CHAPTER XVIII

When we leave this city, we won’t know where to go. We haven’t made any plans.

Don’t leave, then.

We will, Jona. I should find a way out while we still can.

Rachel walked in a straight line, looking for the city walls. When she got frustrated with that, she turned a corner. Then, she turned another corner. She walked up the first hill she encountered, climbing up and towards a river on the other side of the valley. This river had a large bridge, overgrown with city life and lined with low huts and tents. Shrewd men lined the edges of the bridge with outhouses that hung just over the lip of the bridge, available for a fee. Steady filth dripped in bursts onto the river boats like a slow, oozing waterfall.

Rachel walked over the bridge, past the many dirty shops and hot corn vendors and tinkerers selling scrap warped into tools and baubles and the ragmen with their cheap used cloth and cheap paper.

She was hungry, and tired. She stepped into an inn on the other side. She invented fortunes for strangers in the inn’s tavern until she had enough money to spend the night.

She could barely make out a glimmer of the Unity. She was a charlatan to these drunk men and she didn’t care. She had a room on the second floor of the inn. It had a bed, and a bathtub. She didn’t have enough money to take a bath—nor did she want to risk a servant’s assistance—so she fell back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. She listened to two people making love through thin walls, and it reminded her of Jona. She clutched at her stomach, and thought about him.

She didn’t sleep well. She dreamed of darkness.

In the morning, she left the inn and looked at all the people bustling off to their normal lives.

She closed her eyes, and imagined all these people who just wanted to be happy. They wanted to lead spectacular lives. They dreamt of winning prizes and the love of someone beautiful and conquering the enemies of their way of life. Every single one of them wanted to be rich, beloved, and peaceful before they died.

In her mind, she reached out into the Unity, searching for happiness. She wanted to find one happy person in the push of bodies.

Perhaps it was the stink of demon taint that kept her back. All she felt were horses pulling carriages with a numb, animal bliss. Sometimes a whip cracked, and the spark of joy faded a while, but it came back soon enough. The horses were happy.

She opened her eyes. She walked aimlessly through the streets until nightfall. She found another tavern. This time she was able to see a few actual prophecies in the cards. She didn’t earn as much tonight. People paid less for bad news.

She made enough to eat and get drunk. She staggered into the alley near the tavern and found a place to lean against the wall that was mostly hidden from the street. She pulled an empty crate over her body, and closed her eyes, curled up inside this empty, wooden box.

In the morning, she was stiff and sick. She staggered into the light, and followed the crowd to a town square.

The crowd screamed and threw rotten bits of food at a beautiful, pale girl tied to a pole.

Geek and Sergeant Calipari stood on the platform beside the girl. They looked sad about what they were doing. Geek stared at his boots. Calipari held a single torch in one hand, smoldering quietly in the sun, and in the other he held a scroll. He read the scroll, and Rachel threw up when she heard.

The girl was going to be burned alive. She had bled true for Elishta’s demon stain in her blood and she was going to be burned alive.

Geek walked over to the girl. He unsheathed his blade. He lifted her chin with the tip, and got her to look hatefully in his eyes. “Hold still,” he said. He jumped, spinning, and he slammed the flat of his blade across the side of her skull. She sagged under the blow, unconscious.

The crowd booed.

Calipari shook his head. “She’s supposed to be awake for this,” he shouted.

Geek shrugged. “I guess the terror made her pass out,” he shouted.

Calipari squinted. “Guess so,” he shouted back. He pulled a black hood over his head. He placed the flame at the pile of kindling wood bunched at the base of the kindling.

The crowd cheered. They threw pieces of wood and coal at the girl, now. The bottom of her ragged dress caught fire. Her legs reddened as the fragments fell off in bits of black ash. Then, her dress was almost completely burned away, and she was naked from the waist down and her skin was all blisters and boils like an overcooked chicken and the fire kept growing higher and higher and the skin flaked off in grey clusters. The crowd cheered when the last remnant of her dress melted into her ruined skin.

Her eyes fluttered open. Her head rolled to one side. Her hair had burned into a jagged mess.

She screamed.

Her body was blackened bones below her waist. Her chest charred from the smoke. The stink of cooked fat hung in the air. She pulled at the bonds over her head, pulling herself up higher and higher out of the fire. Her hands were still human. They reached and reached up. Rachel watched the girl’s hands. In the back of her mind, an old rhyme popped up, unwanted.

Hands are the things that make us men, 

Deaf men talk and blind men see with them 

Dead man reach hands up to the sky 

Grab that soul that’s flying by.

* * *

The crowd was gone. Only a few morbid stragglers and ragpickers remained at the fringe of the square. Calipari used his sword to cut the bonds over her hands.

The cooked cadaver crumpled into the pile of burned wood. Calipari chopped off the girl’s head with one stroke. He poured fuel over what was left of her. He covered the girl’s body in a thick yellow soup of whale oil and kerosene. He reached for a new torch. He tossed it onto her. He bowed his head and prayed quietly to Imam.

The remains of the demon-touched body couldn’t be buried. It had to be burned completely away.

