CHAPTER III

There was a tree. It was a big tree, which was rare for the city, and a willow, its thick leaves hanging in the heat like ribbons dangling from bound hair. Beneath those long branches, people took their rest in the shade. Near the tree, an old woman had set up a tea cart, slowly circling the trunk with the sun to stay in the tree’s shadow.

That’s what Jona remembered first about Rachel Nolander. There was this tree, and they were in the shadow of it. They had been trying to talk, and neither one of them knew what to say. Jona wanted to ask her about things that were true, but he couldn’t ask her these things because they were too many people around, and he didn’t know what else to ask her about. Rachel broke the silence.

“So… What is your life like? I mean, who are you?” she looked away, and said it again, softer. “What is your life like?”

He squinted. He knew he didn’t look like a nobleman when he squinted like that, with his king’s man uniform and skin as hard as tree bark from the days in the sun. She probably didn’t believe him right away when he said he was a lord. She probably wouldn’t believe anything he said. “I don’t know,” he said. “What’s your life like? How are we supposed to answer that?”

“I have a way,” she said. “I can tell you a koan, and it will carry with it my whole life.”

“Senta stuff? I don’t know anything about Sentas.”

“There aren’t a lot of us this far south. Street magic, mostly. No one takes it seriously except for us. I take it seriously.”

“Tell me, whatever it is you can tell me.”

“All right,” she said. “This is everything you need to know about being Senta. There was this Senta renowned for wisdom. This Senta was so wise that she never uttered a word. A young student of our unities learned of this woman from his parents, who spoke of this particular Senta with great respect. The young Senta journeyed over mountains and oceans to find her. When he found her, she did not greet him. He asked her why she never spoke. She opened a cage where she kept a bird. The bird remained in the cage. It had a mirror inside of the cage, and a dish for seed, and another dish for water. The Senta that did not speak waited. Nothing happened. Then, she closed the cage door.”

Jona waited. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Huh.”

“That is also my life before, I think. That’s… I think that’s all I can say about it right now. Do you understand it?”

“It means you’ve never spoken about it?”

“More than that. It’s a deep truth of the way the universe really is for everyone.”

“Is it one of your spells?”

“Yes. Watch.” A small ball of ice grew in her palm. She dropped it into his tea with a splash. “If you understand it, you will know the spell, too.”

Jona swirled his tea. “I guess that’s my life too, before we met.” He held out his hand, trying to make the ice.

Rachel laughed. “I guess you don’t really understand the lesson. You must also comprehend the koan in a place beyond words. My mother raised me since I was very young to be a Senta like her. It took years and years of focus and meditation. Then, one day, the cold filled my throat, and I breathed the ice. Now I can feel the ice everywhere around me anytime I think about it.”

Jona frowned at that. “I don’t like all that thinking. Nothing makes sense if you think about it too long,” he said. “If there’s one thing you can say about the Imam and Erin people, it’s that they don’t want you to think too much.”

“This is exactly why I do not think they are correct, Jona. Do not speak of the false breaking with me. The cosmos is still in unity.”

“What about the Nameless?” said Jona, “They don’t make sense. Do you believe in them?”

“We were born weren’t we? Think about this,” she said. “I don’t care what anyone says about that. There is a place for us in the world. Dogs do not hate us the way people do. Do you think dogs are capable of comprehending the cosmic Unity?”

“Dogs?” said Jona. “I can’t say I thought about it that way…”

“Dogs don’t bark at us like intruders. We’re just another person to them,” said Rachel. “Now, tell me who you were before you were with me. Here is another spell, of powerful fire: Tell me your face before you were born. Tell me anything, Jona. Just… Let’s not sit here staring at each other. It’s bad enough people would stare at us. We don’t need to do it to each other.”

The silence filled his ears, full of things he could never say to her. He was human enough to know that he couldn’t tell her the truth in the shadow of a willow tree, with tea and all these nice people sitting with them in the afternoon shade.

“Anything at all,” she said.

He opened his mouth.

I don’t know what he said. I don’t think he knows what he said either, except that it probably wasn’t completely honest.

***

Jona and some of his fellow king’s men were down in a dive out on the other side of the Pens. The place stank of dead animals. The living animals smelled worse. People wandered in from a back room in a pink haze, muttering anything they could think about that wasn’t about being right there, in the Pens, where the animal stink pressed through the cracks in the walls. This was the tavern where the blood-soaked butchers drank after a ship came in for slaughter, still covered in animal blood. To toss a few back, to pretend like they were just anybody. The only music was a round or two of song that the killers kept singing because it was the song of their life. They sang this song all day while they were shoving cattle and goats and sheep and parts of them up and down the abattoir. That’s where Jona and the boys were drinking.

