CHAPTER XIII

Days passed, and weeks, and maybe more. Memories do not keep good calendars. Jona and the boys were in a dive hidden between the troubled warehouses north of the Pens waiting on this great band of musicians was coming through. The band never showed, and instead a troupe of drunk actors claimed the stage, singing lewd songs with perfect pitch and close harmony. Men had thrown their glasses or spilled their drinks or spewed their drinks because they were laughing so hard.

When the show was over, the crowd lingered in the bar by the stage, and the boys drank like gutters. It was Geek, Jona, Tripoli, and the two young scriveners full of sand after their first real action in a uniform, a day Calipari sent them out patrolling. The scriveners were chattering about this thing in the Pens the other day, and trying to talk tough about taking down brick-batters that wanted to smash a fellow’s skull until the privates cut the handles off their brick-bats with swords and smacked the fighters with the flat of the blades and one of the fighters bought it when he tried to get on top of the private, but the kid had stuck his blade in the fellow’s belly and he wanted to stand up to tell the story, to show it was just like this, how he had killed someone evil in the name of the king…

Jona stood up and glared at the private. “You think you’re so tough, why you pushing a quill all day instead of walking the Pens?”

The private looked up at Jona.

“You so tough?” Jona grabbed the private by his shoulders and shoved him back away from the table. “Tough boy. Let’s see you take me down. I won’t pull nothin’ but a fist. We’ll see who wins.”

The private didn’t move.

Geek placed a hand on Jona’s arm. “Let them have their day in the sun, Jona.”

“Yeah, one day in the sun? Two? Me and the other boys are in the sun pushing meat around every day when those kids’re pushing quills. Don’t be acting all rowdy when you’re nothing.”

Geek stood up next to Jona. He tapped Jona’s shoulder.

Jona turned. “What?”

Geek smiled, grandfather-like. He was a big, soft guy, with lots of muscle beneath his weight. He knew his way around Jona’s moods. He smiled, and raised his hands in surrender. But he wasn’t giving up to Jona. He was pushing Jona back. “Don’t you think you should find somewhere else a while? Plenty people we don’t need working in the morning you can throw around instead of our own people.”

“What are you talking about?” said Jona. “They’re just getting on my nerves.”

“I’m asking you nice,” said Geek. “You start this with him, and he’s out for a week with busted everything, and you know Calipari’ll make you take his desk once he finds out.”

Jona looked over at his boys. Everyone was eying him like he was ruining a perfectly good evening. And he was. He nodded. “I’m going somewhere else because I’m nice, and because Geek asked me nice,” said Jona. Then, to the scrivener he had thrown back, he snarled, “If you touch me, I’ll break your arm off. What’s your name, anyhow? You’re new.”

“Pup’s my name,” he said. “It’s what people call me, anyhow.”

“Well, you watch it, Pup. You’re nothing after one day in the sun.”

Pup was smart enough not to respond.

Jona had drunk plenty to get this angry, and after being this angry he wanted to get drunk to get more angry. He stumbled into the street. He looked up and down the road, and he didn’t see a thing. He saw the same things over and over every night. He saw people moving and milling and hopping in and out of the taverns and theatres and animal pens and shops and secret backroom casinos along the trouble at the stinking edge where the warehouses met the Pens. He’d seen them all. He’d done them all.

Jona didn’t know what he was going to do now. He didn’t have a job for the Night King, hadn’t for a while since Aggie was condemned. He wondered if he could volunteer for anything, see if the carpenter needed someone killed tonight. But showing up drunk would only get him killed, and volunteering for more was not the way things worked with them. He was their blood monkey, and that was all. Like a dog, he obeyed, and did nothing more.

So Jona was bored. He didn’t want to drink. He didn’t want to gamble. He didn’t want to steal. He didn’t want to talk to any of the people he knew. He didn’t want to do anything.

He wanted to find something new—a new tavern, a new restaurant, a new play, a new anything.

He wanted—but he wouldn’t admit it to himself, or even realize it—to fall in love.

***

Jona was alone, putting one foot in front of the other, and looking for his birdie in one of the local gangs so they could go drinking and Jona could make the birdie sing without a fist for a change. He couldn’t find him. He didn’t know if the fellow was down in the pink pits sucking Demon weed from a hookah, or if he was already drunk somewhere else.

He looked up at the moon hung like a silver earring on a veiled face. He stopped where he was and leaned against the nearest wall, watching all the people walking somewhere, so intently. He had nowhere to go. Nobody looked over at him—their eyes stopped at the uniform. His face might as well have been a black mask.

