Never Knew Another (14 page)

We know that Salvatore and Aggie had met down there, from what Jona learned from Aggie, herself, when she was waiting to be burned alive in an empty prison cell. Salvatore was among the heretics every night, when he was done stealing for his supper.

She had been brought there by an older man who left her at the edge of the throbbing push of bodies. It was only her third week sneaking out of the convent at night and she was already underground. These things happened in cities; beautiful young women wound up in places they couldn’t have anticipated. Aggie stood next to a giant tambourine on a stand, rubbing her hands along her arms. The lime that had been smeared there must have been itching her. Salvatore saw her standing there, so beautiful, and so scared of her own daring.

He knew what to say to her, how to say it. He knew how to thrill her into abandon.

That’s what I think happened.

I will walk among the dancers tonight, and search for him. I will wear the skin of man, and be smeared with lime.

Take a bath before you come home. Wash your hair.

I will.

***

Nights came and into the sewer darkness they went. Aggie held his hand, and tiptoed in her new shoes through the black tunnels, cupping a votive candle against the breezes in the dark if they stopped to rest.

Hold out your hand behind your back,
and there was someone’s purse. He needed her just to walk along with him and hold out her hand when he touched her wrist. He’d slip something there from the other side, where she wasn’t holding his hand in hers.
Tell him anything you think he’ll want. Tell him you love him. Just get him back here. One good hit, he’ll go down. It’ll be fun. Be someone else for a while. Be anything but a convent girl.

***

Not even Jona, Lord of Joni, who had attended to the Lady Sabachthani’s whims for an occasional cup of tea, had seen the guardians of her estate before. Salvatore probably had, in this life or another, but he wouldn’t remember them well unless he felt something for them. He didn’t seem afraid of them.

Their silhouettes were a nightmare of spikes and curling steel armors, praying mantis things the size of carriages. Only a powerful master of magic could build one of them, much less keep two at his front gate in open defiance of the law. Lord Sabachthani would never have dared such a transgression beneath the eye of a dutiful king, but he had used magic to stop the terrible war and that meant something to the city, and to the king beyond just laws. If the king had been paying any attention to his lands, he probably would not have approved the guardians, but the old king had long ago withdrawn from the world, no son or daughter to mind his lands or the men that ruled them. What Lord Sabachthani did was between him and his money and no one who wanted his money suggested anything else about it.

In the daylight hours, the guardians trudged like weary oxen from their post back to a grove inside the estate. At evening twilight, the sleepless juggernauts creaked and groaned from their place among the birds. They stomped across the grass to the main gate, where they stood at attention, waiting to kill.

Sabachthani lives in Dogsland, not in my forest. Let him do whatever the King and Imam allowed. The forest was patient. All these walls surrender to our children and our trees, eventually.

***

Salvatore and Aggie stepped into the streets sideways, clinging to the shadows of the stone fences. Salvatore looked both ways down the street. The lampposts wore fog cloaks. The lights hung alone like ghosts.

Salvatore went first to draw any eyes that might be watching. He strolled down the middle of the street, walking back the way they had come. If any people were watching for trouble, they’d see Salvatore, not Aggie. If any guards were stalking the night, they’d follow him into an alley and search him hard. They’d find nothing, and by the time they were be done, Aggie’d be underground.

Aggie adjusted the helmet on her head. She slipped down the street, up against the edge of the wall.

She had no idea how dangerous this was, and Salvatore had sent her alone like it was a game.

Aggie crept up to the abominations at the gate. She reached out a finger to touch a bladed spike. The creatures didn’t move.

Jona watched her from a tree across the street and back a bit from the wall. He had climbed inside a neighboring estate where he thought no guards would see him. Any guards at this estate were human and tired enough not to notice one man in a shadow of a tree. Thieves didn’t come to the noble estates much. Jona watched her, and he didn’t know what to do if the magical guardians attacked her.

Aggie closed her eyes. She took one gentle step past the gap in the wall. There wasn’t a gate here. There was no need. The mechanical monsters stood in the entrance, blocking everything. They didn’t move an inch for Aggie. She had to slide sideways to get through.

