Never Knew Another (7 page)

Jona wasn’t one to get called Lord Joni much at all, unless he was getting mocked for it. He never understood what Lady Sabachthani might have wanted from him, and he was too afraid to ask her straight out.

This time, Ela had brought a basket, which she coyly set beside her unexplained. When the conversation slowed, she opened the basket to produce a tiny black terrier.

She put the little dog at her feet and told the dog to follow her as she walked around the room. It obeyed. She winked at them, and ordered the dog to climb on the wall. To the politely delighted gasps of her audience, masking the fear of Sabachthani magic, the dog walked up the side of the wall, stopping at the ceiling.

Flush with success, Ela then demanded the dog serve tea. It came down from the wall as easily as it had gone up the side of it. It jumped to Ela’s chair, then the table. The little dog tried so hard to hold the teapot with his clumsy mouth, but clever as he was, he was still just a dog. The pot slipped from his teeth, and broke on the table in front of Ela. Hot tea spilled out.

Ela cursed like a sailor, and threw the animal back into his basket. Her face flushed.

In the silence that followed, Jona wondered why he had been invited, and why she had gotten so mad, and why he couldn’t just go home right then. The room was silent, waiting for Lady Sabachthani’s mood to shift. Jona only got more uncomfortable in the silence. He stood up. “It’s just a teapot,” he said, and handed her his napkin across the table. “That dog was walking on walls and you’re mad over a teapot? I never saw magic like that before. Not even Senta do that.”

Ela ignored the napkin. “Stupid thing did it on purpose,” she said, kicking at the basket. “Parlor tricks like that… My father ended a war with one spell, and I have a retarded dog who can bend his weight up a wall.”

The hostess didn’t say anything. They were all watching Lady Sabachthani. She had the kind of power that made people patient.

“It’s still impressive,” said Jona. “I’ll find a new pot.”

The hostess looked up at Jona as if he had just confessed to murder.

“What?” he said, confused. “I say something?”

The hostess cleared her throat. “The servants will do that, Lord Joni. They’re waiting for you to sit down so they can clean up.”

The other guests smiled and said nothing, except for Ela. “I always liked that about the king’s men: problem solvers. They don’t wait around for anyone to do something. Not like us.”

Lady Ela put the basket in the hostess’ lap, and gave the dog one more command. She made it roll onto its back and pee itself from inside. The dog obeyed. Urine leaked out of the basket’s seams.

Lord Joni was the only one laughing with Lady Sabachthani. The hostess, with the dog on her lap, smiled while her fingernails dug into her teacup. She wouldn’t remove the basket, because Lady Sabachthani had placed it there. She pretended to enjoy it. Tea service was soon over. When Jona left, no one said goodbye to him.

***

My husband came back from the noblewoman’s house. He said they had burned the cards Jona had left behind with his home’s address. None had ever been to the house, and no one remembered the way. Lady Ela would know, but we couldn’t approach her casually. The main city temple petitioned the Captain of the Guard for an address, but he found no record, and his search would take time. Jona’s fellow guardsman had probably destroyed the records to protect his mother and the house she had left. The courts might have tried to take it from her.

Given enough time studying Jona’s memories, I would be able to walk straight there from anywhere in the city. I just needed more time. In the meantime, Salvatore was a greater threat than an empty house and an old woman. Salvatore would try to run. The old woman? The empty house? They weren’t going anywhere.

***

Jona walked around the Pens. He waved at a pinker he knew as he passed. Dellner was just a petty cutter that birdied his boss for a little reward money a Lord had offered. He did everything he could to pay for time at the underground hookahs. He’d confess anything, turn on anyone, as long as there was coin in it for time underground.

Dellner didn’t respond. Annoyed, Jona called out Dellner’s name. Dellner didn’t even look up. Jona waved Geek over from the other side of the street. Dellner didn’t move a muscle where he stood. He leaned against warm stones, breathing while two guards shouted and waved their hands in his face.

Geek squinted. “How pink’s your birdie? Never seen anyone this deep above ground. Shouldn’t have let him walk around. Might walk into a carriage without seeing it.”

