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When the fall came to the city, Richard St. Vier was between jobs and spending most of his evenings at Rosalie's, where people knew to reach him. It was the third or fourth time, now, that he had seen the strange young man there.
The youth seemed to be a scholar, with his black gown and long, tied-back hair -- though few from the University ever ventured across to Riverside, and they certainly did not do so with such regularity. He tended to pick a table for himself in the furthest corner, near the fire, and sit there with his long legs stretched out in front of him, nursing a single half-pint of beer through the night. He never seemed to do anything, except make occasional interjections that caused a slow yet palpable rise in the tension in the room; and sometimes gamble, for small sums but showily, and with creative insults for his opponents. It was amazing that he hadn't yet been killed for it.
Richard did not know why he watched the newcomer, exactly, except that he was bored without occupation, and upstart bravos were no longer keen to fight with him wherever he went. The youth did not look like a swordsman -- his posture was utterly wrong -- but he had about him a definite air of challenge. And he was very beautiful.
Still, it did not take four nights of observation to determine that much, and Richard had turned back to talk to Rosalie about local gossip when an increasingly-familiar voice -- low and drawling and with the unmistakable accents of the Hill -- addressed him from a point above his shoulder.
"Can I buy you a drink?"
St. Vier pivoted leisurely: he did not like people trying to sneak up on or loom over him. "I don't usually accept favors from strangers," he said.
"Oh, good," the youth answered with equanimity, taking the stool beside his. "Because I am entirely out of money. Will you buy me a drink?"
Richard looked at him, half-amused. Close up, he had startlingly green eyes and delicate skin, shadowed around the eyes, and sharp features that might have been as at home as his voice in a noble's drawing-room. Someone's by-blow, perhaps, cast out into the world?
"Rosalie, a pint for my friend here. And," he glanced over to the cup left on the table by the fire, "put his first on my tab as well."
The scholar raised his eyebrows. "Well, if we are to be friends," he said precisely, "we ought to be properly introduced. My name is Alec."
A slight hesitation, and he did not offer anything further. Richard did not put too much credence on the name, though it seemed to suit him: all drawl and sharp edges. "Richard St. Vier."
"I know," said Alec, evidently pleased. "You're a famous swordsman. Very good at killing people."
Richard nodded. It occurred to him that perhaps this young man had been seeking him out to arrange a fight -- nobles always found strange ways to go about it.
"When I'm paid to," he said.
"Do they thank you for it?"
Meeting his green gaze, Richard had a dizzy moment of thinking that he meant the corpses. "Not as a rule," he finally answered, which was true. These days, he usually tried to desert the scene ahead of any awkward social displays.
"Terrible manners," Alec said disapprovingly. "They all have terrible manners, really; and all their good manners are just the elaborate language they invent to disguise it. I know."
"You're from the Hill yourself, then? Or the University?"
Alec bent his head over his drink, so that a loose skein of hair, straight and brown, fell over his cheek. "I'm not actually from anywhere," he said. "I have appeared in the world from the cleft of a rock, like the hero in the story. Does that bother you?"
"Not particularly," answered Richard. "I'm from nowhere myself, as far as the city is concerned." If this was a client, or the representative of a client, he would have to be put at ease -- always difficult when people faced a highly competent hired sword. And if he was not…
Alec took a sip of his beer and frowned assessingly; Richard hoped that he wouldn't say something caustic about its quality, and start a quarrel with the regulars. "What brings you here?" he asked, to forestall it. "To Rosalie's, I mean."
"The company." It was hard to tell how he meant it, but then he smiled, sidelong and slow. "One meets such fascinating people."
"And cheats them at dice?"
"Oh, I never cheat." The green eyes were limpid. "It's all a matter of chances."
Richard had settled back easily on his stool, prepared to listen to whatever else he might say, when Alec suddenly tipped his mug back and drank it down, all in a draught. Richard watched his throat working. When he set it down, Alec looked displeased but determined, a little frown between his eyes. "Isn't there somewhere we could go?" he asked.
"Another tavern?"
"No; somewhere private." He did not drawl the word, the way he drawled many others; in fact, he sounded quite business-like.
"There's a couple of rooms I rent, above a laundress's," Richard said. "Will that do?"
"Admirably." Alec got up, drawing the scholar's robe tighter about himself, huddling inward in preparation for the cold: there had been an early turn in the weather that week, changing the colors of the leaves overnight.
Together, they passed through the tavern and climbed up the stairs to the street. The stones were slippery with substances one did not like to think about; and Alec wrapped his hand around Richard's elbow for a moment to stop from stumbling -- a delicate gesture, more reminiscent of a noble reception.
