the dying men, the cheers of the crowd, the vicious delight on Captain Westfall’s face.

  “Even if you didn’t have fun watching, you should at least be grateful,” Gabriel says in his advice-giving tone, which Colin suddenly realizes he must have learned from Deirdre; the inflection’s almost identical. “One of our enemies just slew three others, and that means the city’s less a danger to us now than it was at dawn.”