Never Knew Another (25 page)

They weren’t even human to her. Rachel watched the birds flittering around the hallways, and the bears chasing after them. She counted the money like golden fruit pulled from a farm.

Weeks passed. Djoss only came home to push food into a cupboard. He dripped into his bed and slept with his arm draped over his eyes to keep the light out. They were both too tired to fight.

***

A heavy storm rolled in for three days. Rain, rain, rain. The streets emptied. The girls smoked corncob pipes from the balconies. The ships couldn’t come to port in such wild waters. No sailors. Few marks. No one worked.

Rachel finished early, and the owner of the brothel told her not to come back until the rains stopped.

She walked home in the rain a while, but she didn’t want to go home. She walked towards Djoss’ work at the bakery room. He was hunched outside a butcher shop, looking up and down the street.

Rachel slipped into a narrow alley before he could see her. She peered around a corner at him. How could she destroy this barely-spoken arguing if she didn’t even know what he was fighting to keep from her?

CHAPTER XVI

W
e searched for Salvatore. We slipped the wolfskins over our backs and prowled the sewer lines. I led. My husband followed. We sniffed the air for his scent.

I thought I had him once, near the Nameless’ pointless temple. I caught his scent near the door where the coin is paid. There were other ways inside, but this was his. I thought I had his smell. Jona was a demon’s child, not a Walker and not a wolf. He couldn’t tell me anything about what Salvatore smelled like.

We followed the smell that might have been Salvatore. It was sour, and cold, like rotten fruit left to freeze in a snowy field.

I lost the scent of him at the water’s edge, where the workmen kept their boats. The rowboat ferried us across fine, but once there, there was no sign of Salvatore’s scent. The street had too many pedestrians, and too many horses. We couldn’t smell anything there. We scared people, too, as big as we were. When anyone dared to come near, we snapped at them and ran off. Back into the sewers, and back onto his trail. No sign. Every night, no sign.

He had been here, somewhere.

I knew so much from Jona’s mind, but never enough. Salvatore’s patterns broke with his heart.

He was here. He had to be here.

***

Jona snuck the tax ledgers he’d stolen in to the station house, and slipped them into a pile of pending reports on Calipari’s desk. The Night Sergeant was in, but he was fast asleep, a bottle resting on the desk beside him. The night crew were about, bringing trouble off the street, but nobody was doing it right then. The scriveners had probably scattered when they saw the Sergeant had fallen asleep, drunk. Jona wrote a note to put with the ledgers. He used his left hand to hide his identity from Calipari’s sharp eyes.

Night King is real. She’s in here, somewhere. Tell no one until you’re sure.

He had studied the ledgers too. The man was working for the noblemen, providing wine and meat for the balls of nobility coming with the arrival of the dry season. With him gone, there was one less merchant to supply the noble balls. That’s all he was in his tax ledger. The Night King had wanted him killed for something, and it was hard to imagine that it was something to do with nobleman dancing long into the night.

***

Jona was at a pub near the Pens, where he had slipped Geek’s buddy Djoss a spare coin to get him inside even though the line was out the door because this troupe of dancers was in town. They could pull their legs behind their head and do cartwheels. Jona was there with Geek, Jaime, and Jaime’s wife. Jaime and his wife immediately started dancing—he wouldn’t touch a drop if she was looking. Geek saw the red door in the back and went gambling, no mind if it was illegal because they let him win a little for the privilege of staying open. Jona was left standing there all by himself in this big, crowded pub.

Jona went up to the bar and raised his hand at one of the barmaids. The only thing for him to do at a time like this was to get drunk as quickly as possible. He tossed his money on the counter and threw back his mug like it was going to fly away if he didn’t drink it fast enough. He raised his hand again. When he turned around with his drink, a woman stood directly in front of his face.

Rachel.

“Excuse me,” said Jona, “help you?” He fingered through his pockets for coins. He wondered if he had enough to bribe her. He was in a crowd. He didn’t have a way to kill her in a crowd. He didn’t have a knife, or any poison or anything. He was tired of killing people. He put the cup down on the bar beside him. He was tired.

“I remember you,” she said. “Don’t I remember you?”