Jona, Jaime, Tripoli, and Geek were at a table at the edge of the bar, near the kitchen. Tripoli had a thing for the barmaid, and was waiting to pinch her as she passed. Geek threw raw eggs back like shots of whiskey and washed them down with a beer as black as tar and bitter as rotten fruit. Tripoli and Jaime were betting on how many eggs Geek could swallow before he puked it all up.

Jona placed his bet. The other king’s men laughed at Jona’s bet, such a low number. Geek could eat dozens more than that, they shouted. Jona let them laugh. He counted Geek’s eggs carefully until his number hit. Then he swung his bat fast, smashing the egg in Geek’s hand. Before anybody could stop him, Jona kicked over the egg crate and swung his bat hard onto the crate, shattering everything. Breathing hard, he stomped on the eggs that had tumbled out of the mess.

The other three guards just sat there, shocked. Jona had just smashed all the eggs over a few coins. They refused to pay up on their bet, at first. Jona sneered at them. Nobody said he couldn’t keep Geek from eating any more eggs.

They were too appalled to argue with him. If they had been a bit more drunk, they might have tried to fight about it, but they were still sober enough to want to keep drinking. They weren’t ready to be thrown out into the night.

Jona sneered like a rooster crowing over his kill. He laughed, counting their coins in his palm. Jona wiped his bat off on the barmaid’s dress, just to rub it in more, right in front of Tripoli. Tripoli left. Then, Geek left. Jaime ignored Jona, and leaned into a cup like he was trying to fall into it and drown.

Jona got bored. The barmaid handed him one last drink, on the house, and told him to go smash eggs somewhere else. Jona didn’t know what it was in the cup, but it was worse than the beer and the beer was awful. He walked off by himself. The soles of his boots were sticky with egg. He’d have to take them off if he went home, but he didn’t want to go home. He was so mad after what he had done that he wanted to punch someone. He should’ve known destroying the eggs would’ve spoiled everything. He should apologize for it.

Tomorrow, he’d pretend to be hung over beyond belief, and claim that he couldn’t remember anything because he was so drunk, even before the contest started. He’d been drinking all day. He’d lie and lie and lie. Nobody would call him on it, and nobody would believe him.

***

Long ago, before he could remember anything about anything, Jona’s mother had cut demon wings away from his back. He told people that asked about his scars that he had fallen on a spiked fence when he was a kid. Sometimes he forgot they were there. He’d catch a glimpse of his back in a mirror and see the scars and part of him wondered if that was really his back, skin jagged like it was shredded with no memory of the pain. He could forget about them hidden under his uniform, forget about his blood.

Once he figured out that he could make people sick if he so much as spit on them, he never made anyone sick on purpose. People did fall ill sometimes, because everybody spits and people shared drinks and handshakes and people kissed sometimes if the mood was right and sometimes they might even try to make love and Jona couldn’t hide among men without doing at least some of these things from time to time. His mother told him all the time to be careful. He tried, but like his lost wings, it was so easy to forget.

His life with the king’s men had hardened him. But this was only the surface. Inside, he was formless, shifting into whatever place he found himself, trying to squeeze into the crevices like water down a mountain, tumbling through life.

The Night King found him before anyone else did. Jona had just broken all the eggs, and was walking around, looking for another tavern. He was alone in the night. He took one step, and he was sober. The next step, he was drunker than he thought he had been. Before he could take another step, he was so drunk he couldn’t walk. He leaned into a wall. His boots stuck to the ground. For one brief moment, Jona thought it was the eggs, sticking under his boots.

A bag came down over his eyes, and hands took his arms at the elbows and held him up. They didn’t say anything. They just took him.

***

The Night King’s fellows tore the uniform off Jona’s body. The only thing they let him keep was the bag on his face. They pushed him down a long, damp hallway. If he ever reached a room, he didn’t notice. They pushed him to his knees. Jona leaned back against the men that had him. He could move a little, but he was still deep inside of the water in his mind. He was on hands and knees before he knew what he should be trying to do. The hands behind him yanked him upward into a kneel, and his head swum.

Someone leaned over him. A knife cut over Jona’s chest. It didn’t cut deep, but it bled. The blood was acid, and toxic. Someone pressed a stick into the spilling blood. The stick wilted against Jona’s chest. It was pushed into his wound, and wilted before it could pressure any part of him, like being stabbed with a ribbon.

“I know what you are,” she whispered.

Jona couldn’t speak. His tongue felt as thick as a sausage. He tried to move his head.

“I could turn you in, and have you burned. You know that, don’t you? Anyone could if they found out.”

