Page 37 of The City in Glass

“Let me go,” he said in sudden terror, and Vitrine did, causing him to flail back into a pretzel seller carrying her wares on a forked pole. When it looked as if he was going to do as poorly with the pretzel seller as he had with the ship’s captain, Vitrine stepped forward again, purchasing two pretzels from the irked vendor and handing one to Alex.

“There,” she said. “It’s good, and that’s the second time I got you out of trouble. That’s two more than most people get from me.”

Alex, half the pretzel already in his mouth, looked at her apprehensively.

“What happens if I get in trouble again?”

“If?” Vitrine snorted. “I don’t think if is the word you want there, my lad.”

They ate their pretzels leaned against a broken wall that had once marked Azril’s boundary against foreign mercenaries, where they had to surrender their arms if they wanted to gain the city’s center. Some of these walls had survived the angels, but there were fewer of them than there had been once. They’d been dismantled for stone, and now people used the old markers and boundaries as doorsteps and foundations.

“These are good,” Alex said reluctantly, and Vitrine smiled. They were, new and good both, and she was coming around to them.

“So what brings you to Azril?” she asked companionably.

“A promise to my mothers.” When he saw that that would not serve, he sighed.

“They told me that I must spend a year of my life here. I don’t know why, but I promised them. I promised them right before they—well. It was a promise.”

The grief was still new. Vitrine guessed that Alex was no more than sixteen. Sixteen was fragile, and she had never had much use for fragile.

“And what will you do with that promise?”

“Find some family, I guess. Mother said I had family here that would recognize her name and—”

“Oh, they’re gone,” Vitrine said, watching his face closely. “In the first week of the great plague, them and their household. There’s no one here for you.”

There was a brief shattering, a child so far from home that he could not take one step further without growing up all at once. Then he pulled himself back together, piece by jagged piece, looking more like Juana than he did Jinan, who had after all been loved every day of her life. No one loved Alex anymore, and Vitrine was still not sure if she would take it up.

“Fine, then there is no one here for me,” he said, nothing more than a welter of hurt feelings, and finishing the pretzel, he stalked off.

“He is going towards the Mazes,” the angel said with some asperity. “They’re going to slit his stomach on the off chance that he swallowed diamonds.”

“So he is,” she said. “If he comes out alive, I’ll find him a nice place to live.”

“You could find him a nice place to live now.”

“So could you.”

The angel gave her a dire look. He would be handsome in the new fashions from Laal, but he insisted on the long tunic and rope belt that the old ascetics wore. Honestly, hopeless.

“Give me some money,” he said at last, holding out his hand as if surely she would.

“And why would I do that?”

“Because I am not permitted to steal it, and I am not permitted to earn it,” he said sternly. “Because clothes and food and shelter cost money.”

“Why?”

He knew she was not looking for a lecture on trade and the violence of those who ate well against those who did not. He couldn’t quite meet her eyes.

“Because we loved Jinan, didn’t we? We saw her grow, and we saw her off. We’ll never see her again.”

The wings in Vitrine’s glass cabinet stirred, gently, almost shyly, and she pressed her hand over her chest to calm them. She imagined, briefly and disconcertingly, reaching up to do the same to the angel. She wondered what she might feel if she set her hand to the scarring over his heart, whether it would beat like a human’s or thunder like the sea or sing like a bird. Perhaps it would only be that stupid humming sound he made when he did not care to argue with her but still wished her to know he disapproved.

Vitrine dropped a scattering of silver and gold into his palm.

“For Jinan, then, and not for you, and not for that boy, not yet. He still has to impress me.”