“Maybe,” said Jona. He smiled. So, that was it.

“I busted your nose?” she said. “I want to talk to you somewhere. Somewhere away from here.”

She should have been screaming for the guard, shouting at everyone that this man in a uniform was an impostor. He looked like a man, but he was not a man at all. He was a demon’s child. He was trying to damn them all. Jona raised his glass to take a sip, and quickly brought it down. His hand was shaking too much. He couldn’t hold the mug. He sneered.

“I didn’t hear you,” he said.

“We need to talk,” she said. “Please, I don’t want to do anything awful to you. I just want to talk, where we can be alone.”

“Why?”

“I punched you,” she said. “Don’t you remember?” She mimicked punching him in the nose. She was trying to be friendly. “I’m not afraid of you, if you think… Look, we need to talk, okay? That’s all.”

“Shouldn’t confess to punching a king’s man,” he said. “King don’t like it when people punch us.”

“Your blood!” she shouted. Her voice didn’t carry well over the music and the crowd. Someone bumped her from behind. She fell against Jona a little. He pushed her back.

He pounded the top of the bar. “What about it?” He couldn’t get through the crowd if he had to run.

“Nothing, okay? I don’t want to hurt you, or tell anyone. Please, can we just talk?” She touched his hand, gently. “I just want to talk to you. Please?”

She pointed at the kitchen door. He shrugged and followed her. He was thinking about killing her. She was pretty. She led him by his collar through the crowd. He tried to think of what his mother would want him to do, but couldn’t think of anything. It was hard to imagine her telling her son to kill a woman.

It was bound to happen. It was in the air, always in the air.

What was there to talk about? There was nothing to talk about. He was what he was, and if anyone else knew, he’d be dead. If he had killed her when she struck him, everything would be different. If he had run back to the brothel where she struck him, after the bleeding had stopped, and hunted her, then he would still be alive in the morning.

He hardened behind a shell. His eyes closed, then opened. He looked around for any chance to get away with it.

She had him by the hand, back into the kitchen where a fat man wiped the glasses furiously, then out the back, where it wasn’t crowded, but there were still people.

“Where can we go?” she said. He looked at her. She was just as scared as he was. She let go of his hand and bit her lip. “We need to go somewhere private.”

Jona shook his head. “You really want to go somewhere private?”

“Please…” she said. She took a deep breath. “Anywhere. I’m new here. I don’t know where we can go.”

He looked up and down the street. “I know where to take you.”

A canal was near.

Jona led her down to the waters’ edge to an empty place, where the homeless cleared out at the sight of Jona’s uniform—a perfect place to choke the girl in privacy and drop her in the water. He’d have to be careful and fast. Sentas had tricks up their sleeves, he knew.

“Private spot,” said Jona.

“Okay,” she said. “I wanted to tell you that…” She looked around. “Please, don’t hurt me. You don’t have any reason to hurt me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” said Jona. “I really don’t.”

“Okay,” she said, again. She looked at the water.

Then, she leaned in close to Jona, close enough he could smell her skin, and she smelled like bleach and brimstone. Horrible. The ale hit him, maybe. Something hit him; something washed over him. Jona realized that he wanted to taste her neck. She spoke softly. “You were telling me over and over to wash my hands.”

“What do you want?” he whispered. “Want me to pay you? I don’t have a lot of money, but I’ll pay if I have to.”

“I’m not going to blackmail you,” she said. “I don’t want to do anything to you. I just… I just want to talk.”

“So talk.”

“I don’t really know what to say.”

“If you tell anybody, I’ll be burned alive. My mother arrested…”

“No,” she said. “No, no no… I know, I don’t want that.”

Jona’s fist clenched. She might just be wearing the clothes for the protection of them. “Are you really Senta?”

“Yes.”

Jona looked away from her, towards the murky canal water. “I don’t believe in that,” he said. “Don’t believe in Erin or Imam or the Unity.”

“Everyone believes in something.”

He didn’t want to kill her. “Where’s Elishta in all that, huh? Where am I? Nowhere. Evil. What am I supposed to do, worship demons?” He looked her in the face. She was terrified. “I can’t change what I am.”

