No one ever does. Futile words, a waste of breath. Nearly a waste of thought, and gargoyles rarely bothered with wasteful things. But there was no fight Biali couldn't win. Not against humans. Every fight he lost looked good, and no one—not even the short, putrid-breathed manager he collected scant dollars from after the matches were done—had any idea he threw all of them. All but the few he permitted himself to win, usually against broad-shouldered blondes. None of them had the wheat-pale hair of his old rival, and none of them had Alban Korund's strength, either. Beating the pulp out of look-alikes was cold comfort, but at least it was comfort.

  Tonight's bout was against a stocky Italian, hardly taller than Biali himself. He was missing two teeth and his nose sat askew, bulbous end mashed to one side. He'd never been pretty, but there were women who liked the rough edges fights brought out. Or at least women who could be paid to say they did, and for most fighters that was enough.

  Not even the highest-paid doxies in the city looked at Biali without flinching. The left side of his face was scarred, eating his eye and flattening the cheek. It was nothing to the ruin of his gargoyle face, but he never let humans see that. Rarely looked at the marks himself, knowing all too well that they looked as if his very bones had been chiseled away. Or bludgeoned, more like, the weight of one corundum fist changing the shape of his hopes forever.

  He wore his scars belligerently. It helped in the ring, frightening some men, making others bold. He didn't need the help, but there was no reason to try harder than necessary. Not when he fought humans. And he had no real use for mortal women, but their caught breath, their sliding gazes, stung him every time. Gargoyles were less taken with the physical form: stone chipped and wore away with time, and the wreck of his face was only age hurried along.

  The Italian was in the ring already, snorting like a horse. Big slabs of marbled muscle on him, the solid stuff that would barely ripple when he took a hit. Biali might look like that someday, if all he ever had to fight again were feeble humans. The manager shoved his shoulders, hurrying him toward the fight, and because he played at being human, Biali moved. A few heavy steps into a ring made up of wooden slats and sweating men, dirt under all their feet. He could dig his toes in and become unmovable, win it that way, but then he would have to stop fighting.

  And the fight was the only thing worth living for.

  He let the Italian make first contact. A blow to the chin, hard enough to knock a man out. He saw it in the Italian's eyes, too, that he should have staggered, and gave a thin uncompromising smile. Fear and anger burst to life in the Italian's gaze, and for whole minutes there was nothing but ducking and jabbing, fists slapping against flesh. A bell rang. The Italian kept coming. Biali let him, took another hit that should have doubled him, and saw fresh anger erupt across the Italian's face. Then the Italian's manager was on him, hauling him back. Biali shrugged, returning to his own spot across the human-lined corral. Sweat and shit and animals and beer: they all stank, and no amount of washing got rid of the stench.

  Perfume, though, disguised it. Perfume, but no man would wear that. Not here, anyway, not among the ranks of dock workers and street cleaners, not where a hint of effeminacy would get him killed. That was for dandies in the hothouses, for well-dressed young fops living life large as progress rolled on. Their kind would be killed, too—or at least beaten and robbed—down here in alleys and waterside warehouses.

  It had to be a woman. A woman, where none would be welcome. A woman escorted by the sort of fool who would bring one here, and from the scent, she was beyond expensive. She smelled rich, like she hadn't been bought. The perfume was delicate, unlike what whores wore, and through the noise of betters and backers, silk shifted against silk. Humans would never hear it, but any of the Old Races would. A cowbell clanged, harsh flat sound as out of place as the woman's perfume. The crowd was moving, jostling, shouting, and finally broke apart enough to give him a glimpse of her.

  Amber skin, black curling hair, large dark eyes. A free woman of color. Well, they were all free now, but the phrase lingered. Petite and curvy, or petite for a gargoyle, at least. Tall enough for a human woman, but it wasn't a human woman he was reminded of at all.

  The name left his lips in an unvoiced whisper: "Hajnal."

