Wicked Gentlemen (8 page)

The hiss and gurgle of the gas lamps reminded me of the way he had whispered curses constantly behind the backs of his least favorite teachers. He had also whispered, in that same quiet way, after he had fallen asleep in my arms. The low moaning of cats made me remember suddenly the first night we had made love. It had been in an alley, and neither of us had known very well what we were doing.

The smell of him seemed to rise through the wind. I closed my eyes and took in another deep breath. Above the reek of the horse shit in the street, there was that deeply familiar scent. I opened my eyes. It wasn't simply my haunted imagination; Sariel's presence twisted through the wind. He was nearby.

Unconsciously, I had been wandering toward him. I had followed his scent, all the while attempting to think about something else. I supposed it was in keeping with my deceptive nature that I should have lied even to myself.

The thin wisps of cigarette smoke drifted up against the dark sky. I followed them easily. Even among my own kind, my sense of smell was powerful. I found Sariel long before he caught sight of me. He strolled up Butcher Street as if it were his. A cigarette hung between his fingers. He exhaled, whispering softly as the smoke blew past his lips. His long green coat flapped slightly in the breeze, and the dark scarf he wore waved back behind him. The smoke rolled ahead of him, and he followed it.

He was beautiful. I had taken that for granted when I had known him before. His languid motions and bright eyes had been so familiar to me that I had not really known how rare he was. I had never understood why the headmaster at St. Augustine's insisted that Sariel keep his tempting glances to himself. He had simply been Sariel, and I had loved him. Now I realized how handsome he truly was. At the same time, I did not overlook Sariel's wickedly sharp black nails or his fixed expression of superiority.

He took a long drag off his cigarette. The fire in it burned bright red. After a moment of gazing up at the sky, Sariel released the white smoke in a long whisper. I felt him say my name; the pulse of his breath washed over me.

The exhaled smoke rushed up from Sariel's lips. It shifted and twisted as the wind moved through it, but it always wound its way back to the rooftop where I sat. Sariel watched it move, and at last he saw me. He came forward slowly, his outward calm betrayed only by the words he had burned into the air with such intense force.

The tongues of Sariel's smoke curled over me. They were warm and smooth, like delicate fingers. Wisps rolled over my bare stomach and shoulders. Sariel smiled at me and then soared up to the rooftop.

"Hello, Belimai," he said, and he flicked his dying cigarette back down to the muddy street. "Mind if I join you?"

"Do as you please," I replied.

Sariel sat down on the roof tiles and leaned back against the brick column of the chimney. We watched each other in silence for a few moments. He lit another cigarette.

"How's your back?" he asked.

"It's all right, so long as I don't think about it."

"You always were tougher than you looked." He frowned, then took another drag off his cigarette.

I watched the smoke he exhaled rise and twist up into the night sky.

"Were you looking for me?" I asked at last.

"Was it obvious?" he asked, and then he went on. "I wanted to say something to you."

"Oh?" I cocked my head slightly. "What?"

"Something. Anything. I just wanted to see you again, to say something more than goodbye," Sariel said.

I couldn't think of a response that didn't sound clever or cruel, so I kept quiet. Sariel smoked and at last crushed out the butt of his cigarette against the roof.

"You aren't going to make this easy, are you?" Sariel asked.

"What do you mean?" I watched the last thin streaks of Sariel's smoke turn on the night air.

"Don't do this, Belimai," Sariel said. "If you're angry at me, then say so. Scream at me if you want, but don't treat me like a stranger. Don't pretend that I'm some stray off the street who you've never seen before."

"I thought it would be better for both of us this way," I said at last.

"Better?" Sariel shook his head. "I'd rather have you beat my head in. At least then I'd know that you still felt something for me."

"I'm not going to beat your head in. I'm not even angry at you."

"How could you not be?" Sariel looked at me as if I were lying.

"I'm just not," I snapped. "What happened was my fault. How could I be angry with you?"

"It never occurred to you that I got you dragged into the Inquisition in the first place?" Sariel pulled a cigarette case out of his coat pocket, took one of the cigarettes, and lit it with a snap of his black nails. "If I had gone straight right after school, like you did, it never would have happened. We could have set up house, and maybe you would have gotten into that school..." He paused to exhale a long swirl of smoke. "What was it called?"

"I don't remember," I replied.

"Like hell you don't remember." Sariel stretched out onto his side and looked out at the sky. "It was the Downing Academy, wasn't it?"

"It's old history, Sariel. It doesn't matter what school. There's no point in trying to get me mad at you about something that's long past."

"You've avoided me for six fucking years, Belimai." Sariel jabbed his burning cigarette in my direction. "You're barely speaking to me now. It's not over. It's still going on right now between us. You think that I'm furious because you turned me in. And I think you hate me because...well, you're acting like it."

"I don't hate you, and I don't think you're furious at me." I shook my head.

"Then why did you stay away so long? Why did you leave Hells Below?" Sariel demanded.

"I changed." I knew that didn't make much sense, but there was no way that I could describe what had happened to me in the Inquisition. It hadn't just been the matter of a few scars and twenty pounds. I had been brought in as a proud youth, and I came out a pathetic addict. I might as well have been killed and my name given to a mongrel who resembled me around the eyes and jaw.

"You changed?" Sariel blew a hot tongue of smoke into my face and I glared at him. "Same nasty look, same vicious glare. You don't seem changed."

"I don't.. .Look at me, Sariel." I thrust my upturned arms out at him. "Open your eyes and actually look at me."

Sariel stared into my eyes for several moments. Slowly, his gaze moved over my dirty face. He glanced to my bare chest and at the white scars there. He followed the white letters over my shoulders and then down my arms. His expression was gentle until the moment he caught sight of the bruised, deep furrows that years of needles had left on both my arms. He looked away, but not before I saw an expression of revulsion flicker across his handsome face.

