“Something the matter, Drake?” Gabriel asks, looking up at him.
“No.” Colin’s face heats. With any luck, Gabriel won't notice it in the last of the fading light.
“Come to bed, then,” Gabriel says, squirming under the blankets. “We’ll want rest, if we’re going to do actual work tomorrow.”
Colin exhales heavily. “Right.” He takes off his boots, and strips off his coat so he can ball it up to use as a pillow. With two blankets and Gabriel's body heat, he doesn’t need it for warmth.
“Good night, Drake,” Gabriel says when Colin lies down. He sounds oddly content, like having Colin here makes him happy, which is something Colin doesn't want to think about too hard.
Gabriel’s back is solid and warm against his own, almost comforting. “Good night.”
Red Emma is a Jua’zan islander with a nasty smile and a pirate’s brand. She holds court in a dockside tavern, brokering deals between men who need ugly jobs done and men who don’t mind getting their hands dirty. She greets Gabriel like an old friend, and only looks askance at Colin for a moment. The first day they go to see her, she has nothing for them, but she promises to keep an ear out for things that would suit them. Two days later, she has something to offer.
The job she gives them isn’t complicated, just nasty. They track down the first mate of a known smuggling ship, follow him until they catch him alone, and then Colin stands watch while Gabriel makes a grotesque, messy example of him in a rented tavern room. Colin doesn’t let himself look too closely. It isn’t as quick as the scrapes they’ve gotten into together or even that first night with Morgan. Someone who runs in the kind of circles that get Gabriel loosed on him can’t be much of an upstanding citizen in the first place, but that doesn’t make it easy to watch. He’ll sleep better if he doesn’t know the details.
The important part is they get paid a dozen newly minted shillings—not even a guinea’s worth, but enough to keep trouble off the doorstep.
The day after that first job, feeling oddly pragmatic, Colin insists they spend a fairly large fraction of their earnings on practical things. They give Jack enough money to earn a week’s grace on the rent, and buy a bucketful of coals for Gabriel’s little stove. In the afternoon, they poke around the market, and when Colin finds a coat that fits decently across Gabriel’s shoulders and isn’t too moth-eaten, Gabriel manages to talk the seller down to eight pence less than she’d first asked for it. Overall, Colin feels good about the entire day. He catches Gabriel once or twice holding his hands out in front of him and admiring the tarnished braid that still hangs limply from the coat’s cuffs.
And then Gabriel turns in to a chemist’s, instead of heading south toward home.
“What are we here for?” Colin asks, squinting in the gloom of the shop, wrinkling his nose at the smell of dry, pungent herbs and bitter powders.
“Bottle of genepy,” Gabriel says, as much to the old man behind the counter as to Colin. He looks over at Colin as the old man gets down from his stool to fetch the bottle. “You don’t want laudanum, do you?” he asks suspiciously.
“No? I mean, why would I?”
“For the pain.”
Colin tries not to look as alarmed as he feels. His eye’s still nicely bruised, sure, ugly and purple in the reflections of shop windows, but he didn’t need laudanum for that when it was fresh, much less now. “The pain?” he repeats. “Are we planning to get ourselves hurt?”
Gabriel pats Colin’s shoulder. “Deirdre’s needlework has to come out sometime. Mine’s about done, so yours should be, too.”
“And that hurts, does it?” He should have suspected it, Colin supposes. The stitches have never gotten comfortable, even when the swelling went down; now, with new skin forming pink and shiny under them, they’ve begun to itch whenever he pays attention to them.
“Be brave,” Gabriel says. “I won’t hurt you more than I have to.” He smiles at the chemist. “That’ll be all, thank you. We don’t need any laudanum.”
The genepy, milky green in the bottle, costs Gabriel a shilling by itself. Colin is shocked at the expense for a moment, and then feels ridiculous. A guinea’s a lot of money; a shilling is the bet he used to place on a decent hand of cards. How many days has it been, that he’s starting to get used to this?
