We Leave Together

by J. M. McDermott

  Jaime nodded with the rest of the boys. He popped his bat in his hands. He looked like he was listening a little too close, like he disagreed but he wasn’t saying anything. He had a mean squint in his eyes.

  The night sergeant grimaced. “You got it, Nic,” he said, “but one week’s all I’m willing to give on this. I already had my boys looking for kids to club out.”

  “You find any?” said Nicola.

  The night sergeant shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, “Ask the boys. Boys?”

  Mumbles and denials from the tired night crew. They hadn’t been looking and the night sergeant had said this to cover himself about something was going on in his district that he didn’t know about. Jona was dead certain of that, and so am I.

  Sergeant Calipari nodded at the king’s men. “That’s all, boys. Night crew’s dismissed and day crew better be out and about. You got your assignment. Get the new songs from your birdies on these little kings. Until then, no neglecting the usuals. Any cutters or foreign thieves about, roll ’em on up my way like any walkabout.”

  The corporals all gave their best military yessir, but these men were no phalanx. They had the slouch like a street gang. They had the mussed up uniforms like a street gang.

  Like dogs, not wolves, these men were more scavenger than hunter, sniffing through trash heaps for easy kills.

  Dogs are scavengers, not hunters. They root in filth for roots and larva and bits of rotting meat.

  These men, they would walkabout, but the king’s navy would have few young recruits.

  ***

  The hazy dread was too much to bear. Jona couldn’t help but feel followed. He hadn’t been told to kill anyone in a while, and he was glad, but he couldn’t help but feel like he was being followed. Nicola was buying, and Jona wasn’t drinking. The boys were gone drunk, tired and falling asleep at the table. Jona never slept. The demon stain in his blood kept him always awake, always thinking about being watched.

  Jona looked over his shoulder at shadows. No one was there.

  Live a life like this, in fear. Surrender to it. Become a slave to the shadows.

  Demons abide such misery in the bonds of Elishta, below the ground. Children of men do not live in fear, but must fight back. It was the human in him that snapped.

  The long night, when the bar gets quiet, and there is no dancing and the bells have stopped ringing and almost everyone is going home, the daylight crew had gathered what was left of their weekly pay to settle in for a long, hard, angry drink. Jona was more sober than the rest. He touched Calipari’s arm and leaned in close. When we started talking, Nicola felt himself sobering quickly.

  “Nicola, I don’t know about you,” said Jona, “but I’m sick of the pink weed running these streets that ought to be the king’s and used to be my father’s land. I’m sick of the hold they have. I’m sick of wondering who is what and where and knowing it’s there, in front of my face, and not a thing to do about it. We ought to stop it. We ought to drive back to the source and roll all the bastards without a trial.”

  “There’s battles we don’t got the manpower to win,” he said. “Leastways looking the other way now and then, we can take a little coin for ourselves and our families.”

  “We’re trying to mousetrap children who skim off the top of the real trouble, we ought to be chasing down the pinks where they are.”

  “You go after that, you’ll probably get a coffin in the water, and a bunch of your brothers-in-arms floating beside you.”

  “We got real trouble and we’re not doing anything.”

  “We’re containing it, Corporal. We’re keeping it separated from the street, so people that don’t go looking for it don’t find it. They know that we only look away when it’s kept off the street, out of sight, and away from the good people of this city.”

  “It’s a lie.”

  “It’s a way to let the people of the city live without knowing how bad it is, or feeling it in their skin and hands. Because if they knew…? If anyone really knew?”

  “You going to stop me?”

  “No,” he said. “Get yourself killed. I won’t stop you.”

  “I want someone to follow this guy. I know he’s running a show.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He bribed me, Nic. I’ve done jobs for him, too.”

  Nicola took a sip of piss gin. He darted his eyes around. The other boys were deep in the cups, not listening. Nicola was almost completely sober just from the fear.