Her voice sounded like it was far away, but it was so close to him he could feel the breath on his shoulder. She was leaning over him, whispering into his ear. His limbs felt heavy, like sinking ships. He couldn’t fight back even as he longed to strike out. The torturer pulled up Jona’s hands with care, and placed something in them. The bag was peeled back from his head, but he couldn’t lift his face up. He saw woman’s hands, holding up his own, and what she had put into his hands. She had given him a doll, with long, white hair. An old woman. His mother.

“You need to prove useful to me,” she said. Jona wanted to look up at her, but a hand grabbed his hair from behind, forcing his head to stay down, even if he had enough strength to lift it. “Be extremely useful, or I won’t stop with you.”

The clouds parted from the haze in Jona’s mind. He knew exactly what choices he had. He took a deep breath, and moved his tongue. He found enough to speak his heart. “I will,” he said, “Anything, just….”

“I’ll be in touch,” she said. The bag returned, and the darkness of it. Rough hands dressed him.

As if it was all a dream, Jona was back on the surface, dressed in a clean uniform in moments, with clean boots. The tiny doll weighed down his pocket like a stone. The cut on his chest had been sealed in wax and clean bandages. After the cut healed, it was like nothing had happened to him. He hid the doll in the huge, empty house where his mother wouldn’t find it. Jona thought of saying something, but couldn’t think of what to say. He had been found out, and he was going to be used because of it. He didn’t know how or why, but it was so.

One night, Jona was walking home from a shift in evening twilight, and a merchant stepped out of his shop to stop him, glancing around nervously.

“What?” said Jona. “You want something? I’m off duty.”

Then he saw the doll the tailor held in his hand. The man gestured Jona into his shop with a nod, and handed him a scroll. Night King’s Man was written in jagged red ink.

A smuggler was pretending to be a baker two districts over. The merchant gave Jona clothes for the job to wear, and heavier clothes to carry. The merchant didn’t speak. Jona changed in a back room. The scroll had detailed instructions, including what to do with the paper itself.

Jona did as he was told. He cornered his victim as the man waited for a ferry on an empty street. Jona called out his name. The man looked up. Jona forced him around a corner and tied a bag full of bricks around the man’s neck. He pushed back against Jona, but Jona was stronger. Confused, the man started to speak out against it, but Jona was faster than any cry for help. Jona pushed the man into the water. His face, going down, in a flash, was a pale mask of sudden clarity. His stomach churning, Jona waited to make sure the man didn’t come up for air. When he was sure, he tore up the scroll and tossed it into the water.

Jona ran from the scene as fast as he could, slowing as he neared the merchant’s shop, where he ducked into the back door, and changed back into his uniform.

The merchant didn’t seem to care if the job was done or not. He paid Jona for his time with a blank face. He patted Jona on the back without a word.

This was the beginning of Jona’s second life, when nightfall meant walking in shadows, following men and women, sometimes killing them. Before that, at nightfall, Jona did nothing at all. He read until he ran out of candles. He swung his sword aimlessly on the roof of his house until he ran out of moonlight. He let his mind wander until he ran out of darkness. When the sun rose, he pretended he had spent the night asleep like everyone else in the world.

Then, the Night King came, and filled the empty hours with blood, and hunting.

***

I pieced together some of the murders, but not all of them. They were so sudden. Most of the time all that lingered was the anticipation, and the way the knife felt in Jona’s palm when it punctured someone else’s skin. Jona remembered standing in a corner and staring at a door with a knife hidden in his shirt sleeve. He remembered trying to walk casually through a crowd, searching for a woman or a man or both.

There was one I studied closely, scenting at the place where it had happened because Salvatore went there before Jona knew to look for him. Jona was underground, pushing through the Nameless’ illegal temple, the crowd jumping to the huge drums, other music somewhere beneath the drum, pushing into each other right at the edge of where the sewer fell into the bay. Their hair was all spiked and green from clumps of lime. They reeked of sweat, and lime. They were so ugly, in rags, and so proud to be ugly. They smiled with phosphor smeared on their teeth and laughed and laughed and danced ecstatically pressed into each other.

Jona pushed through the crowd, found his mark pounding the drums at the center of the sound.

He slipped a knife from a pouch up his sleeve.

Thrown, his knife went straight into the drummer’s eye. The man’s head whipped back. He fell backward, gasping. His trembling hands reached for the handle, too surprised to wonder from where it had flown. He tried to stand.

Jona raced up to the drum and leaped on top. It gave a little under his boots, but the leather head didn’t tear with his weight. He tugged his bat from his back, and smacked the drummer’s hands away from the knife. Jona clubbed the man in the head, knocking him back again, and jumped on top of him. He swung the bat. He kept swinging. Blood and bone, he kept swinging. Jona closed his eyes and didn’t stop. It made him sick to think about it, and what he saw.

