Never Knew Another (27 page)

“What do you care what he does long as the coin’s solid?”

“We have enough bad business on our own without looking for more. What’s he smuggling?”

“Bad business?” the widow echoed. “I knew those tricks of yours weren’t good for anything. Turco says they ain’t stealing. Might be lying, but it’s none of my business. You done? I don’t want you around when the boys come back.”

She could have meant her sons, or the men that kept her here. Rachel looked around. The squalid room had not improved from the recent rains. A few more wooden posts had been put up to prop the bowing floor above. It didn’t seem like enough.

Rachel had a room above ground with a window, a table and a bed. It made Rachel want to strangle her brother for what he was doing to this woman, how he was using her, but she knew that he’d stay with Rachel if she had to run. She wasn’t losing him. For now, he wanted to pretend like he was a different man, and have a secret life away from her.

Sparrow went to a corner of the room. She had a jug there that could have been rain water. It could have been anything. She took a deep swallow from it. She didn’t offer anything to Rachel. She didn’t even look up.

In the street, Rachel saw Djoss’ back pushing through the crowd. She ran after him. She ran beside him. He slowed down. There was blood all over his hands. “Pig’s blood,” he said. She didn’t believe him, but she didn’t know how to tell the difference. They walked back to the apartment. He went to his bed with dirty hands. She went to her cot with her muddy boots still on.

She thought about Jona, walking the streets. She thought about having her own secret life. She thought about how handsome he was in his uniform, even if he was a little mean sometimes.

***

Two nights later they both got their night off on the same day. Djoss rented a small skiff. They took to the bay, running along the sides of the galleons and the cutter ships, and the low freighters. Djoss could sail a little, and Rachel could manipulate the winds when she wanted. They picked up speed, and bounced from wave to wave.

Rachel laughed and laughed.

And everything was fine between them again for a while. Djoss was going back to see the widow now and then. Rachel knew but didn’t talk about it. She was out, too, meeting Jona in a café, sitting in the sun and talking to him about her life. She had never had anyone to talk to like that.

What was your face before you were born?

What is life like for you?

How do you live?

When she closed her eyes, she tried to picture him with wings. Would they have grown large like a gargoyle’s, or small and deformed? She tried to imagine his scars, and how’d they feel if she ran her hands over them.

***

Rachel waved at Djoss in the street. He nodded at her. He was carrying something. Rachel picked up step beside him.

“Hey,” she said.

“I know,” he slurred. He had a sheen over his eyes, like a crystal veil, and his shirt collar was pink from his sweat. He was having trouble focusing.

“What do you know?” said Rachel. She folded her arms. She knew what.

“Don’t use the stuff,” he said.

“Just make the money on it. Don’t use it.”

“Turco pays me enough to pay for a decent apartment for a change.”

“Right.”

“I’m not really into this stuff.”

“I believe you.”

“You don’t.”

“No, I believe you,” said Rachel. “I have to, Djoss. You’re all I have in the world.” She looked up and down the street. She knew where he was going next. “You know what else you should know? It isn’t a nice thing to do to that woman, or her boys. I wish you wouldn’t. I’m going home. Come with me, instead.”

He smiled, sadly. “Yeah,” he said. “I will. But Sparrow helped us when no one would. Her and Turco and Dog, they’re my friends. Rachel, when’s the last time we had friends?”

“I’m your friend,” she said.

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t, Djoss,” she said. She was lying. She knew exactly what he meant. She was going to meet Jona for tea under a willow tree. The rains were fading away, and people could live outside again most days without a parasol. Djoss said he’d be home later, and he was lying, too.

Rachel didn’t let him off easy this time. All this fighting with her brother, and Jona could wait one day. She wanted to make Djoss give this lie up, before it hurt even more. She followed him back to the baker’s room.

She watched him go in alone. The three boys came out and sat on a stoop. They pulled out their dice and tossed them in turns, but there didn’t seem to be a game to it. No one was winning. Rachel walked up to them. She smiled. They didn’t smile up at her.

