CHAPTER XVII

We hunt the living not the dead. Salvatore eludes us. Rachel may return to Dogsland, if her brother returns.

I see with my eyes, my senses, deep enough into Jona’s memories. I can see more than he ever did. His memories lead where they lead, and there is never too much information for hunters to know their prey.

Is it real? Will it help us if it isn’t real?

No memory is real.

If it helps us hunt her, then it is real enough.

***

The next evening, Rachel opened the window to a dreary sky drenched in gray clouds and rolling thunder. She sipped her tea and watched the storm coming.

“It’ll pass,” said Djoss. “A dry spell is coming.”

“Since when do you know anything about the weather here? We’ve only been here a few months.”

“People are saying it.”

“You think they’ll want us to work tonight?”

“No,” he said.

“Have we got enough for rent?”

“We do,” he said.

“Do we have enough for me to have some fun?”

“Like what?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I want to go dancing! Come dancing with me, Djoss!”

Djoss shrugged. “All right,” he said, “Where?”

“Anywhere. Just don’t leave me alone. I miss you.”

He sighed. “I miss you, too,” he said. “I have some things I have to do first.”

“What?” she said.

He squinted his eyes, thinking. “You know what? I guess I can skip it until tomorrow. You wouldn’t like it, anyway.”

“No, I’ll come with you,” she said. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Just… We’ll go do something fun. It will be empty except for us. It’ll be our own, personal, flooded city. One of these days we need to invest in some parasols.”

The first thing they did was slip into the night between the worst of the storms. The second thing they did was slip into a bar, drenched from head to toe from the rain. The bar wasn’t playing any music. They stepped outside. They clomped across a bridge of planks to the other side of the road. The bending boards sank the edges of their boots into the water that had emerged from the sewers. This late in the season, the sewer water mostly ran clear. Anything that hadn’t washed out into the bay by now was never going to leave. The heat was coming back. The dry time was coming, when it wouldn’t rain for weeks at a time, and then only a little.

The next tavern they found only had one musician, a single drummer. Djoss and his sister danced awkwardly—her in all her Senta attire, and him terrified of stepping on her feet with his huge boots.

The drummer smoked a pipe while he drummed. When his pipe ran low, he gave the two dancers a loud, fast finish.

Djoss, Rachel, and the bartender clapped for him. No one else was there. Djoss got them both a drink and a little stew. She asked him where he’d been all these nights. He asked her the same thing. Neither of them wanted to admit to anything.

Djoss tossed some more money at the drummer, and they danced some more. They didn’t have to talk if they were dancing.

When the drummer ran out of weed again, they sat back down and drank some more. They talked about the different ales they had had from all the different places they had been, and at last, after false starts and too much effort, they gave up. They stepped back out into the street.

Looking ahead, Rachel saw the widow’s middle child leaning against a wall and glaring at them. He faded into the night behind the storms of another weeping cloud.

Djoss and Rachel went home, eventually. She borrowed one of his huge shirts. He had three of them, now. None of them ragged thin. She sat on her cot in the dark, looking down at her legs. She rarely looked at her own body. When she did, it didn’t seem real to her. Sometimes she could forget that she wasn’t a normal person, and she walked and moved among the people as if she was safe. She ran her hands over the jagged scales. She was so dirty, and so smooth.

Djoss scrubbed their clothes in the bathtub with a washboard he had picked up with all his new money. Rachel had stopped yelling at him about buying new things. They had furniture, cutlery, and herbs in pots in the window. He hung her clothes to dry in the apartment because of the rain outside.

In the apartment above them, two people were making slow love.

Rachel took a deep breath.“Djoss,I want to tell you something important.”

“What is it?”

“I think we need to run, and soon.”

“Why?”

“I found someone else like me, I think. I did. We should run.”

“If no one knows about you, we should stay. This has been good for us. We’ve never had it so good. Beds, clean clothes, and everything. You just stay away from her. You see her, you turn the other way. She doesn’t need to know about us if she gets caught.”

“It’s a man, Djoss. We’re both getting used to this place,” she said. “It scares me. How’s Turco doing? How is your thing with him?”

“Basement’s flooded out. Nobody’s going down there until it dries. He’s looking for a new place.”

