American Hippo

by Sarah Gailey

  As Abigail set off, a splash sounded from behind them. Hero, who was bent forward and cooing into Abigail’s ear, didn’t seem to notice. Adelia looked over her shoulder and saw that the reeds were moving again. A bone-white nose stuck up out of the water for a moment before disappearing again below the surface.

  “Did you say something?” Hero asked.

  “No,” Adelia replied. “I thought I saw—no, never mind,” she said, shaking her head. “It was nothing.”

  It had been nothing. A trick of the moonlight on the water. As they rode out of Port Rouge, Adelia began to shiver again. She told herself that it was just her fever, returning in earnest and making her see things. It’s only the fever, she told herself. Don’t tell Hero about your hallucinations. You’ll only reopen the wound. Her conscience twitched. Haven’t you hurt them enough?

  * * *

  “Adelia?”

  Adelia startled awake. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d woken naturally. Whether she was startling awake because the baby was crying or because someone was trying to catch her or because she was dreaming about blood and death—it didn’t matter. She was always stuttering into consciousness, her breath in her throat and her heart pounding.

  “What is—what?” she said, her voice rasping in her throat. Her mouth tasted like a dead thing. A canteen appeared before her, and she drained it before she could think to turn it away. You’re getting complacent, she scolded herself.

  “Thought you might want to wake up,” Hero said mildly over their shoulder. “We’re getting into an iffy part of the water.”

  Adelia blinked, took in her surroundings. It was bright out, startlingly bright, and the air over the surface of the water teemed with dragonflies. Abigail was pushing forward through a thicket of water hyacinth quickly enough that Adelia guessed the hippo had eaten her fill a ways back. But she could see what Hero was worried about: a few hundred feet ahead of them, the hyacinth started to thin, exposing the muddy waters of Thompson Creek.

  “I’m awake,” Adelia said, and she reached instinctively for a weapon, any weapon. Her throwing knives were still strapped to her left arm, and the long, curved knife she kept strapped to her thigh was still there—but the rest of her weapons, she realized belatedly, were still back at the Hop’s Tusk.

  Adelia suddenly felt very naked.

  “Don’t be too nervous,” Hero said. “I don’t think any ferals will have made it this far up the creek. And if they did, they’ve probably been gorging themselves on whatever was living in here. So they shouldn’t be too hungry, I don’t think.”

  “I’m not nervous,” Adelia snapped, scanning the surface of the water. It was still, save for the water bugs that skimmed back and forth, waiting to be eaten by enterprising fish.

  “Sure,” Hero said. “Anyway, I’d say we’re just a few more hours away from the place Parrish told us to meet him. We’re not making bad time at all. Wondered if you might want to talk about what it is that we’re going to do when we get there?”

  Adelia wanted so badly to growl that they’d kill Parrish on sight—but she knew that wouldn’t be the case, and she suspected that Hero would see right through her. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “I suppose we will have to wait and see.”

  “He won’t have Ysabel anywhere we can get to her,” Hero said. “You know that, right?”

  “I know,” Adelia murmured, hating that Hero was right. “We will have to figure it out when we arrive. I…” She faltered.

  “You don’t want to guess,” Hero filled in. “You don’t want to try to make a plan that will inevitably turn out to be wrong.”

  “Aren’t you the smart one? Why don’t you have a plan?” Adelia snapped.

  “I was too busy saving your life to come up with one in the last hour,” Hero replied tartly.

  Adelia didn’t say anything—Hero was right, and they knew that they were right, and they didn’t need her to tell them so. She bent slowly toward the water, pushing the thinning hyacinth aside to scoop up a hatful of relatively clear water. She poured it over herself, sluicing away fever-sweat. Abigail’s tail flicked behind her, and for a few minutes, the only sound was the splash of Adelia’s hat dipping into the water and tipping over her head.

  Hero coughed. “Do you mind?” they said, and at first Adelia didn’t know what they meant—but then she realized that they were close enough together on the saddle that Hero’s back was soaked.