The eldest pulled a spike from his ratty boot. He picked at his teeth with it. The rust matched the color of his teeth.

Inside, the baker was nowhere. Downstairs, the door was quietly ajar. Rachel heard the sounds of two people grunting softly, male and female. She thought about knocking. She pulled the door completely closed. She covered her ears. She didn’t want to confront them until they were dressed again.

The eldest boy came into the stairwell after Rachel, still picking at his teeth.

She pressed a finger over her mouth.
Hush.
The boy raised the spike in his hand and pointed at Rachel. “You leave us alone,” he snarled. He jumped at her from the top of the stairs.

Rachel grabbed for him in the air. “Djoss!” she shouted. The boy tried to stab her, howling. She couldn’t hold him back for long like this, he was so wiry and angry and fast.

Djoss came out, naked with his pants in his hand. He looked down confused at the boy fighting Rachel, stabbing at her body with the spike, cutting at her clothes, and tearing into the places in her body that should have been soft with hands and teeth.

The widow shouted from the room, “Please…!”

Djoss got his free hand on the boy’s leg and threw him against the wall hard. Rachel snapped her fingers, and the boy’s clothes caught fire. He howled like a little wolf. He smacked at the fire, then ignored it. He lunged at Rachel with the spike again.

Djoss had his pants halfway on. He couldn’t stop it in time. The spike caught between two of Rachel’s exposed scales catching the spike like armor under her clothes. The boy tried again. He would never break through with a rusty spike. Rachel tried to block with her arms to protect her clothes.

“What’s that!?” the boy shouted. Finally, the fight went out of him. His knees weakened and he leaned back into the stove. He coughed. He hadn’t drawn any blood, but he had tried. He had bit and clawed and shoved.

The widow said, “Djoss, please don’t.”

“Don’t what?” he said.

“Don’t hurt him.”

Rachel was exposed. Her scales showed through the cuts in her clothes. Djoss grabbed the blanket that the widow had been clutching over herself and handed it to her. Rachel couldn’t think. She had to cover the holes in her shirt where the boy had slashed at her. She had to hide herself.

The widow said nothing. The other two boys came in from the street.

Djoss broke the silence in the room. “If you tell anyone about my sister, I’ll kill you with my bare hands. If you tell Turco or Dog, I’ll kill them, too. You know I could.”

He found his shirt, pulled on his boots while standing up, one foot at a time, and nodded at Rachel.

Sparrow was crying. She reached out to her children. She grabbed at them. She looked up, terrified.

“Time for you to leave town,” said Djoss. “Time for you to take your boys and get out of the Pens. I see them again, it won’t be good.”

Sparrow pulled on her clothes quickly, her hands trembling. She took her boys hands.

“Go on. Get out of town. Get out of town forever.”

Sparrow led them up the stairs.

Djoss’ face was a mask, like a brick.

***

Back to their apartment near the butcher’s, Djoss pulled out a sewing kit and fixed Rachel’s shirt. She waited in her cot, with the blanket wrapped over her body.

“How long were you following me?” he said. He was a better sewer than she was. He had done it longer. He could pull leather taut and was strong enough to push needles through it.

“You don’t want to know,” she said. “I’m sorry. Did you mean what you said to them?”

“Of course not.”

“Because if you did…”

“No.”

“Her boy just tried to kill me, and it’s your fault”

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, Rachel. It’s not what I wanted. It’s not what I wanted for any of us.”

“What do you want, Djoss?”

They sat quietly a while. He sewed. She watched him.

“I don’t want to run. She’ll leave. She’ll take her boys,” Djoss said.

“I hope you’re right.”

He put down his work. He folded his hands on his lap. “Do you want to run?”

“No,” she said. “I like it here, too. I don’t think Sparrow will hurt us. Djoss, I’m so tired of running.”

“What do you think it’ll be like if we stay here?”

“Like this,” she said. “Like this until we have to run. It never, ever stops. Nothing changes. Nothing gets better. We just keep on running until we die.”

