Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet (23 page)

  
“Martial Knight,” he pronounced, abruptly. 

  
Saul took up his drink again, thoroughly suppressing the jolt that suddenly
rose in him at the mention of Celyn’s name.  He feigned apathy as he drank.

  
“I am sure you recall the name.”

  
“Yes,” said Saul.  “We intercourse on occasion.”

  
“Every tenth day without fail.”

  
“… I enjoy her,” he replied.

  
“She
is
a remarkable beauty, particularly for a martial.” The
neuralist’s eyes flashed when he inclined his head. “But, then, therein lay the
problem.”

  
Saul sensed the “darker purpose” breaching the surface.

  
Pope took up the bottle, refilled both glasses and leaned back again.  “Intercourse
between martials,” he continued.  “It tends to create complications, which is
why we generally encourage copulation with walkers.  Mutuality tends to be a more
fertile seedbed for emotional connection – very dangerous,
especially
given
the woman in question.”

  
Pope drank and was silent.

  
“What are you talking about?” Saul asked.

  
The neuralist exhaled deeply.  “Martial Knight,” he said, putting down his
glass with a clink, eyes raised to the ceiling.  “She is…”

 
 The silence was agonising. 

  
“She is what?” asked Saul.

   The insidious smirk reappeared.

   “She is … unstable.”

 
 “I don’t like it.”

  
Naomi lifted her head up from the table.  Her lips curled into a pout.

  
“You’re too hard on yourself,” said Celyn.  “If you keep starting over, you’ll
never stop.”

  
“But it doesn’t look right.”

  
“You won’t know until it’s done.  Now, stop moving already.  This is hard
enough as it is.”

  
The tip of the pastel scraped against the thin paper as she lightly dabbed the
fine powder onto the girl’s rose-crested cheeks.  Her eyes moved rapidly up,
taking snapshots of the girl whenever she found herself in the right position. 
The feel of slowly bringing something to life was a queer and alien joy she
never thought she could experience again.  

  
Naomi sighed, frustrated, and scrutinized her work with a pout.

  
“How’s yours coming?”  

  
“Almost finished…”

 
 She made three more strokes of yellow and brown down the locks of hair and
added four more dots of turquoise to the bowed eyes, then sat back and smiled
at her work.  “There,” she said, beckoning the girl toward her. “Come.  Tell me
what you think.”

  
The girl dropped her pastilles down at once and came beside her.  

  
The little weight pressed against her leg as Naomi gazed down at the pastel
drawing and beheld the image of herself: bowed over, crayon in hand, eyes vivid
and genial, the light hairs of her bright, gold fringe drooping over her
drawing hand.  

  
“Wow… it looks just like me.”

  
The girl looked up at her, eyes large and wondrous. 

  
“Then, it’s perfect,” she smiled.  

  
She took the fixative and sprayed it over the piece from a distance.

  
“For you,” she said, presenting the girl with her own portrait.

  
The little face beamed.  A second later, however, the girl’s eyes strayed up
over the top of the page, focusing directly on her chest.  The wide smile
disappeared and the little expression became suddenly sullen.

  
“What’s wrong?”

  
“Ah, nothing,” Naomi hesitated.  “It’s just…”

  
“What?”

  
“…My locket.”

  
She looked down at the gold pendant hanging from her neck.

  
“Oh…”  She picked the pendant up and held it up in her lone hand.   “You can
have it back.”

  
“No!” Naomi exclaimed suddenly.  “I-I want you to keep it.  I do.  I really do.”

  
The girl hung her head and started to shuffle one foot over the other.  “It’s
just…”

  
“What is it?”

  
“… The picture,” she garbled.

  
“Picture?”

  
“Yeah.”

  
“What picture?”

  
“Mom and Dad…”

  
She stared back down at the pendant in the palm of her hand.  When she turned
it over, she noticed the round seam in the back, pressed it, and the locket
clicked open. 

  
“I forgot to take it out before I gave it to Saul,” said Naomi.

  
“These are your… parents,” she said in an inaudible murmur.

 
She stared at the two unknown figures in the picture and a ripple of sorrow
went through her.  She ran her thumb over the dirty glazing and pressed.  The
small sheet of glass slid out, along with the picture.   “Here…”

  
Naomi took the picture from her hand and quickly tucked it away in the pocket
of her dungarees.

  
“So, you’re supposed to keep a picture of someone special inside.  Is that how
it works?”

  
The large, innocent eyes looked up with a shimmer.

 
Celyn gave a slow, deliberate nod and cleared the loose papers from the table.  Something
gleamed in the light from beneath.  It was the edge of a blade.  She took the
blade by the grip and folded over the edges of the girl’s portrait, then
proceeded to carefully run the blade edge through the bends of the fold, cropping
out the excess edges.

