Page 40 of The City in Glass

“He’s just like you,” the angel said in exasperation. “Have you heard his latest poems to Azril’s towers?”

“Terrible, simply awful,” Vitrine said happily. “And yes, he loves this city almost as much as I do.”

Every time Alex returned to Azril, after he had washed off the blood and grit and seen his gold deposited safely in the new banks, he went to the coffeehouse on Marigold Street to meet with his old priest and his first patron, a glamorous and mysterious courtesan.

“You two never change,” he said, eating the bowl of rice noodle soup. “Why is that?”

“Would you like us to?” Vitrine asked in amusement, but the angel scowled.

“Why should we?” he asked. “It is enough that you do. You have grown thinner since you were home last, and look at the scars on you.”

“I never change, I will always be this strong, this vicious, and this alone,” boasted Alex, and because he was her favorite, Vitrine reached out to touch his chin, turning his head to see the woman coming in the door.

She was small and brown, unremarkable in every way save for how relentlessly unremarkable she was. She had taken pains to make herself so, and the business that had brought her to Azril was a bloody one. She was vengeance’s daughter, and the knife strapped to her leg, easily grasped through a slit in her pocket, was very sharp.

Then she looked up, meeting Alex’s gaze. That alchemy that Vitrine suspected sparked, and fate shifted in its banks.

Forgetting his patron and his priest in a moment, Alex stumbled to his feet, almost tripping over his sword.

“Marry me,” he said, and vengeance’s daughter laughed straight in his face. Vitrine liked that laugh a great deal. The angel frowned.

“What will you give me?” she asked.

“Anything. Anything at all.”

She looked him over closely, and her eyes lit on his sword.

“Are you any good with that?” she asked, and he puffed up like a singing bird.

“The best there’s ever been.”

“Well,” she said, “buy me dinner. We’ll talk.”

“Oh, no,” the angel said. “This will only end in—”

“With good luck and kind fate, it might never end at all,” Vitrine said, running her fingers along the bloody threads of the girl’s quarrel. “But come along. We’re not wanted here.”

They weren’t, and the angel followed her into the street.

“You can’t keep him from every danger,” she reminded him. “You never could.”

“You don’t care about him at all. That girl has blood dripping from her skirts.”

“And he leaves bloody footsteps wherever he goes. It’s a good match, I think.”

“For him or for the city?”

“For me, it’s the same.”

Vitrine sighed when the angel looked mutinous.

“I shouldn’t have to give you of all things a lecture on playing favorites.”

He looked abashed at that, and he was not seen in the city for a handful of years. It was fine. Vitrine had things to do, and there was the blood and intrigue that vengeance’s daughter would spin around Azril like a spiderweb, giving it a hard and garnet glitter.

Be vicious, be loved, and be lucky, read the words Alex had chiseled over the mansion he built on what used to be Clayborn Street, and largely, they were. When they grew older, they sank into a respectable middle age that they took to quite well, and from the exploits of their younger days, they had a fortune, a share in a fleet of ships, and a pack of children, saved or given or salvaged.

“It’s quite a lot,” Vitrine said, playing the adoring auntie that of course they all remembered. “Do you have a favorite?”