When he finally stopped, Jona realized that the drumming had long since stopped. It shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did. No one had tried to stop him.

Blood and bone and brain crawled in the crevices that snaked through the stone to the sewer water. In that bad light, the water in the sewer was dark red, like death.

Jona turned to the Nameless’ dancers. They stood still, looking at him.

“What?” said Jona. “Night King sends regards. Stay out of my way.”

Was Jona wearing a mask? I don’t know. Sometimes he covered his face when doing the Night King’s work where people might see. Sometimes he didn’t. Corrupt king’s men were nothing new. If anyone recognized him, what could they do with the blessings of both the city’s kings upon his deeds?

The crowd pulled back. Retracing his steps to the main sewer lines, Jona felt their eyes on him the whole way.

Jona now got most of his work from a carpenter that didn’t mind speaking. When Jona got back up to the surface to report on the job, the wrong name slipped from his tongue. For a second, the carpenter was furious because he thought the wrong man had been killed. Jona described the man, and it was the right one, but the name was off. It was hard to remember everything he was doing in the night.

Home, in clean clothes, he came downstairs where his mother cooked breakfast. She hugged him hello.

“Long night?” she said, making conversation.

“I just went out and about. Didn’t find anything at all. Didn’t even look.”

“Have fun?”

“Eh, not really,” replied Jona. “It gets boring pretty quick when you aren’t rich, and you have all night to remind yourself that you aren’t rich.”

“We’re still nobility. Don’t forget that when you’re getting bossed around all day. Porridge?”

“Thanks.”

He sat down to eat. She joined him at the table, but didn’t eat anything. She never ate breakfast with him. She just watched.

Spooning the porridge into his mouth, he tried again to remember the dead man’s name. It was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t conjure it.

Later that morning, Jona was working with Jaime in the Pens. Some weed smokers had been stealing goats, and smuggling the stuff sewn into dead animals. They wouldn’t bother anyone if they hadn’t stolen the goats first. Jona and Jaime found a man they knew had done it. They pushed him against a wall to get names out of him of anyone else helping him. The man was terrified. A name hit Jona like a brick wall.

“Grigora,” he said, out of nowhere, almost under his breath.

“Who?” Jaime turned his head. He had the smuggler by the hair against a brick, names pouring from his lips like water.

Jona shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, “this fellow I met last night, is all.”

Jona looked out at the horizon, wondering where he was going that night. He had heard that Grigora had a few friends that had gone sour over his death, and the Night King was already making plans for Jona to take care of them, too.

When the smuggler’s confessions were done, Jaime punched Jona’s arm. “Wake up, Jona. Need you sharp.”

“Yeah,” said Jona. That’s all he said to Jaime. If Jona had said the truth, he wondered who among the guard would turn him in and who among them were doing the same thing he was, working late into the night for the kind of people that they spent all day trying to find.

***

Jona sat with his mother’s co-workers at the dress shop, all women as old as she was or more, and all of them chattering like Jona wasn’t even in the room. That suited Jona fine. It was Adventday, when people visit neighbors, and they’d come to drink bad mint tea and talk about dresses. The dressmakers loved to come to the Joni Estate—what was left of it. They loved to see how a noble lady wasn’t rich anymore, once proud and now making dresses with calloused hands from so many needle-pricks, and the special way the lips moved after years of pinching threads down. There but for the mercy of Imam, went all of the snotty children that wore the fine gowns they sewed.

When they finally noticed Jona, too quiet, one of the dressmakers asked him politely about his work with the king’s men. He smiled. He knew the story to tell them. He told them about the time he beat a confession out of a young man just to keep one of the noble women that wore the fancy dresses happy. The noble lady had been offended by a brute because he had nabbed a purse from her coachman. Of course, the coachman was wearing his fat purse like a peacock’s tail down in the Pens and expected his noble seal to keep him safe. This noble girl begged Corporal Jona, Lord of Joni, to beat the petty thief until he confessed to stealing everything he ever stole in his life. He confessed to so many coins, a fistful at a time. Calipari kept track in a ledger. Once it got to be enough, the guard could hang him. They carried the thief to the gallows with two broken legs, and a face smashed into meat. Beautiful girl, that one, with the bluest eyes and looks so good in a low-cut dress with her calves sealed in ribbons and she dances like a lark. Last time Jona crashed a nobleman’s ball, she deigned to dance with him. She was a solid kisser, too, but he urged the dressmakers not to tell her fiancée about that. He might want to beat a confession or two out of Jona if he ever found out.

Jona took a long, loud sip of his tea in the silent room. He reached for one of the Adventday sandwiches on the other side of the table with his dirty hands, and sat back down with a deep slouch.

