Chương 75: 31-1. City of Angels

The steel gates ground open with a shriek that set your teeth on edge. Heavy iron plates scraped against each other, producing the kind of sound that reached directly into your jaw and twisted. Dust kicked up in the desert morning light, hanging pale and fine—the color of ground bone. I pulled my hood down another inch on instinct, my palm settling against the hilt at my waist. Not gripping. Just resting.

"This is... Angel's Gate?" Lucas's voice came from behind me, kept deliberately low. I didn't answer immediately. I just looked ahead. If the gates hadn't been standing open, I might not have called what lay beyond them a city. It looked more like a massive corpse that had been dead for a very long time, into which someone was still stubbornly shoving the living. Behind the crumbling outer walls, impossible architectural silhouettes jutted against the skyline at wrong angles.

These weren't structures built for ordinary human habitation. The entrance halls were too tall, the outer walls too wide, and on several fractured facades you could still make out fragments of relief carvings—shapes suggesting wings, or the decorative excess of some bygone era's entertainment for the wealthy. The traces of former extravagance had been reduced to wind-carved stone, spreading cracks, and a stubborn refusal to finish collapsing. A handful of guards lounged against sandbags near the gate.

Their armor was a patchwork assemblage—leather, iron scraps, cloth strips that had no business being called equipment. The overall effect was of wild dogs who had given up grooming themselves. The one in front glanced up at us, still chewing something. His eyes moved deliberately from our wheels to our horses to my face. I recognized that look. He wasn't seeing people. He was calculating whether we were worth bleeding. He spat a stream of yellowish liquid onto the ground and made a dismissive sound.

"Where from? Entry fee's three silver per head. Short one coin, you go back outside and chew sand." Before I could speak, Jessi had already drifted two steps forward. She tilted her head, studied the guard for a moment, then let out a laugh like someone recognizing an old joke.

"Well, if it isn't Gern. Since when are you working doors for other people?" The guard's expression, set to vaguely hostile, went visibly rigid at the name.

"... Who are you?"

"Cruel." Jessi pressed a hand to her chest with theatrical injury.

"Two years ago, Broken Spring back alley—you owed two nights' drinking money, and I was the one who talked the debt collectors off you. Forgotten already?" The guard narrowed his eyes, clearly searching his memory. Eventually something surfaced, and his expression shifted to something considerably more awkward.

"... That was you?"

"That was me." Jessi's smile was sweet and entirely untrustworthy.

"So. These people are with me. We're all friends here. Let's not make this collection look uglier than it has to be." The guard's jaw worked. His eyes made another circuit of our convoy, weighing options. Finally he spat again, kicked aside the wire barrier, and jerked his head.

"Get in. Don't cause me trouble I can't explain."

"Relax." Jessi raised her hand in a cheerful wave.

"If anything goes wrong, it won't trace back to you." I glanced at her but didn't ask questions. I signaled Matthews to keep the wagons moving. I hadn't let Olivia show her face. In a place like this, a woman who looked clean, composed, and obviously well-bred was a liability waiting to happen. Things were complicated enough without adding layers. The moment we crossed the threshold, Angel's Gate's air introduced itself. Not wind. The air itself.

A thick, stale stench wrapped in heat drove itself up my nose without ceremony. Stagnant water, human waste, the sour residue of vomit left in corners after a night's drinking, and underneath it all something rotting that I had no interest in tracing to its source. It layered together like a slap delivered personally to every person entering the city at dawn. Worse was the sweetness underneath.

From the ragged canvas stalls and half-hinged shop fronts came the smell of cheap perfume—not pleasant, but like someone trying to cover corpse stench with sugar, the two wound together into something more nauseating than either alone. I pressed my lips together, finally understanding why some places made even breathing feel like a losing proposition. Morning here wasn't an awakening. It was last night's rotten dream refusing to dissipate.

Several women with smeared makeup leaned against the remains of a glass display case. The broken gold framing and cracks behind them still suggested this had once showcased something valuable. What was on display now was different. One looked up with a half-asleep smile when she saw us.

"Come on, young master... missed last night, morning rates are better." Her voice was wrecked—she'd probably used it all night without rest. In the shadows behind her, two men lay motionless—status unclear. Nearby, a vendor crouched sorting glass tubes and dirty cloth with the practiced efficiency of someone packing up a breakfast stall. I looked away and signaled Matthews.

