Page 5 of The City in Glass

“What is that?” she asked, and the scarred hanged man smiled.

“It’s a song as old as the city,” he said kindly. “Everyone knows it.”

“It’s silly,” said the insolent hanged girl with a sigh. “I used to belong to the Sui Emperor, and such music we had there. Still, it makes you want to dance.”

“I should think we have had enough of dancing today,” said the hooded hanged person sharply, but their feet were already tapping again in the air, and with a laugh and a sigh respectively, the man and the girl joined them.

An older woman with a handsome face and one arm that ended in a leather cap instead of a hand came by to light the round lantern hanging from the gallows. Vitrine knew that custom at least, that the dead should not spend their last night in the world in the dark. The lantern was made from pale green glass, and it sent verdigris light scattering over Gallowscross, the dancing feet of the dead, the ruts of mud, the one-handed woman’s splendid eyes, and Vitrine’s long shapeless white robe.

Vitrine held up her hands curiously. Through her long fingers and the uncanny green light, she could see, truly see, the city that would become Azril, and fatally and at once, like an angel would three hundred years later, she fell in love.

With a shout of joy, Vitrine leaped up on the gallows, and she danced with the dead, her feet on the splintered boards and theirs in the air. They could not bow to her, too stiff from their day’s sorrow, but she bowed extravagantly to them, a final honor before they were picked up by the White Ship or the Click-Clack Hag or perhaps even something winged that they would think was an angel.

They were leaving just as she was arriving, and Vitrine knew with a burning passion that she would miss them so.

“Mine,” she said, and then she turned to shout it to the city in a voice that could be heard only by the dead, the listening, and the cats.

Home, Vitrine thought, which was just another way to say how it was hers, and then wrapping her robe a little more snugly around her shoulders, she disappeared into the shadows.

Gallowscross was still there.

It took Vitrine some time to recognize it, with the buildings on both sides torn down and the glorious mosaic plaza, turquoise and orange diamonds, broken to dust. It had not been a gallows in a long time, but when she put her hand down to the ground, she could still sense the sorrow and the fury and the grief there, far older than this contemporary destruction.

“Oh, but I am sorry,” she whispered, feeling for all the world as if she had been given something precious and then through carelessness and neglect caused it to come to harm.

She shook her head, forcing her spine straight and refusing the guilt.

She had been given nothing. She had taken it, and it was hers to neglect and destroy if she so chose. Her family had learned that much from watching the humans that swarmed the world, that love could be a destructive thing. The angels understood love as destruction. She had chosen a different way to love Azril, and this destruction had nothing to do with her.

Vitrine knew she had a great deal of work in front of her, but she paused in Gallowscross. From the depths of her memory and the writing in her book, she could summon forth the old gallows and the three who hung there her first night in town. She closed her eyes, and she saw them hanging still. They had gone on the way that humans did, and they had nothing to do with her, but she was a demon, and therefore they were less than souls, but more than memory.

“Well, what a mess,” said the figure in the hood. “No one will ever dance here again.”

“No, people dance everywhere,” corrected the man with the scars. “Different songs, different people to hear, but they’ll dance.”

“What did you do?” accused the insolent girl. “Why did you make them so angry?”

Vitrine tossed her head proudly, ignoring the weight of guilt that tried to settle on her shoulders.

“I didn’t send fire to tear down the towers. I didn’t turn a city of sixty thousand to charcoal and ash. That wasn’t me.”

“But you’re here to fix it,” observed the person in the hood. “That implies some responsibility.”

“It’s mine,” Vitrine agreed. “Mine to tend, and mine to grow great again. Tell me what I can do for you here.”

The scarred man swung one leg restlessly, turning in a slow arc, and he did not speak until he came around to face her again. His face when he returned was clean and unswollen, the way it must have been before they hanged him. He had been a handsome man, and not for the first time, Vitrine wondered why he had swung.

“We only knew each other for a short time,” he said apologetically. “We died here, and we’re gone now, so we can’t really help you. I’m sorry.”

“I think there might be white flowers,” the hanged girl said abruptly, and Vitrine turned to her.

“Flowers for the dead?” Vitrine had heard that white was the color for mourning in the Sui empire.

“Flowers for me,” the girl said, aggrieved. “No one liked flowers as much as I did, and no one ever brought me enough of them. I want white flowers.”

“Might as well ask for an honest scholar,” sniped the person with the hood. “Might as well ask for the heart of the moon. Might as well ask for them to play us the ganli again.”

“White flowers,” Vitrine said, looking around and wanting to cry. The dirt under the broken tile was blasted and sere. Before that, it had been city dust, trodden over so well it wouldn’t grow weeds, let alone flowers.