“Gabriel,” Colin says slowly as they head south along Cypress again, “how long have I been—” he almost says with you, but catches himself in time “—here?”
“Starting to worry?” Gabriel parries. “Are your people coming for you?”
They should be, Colin realizes. By now surely his father is more worried than angry. Even if Captain Westfall told his parents . . . awful things. They’d want him back, wouldn’t they?
“I don’t know,” Colin says. “They—they might be. I thought they would. But I suppose they’re not doing a very good job of looking, are they?”
“Well, you don’t look much like you did that first night. And you had the sense to come and hide with me.”
“That’s not . . .” Colin frowns. He doesn’t want to be stuck with Gabriel, certainly, and he still thinks he wants to go home eventually. But perhaps it can wait just a bit longer. They pass the house with the tower room whose roof has fallen in, and that means they’re almost back to their own. “Thank you. For taking me in.”
“My pleasure,” Gabriel says. “How many men ever get this close to a dragon?” His tone is teasing, enough that Colin feels a jolt of surprise. From someone else that would sound like flirting. Even from Gabriel, it sounds awfully close to an admission of just how much he’s invented between them.
Colin hasn’t figured out how to ask about that before they reach the house. It’s getting easier to be here, to step over the filth in the first-floor hallway and climb the rickety stairs by only putting weight on the relatively solid parts. Their door is closed and everything inside is still right where they left it, even the coals, which Colin had been a bit worried about. They seem like the sort of commodity that would be in high demand.
“The tinderbox is tucked under the stove,” Gabriel says. “Light us a fire, Drake?”
Colin hesitates; he’s never built a fire himself before. There were always servants to do that at home. But he’s watched, at least, so he knows more or less how it’s done.
“What are you doing?” he asks as he feeds some coals into the belly of the little iron stove. When he glances over, Gabriel is sitting cross-legged on the bed, studying something in his lap.
“Tricky work, drawing stitches.” Gabriel holds up his smallest knife and tests the edge against his thumb. “It helps to have your knife freshly sharp.”
That’s not reassuring at all. One day, Colin thinks, he’ll have the sense to stop asking Gabriel questions. He takes the battered tinderbox from between the legs of the stove and flips open the lid. The straw inside is so dry, it almost crumbles at his touch, but that should make it catch fire easily. Colin carefully lays the straw on top of the coals as Gabriel starts drawing his knife across a whetstone with a thin, high scraping sound.
Really, Colin decides, it’s more shameful than anything else, the fact that he’s sitting here hoping he’s guessed right about making a fire. It’s pathetic that he knows so little about taking care of himself. He holds the flint and steel above the tinder, striking them together with maybe a little more force than necessary. Sparks fly, but they die before they reach the straw. Colin holds the flint a little closer and tries again.
This time the spark catches, and a little flame blooms in the straw, wavering and then growing bolder. Colin draws a breath to point out to Gabriel that he’s done it, and then feels silly. It’s not that much of an accomplishment, is it? A child half his age could probably light a fire as easily, if he hasn’t been coddled all his life.
“Good,” Gabriel says. “It’s a little easier to do this when you’re warm.” He kicks off his boots, then tugs at the laces of his trousers and lets them fall. Colin averts his eyes, but can’t h
elp glancing back as Gabriel sits down gracelessly on the mattress, twisting like he’s trying to examine the stitches on the back of his thigh. “Hmm. I might need you to get these for me, Drake. It’s a tricky spot to reach myself.”
“Me?” Colin echoes. “I wouldn’t have the first clue how to take stitches out. Wouldn’t you rather go see Deirdre for that?”
Gabriel shakes his head. “You can do it. You’re clever. Come here, and I’ll show you.”
“I wouldn’t want to hurt you,” Colin protests. “You trust me more than you should, Gabriel.”
The look in Gabriel’s eyes is piercing, too perceptive, too aware. “Do I?”
Colin swallows hard, not sure how to respond, and Gabriel smiles slowly.
“Sit down and take your shirt off, and I’ll show you how to do it.”