As Jona lingered there, a gorgeous carriage turned into a nearby alley, headed toward the brothel that way. The bells had all been wrapped in black cloth, and the noble insignia was obscured with drapes in an attempt at anonymity.

Jona recognized the carriage. Lord Elitrean’s son was shameless… as long as everyone pretended they didn’t know his name. Jona, feeling wild himself, decided to grind the young buck’s horns down a bit. He wanted to do something that wasn’t boring. He wanted to do something new. He thought he wanted this. He thought it would be a quick laugh, and maybe a lecture later. He didn’t realize this night, this impulsive act, was going to lead him to the thing he had been seeking without knowing it for weeks, months, maybe years.

Jona jogged to keep up with the carriage. The coach stopped back in the brothel’s rear entrance. Lord Elitrean’s son disappeared before Jona could get there. The coachman smoked a cigar and leaned against the vehicle. He knew he was in for a long night tonight.

Jona walked up to him. “Whose carriage is this?” he barked, “You, tell me whose carriage this is!”

“This is nobody’s carriage,” said the coachmen. “Owner ain’t here.”

“Yeah?” said Jona. “You steal it so you can smuggle?”

“This is a lord’s business,” said the coachman, “and if he wants to keep the carriage black, then it’s black.”

“How I know your ‘lord’ is no smuggler pretending when his family crest is covered up like this?”

The coachman shrugged. “You want me to strip the drapes, I strip the drapes. But Lord Elitrean’s son will just put them right back on and come down on you like a knife. Don’t be complaining to me when he does.”

“Give them to me,” Jona snapped.

The coachman did as he was told.

Inside the brothel, Jona shouted away the ragged children who begged beside the old stairs. They kept crowding him. He threw the expensive black satin out to them, a distraction. They shrieked at their gift, tearing at the expensive cloth like sharks, and running off with their scraps.

The mistress of the brothel nervously fluttered over to stop Jona in the stairway. Jona announced, at the top of his lungs, that he had come for Lord Elitrean’s rogue son. Doors opened and closed, some clicking locked.

Jona pushed past the owner, and snarled at the whole house, again. He kicked open the first door he saw, but it wasn’t Elitrean’s son. The next door wasn’t, either.

Women screamed and tried to cover themselves.

The owner ran up behind Jona, and begged privacy for her guests, offering a large bribe. Jona threw the money on the floor. More money appeared. Jona smacked it away.

“Tear the place down, then,” she shouted, “And don’t be looking for me when your wick needs burning.”

The children, a flock of pigeons, snatched up as much of the spilled bribe money as they could. The owner cursed them, kicking at them, but she couldn’t stop them. The children faded into empty rooms and closets.

Jona laughed.

Lord Elitrean’s son waited in a room with a sword in his hand, a half-naked woman hiding behind the bed.

“Are you the man shouting for me?”

“Yeah. I’m Lord Joni,” said Jona. “This was all my estate before the war.”

“You’re really a king’s man? I thought you wore the uniform to sneak into parties,” said the young lord. He sheathed his blade.

“I am a king’s man, and I’m sick of all your parties, and I’m sick of you. You aren’t on your own lands here,” Jona sneered.

“Are you hiding behind the King’s service?”

“Are you hiding in a brothel? I stripped your carriage of drapes, and exposed your house seal. If I catch you with an unmarked carriage, I’ll strip it again. How you run things on your grounds is your business, but in the King’s City, you will not get away with destroying your family’s honor in hiding.”

“My father will hear about this.”

“I’m sure he already knows what you do. He’ll give me a prize for trying to stop you.”

The young nobleman looked back at the woman hiding behind the bed. “I’m not paying you,” he said, and pushed past Jona, past the apologetic owner, and into the main street. Jona followed him, watching to make sure he got into his carriage and left.

When he was gone, Jona smiled. He turned to the owner. “So, got anyone new?”

“You get out of here!” she shouted. “Calipari won’t like it you making a scene!”

Jona laughed. “My money not heavy enough for you? I want a girl, healthy and strong, and new. Who you got for me?”

“Nobody,” snarled the owner. “The Sergeant won’t mind I throw you out hard after what you just did in my house!”

“Go get him, then. See what he says.”

She backed away looking angry enough that she just might.

Jona laughed. He went back into the brothel, and back upstairs to the room where Elitrean had been having his fun. Inside, the woman had come out of hiding. She was washing her naked chest in a basin of fresh water. She looked up at Jona without covering herself. “You next?” she said. “Must have wanted me bad to chase him off.”

Jona smirked. “Something like that.”

“Sixteen for the business. Anything special, you pay more.”

“How much just to touch you a bit?”

“Touch me? Where?”

“Anywhere.”

“Sixteen.”

“Even if there isn’t any business?”

