Gabriel's City Read online

  The door swings open silently when Colin pushes, and he steps inside. He feels queasy, like he did the very first time he smoked a pipe. The hallway is dark, save for the moonlight filtering in through the glass of the back door. Why would burglars smash their way in the front door and leave the glass in the back alone?

  He startles, nervous as a barn cat, when he hears a sound on the stairs. It’s only Anna, coming down the steps in her nightgown, her hair tumbling loose over her shoulders and her eyes wide in the dark.

  “Colin,” she whispers. “Thank the Maiden. Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” Colin whispers back. “What—” He gets no further before Anna throws herself into his arms, holding on tight. “What happened?”

  Anna takes a shaky breath, and it sounds like she might be crying, of all the awful things. “You’ve never seen anything so terrifying,” she whispers. “Papa was already angry when they came home, because you’d gone, and then just after we put out the lights, the door burst open, and these men came storming in yelling for you, and—”

  The parlor door slams open behind them, and Colin flinches. “Anna,” their father growls, “go back to bed. The last thing he needs now is coddling.”

  Colin turns, squinting against the light spilling from the parlor. “What’s that supposed to mean? I haven’t—”

  His father crosses the hallway and backhands him. “Don’t dare to tell me what you have and haven’t done. Bad enough that you abandon respectable company to waste your money in gambling dens, but this . . .” Colin’s face stings, feels hot; his limbs tremble with the desire to strike back. “Borrowing money from thugs and ruffians to further compound your troubles!”

  “Papa,” Anna says, and Colin raises a hand to warn her to stay back.

  “I never meant to— I mean, I was going to pay it back! It’s not as though I thought—”

  “I doubt you were thinking at all,” his father says. In the parlor, Colin’s mother is sobbing softly. “Fifty guineas, Colin! How did you even get in that much trouble?”

  The figure stuns Colin nearly as much as being hit again. He knows he never borrowed so much from any one person; he was careful not to let any of his debts grow too unwieldy.

  A chill creeps up Colin’s spine. Barron must have bought up the rest of his loans. If he bought them all, and compounded the interest together . . . “We can still pay, though, can’t we? You said the plantation yields almost a thousand a year. Fifty isn’t so much of that—”

  His father raises a hand as if to hit him again, and Colin flinches, but it’s Anna’s distressed noise that saves him. “No,” his father says, “I won’t be paying extortionate sums to a pack of arrogant criminals because of your thoughtlessness. Upstairs, both of you.” He steps forward, shepherding Colin and Anna up the staircase. At the top, he lets Anna go and follows Colin down the hall.

  “Look,” Colin says as he gets to his room, hoping he can head off the additional lecture, “I know I’ve made a mistake, all right?”

  “Do you?” his father asks, stepping into Colin’s room and lowering his voice. “I’d like you to think about how lucky we’ve been tonight. You should thank the Fates that your mother and I had come home, and that one of the serving girls had the sense to run to the stable and rouse the boys before those thugs had a chance to do too much damage. I don’t even dare to think what they’d have done if they’d caught your sister alone.”

  His father leaves before Colin can recover from the shock of that awful idea enough to protest—of course he’d never want such a thing, never meant to put Anna in danger—and punctuates the slamming of the door with the heavy thunk of the bolt sliding home.

  “Wait!” Colin says, grabbing the doorknob, rattling it fruitlessly. “Come back!”

  His father doesn’t answer, footsteps fading down the hall. Colin pounds on the door, and then winces when all that does is sting. Well. Fine. He turns away from the door, crosses to the window, and pushes it open. He’s not going to sit here like some child being punished for tantrums, waiting to be allowed out of his room.

  It’s the work of but a few minutes to change out of his fine dinner party clothes and into something more suitable for Casmile late at night: a plain shirt with no lace at the cuffs, dark cotton trousers instead of embroidered breeches, the high cavalier boots that he’s always thought make him look like a highwayman. He even has a jacket that’s wool instead of velvet, with deep pockets to keep his coin out of easy reach. He pushes his hair back off his face, catches it in a cord at the base of his neck.