Whenever it really counts for anything, Colin seems to find himself doing what Gabriel wants. He tugs off his coat and shirt, and he’s glad for the stove, even if the heat from it isn’t much yet; he has goose bumps rising on his arms, and he wants to curl up under the blankets. “All right. I’ll—I’ll do my best.” His heartbeat is loud in his ears. “Go ahead.”
“You want a drink first?” Gabriel asks, offering him the genepy bottle.
Colin shakes his head. Considering how fast the whiskey overtook him when he first got the stitches, something as strong as genepy would wreck him. “You want my hands to be steady when I do yours, don’t you? I’m afraid I’d best not drink until after.”
“Brave dragon,” Gabriel says approvingly. He leans forward, examining Colin’s side, pushing Colin’s arm back and out of the way. “You start at one end, and you have to cut each one by itself. Like this.” Colin should be terrified, watching Gabriel’s knife come closer. He’s holding still for Gabriel to use a knife on him. Perhaps he is terrified, a little, but it’s really more that he’s afraid of something going wrong by accident; he honestly believes Gabriel wouldn’t hurt him.
The very point of the knife slides under the first stitch, then sideways. Colin grits his teeth at the tension on the thread, the way it pulls—and then the thread gives, all at once, and Gabriel lifts the knife away.
“Brace yourself,” Gabriel says, carefully catching the knot between his fingernails. “Sometimes this part is bad.” He pulls, and Colin hisses at the pain, hot and ragged, like ripping off a scab too soon, except much worse.
“Ah, Black Mother,” Colin curses as Gabriel tugs the stitch free and drops the scrap of thread. “Do they really have to come out?”
Gabriel shrugs. “Deirdre says if you leave them too long, they rot in your skin, and then sometimes it swells and festers and she has to cut you open to get the bile out.” He raises his shirt and shows Colin a little knot of scar tissue low on his ribcage, thick and raised and still an angry pink in spots. “Then it heals like this.”
“Right,” Colin says as Gabriel pulls his shirt down again. “They have to come out.”
“So sensible,” Gabriel says, using that almost-teasing tone again, and leans down to cut the second stitch.
It’s awful, Colin decides as Gabriel pulls the second stitch free, but less so than having his side fester and fill up with bile. He grits his teeth and tries not to make any more noise than he has to, even when it feels like Gabriel is tearing his skin to get the thread to come loose. Looking down is discouraging, because it means then he can see how little progress they’ve made, and also alarming, because there are little beads of blood rising to the surface in a few of the spots where the stitches are gone. He can get through this. Men live through worse. He’s fairly certain that Gabriel has lived through far worse.
“There,” Gabriel says at last, sitting back on his heels. “All done, my dragon.”
“Thank you.” Colin reaches for his shirt and pulls it back on. His side aches, and it feels hot, but at least it’s over. Soon he’ll be able to have a drink, and that’ll do a lot to make it better.
First, though, he’s going to have to take care of Gabriel. “All right,” he says, picking up the knife. “Are you ready?”
Gabriel gives him a little wry smile, completely ordinary, completely reasonable. “Close enough.” He stretches out on the mattress, facedown, head pillowed on his hands. He looks relaxed, like he doesn’t even realize what a vulnerable position he’s in, lying on his belly in his ragged small clothes.
For Gabriel, it probably isn’t a vulnerable position. Colin tries to imagine himself—anyone—attempting to take advantage of Gabriel. It could only end in blood and pain.
He kneels between Gabriel’s legs carefully, leaning down to examine the stitches. There aren’t all that many, which is a bit of a relief. The skin right around them is bright pink, freshly healed, and fades at its edges into dusty olive. Gabriel doesn’t have an ounce of fat on him, just lean muscle over bone, and the skin at the back of his thigh is pinched tight around the new scar. Older scars make finer lines, some raised and white, others flat and brown.
Colin almost reaches out to touch one, to see what it feels like, before he thinks better of it. “I’m, ah, going to start now.”
“Go ahead,” Gabriel says.