“You know I’m worth it.”

“Guess so,” said Jona. “Stand next to the bed.”

All she had on was her skirt. She stood where she was, with her hands up behind her head, waiting near the bed. Jona counted sixteen coins from his pockets, carefully placing each coin one by one on the table. He was surprised he had enough.

At the bed, Jona cupped each of her breasts. They felt heavy, like they were full of water. A little milk leaked from one of her nipples. He thought about taking her, and leaving her reeling and ill. But the milk meant she had a child hidden here, and if she got sick, her child would, too. He stopped. He shrugged at her. “Right then,” he said, “sixteen well spent. Now get out of here.”

“What? All that trouble, and that’s it?”

“Go on,” he said. “Get out of here. I want to be alone awhile. Now get going.”

“I got other customers.”

“Not tonight. Tell your boss to find a new room for you. I’m staying here a while.”

“How long?”

“Long as I want,” he said, “Now get out of here!” He slapped her lightly on her backside. Annoyed, she quickly poured the money into a bag, then pulled a robe over her shoulders. She disappeared into the hall.

Jona wiped his wet hand off on the bedsheets.

Jona didn’t know why he had done what he had just done to Lord Elitrean’s son, or to the woman in the room. He knew he had wanted to do it, and that no one would really stop him. So he did it. He wondered what he wanted to do next, and couldn’t think of anything right away.

Jona looked around, wondering if he could find something incriminating to justify this whole idiotic night. If he was really lucky, the owner would come in with some thugs and he could fight them and then everything would be sensible and right with the world, beating down the rough men and bouncers that brothels always drag in off the street.

Jona smiled at that thought, and snatched a heavy glass perfume bottle off a cabinet. He pulled the pillow out of its case, and turned the perfume bottle and the pillowcase into a makeshift blackjack. He slipped beside the doorway to surprise anyone who came in from looking for a fight.

He heard footsteps in the hall.

When the door opened, he raised his improvised blackjack, ready to shatter a heady stink all over whoever came through the door. He expected trouble.

A maid pushed a mop bucket into the room, dressed like a Senta.

Jona frowned. “That’s it, then.” He lowered his weapon.

The Senta startled and jumped away from him, tripping over herself and the mop bucket and the mop, falling over. She landed hard on her elbows.

Jona winced. “I was expecting someone else.” He bent over her to help her up. “Sorry.”

The Senta snarled at him. She snapped her fingers and fire singed Jona’s face. It caught easily on his clothes and the sweat stain in the fabric started to singe and burn. Jona startled. He beat at his collar and rushed over to the water basin in the room. He threw filthy water on it.

“Bloody Senta,” he said, dabbing at his uniform, “Look, it was an accident! You shouldn’t burn a king’s man. It’s the same as burning the king himself!”

She stood up and adjusted her thick clothes. “The king should be burned for letting you thugs run around!”

Jona balled up his fist, but hesitated. “People don’t say that to our faces,” he said, instead of hitting. If he struck her, she’d probably set his clothes on fire, and the sweat stains would burn through the cloth before he could douse it all.

“People should!” said the Senta. Jona walked over, still thinking about striking her, and if he could hit her hard enough in one shot to knock her out while she was busy standing up.

She punched first. She got Jona hard, right on his nose. “Don’t come near me!”

Blood. Blood all over her hand.

Jona held his breath. He clutched at his nose, and pinched it. “You shouldn’t have done that.” He leaned back and felt the blood seeping into his sinus cavity and into the back of his throat. He coughed.

The blood caught the edge of her long sleeves. It started to singe the cloth.

Jona smiled even through all the pain and fear, and had to try not to laugh. She’d see that. She’d see that, and he’d be done with everything. As soon as she saw that, his life was over. Even killing her wouldn’t save him. Calipari would hang him for that. She wasn’t some brain dead pinker, or a thug on the street. She was decent people, working hard at something.

She looked down at her sleeve, how it cooked. She beat at it.

“Don’t.” Jona’s life flashed before his eyes. He had been lucky last time, with Calipari, that the sergeant had washed his hands before he saw how the blood had gotten on his sleeve, and anyway it all could be blamed on Aggie’s broken nose.

“What is this?”

“Nothing,” Jona said. “Wash your hand. Come on. Get that blood off it.”

“Is this…?”

“Listen, I’m sorry I scared you. I was just bored. I thought Elitrean’d send someone tough, and I’d bust a perfume bottle on ’em for a laugh. I meant nothing by it. I swear I didn’t mean to scare you, or do any real harm to anybody. Please…”

Jona should have felt more fear than this. Always, hanging over his head, running through the streets and the night, the threat of it: a bleeding wound. Now he was begging for his life.

