Hale, Ginn

by Wicked Gentleman (lit)

  I dropped to the rooftops and ran across them, jumping from one to the next as I went. The closest watchtower stood only three roofs away. Once I passed it I would be in the circle of searchlights. I knew it was not my nature to run to the rescue of some idiot child. Still, I rushed in as if it were my own life I was saving.

  The Inquisition men were already deep into the park. They were well ahead of me, but I had the advantage of the night itself. I could see into the shadows that they mistook for branches and twigs. I knew exactly where I needed to go. It was only a matter moving between the dozens of Inquisition men and their piercing lights.

  A tense excitement pulsed through my body. I moved in behind one man, matching my steps to his. As he turned, I slipped up to the man just ahead of him. I was so close I could see the short hairs at the back of his neck. I could have slit his throat before he knew I was there. I held my breath. As the Inquisitor passed another of his own men, I switched off again. I moved with each of them, pairing and parting like a spreading disease.

  At last I stopped. Slowly, I knelt down. The little Prodigal had been smart enough to know that the Inquisition men were expecting to find her up in the tree branches. Instead she crouched low, camouflaging her form in the lush shadows of irises and tulips.

  She froze absolutely still as I knelt in front of her. She was small and filthy. Her short hair was caked with mud and her clothes smelled like rotting leaves. Tiny flickers of red fire moved through her dark eyes as she watched me. She looked like the kind of girl who bit men's fingers off. I held out my hand, letting her see my long black nails clearly. Then I raised a finger to my lips and stood back up. The rest I left to her. If she chose, she could remain hidden where she was. I was willing to offer her my help, but I wasn't going to force it on her.

  As I began making my way back across the park, I glanced over my shoulder. She was following me. I didn't slow down for her or wait when she fell behind. I took care of myself. My attention circled between the movements of the men around me and the slashing searchlights overhead. I darted into shadows, then bolted from them moments before the sweeping lights burned them away.

  All I offered the Prodigal girl was a chance to learn what I knew. I showed her the way out, but it was up to her to get through. She had to be quick and silent. One step in the wrong place and she would be trapped under dozens of hook nets. Then the Inquisition would have her. She had no second chances.

  When I reached St. Christopher's Cathedral, I bounded up into an alcove of sacred statues. A cluster of sleeping pigeons broke apart and flew up into the eaves. I leaned back against one of the weathered stone angels and watched the Inquisition's search. The lights continued to probe through the lines of trees and flash up into the cloudless night sky.

  I didn't really expect the girl to follow me. When she floated up into the cranny next to me, I said nothing. I kept looking out across the park. I wondered if Harper lived in one of those houses.

  "Do I know you?" the girl asked.

  "I doubt it," I replied.

  She was small, but older than I had first thought. Her expressions were hard and suspicious. I noticed the hilt of a knife jutting up from her belt. Her fingertips remained close to the knife as she watched me.

  I turned my attention up into the dark sky. Above us, the stars still shone like jewels. Their luminescent colors shimmered and twisted with the distortions of the winds. The night was still deep and beautiful, but I couldn't seem to lose myself in it.

  I watched a bat swoop through the air and snap up a firefly.

  "Why did you help me?" the girl asked.

  I didn't answer.

  It was none of her business. She wasn't really the one I had wanted to save from the nets. My kindness had nothing to do with this girl, here now. It had just been a drug-addled attempt to comfort my own past. No one had come to my rescue when I had been trapped by the Inquisition. No one had been there for Sariel. So, years too late, I had come, as if I could somehow redeem either of us by saving this girl. I felt disgusted by my own sentimentality.

  I scratched one of my black nails hard against the tip of a stone angel's wing. It left a white scrape, but nothing more.

  "Are you a member of Good Commons?" the girl asked. The fissures of red fire in her eyes pulsed wider.

