Gabriel's City

by Laylah Hunter

  A third voice answers, a girl’s voice, and Drake looks past the adults to see the girl herself half-hidden behind the trunk of a tree. The color they’ve been following through the trees, he realizes, is the dull blue of her dress.

  “When we need it,” Gabriel says softly, and he’s not tensed for a fight at all. He has his arms wrapped around himself and his hands hidden in his armpits.

  Drake nods. “Please,” he says to the woman, “will you let us sit by your fire for a little while? We won’t ask for anything else, but it’s so cold, and we’re wet through.”

  “Who’s after you?” the man asks. He hasn’t lowered the pitchfork, but the set of his shoulders says he’s not looking for an excuse to use it, at least.

  “Nobody, I hope.” When that makes the man’s expression darken, Drake explains, “We fled the city this morning, and I don’t think the men after us are still following.” He looks at Gabriel. “We’d have heard them by now.”

  “Yelling,” Gabriel says. “They did a lot of that.” He’s shivering, little shudders wracking him as he stands there. They need that fire.

  “We’ll be on our way as soon as we’re warm. Please.” Drake doesn’t think they have anything they can barter with, or he’d offer—anything for a little aid right now.

  The man and the woman trade a few words—and the strangest thing is that it sounds like a few of the words are Casmilan, every fourth or fifth one; Drake thinks he hears “hounds” at one point, and possibly “rest” in the answer to that, but most of the words are nothing he knows.

  “If you bring the bounty hunters with you,” the woman says eventually, “we kill you both.”

  Gabriel’s lip curls back from his teeth, and he hisses like a snake himself. Drake puts a hand on his arm. “We bring no one.”

  The woman nods, and beckons. “This way.” She sends the little girl first, furthest from trouble, and Drake follows, still holding on to Gabriel. He’s not sure which of them he’s trying to reassure. The man walks behind them, and he hates the feeling of turning their backs on someone with a weapon, but he can’t blame these people for not trusting them.

  They’re dressed like Casmilans, despite the strange language and the man’s dark skin. The clothes are simple and a bit threadbare—there’s a patch on the right sleeve of the woman’s jacket with ragged, uneven stitches, and the hem of the girl’s dress is muddy and torn. But they’re ordinary enough; they don’t wear the bright colors of the travelers, and Drake’s not quite far gone enough to think they’re the fair folk.

  He follows the woman and the little girl—her daughter, probably, for all that she’s more light-skinned than either of the adults—along a narrow trail that he’d never have noticed without them going first. When they turn one last bend, and what he’d taken for another dense thicket turns out to be hiding a little ramshackle house, Drake almost stumbles as he realizes where these people must have come from.

  They’re escaped slaves. Hiding in the swamp where their old masters’ hounds couldn’t sniff them out, and then just staying there. It’s a fanciful enough story for Gabriel, and yet he’d bet it’s true.

  “In with you,” the woman says, pulling back the flap over the door. A deer skin, it looks like. “We’ll build the fire back up, see if you thaw.”

  “Thank you,” Drake says. It’s dark in the little house, and it smells of something odd and sharp that he can’t place, but even with the fire banked and low, it’s warmer than they’ve been all day. He sits down on the floor—more skins, there, between them and the cold wet ground—and scoots as close to the fire pit as he can comfortably get. Gabriel crawls halfway into his lap, not so much sitting beside him as leaning across him.

  “So clever,” Gabriel mumbles into Drake’s shirt.

  “Just lucky,” Drake says softly. He drapes his arm over Gabriel’s back, and watches the woman feed the fire. Her hands are broad, the knuckles twisted with years of hard work.

  When the first red tongues of flame curl up from the fire pit, the woman sits back on her heels and meets Drake’s eyes. “What are you running from?”

  There are a lot of true answers to that question, Drake realizes. He thinks of Captain Westfall, of Sebastian’s party and Danny’s expectations, of the scraps they’ve had with dockside toughs. “This morning,” he says slowly, “there were men after us that we’d never seen before.” That isn’t quite right, though. “After me, I think. They didn’t—they didn’t seem to care whether they got both of us.”