“I’d have already turned you in, you know. If I was going to do that. If I wanted money, I’d have asked for it by now, back in the bar where it’s…”she looked over at the canal. “You know… Safer.”

“Right.”

“This isn’t exactly what I meant when I said somewhere private.”

“It’s the best we can do.”

“I just want to know how it happened, for you? That’s all. I’m just curious about you.”

“Right.” He’d never said it all out loud in his entire life. “All my secrets, then? My father and my father’s father, and maybe even my father’s father’s father were all like me, but they were a little worse. I was born with demon wings, and my mother cut them off me, sanded the stumps down to the bone. I have big scars there. Tell people I fell on a gate. I never sleep. Not even a little. What else do you want to know? There’s nothing else to know about it. That’s all there is. Satisfied?”

“My name’s Rachel. Rachel Nolander. I want to do something to you, and it might hurt a little, but it’ll be all right, I promise.”

They stood there, looking at each other. Jona wanted to laugh. He wanted to walk away as if this never happened, pretend it was all a joke.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said.

Jona snorted. “So, I’ll see you around. You tell anybody what I said, it’s the end of my life. Maybe the end of yours. You think about that.”

“No.” Rachel grabbed Jona’s hand. She lifted his palm up to look at it. “Just give me a second.” She ran a finger over his palm.

Jona shivered. Her finger was so warm, that a chill ran up his spine.

Rachel circled her naked finger over Jona’s palm, calling small bursts of fire into his skin, underneath it.

“That hurts,” he said.

She closed her eyes. She didn’t let go of his palm.

“That hurts!” he said, louder. He tried to curl his palm, but she wouldn’t let go.

“Stop,” she said. “I’m done.”

“What did you do?”

She still clutched his hand. “Listen, I know more about your heritage than you do. My mother taught me. When the oceans were born, they weren’t salty at all, and ran pure as liquid crystal. The rain came, and the rain fell over the naked ground, and the minerals on the rocks leached into the water. And the water grew dank with saline and brine. We can measure the precise moment the heavenly Unity touched the water, because the salt in our tears is only so lightly salty, and the rivers keep pouring the minerals and filth into the oceans. We can look for the place where the water is as salty as our tears, and the length of the journey will be the length of time human beings have been alive on these shores.”

Jona coughed. He was sweating. He had trouble breathing. He rubbed his hand. He had a burn mark under his skin.

“Elishta, far below our feet, has no life, only demons, and their wickedness seeks to destroy our life for theirs. They sent emissaries to enrapture the mortal world into the darkness below the waters, below the ground, where the burning of souls is the only light. When a demon-touched child is born, they are… supposed to be evil destroyers of life.”

She let go of his hand.

“And, everything I just said, what they teach about you, well… It’s all wrong. I think it’s all wrong. I know, because I’m not like that. I’m not a destroyer of life. I’m just me. I’m all I ever was.”

Jona leaned back against the wall, rubbing his hand. He looked down at it. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have anything to say. She unlashed her sleeve. She pulled it down a little to expose her shoulder. She leaned over to Jona. “What do you see?” she said.

Jona squinted in the dim lamplight. She had white skin, like a corpse, on her face and hands. Her shoulder was black as pitch. It shined in the moonlight. He reached out a finger and touched it. Too hard to be moles, to supple to be armor.

“My father, too,” she said. “My mother was a Senta he had beaten into submission. One day, my brother poisoned him, and killed the evil inside of him. I wasn’t evil like he was. My mother was killed when people found my demonic father’s body. My brother isn’t like us. He was born before I was, when my father wasn’t what he became. My brother hid me, and ran to get my mother, but he was too late. Him and me ever since, and no one else. These scales are all over my body. My feet are demon claws.”

Jona touched the skin in front of him. He ran his fingers on the scales.

Rachel let him touch her scaled forearm. He pushed the rest of her sleeve up higher, exposing more of her arm, and above the elbow it was only scales, like the smooth armor of a warm snake. He ran his hands over the scales, gently.

Rachel pulled the sleeve down sharply. She bound it shut. “So,” she said, “are you evil?”

“What?”

“We’re supposed to be evil, right? Are you evil?”