  At the mention of Good Commons, I knew my escape into the sweetness of ophorium and the depths of the night had been futile. I couldn't out-distance the world that surrounded me. At every turn it seemed to close in over me. Still, I refused to abandon my night of thoughtless beauty. I pointedly gazed up at the North Star. Its blue brilliance burned into my eyes.

  "Look at it." I pointed into the sky. "All it has to do is shine. Simply hang there in the sky and shine."

  "Is this some kind of game?" the girl demanded.

  "No."

  "Are you drunk?" she asked suddenly.

  "I wish I were," I said.

  "You aren't with Good Commons?" she asked again.

  I gave up. This girl just wasn't going to go away. I had made the great error of being kind to her, and because of that, she doubtless felt that there had to be some connection between us.

  "I helped you because I thought it might have been a good thing to do for another Prodigal. I had no other reason beyond that," I said.

  I frowned at one of the cathedral angels. Its face and shoulders were thick and distorted from the months of accumulated pigeon shit.

  The girl studied me intently for a moment, then let her fingers fall back from the hilt of her knife. She looked out over the park. Inquisitors still searched the trees and undergrowth. She smiled, watching them.

  "Do you know why I came here?" the girl asked.

  "You came to do harm," I replied.

  The girl's eyes narrowed. "What makes you think that?"

  "You're carrying one knife in your belt and another in your boot." I took a small sniff of the air between us. There was a strong scent like that of scorched limes: sweet, bitter, and burning. "You're sweating vengeance. But what gives you away the most are your eyes. They've split. Red fires are shining through the cracks."

  She looked surprised. She instinctively lifted her hand to her dirty face, then stopped. There was nothing she could do about it now. Slowly, she turned back to watch the movements in the park.

  I looked back up into the sky. The ophorium ran thin through my bloodstream now. Flight and concentration had burned it to little more than vapor. I felt strangely cold, and everything around me seemed slightly ugly.

  The shifting breeze caught the reek of rotting fish and sewage from the edge of the river. The moon seemed to have yellowed and cracked like a rotten tooth. Even the North Star took on the tawdry shine of costume jewelry.

  "They murdered my friends," the girl said quietly. "One after another. Lily, Rose, Peter—"

  "Peter Roffcale?" I asked softly. I knew it had to be him.

  "Yes. Did you know him?" she asked.

  "Just in passing," I replied.

  "They strung him up and gutted him." The red fissures in the girl's eyes spread, swallowing her dark irises. Blood-red tears welled in her eyes and slid down her cheeks. "They gutted him like a fish. Like an animal. They did the same thing to the others, to Lily, to Rose..." She wiped her tears, smearing bloody slashes across the back of her hand. "I tried to stop them tonight, but I got there too late. They murdered Tom. He was just a boy." More bloody tears dribbled down her cheeks, and she scrubbed at them angrily.

  "I'm sorry," I said. The girl hardly heard me.

  "They'll pay. I'm going to make them pay. I don't care if I have to go to hell to do it. I'm going to kill them all." She stood up and glared down at the Inquisition men in the park. Slowly, her gaze moved on to the houses on the south side of the park. I remembered that I had first seen her floating just outside the window of one of those houses.

  "Does one of them live there?" I studied the elegant building.

  "No." Her expression softened momentarily. "The
man who lives in that house has never done anything wrong to anyone. His only crime was to marry a coward."

  Fury began to burn through the tones of her voice. "A weak, lying bitch who should never have been born. She should've been wiped off the face of the earth."

  I felt the change in the air as the girl spoke. The smell of burning lime intensified to the sickening scent of acid. The familiarity of it made the wounds across my back shudder with remembered agony. The same sharp scent had come just before the attack against Sariel's conjuring.

  "If you want to do a good deed tonight, you'll make sure that the Inquisitors get him out of that house."

  The girl didn't spare me a glance. She whipped out her knife and spat on the blade. The steel blade turned instantly black and flames sprang up. She hurled the knife out into the sky. It streaked through the air and slashed through a window on the second story. An instant later, yellow flames exploded up, shattering the glass and tearing through the shingles of the roof. Black and violet clouds of smoke curled up into the air.