“I say something?” Jona grunted with his mouth full of food. Chunks of sandwich showed in his mouth when he talked.

The little old ladies touched red cheeks with pale fingers. When the conversation began again, the women talked about the last dress they sewed for the girl, and all the special things she had wanted embroidered into the hem, as if anyone noticed such small details but dressmakers.

Jona’s mother shared a brief smile with her son, and poured more tea into his cup. “When are you meeting Lady Ela Sabachthani for tea, Jona?”

The dressmakers fell silent.

“Couple weeks. Wants advice about the crime in the districts. Wants me to tell her what she can do about it. Nothing to be done for it, is what I’ll tell her. Burn the whole place down, and kick everybody out.”

“She invited him for tea,” said his mother. “He’ll be going to nobleman’s balls when the rains stop. He’ll dance with the women who buy our dresses. Isn’t he handsome in his uniform?”

The other women didn’t say anything. Some of them put down their cups. One of them got up to leave. “Now you’re just making things up,” she said.

Jona poured more brandy into his tea. They couldn’t afford sugar, so they had to use cheap brandy to take the edge off the cheap, bitter mint. The more he thought about it, the more brandy he wanted to add.

Lady Ela had tea with everybody. If you were of noble blood, you could count on it, eventually. The last time it happened, it took Jona five minutes to get politely shown the door.

***

Jona was sitting in on an interrogation with a candle maker whose tax ledgers looked funny to Calipari. He rolled his eyes while Nicola questioned the man. Jona had seen the books, but nothing worth all this interrogation.

“And the capital expense was…?” Sergeant Calipari questioned and questioned, waiting for some admission that hadn’t come, yet.

Jona stared out the window past the heads of the two men. He wanted to go home, take a cool bath, open a bottle of wine, and pretend like he was taking a nap. That’s what everyone else said they did after a long day at work.

Sergeant Calipari snapped his fingers. Jona nodded. He raised the hidden mallet from his lap up over the table in a smooth motion, and slammed down upon the candle maker’s thumb before he could think to pull it away.

The candle maker screamed. He sucked his thumb in his mouth, whimpering like a child. His nail cracked and bled.

Jona turned back to the window again. He thought he saw a bird fly by, but it might have been anything blowing in the wind. He wanted to take a long, cool bath with that wine he just got as a bribe, and maybe afterward he could buy some better sausage with the money he kept hidden on the roof. His mother didn’t know about the money on the roof, or where it came from. All she ever saw of it was better food.

Jona looked down. He frowned. The candle maker was still there, holding back tears and clutching his broken, bloodied thumb. He was listing all the names he could scrape from his head. Jona didn’t listen.

Calipari carefully transcribed this new list of names. He’d give them to scriveners for warrants, and all the tax evaders would be arrested for their crimes, except for the candle maker. The informant was free to go, until an informant was needed again, or unless his crimes were too serious for that. Had Calipari told him he could go? Calipari went out to see the scriveners, and Jona was alone with the weeping candle maker.

He looked in terror at Jona.

Jona lifted the mallet. “What?”

“Please…” the candle maker was crying.

“Get out of here. Don’t look back at me, or I’ll crack your face, too.”

The candle maker bolted for the door.

Jona went back among the cells. He wasn’t sure if Calipari wanted the candle maker arrested or not, but Calipari wouldn’t let the candle maker leave the station if he was supposed to be arrested. Jona, still unsure, left the empty room. He went back in the cells to check and see if the candle maker was there. Jona found Tripoli in one of the empty cells, and no sign of the candle maker. Tripoli was drinking. Together the two corporals traded a flask of cheap whiskey until it was empty. Tripoli fell asleep on a pallet.

For a moment, Jona thought about locking Tripoli in, on a lark. Instead, he returned to the main room with the scriveners to ask about what happened to the candle maker. Calipari wrinkled his nose at Jona’s whiskeyed breath and ordered him home. Before he left, though, Jona showed Calipari where Tripoli lay asleep. Cursing, the sergeant locked the cell and kicked the bars. Tripoli didn’t even stir.

Stumbling home, a chill of dread hit Jona. He shouldn’t have shared the flask. He told himself it was all right, just this once, to share a flask. Tripoli’d be feeling ill a few days. When it had happened before, no one had died. No one would put two and two together as long as it didn’t happen that much. It would be all right. Tripoli would be all right.

It was so easy to forget that he wasn’t like these men who were his friends. He had to be more careful.

***

Jona snuck into most of the better dry season parties because it’s what his mother had done to meet his father. It’s how people met when they couldn’t officially meet. His official meeting seemed like she was biding her time until she needed a king’s man owing her favors.

How little he understood. Lady Sabachthani already owned the king’s men. She already owned him, and he didn’t even know it.