She knew he was lying. She had been in the basement in the worst of the rains and it had never flooded. “Do we still have enough money?”

“We’ve been keeping our hands busy,” said Djoss.

“Doing what?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Djoss, doing what?”

“Try to get some sleep. Plenty of work in the dry season, and no monsoon rains us out.”

She looked down the shirt she was wearing. Some of the sweat stains on it were a strange rust-color, like blood, diluted.

***

When the rain faded, Djoss and Rachel went back to work as quiet as ever. The night passed easily enough. Sailors had money and whores had easy lies and no shame. Rachel cleaned up after them without a word.

In her mind, she saw a whole city spread out before her full of taverns and brothels and men looking for women and women looking for money and her brother punching people and smuggling from one building to another to pay the rent for the woman he kept on the side and her kids who were growing up to be criminals and the daylight world was just noise, while she slept, of shopkeepers and people that don’t talk to each other and everything in the city was lonely and wrong and sickening and nothing was good in her world. The only person she was talking to then was Jona, in cafes and quiet corners of the city where they could speak alone and only for themselves.

When she told that to Jona, he hugged her. He said, It isn’t all bad all the time. It’s just like that when you stay in the Pens too long. I’ll take you to a ball. You’ll see something new, something wonderful. Do you have a gown?

Of course not.

Well, I’ll find you one.

I don’t want to go to a ball. I want to go to a place where I don’t have to hide who I am. I’d have to do more than hide at a ball. Jona, I don’t know what I want.

Well, when you know, tell me. I’ll help you. We’re friends. We should help each other.

Maybe. I’ll think about it. What do you want?

I want to know what dreams are like.

Oh.

That next day, the shift ended, and Djoss was missing, and Rachel couldn’t stand it anymore. She went straight to the baker’s basement. She walked in, and ignored the baker, and went to the stairs in back.

The basement wasn’t flooded out. She had been there in the rains. She knew Djoss had been lying to her.

She knocked on the door. Sparrow opened it. Rachel had expected Sparrow to be there, with her stooped shoulders and her mean face. This was no surprise.

Rachel pushed her way inside. The widow said nothing. She sat down in the mud leaning back against a post.

“What do you want?” said Sparrow.

“Djoss keeps you here, doesn’t he?”

“He does. Turco’s spreading out. Didn’t need this anymore. People don’t like how muddy it is. Djoss said we could stay here.”

“He’ll never stay with you. Not for long.”

“I thought you said you were his sister.”

“I am. I’m not jealous. Djoss and I… It’s only a matter of time before we have to leave this town. I hate it, but that’s the way it is. And when we go, no one follows us. We’re just gone. Poof. Like smoke.”

“For now, my boys get to sleep indoors. You take him with you, you take care of him when he’s stumbling in here too pink to walk straight.”

Rachel leaned against a wall. “When does Djoss get here?”

Sparrow shrugged.

“How dangerous is this stuff they’re doing, him and Turco and Dog?”

“What do you care what he does long as the coin’s solid?”

“We have enough bad business on our own without looking for more. What’s he smuggling?”

“Bad business?” the widow echoed. “I knew those tricks of yours weren’t good for anything. Turco says they ain’t stealing. Might be lying, but it’s none of my business. You done? I don’t want you around when the boys come back.”

She could have meant her sons, or the men that kept her here. Rachel looked around. The squalid room had not improved from the recent rains. A few more wooden posts had been put up to prop the bowing floor above. It didn’t seem like enough.

Rachel had a room above ground with a window, a table and a bed. It made Rachel want to strangle her brother for what he was doing to this woman, how he was using her, but she knew that he’d stay with Rachel if she had to run. She wasn’t losing him. For now, he wanted to pretend like he was a different man, and have a secret life away from her.

Sparrow went to a corner of the room. She had a jug there that could have been rain water. It could have been anything. She took a deep swallow from it. She didn’t offer anything to Rachel. She didn’t even look up.

In the street, Rachel saw Djoss’ back pushing through the crowd. She ran after him. She ran beside him. He slowed down. There was blood all over his hands. “Pig’s blood,” he said. She didn’t believe him, but she didn’t know how to tell the difference. They walked back to the apartment. He went to his bed with dirty hands. She went to her cot with her muddy boots still on.