There were more people gathered outside, preparing to disperse or lining up by the baked-potato woman's stall to purchase the last of her night's stock. Most of them knew Richard, and offered a wave or a word; it was another while before they were what passed for alone in a Riverside street.
"Why does everyone keep staring at me?" Alec demanded.
"You're a stranger here. They don't know what to make of you." Though only the latter half was true, he'd noticed -- Riversiders usually looked upon strangers as marks; but they regarded Alec as an anomaly, and let him pass.
Alec wrapped his arms tighter about his chest, staring down at the damp, dirty road where the puddles were beginning to freeze at the edges.
"I used to think," he said, "that this was a place where you came to die. They tell such dreadful stories about it, you know. And then I got here, and found that it's only a place where people live, just like everywhere else -- drinking and squabbling and all writhing together. It doesn't matter to them if they're the lowest dregs of humanity. It's only the Hill where it matters."
"People can make a life just about anywhere," St. Vier said. "My friends who've been to prison, they say that a whole society grows up among the people who've been there for a while -- rules and forms and ranks of precedence. It's what we're like."
"Society is a prison," said Alec. And then, with sudden savagery, "I think it's horrible. Why can't they just let you die? Why do we all have to keep pretending that we're alive, when really--" He kicked at the leaves in his path, crisp and glittering by distant lamplight, "we're all like these. Already fallen, just waiting to decay."
"Is that from religion?" Richard asked mildly.
"No, it's from natural philosophy. Easier to argue with religion. But natural philosophy doesn't care, Richard -- it's all so cold…"
Cautiously, he said, "Are you drunk?"
"On that swill? I wish I was." He took some long strides forward in silence, but he did not know where he was going, so in the end he had to stop and wait for St. Vier to catch up. He stood there gazing upward, until Richard feared that someone would bowl into him in passing.
"Consider the music of the spheres," Alec was saying pensively, when Richard reached him. "The ultimate harmony -- the complete consort of the planets dancing together in beautiful, ordered--" His voice broke off on a bitter note. "Do you think it might snow?"
Richard glanced up. It was a chill night -- perhaps the first hard frost of the season -- but the sky was empty and clear. He could not make out any stars. "Not for some weeks yet." A thought occurred to him. "Have you got someplace to sleep?"
"Oh, yes." Alec nodded earnestly and pointed down the road they had just crossed. "You see that abandoned townhouse there? I think it used to belong to the Rankeillors, from the crest above the door. That's where I have my bed, most nights -- on a pallet of straw among ruined splendors. It's enough to make you write a poem about the corruption of the world."
Richard was staring at him in horror -- the place was notorious as a haunt for the displaced and dangerous of Riverside; and it would be at its worst now, with the end of the summer sending them scurrying indoors. For a young man like this to escape with his life, let alone in one piece… "It must get very cold," he said at last.
"It does," Alec agreed. "I thought I wouldn't mind being cold, after all, but it's the thing I mind the most. My teeth chatter at night. It's very embarrassing."
"We'll get to my rooms soon," Richard promised. "Then you can get warm."
"You must think I've very strange," Alec said, in a mulish way. "In addition to being a stranger, in your terminology."
"I don't mind." They turned off onto Richard's cul-de-sac, where it was darker and the leaves swirled in eddies. "It's just that house at the end." Above the usual base-line part of his mind, which calculated corners for ambush and lines of attack, he was taking a quick inventory to see what he might offer Alec when they went up. Despite his raggedness, he seemed to be made for fine things.
They stopped before the front door. All the windows were dark and shuttered: Marie must have been out, or having a slow night.
"It would have been very grand here, too, once," Alec noted, stroking one of the fluted columns that flanked the entrance. "I like it better like this."
"Run-down?"
"Real." They spoke quietly, standing close together. "Only the decaying things are real."
Alec leaned down to him. His lips were cold and slightly chapped, but his kiss was warm and lush. When Richard took hold of his shoulders, he made a noise deep in his throat.
It ended far too quickly. Alec pulled away, breathing fast, and whispered, "I want you to kill someone for me."
Richard stepped back and dropped his hands, more disappointed that he should have been. He did not say what he thought of Alec's tactics: one did not insult potential clients until one knew what they wanted. "Who's the mark?"
Alec smiled, a strange fey smile. With one long finger, he tapped his own breastbone through the scholar's robe. "One clean blow to the heart. That's what you do, isn't it? Only I'm afraid the payment would have to be on credit."
St. Vier shook his head. "I don't kill unarmed men, or those who come asking for it. If you're that brave, do it yourself."