Jona scratched his neck and shook his head. “He’s so pink, he might as well be meat.” Jona pushed Dellner deeper into an alley. Dellner didn’t fight back. Geek followed. “Only a week ago he was our boy. He must’ve been living in a weed pit with the reward, puffing like he’s trying to kill himself with it.” Jona pushed Dellner harder. The man stumbled into a brick wall and scraped his head against it. His blood was pink. His sweat was pink. It left a stain along the wall. He stumbled and fell. Dellner’s head rolled back and gazed up at the sky. His toothless mouth hanging open was pink inside.

“What should we do with your birdie?” said Geek.

Jona didn’t answer. He leaned over and flipped Dellner over, making sure the man’s face was in the mud. Jona put his heel to the back of the pinker’s head, pushing Dellner deeper.

Dellner’s body couldn’t connect to an appropriate response. His arms lay limp in the mud. His face stayed in the mud. His chest heaved up and up, struggling to breathe, while his feet tried to walk away from the mud, as if they were planted on solid ground.

Geek said something, but Jona wasn’t listening. “Hey!” Geek shouted, grabbing at Jona to pull him off.

He wasn’t fast enough. Dellner’s body was weak from the smoking the demonweed hookahs. His chest stopped shuddering. His legs and arms went still.

Jona stepped off the body. Geek stared at Jona, his face pale. Geek’s hands were shaking. “What’d you do that for?!”

“Well…” Jona thought a moment before he spoke. “I didn’t mean to kill him.”

“We could have taken him to a temple! They’d have watched him until he came off the smoke!”

“I don’t go for the temples, Geek.” The body in the mud looked more like a muddy root than a man. Jona half expected a brown trunk to sprout from the back of the fellow’s skull. “He didn’t go for temples, either.”

Geek said nothing about it later to Calipari. Nobody birdies on the king’s men, least of all another king’s man. Geek helped Jona push the body down a sewer grate, and if anyone was watching they didn’t say anything. A bad interrogation was all, and these things happened, and everybody knew Dellner was nobody to nobody.

Lunch came, and Jona sat down with all the boys outside the guard house. The other guards looked at him without eating, waiting for Jona to leave. Jona snorted. He took his bread to the main room where Sergeant Calipari sat poring over scrolls while he ate.

Jona nodded towards the papers. “What are you doing?”

“I can’t make figs out of this tax form from the… You know, that one…” Calipari’s voice trailed off as he crunched numbers in his head, looking for the smugglers in the columns. The scriveners on the other side of the room tried to make conversation, but Calipari scolded them and they bent their backs to work.

Sergeant Calipari set his ledger down, and snapped a finger at Jona. “Hey, Lord Joni.”

Jona formed a mask on his face, playing the role of the red-handed bully, too proud to show any red in his face. That’s who he was supposed to be, he knew.

“Don’t kill any more birdies, even in accident,” said Calipari. “Don’t be so cruel. You’re a solid man day-in, day-out, but you aren’t a nobleman when you’re in that uniform. Even noblemen can only break and batter the ones on their own lands, and you got no lands left. The king’s subjects are not yours to break and batter in the king’s streets. Take pity on the pinkers. Nobody asks to live like that, even if they choose to go down to the hookahs.”

Jona nodded.

“No one’s reporting on it. I say let it die.” He looked back down to the ledger and circled something with a quill. “There. Corporal, I’ll break you myself if you ever do that again. I’ll pull the lever when you hang. Clear?”

Jona nodded, and chewed his bread, silently.

Sergeant Calipari didn’t look up from his papers. Behind him, the young scriveners were pale and shaking. One of them stood up to leave, until Sergeant Calipari cleared his throat. The scrivener sat down, and cut a new goose-feather. He held his feather over the page like he couldn’t remember where he was.

Sergeant Calipari had just threatened to kill Corporal Jona, Lord of Joni, a king’s man and nobleman. Jona heard it. They had all heard it. Jona knew he was supposed to be afraid.

Jona finished his bread, and went for a walk. He couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t shaken. He knew that he should be terrified, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t even angry.

The guard had hardened him, the Night King hardened him, but inside he was formless, still.