  “Sorry, sorry.” Adelia laughed, combing her wet hair back from her face with her fingers before putting her hat back on. “I—I didn’t think—”

  “It’s fine,” Hero grumbled, and the set of their shoulders was so offended that Adelia burst out laughing again.

  “I really am very sorry, Hero,” she said. “I think the fever cooked my brain.”

  “It’s alright,” Hero said with a glance over their shoulder. “It’s kind of nice. My back was getting mighty hot what with your feverish self trying hard to be a furnace back there. How are you feeling?”

  “Like a trough of hop shit,” Adelia said.

  Hero chuckled to themself. “So, a bit better, then?”

  “A bit,” Adelia said, smiling. She tilted her head back and let the sun warm her damp face for a few minutes before returning her attention to the water. A ripple broke the surface and she tensed, reaching for a blade to throw—but it was just a fish, reducing the number of water bugs on the creek by one.

  “What about after?” Hero murmured, softly enough that Adelia wouldn’t have heard it if Abigail hadn’t stopped to investigate a toad in her path.

  “What about it?” Adelia replied.

  “What will you do, after we get Ysabel back?” Hero tugged on Abigail’s harness, and the hippo waded forward again, leaving the relieved toad behind. “Will you go back into the wilderness and hide?”

  Adelia shifted in the saddle. “No,” she said, “I don’t think so.”

  “Will you go back to work? What’s going to happen?” Hero sounded oddly agitated. Adelia felt a heat rise in her scalp, and took off her hat to fan herself with it.

  “No,” she said, forcing her voice to be cold and flat so that she wouldn’t yell. “I will not be going ‘back to work.’ That—that will never happen.” Hero didn’t say anything, and Adelia found herself wanting to continue in spite of—because of?—the sudden flush of anger. “I have not ‘worked’ in nearly a year now, Hero, did you know that? Did you know that it’s been that long since I’ve taken a life?” She spat into the water. “A year. That’s the longest I’ve gone since the first time. A year.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Hero murmured, their shoulders tense.

  “I didn’t even kill Travers,” Adelia said, her pulse pounding in her ears. “I didn’t even kill you, Dios ayúdame. I am—do you understand me? I am finished with it.” Her fists were clenched tightly in her lap, and she could feel her fingernails driving crescents into her palms. “I am done with that.”

  “Sure,” Hero said. “I hear you. You’ve retired.” They got quiet, spoke in the slow cadence of someone finally coming to understand. “You didn’t kill me.”

  “I’ve retired,” Adelia repeated, flexing her fingers. “I am retired.”

  “Give you some advice?” Hero asked, then continued without waiting for Adelia’s reply. “Find yourself something to do. Find a hobby. Otherwise … you get restless. Lonesome.”

  “Lonesome?” Adelia asked, holding back a sharp, bitter laugh. “I have been alone all my life, Hero. I don’t think loneliness would be a problem for me.”

  “Alone and lonely ain’t the same thing at all,” Hero said, shaking their head. Adelia couldn’t see their face, but it sounded as though the words hurt them. “You of all people should know that. And even if they were the same—you would think that being alone and retired would be no different from feeling alone in your job. But you’d be wrong.”

  “You wouldn’t know a goddamn thing about it, Hero,” Adelia snapped. “You may
not be as infamous as Archie, but you have your own reputation, sí? You always worked in a team. It’s why your hands have stayed so soft.” She regretted it the instant she said it, but they both knew it was true—Hero was a behind-the-scenes type, a tinkerer, a poisoner. They had fingers made for capping vials and twisting wires together. They didn’t have the knife scars ubiquitous to most hoppers, with one notable exception.

  “Exactly,” Hero murmured. “I’ve been hearing that my whole life. It’s lonesome being a killer, Adelia. But it’s lonesome staying behind while the killers pour your poison into someone’s drink, too. It’s lonesome to be back at the ranch while someone else sets up the bombs you rigged. Don’t tell me I don’t know lonesome.” Their voice was soft, but not sad. Not even angry. Just … resigned.

  Adelia chewed on it—the idea of Hero being lonely. The idea of their bright mind—always working—growing bored in their retirement. She chewed on it, and perhaps it was her fever making her bold, but she finally asked the question that she had known all along she was not supposed to ask.