  “You can’t trust Pup,” he said, softly. “I know that for sure, so keep him out of it, far away. Jaime’s rotten to the core. You can trust Geek as long as you can buy him off or trade a favor. I’d have assumed you were crooked as sin, what I heard about you. You’re awful rowdy in the dark. Lots of bad things happen when you’re around. When do you sleep?”

  “My hands aren’t clean. Are yours? I know your heart is right. Who’s got clean enough hands, here? Who has the heart for it? I’m done with that, now, and I mean it. There’s you and me. Maybe there’s Geek? That’s why you want him as sergeant, right?”

  “Geek would keep his boys alive, is all, fighting battles they can win,” said Nicola. “He plays a lot of cards. He’s got a lot of girls he sees for free. I don’t know if he’s in too deep otherwise, but he doesn’t seem as bad as other options. The last thing we need is someone coming in here trying to be everything good in this world. He’ll get killed and take a lot of good boys with him. Better Geek than someone doesn’t know the Pens.”

  Jona nodded.

  “Can you get my guy tailed?”

  “Maybe, yeah,” said Nicola.

  “There’s a carpenter. He’s got a front a few blocks from here. He’s high up. I followed him back a few times, and you know where he went in the night? Where you don’t go if you aren’t high up. The Island.”

  Nicola nodded. “You took his money, so he’ll see you a mile away, right? He could have been leading you anywhere.”

  “I don’t think he cared that I was following him, and I’ve spent my time on the Island and know what it means. I’ve crashed parties there. I was dirt under his fingernails, and he wanted me to know it. They all did.”

  “Never turn down the money, and pass along anything you find out. Let them think you’re still their boy, and let me know what you do. See if you don’t come to your senses in the morning, too, and stop telling me a thing.”

  “I’ll show his shop to you. Where does his stuff come from and where does it go? Tail him and let me know. I’ll go poke around where he ends up, and I’ll find something we can really use. If we do it fast enough…”

  Calipari nodded.

  “I’ve got another thing I got to go run down on this. I know the two are connected, but I can’t say how.”

  Nicola lifted his glass to Jona, and toasted him. Jona looked down at his. The glass was filthy. There was mud floating in it. It left grit in his teeth to drink it. He handed the glass to Nicola, and stepped out into the night.

  Boys with crowns running in the dark, and evil men walking the streets, and children of demons stalking prey. It was hard for Jona to see three women walking together, smiling and singing. There were working men walking home from the canal boats. There were working men that had nothing to do with anything but their own life drinking in the streetlamp glow and candlelight, calling out to the girls selling hot food in carts walking past.

  Jona wanted to run, but he couldn’t run. Not here. Dogsland was awake in the night, singing and laughing, and it wasn’t anything like all he was afraid of.

  The city did not share Jona’s fear.

  The messages came from time to time, from all the places these messages come. Jona’s hand reached into a pocket and discovered a scrap of paper signed with a stamped code. A man stepped from an alley with a feather in his hand. He handed the red feather to Jona, and the man said the message and ran away. A woman in a tavern leaned over Jona from behind and whispered her sultry words into his e
ars.

  A hot-apple girl stopped and saw Jona. She laughed because she thought it was some kind of love letter or something. She had been paid to hand this message to Jona, and she thought it was the funniest thing. She held out her hand. She was smiling, and had said his name, and he had said “What?”

  “I was paid to give you this,” she said. “Your girl is an ugly one, king’s man. I wouldn’t marry her if I were you.”

  “Thanks,” said Jona.

  It was a note, from the night itself. Leave Salvatore alone. Be a good boy until we call again.

  He crumpled it up and threw it away into the mud.

  ***

  Geek tapped Jona’s arm and pointed. The two king’s men quickly ducked back against a wall. One of the street rats that called himself Mudskipper was hard at work.

  This dropper pretended like he had found this box with someone’s address on it.

  The kid wouldn’t give up the box without a reward, and the victim would be thinking about a reward, too. Usually the boxes had dead rats or rocks in them. The addresses were only occasionally real.

