by Gregory Ashe
Chapter Twenty-nine
Joaquim cringed as the men bearing the mark of the Order passed him. He thought one of them might be Etio—he saw a tanned, round face, but Joaquim did not dare make eye contact. He slunk down in the garbage at the side of the street. He knew the men, most of them by name—Palantus, Tubo, Thala—all from wealthy families. Tubo and Thala both stood to inherit titles at some point, whenever an inconvenient father died or, as more often the case, was gently pushed out of the way. They did not glance twice at him.
Why should they? They ignored him the way they ignored the rest of the people in the Gut, the rest of the filth that filled its streets. Joaquim had a vague idea of how he must appear—he did not know how long it had been since the beach, but days, perhaps weeks. He had not bathed, he wore the same clothes—already torn and stained, as much from fighting the other homeless as from grunging through the waste heaps for scraps of food.
Even before the Order group had passed on, steel armbands glinting in the late summer sun, Joaquim forgot them. It was difficult to concentrate. Hunger made his thoughts wander, calling back half-remembered memories. As often as not, he found his daydreams interrupted by the feel of Viane’s last breath being choked back by his hand, or her last words, flecked with blood, rang in his ear. Those memories were painfully clear, as though etched in steel or stone, and woven into the fabric of his soul. No matter how deep he tried to sink, Joaquim could not escape those memories. They came back with a regularity that, if he had not been so hungry, Joaquim would have found suspicious—the fixation of a madman.
The street he followed looked familiar, but Joaquim could not place it, and his mind scurried on before long, afraid of being caught up in memory. A pair of little girls stared at him, then whispered to each other and ran off. Joaquim thought, briefly, of following them. I’m a killer now, aren’t I? he thought. What holds me back from killing again?
Worse than the memory of the violence was the recollected pleasure, obscene, that swept over him at times. Those were the moments that Joaquim contemplated suicide: a plunge into the harbor, or an assault on the guards, taking a piece of ragged pottery to his own veins. The only thing that kept him from those last, desperate measures was the underlying fear that someone, somehow, would interfere, and that he would survive, that he might be taken home and have to face his parents. In a moment of clarity, Joaquim realized with a dark smile that he could not live with another failure.
Still staggering along the street, Joaquim saw a familiar face coming toward him in the street. A Jaecan, curly hair and beard well-oiled, wearing fine Apsian clothes. Too fine for the Gut. Joaquim stopped and leaned up against a wall stone that, at some point, had been whitewashed, but now was stained a multi-hued brown from his waist down. The man did not notice him.
Memory sank its hooks into Joaquim and dragged his mind out of its hiding place. Sipir. The name sent a ravaging, unreasoning rage through Joaquim. He turned and limped after the well-coiffed man, wiping a strand of drool from his chin as he went. Joaquim struggled to think, to remember why he hated this man. A brief glimpse of fire on water, a towering anger.
With a start, Joaquim realized he was muttering to himself. “Only one. I said only one. Send only one. One. One. Only one.” He ground the words between his teeth and imagined they were some choice piece of Sipir’s flesh, something that would cause him excruciating pain. Although the realization surprised him, Joaquim was past feeling anything for too long. He clenched his teeth shut, aware that people were beginning to stare at him. It wouldn’t do to catch Sipir’s attention now.
Joaquim recognized the street, now. The building ahead was owned by Sipir. The memory jolted another—tumbling into the narrow bed with Viane, the feel of her big breasts under him as they landed, her wide mouth pressed up against his neck. His mouth twisted up, and with a start, Joaquim realized he was smiling. Those days, as short as they were, had been good. Then his mind flashed back to her face, shock written across her features, as the surf washed over her.
Each time the memory was like a wound. Joaquim pressed forward, the aches in his body forgotten as a strange blend of hatred—part his own, familiar, understandable, part foreign and mindless—mixed within him. Ahead was the man who had ruined everything, taken everything, from Joaquim.
Sipir unlocked the battered wooden door of the building and went inside. That was Joaquim’s opportunity. Before the Jaecan could lock the door behind him, Joaquim barreled through. He knocked Sipir back onto the stone stairs and landed on top of him. The door cracked against the wall and swung shut, plunging the stairwell into darkness.
“What—” Sipir shouted.
The darkness disoriented Joaquim, but not much—he had learned to act during his nights on the street, where a knife in a sleeping man was not only expected, but somewhat necessary. He drove his fist into the outline of the Jaecan’s jaw. Sipir’s head slammed back and hit the stone steps with a dull thump. The man gave a jerk underneath Joaquim.
“You ruined everything,” Joaquim screamed. His fists flew, slamming Sipir’s head one way, then another. “You took it all from me. Everything!”
Joaquim slumped back after a few more punches, exhausted. The door hung open, letting a band of light fall into the stairwell. Dark blood stained the steps. Sipir did not move. Joaquim felt numb, everywhere except for his fists, which ached. He looked at them and saw blood. He rolled Sipir over. The oiled curls were a bloody mess.
Joaquim let the corpse drop and curled up in the corner of the stairwell, outside of that thin ray of light. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, trying to keep from shaking. He did not feel bliss or ecstasy. He felt sick to his stomach, foul, dirty, and most of all tired. His own hatred for Sipir was spent, leaving Joaquim hating only himself. Yet, somehow, in the back of his mind, something screamed with hate for Sipir, screamed to kill him—a voice that did not know why it hated. A mad voice.