  He’ll go back to town tonight, he thinks as he studies his reflection, and he’ll talk to Barron. He’ll put up what money he can, and he’ll apologize for those jokes he made last month to the man’s friends, which of course he didn’t mean but perhaps were a bit over the line in any case. They’ll get all this worked out before it gets any worse. Things will be fine.

  The night’s taken on a good deal more chill already when Colin boosts himself out the window. Perhaps it’s only that he’s more sober now. He lowers himself down as carefully as he can, hanging from the sill for a moment and taking a few deep breaths before he lets go and drops to the grass.

  There are clouds drifting over the moon, dimming its light, but the route through the gardens and the orchard is one he could manage in his sleep, after all the times he’s gone out with Danny before now. He finds his way with barely a false step, over the fence and back to the road, and is already thinking about how he’s going to tell this story once Danny comes home from the mountains. It’ll sound like a grand adventure by then, he’s sure.

  When he tells the story, Colin decides as he walks down the road, he’s going to leave out the part about how cold it gets when one is tired and sober and walking back to town in the middle of the night. Or the way the distant baying of dogs makes him shiver and reminds him uncomfortably of children’s tales of the Lady’s hound. Or how dismal the western road seems when it’s late enough that all the plantations have doused their lamps, and he has no company to help him pass the time. Most likely, he’ll leave out the walk back to town entirely.

  When he reaches the west gate, it’s already shut for the night, and there’s a guard on duty in the gatehouse, slouching out to meet him as Colin walks up. “Late for honest business, isn’t it?” he asks, propping his duty pike beside him so he can lean on it.

  “Never too late for Kite Street,” Colin bluffs. Probably it isn’t strictly true; the brothels must shut their doors eventually. But Colin’s never been there late enough to see it happen.

  The guard doesn’t move to unlock the gate. “If you’re headed up to Kite, your lordship, you must have coin to spare.”

  Colin stares. That certainly doesn’t happen earlier in the evening, when there’s more traffic coming through. “You can’t be serious. My father knows your captain personally. I was at supper with him just this evening.”

  “That so?” The guard has a tooth missing in front, which only makes his smile uglier. “You going to run back home and complain that you couldn’t go whoring in the middle of the night?”

  Colin grits his teeth, clenches his fist until he’s sure he has control of himself. He’d gain nothing by fighting here. He digs a shilling from his pocket and tosses it at the guard’s feet. “Open the gate.”

  The guard waits another few moments, but Colin can read that for the bluff it is, and when he doesn’t produce any more coin, the man does turn at last and dig out the heavy iron key to unlock the gate. “Enjoy your business in Casmile, your lordship,” he says. Colin can’t bring himself to say thanks.

  He’ll definitely leave out the parts about how he got back to town, when he’s telling all this to Danny. None of it is worth repeating.

  It’s next to impossible to find a carriage for hire this late, of course, so he doesn’t really have any option but to keep walking. Colin stuffs his hands in his pockets, hunching his shoulders against the chill, and starts down Market Street into the
city. The later it gets, the less this seems like a good idea. He’s cold, he’s tired, and his head aches. His steps grow slower the closer he gets to Alder Street and the gaming district. Surely it’s too late to find Barron at the Peacock by now. Only the most dedicated players would still be at the tables at this hour. Tomorrow would be soon enough, wouldn’t it? When he has his wits about him and can explain himself properly.

  Colin passes the turn he ought to take, and immediately feels better. Not entirely relieved, of course—Market Street is dreary at night, the shops all shuttered and the open stalls bare. Nothing moves save in the alleys, and there the rats are the most wholesome thing awake. He walks a little faster. It is late for honest business, and he might be the biggest troublemaker among his friends, but that’s still a far cry from the worst the city has to offer.

  He’ll stay the night in a tavern, he decides, and straighten out this mess with Barron tomorrow. When he makes it all the way down to Front Street, there are plenty of places still open, light shining from their windows. Sailors, he remembers hearing once, keep time by the tide, not the sun. Of course, that presents its own problems—the door to the Mermaid opens as he passes, a few men staggering drunk out of a room alive with song and laughter.

