CHAPTER XXI

Sergeant Nicola Calipari and Geek bit thumbs at each other and laughed because of a joke they had just finished about a fellow that’d answer every question they asked him by biting his thumb at whoever punched him last. Jona walked in at the end of the joke with Jaime. Jaime clomped his heels and saluted.

Sergeant Calipari jumped to his feet. “What was that, Corporal?”

“Corporal Lord Joni and the Corporal Kessleri walked the Pens, sir!”

“Excellent, Corporal!” said Calipari, “Are the livestock safe in those Pens?”

“Sir, no sir!” said Jaime.

“What?” Calipari leaned into Jaime’s face, spitting on him a little, in good fun. “Why aren’t the livestock safe, Corporal?”

Jaime choked on laughter. It took him two tries to spit the words out with gravitas. “Any pig in a pen isn’t safe, sir! Pigs in pens are lunch, sir!”

Geek burped.

Jona grabbed the reporting papers from the desk, and moved items around the duty desk so he could sit down and write report. The worst he saw was some kid smugglers. When they were ghosted by the guard, they cut cargo and ran. Jona let them go. He dumped their lost pinks into the river.

Jona cut a goosefeather quill, and dipped it in the ink. He scribbled his report. Jaime waited for Jona to finish.

Jaime was telling the crew about this thing his kid used to do. Jona didn’t want to listen. When Jona finished his report, he handed the paper to Jaime. Jaime scanned quickly, while talking. Jaime initialed at the bottom, and placed the paper on Calipari’s desk.

Sergeant Calipari took the paper, initialed it, and stuffed it into a large envelope with all the other reports. He looked around him for a spare body. Jaime and Geek had both disappeared into the holding cells to drink brandy in an empty cell.

Jona held out his hands. “Sergeant,” he said, “I’ll take it in.”

“Corporal?” said Calipari. He leaned back in his seat. “You sure you don’t want me to get one of the scriveners?”

“It’s fine,” said Jona, “Let the kids go home early.”

“You want to run papers?” he said, “Look, if you got nothing going on, want to run a den with me and the kids instead? We bust one of the dens, we smash the pipes, and we run anyone we catch into the tank. Then we file a few reports. A little fun for the scriveners, huh?”

Jona nodded. Jona stood up. He unsheathed his sword, and checked the blade for imperfections. He flipped the blade back into his baldric. “Bats or teeth?” he said, “And you know how I feel about just bats.”

“I know, Corporal. Sorry, but bats. You can keep the teeth in your pants,” said Calipari, “You never know.”

Jona pulled a club from off the wall. He hefted it in his hand. He didn’t like it. He put it back for a different one, thinner with more weight at the end. “I’m not sitting with a scrivener,” he said. “Get me killed.”

“I’ll sit the scriveners around front, and you’ll watch for the back way,” said Calipari, “Always a few like to run for it. Break them. I’ll meet you in the middle.”

“Aye,” said Jona, “Which hole?”

“The Three-Legged Dog.”

“That pit?” said Jona, “Back way’s a pit, too. Easy to roll a fellow there.”

“Soft on me, Corporal?”

“Never,” said Jona. He gestured at one of the scriveners. “Just give me the new one. He’s fresh from training and still strong from it.”

The scriveners sat up taller hearing about the evening’s plans. Their quills slowed, and their backs straightened.

Jona caught the youngest private’s eye. Jona and the new private shared a grin. “Pike him and he’ll watch my back,” said Jona, “He’ll like pikes better than teeth.”

“You’ll be fine on your own. I’ll run through and let the kids break the guts of the place. Any trouble should break quick.”

“Right,” said Jona, “If some tough breaks me, my mother’ll come looking for you, Nic. I’m an only son.”

“You’ll do fine, Jona,” said Calipari, “You live for this stuff.” Calipari snapped his fingers at the new private, who would be running reports at the end of the day. “If you get back in time, you can come along, Private.”

The boy, for he was still a boy, dropped his quill where it sat and ran for the central station, reporting envelope in hand.

* * *

He doesn’t tell me anything about where he goes. Nothing at all. It makes me sick to think about it.

I could probably tell you.

Don’t. Please, just don’t.