Jona’s mother had bragged about the invitation to tea among the dressmakers, and had fluttered about the house to get him ready for this. His uniform was clean and starched. His hair was cut close and combed into place with lard to hold it down. If she could have personally, she would have walked with him all the way to the door of the parlor room of the third or fourth cousin, twice removed, that was chaperoning. The distant cousin had just been engaged to marry Ela’s distant cousin, and Ela was visiting, nominally to celebrate the engagement. It was a ruse, and explicitly described as one on the invitation. Ela wouldn’t meet nobles like Lord Joni in her own house, no matter what Jona’s mother said to the other dressmakers. Lord Joni was unmarried, and so was she. Decorum still applied. But Lady Ela Sabachthani had tea at least once a year with every noble in the city, even Jona. She made up excuses about important issues, and found an excuse that merited a meeting in someone’s house, for tea.

Jona wasn’t one to get called Lord Joni much at all, unless he was getting mocked for it. He never understood what Lady Sabachthani might have wanted from him, and he was too afraid to ask her straight out.

This time, Ela had brought a basket, which she coyly set beside her unexplained. When the conversation slowed, she opened the basket to produce a tiny black terrier.

She put the little dog at her feet and told the dog to follow her as she walked around the room. It obeyed. She winked at them, and ordered the dog to climb on the wall. To the politely delighted gasps of her audience, masking the fear of Sabachthani magic, the dog walked up the side of the wall, stopping at the ceiling.

Flush with success, Ela then demanded the dog serve tea. It came down from the wall as easily as it had gone up the side of it. It jumped to Ela’s chair, then the table. The little dog tried so hard to hold the teapot with his clumsy mouth, but clever as he was, he was still just a dog. The pot slipped from his teeth, and broke on the table in front of Ela. Hot tea spilled out.

Ela cursed like a sailor, and threw the animal back into his basket. Her face flushed.

In the silence that followed, Jona wondered why he had been invited, and why she had gotten so mad, and why he couldn’t just go home right then. The room was silent, waiting for Lady Sabachthani’s mood to shift. Jona only got more uncomfortable in the silence. He stood up. “It’s just a teapot,” he said, and handed her his napkin across the table. “That dog was walking on walls and you’re mad over a teapot? I never saw magic like that before. Not even Senta do that.”

Ela ignored the napkin. “Stupid thing did it on purpose,” she said, kicking at the basket. “Parlor tricks like that… My father ended a war with one spell, and I have a retarded dog who can bend his weight up a wall.”

The hostess didn’t say anything. They were all watching Lady Sabachthani. She had the kind of power that made people patient.

“It’s still impressive,” said Jona. “I’ll find a new pot.”

The hostess looked up at Jona as if he had just confessed to murder.

“What?” he said, confused. “I say something?”

The hostess cleared her throat. “The servants will do that, Lord Joni. They’re waiting for you to sit down so they can clean up.”

The other guests smiled and said nothing, except for Ela. “I always liked that about the king’s men: problem solvers. They don’t wait around for anyone to do something. Not like us.”

Lady Ela put the basket in the hostess’ lap, and gave the dog one more command. She made it roll onto its back and pee itself from inside. The dog obeyed. Urine leaked out of the basket’s seams.

Lord Joni was the only one laughing with Lady Sabachthani. The hostess, with the dog on her lap, smiled while her fingernails dug into her teacup. She wouldn’t remove the basket, because Lady Sabachthani had placed it there. She pretended to enjoy it. Tea service was soon over. When Jona left, no one said goodbye to him.

***

My husband came back from the noblewoman’s house. He said they had burned the cards Jona had left behind with his home’s address. None had ever been to the house, and no one remembered the way. Lady Ela would know, but we couldn’t approach her casually. The main city temple petitioned the Captain of the Guard for an address, but he found no record, and his search would take time. Jona’s fellow guardsman had probably destroyed the records to protect his mother and the house she had left. The courts might have tried to take it from her.

Given enough time studying Jona’s memories, I would be able to walk straight there from anywhere in the city. I just needed more time. In the meantime, Salvatore was a greater threat than an empty house and an old woman. Salvatore would try to run. The old woman? The empty house? They weren’t going anywhere.

***

Jona walked around the Pens. He waved at a pinker he knew as he passed. Dellner was just a petty cutter that birdied his boss for a little reward money a Lord had offered. He did everything he could to pay for time at the underground hookahs. He’d confess anything, turn on anyone, as long as there was coin in it for time underground.

Dellner didn’t respond. Annoyed, Jona called out Dellner’s name. Dellner didn’t even look up. Jona waved Geek over from the other side of the street. Dellner didn’t move a muscle where he stood. He leaned against warm stones, breathing while two guards shouted and waved their hands in his face.