  It wasn't her. Couldn't be her. He knew it; Hajnal had died decades ago. But whenever he saw a woman like this he forgot, just for a moment. Forgot, too, that he'd lost Hajnal long before she'd died. Both remembrances always came back like a mule kick to his heart. He hated them for reminding him of her. Hated them for flinching when they looked at him, as she never had. Hated them for being human, when she had proved mortal too. Hate was easier.

  She looked his way. Her brow furrowed, then smoothed, and she lowered her eyelashes. Less than a nod, but nothing coquettish. Just a greeting before the crowd closed and took her away again.

  The ground shook, lumbering footsteps. Biali ignored it, still scowling into the crowd. Her scent lingered, but she was gone, not even a hint of what man she'd been with to give him a lead to follow. Behind him, the manager barked, "Fight!" and the thundering earth resolved into sense. He turned away, facing the ring again, and the Italian was there with a fist full of steel. It hit with a shattering boom, and Biali...

  ...fell.

  It had been convincing enough. He'd gotten his pay. As he should have, for the only fight in memory he hadn't thrown. But he hadn't said that to the manager, only collected his dollars and shoved his way out through the gathered mass. Out and then up, pulling rickety ladders down high walls to climb them. He didn't need them. He could leap and dig clawed fingers into the walls more easily than take fire escapes to the rooftops, but there were always people watching in this city of millions. Better to transform closer to the sky, where fewer eyes watched.

  The dull pain in his chin from the Italian's fist disappeared as he swung over a short rooftop wall and changed, explosively, into his natural form. Stone healed, or the transformation did; it was one of a dozen reasons the Old Races were hard to kill. A few quick steps brought him to the roof's far wall and he launched from it, stout wings catching the building's updraft and carrying him aloft. He was a blunt white mark against the sky, should anyone look up to glimpse him, but humans rarely looked up. And right now there was still a chance of catching the woman's scent again, following her. Of finding out who she was, why she had been at a place no woman should be. Of learning why she'd been brave enough not to flinch when she saw his scars.

  Of exposing himself, as he sometimes did, to ridicule and rejection. Gargoyles would not by nature do that to themselves, but by nature they gathered in tribes or clans. Not Biali; not since he had chosen to follow the outcast to New York decades earlier. Not since he'd been asked by the elders if he would, because Alban Korund had not joined the overmind in centuries, and the only way to learn what he knew was by watching him. In a few minutes the air currents would bring him above Trinity Church, where Korund lived. If Biali was human, he might convince himself he had taken wing to check on the other gargoyle, but he lacked the talent for that depth of self-deception. He would look to see if Korund was visible, but he wasn't Biali's prey tonight.

  Most nights, yes. Most nights, Biali was the best and worst choice for watching Korund. Best because he had reason above all others to want to catch him out. To find some way to punish him for Hajnal's death over a century earlier. She had been Biali's once, in so far as any gargoyle belonged to another. They tended to mate for life, though, and he had been more than happy with the tiny dark gargoyle whose family had risen from obsidian veins. But she had been distracted by Alban Korund when he was just a youth, still trying out his burgeoning wings. Had been taken by his fascination with the world outside the tribes and mountains, and in the end, had been taken away by that very world. Yes, Biali was the best choice to watch Korund, both of them exiles in humanity's cities.

  And he was the worst, because desperation lay behind his willingness to leave the gestalt. He would do nearly anything to lay some avengeable blame at Korund's feet. Hajnal's death had not, despite her departure from safety with Alban, been his fault. He had not fired the guns that shattered her wings or thrust bayonets into her human body. He had murdered no one. He could be blamed, but not condemned, and even if he could be, they had no law to put one another to death. Exile was their punishment, and Alban had imposed that on himself long before Hajnal's death. No one knew why. Even Hajnal's memories, which might have answered the question, had been contained by Alban, who was closest at her death, rather than being restored to the overmind. To the precious gargoyle memories that kept all of them, every single one of the remaining Old Races, in mind. They paid a price for being the bearers of so many memories: every other Old Race could move through day or night in its human form. Gargoyles, though, were bound to stone in daytime hours. Stone endured. Memory, therefore, endured. Without the gargoyles, the Old Races themselves might forget who and what they were. That was a cost too high to pay.

