Jona said nothing else. He didn’t walkabout right then. He watched Kelper’s dirty white undershirt slipping in and out of the crowd. After the white shirt was gone a long time, Jona leaned against a wall and thought about finding a powerful drink, strong enough to blind him and turn his stomach and make him hungover before he even wakes up. A good hangover is like being swallowed up in darkness, and there’s no room for thinking inside of it.
***
Djoss woke up in the room, next to Rachel. She had been sitting next to the bed, waiting for Djoss to wake up. Rachel touched his arm. “Rent’s due tomorrow,” she said, “but you don’t have any money, do you?”
Djoss shook his head.
“I don’t want to leave Dogsland over you,” said Rachel, “I like it here. I have a friend, here. I’ve never had one before now.”
Djoss nodded. “We should’ve left after Sparrow’s kids cut down to your scales. I like it here, too.”
“Stay here a few days,” said Rachel, “Don’t go out. I’ll bring you food. I’ll make rent.”
“How much money do you have?”
“I’m not telling you that, Djoss.” Rachel ran a hand through Djoss’ hair. She touched his face. She touched his lips. “You need a bath. You want it hot?”
“No,” said Djoss, “I’ll take one later. Did you already get the water?”
“I did,” she said. She pointed at the bathtub on the other side of the room. She shrugged.
Rachel saw a snowfall hidden in the room. Unsaid words coagulated into ice and descended to the ground like cold, white ash.
Rachel closed her eyes. “I don’t know what to do with you,” she said, sadly. “I don’t know what to do, Djoss.”
Djoss rolled towards the wall. He shoved his face into his pillow.
“Tell me what to do,” she said.
Djoss moved his head out of the pillow. He stared at the wall. He spoke to the wall. “You could go see Dog. He’s still got some things going, and if you tell him I sent you, he might have something. He might know someone.”
“Where’s Turco?”
“Turco’s dead, Rachel,” said Djoss, “He’s been dead weeks now. A king’s man rolled him into the river. They’re asking around for Turco now, and he’s already… Well. Dog’s living in an empty brewery with a bunch of the mudskippers we hired, but there’s nothing anymore without Turco knowing who. I think some of the older kids might be running the stuff on their own. I kept out after Turco got rolled. The kids aren’t smart about it, you know?”
“No one was smart about it,” she said. These words spilled like snow from her lips, and spilled all around the room. Ice everywhere, so cold. “I’m running out of clothes again. I’m going to need you to get me something I can wear, Djoss. Can you do that?”
Djoss said nothing back.
Rachel reached her mind into the air between them, full of fire and ice and cool winds and throbbing with the energies of the Unity and this ashen snow of unspeaking. The room was just a normal room, like every too-small, stinking room jammed into the corners of the too-big buildings in the huge city, but in here it was snowing.
“You do that without money. Bring me clothes. Make that happen for me. I can’t give you any coin for it right now. We need it all to make rent. Got it? You always got clothes for me, Djoss.”
He nodded. He didn’t look like he meant it.
Disgusted, Rachel left her brother without another word. She walked outside. She felt into the Unity for all the energy hidden in the air, where people live and love and the threads of life swell into one pattern.
In every room—every single room—her breaking heart was not alone.
A thousand upon a thousand snowfalls, and all the city weeps in the dark, alone.
***
In the Docks south of the Pens, crates ascended up and out from the ship’s hold by a crane that placed the crates in leaking heaps on the docks. A dozen stevedores hauled on the crane ropes to muscle the crates off the ship. Once upon the ground, the stevedores unhooked the crane, and cracked open the crates on the spot. They pulled sacks of ore out of the crate, and threw them one by one onto a flat river ship in a messy heap. A merchant sweatier than the stevedores counted the sacks.
The sacks seeped ore across the mud. The yellow-white ore splashed all over the naked chests and backs of the porters. It filled their hair and clumped in the sweat down their leggings. Tonight, the men’d find the ore’s flecks behind them in the chamber pot. They’d dream of ore. They’d taste ore in their lovers’ skins, if they had one to taste. Most did not.