"I've tried. But I'm not, actually," Alec admitted, "I'm not brave at all. It's hard to condemn people to living just for being cowards: it isn't what I call justice."
He was shaking visibly: Richard did not think it was with cold. He knew better than to try and offer reassurances. Part of him was even relieved: if Alec was mad, or scared, or running away from something, well, that made him no different from many in Riverside. Even if there was no one else exactly like him.
"Would you like to come inside?" he asked.
"Why, if you won't kill me?"
"There are other things we could do. It might make you feel better."
Alec gave one long, slow blink; his moods seemed to change faster than the direction of the wind between the crowded buildings. "Chess, you mean? Or charades."
"Something like that."
They climbed up the narrow, creaking stairs in the dark, and through into the former music room that served as Richard's parlor. He saw Alec pause and take it in: the dark fireplace with its cherubs, the cobwebbed molding on the ceiling; the scuffed and peeling wall against which Richard practiced; the chaise longue and the single chair.
Richard fumbled on the mantelpiece for a candle: there was only a stub of cheap tallow left, and when lit, it didn't help much. Of late, he had only been using his rooms to sleep and practice in: seeing them now through Alec's eyes, he recognized the lack of comforts. But Alec was smiling in the dim light.
"I can get the fire going," Richard offered.
"Mmm. Later." He came over and traced the cherubs around the hearth with his long, pale fingers, and then gave the same care to Richard's face: mapping it like a blind man. "I thought a real swordsman would be scarred all over. Craggy. That the handsome ones were only in parades and cheap literature."
"The scarred ones don't make it long." Richard kissed him, and Alec's hands came around to the back of his neck. They were still wearing their cloaks; Richard shrugged out of his, and pressed Alec up against the ruined wall. Desire ran hot and fresh in him, a new-made thing.
"Was it here that it happened?" Alec whispered, letting his head fall back against the wall. His face was flushed and his eyes all pupil; he had downed his beer quickly, on an empty stomach, and he must have been a little drunk after all. "They say you killed your last lover here…"
Richard hardly knew his own response: it was below the level of conscious thought. With one hand, he'd grasped Alec's two fragile wrists and held them to the wall, pressing hard enough that the bones ground against each other; with the other he reached for the pommel of his sword. "Never mention that again," he said, in a calm clear voice he did not recognize.
Alec was breathing hard. "Or else?" he asked, his green eyes flashing viciously.
Richard let him go. He found that the air hurt in his throat: no one had ever wrenched such a reaction from him, not after a scant hour's acquaintance. "You're not going to goad me into killing you."
"What can I goad you into?" He was still braced against the wall, among the marks of Richard's swordplay: his long body languid, the shirt unlaced at his neck.
"Nothing you would like." Richard leaned on the threadbare back of the chaise longue, suddenly very tired. "You'd better leave now."
"Because I made you angry?"
"Because if that's all you want, you're going to be disappointed."
He felt Alec moving towards him, quietly as a cat, and then his hands were warm on Richard's shoulders. "It's not all I want," he said, and later, "You're nothing like what I expected, at all."
The predictable ones don't make it long either, Richard thought, but this was no time for a discussion. He tugged Alec through to the other room -- "Oh," Alec murmured, "your bed" -- eased the shirt from his shoulders, lay down with him in the large, ornately-carved bed with its cold linen sheets.
He had been told once, by someone he'd thought above such affectations, that he made love the way he fought his duels: elegantly and with great efficiency. But with Alec he took his time, mapping every inch of that pale skin -- the curve of his collarbones and the jut of his hip -- trying to soothe the tension he felt thrumming through him. To wipe out all trace of the fear and triumph he had seen in Alec's eyes in the other room, to show that it did not have to be like that.
He wished Alec might talk to him -- he loved the cultured cadence of his voice -- but he only made soft, broken sounds, and shook his head when Richard asked if he was hurting him.
"No -- ah, Richard, I didn't know…" He brought his hand to his mouth and bit it between the thumb and forefinger, hard enough to draw blood: when Richard pulled it away, despite his protests, and kissed him instead, he tasted the tang of iron on his tongue.
They were in a place beyond words, soon enough, the heat between them as incendiary as a firework on a cold autumn evening. Afterwards Alec drifted to sleep with his head against Richard's shoulder, and let him card his fingers through his long, soft hair.
When Richard slept in his turn, he dreamed of the planets dancing together, all in an orderly waltz like the nobles' parties up on the Hill. Alec was among them, shining pale and dressed in glittering brocades; his arm was outstretched, but Richard could not reach him through the crowd of moving stars.