  “Mmm.” The woman nods, holding her hands out to warm them by the fire. “Lawmen?”

  “No. Not this time.” Drake wants to move—Gabriel’s weight on his leg is giving him pins and needles all down it—but he thinks he shouldn’t just yet. Not until Gabriel feels a little less tense under his hands. “I think they wanted to take me away.” Gabriel clutches tighter, and growls in his throat. Drake runs his fingers through Gabriel’s hair.

  It’s because of the party, he’s suddenly sure. Someone there said something about it to his friends, and the rumors would have spread, and now the people who know who he used to be also know who he’s become. Those men this morning were looking for Colin.

  “We can’t go back to Cypress Street,” he says, as much to himself as to Gabriel. “We’re going to have to start over.” If he counts up all his copper, he might have a shilling to his name, and he can’t imagine Gabriel’s much better off. They’re in for a rough night or two unless their luck changes in a hurry. They might be able to go see Deirdre, but staying with her would just get her involved in it, too.

  “You can’t stay here,” the woman says firmly. “We’ve trouble enough already, and no room to take on strangers.”

  Drake nods. “I know. Really, I meant it. We’ll be on our way soon.”

  “Just so you know,” the woman says. She gets up from the fire. “We can spare you a bit of broth, at least, as long as that’s clear.”

  “Thank you.” Drake’s fingertips ache with the warmth coming back to them. He watches the woman bring in a pot of water and hang it over the fire. She adds some flakes of something from a leather bag. Fish, it smells like when it starts to heat up. They must live off what they can find or catch in the swamp.

  “Either of you carry brands?” the woman asks, stirring the broth slowly. She says it casually, like it’s no big deal, like it would be no surprise.

  “No.” Drake tries not to bristle. Probably better if she does think they could be slaves too, if she thinks his pale skin means he’s part barbarian. He remembers Barron’s thugs threatening to sell him off back when he’d first met Gabriel. What if they could do that? Would anyone believe him if he declared himself now? Would it even matter to the sort of men who’d buy him in the first place?

  “You might be able to take the road, then,” the woman says. “If you want, Hajari will take you out to the mountain road when the sun goes down.”

  Drake hesitates. It would mean starting over, that’s for sure. He’s not sure what they’d do in Deradan or Port Clair, save that he’d need to leave being Colin behind for good. But it would get them away from their troubles here. “I’m not sure. Thank you for the offer. I’m just, I don’t know if . . .” He brushes a lock of hair off Gabriel’s forehead. “If we’re ready to leave Casmile just yet.”

  “Your choice.” The woman produces two wooden cups, and dips the first one in the broth to ladle some out. “Waiting on your friend?”

  “Yes.” His friend. Gabriel is that, he supposes, odd as it is to think of him as anything but simply Gabriel. “Gabe?” he says gently. “You want to sit up and have some broth?”

  There’s no response for a minute. Drake would almost think Gabriel had drifted off to sleep if he weren’t still holding on so tightly.

  “Please, Gabriel,” he says. “Come back. We’re going to be all right. Come back to me.” He cups Gabriel’s face in one hand, strokes Gabriel’s cheekbone with his thumb. Gabriel’s throat works as he swallows, but he d
oesn’t move otherwise. “I didn’t go away when you asked me not to. Don’t you go away from me, either.” Drake leans down and brushes gentle kisses across Gabriel’s brow.

  Gabriel stirs and peers up at him. In the dim light of the hut, his eyes look pure black. “Drake?” he says hopefully.

  “I’m here.” A knot of tension eases behind Drake’s ribs. “You hungry?”

  “Always,” Gabriel says with a little wry twist to his mouth. He sits up and reaches out to take the cup of broth. “Thank you,” he says to the woman as he raises it to his lips.

  Drake accepts the second cup gratefully. The broth is thin, and the flavor of the fish is strong, but it’s hot and it’s the nearest thing they’ve had to a meal yet today. He drains his cup as fast as Gabriel does.

  “Welcome back,” he says to Gabriel when he’s done. He’d like to ask for more, but he’s already gotten more generosity here than he had any reason to expect.