She thought about Jona, walking the streets. She thought about having her own secret life. She thought about how handsome he was in his uniform, even if he was a little mean sometimes.

***

Two nights later they both got their night off on the same day. Djoss rented a small skiff. They took to the bay, running along the sides of the galleons and the cutter ships, and the low freighters. Djoss could sail a little, and Rachel could manipulate the winds when she wanted. They picked up speed, and bounced from wave to wave.

Rachel laughed and laughed.

And everything was fine between them again for a while. Djoss was going back to see the widow now and then. Rachel knew but didn’t talk about it. She was out, too, meeting Jona in a café, sitting in the sun and talking to him about her life. She had never had anyone to talk to like that.

What was your face before you were born?

What is life like for you?

How do you live?

When she closed her eyes, she tried to picture him with wings. Would they have grown large like a gargoyle’s, or small and deformed? She tried to imagine his scars, and how’d they feel if she ran her hands over them.

***

Rachel waved at Djoss in the street. He nodded at her. He was carrying something. Rachel picked up step beside him.

“Hey,” she said.

“I know,” he slurred. He had a sheen over his eyes, like a crystal veil, and his shirt collar was pink from his sweat. He was having trouble focusing.

“What do you know?” said Rachel. She folded her arms. She knew what.

“Don’t use the stuff,” he said.

“Just make the money on it. Don’t use it.”

“Turco pays me enough to pay for a decent apartment for a change.”

“Right.”

“I’m not really into this stuff.”

“I believe you.”

“You don’t.”

“No, I believe you,” said Rachel. “I have to, Djoss. You’re all I have in the world.” She looked up and down the street. She knew where he was going next. “You know what else you should know? It isn’t a nice thing to do to that woman, or her boys. I wish you wouldn’t. I’m going home. Come with me, instead.”

He smiled, sadly. “Yeah,” he said. “I will. But Sparrow helped us when no one would. Her and Turco and Dog, they’re my friends. Rachel, when’s the last time we had friends?”

“I’m your friend,” she said.

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t, Djoss,” she said. She was lying. She knew exactly what he meant. She was going to meet Jona for tea under a willow tree. The rains were fading away, and people could live outside again most days without a parasol. Djoss said he’d be home later, and he was lying, too.

Rachel didn’t let him off easy this time. All this fighting with her brother, and Jona could wait one day. She wanted to make Djoss give this lie up, before it hurt even more. She followed him back to the baker’s room.

She watched him go in alone. The three boys came out and sat on a stoop. They pulled out their dice and tossed them in turns, but there didn’t seem to be a game to it. No one was winning. Rachel walked up to them. She smiled. They didn’t smile up at her.

The eldest pulled a spike from his ratty boot. He picked at his teeth with it. The rust matched the color of his teeth.

Inside, the baker was nowhere. Downstairs, the door was quietly ajar. Rachel heard the sounds of two people grunting softly, male and female. She thought about knocking. She pulled the door completely closed. She covered her ears. She didn’t want to confront them until they were dressed again.

The eldest boy came into the stairwell after Rachel, still picking at his teeth.

She pressed a finger over her mouth. Hush. The boy raised the spike in his hand and pointed at Rachel. “You leave us alone,” he snarled. He jumped at her from the top of the stairs.

Rachel grabbed for him in the air. “Djoss!” she shouted. The boy tried to stab her, howling. She couldn’t hold him back for long like this, he was so wiry and angry and fast.

Djoss came out, naked with his pants in his hand. He looked down confused at the boy fighting Rachel, stabbing at her body with the spike, cutting at her clothes, and tearing into the places in her body that should have been soft with hands and teeth.

The widow shouted from the room, “Please…!”

Djoss got his free hand on the boy’s leg and threw him against the wall hard. Rachel snapped her fingers, and the boy’s clothes caught fire. He howled like a little wolf. He smacked at the fire, then ignored it. He lunged at Rachel with the spike again.

Djoss had his pants halfway on. He couldn’t stop it in time. The spike caught between two of Rachel’s exposed scales catching the spike like armor under her clothes. The boy tried again. He would never break through with a rusty spike. Rachel tried to block with her arms to protect her clothes.