Salvatore yawned, and leaned against a fence across the street. He pulled out a two-inch cigarillo laced with redroots. Thieves of the city in the north marked the hours on a job by smoking.
Maybe our demon child was from the north, maybe that was where he had fled from, and returned to.
Two inches was just enough time for a good thief to pull in and out of a big house like this one.

Aggie ran through the shadows of the yard, between the willows and the magnolias. She pressed her back against a wall. She shoved open a window with a tiny wedge from her pocket. Inside the window, purple drapes caught the night breeze. A long, black hallway yawned open before her. She looked both ways, then jumped inside.

Jona considered leaving her here, and grabbing Salvatore and dragging him into the sewers again for a solid beating for sending Aggie into Sabachthani’s all alone. Jona didn’t move. He had grown accustomed to waiting, though he didn’t know what he was waiting for, exactly. He knew he was going to have to do something, soon.

Aggie was gone a long time.

Salvatore smoked everything he had. He rubbed his hands, expectantly, glancing up and down the street.

Aggie snapped her finger at Salvatore from behind him along the nobleman’s walls. She had a thick wicker basket under her arm and a smile big enough to see beneath the helmet on her head.

Salvatore exhaled, and smiled with her. He pointed to the sewer grates. They went back underground, where they could talk in peace. Jona went down, too, through a grate one block down. He crept up to them kissing in the dark.

“I didn’t see you leave,” said Salvatore. “I feared the worst.”

“Used a different way out, got spun around a bit. Lots of locked rooms inside. I found one with a keyhole big enough for my fingers to get in. I didn’t even need to do anything to pick it. I found something heavy in the center of the room, on this pedestal,” she said. She swept her helmet from her head. She put it down on the ground. Her hands were still trembling with excitement. “I actually…” She held the basket up. “I don’t know what it is. I couldn’t see.”

Salvatore took the basket from her arm. “It’s heavy,” he exclaimed, surprised.

“I hope it’s magic,” she replied.

Salvatore hefted the basket in his arms. “Better hope not,” he said, “If it is, we dump it here and walk.”

“Let’s open it!” She closed her eyes. “You do it. I’m afraid to look.”

“Yeah. Got a candle?” Salvatore slipped the lid off. He lit the candle and held it out over the lip. “It’s… ”

“What?” She opened her eyes. “What is it?”

“It’s a thing… it’s… kind of like a dog, but there’s metal all over it.”

Salvatore leaned over and studied the creature. He pulled it up by its metallic scruff, and turned it in full candle light. The front half of its body was more metal than animal. The back was still recognizable as something like a dog.

The dog, if it could still be called a dog, ignored them both. The creature inhaled slowly, exhaled in a puff. Whenever it exhaled, a small golden powder spilled out from its snout, like a mold. The basket’s insides were thick with it.

Aggie reached in to pick the creature up. It remained still as a statue. She held it up with one hand. It was no bigger than a terrier. “What…?”

“Shh,” whispered Salvatore, “quietly. Oh, I hope you didn’t hurt it.”

She frowned. “Is it a dog?” The skin was missing in places. Naked bone and muscle showed in ridges along its bloodless haunches.

“Put it down, Aggie.”

She laughed, confused. “What is that supposed to do? What kind of magic is that? What’s it for?”

Salvatore gingerly extricated it from her hands. He placed it in the basket and put the lid gently over it. “Aggie, we need to dump that. It’ll be our death when Sabachthani finds our soul stink on it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Magic makes no sense. Drop it. We need to run before it does anything. If it does anything.” Salvatore took a deep breath. Thieves did not live as long as he had by being reckless with magic. “Better thieves than us have hung for less,” he said.

“Let’s at least dump it in a house in the High Streets, scare someone.”

He shook his head:
No.

“We should get someone in trouble with it,” she said. “I know who.”

“If you plant it it’s their heart on a plate. Things like this… People who make them… No, Aggie.”

“We need to go back to the convent. Take me back.” She picked up the basket. “Take me back, Salvatore.”

“Who could you possibly hate so much you’d have them killed?”