Djoss picked up his sewing again. “Good,” he said. He handed her clothes as he finished repairing them.

By evening twilight, they both had work to do. She checked it for new holes in his mending. She put all her Senta clothes on. “Check me,” she said.

He checked over her whole body for a hint of a scale, or a flash of skin. He found none. Outside, they stopped at a street vendor for something to eat. They came home at the end of the day, slept, and did it again and again.

And that was their life. That will be their life everywhere they go.

***

Jona’s mother piled ladles of stew into a bowl for him. She set the bowl before him and sat at the table, eating nothing.

“So,” she said, “how’s work?”

“Eh,” he said, “it’s work. You?”

“I finished the dress for that Carroha girl. You know the one, with those fat hips. I never had hips like that. When she walks, it’s like a ship’s floating sideways. She’s rich, though. Money makes any girl pretty.”

“No, it really doesn’t,” said Jona. “I hate those girls.”

“You need to marry one of those girls. You cut a fine cloth in a uniform. Get a promotion, maybe a commission, and you find yourself a rich girl, and one that isn’t too pretty because then she won’t mind you.”

“You were pretty once.”

“Your father was rich once. Any big plans tonight?”

“No.”

“The balls are starting soon. Lady Sabachthani’s the only one throwing any good ones. You should go to them. If you go out, pick up some tea. You drank a ton of tea yesterday. Honestly, I’ve never seen someone drink so much tea. How’s the stew?”

“It’s fine, Ma.”

Jona hunched over his stew. He tried to ignore his mother staring at him. She just kept staring at him, every night staring at him. Jona never saw her eat anyting, but she always cooked for him and watched him chew and swallow.

CHAPTER XVIII

S
alvatore was being kept from us. We were sure of it. Someone had told him we were here. They pulled him away. His trail was cold and getting colder every night.
The Night King knows.

We can’t trust her.
I did not want to contact her. The money he made for her would not be enough to justify protecting him from us. We were the only two people in all of Dogsland that were not afraid of her, and did not bow to the authority of kings.

We should have her arrested. We need some kind of leverage to get the truth out of her.

You’re thinking like him. We already know the truth. It is the only leverage we need.

When I dream, I do not know where I begin and he ends.

Give it time. All memories fade.

My husband was trying to comfort me, but this only made it worse. I thought about how Salvatore had eluded us. I was losing memories every moment, even as I was digging deeper inside of them, writing everything down as best I could. We had to face the Night King, and demand the truth. To do this, we needed to arrange a meeting, where we wouldn’t be killed just for demanding a meeting. We chose our own main temple, near the king’s palace.

We sent word to her in her father’s house. We wanted to send a clear message to her that we knew who she was, and that we had the power to reveal what we knew. We told her where we would be.

The temple of Erin in the city was open to the sky. If it rained during a service, it rained. The grass turned into mud too quickly, here, with all the crowds and all the rain. The temple here kept gravel stones across the yard instead of a lawn because of all the rains and the crowd of feet that would ruin everything into mud. The stones made walking noisier. We heard her long before we saw her, her dainty shoes as narrow as a hummgbird’s nostril compared to her heavy ankles. She was in widow’s black, but she wasn’t a widow. Her face was veiled.

We wore the wolfskin in the shade of a tree. We did not want to take them off. This place was a comfort to us in the city. There was dandelion wine and apple trees and on any other day children would be playing here.

I considered letting my husband speak for us, but I knew he wouldn’t speak kindly to anyone from her father’s house.

Let her speak first, I thought. Let her squirm and wonder if we were the Walkers or if we were just wolves.

She sat on a root that had grown out of the ground like a curving bench. She placed her hands in her lap, demure.

I yawned. I had very sharp teeth, and she could see them all.

Well?” she said.

I flicked my ears at an imaginary fly.

“You sent for me, and rudely I might add. I don’t know who you think I am…”

My tongue slipped loose. The wolfskin peeled away from my mouth. “I know who you are, Ela. I wanted you to know that the Temple of Erin knows exactly who you are.”