  “Why did you retire?” she said. “Why not just … roughen your hands a bit?”

  “Same reason as you,” Hero said. “I got tired of killing people.” Adelia started to protest, but Hero held up a hand. “Don’t try to deny it. I heard you a minute ago—you’re finished with it. You’re done. I know how that is too.”

  “Oh?”

  Hero spat into the water, then reached down to run a hand across Abigail’s flank. “You kill the first one, and it’s not as bad as you thought it would be. You kill the second one, and it’s not better, not exactly. But it’s more not-so-bad. You kill the third one and you realize that you’re good at it.” They scooped up a handful of water and splashed it across the hippo’s shoulders, darkening her grey hide. “You start to get a reputation, and you realize that people think you’re great at it. You start to take real pride in your work. You start to make real damn money.” Another handful of water, this one across Abigail’s neck. The hippo grunted appreciatively, flapping her ears. “You dream about contracts and you start tasting your own poisons to get a feel for how they land in the gut, and you love it. And then you’re doing it because you love it, and you think you’ve really found your calling. You’re so fucking good at this.” They poured another handful of water between Abigail’s ears, rubbing it across her skin with a long-fingered hand. “So you keep on mixing poisons and blasting vault doors open until you could do it in your sleep. And then one day, some kid shows up at your door and says that they’ve heard you’re the best in the business, and you think—am I?”

  Adelia didn’t say anything, even as Hero’s pause thickened.

  “You realize,” Hero finally said softly, “that you’re only doing the job because you’re good at it. That you only love it because you’re good at it. You realize that somewhere along the way, you forgot that you’re killing people. You don’t feel a goddamn ounce of the remorse that your mother’s preacher said you’d feel if you ever took another life—you just feel bored.” Their voice dropped to a whisper. “You feel bored by the murders. And you wonder who you are, that you can say that about yourself—that you’re bored by the murders.”

  Adelia swallowed hard, brushing away a mosquito that had come to investigate the tears that had traced trails to the hollow of her throat. She watched the sandy banks of Thompson Creek drift by—she spotted only a single feral sunning itself on the shore, so still that not even Abigail noticed it there. She lifted a fistful of muddy water to her face to wash away the salt and sweat that had accumulated. By the time her face was dry, Abigail was climbing up out of the creek and starting down the man-made stream that led to Whelan Parrish’s barge.

  Chapter 8

  Houndstooth’s hands were steady for the first time in nearly three months. He finally understood how the ferals must have felt when they slid up the Mississippi and found themselves free of the Harriet.

  He felt good.

  He twirled his favorite ivory-handled knife between his fingers like a baton, sober as mountain air, and strode in a slow circle around the ladder-backed chair. The chair was resting on its side on the sawdust-strewn floor. It was a well-made chair, Houndstooth mused. It had stood up to the impact of his boot when he’d kicked it over.

  He couldn’t say as much for the innkeeper tied to the chair, of course. No—that man’s nose had taken the brunt of the impact when his face had hit the floor, and he was bleeding all over the place. The sawdust could only manage so much.

  It would need to manage quite a lot more if the innkeeper didn’t start answering questions soon.

  “I can do this all night, Percival,” Houndstooth said, letting his already-low voice drop to an even deeper baritone than usual. “You, on the other hand? I don’t know if you’ll be able to keep up with me.” He crouched in front of the innkeeper, grabbing a fistful of the man’s thinning, oiled hair. He pulled hard enough to lift Percival’s head from the floor. Blood had pasted a good deal of sawdust to the man’s cheek. “You’re a mess,” Houndstooth said, shaking his head slowly. He lifted his knife and used the edge to scrape Percival’s cheek clean. “Oh, dear,” he said. “My mistake. I seem to have taken some whiskers off of you.” He wiped his knife on the innkeeper’s shirtfront, then lifted it again. “I’ll just even you up, shall I?” He scraped the blade against the man’s other cheek, letting him feel just how sharp it was.

  “I don’t know where they went,” Percival whimpered. Houndstooth dropped his head, and it bounced off the wooden floor with a crack.