  This mudskipper had a normal left arm, but a right arm twisted up and small, like fruit withered on the vine. He smiled with only a couple yellow teeth sticking out at weird angles from his mouth. He walked up to a carriage.

  “Hey,” he shouted, “You going anywhere near this box I found?” He held the box up with his one good hand. The address pointed up at the carriage driver. He averted his eyes.

  The mudskipper pulled the box back into his body. He walked down to the next dogcart. The driver bit his thumb at the boy.

  Normally no one cared about a little dropper. If you’re dumb enough to fall for the scam, you deserve the trash inside of it. This mudskipper was wearing a crown on his head of bent metal.

  Geek asked Jona if he was interested in the contents of the box. Jona nodded. Geek went around the corner with a quick step. Jona watched until he saw Geek on the other side of the boy, poking around from an alley in front of the body.

  Then Jona walked towards the boy fast. He wanted the boy to see the king’s man coming for him. The mudskipper jumped to run for it, but Geek snagged the boy by the hair below the crown and pulled.

  The box fell and the boy was screaming.

  Jona snatched the box.

  Inside was a dead rat, half-eaten and rancid.

  “That ain’t yours, king’s man!” shouted the mudskipper.

  “Right, you are, Mudskipper,” said Jona, “This here rat belongs to… My goodness, Corporal, did you know that the name on this box does not exist in this city?”

  “It do!” shouted the boy.

  Pup pushed the boy against a wall and tied the boy’s hand to one of his ankles behind his back. The deformed hand bounced in the air.

  “It do! I found the box.”

  Jona rolled his eyes. “You’re dropping. That’s your grind. Don’t act like you weren’t.”

  “I wasn’t dropping.”

  “Nobody cares that you were dropping. Where’d you get that sharp-looking crown, kid? Someone give that to you?”

  “I’m not your birdy, king’s man!” the boy spit.

  Jona smacked him across the face. Geek had a good grip on him, with both hands. Jona pulled the crown off and looked hard at it.

  “Lots of you runts running around with crowns,” said Geek. “You think you’re a street gang? You forming up some kind of operation?”

  The boy spit again, and got hit again.

  Geek hefted the boy up off the ground and over a shoulder. “I’ll run him in and question him,” said Geek. “He might not survive if you run the interrogation.”

  Jona grunted assent, holding the crown.

  Jona watched Geek with the boy on his shoulders. He stood in the street, alone. He stepped into an alley, and watched the street. He sat on a barrel. He pulled a flask from his jacket. He drank until it was empty. He turned the crown over and over in his hand.

  He hadn’t seen Rachel for three days. He had been looking for her.

  Corporal Jona Lord Joni was not the kind to swallow his own anger like a rotten fruit. His mind reached out for someone to dwell upon—someone to push.

  Jona curled his fist and punched his palm. He wanted to kill someone. A name emerged from his lips, and he knew he couldn’t kill the fellow, but he could hurt him. He could hurt him, bad.

  “Salvatore Fidelio,” said Jona.

  There was a darkness in him and Jona recognized it. He thought of it as the black demon in his chest. He felt it there, pumping acid in his veins in darkness. It was an evil feeling. It made him want to crawl into a black corner of the basement, where his father used to stand in chains in the night, and sit in the dark alone a long time.

  CHAPTER 3

  Like a flock of ravens flying low to the ground—layer upon layer of fluttering black cloth—the form of a man ran in the gaps of the black clothes. Jona stood between two buildings on the dark side of the street, where the moon was blocked by a long eave. Jona peeked around the corner at the man he had followed through the night.

  Jona shadowed the edge of crowds. He moved from alley to alley in the dark over sleeping men and wet rags and shit and broken crates.

  Then, out of the Pens, and down into a sewer and up again and into a shadow and Jona watched Salvatore Fidelio scurry over the yards. These street alleys were walled by fences that held small gardens back from cobblestones. In the alleys here, Jona had to hunch low to stay in a shadow and he was mostly alone among strays and trash.