Gabriel’s skin is warm and smooth under his fingers, and Colin tries to stop thinking about that as he eases the knife under the first stitch. It won’t do him any good to notice. Wouldn’t do him any good to try anything. If he’s really that hard up, he can hire someone the next time they wind up in a gaming house—Gabriel is much too dangerous, and much too hard to predict.
The thread is tougher than it looks, even with the sharpness of Gabriel’s knife. It pulls taut, then snaps, and the knife slides almost too fast for a moment before Colin manages to get it under control again. “Sorry,” he says.
“You’re doing fine.” Gabriel’s voice sounds smooth and distant. “Now pull that stitch.” He’s still completely relaxed, completely calm.
“Right.” Colin catches the knot with his nails. The fine detail work is difficult, with the poor light and the way his hands shake. Drinking the genepy before this would have been a terrible idea. But the thread comes loose without too much trouble, once he can actually get a grip on it, and Gabriel makes a soft humming sound that he doesn’t want to think about too hard. “Like that?”
Gabriel nods. “Just like that. You should have a little more faith in yourself.”
“I’ll do my best.” Colin can feel a sort of helpless smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He’s done nothing, really, to earn the trust Gabriel has in him. But he has it and he’s going to do his best to keep it.
It helps that Gabriel seems to be more healed than Colin was. He doesn’t bleed when Colin pulls the stitches free, and most of the thread comes loose without too much effort. The fresh scar is thin and bright pink, smooth and shiny against the ordinary skin around it. Colin counts as he goes—eight of them, which feels like far fewer than he had. It seems unfair that Gabriel should be the tougher of the two of them and also get hurt less.
“All done,” Colin says at last, sitting back and setting Gabriel’s knife aside.
“Mmm, good.” Gabriel sits up, curling his legs under him and reaching for the bottle. “Let’s not do that again for a while.”
“Gladly,” Colin says; he’d be happy not to do it again at all.
Gabriel uncorks the bottle and takes a long pull from it, then hands it over. The genepy smells tangy, herbal, strange, overlaid with the sharp bite of alcohol. “Have some,” Gabriel encourages. “You’ll hurt less, and it’s good for you.”
“Thank you.” Colin lifts the bottle to his mouth and takes a careful drink. It’s stronger than the rum from the gaming house, stronger than the brandy he was used to before, turning to dizzying vapor in his mouth and making heat burst in the pit of his stomach. “Oh,” he says, and takes another drink. “Oh.”
Gabriel laughs. “Yes. Exactly.”
It’s coming close to the Longest Night. Houses in the nicer parts of town are decked with evergree
n branches, and when they leave the relative comfort of home, their breaths steam in the cold air. Drake’s been here for more than a month: long enough to get used to Cypress Street and the tidal rhythms of Gabriel’s madness, long enough to start answering to a new name, long enough to act more the part of Drake than that of Colin Harwood. Sometimes he still thinks of home, but less than he’d have expected, especially in the winter. With Gabriel, even the most mundane routines have a chance of turning into fantastic adventures, and the excitement has yet to fade. They walk the streets of Casmile, and hear stories in pubs, and play cards in dockside houses, and sometimes they take money from well-fed old men with hard eyes, and then go start fights that other people don’t walk away from. Drake hears his new name come up in stories about Gabriel occasionally, and he tries not to let it go to his head, but it isn’t easy when he sounds so much larger than life in the rumors.
Gabriel, for his part, only rarely asks to hear stories about dragons, and doesn’t complain much when Drake still denies being one. He thanks Drake for doing practical things like bringing up a pitcher of water from the rain barrel outside so they have fresh water in the mornings, or setting aside some of their coin every week so the rent gets paid with no trouble. The one time Drake gets needy enough to hire a girl at a gaming house, Gabriel stands watch in the alley while Drake pins her to the wall and takes what he paid for. Afterward the girl asks if Gabriel would like to buy a turn, too, but he shrugs her off without bothering to hide his distaste.
Gabriel's City Page 11