  Even if it meant the dawn was likely to prevent him from finding the woman who'd been at the fight. There was time yet, December nights as long as any. There were a few gargoyle clans who lived in the far north and equally far south, having traded mountains for months of night. They slept all summer in those remote climes, but winter was theirs. Biali felt a flash of envy for that.

  More for the kinship, though, than the wakeful months. Perhaps it had been easy for Korund to leave the gestalt in the beginning. He'd had Hajnal then, so he was never alone. Perhaps near-isolation had become comfortable enough that the solitude after her death hadn't been a shock. Biali could not imagine it. Bad enough to be only one of two gargoyles in the city, even if he was the one who could and did linger in the community of minds accessible to them no matter where their physical bodies rested.

  Wind kicked up, spewing dust down one of the city's long straight streets and bringing a hint of perfume with it. Maudlin thoughts cast aside, Biali sharpened his gaze, always more acute than human vision. He had come a long way from the docks, toward the Upper East Side, where townhouses and expensive apartments sprawled behind iron gates and well-paid police patrols. He'd moved faster than the woman would have, unconstrained by streets and certainly unthreatened by passers-by. Not that a woman willing to come to the fights would feel threatened by much. He wondered again who her escort had been, how she had been granted passage through the fights at all.

  He came to earth in an alleyway north of the park, transforming before the sodden drunk amidst the garbage could focus. The man still shoved backward, disbelieving fear sobering his lined features. Biali bared his teeth and the drunk looked away, deliberately forgetting what he hadn't quite seen. The Old Races survived that way. Had for centuries. Would, if they were lucky, for centuries more, but even the unchanging gargoyles admitted in their deepest places that they were at the end, not the beginning, of their long history.

  A carriage stopped up the block from him, driver leaning out to bray, "No further, lady. Walk the rest of the way, or get somebody dumber than me to drive."

  His quarry opened the door herself, stepping down with more grace than pique, and paid the driver without speaking. He turned the carriage and drove south again, back toward wealthier streets, but the woman continued north. Toward Harlem, full of Jews and Irish and blacks. The undesirables, but she was too well-dressed, too genteel, to live rough. Biali had her scent now. He wouldn't lose her, even if he couldn't see her. It was easy to cut across a shorter block and come up a side street a few yards ahead of her.

  She did startle this time, coming to a full stop with her hands clenched warily in her skirt. But he'd come out of the darkness without warning. Any woman might shy at that. Her first impulse of fear faded as she recognized him, and surprise wrinkled her forehead. "You are the fighter."

  The fighter. Not the scarred one, the white one, the angry one. There were many descriptors she might have chosen. That she used only the one was somehow flattering. Unaccustomed to the feeling, Biali muttered "One of 'em."

  She shook her head, a motion so small it might have been taught by the Old Races. "The others, they can be said to be something else. The one you fight tonight, the Italian. That is what he is. His name, it does not matter. The men after you, they are the Irish, the German, the Spaniard. Maybe you are the German too, but no. I see in you only the fighter. It is...pure, in you. Who are you? Why is this?"

  "My name is Biali." He frowned, then shrugged, hard motion of broad shoulders. "Why is because I've got nothing to lose. You're Spanish." He'd expected her to be American, and from the South, or from Boston, where many of the freed coloreds had gone after the war.

  "Mexican," she said, but with a smile. "My mother is a don's daughter, my father a Buffalo soldier. Mi abuelito, the don, he does not approve, but he approves less of my mother being unwed with a baby girl. I have come here to see the land my papa fought for. I have left them there in the fine seaside hacienda, waiting for my return."

  There. A woman's life, the whole of her history, given up to him willingly, yet he didn't know her name, and he had already lost her. Biali bared his teeth as he'd done at the drunk, angry at an unchanging world. "You're never going home alive if you walk through Harlem alone at night."

  Her eyebrows quirked. "But I am not alone." With a gesture, she invited him to walk beside her.

  Stupefied, he caught up after several steps. Her smile was genuine, but as brief as her other expressions. "There. You see?"