  “I didn’t really go away, you know,” Gabriel says. “I don’t think I’ve really gone away since you came.” He smiles. “You keep me here. I’m glad I did that for you, too.” He holds out his cup to the woman. “Is there more?”

  The woman laughs. “You’re not shy at all, are you, Gabriel?” She takes his cup. “There’s more. You hear what I said to your friend earlier?”

  Gabriel nods. “About leaving. Yes. We’ll go soon. Back to Casmile.”

  “You sure?” Drake asks. If it’s what Gabriel wants, he’ll go, of course. But he can’t help worrying about their odds. “You want to go back?”

  “Those men wanted to take you.” Gabriel sits up straighter, and his eyes narrow. “I’m not going to let them.”

  They leave almost as soon as they’ve finished their second cups of broth. Outside, the two adults talk things over for a minute in their odd half-familiar language, and then the man nods to them.

  “This way,” he says. His Casmilan is accented, like he wasn’t born on the plantation he must have run from. “Take you up to the south gate.”

  “There’s a south gate?” Drake asks. The only ones he’s ever heard of—the only ones anyone ever uses—are the north gate, toward Hanaein and the barbarian territories, or the west gate, toward Deradan and the mountains.

  “Not anymore,” Gabriel says. “But you can still see where it used to be.”

  The fact that Gabriel knows about it makes Drake feel better. They’ll be back on familiar ground. This doesn’t seem like a trolls-and-dragons afternoon, either, so they should be able to get their feet back under them in the city.

  Their guide doesn’t talk to them, just leads the way through the tangle of the swamp, past the standing pools, under the trailing moss. Beneath the trees it seems like it’s barely raining anymore. Drake’s hand is sore where he cut it this morning, but the bleeding stopped by itself, so it can’t be too bad.

  When they can smell wood smoke through the trees, Hajari stops. “Keep on that way,” he says, pointing ahead of them. “You’ll come to the city again. I don’t go further.”

  “Thank you for all your help,” Drake says.

  “Just get gone. Don’t send any trouble our way.”

  “We won’t,” Drake promises. There’ll be trouble enough—Gabriel’s shifted into that too-alert stance that means he’s waiting for a reason to cut someone—but not here. Not for the people who helped them.

  Hajari nods and turns away, heading back into the deeper cover of the swamp. Drake looks to Gabriel.

  “Shall we?” Gabriel bows, gesturing to the faint trail ahead of them.

  “You know,” Drake says as they start moving again, “someone might be waiting for us here. If they figured out where we went.”

  “That would be nice. It would save a lot of trouble hunting them down.” Gabriel sounds cold, almost but not quite like he gets on a job; he sounds angry, Drake realizes. When was the last time Drake actually saw Gabriel angry?

  He thinks it’s possible there was only the once, that very first night.

  “Somebody must have sent them,” Drake says, holding a stray branch out of the way until Gabriel passes. “They acted like they wanted me for something in particular.”

  Gabriel nods. “We’ll find out who it was. And I don’t care if it’s the captain himself. He’ll be sorry.”

  “Planning to take his eyes?” Drake tries to keep his tone light, but he doesn’t think it works.

  “Done that before,” Gabriel says. “I might have to find something really unpleasant for this one.”

  The trees thin out at last, and Drake spots the first houses ahead of them—little ramshackle things, barely more than the swamp runaways’ hut, scattered through the trees. The trail underfoot becomes clearer, more defined.

  One or two people come out of houses to watch them as they go past, but they don’t speak, don’t try anything. It’s probably for the best. Gabriel wouldn’t have the patience for anyone getting in his way right now.

  The houses grow more densely clustered, but not much more well made, as they walk onward. There is almost a road now, not like the broad ways out by the main gates, but near enough to the single-cart lanes that wind from one estate to the next. And ahead of them, in the weak winter light, Drake can see stone walls.

  The little ramshackle houses go right up to the edge of the city wall, some of them even leaning against it. Everything feels cramped, too close together and just this side of falling down. Drake wonders if this little outlaw town has ever caught fire, how fast the whole thing would go up.