  There’s no way he’ll see a decent night’s sleep with that sort of lullaby, so he walks onward, past the busiest part of the street near the main docks, and turns onto Ash Street a little further north. About halfway up the block, he finds a tavern whose sign is shaped like a dragon’s head, with light in the windows but no sound spilling out into the street. It should be passable enough.

  The light in the Dragon’s Head comes mostly from the fireplace, with a few lamps behind the bar to help it along. The furniture is rough wood, unfinished, and plain where it hasn’t been scored by guests leaving their mark. Apart from the innkeeper, who’s a woman probably Colin’s mother’s age but considerably the worse for wear, there are only two other people in the room. One is an old sailor with a wooden leg who’s nodding by the fire. The other is a skinny boy about Colin’s own age who looks up with wary eyes, inspecting Colin suspiciously before he turns his attention back to the wooden cup in his hands. All three of them are ordinary Casmilan stock, with dark hair and eyes and skin similar shades of dusty tan, and Colin wishes he weren’t quite so pale, nor his hair so tinged with red.

  But for all that he feels awkward, nobody’s actually challenging him. He crosses the room and steps up to the bar, trying to act as though he does this sort of thing all the time. “Have you a room free tonight?” he asks.

  The innkeeper barely glances at him. “Three shillings for the room,” she says, “or four with meals.” She has a faint lisp when she speaks.

  “Just the room is fine.” If he does want breakfast in the morning, he’s sure he can find better than the dull porridge they no doubt serve here. “I’ll take a pint now, though,” he adds. His nerves could use it, and it’s probably polite.

  “Three pennies a pint,” the innkeeper tells him, and turns away to pull his pint while Colin fishes in his pocket for some copper. She puts his mug on the bar, he drops his coins into her hand, and after a moment of hesitation, he decides to take his drink to a table. No point in saddling either of them with the obligation to converse, is there?

  Casmilan ale somehow manages both to be bitter and to taste of almost nothing. He lifts his mug to his lips and congratulates himself on managing to not make a face, though he’s not sure how he’ll get through the entire pint. The lager imported from the northlands is far better, but a place like this probably doesn’t carry something that expensive, and he wouldn’t want to give offense by suggesting he preferred the barbarians’ craft, especially when he’s so white-skinned himself. So he sips his bitter ale, and stares at the scars beaten into the tabletop, and wonders just how awful it will be to get Barron to agree to reasonable terms for repayment.

  He’s making himself miserable for no purpose, he thinks, and takes a long pull on the ale as though it’s medicine enough to calm him. This mess won’t get straightened out tonight, and it won’t help matters any for him to worry.

  The boy in the corner is watching him again, eyes too intent and focused for any sort of polite or well-intentioned interest. Colin glares, daring the boy to come give him trouble. He could take down a skinny little rat like that, and it might even make him feel better, with the way this night’s turned. The boy just smiles, though, or possibly bares his teeth—he looks amused enough, but not at all friendly. Brat. What makes him think he’s so tough?

  Colin’s about to get up and go over there, ready to ask what the boy thinks is so rotting fascinating about him. Then the door opens, and the boy looks away immediately.

  “Good tip,” says the man in the doorway. “He’s in here.”

  Colin’s heart stutters in his chest, panic locking his limbs as the man steps inside and brings three of his friends with him. They’re big, broad-shouldered as dockworkers, one of them dark like an islander, and all four of them are carrying cudgels. But they don’t even glance at Colin, instead heading straight toward the boy in the corner.

  The boy gets to his feet, uncoiling into a ready, tense stance, and bares his teeth at them, too. “The dogs come snapping at my heels, do they?” he asks. His voice is smoother than Colin would have expected, a light tenor that sounds almost friendly.

  “Morgan’s not happy with you,” the leader of the thugs says as his companions spread out between the boy and the door. “He wanted his girl back in one piece.” Colin glances over to see if the innkeeper is going to try to intervene, at least to tell them to take the trouble outside, but she’s disappeared.