  I glanced at the girl, but she had already kicked off the cathedral and swooped up into the night sky. The Inquisition men rushed to the fire. I watched. They pulled men and women out of the house, most of them servants. The timbers of the roof began to collapse, and a huge geyser of fire leapt up into the open air. I floated up on the hot currents.

  Even through the thick smoke and waves of heat, I recognized the last man to be dragged from the burning house. For a moment, I lingered on the searing currents. Below me the searchlights uselessly raked the thick walls of smoke. Down in the midst of the confusion and shouting, Edward Talbott stood in his nightshirt, watching the flames consume his home.

  Chapter Eight

  Smoke

  I knew nothing about Joan Talbott except that her Prodigal friends were dying. Now her husband's house was in flames. Violent devastation seemed to encircle the woman, sweeping away those nearest her while she remained a mystery at the center of it all.

  The smell of fire and smoke permeated my clothes. It hung in my hair, mouth, and nostrils and lay against my skin like a sheen of perfume. I wiped my face and kept walking. I wanted to think, clearly and calmly. Too much was happening, too quickly.

  I needed to know more about Joan Talbott. Why had she inspired such hatred from a single Prodigal girl? Where had she gone, and how was she tied to Peter Roffcale's murder? I needed to find out what she had actually done in Good Commons.

  All of these questions churned through my thoughts, but I couldn't concentrate on any one of them. They aroused flickers of my curiosity. But I was tired and too disconnected from them. They seemed like they should fit together, like they did, but I was missing just the right angle to slip them into place.

  I toyed with possibilities, not because I thought I could solve anything, but to distract myself from another thought. I took in a long breath. The flavor of burning wood and the heat of full, rich flames rolled up through my thoughts. The smoking remains of Edward Talbott's house lay far behind me. The scent and sensation arose from my own memories of Sariel. Everything about fire reminded me of him. Now the scent of burning clung to me like a ghost, and I could not stop thinking of him.

  I had kept memories of him buried for so long and so well that I had imagined that I had forgotten about him altogether. It had been a lie I wanted desperately to believe, and so I had.

  But now, the very air seemed saturated with his presence. There was some detail in every object that I touched or passed that recalled a memory of Sariel.

  The hiss and gurgle of the gas lamps reminded me of the way he had whispered curses constantly behind the backs of his least favorite teachers. He had also whispered, in that same quiet way, after he had fallen asleep in my arms. The low moaning of cats made me remember suddenly the first night we had made love. It had been in an alley, and neither of us had known very well what we were doing.

  The smell of him seemed to rise through the wind. I closed my eyes and took in another deep breath. Above the reek of the horse shit in the street, there was that deeply familiar scent. I opened my eyes. It wasn't simply my haunted imagination; Sariel's presence twisted through the wind. He was nearby.

  Unconsciously, I had been wandering toward him. I had followed his scent, all the while attempting to think about something else. I supposed it was in keeping with my deceptive nature that I should have lied even to myself.

  The thin wisps of cigarette smoke drifted up against the dark sky. I followed them easily. Even among my own kind, my sense of smell was powerful. I found Sariel long before he caught sight of me. He strolled up Butcher Street as if it were his. A cigarette hung between his fingers. He exhaled, whispering softly as the smoke blew past his lips. His long green coat flapped slightly in the breeze, and the dark scarf he wore waved back behind him. The smoke rolled ahead of him, and he followed it.

  He was beautiful. I had taken that for granted when I had known him before. His languid motions and bright eyes had been so familiar to me that I had not really known how rare he was. I had never understood why the headmaster at St. Augustine's insisted that Sariel keep his tempting glances to himself. He had simply been Sariel, and I had loved him. Now I realized how handsome he truly was. At the same time, I did not overlook Sariel's wickedly sharp black nails or his fixed expression of superiority.