Turco and Djoss cased this huge warehouse from the back.

The warehouse had one whole wall open to the canal, where water and ships ran straight into the warehouse like needles docking in old veins. These flatbeds with heaps of damp wool belched back into the canal.

Turco and Djoss stood outside the arch where the wall opened to the canal. They were on dry land. Turco pressed against the arch, his head shooting around the beams to peak inside. Djoss was just behind him.

Six workmen moved wool from the heaps on the land to the heaps on the boat.

Turco grimaced. Djoss shook his head. Djoss pointed again. Turco looked in, and saw workmen. He punched Djoss on the shoulder. Turco tried to walk away. Djoss grabbed Turco’s cloak. Djoss shook his head. He gestured to the ground with his open palm. Wait.

The next riverboat piled with wool disengaged from the docks, and drifted into the canal. The drivers pushed the boat along with long poles across the bottom of the river. One man stood in back with the rudder. Until the next boat came, the workers sat down on the wool, and passed different flasks around.

Djoss pointed again. The wool on the boat had been blocking a small, red door on the other side of the warehouse. Card games are behind red doors.

Turco nodded. He wrapped a dirty red rag over his face. He slipped a small crossbow from his cloak. He strapped three bolts to the string, ready to shoot wild. “You were right,” he said. He grabbed the edge of the wall and swung around, howling.

Djoss winced. Too soon. Djoss tugged a brickbat off his back, and swung into the warehouse on Turco’s heels.

A worker looked up at Turco. “What you want?” he snorted, “You stealing wool?”

Turco stopped in his tracks. “Pardon us, gents,” he said. Turco bowed gracefully.

Turco kicked open the red door. Inside the room, six men sat around a table, and a seventh held a bottle of brandy.

Djoss filled the space behind Turco.

The gamblers looked up at Djoss, a huge gorilla of a man, with arms like bags of meat. Turco waved his crossbow around the room like a child with a toy.

The man with the brandy placed his cup onto the table. He placed the bottle next to it. He raised his hands. The other men put their cards facedown on the table, and raised their hands in the air.

Djoss had the brickbat in one hand and a damp red rag over his face, too. Djoss closed the red door behind him. “Well,” he said, “Keep your hands up, and don’t get killed.”

Turco moved to the edge of the room. He howled and hopped. Turco threw his cloak on the floor next to the table.

Djoss swept one hand across the table, and threw everything there onto the cloak—card, coin, cup, and pipe. He grabbed the corners of the cloak together in a bunch, and swung the makeshift sack up to his back.

Djoss and Turco backed away fast, and by the time they got to the warehouse again, a new boat had been half-piled with wool. Turco jumped onto the boat, and he crawled over the mountain of wool to the other side of the boat, the edge of the warehouse, and escape. Djoss followed over the wool, too, because he didn’t want to run through the workers with the money.

The workers stayed out of the way.

The man with the brandy probably alerted the improper authorities. Djoss and Turco had to get off the streets. They moved ten blocks fast, sticking to the alleys as much as they could. They didn’t run, but they didn’t linger. They lost their red rag bandannas. When they got to the tenth block, they were at the kind of tavern where no one had eyes.

The place used to have a sign of a black dog over it, until a thug had broken the decrepit sign and the dog had lost a leg. Now it’s called the Three-Legged Dog.

Djoss paid cash for a room upstairs. While there, they’d both split the bounty, and take their prize downstairs to the limbs of the wishing tree. They’d smoke everything immediately.

By the time they finished counting, Turco’s hands were trembling, and he sweated pink blood. He fingered the pipes from the table, searching for the right kind of smoke. The pipes leached black ash.

“You,” said Djoss, “Get your hands out of the way.”

Turco pushed aside cracked glass from the cups and bottles, and the edges cut his hands, but he had to get to the next pipe. He didn’t seem to mind the tiny lines of blood on his hands.

Djoss slapped Turco’s wrists. “Hey!” he said, “Look out, alright! I’m trying to count the coins! People don’t smoke the real stuff at the tables.”

“Never know,” said Turco.

“They don’t, all right?” said Djoss. He pushed Turco back from the pile. “Relax. Let me finish counting. We can’t rent a room for the ragpicker pipes with what’s left.”