“I don’t care what you’re doing here,” said the Senta. “You should get something for your nose.”

“It got broke a bit ago,” he said. “It’s not important. Please…” He pinched his nose shut, trying to stop the bleeding.

She frowned. She pulled some wet rags from her pocket and wiped at the blood on her hands and sleeves. Her hand was shaking. She offered the rags to Jona. “Soapy washcloth?” she said, “Slightly used, but still covered in soap. Might keep it from burning your shirt off.”

Jona shrugged. “Why not?” He took the washcloth from her fingers.

“You…” said the woman.

“What?” he said. His eyebrows creased.

“Your blood is eating my sleeve. It’s like an acid.”

“I’m not,” he said, forcefully. “Don’t be crazy. Elishta’s been sealed a thousand years.”

“Right, I know. You know I’m Senta. I could find these things out.”

“So go find these things out, and find out I’m not.”

“Some demons’ children are exceptionally long-lived.”

“If you’re such a Senta, why you cleaning up after whores?”

“I do what I must. Would you prefer I joined the city guard?”

“Of course not,” Jona sighed. “It’s just weird. Aren’t you supposed to be on a corner with dice or cards or something?” He thought his voice sounded crazy with all that blood in his throat. It was hard to try and talk out of this problem when there was so much blood.

“Not every Senta finds the koans of dreamcasting in her heart.” She snapped her fingers again, and a splash of fire sparked in mid-air.

“What’s your name?”

“What’s it to you what my name is, king’s man?”

“Nothing, I guess,” he said. “You like it here? You know, cleaning up brothels.”

She nodded. “I like it fine.”

“Well, if you need anything, you look me up, and we don’t tell anybody about the blood, okay? It’s not what you think it is, and a rumor can kill me over nothing when it’s about my blood. My name’s Sergeant Calipari,” he said. “Sergeant Nicola Calipari.”

“Nicola,” she repeated, her expression grave. “I will.”

“I have to go take care of this.”

“Okay.”

***

Jona left Rachel there, in the messy room alone. He rushed back to his own home to clean the blood off his uniform and out of his fingers, and make sure his nose wasn’t going to open up again. If Jona’s blood touched grass, the grass would die too fast to be inconspicuous.

He ran through the dark. He pushed through all the shadows in the street to run home to the light of his mother’s kitchen. He ran, feeling his way around through darkness, pushing up to the basin where the old pipes still carried water from the river. He pumped water into the sink. He held one hand under the surface, then another. He washed at himself with old rags he’d have to burn.

He heard his mother’s soft feet coming down the creaky stairs. He heard her bare feet padding across the room. He felt her hand on his arm.

“Jona,” she said, “Are you all right?”

Jona nodded. “I’m fine, Ma.”

He was lying. His stomach burned.

She rubbed his arm. She wrapped an arm around him.

“I said I’m fine,” he said. “You need to stay back.”

She held him. He didn’t push her away. “You have to work in the morning,” he said.

“Are you going to be all right?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“My nose opened up again. I got scared, that’s all,” said Jona. “I just got really scared that someone might find out about me.”

“Did someone find out?”

“No,” Jona said, “I just got scared.”

“Don’t be,” she said. “How’s your nose now, Jona?” She reached for his face.

He flinched away from her. “It’s better. Don’t touch it, ma.”

“I never wanted you to be a king’s man. It’s dangerous. More so for you than anyone. Clean up your mess before you go to bed,” she said. “I’d do it for you if I could. Good night, Jona.”

“Ma, what do I do if someone finds out about me?”

She walked back to the stairs, quietly.

“What do I do if someone finds out?”

Her steps up were so slow, like each one was a sunset coming down all heavy in a valley. Her steps were so slow. Jona listened to them, and to how quiet it was between her steps.

Silence was a word, right then.

***

We hide all the time. I hide all the time.

Rachel sniffed the blood again. She definitely smelled the touch of Elishta on it. It smelled just like hers. Djoss taught Rachel her whole life to keep her blood hidden and burned. Her mother taught her that, before her brother did. When the women’s dilemma arrived, she had to use rags and burn them to ash in private. If she cut a finger she had to cover it with candle wax and cloth to keep it completely sealed. People got sick around her blood.

Rachel rushed the blood-spattered sponge and rags into an abandoned strip of grass behind the brothel. She found a few blades of green grass. She sprinkled the blood on the grass. The blades withered like they were in a drought. She held her breath and tried the little experiment again with a larger plant. That plant died, too. Already, the acid had eaten through the rags, pooled in her palms in ruined ash, blown away in the wind like sand.

She had never met another like herself before in her whole life.