  
Naomi observed her, silent and perplexed.  

  
Once the picture was carefully trimmed, she put the blade back down and took
one last look at the image, then at the girl herself.  She folded the picture
five ways and closed it inside the locket.

  
“There,” she said, finally, and let the locket drop over her chest.

  
“That means that
I’m
special, right?”  Naomi grinned happily.

  
“How about that?” she smiled.

  
She stood up and turned on the holoscreen.

  
“Breakfast?”

  
“Is it gon’a be like Saul’s breakfast?”

  
“No.”

  
“OK.”

  
She chuckled.

 
The low bawls of singing whales basking in the blue ocean light filled the
living area and Naomi sat up and was instantly immersed in the deep blue sea
with the migrating pod.  The glint of the blade on the table caught her
attention from the corner of her eye.

  
Celyn started the cooker and the big induction cooktop smoked as she opened the
fridge and took out the only raw ingredients nestled among the dried and
processed food packages: four eggs, a pint of milk and a bell pepper.

 
 The sunlight gleamed over the bright red bell pepper and the knife cracked
through the crust and rose and fell with slow thuds against the chopping board. 
The sunlight was warm against her face, and the back of her hands around the
hilt of the knife were rough and scored and the scar tissue shone.  She drew a
deep breath into her belly and the residual bliss of the previous night
simmered in the base of her abdomen on the exhale.  In the middle of her
delighted musing, she looked up.   She stopped in horror.

  
“Naomi…”

  
The blade she had left on the table had found itself in the girl’s hands.

  
“Naomi, don’t touch that-”

  
Startled by her voice, Naomi flinched.  The blade fell on the floor, and a
stream of bright red started to pour from her hand.

  
She dropped the knife with a gasp, grabbed a piece of cloth and immediately
rushed over. 

  
Naomi held her own hand just above the wound.  Her breaths were short and rapid
with shock and she started to whimper.

 
 “I’m – I’m s-s-sorry.”

 
The wound was deep and the blood was gushing out.  The under-flesh was exposed
and pink and tender.

 
 “I- it – it – l-looks b-bad.”

  
“It’s alright sweetie, just calm down.  It looks worse than it is.” 

  
She kept her voice calm as she bound the cloth around the deep cut.  The blood
soaked through the cloth in red blotches.  She looked up and when saw the tears
spilling down the little red cheeks, she was shot through with dread.

  
She froze.  Her eyes widened.

 
 “Don’t cry,” she whispered.

  
The girl fought back the whimpers to no avail.

  
The little face reddened and warped.  The tears streamed from the large,
enflamed eyes. 

  
“Stop crying,” her voice broke. 

  
A wave of heat swept over her and she recoiled, staring back at the girl.

  “Stop
crying,” she repeated.

  
But the weeping and moaning rose to shrieks, shrieks of a long forgotten past. 

   “Stop,” she repeated between unsteady
breaths.  “… Stop.”

   She picked the bloody blade up off
the floor.  Her hands started to shake. 

   “The crying …  The crying…”

   A scowl furrowed into her brow.

  
“Saul.”

  
Roused from his trance, Saul looked up.  Pope’s eyes were broad and dark with
premonition and he lifted the glass of ambrosia to his lips.

 
 “Saul … what do you know about Martial Knight?”

  
There was a long pause.

  
“Not much,” he answered.  “Is there something I am meant to know?”

  
The hollow eyes veered deviously up and surfaced through the glare of the round
lenses.

  
“Are you aware,” Poe asked, “that she had attempted to cohabit with another
martial?”

  
“Yes,” he replied.  “His name was Elijah Malachi.  He died in Nova Crimea.” 

  
He elucidated the facts as though there was no disputing them. 

  
“The rule of confidentiality
should
preclude me from telling you what I
am about to tell you,” said the neuralist.

  
“What happened?”

  
Pope serenely leaned further back into his seat and delayed his response. 

  
“She tried to kill him.”

  
There was long, uninterrupted silence.

  
“What?”

 
“…Martial Malachi,” Pope clarified, “her former lover, since deceased.  She
took a knife to him – cut right across his face.”

  
His immediate thought was that Pope was lying.  Then, flashes of Malachi came
back to him, and he thought of Celyn’s reticence, her silence about their past…

  
“You did not know?” asked Pope, stifling his racing thoughts. 

  
He looked up, tried desperately to spy out the shadows of a lie in the cold,
blue eyes.  There was no way this could be true.   

  
“Why would Malachi remain allied with someone who tried to kill him?” he asked
in response.

  
“Conjectures…” Pope hummed.  “I imagine Martial Malachi’s business interests were
of more concern to him, especially bearing in mind the neurals would have
removed any traces of residual animosity.”