"Keep moving." The old soldier grunted acknowledgment and guided the wagons toward the wider main road. Jessi and I flanked the convoy, eyes moving constantly. In a place where human life was the cheapest commodity, value was rarely what was displayed openly. Wagon doors, bundles, horses—even a woman lifting a curtain to show half her face—any of it could draw the wrong kind of attention. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

Which was why Olivia, Erina, and Lucas needed to stay invisible. The more something looked like cargo, the more critical it was that no one knew what was inside. Deeper in, the city's true shape emerged. The buildings lining the streets weren't ordinary structures. They were ruins built to a scale that had nothing to do with human needs. Entrance halls tall enough for two wagons side by side. Load-bearing columns cracked down the middle.

Exterior walls bearing fragments of decoration—wing shapes, banquet scenes in styles I couldn't identify. Stone basins in the street, their rims long dry, sized for fountains or courtyard displays built to give wealthy people something to look at. Now they held broken furniture, wooden planks, barrels, and men crouched in the early light dividing money. This place had been built for indulgence. It still was. Only the currency had changed. Before, people spent money here. Now they mostly spent each other.

"Starting to see why legitimate caravans stop at the oasis outside," Matthews said quietly.

"Because they want to go home afterward," I replied. Jessi made a sound of amusement.

"Also because most of what you can buy here isn't meant for daylight discussion." Her tone stayed lazy, but her eyes read the street with a familiarity I didn't like. I filed it away without comment. We passed under a half-collapsed archway and the scene changed again. The space beyond had once been a hotel's main plaza—open on a scale that made no practical sense. But the centerpiece wasn't a statue or fountain. It was a row of iron cages, thick-barred and bolted down. Some people crouched inside.

Others were chained outside, heads down, silent. Men in leather vests called out prices in the hoarse, practiced voices of livestock auctioneers. I looked once, then moved my gaze away. Not because I couldn't stand it. Because in a place like this, staring was how you bought trouble.

"This place is hell," Alvira's voice came from behind, very low. Without turning, I said:"No. Hell at least has rules. This place just sold all its rules off." I paused, then added:"Pull your hood down. Stop giving them something to stare at." Brief silence, then a clipped response.

"... Right." I drew a long breath of the foul air and let my fingers settle on the hilt. The truly frightening thing about this city wasn't the filth or chaos. It was that even the filth and chaos had been neatly zoned into districts.

"So," I glanced at Jessi.

"Since you're on first-name terms with the gate guards, you must know somewhere we can actually sleep without losing organs." Jessi shrugged, grin still in place though her eyes had moved ahead.

"I know places. But let me clarify—in Angel's Gate, can sleep there and should sleep there are completely different categories." She pointed forward.

"Places you can sleep: anything with a door that hasn't collapsed and floor space for a blanket. Places where you wake up with your coin purse, boots, and both kidneys attached—that requires selectivity."

"That last example sounds like it has a story I don't want to hear," I said.

"Better not to ask. Ruins the appetite."

"I don't have much appetite to begin with."

"Perfect." She moved ahead, pace unhurried but directional, threading through the maze with confidence born of familiarity. I signaled Matthews to follow and kept moving alongside the wagons, watching road and people equally. The deeper we went, the less Angel's Gate resembled anything a city should be. Streets were still streets, buildings still buildings, but the proportions were wrong. Roads too wide, doorways too tall, windows placed at heights no ordinary person would choose for ventilation.

On several half-collapsed facades, decorative remnants survived in fragments—broken wings, stone faces missing half their features, archway reliefs that might have been dancing or madness, all sandblasted to pale grey but still clear enough to unsettle. This place had been built for waste. Still was. The currency had simply changed. Once it was money. Now it was mostly people. We passed a half-open entrance hall and I couldn't help glancing in.

The interior had been a reception space designed to make guests feel small—ceiling high enough to lose an arrow shot straight up. The marble floor was cracked in every direction. What had been a front desk was now tilted tables where people played cards, bottles and bones piled at their feet. Further back, half a sofa remained against the wall, occupied by a man in a half-open shirt whose status—sleeping, unconscious, or otherwise—was unclear.

Beside him, a freckled woman crouched through his pockets with the unhurried focus of routine morning chores. She didn't look up once. I pulled my gaze back.

"Don't look at those places," Jessi said without turning.

"Either you'll want to get involved or it'll just make you miserable. Neither outcome pays."

"Do you have eyes in the back of your head?"

"No." Lazily.