  “Over here,” Gabriel says, bearing left, leading Drake along until they come to the real gap in the wall—not just a spot where stones have come loose and fallen, but the remains of the south gate. Parts of the wall have come down here too, a pile of rubble littering the ground. Fragments of the old gate still hang from rusted hinges, but the wood is soft with age and water, crumbling away in pieces. The shape of the gate that must have stood here, high and arched, is barely suggested by the remains of the western-side wall.

  “How old is this?” Drake asks. “When did the gate come down?”

  “Years and years ago,” Gabriel says, climbing onto the rubble of the wall. “Deirdre said it was already like this when she first came here.”

  Drake follows Gabriel over, trying to balance himself with only his uninjured hand. “It looks like there used to be something down here, apart from just the swamp.”

  “Everything used to be something else, didn’t it?”

  “I guess so,” Drake says, as he climbs down on the city side. The cobblestones are about half missing, and there’s grass growing up through the spaces between them, but it’s a Casmile street, and that makes Drake feel better than he ever thought it would. Ragged and dangerous as it is, the city—Gabriel’s city—has still become home. “Let’s go get some proper food.”

  “Feed my dragon to make him strong,” Gabriel says, “and then we’ll go see what we can learn about your new friends from this morning.”

  Even that can’t put Drake off his food. It’s about time, as far as the stories in taverns and gaming dens go, for Gabriel to do something terrible again. What good is a legend that’s not still growing?

  By the time they get clear of the no-man’s-land around the south gate and all the way to the river—fairly far into the heart of the city, as near as Drake can tell, closer to the gallows square than he’d really like to be—it feels as though they’ve been walking for ages, and Drake half thinks his stomach is trying to devour itself in despair. “Here,” he says when they come to a tavern, never mind that it’s likely more expensive than something down nearer the port. Tonight he’s sure he’ll be sorry, but right now he doesn’t care.

  The heat and the scent of something savory make him sag with relief the second he pushes the door open. He stops a barmaid before they’ve even taken a table—Gabriel’s headed for the one in the corner—and says, “You have some kind of stew on?”

  “We do,” she says, and looks him over
. He must be a mess, he realizes at once, muddied and waterlogged and smelling of swamp. “It’d be eight pence for you and your friend, and the ale extra.”

  Drake digs in his pocket and comes up with the copper. He has precious little to spare. “Two bowls, then, and some bread to go with it.” They can always get more money, can’t they? Especially if they’re well fed and strong enough to fight.

  The stew, when it comes, has some strong-flavored meat in it that Drake doesn’t recognize. Gabriel says it’s goat and sounds amused that Drake doesn’t know that, which seems like a good sign all around. If Gabriel’s feeling that much better, they can start making plans.

  “We need to figure out who sent them,” Drake says when Gabriel is pushing the heel of his black bread around the bowl to sop up the last of the gravy. “The ones after us this morning were just doing what they were told.”

  Gabriel nods, licking gravy off his fingers. “We should go back home.”

  Drake blinks. “Are you sure?”

  “Remember the pigeons. They’ll expect us to be pigeons, too. Coming home to roost. Someone will be waiting for us.”

  “I’m not sure that’s what we want.” Drake wishes he had more coins, enough to buy a pint of ale. “There must be easier ways to learn who they were.”

  “If we knew names,” Gabriel says. “If we’d seen more of them close up. Maybe then we could ask someone. But we don’t, so this will be faster.” He smiles his working-an-ugly-job smile. “Besides, this way we can make them sorry they thought they could have you.”

  That’s going to be nasty, no matter how it goes. “All right,” Drake says. “If you think it’ll work better.” The barkeeper is watching them, now that their food is done and they don’t seem to be ordering anything else. “Should we get going, then? We don’t have all that long until dark.”

  Gabriel shakes his head. “Today they’ll still be nervous. We wait out tonight. Let them get bored. Sloppy.”

  “You have a plan for tonight, then?” Drake can’t summon any enthusiasm for the prospect of sleeping on the street somewhere. “I don’t have the coin for a room, even a cheap one.”