Geek squinted. “How pink’s your birdie? Never seen anyone this deep above ground. Shouldn’t have let him walk around. Might walk into a carriage without seeing it.”

Jona scratched his neck and shook his head. “He’s so pink, he might as well be meat.” Jona pushed Dellner deeper into an alley. Dellner didn’t fight back. Geek followed. “Only a week ago he was our boy. He must’ve been living in a weed pit with the reward, puffing like he’s trying to kill himself with it.” Jona pushed Dellner harder. The man stumbled into a brick wall and scraped his head against it. His blood was pink. His sweat was pink. It left a stain along the wall. He stumbled and fell. Dellner’s head rolled back and gazed up at the sky. His toothless mouth hanging open was pink inside.

“What should we do with your birdie?” said Geek.

Jona didn’t answer. He leaned over and flipped Dellner over, making sure the man’s face was in the mud. Jona put his heel to the back of the pinker’s head, pushing Dellner deeper.

Dellner’s body couldn’t connect to an appropriate response. His arms lay limp in the mud. His face stayed in the mud. His chest heaved up and up, struggling to breathe, while his feet tried to walk away from the mud, as if they were planted on solid ground.

Geek said something, but Jona wasn’t listening. “Hey!” Geek shouted, grabbing at Jona to pull him off.

He wasn’t fast enough. Dellner’s body was weak from the smoking the demonweed hookahs. His chest stopped shuddering. His legs and arms went still.

Jona stepped off the body. Geek stared at Jona, his face pale. Geek’s hands were shaking. “What’d you do that for?!”

“Well…” Jona thought a moment before he spoke. “I didn’t mean to kill him.”

“We could have taken him to a temple! They’d have watched him until he came off the smoke!”

“I don’t go for the temples, Geek.” The body in the mud looked more like a muddy root than a man. Jona half expected a brown trunk to sprout from the back of the fellow’s skull. “He didn’t go for temples, either.”

Geek said nothing about it later to Calipari. Nobody birdies on the king’s men, least of all another king’s man. Geek helped Jona push the body down a sewer grate, and if anyone was watching they didn’t say anything. A bad interrogation was all, and these things happened, and everybody knew Dellner was nobody to nobody.

Lunch came, and Jona sat down with all the boys outside the guard house. The other guards looked at him without eating, waiting for Jona to leave. Jona snorted. He took his bread to the main room where Sergeant Calipari sat poring over scrolls while he ate.

Jona nodded towards the papers. “What are you doing?”

“I can’t make figs out of this tax form from the… You know, that one…” Calipari’s voice trailed off as he crunched numbers in his head, looking for the smugglers in the columns. The scriveners on the other side of the room tried to make conversation, but Calipari scolded them and they bent their backs to work.

Sergeant Calipari set his ledger down, and snapped a finger at Jona. “Hey, Lord Joni.”

Jona formed a mask on his face, playing the role of the red-handed bully, too proud to show any red in his face. That’s who he was supposed to be, he knew.

“Don’t kill any more birdies, even in accident,” said Calipari. “Don’t be so cruel. You’re a solid man day-in, day-out, but you aren’t a nobleman when you’re in that uniform. Even noblemen can only break and batter the ones on their own lands, and you got no lands left. The king’s subjects are not yours to break and batter in the king’s streets. Take pity on the pinkers. Nobody asks to live like that, even if they choose to go down to the hookahs.”

Jona nodded.

“No one’s reporting on it. I say let it die.” He looked back down to the ledger and circled something with a quill. “There. Corporal, I’ll break you myself if you ever do that again. I’ll pull the lever when you hang. Clear?”

Jona nodded, and chewed his bread, silently.

Sergeant Calipari didn’t look up from his papers. Behind him, the young scriveners were pale and shaking. One of them stood up to leave, until Sergeant Calipari cleared his throat. The scrivener sat down, and cut a new goose-feather. He held his feather over the page like he couldn’t remember where he was.

Sergeant Calipari had just threatened to kill Corporal Jona, Lord of Joni, a king’s man and nobleman. Jona heard it. They had all heard it. Jona knew he was supposed to be afraid.

Jona finished his bread, and went for a walk. He couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t shaken. He knew that he should be terrified, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t even angry.

The guard had hardened him, the Night King hardened him, but inside he was formless, still.

***

Out with the boys, this time Sergeant Calipari was with them. They were deep in the Pens, underground, betting on the cockfights. Jona wasn’t betting. He stared down at the flurry of blood and feathers. He was bored by it.

Calipari came over and smacked him on the back. “Buck up! You’re bringing us down.”