*
The next morning, Richard woke up alone in the wide bed, with strips of diffuse light coming in through the shutters. It was still early.
He put on some clothes and went out into the front room, where Alec was curled up on the chaise longue with his arms around his knees. He had got the fire going and was burning it far too brightly for the season and Richard's supply of wood, but Richard did not reprove him for it.
He did not say anything at all, or go to Alec, or touch him, or kiss him, though he wanted to do all of those things. In daylight, Alec's bearing had a forbidding stillness about it, like that of a stray cat -- a reserve with claws behind it; not of nobility, after all, but of the alley. Staring into the fire, he did not seem to notice Richard at all.
Richard leaned against the wall near the door and watched him: the tangled rope of his leaf-brown hair and the long lines of his limbs. He was strange and beautiful, and he did not belong in Riverside or in Richard's bed.
"I finished all of your bread and cheese," Alec said suddenly, without looking. "Though some of the bread had mold on it, and I fed that to the birds out the window."
Dimly, Richard recalled being woken by an avian racket. "I'll buy more," he said. "It's a market day."
"Ah," Alec murmured. He stretched back in the chaise longue and looked up at Richard from beneath his lashes: an assessing look, not deliberately seductive, but he was affected by it all the same.
"Don't sleep in the Rankeillor mansion anymore," he blurted, all against his better judgment.
"Then where," inquired Alec, "shall I sleep?"
"Here." And to make abundantly clear the depth of the grave he was digging for himself, Richard gestured towards the other room with its grand carved bed. "There."
"All right," Alec said.
After a moment, Richard asked, "Do you have any other possessions?"
"Some books. I've got them hidden away in a chest in an upper bedroom, but I doubt anyone there would want to steal them. Literacy does not seem to be one of their attributes."
Richard doubted that this would deter a denizen of Riverside -- particularly one desperate enough to resort to the Rankeillor house -- from stealing anything that wasn't bolted down before him, but he was willing to go along with Alec's optimism. "We'll go and get those this morning, then."
"And then we'll buy more bread and cheese. And fish? And maybe some candles. I do hate stumbling about in the dark."
"Anything you like. I've got some money left from my last fight." Any one of his friends might have told him that this was a stupid thing to say to a new lover.
But Alec only smiled, sharp and sweet, and Richard did not think that he was contemplating money.
*
They were at the market-place about noon; St. Vier had Alec's small satchel of books -- miraculously intact -- hanging over his arm, while Alec carried the food and other things they'd bought. It had turned into another bright, chilly day, and Alec's cheeks and nose were red. It made him look slightly more believable, but all the same, Richard did not touch him.
If he had been a few years younger, if it had been -- anyone else, this first day might have been a time for foolish promises and kisses stolen in the shadows. But he and Alec only walked together, side by side, like any two friends out for the day; Richard slightly behind and with his hand on the pommel of his sword, protective.
It occurred to him that Alec's glamour among the Riversiders was unlikely to outlast a prolonged exposure to the sharpness of his tongue, and that he, Richard, would not always be around to deter them. Near the end of the market, he steered Alec toward a stall whose counter gleamed with polished metal.
"Here," he said, taking away the purchases and placing the knife into Alec's hands. It was a fancier piece than he might have chosen for himself, but it suited Alec and would serve its purpose. "Carry it with you everywhere, if you're going to stay in Riverside."
Alec regarded the knife with a bemused expression, tracing the metalwork with his long fingers and testing the edge of the blade. Richard didn't realize that he had cut himself until he lifted his finger up into the light, examining it dispassionately. "It's sharp," Alec observed.
"That's the idea. I can teach you to fight with it, if you like; but for a start, just aim the pointed end toward anyone who tries to hurt you."
Alec didn't answer; his face was blank and distant. "Alec," Richard said, "you're bleeding." He looked down at that, and brought the injured finger to his mouth, to suck away the blood; Richard could not have said why that small gesture stole his breath as it did.
He was drawn to this stranger in the scholar's robe like a magnet, that was clear enough, and if only that was all of it -- but he had to admit that it was not. He had asked Alec to live with him, after a single night; he had already allowed himself to think of a time, not too distant, when Alec would be no less unpredictable or brittle, but they would be easier with one another -- when they might talk and joke, and roam the streets of Riverside together.
"Let's go home," he said, thinking of Alec unpacking his books on the mantelpiece; and being able to properly see, by day-light, his pale body spread out against the sheets. "Unless you'd rather go to Rosalie's again?'
"Home," Alec answered, with a shade of his haughty bearing, "by all means." And he went with him.