“Your wings,” Rowan exclaimed. “They’ve disappeared! But I thought angels couldn’t work the ley.”
“I cannot,” he admitted, “not like witches do. But I can use it to make a glamour. My brother Michael calls it laying scales upon their eyes. It is one of the powers granted to archangels. I can conceal my true form when necessary. Shall we proceed?”
She scanned the street and seemed satisfied. The scribblers were all camped out by the main entrance. “I assume you know the way?”
He nodded and they fell into step together. He’d been alone with her once in the library, but that was different. He’d been working, with a large desk between them.
Gavriel cleared his throat. “Have you been to Satu Jos before?”
Rowan shook her head. “It’s my first time.”
“How do you find it?”
“Fine.”
“The kopi is good,” he remarked, a bit desperately.
“Hmmm.”
She was a veritable font of conversation. “Did you know,” he said, “that there are no buildings older than a hundred and thirty years? That was the time of the Great Fire, when the Sinn came from the Zamir Hills and burned Kota Gelangi to the ground. The old city had wooden structures that turned to ash in an instant, so afterwards they rebuilt with brick . . .” Gavriel trailed off.
Rowan was ignoring him, her gaze flicking between the rooftops and the shadowed rookeries between buildings.
“You don’t like to speak of the Sinn,” he observed.
“What? I don’t care. Talk about whatever you like.”
Gavriel realized that while no one gave him a second glance, Rowan drew wary looks and a few warding gestures. He wondered how it might feel to inspire fear simply by existing.
“Never mind,” he said. “Er, what happened to your hand?”
“A witch broke it,” she replied absently.
Rowan didn’t elaborate and he gave up. They left the downtown behind and walked along the Corniche, a riverfront promenade with cheap hostels crowding the side streets.
“Is it true that you turned down the aid of the White Foxes?” Rowan asked.
He glanced at her. “Who told you that?”
“Felicity Birch.”
“Yes, it’s true. I much prefer cyphers.”
“Why?”
The frankness of her gaze made him decide to answer honestly. “I don’t care for their tactics. Nor their history.”
When the Sinn had first appeared in Sion, no one knew where they came from. Eventually, it was discovered that the monsters were the result of mingling witch-angel bloodlines for two generations. The Morag at the time, a grim woman named Amfreide Karadas, created an order to find infant cyphers and kill them before they could breed. These hunters become known as the White Foxes because their coats blended with the snow in the northern provinces where the order was founded.
It was a long time ago, but Cathrynne Rowan seemed well aware of all this. Her mobile face went very still. Gavriel silently chided himself for mentioning it.
“Minerva finally made them stop,” Rowan said quietly. “If it weren’t for her, I’d be dead. I haven’t forgotten that.”
“Nor should you,” Gavriel agreed. “It was an abominable practice. Had I been alive at the time, I would have put a stop to it myself.”
Rowan smiled at him. It lit up her entire face. Gods, but she was lovely. He felt a strange wistfulness and crushed it ruthlessly.
They walked in easy silence for a while, the river a glittering serpent on the right. At the sixth pedestrian bridge, Gavriel guided her across to the residential neighborhood of Nove Octaver. It was named after the date of another infamous Sinn attack, but he decided not to tell her that.