Rachel sat down on a porch stoop across from the stevedores. She waited until she saw one wearing a wedding band around his neck on a chain, where it wouldn’t catch on the hook in his hand, or any of the ropes and pulleys. He had a neck the size of a small tree. His hair was burned-off along one side, and he laughed with a sound like coughing smoke.
She caught the man’s eye. She walked towards him, slowly.
He sneered. “Get back, Senta.”
“I have a warning for you, friend,” said Rachel.
“I ain’t your friend.”
“Your wife knows,” said Rachel. She placed her hands on her hips and shook her head. She tsk-ed at him.
The man looked sideways at Rachel. “My wife?” he said, “What’s she know, then?”
Rachel looked around at the stalled stevedores, waiting for their fellow to get back to work. She winked at the married foreign man. “I’d tell you if we were friends.” Rachel turned to walk away.
One of the other stevedores smacked the dock worker on the back. “Hey! Pay the Senta lest she curse you for it! She done you a favor!” They shouted at him, and they urged him on.
The stevedore with the burned head and the wedding band threw off the hands of his fellow superstitious stevedores. He jogged after Rachel.
The merchant shouted about how he wasn’t paying for foolish trips to the Senta.
The stevedore shoved a hand into his pocket for a few coins, and jammed them into Rachel’s palm.
“Thanks, I guess,” said the stevedore, “Don’t curse me, Senta. I paid you fair.”
Rachel nodded. She walked away.
She needed more money than this, and soon. She asked a shopgirl about an old brewery. She pointed to the edge of the pens, on a three-edged corner between the Warehouse District, the Pens, and the maw of a canal.
When she finally found the decrepit building, she saw Dog pounding away at some lump of malformed metal near the water’s edge. A street boy, with only one good arm and the other twisted and limp like a chicken wing jutting out of his shoulder, dangled his feet in the canal.
Dog lifted the lump of metal in the air. He threw it to the boy.
Rachel saw the shape of the metal: a crown.
The boy couldn’t hang onto the hot metal in just his one hand. He dropped the thing into the canal. Then, he cursed at Dog for throwing the crown into the water.
Dog ignored the boy. He shoved a pipe into his mouth and sat down with his back against the brewery.
Rachel frowned at what she had seen. She turned back into the Pens District and walked away.
She only knew one person near the Pens that cared enough about her to give her money.
The sun was still high. Rachel knew Jona’s mother wouldn’t be at home. She didn’t know if he was off today or not. He wasn’t. The house was empty and dark. Her boots echoed on the old wood and tiles.
(Jona never knew how Rachel managed to get into his house when she did. He never thought to ask. It was a large house where the absence of anything worth stealing protected it from thieves more than a lock, and more than a king’s man living there.)
She walked up to his room through dark halls. She peeled her boots off. She stretched her lizard-like toes. She fell face first into the bed. She wrapped her arms around his pillows, pulling them into her face until she had trouble breathing.
She felt like crying, but she knew she’d destroy
his bed with her tears. She held them inside. She told herself to be strong.
The more she said it to herself, the more it sounded like a lie.
When he showed up, she knew that she couldn’t touch him because if she touched him she’d burst, and her body’s water burned things. If she kept the water inside her, the water only burned her heart. He grabbed her, and smelled the ore all over her. He didn’t care. They stripped each other of clothes with a need neither cared to discuss.
***
Jona stared down at her nude body in his bed. She was curled into him. Her foot moved up and down Jona’s leg and he didn’t say anything to her but the scales scraped his skin and hurt a bit and might have drawn a line of blood and the blood might burn the sheets. He figured she’d fall asleep soon, and he wouldn’t have to worry about any little cuts burning out.
“Thanks for that, Jona. I needed it.”