“If they don’t throw us out together, I’ll cut off your fingers.”

“I’m almost done counting.”

“Did you hear me?”

“Wait…” said Djoss. He looked down at hands, befuddled. “I lost count. Let me count. Go spit out the window and see if you hit anybody.”

Turco threw his hat off his head, and let his scraggly, black curls swing free in the wind like ruined rope. He wiped at the pink blood seeping from his trembling skin. He leaned out the window.

Djoss finished counting. He pushed a pile of coins across the floor. “Hit anybody good?”

“No,” said Turco, “I haven’t been spitting. There are guards down there.”

“What? How many?”

“Lots.”

“What are they doing?”

“They’re standing there. And they’re talking with a fellow.”

“A fellow fellow, or just someone?”

“A fellow fellow. I think it’s the innkeeper’s fellow. Their watchout man is watching out. Don’t worry. Fellow’ll bribe the guards. Guards don’t really care about this place. Might get killed coming in here, ringing their bells.”

“Want to wait a bit?”

“Why?”

“You know, maybe the fellow don’t have enough.”

“No, it’ll be… Yeah, I see the coins. Let’s go.”

Turco stepped towards the door. He crossed over the coins and Djoss.

Djoss grabbed at his cape. “Wait,” he said. “Weren’t we going to use this to get some paint, find Dog and get the mudskippers working?”

“We can do that later.”

Djoss pointed down at the floor. “Don’t forget your coins,” said Djoss, “I’ve got mine.”

* * *

Corporal Jona Lord Joni leaned against a wall beside the back door. The Three-Legged Dog squatted on an intersection of three footpaths. Two of those footpaths went to the front door. One went to the back. The back footpath was a zig-zagging mess of old bricks, loose beams, and squatters in the ruins. The front way wasn’t much better, but at least the two roads passed between the Pens and the Ferry, and crowds walked on them.

Jona had the bat in one hand and the sword in the other, and he held them up so everyone there could see him.

Among the ruins, hollow eyes looked out from shadows at Jona like he was a piece of raw meat.

Jona knew he’d hear the screams and footsteps pounding up the stairs, when Calipari struck. Until Jona heard commotion, he watched the crowd around him. Two men in black capes bled pinks. They trembled and passed an undercooked sausage between them. They growled obscenities at each other between their turns of bites of food. An abandoned chamber pot kept a fire burning where six or seven wadded clumps of rag watched the two men with the sandwich. They pretended to ignore Jona.

Jona pressed his back against a solid pillar that used to be a chimney. He kept his weapons up near his face so no one could easily wrap a blade across his throat from behind.

Then, from inside the building, ceramic broke. A woman screamed. The band stopped. A cluster of boots galloped towards the back door. Jona stepped away from the pillar. He held his sword out in front of him, towards the door. He braced himself for the runners.

The first was a puff of cloth and fear. Jona jammed the sword into the man’s thigh. The man’s face grimaced and he dropped to a knee. Jona pulled his sword out in time for the next man, a Dunnlander that reeked of the pink. Jona caught the Dunnlander tripping over the fallen body with a bat across the skull. Jona knocked the spinning Dunnlander back into the guy behind him. The press of bodies swelled out into the alley. Too many were trying to run for it. Jona swung his sword again, at the air around the Dunnlander so everyone behind the Dunnlander could see it.

“King’s man!” shouted Jona, “Stay where you are!”

Sergeant Calipari shouted from inside the Three-Legged Dog. Jona couldn’t make out his words. The bodies stopped at the back door, peeling back into the building as the scriveners jammed at them with quarterstaffs and clubs.

Jona kicked the Dunnlander back into the room. Then, he picked up the wounded man up by the hair and threw him into the room.

Jona’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. He saw smoke, and motion. Scriveners corralled all the people against one wall, mostly. One of the scriveners prodded at two men grappling on the ground with his boot, without a weapon in his hand. Jona squinted through the haze of smoke. Then he gasped. Jona saw Calipari wrestling with a large man on the floor. The large man had Calipari by the neck, but Calipari was smacking the fellow with his club across the large man’s stoned skull.