"But right before you decide to stick your nose somewhere it doesn't belong, your breathing gets heavier."... This woman needed regular mouth-sewing maintenance. The wagon curtain shifted at that moment. Not obviously—just a thin gap, opened and closed like wind. Then Olivia's voice reached me, level and quiet.

"Lord Cedric." I drifted half a step closer without turning.

"What is it?"

"The building ahead on the left. Don't stop there." I glanced where she indicated. Relatively intact walls, even half a sign still hanging—it looked considerably more legitimate than its neighbors. Two men in vests stood at the entrance, waving at passing travelers.

"Reason?"

"The entrance is too clean," she said. I paused.

"... What?"

"This street is filthy. That building isn't." No inflection whatsoever.

"Either someone constantly maintains it, or someone wants outsiders to believe it's worth entering. The first means established territory. The second means established method. Neither suits us." I looked again. The intact entrance canopy now looked distinctly like a set of well-maintained teeth.

"Understood." The curtain fell back silently. I hadn't noticed how naturally I'd been taking her directions. Jessi had caught it. Her mouth curved though she didn't look back.

"My, the young lady in the wagon has sharp ears."

"Keep leading," I said.

"Yes, yes." She took us through two more turns. The foot traffic grew more varied—grease-blackened workers hauling iron, mercenaries dozing against walls, half-grown children watching from elevated positions, and gang runners identifiable by matching cloth strips on their arms, circling like dogs on patrol. Twice, some drifted toward us. Both times they slowed after seeing Jessi. Not fear. Recognition. Which was more concerning than fear. I noted it alongside the gate guard incident and her easy navigation.

Jessi knew this place—not as a visitor, but as someone who belonged. She wasn't volunteering that information, and this wasn't the street to dig for it. After another stretch, Jessi finally stopped at a narrow side street entrance. The noise dropped immediately. Not empty—but the main road's chaos stayed behind the corner. A cracked metal plate hung at an angle over the entrance, half a decorative pattern still visible.

Further in stood a building noticeably lower than everything around it, like a storage shed that had grown in the shadow of giants.

"Here." Jessi pointed.

"Used to be service quarters for one of the big hotels—staff housing, drivers, cargo workers. Ugly and worthless-looking. Exactly why people don't bother targeting it." Matthews studied the entrance, frowning.

"Too narrow. Wagons will have trouble turning."

"But easier to hold if we need to block it," I said.

"Mm." He nodded.

"Needs a second exit inside." Alvira had pulled her hood lower and moved beside me. She looked at the building, then said: "Second-floor window on the left has a new frame."

"I see it," I said.

"Someone uses it regularly."

"Or someone just died and it opened up recently," Jessi added cheerfully.

"Could you phrase that in a way that doesn't make me want to lie down?" I asked.

"No." Completely unapologetic.

"This place runs on ruined expectations." I was about to respond when the curtain moved again. This time Olivia didn't speak immediately. She looked out through the gap—brief, precise, like a dragonfly touching water. But in that moment she catalogued everything: entrance, walls, wheel ruts, the half-collapsed water trough, tie rings, window count, even the dust depth beneath the door. After a moment:"Don't disembark yet."

"Mm?"

"I want to see the rear." I looked at Jessi.

"Back entrance?"

"Old loading door. Goes around the side. Whether it still works is luck."

"Show us." She whistled and disappeared deeper into the side street. I signaled Matthews to hold the wagons in shadow and followed with Alvira and Jessi to check the back. When we rounded behind the building, I understood why Olivia had wanted this look. The front told you what the building wanted you to think. The back told the truth. The rear wall faced an even narrower alley, stacked with broken barrels and split crates. Dried drainage marks ran along the base, drag marks scarred the ground.

But the iron loading door, though rusted, had hinges that weren't seized. Beside it, a patch of sand showed recent compression.

"Usable," Matthews said, crouching to touch the ground.

"Not heavy traffic, but not abandoned."

"The roof?" I asked. Alvira looked up.

"Accessible. Partial ladder on the right wall—broken halfway but easily supplemented. Second and third floors work as shooting positions." I nodded and looked at Jessi.

"Whose territory?" She blinked.

"Currently? Roughly nobody's. Used to be run by a dwarf called Old Horu. Last time through, he was mostly pickled in alcohol. Either dead now or too soaked to care about property rights."

"When was last time?"

"Long enough that I've stopped counting." Light smile.

"Long enough." Functionally no answer. But not the moment to push it.