His second kick broke her rib. She hadn’t broken a bone in a long time, and the snap surprised her. Bile welled in the back of her throat.
She pulled her hands free, clawed, found skin, drew more blood. The boot came again.
Still, up there, the moon watched.
Gabby lived in a godly city, but she had no faith herself.
Nor did she have faith now. She had need.
So she prayed as she had been taught by women in Hot Town and the Westerlings, who woke one day with echoes in their mind, words they’d heard cave mouths speak in dreams.
Mother, help me. Mother, know me. Mother, hold and harbor me.
Her nails tore her palms.
Hear my words, my cry of faith. Take my blood, proof of my need.
The last word was broken by another kick. They tried to stomp on her hand; she pulled it back with the speed of terror. She caught one man’s leg by the ankle and tugged. He fell, scrabbled free of her, rose cursing. A blade flashed in his hand.
The moon blinked out, and Gabby heard the beat of mighty wings.
A shadow fell from the sky to strike the alley stones so hard Gabby felt the impact in her lungs and in her broken rib. She screamed from the pain. Her scream fell on silence.
The three who held and hit her stopped.
They turned to face the thing the goddess sent.
Stone Men, some called them as a curse, but this was no man. Back to the streetlights at the alley’s mouth, face to the moon, she was silhouette and silver at once, broad and strong, blunt faced as a tiger, long toothed and sickle clawed with gem eyes green and glistening. Peaked wings capped the mountain range of her shoulders. A circlet gleamed upon her brow.
“Run,” the gargoyle said.
The man with the knife obeyed, though not the way the gargoyle meant. He ran forward and stabbed low. The gargoyle let the blade hit her. It drew sparks from her granite skin.
She struck him with the back of her hand, as if shooing a fly, and he flew into a wall. Gabby heard several loud cracks. He lay limp and twisted as a tossed banana peel.
The other two tried to run.
The gargoyle’s wings flared. She moved like a cloud across the moon to cut off their retreat. Claws flashed, caught throats, and lifted with the gentleness of strength. The men had seemed enormous as they chased Gabby and hit her; they were kittens in the gargoyle’s hands. Gabby pressed herself up off the ground, and for all the pain in her side she felt a moment’s compassion. Who were these men? What brought them here?
The gargoyle drew the muggers close to her mouth. Gabby heard her voice clear as snapping stone.
“You have done wrong,” the gargoyle said. “I set the Lady’s mark on you.”
She tightened her grip, just until the blood flowed. The man on the left screamed; the man on the right did not. Where her claws bit their necks, they left tracks of silver light. She let the men fall, and they hit the ground hard and heavy. She knelt between them. “Your friend needs a doctor. Bring him to Consecration and they will care for him, and you. The Lady watches all. We will know if you fail yourself again.”
She touched each one on his upper arm. To the gargoyle it seemed no more consequential than a touch: a tightening of thumb and forefinger as if plucking a flower petal. The sound of breaking bone was loud and clean, and no less sickening for that.
They both screamed, this time, and after—rolling on the pavement filth, cradling their arms.
The gargoyle stood. “Bear him with the arms you still have whole. The Lady is merciful, and I am her servant.” She delivered the last sentence flat, which hinted what she might have done to them if not for the Lady’s mercy and her own obedience. “Go.”
They went, limping, lurching, bearing their broken friend between them. His head lolled from side to side. Silver glimmered from the wounds on their necks.
And, too, from scars on the alley walls. Not every mark there glowed—only the deep clean grooves that ran from rooftops to paving stones, crosshatch furrows merging to elegant long lines, flanked here by a diacritical mark and there by a claw’s flourish.
Poetry burned on the brick.
The gargoyle approached. Her steps resounded through the paving stones. She bent and extended a heavy clawed hand. Gabby’s fingers fit inside the gargoyle’s palm, and she remembered a childhood fall into the surf back out west, how her mother’s hand swallowed hers as she helped her stand. The gargoyle steadied Gabby as she rose. At full height, Gabby’s forehead was level with the gargoyle’s carved collarbone. The gargoyle was naked, though that word was wrong. Things naked were exposed: the naked truth in the morning news, the naked body under a surgeon’s lights, the naked blossom before the frost. The gargoyle was bare as the ocean’s skin or a mountainside.
Gabby looked into the green stone eyes. “Thank you,” she said, and prayed too, addressing the will that sent the being before her: Thank you. “The stories are true, then. You’re back.”