Calipari and Geek tossed their swords into the flames. Calipari turned his back on the fire, and looked around at what remained of the crowd. He needed to make sure no one disturbed the fire until the body was burned away to purity. Then, the body would be thrown into a deep pit and burned again and again, until nothing remained but a black stain on the steel.

That’s how demons are killed and their poisonous bodies are removed from the world of men.

* * *

Rachel’s guts were in knots as tight as rigging. She walked to Jona’s house. She got there by sunset. She knocked on his door.

An old woman answered.

“I’m looking for Corporal Joni,” she said.

“Are you, now?” said the woman, “and what about?” “Please,” said Rachel, “It’s important.”

She sniffed at her. “Some Senta demanding my son. Have a prophecy about something, you want to share with my boy?”

Jona appeared behind the old woman. He pushed past her. “Ma, it’s fine.”

The old woman walked back into the house. “I’m going to bed. Be careful with those Senta, Jona. They can sniff things about people you’d rather they didn’t know. And be sure to do the dishes before you leave.”

Jona brought Rachel into the kitchen, and what was left of dinner. She sat down, and poked at some leftover noodles. “Mind?” she said.

“No,” said Jona. “Don’t you have to work tonight?”

“I don’t think I’m working anywhere right now.” She didn’t see any silverware, so she reached into the bowl with just her gloves. She slurped at the noodles, unashamed.

“Are you alright?” said Jona.

“Why did you have to ruin my night like that?”

“What? What did I do?”

“You didn’t even dance with me.”

“Oh,” he said, “You never dance with who you show up with. I told you that.”

“I’m not some noble hussy. I wanted to dance with you because it’s every girl’s dream to go to a ball with a handsome lord and dance into the night. And when I had someone to dance with…”

“Salvatore sold out his partner, and now she’s dead. She was just a kid, too, younger than you. Hey, how old are you anyway?”

“I don’t know. I’m exactly as old as you. How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-six.”

“I‘m not that old. I’m trying to be mad at you, Jona. I’m trying.” “Be mad. I was a bastard.”

“You were.”

“It’s probably the blood to blame, not me.”

“If the blood makes someone evil, how come I’m not evil? I just know I’m not evil. I don’t feel evil. Who says we’re evil?”

“I think… I don’t think it works like that.”

“Well, how does it work, then?”

“I think it works like… I don’t know.”

“Imam tells us that all we do in the world will be brought back to us seven-fold. If I do good, then that good will come back to me, and I will be good.”

“All right, well if we do both good things and bad things, will the sevenfold cancel each other out?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

A knock on the door. Jona looked past her. “A minute. That’s going to be my Sergeant.”

“Get rid of him. I want to talk with you.”

“I’ll try,” he said, “Not easy to get rid of Nic.”

Jona walked out of the kitchen, and opened the door. Calipari let himself into the kitchen in an instant, digging through the pantry for some tea to drink like Rachel wasn’t there.

Rachel looked at Sergeant Nicola Calipari. She heard his name being said, and took his hand and shook it. She looked right at him. She washed her hand in the sink, and stormed out.

* * *

Nicola gestured at the slammed door. “Pretty thing, but weird in the head. What’d you do to her?”

“I told you not to come in, Nic. You weren’t listening.”

“You hit her, yet?”

“Of course not.”

“Well try not to hit this one. I know a few fellows that like to keep a lady in line. If you need to hit her, you’ve already lost, I say. I went about with a Senta once, when I was your age. It was great until she prophesied I’d end up with someone else. Then she left me. You haven’t been doing any prophecy with her, have you?”

“Of course not. You know I don’t believe in any of that. Imam.”

“Hope you don’t tell her that. Drives Sentas crazy, crazy. Hope she hasn’t done it on her own, either. Prophecy’s not a good idea. I don’t know why lovers do it, but lovers are always dumb. Providing the livelihood of many a Senta, but that’s the way of things.”

* * *

When Djoss got back, Rachel was there, asleep. He grabbed her boot and wanted to wake her up.

“Hey!” he said, “Rachel! Wake up!”

She groaned. She sat up. She looked at him. “What?”

“Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere. You?”

He snorted at her. “I went nowhere, too. Didn’t see you there.”

“Well, that’s too bad. That’s where I was. I guess I didn’t see you, either.”

“There was this girl,” said Djoss, “They burned her. For a while, I thought…”

“Well, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t anyone I knew.”

“I wish…”

“You’re a mess. You’re sopping wet, filthy.”

“I was in a gutter when I woke up.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“Drink much?”

“Something like that. Lost all our money.”

“Better get back to work then. Those mudskippers still running your little packages?”

“Yeah. You should go back to work, too. I think you lost your job, though. You’ll have to find a new one.”

Silence hung in the air like a low fog, filled their lungs, and filled their eyes. They looked away from each other.

“Elishta, Djoss. What happened to us? I don’t remember when we last talked to each other. When’s the last time we just sat down and talked to each other?”

“What should we talk about?”

“I don’t know.”

“Anything.”

“We’ll talk in the morning.”

“I’m worn out.”

“Go clean up. You’re a mess.”