Page 28 of The City in Glass

“See,” the angel said, “there was a crane girl once, who I made and who is gone now. She sleeps here, under the stone. Look, take your finger and trace the letters in the stone. They are almost too worn to see, but you can still feel them.”

The child, the wooden beads in her hair clacking as she lowered her head, traced the characters on the stone, her lips moving as she tried to give them voice.

“Before it sheltered a worthless crane, it was the grave marker of the fourth Malabec,” Vitrine said, coming out of the shadows. “He was a Mercer, one of my favorites. He loved so many men that he emptied the family vaults, and he had to turn pirate to fill them up again.”

The angel stood and turned, holding the child more tightly against his body, but the child only looked at her with curiosity. Her face was delicate and round, and there was a determined set to her chin that would incline her towards defiance.

“He said there was a demon in the ruins,” the child said. “Is that you?”

Vitrine laughed in surprise to be recognized after so long a time. It had never been very common even in the old days, and when she saw that she had given offense, she bowed to the child.

“I am the demon of Azril. Who are you, so that I may know who to curse if I should ever need to do so?”

The angel bared his teeth at her, and Vitrine observed that there was something desperate to him. He was ragged for all that he still wore a handsome man’s face, for all that dust and mud were ashamed to soil the hem of his robe. Here and there, his clothes were still stained with blood, as if water could not touch what she had put him through. Perhaps he wondered if she would ask him to kill this girl as well so that she could eat her over the fire.

The child had no such reservations, and she squirmed out of the angel’s arms to stand on her own two feet. She was even shorter than Vitrine had thought she would be, but fearless, and Vitrine grew more interested.

“I’m Jinan, daughter of Ghada and Zolah,” she said. “My eimi is a witch, and you can’t curse me.”

“Imagine that,” Vitrine said lightly, not agreeing or disagreeing. “But that headstone that belongs to Malabec Mercer rests over the body of the last girl who displeased me. Would you like to hear Malabec’s story instead?”

Story was the magic word, and when the girl nodded, Vitrine looked over her head to the angel, who was wary but calm. Perhaps he was even a little satisfied.

The darkness came on, and over the fire, as the clams she dug steamed in her bucket, she told the girl about Malabec Mercer and the real Avaline Demorsico, and once she had spoken about the Mercers and the Demorsicos, of course she had to speak about the Adebayos as well, who had brought sleek desert horses to the city, breeding them against the sturdy northern horses to make a mount of surpassing strength and beautifully sweet temperament. The Adebayos had lived in Azril until the very last, the night of the angels, but she never got that far in their story, instead telling the child about Kola Adebayo, who had swum his favorite mare out to sea to have her covered by one of the stallions of the sea king Bellam. The union produced the great mare Ba-Dalih, who Hanyo-from-Kittiwake rode to warn the coast of the coming of eastern raiders.

When the clams popped open in the steam, Vitrine plucked out the meat for Jinan, giving her the most savory, most delicate bits. The girl, she could see, was used to being fed thus by her parents and relatives. She accepted the choicest morsels as if they were her due, and she never troubled herself with feeding any to the angel, who watched from the shadows with patience.

“Come on,” he said, after the shells were empty and the girl had started to yawn. “Your parents will worry.”

“They should. What company their girl keeps,” Vitrine said, but the next evening, she went to find the angel.

He stood up to his waist in the water, staring out at the sea and the encroaching darkness. She knew he heard her steps, but he did not turn, and she sat on the shore, her knees drawn up.

“Why did you bring her to me?” she asked at last.

“What makes you think I did?”

Vitrine picked up a stone from the beach, throwing it at him lazily. She didn’t mean to strike him, and the stone hit the water by his side. The angel didn’t flinch from the small splash or turn towards her.

“You were not made to lie,” she reminded him, “and you do the trick of lying without lying very badly. I’ll ask you again. Why did you bring her to me?”

“Parents introduce their children to the dangers that they will face. In the southern seas, they teach their children to watch for sharks and squalls. In the north, it is bears and blizzards. Here, it is you.”

Vitrine considered, because it was an answer, even an answer that had some truth in it, but it was not the full truth, and she had already decided that she would not accept less.

She pitched another rock at him. This one landed closer and still he did not turn to face her.

“Try one more time,” she suggested, and the angel shifted. In her chest, his wings stirred restlessly. If he still had them, he would be aloft and gone from this discussion that he clearly did not want to be having, but he didn’t. They were hers, and he had to stay where he was.

“Jinan’s parent went into labor a week after you permitted them to land,” he said at last. “They gave birth to her under a shelter of woven branches while loons cried over the river and while they were still eating the food they had taken from home.”

Vitrine was silent, and the angel, unable to fly, traced a fidgety flaming pattern in the water at his side. It was gone almost as soon as it appeared, but if she closed her eyes, she could see an impression of the mark he had made in the darkness.

“You’re saying she’s mine,” she said at last.

“I’m saying she’s her own,” he said sharply, looking at her over his shoulder.

“But.”