Jona shrugged. “Guess I’m not kicking for this kind of bird,” he said. “Going to go find me a better tail-feather.”

The boys laughed and Jaime said he wanted to go, too, so Jona waited out one more fight. Then, Jona and Jaime went above ground and north of the Pens. Uniforms got deep discounts there. Jaime picked out a child, all soft curves and barely thirteen, and hopped up the stairs after her, laughing at Jona to choose well.

Jona never actually went upstairs with the girls. Instead, he sat with the madame of the establishment and shared a cup of tea, ignoring all the sounds from above, and all the people coming and going. The two talked about the madame’s daughter off and married to a nice officer of a merchant ship, the girl now living right on the bay next to the port. They both knew her son-in-law was dead and her daughter was pushing mugs in a dive, pregnant from who knows who.

Jona talked about his quest for a suitable bride among the rest of the nobility as if he actually wanted to marry anyone. The madame gave Jona her motherly advice based on the news she heard from the noblemen that passed through her establishment. She mentioned upcoming parties he might attend to meet promising young ladies. This season there weren’t as many parties to attend as usual, but still plenty of opportunities for an up-and-coming nobleman with such a fine uniform.

In truth, Jona wouldn’t have come here at all except that Jaime followed him out after a brothel. In the end, Jona was glad for the conversation with the woman. People didn’t really talk to Jona, with his uniform on. When Jaime staggered back downstairs, his eyelids dropping from the effort and the booze, Jona was disappointed that his time was up.

Jaime swayed around his boots, barely able to keep his feet beneath him. The proprietress frowned and put her cup down hard on the table. Jona shrugged. “Can’t be helped.” Jaime slapped Jona on the back and tried to say something, but when he opened his mouth, bile spewed out. Gobs of vomit splashed into the tea, and smothered the fine china. Jaime simply laughed.

Jona had to walk his stumbling friend home. Jaime couldn’t make it without shoulders to lean on. But even drunk, he knew the way to the little house he had inherited from his wife’s family. He pointed and mumbled the directions home. Jaime’s wife had been waiting up for her husband to return. She and Jona didn’t say a word to each other as he let Jaime’s weight lean over to her. She was strong enough for him. She eased her husband onto the kitchen table sideways where he could puke and it could be wiped away without much fuss. She and Jaime had been married for fifteen years like this. From the windows, one of Jaime’s sons looked down, barely thirteen and looking more like his father every day.

Then Jona was standing in a dark street all by himself, surrounded by these plain, simple houses. He wondered what it was like inside those houses in the daylight. He wondered what it was like on an Adventday afternoon, sipping tea and watching the kids while the good wife sews Adventday Caps with her sisters on the back porch, and people go around visiting everyone. He imagined the scene. It all seemed so normal, but the women had no faces, and the children were just small, formless, hands running through trees and grabbing at everything.

He tried to picture a child. Any child. He couldn’t think of even one. He tried to remember the name of Jaime’s son, in the window, but it came out all wrong—too much like Jaime drunk and smiling. He tried to think of any child in the world, and hold that child in his mind’s eye.

He couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t feel anything. The black absence of feeling caught up inside his chest as if his heart had blackened into a stone. Jona sat down on a curb, and pressed his hands into his chest. He tried to breathe, but air wasn’t coming into his chest right. He stayed there a long time, bent over from this pain—an ache in his chest like a scream that wasn’t coming out. Not even tears came out.

It diminished, but didn’t faded. He walked home slowly.

***

My husband scoured the city, sniffing through the trash heaps for the worst of the stains among the outhouses and drinking houses and all the places Jona might have sweat out a long night. He had lived here too long. He had been in too many of the buildings here. He had walked down these roads, pissed in the alleys, and wiped sweat away everywhere he went.

Jona was alone every night, when everyone else was dreaming. He never slept like people were supposed to sleep. He kept his heritage a secret, and he was careful about it, but it was too easy to make mistakes when he was passing among the king’s men. He kept his true self hidden, like his blood, and no one gets close.

Jona’s life ended at the edge of his skin. This made his loneliness a broken sail that hung always on his back, windless and rain-drenched. He walked with this sail hanging over him. His shoulders rolled forward, and his eyes gazed tight into every stranger in the world. Watch out.

That was Jona’s life, before he knew there was anyone else like him. This was before he found out about Salvatore, the immortal—I think his name is Salvatore—and before he met Rachel Nolander. This is the life he wouldn’t tell her about, under the willow tree, when she asked him.

There wasn’t anyone else in the world like him, and he felt it deep inside, all the way back until before he was born, as the Sentas said.

***

This was the life Jona knew. And then Rachel Nolander, a doppelganger’s daughter, came to Dogsland with her human half-brother.

They came on a ship.