  “The problem here,” Houndstooth said, twirling his knife again, “is that I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you because you do this … this thing.” He tapped the tip of the blade against Percival’s front teeth. “You bite your lip, see? Right before you tell me that lie.”

  “It’s not a—what are you doing?” Percival’s voice rose to a high quaver as Houndstooth grabbed the top of the ladder-backed chair with one hand, hauling it upright.

  “Well, it’s tricky, trying to look at you when you’re all sideways down there, eh? That’s no way to have a conversation,” Houndstooth said. He brushed sawdust from his palms, then stooped to pick up his knife. He tossed it a few times, watching it flash as it spun through the air, savoring the clarity of purpose that had entered his mind at last.

  “I don’t enjoy being lied to,” he said, pulling a second chair in front of Percival’s. He rested one elbow on his knee and started paring his fingernails with the blade of the ivory-handled knife.

  “Where’s the marshal? And the other gentleman, your—um, your friend, from before?” The innkeeper kept glancing toward the stairs as though anyone could come walking down them who might save him.

  “They’re conferring.” As he said it, a thump sounded from just above their heads, near the room that Hero and Adelia had been occupying until just a half hour before. “They have some catching up to do. It’s none of my business, and it’s certainly none of yours.” He tapped the innkeeper’s forehead. “Eyes on me, eh, Percival? Let’s not try to eavesdrop, now. S’downright rude.”

  Percival reluctantly looked from the ceiling to the stairs, then to Houndstooth. The side of his face that had struck the floor was swelling; blood trickled from a cut over his eye, from his nose, from the corner of his mouth. Disgraceful, Houndstooth thought a bit giddily.

  “What do you want?” Percival whispered. “I—I’ll give you—there’s not much in the till, but it’s yours. Please.” His teeth found his lower lip again. “I don’t know where they are.”

  Houndstooth’s hand shot out. Before the innkeeper could so much as flinch, Houndstooth had the man’s lip gripped between his thumb and index finger. He held tightly to it even as Percival thrashed like a fresh-caught catfish. It only took a few seconds for Percival’s higher functions to cut off his instincts—when he was finally still, Houndstooth leaned in close enough that he could have kissed the little weasel on the nose. He smiled, not re
linquishing his grip on the innkeeper’s lower lip, and whispered to him as softly as a lover.

  “You’re a fucking liar, little man. You’re trying to play a game to which you’ve never learned the rules. You’re making mistakes.” He tapped Percival on the teeth with the tip of his knife again. “You keep biting your fucking lip and then lying to me. So here’s what’s going to happen. Look at me, Percival,” he said, and the innkeeper tore his eyes away from the stairs behind Houndstooth. His saliva was starting to drip down Houndstooth’s wrist, but Houndstooth hardly noticed. He watched the other man’s eyes like a bobcat watching a hare. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to cut off your lip—ah, ah, no no, hold still, now—” Percival had tried to yell, a wet, half-strangled noise. Houndstooth waited for the man to quiet down again; until his breaths started to come in short, shallow pants. “I’m going,” Houndstooth began again, “to cut off your lip. That way, you’ll have nothing to bite, and you’ll have to tell the truth. How does that sound? Good?”

  He lifted his knife and held it to the corner of Percival’s lower lip. A sense of serenity—as deep and thorough as sleeping under the stars with Hero’s hand resting on his chest—washed over him as he applied the faintest bit of pressure to the blade. After a few seconds, blood was running freely down his wrist, staining his shirtsleeve.

  The tenor of the innkeeper’s screaming changed abruptly, and he seemed to be attempting words. Houndstooth paused.

  “What was that?” he asked, not looking up from the man’s lip, which was still three-quarters attached. “If you keep interrupting, this will take forever, you know.” Percival’s response was unintelligible, since he couldn’t move his lip or jaw. “That sounded a bit like ‘I’ll tell you everything,’” Houndstooth said. “Was that what you were saying, Percival, old friend?”

  Percival nodded, then screamed as the motion of his head drove Houndstooth’s knife farther into his lip.