“I wish you were here all the time and we could do this when I came home all the time,” he said, “I wish you didn’t leave.”
“Please, Jona.”
“Please, what?”
Her leg stops moving. She’s staring at her own hands running across Jona’s chest.
“I need money, Jona.”
“So do I. You find some, you let me know.”
“Djoss lost the rent.”
“Pinkers do that. Gets worse. He’ll fence anything he can carry. Then, he’ll go too far one day, and he’ll be cheese-for-brains. You’ll have to dump him at a temple or something.”
“Don’t say that. He’s my brother, Jona. He’s more than that. That’s awful. He’ll quit. I’d never dump him at a temple. I’d never do that.”
“Better for you if you did. He won’t quit, Rachel. They never quit for long when they’re sucking on the hookahs.”
“He’s not like those people.”
“I hope not, for your sake. Lots of strong men go cheese-for-brains and don’t get better.”
“Did you ever try it?”
“Yeah, but I was just an eater now and then when I was a dumb kid no different than red roots or hardmint leaves, and only now and then since I couldn’t really afford it too often. Eating’s different from smoking the hookahs. It passes through you like a strong drink, and I guess I’m demon child so demon weed doesn’t do much to me. Eating doesn’t hang in your head in a cloud, though, or eat away all your skin. Anyway, that was before I knew what it really was. I went out to the woods for guard training, and I cleared my head. I never touched it again. It wasn’t really a big thing to me, before, anyhow, and mostly I cleared my head. Anyhow, when I was scrivening, I kept reading about all the stuff about the demon weed—the real stuff, what it does to everyone, and all the crimes hurting people. Anyway, if you need money, I don’t have any. Maybe you turn birdy on a big something and you can get some money. If you got any dirt about a street gang name of Three Kings, maybe Sergeant Calipari’ll pay for that. Can’t you just go read fortunes somewhere?”
“I can. I don’t like to.”
“Why not?”
“Because people want you to tell them something happy. People cling to it. And nothing’s happy. Nothing is ever happy. Everyone is going to lose someone they love, and then they’re going to die and face their goddess alone.”
“About your brother. You told me once that you can see the patterns in people’s lives, right?”
“Don’t start playing Senta. You’re wrong about him.”
“You’d say it to me.”
“No I wouldn’t, Jona. Not even if you paid me for a fortune and I hated you. I love Djoss. He’ll get right.”
“I guess you know him better then I do. But, if you need money, I don’t got enough to split it three ways when I’m already here with Ma. The only things Calipari wants right now are some real scary stuff that I wouldn’t even touch myself with ten hard boys behind me and a street gang full of kids running around with crowns. They’re into the pinks a bit. Sergeant wants to find the top men. You find out who they are, and where they are, and he might pay you for it.”
“Do you have any money right now?”
“I do.”
“Can I have that, too, and I’ll pay you back later, when I find out about the kids?”
“Yes.” Jona reached into the pants at the foot of the bed and pulled his purse from his belt. He had a little extra money under his pillow and he pulled that out, too. While he did this, he thought about how loud skin sounded moving across blankets, and how much he hated how long it took him to dig up all the money. He thought about this pit in his throat from doing this and he didn’t know why. He held the money out to her and he listened to the sound of her naked body moving against the sheets and against his skin and everything in the world was wrong when she held out her hands.
She had this look on her face like she was about to cry.
“Do you love me, Rachel Nolander?”
“What?”
“Do you love me?”
“I wish we had a different life, Jona. I wish we were two peasants in the woods, tending sheep and sleeping beneath the stars, and all human, and all in love.”
“Do you love me, Rachel?”
“I don’t want to say it when your money’s in my hand!” She said it again, in a whisper, “I don’t want to say it. Do you?”
“I do,” he said, “You’re the woman I love.”
“Even monsters can love, then. I hope it’s not the demon in me that you love. I don’t know who I am, right now. This street gang you were talking about. You’re looking for a guy named Turco?”