I folded my arms back in across my chest. I had invited his gaze to force him to admit that I was a wreck of what I had been. Still, the moment he glanced away from me, rejection knifed through me like a deep wound. It was what I had expected-demanded, even—but still it hurt me.

"You just need a bath and some rest," Sariel said, but he couldn't bring himself to look into my face.

"I know what I need, Sariel. In fact, I need it more than I need you." My bitterness at him made my words come out more harshly than I had wanted. "Don't patronize me with that 'all the boy needs is a bath, a bed, and a hot meal.' Save it for your Good Commons gatherings. I know perfectly well what kind of man I am."

"It isn't who you are; it's only what the Inquisition did to you." He was sitting up now, his red eyes glowing almost as brightly as the cherry of his cigarette.

"They took you in three times before they came after me, and you're the same as ever," I responded as coldly as I could manage.

"That's because I just confessed. I told them what they wanted to know, and I paid my fines." Sariel glared at me. "What were you thinking, trying to hold out?"

"I promised you I wouldn't betray you."

"It was only a fucking fine, Belimai!" Sariel was shouting now. "Fifty coins! Didn't you think I would have paid fifty coins just to not have you hurt? Did you think I was that cheap?"

"I didn't know what the charges were," I snapped. "I didn't know, and I didn't want you to end up roasting at the stake because I—" I cut myself short, realizing that this whole thing was going wrong. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. All of this was over. It had come and gone. Screaming at Sariel now wouldn't alter even a moment of the past. Not even his one glance of repulsion could be taken back, now.

"I'm too tired to fight with you, Sariel. And I don't want to, in any case," I said.

"Neither do I." Sariel leaned back again. "Fighting is about the last thing I want, honestly."

He took a drag off his cigarette, and I looked up at the sky. The stars were still shining brightly, though a pale blue light crept up from the horizon.

"It's a nice night, isn't it?" Sariel asked at last.

"Yes," I agreed.

"Can we start over?" Sariel asked, and I knew he meant more than the conversation.

I wanted to tell him that we could. But the past could no more be forgotten than it could be undone. It would always be between us. When I looked at him, I could not help but remember who I had been and how low I had sunk since then. No matter how many years passed, I knew that I would never be able to think of him without recalling my time under the prayer engines. He would think of the same things when he saw me.

"No," I said. "Let's just go on."

A few more moments of silence passed. Sariel blew smoke rings, and then as a thick plume of smoke floated up from between his lips, he whispered the word, "Moth." The smoke curled into the form of a gypsy moth. Its wings beat against the breezes, dissipating as it rose up.

I smiled. Creating smoky moths had been the first magic Sariel had accomplished. He had shown them to me on a night much like this one, when the two of us had snuck up to the roof of the school. I remembered how his young face had been flushed with exertion and pride. He had singed his hair and burnt one of his fingers, but that had hardly mattered to him. Now he made it look as effortless as breathing.

Sariel leaned languidly on one elbow, as if he were on the edge of sleep. He watched me, but from the shadows of his lowered eyes. I didn't catch the word that he whispered, but the smoke that rose from his mouth whirled up into two slender forms. They circled each other, the thin trails of their bodies winding together. At last they drew into an embrace that swallowed them both.

Sariel looked directly at me then. As much as he wanted to return to the past, I needed to leave it behind. The man I was could never reclaim that time of trust and pride. I no longer fit into it. I looked past Sariel to where black walls of smoke still hung over Edward Talbott's house.

"Did you know Joan Talbott very well?" I asked.

"I knew her," Sariel said, "but we weren't associates outside of Good Commons. She was never willing to get her silk gloves that dirty."

"Tell me about her."

"What do you want to know?" Sariel looked slightly unsure of the turn of the conversation.

"What connection she had to Peter Roffcale and to a woman named Lily and another named Rose."

 
"So, Captain Harper really has hired you for his investigation." Sariel frowned. "I thought he might have just brought you along with him to protect himself."

"He hired me," I said. Whether to investigate, to provide a buffer from others of my own kind, or just to waste his money, I didn't know.

"Mica might have killed him if you hadn't been there." Sariel moved a little closer to me. "She raised Peter from the time he was nine. When we heard that he had been murdered, she.. .Well, you saw how she was. She's almost wasted away to nothing."

"Did Mica know Joan also?"

"Oh yes, they were fond of each other. I think Mica believed that eventually Joan would come back to Peter. She used to say that the girl was just scared. She needed time." Sariel shook his head. "Joan wrote a lot of our speeches, some of the best ones. But she never had the courage to deliver any of them or to attend any of the demonstrations. Peter and Lily read most of what she wrote. Rose took the vitriolic ones.

"Rose had a sweet look about her that let her say vicious things without losing the crowd. Peter did six months of labor for one of Joan's speeches. Lily spent ten months in a reformatory for Prodigal women. Rose was charged, but I think the judge couldn't bring himself to give her more than a fine. Even I've given speeches that Joan wrote. I was charged for public indecency for one." Sariel smiled briefly at this. "Joan, on the other hand, never even stepped into an Inquisition House unless it was to take a lunch to her half-brother—"

"Half-brother?" I asked.

"Captain William Harper," Sariel said, as if I should have already known that. "His father was some Inquisition abbot who got his head ripped off during the mine riots. Joan was the child from the mother's second marriage."

"I see."

"They're a rich family. Though you wouldn't know it from the captain. They own a huge estate house out past St. Bennet's. Before she married, Joan had a house up near the banks all to herself. She hired Peter on as an under-gardener. He carried her speeches down to us in Hells Below. I suppose he provided other services as well. It must have been quite nice for her. She could express her displeasure with the society around her while still enjoying its amenities."