  He took a long drag off his cigarette. The fire in it burned bright red. After a moment of gazing up at the sky, Sariel released the white smoke in a long whisper. I felt him say my name; the pulse of his breath washed over me.

  The exhaled smoke rushed up from Sariel's lips. It shifted and twisted as the wind moved through it, but it always wound its way back to the rooftop where I sat. Sariel watched it move, and at last he saw me. He came forward slowly, his outward calm betrayed only by the words he had burned into the air with such intense force.

  The tongues of Sariel's smoke curled over me. They were warm and smooth, like delicate fingers. Wisps rolled over my bare stomach and shoulders. Sariel smiled at me and then soared up to the rooftop.

  "Hello, Belimai," he said, and he flicked his dying cigarette back down to the muddy street. "Mind if I join you?"

  "Do as you please," I replied.

  Sariel sat down on the roof tiles and leaned back against the brick column of the chimney. We watched each other in silence for a few moments. He lit another cigarette.

  "How's your back?" he asked.

  "It's all right, so long as I don't think about it."

  "You always were tougher than you looked." He frowned, then took another drag off his cigarette.

  I watched the smoke he exhaled rise and twist up into the night sky.

  "Were you looking for me?" I asked at last.

  "Was it obvious?" he asked, and then he went on. "I wanted to say something to you."

  "Oh?" I cocked my head slightly. "What?"

  "Something. Anything. I just wanted to see you again, to say something more than goodbye," Sariel said.

  I couldn't think of a response that didn't sound clever or cruel, so I kept quiet. Sariel smoked and at last crushed out the butt of his cigarette against the roof.

  "You aren't going to make this easy, are you?" Sariel asked.

  "What do you mean?" I watched the last thin streaks of Sariel's smoke turn on the night air.

  "Don't do this, Belimai," Sariel said. "If you're angry at me, then say so. Scream at me if you want, but don't treat me like a stranger. Don't pretend that I'm some stray off the street who you've never seen before."

  "I thought it would be better for both of us this way," I said at last.

  "Better?" Sariel shook his head. "I'd rather have you beat my head in. At least then I'd know that you still felt something for me."

  "I'm not going to beat your head in. I'm not even angry at you."

  "How could you not be?" Sariel looked at me as if I were lying.

  "I'm just not," I snapped. "What happened was my fault. How could I be angry with you?
"

  "It never occurred to you that I got you dragged into the Inquisition in the first place?" Sariel pulled a cigarette case out of his coat pocket, took one of the cigarettes, and lit it with a snap of his black nails. "If I had gone straight right after school, like you did, it never would have happened. We could have set up house, and maybe you would have gotten into that school..." He paused to exhale a long swirl of smoke. "What was it called?"

  "I don't remember," I replied.

  "Like hell you don't remember." Sariel stretched out onto his side and looked out at the sky. "It was the Downing Academy, wasn't it?"

  "It's old history, Sariel. It doesn't matter what school. There's no point in trying to get me mad at you about something that's long past."

  "You've avoided me for six fucking years, Belimai." Sariel jabbed his burning cigarette in my direction. "You're barely speaking to me now. It's not over. It's still going on right now between us. You think that I'm furious because you turned me in. And I think you hate me because...well, you're acting like it."

  "I don't hate you, and I don't think you're furious at me." I shook my head.

  "Then why did you stay away so long? Why did you leave Hells Below?" Sariel demanded.

  "I changed." I knew that didn't make much sense, but there was no way that I could describe what had happened to me in the Inquisition. It hadn't just been the matter of a few scars and twenty pounds. I had been brought in as a proud youth, and I came out a pathetic addict. I might as well have been killed and my name given to a mongrel who resembled me around the eyes and jaw.

  "You changed?" Sariel blew a hot tongue of smoke into my face and I glared at him. "Same nasty look, same vicious glare. You don't seem changed."