  “Well.” The boy shrugs, shifts his weight, and somehow there are knives in his hands, glinting in the firelight. “You’re good dogs who do as you’re told. Maybe he should have sent you after her instead of me.”

  “You think you’re clever?” the leader asks. His men close ranks, weapons ready.

  The boy hisses, low and threatening, like a barn cat cornered by the hunting hounds. Colin almost can’t stand to look. This is going to be awful.

  They all move at once, sudden as a flock of crows startled off a corpse. One moment they’re glaring at each other, and the next they lunge. The boy is fast, ducking low and catching the leader’s arm with one knife as he twists out of the way of a swing. A fine spray of red arcs across the floor, but it’s not enough to slow the man down. The thugs swear and yell as they fight, but the boy stays quiet, hissing sharp little breaths between his teeth as he dodges their blows and shoves furniture between him and them. A chair splinters under a cudgel blow, and Colin winces. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the old sailor hobbling for the door. If he had any sense, he’d follow, but he can’t bring himself to move. He’s never seen anything like this; even the best theater can’t capture this feeling.

  The boy snarls—the first real sound he’s made since the fight started—as he loses one of his knives, caught between the ribs of the most aggressive thug. It unbalances him, and the islander’s next swipe sends him sprawling to the floor. He rolls away, dives toward the fireplace and comes up with the poker, iron scraping stone as he pulls it free. He jabs it into the islander’s stomach as he regains his feet, and the man goes down howling, clutching at the burn. The air reeks of seared flesh.

  But the poker’s too heavy for the boy to use one-handed, and the leader knocks it from his hand. The boy springs back, dodging and swiping at his attackers when he has the chance. He looks like he’s trying to get past them, but they’re driving him into the corner. Once he has no place left to run, this won’t last long.

  He should be doing something, Colin realizes abruptly.

  He gets up, crosses the room to take the cudgel of the man who’s been stabbed. It’s heavier than he expects, unbalanced, weighted at the end. The last two thugs have the boy cornered, so there’s no time left to hesitate. Colin steps up, swings the cudgel, and there’s an awful, wet crunch when
it connects with the back of the first thug’s head. The impact jars up Colin’s arm, solid and final, and the man drops gracelessly to the floor.

  The last one, the leader, turns toward him, and the boy lunges immediately, grabbing the man’s hair with one hand and drawing a knife across his throat with the other. Blood sprays; the man makes terrible gurgling noises as he collapses.

  Then, thank the Fates, it’s over.

  The fire pops and settles, loud in the sudden stillness. Colin stares at the boy, his blood pounding in his veins. The boy grins back, fierce and proud. “Ah,” Colin starts, not even sure what he’s going to say, “I—”

  The boy shoves past him, knocking Colin out of the way with a snarl, and buries his knife in the eye of the man he’d burned before. Colin catches himself against the edge of a table, swallows hard against the feeling that his throat is closing up. He starts to shake, his nerves overtaxed, as he takes in the long, thin blade in the dead man’s hand. He could’ve— If this boy hadn’t been so fast, he’d—

  Lady’s luck, this night is going all wrong.

  “That went pretty well, didn’t it,” the boy says, more a statement than a question. He pulls his knife free—Colin winces at the rush of fluids—and wipes it on the dead man’s shirt before he tucks it away in his clothes somewhere. Then he shrugs, rolling his head from side to side, and his neck cracks audibly. “Help me with the bodies.”

  “Help you?” Colin sways on his feet. He could have died just now. He fears his legs won’t hold him if he tries to move.

  The boy nods. “This is a nice place. It’s polite to clean up your messes.” He pries the knife out of the dead man’s hand and tucks it into his belt, then takes the body by both wrists. “A big strong monster like you ought to be able to help me carry them, right? I’ll share with you.”

  There are so many things wrong with that explanation that Colin doesn’t know what to object to first—from the description of this dingy tavern as “nice” to the lecture on manners from a savage little street killer. His wit fails him, and he says nothing at all, only takes the dead man’s feet and helps the boy carry him out the door. They leave the body in the alley behind the Dragon’s Head, where he’d almost look like he was just dead drunk instead of dead, except for the blood and fluids on his face.