  That was an almost gargoyle-like literalness. Except a gargoyle could be expected to protect herself. Most of the time. More than a human woman could, despite Hajnal's fate. Biali stole a glimpse at the woman beside him. The resemblance that had caught him initially was superficial: her eyes were more almond in shape, her nose broader, flatter than Hajnal's. Her skin tone was very close, though, and they shared a strength of jaw as well as the thick dark hair. Women like her—paler of skin, but otherwise very like Hajnal—had died recently. At least one had been acquainted with Alban Korund. "Not being alone doesn't mean you're safe."

  Amusement touched her eyes. "Am I in danger?"

  Exasperation as rich as her humor rose in Biali. It would be smart to frighten her. Instead, surprised by his own intensity, he said, "Not while I'm near."

  They walked in silence a while, the woman considering that reply before she said, "But you do not know me."

  "No."

  She nodded, continued in silence, then said, "She was so special to you, then?"

  She left him behind a second time, his footsteps ceasing to echo on quiet streets. A dozen steps before she turned, expectant, and said to his angry shock, "There are so many reasons a man might hurry across a great city to find a woman. Lust, love, loss. You do not have the eyes of a man who lusts, and you do not know me to love me. So it is loss, no? I remind you of her, and you will see me safe because of that. What was her name?"

  No one should see that clearly. No human, anyway. Nor ask such questions, either, and no gargoyle should feel pressed to answer, but the name came unbidden for the second time that night: "Hajnal."

  "Hajnal." She tasted the name, then smiled, brief and sweet. "A strong name, no? I would like my daughters to be strong enough for such a name."

  "You have daughters?" The question came out before he could stop it. She was old enough, certainly, but there was nothing of the matron about her. The Italian had hit him harder than he thought, if his mind was so garbled. A human shouldn't flummox him half a dozen times in as many minutes. "Who are you?"

  "My name is Isabel, and I think I have come here for you."

  He should have walked away. Instead, somehow, he was at her doorstep, accepting the offer of a meal. Her house—rented, no doubt—was too large for one woman, even a woman with a Mexican manservant and maid who both looked disapproving as Isabel brought him into the house. Not too disapproving: they were no doubt paid by the don Isabel had mentioned, and no doubt sent letters back to Mexico detailing the granddaughter's exploits.

  Everything about the house proclaimed wealth. Not outrageous wealth, not so much to buy a colored girl a place in New York's finest society, but more than expected even in this wealthier stretch of Harlem homes. The rugs were new and deep, the windows caulked and the shutters firmly set. Tapestries and paintings hung on the walls, keeping warmth in, and generous fires burned in both the dining hall and the parlor Isabel later invited him into. There, finally, assured of some degree of privacy from the staff, Biali asked what he should have before: "What did you mean by that? What were you doing at the fights? A woman who lives like this shouldn't be in the docklands at all. How did you get there unmolested?"

  Isabel poured drinks, a task more suited for servants in the drawing room, not a woman in her own front parlor. Glass in hand, she settled near the fire, feet tucked under her skirts as if she kept company with intimates, not a stranger from the street. Maybe that was how the wealthy behaved in Mexico. Biali sat on the edge of another chair, safely distant, and scowled at her with interest as she shrugged. "A woman told me to go there. A tiny woman, with wrinkles and black hair, as I sat and had tea at a bookshop. She said the man I wanted would see me there, and no other would notice me."

  "The man you wanted."

  The woman smiled again, that brief tantalizing curve of lips. "I see how my mama looks at Papa, no? He is a fighter, a soldier, a strong good man. There are many men like this in Mexico, but I cannot look at them the way I see Mama look at Papa. So I think I am too, what is the word? Housed?"

  "Sheltered."

  "Sí, yes, sheltered. Too sheltered from the world, if my mama, the don's daughter, can find a soldier to make her eyes shine and I can find no one. So I travel. First to San Francisco, with so many hills and Chinese men. Then to Chicago, but there is still the scent of fire there, and I do not like fire."

  "Fire? It's been twenty years since the fire."

 

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