The large man was Djoss, Rachel’s brother.

Jona sheathed his sword and threw his bat at the scrivener there. Jona grabbed Djoss from behind in a hard sleeper. Jona dragged Djoss away from Calipari.

Calipari gasped for air. “Hold him!”

Jona pulled Djoss back into the alley. He threw him past the man with the injured leg, and jumped over his body.

The Dunnlander had recovered some of his consciousness. He was trying to crawl to the river. Jona pulled a knife from his boot, and lunged. The Dunnlander took Jona’s blade in his back, right over his hip. The Dunnlander screamed in pain. His blood spurted black across Jona’s uniform.

Jona looked up and heard fists slamming into skin.

Calipari had come after Djoss in the alley. Calipari stepped on Djoss’s head and snarled.

Jona pulled Nicola back.

“Let this one go,” said Jona.

“What!?” shouted Calipari.

Djoss dragged himself to his knees, and crawled down the alley.

Jona had a hand on Calipari’s shoulder. “We got plenty, didn’t we? What’s one more?” barked Jona, “So, let that one go.”

“Why?!”

“I know his sister,” said Jona

“I don’t care who you know!” snarled Calipari, “He had it for me!”

Djoss shook his head. “Listen, I know his sister. I can’t drag him in. I’m trying to make things right with her, and I don’t want to drag him in.”

Calipari looked at his boy, in this alley. He cocked his head. “Never knew you to have mercy,” he said. He took a deep breath. “Never knew you liked a girl this much. Let him go. But, you owe me one. You owe me big.”

Djoss stumbled down the alleys between ruins and river, into the warm embrace of stink that the poor made with their fires burning trash in the night. Let the pinker burn himself in those corners. Let someone else slit his throat. Jona’s hands were clean.

Jona collected his knife from the kidney of the howling pinker.

Calipari grabbed the Dunnlander by his sweaty hair. Sergeant Calipari glanced at the wound on Turco’s back, and cursed. He pushed Turco to the edge of the river. “You’re bleeding black from your liver,” said Calipari, “You’re a dead man now or in an hour. Hour’d be long with this kind of pain. So…”

Turco screamed for mercy. He screamed so loud his voice cracked.

Calipari pulled a knife over Turco’s throat. Calipari pushed Turco’s body into the river. Blood fanned out in a cloud. The body stayed afloat, drifting towards the bay.

* * *

Let Rachel find him, thought Jona.

Her brother was lying in a ditch, all bloody.

She was meditating a koan, and pushing a mop from one corner of a hall to another. A man came by and asked if she could read his fates. She told him that she saw a painful encounter with a mop in his immediate future. The man laughed and went back into the room with the girl he had bought. Rachel looked down on the water, focusing on her koan. How do I move a ship on the far horizon with only this hand? She pondered a solution of the pain that moved the winds, how enough pain could pull any ship, anywhere.

And, then she saw her brother in a burst, on the horizon, sinking.

She knew there was nothing she could do until her shift was over. He would survive until the shift is over. And rent money had all been smoked, so her money would be necessary.

After her shift, she walked six blocks south and turned a corner behind the warehouses and behind the pens. She ducked under the pillars of a ruined building. This used to be a house. Now it was the ruin that shared a wall with a warehouse that shared a wall with a tavern so no one could tear it down and no one wanted to pay to renovate. Under the eaves the drifters shuffled into slow death and alcohol. 

Rachel wrapped the air behind her with fire to keep the bedraggled night monsters back. She touched her brother’s face, and wondered how she’d get him home by herself. She picked up his legs. She pulled him through the mud on his back by his legs. She dragged him out of the mud, to the cobblestones in front of the tavern. She flagged down a man in an empty dogcart, and paid the fellow to help her lift her brother into the back. She hopped into the cart next to the driver.

When the cart reached their little corner of the city, she had Djoss placed gently on the sidewalk, where they could wait for him to wake up and carry himself up the stairs.

She let him rest there, in the street. She took what was left of her night’s pay to the landlord, and handed all of it over to him.

She went to work. She knew she had to let him heal himself a little. Give him a chance to heal.

She knew it was time to leave this town, and this time it was because of Djoss instead of her.