She creased her eyebrows like little hammers. Her lips curled. “I’ll show you.”

“Who is it?”

“I’ll do it whether you come with me or not,” she said. “If you come with me, you can see who.”

Salvatore sighed. “
Who is it?
” he repeated.

“I hate her so much.” She stomped her foot. “I’ll leave you here and do it myself. I wanted something dangerous. When you told me there were dangerous things, I went looking for one. Lord Sabachthani might destroy her. I want that. You’ve seen my back.”

“Aggie…”

She left him. She stepped into the darkness just like he had taught her to step. Her feet, thieves’ feet now and not a nun’s awkward gait, stayed forward on the balls. Her toes turned in a bit to keep her step solid and silent even in darkness, leaving no footprints, and no sound. The helmet was a sparkle in her stolen candlelight.

Salvatore reached for her.

Jona’s hand caught Salvatore’s sleeve. “In over your head, Salvatore?”

Salvatore whipped around.

“I’m here to help,” said Jona, sneering. “You know who sent me. Your friends are worried about you messing with this girl.”

“I have friends?”

“Productive little boy. Production falls, and they find you trying to mess it all up.”

“We’re not friends. If we don’t stop her, do you know what she’s going to do?”

Jona nodded. “You don’t get to love pretty girls when they might get you found out,” he said. “Don’t you know what’s in your blood? You’re lucky people look after you. Lucky you bring them so much good stuff.”

“Who really sent you?” said Salvatore. “Sabachthani?”

“It’s time to let her go,” said Jona. “Just let her go. You’ve done enough. I’ll walk you home. I’m thirsty. First round’s on me. Come on, Salvatore, let’s go.”

Salvatore looked down the sewers. The light of Aggie’s candle flickered in the distance. He frowned. “I’ll forget her, right? That’s what you mean. Then, I’ll find somebody new as soon as I forget her, and it’ll be like all this never happened.”

Jona smiled. “Other girls are all over, and they aren’t in convents.”

“Right,” said Salvatore. He flipped a backfist at Jona’s skull.

Jona snatched his wrist.

The blackjack slammed into Jona’s knee from Salvatore’s other hand. Jona fell to one knee. He grabbed for Salvatore’s cloak. Salvatore flipped the cloak off in Jona’s hand.

He should have expected the blackjack in the other hand. He was too distracted by the chance to finally speak to Salvatore, standing so close to someone else like him, after all that watching from afar. He wanted to get Salvatore alone and talk about how he lived, and how he should live, and how their life came to be at all in this world.

Jona’s pride hurt more than his knee. He should have remembered the blackjack.

***

When Salvatore caught up with the girl, she was already at the gates of the convent, struggling to figure out a way inside. She had wrapped her cloak around the basket, and had knotted the cloak over one shoulder like a cheap sack. It swung in the air, heavy enough to throw her balance off.

She frowned at Salvatore and pointed to her window. He reached for the basket, but she pulled away. She pointed up again. Salvatore shook his head, but he had his grappling hook out with his other hand. He let her go first, carrying the basket in her cloak, then climbed up the wall behind her. He held his hand out to push her up into the window. She turned around and glared at him like an angry child. He pulled his hand away from her.

***

Mother Superior remembers the girl who bled of Elishta after the king’s man breached her halls. She said that the church of Imam wrote us to ask for fireseeds when the girl was arrested and thanked me for them. They couldn’t just burn the convent down.

They should. Salvatore was in her room, right up until the end. The Temple is sure of it. I’m sure of it. He would have gone to her room, and tried to save her from herself.

They want us to share the thief ’s knowledge with them, when we find it. They want to know all about how he ruined their girl.

When the time comes, we will not share. They had their chance.

***

Inside the girl’s narrow room, as she had told it to Jona later, Salvatore placed a hand on the basket.

“I’ll scream.”

He pulled gently at the basket.

She took a deep breath.

He took his hand away. “Please don’t be this person,” he whispered. “Don’t hurt anyone like this.” He held his hands up, like surrendering.

She took the basket into the hall. Salvatore knew exactly who she was going to try and destroy with this thing, and it would never work.