Page 36 of The City in Glass

“My skill set is very limited,” he retorted, just as a flight of pigeons broke cover overhead.

They watched as the flock wheeled over their heads, their wings flashing gray and green and white and pink in the sun, and then disappeared over the city.

“Hmm,” they both said.

The next sunrise saw the dovecotes a place of slaughter. The feathers floated down to produce a soft bloody mat on the ground, and every bird was dead. The cry went up from district to district, echoing and panicked and grieved, and the plague lords took it up as well, a hollow and high-pitched shriek of disappointment.

There were only two pigeons left in Azril, a crowned white and an almandine racer, their bellies heavy with the plague and their eyes as bright as jewels. Vitrine had taken them from the dovecotes of a messenger service, separating them carefully from the flock by virtue of the identifying sigils on their leg bands. She released them from the watchtower, unmanned for half a year now.

The crowned white flew on the west wind to Canna, and the almandine racer made her way down the coast to the tall steeples of Seillon. Vitrine watched them go, pulling her dark red shawl a little more securely over her head. She had pinned it with a delicate iron brooch shaped like a crane in flight.

Cranes suit the city better than pigeons do, anyway, she thought.

They would eat the cranes in the time to come, bereft of squab and the plump layers that put out two eggs every three days until they died. They might eat the mangy cats and dogs as well, and, perhaps if things grew terribly bad, even each other.

However, as she walked back to the city center, the plague lords and their red-faced imps flew over her head, their diaphanous robes blotting out the waning sun and leaving her in momentary chill as they passed by. She lifted her hand to them, for even if they were not her own family, they were likely kin of one sort or another.

She watched until they were out of sight, some gone over the sea, some gone down the coast, and then she made her way into the city, where they had built great fires that stank of burning feathers and tortured meat.

She found the angel sitting next to some of Juana’s cousins, politely holding a mug of beer as the humans fell down drunk around him. Their doublets were covered in down and their hands filthy from the day’s work. In the morning, they would remember that there had been five on their crew, but when they tried to name each one, they would only come up with four.

“Well, they were happy for the extra hands, anyway,” he said. “Though I can’t do much with the beer.”

“A shame for you,” she said, taking it from him and drinking it down with one gulp. She smashed the mug into the fire and lifted one of the drunks into her arms, half carrying him, half dragging him as she whirled around the flame. He pulled away in surprise, but somewhere else close by, the exhaling notes of a set of pipes floated to them, fast and very good. The musicians had had a difficult time. They’d become gravediggers and professional mourners, but soon there would be a day when people would need music more than they needed either.

“Come and I will teach you the ganli,” she said to the men. “I danced it for three dead at Gallowscross and for so many after. You will love it, I promise, and you will want to dance it all the days of your life.”

The men groaned in exhaustion, but one, short and fat, came up to his feet and took her hands in his. She laughed with delight, and she wondered if she had danced with someone like him sometime in the past, caught his face out of the corner of her eye or seen some great-great-great-grandparent succeed or swing. Then it didn’t matter because she was dancing with him now, and he was a good dancer.

She danced with him, and then when she reached for another partner, so did he. They pulled others and others still into their orbit, something like a plague itself, and some drums joined the lonely piper. They thought they danced for death, but Vitrine knew otherwise. They always danced for life, no matter how death lapped their heels.

Vitrine turned and came face-to-face with the angel, standing on the sidelines like the disappointed girl at the party. She looked up at him, not enjoying how much taller he was, and then half haughty, mostly convinced he would refuse, she offered him her hands, palms up. To her surprise, he didn’t hesitate a moment, though he held her hands as gingerly as if they were hollow-boned birds, biting his lip hesitantly.

“Doubting yourself already?”

“Only in that I do not know this dance.” Then, more defiantly, “It is only dancing.”

It was seldom only dancing, but Vitrine did not owe him that explanation. Instead, as the music came around again, she took a step back and the angel took a step forward. Her mind flashed briefly to retreats and pursuits, natural to her kind and to his, but anyway, their roles had never been set in stone. When the music changed, perhaps she would chase him.

“Follow me,” she said, and he did, clumsily at first, and then with enough confidence that she could leave off steering him and simply dance with him. Their shadows were greater than the bonfires could throw, and their feet left tender, shallow hollows on the stones where they stepped. When the rain filled those hollows in the generations to come, they would steam slightly, one of the thousands of small wonders of Azril that would never be remarked or observed.

The crowd unthinkingly made way for them without knowing why they did so, the same way they would resist a riptide or pull back from a hot iron. They recognized Vitrine and the angel in their spines and in the spaces between their shoulder blades and in their skin, and they danced with them like they danced with the threat of drowning or burns.

The steps, it occurred to Vitrine, were not quite the same as the dance she remembered, too fast, a hop where there should have been a pause, and too short, as if there was a bit missing, but she didn’t care. They were dancing the ganli again in Azril, and right in that moment, every pigeon in the city dead, the plague lords gone on to other places, and an angel holding her hands, it was all right.

EIGHTEEN

Alex, first named Elena, returned to Azril as a heartbroken, furious teenager, dressed in a pair of stolen trousers and with his hair cut short. He had stowed away on a ship from Combes only to be discovered as the ship was making its way into the harbor.

Drawn in by the shouting, Vitrine, in the uniform of one of the harbor masters, came up to take Alex by the arm. At the captain’s protest, she cut him down with a cold look.

“This one is under my jurisdiction now, and as far as Azril is concerned, so are you.”

The captain, who wanted to see Alex hanged, pulled back in chagrin with a sullen yes sir, and Vitrine briskly marched her new charge into the city.

“Where are you taking me?” Alex demanded, trying to sound bigger than he was. “I’ll crack your head open, I’ll slit your throat.”

“Well, where would you like me to take you?” Vitrine asked, and he blinked, because now she looked like a middle-aged auntie, comfortable in the tunic, loose trousers, and shawl that were so common in Laal. Laal and her famous princess had recently awakened from a two-hundred-year sleep, and were finally trading with the world again.