  Salvatore didn’t try to hide anymore. He walked down the middle of the street like a resident, dressed in fine clothes for the location. Tonight he was going to a ball, uninvited, to steal the costume jewelry that crashers wore and then lost to the thieves. The thieves would sell them to the fence where the crashers would buy their own costume jewelry again. As long as none of the true guests were robbed, no one would stop him.

  And a young woman was awake right now, leaning out of her window. Her red hair was a purple ribbon in the streetlamp glow. Her skin mirrored moonlight.

  She and Salvatore kissed. She crept from her window in a chiffon dress. She had to hold the edges up to keep the weeds of the yard from dirtying her hem. In the street, she held his hand and skipped like a child. Salvatore tried to calm her down, and be less conspicuous.

  Jona waited. He knew where they were going, and felt no need to go to Lady Sabachthani’s garden gathering of thieves and noblemen and those who aspired to both ranks uninvited. Two more lovers in fine clothes ran away from a house in the dark, smiling like fools—like Aggie had smiled. Jona waited until he couldn’t hear the soles of their boots on the cobblestone. Then, Jona listened for any new noises in the night. He heard wind. He heard—he listened hard—snoring from the house at his back.

  He stepped into the street. He kept his head high and his pace calm, as if he was supposed to be walking here in the dark. He didn’t jump the fence. He walked behind the house, to the servants’ gate. Jona picked the lock and crossed the shadows in the little yard.

  Jona peered into the girl’s open window. On the white corner of a bed, a man’s naked leg stuck out across a patch of moonlight.

  Jona pulled out his knife.

  He watched that man’s leg for movement.

  Jona dug his knife along the top of the windowsill. He carved a single letter, slowly. With the cheap knife on this hard wood, he had to dig hard. He had to be careful not to make scratching noises. He needed to apply pressure, and indent the wood.

  This wood was not from the rotting Pens.

  Jona’s hand hurt halfway through the first line of the first letter of Aggie’s name. He listened while he shook his tired hand. He glanced at the man’s naked leg, unmoved on the bed. Jona touched the line he had carved. The thought of rolling the next letter on that hard wood with a sleeping man a few feet away, and thought about getting some mud or ship’s pitch, instead—or anything.

  Jona looked around
the yard for an idea. Jona saw a long, thin, low-hanging branch on a tree. Jona used his knife in his rested hand and wrestled the branch off. He took it back out the open servants’ gate. He stripped away his overshirt and then peeled off his ragged undershirt, exposing his scars and skin to the darkness. He put his overshirt back on. He wrapped the ragged undershirt around the edge of the stick to make a torch. He reached up to the top of the fence near the gate. He hooked the blunt butt of the stick into the streetlamp’s latch, and put the cloth end into the fire. It sparked like a match from the demon stain in the ruined cloth. Jona leaned into the bedroom with the burning stick like a torch in front of him. He looked around. A nude man was asleep on the bed, his mouth hanging open. He didn’t look up at the light beyond his eyelids.

  Jona placed the burning branch onto the edge of the bed, beside the sleeping man’s leg. He ran.

  He didn’t want to listen for the screams of the man, waking up to the fire on his bed, or the sound of the booming bells of the fire captains.

  When he reached his little corner of the night, and safety, a thought came to Jona: Perhaps the girl had drugged the man.

  He thought maybe he had killed someone. Maybe he had killed because he was angry at Salvatore. This only made his disgust with his fellow demon child grow like a rotten fruit swelling on the vine.

  ***

  I see him now in the shadow of a dream of memory lost and found and maybe it never was real but I can see it.

  Salvatore, the look in his face was this: He dreamed of cities across the world that had never known his face and king’s men weren’t hounding him day and night. These cities, their young women were lovely, lonely, and bored. He could escape there, with help from his friends. He knew that. He never quite knew exactly why they helped him.

  Salvatore watched Jona’s back and thought about leaving Dogsland forever, and all the industry and all the city’s petty intrigues could fall into the fog of the immortal bloodstain.