“We are. He’s a Dunnlander and he’s dressed like it. I heard he was doing something pink with the ragmen, but we don’t know exactly what. What do you know?”
“Turco’s dead. He started the Three Kings. It was just a bunch of ragpickers with whistles. Turco’s been dead a while. He was friends with my brother, and he’s the one who got Djoss on that awful stuff. My brother’s been out of the work since Turco died. This other fellow named Dog is probably running things now, in his way. Dog’s hiding out in the empty brewery at the edge of the Pens. You know the one, right?”
“I know it.”
“Dog has no tongue, and no ears. Anyway, that’s probably it, yeah?”
“Yeah. I’ll tell Sergeant Calipari. Why didn’t you tell me right away about it when I asked you?”
“I want you to help me because you love me. I don’t want to tell you about Turco and Dog, Jona. I hate what you do.”
“What? Why?”
“I’ve been hiding from city guards my whole life. No matter what there’s going to be street gangs and people getting killed, and the king doesn’t care and the nobles don’t care and the good citizens don’t care, so why don’t they just leave the rest of us alone? We can take care of ourselves. It’s the only thing we know how to do, because it’s all we do our whole lives.”
Jona pulled away from her. He pulled his feet around and planted them on the floor like he thought about standing up and getting dressed and talking to her with his uniform on.
“If we don’t stop these kids now,” said Jona, naked, and on the edge of the bed, “not a one will take care of themselves because the real power in the Pens is going to wake up and roll them hard and all at once. If we don’t get those kids off the trouble they’re in, the big smugglers are going to take them out. I think Calipari’s been working his contacts and begging for time.”
“How come you go after the kids instead of the smugglers?”
“We go after them, too. I’m working on that one hard, but I can’t move, yet. They’re better so they’re harder to catch.”
“They’re probably just richer and stronger.”
“That, too, and they buy their share of king’s men. Bought me for a while, too, but I’m past that now. We ain’t all good, but we ain’t all bad either. And you can hate me for what I do, but I’ve been better since we met. I mean, I’m not as bad as I was before, and I can’t really explain that, but I prom
ise I’m better than I was. And it’s because I love you.”
“You know that thing about the patterns, and how there’s no escaping them?”
“What patterns you mean this time?”
“I mean nothing. I think I’m in love with you, too. And I’m too angry to tell you the right way about how I love you. So, we’re going to have to do this later. And, I have to get my brother out of the city before he… You know. I can’t stay here. I’ve been telling you that. Djoss and I could never stay forever. We have to move on.”
“Can I see you again tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. We have to go. Aren’t you listening to me? We… have… to… leave.”
“I love you, Rachel Nolander.”
“Not tomorrow. Not ever again. I’m sorry.”
“Please.”
She got dressed. He watched her getting dressed. He held still. He held his breath. He felt a pain in his chest like his heart was winding up in a coil, like a spring breaking. He watched her, and she pretended she wasn’t being watched. She bent over and kissed his cheek.
“Please, don’t go,” he whispered.
She shook her head, and she left Jona there, with his money in her hand.
***
Rachel paid the butcher the rent in his shop between two customers. The butcher didn’t deal in fine meats. He sold sawdust sausage, and lots of it. He sold cuts of meat that nobles wouldn’t feed their dogs. He made most of his money renting the rooms over his head, and ran the shop so he could feel like a butcher instead of a slumlord.
The butcher asked Rachel if she needed any meat. She shook her head. “You got all my money in your hand,” she said.
The butcher nodded. He wrapped two handfuls of scraps in cheap paper and gave them to her. She thanked him, and asked him how much it cost.
He told her they were dog scraps, and he didn’t want anything for them, but they’d do her fine in a little rice.
She probably considered putting the scraps back on the counter—everyone has their pride—but instead, she nodded at him. She got this sad look in her eyes like she had become a beggar again out of nowhere. Then, she thanked the man, and went back to her room.
We Leave Together Page 5