“What’s that!?” the boy shouted. Finally, the fight went out of him. His knees weakened and he leaned back into the stove. He coughed. He hadn’t drawn any blood, but he had tried. He had bit and clawed and shoved.

The widow said, “Djoss, please don’t.”

“Don’t what?” he said.

“Don’t hurt him.”

Rachel was exposed. Her scales showed through the cuts in her clothes. Djoss grabbed the blanket that the widow had been clutching over herself and handed it to her. Rachel couldn’t think. She had to cover the holes in her shirt where the boy had slashed at her. She had to hide herself.

The widow said nothing. The other two boys came in from the street.

Djoss broke the silence in the room. “If you tell anyone about my sister, I’ll kill you with my bare hands. If you tell Turco or Dog, I’ll kill them, too. You know I could.”

He found his shirt, pulled on his boots while standing up, one foot at a time, and nodded at Rachel.

Sparrow was crying. She reached out to her children. She grabbed at them. She looked up, terrified.

“Time for you to leave town,” said Djoss. “Time for you to take your boys and get out of the Pens. I see them again, it won’t be good.”

Sparrow pulled on her clothes quickly, her hands trembling. She took her boys hands.

“Go on. Get out of town. Get out of town forever.”

Sparrow led them up the stairs.

Djoss’ face was a mask, like a brick.

***

Back to their apartment near the butcher’s, Djoss pulled out a sewing kit and fixed Rachel’s shirt. She waited in her cot, with the blanket wrapped over her body.

“How long were you following me?” he said. He was a better sewer than she was. He had done it longer. He could pull leather taut and was strong enough to push needles through it.

“You don’t want to know,” she said. “I’m sorry. Did you mean what you said to them?”

“Of course not.”

“Because if you did…”

“No.”

“Her boy just tried to kill me, and it’s your fault”

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, Rachel. It’s not what I wanted. It’s not what I wanted for any of us.”

“What do you want, Djoss?”

They sat quietly a while. He sewed. She watched him.

“I don’t want to run. She’ll leave. She’ll take her boys,” Djoss said.

“I hope you’re right.”

He put down his work. He folded his hands on his lap. “Do you want to run?”

“No,” she said. “I like it here, too. I don’t think Sparrow will hurt us. Djoss, I’m so tired of running.”

“What do you think it’ll be like if we stay here?”

“Like this,” she said. “Like this until we have to run. It never, ever stops. Nothing changes. Nothing gets better. We just keep on running until we die.”

Djoss picked up his sewing again. “Good,” he said. He handed her clothes as he finished repairing them.

By evening twilight, they both had work to do. She checked it for new holes in his mending. She put all her Senta clothes on. “Check me,” she said.

He checked over her whole body for a hint of a scale, or a flash of skin. He found none. Outside, they stopped at a street vendor for something to eat. They came home at the end of the day, slept, and did it again and again.

And that was their life. That will be their life everywhere they go.

***

Jona’s mother piled ladles of stew into a bowl for him. She set the bowl before him and sat at the table, eating nothing.

“So,” she said, “how’s work?”

“Eh,” he said, “it’s work. You?”

“I finished the dress for that Carroha girl. You know the one, with those fat hips. I never had hips like that. When she walks, it’s like a ship’s floating sideways. She’s rich, though. Money makes any girl pretty.”

“No, it really doesn’t,” said Jona. “I hate those girls.”

“You need to marry one of those girls. You cut a fine cloth in a uniform. Get a promotion, maybe a commission, and you find yourself a rich girl, and one that isn’t too pretty because then she won’t mind you.”

“You were pretty once.”

“Your father was rich once. Any big plans tonight?”

“No.”

“The balls are starting soon. Lady Sabachthani’s the only one throwing any good ones. You should go to them. If you go out, pick up some tea. You drank a ton of tea yesterday. Honestly, I’ve never seen someone drink so much tea. How’s the stew?”

“It’s fine, Ma.”

Jona hunched over his stew. He tried to ignore his mother staring at him. She just kept staring at him, every night staring at him. Jona never saw her eat anyting, but she always cooked for him and watched him chew and swallow.