***

Out with the boys, this time Sergeant Calipari was with them. They were deep in the Pens, underground, betting on the cockfights. Jona wasn’t betting. He stared down at the flurry of blood and feathers. He was bored by it.

Calipari came over and smacked him on the back. “Buck up! You’re bringing us down.”

Jona shrugged. “Guess I’m not kicking for this kind of bird,” he said. “Going to go find me a better tail-feather.”

The boys laughed and Jaime said he wanted to go, too, so Jona waited out one more fight. Then, Jona and Jaime went above ground and north of the Pens. Uniforms got deep discounts there. Jaime picked out a child, all soft curves and barely thirteen, and hopped up the stairs after her, laughing at Jona to choose well.

Jona never actually went upstairs with the girls. Instead, he sat with the madame of the establishment and shared a cup of tea, ignoring all the sounds from above, and all the people coming and going. The two talked about the madame’s daughter off and married to a nice officer of a merchant ship, the girl now living right on the bay next to the port. They both knew her son-in-law was dead and her daughter was pushing mugs in a dive, pregnant from who knows who.

Jona talked about his quest for a suitable bride among the rest of the nobility as if he actually wanted to marry anyone. The madame gave Jona her motherly advice based on the news she heard from the noblemen that passed through her establishment. She mentioned upcoming parties he might attend to meet promising young ladies. This season there weren’t as many parties to attend as usual, but still plenty of opportunities for an up-and-coming nobleman with such a fine uniform.

In truth, Jona wouldn’t have come here at all except that Jaime followed him out after a brothel. In the end, Jona was glad for the conversation with the woman. People didn’t really talk to Jona, with his uniform on. When Jaime staggered back downstairs, his eyelids dropping from the effort and the booze, Jona was disappointed that his time was up.

Jaime swayed around his boots, barely able to keep his feet beneath him. The proprietress frowned and put her cup down hard on the table. Jona shrugged. “Can’t be helped.” Jaime slapped Jona on the back and tried to say something, but when he opened his mouth, bile spewed out. Gobs of vomit splashed into the tea, and smothered the fine china. Jaime simply laughed.

Jona had to walk his stumbling friend home. Jaime couldn’t make it without shoulders to lean on. But even drunk, he knew the way to the little house he had inherited from his wife’s family. He pointed and mumbled the directions home. Jaime’s wife had been waiting up for her husband to return. She and Jona didn’t say a word to each other as he let Jaime’s weight lean over to her. She was strong enough for him. She eased her husband onto the kitchen table sideways where he could puke and it could be wiped away without much fuss. She and Jaime had been married for fifteen years like this. From the windows, one of Jaime’s sons looked down, barely thirteen and looking more like his father every day.

Then Jona was standing in a dark street all by himself, surrounded by these plain, simple houses. He wondered what it was like inside those houses in the daylight. He wondered what it was like on an Adventday afternoon, sipping tea and watching the kids while the good wife sews Adventday Caps with her sisters on the back porch, and people go around visiting everyone. He imagined the scene. It all seemed so normal, but the women had no faces, and the children were just small, formless, hands running through trees and grabbing at everything.

He tried to picture a child. Any child. He couldn’t think of even one. He tried to remember the name of Jaime’s son, in the window, but it came out all wrong—too much like Jaime drunk and smiling. He tried to think of any child in the world, and hold that child in his mind’s eye.

He couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t feel anything. The black absence of feeling caught up inside his chest as if his heart had blackened into a stone. Jona sat down on a curb, and pressed his hands into his chest. He tried to breathe, but air wasn’t coming into his chest right. He stayed there a long time, bent over from this pain—an ache in his chest like a scream that wasn’t coming out. Not even tears came out.

It diminished, but didn’t faded. He walked home slowly.

***

My husband scoured the city, sniffing through the trash heaps for the worst of the stains among the outhouses and drinking houses and all the places Jona might have sweat out a long night. He had lived here too long. He had been in too many of the buildings here. He had walked down these roads, pissed in the alleys, and wiped sweat away everywhere he went.

Jona was alone every night, when everyone else was dreaming. He never slept like people were supposed to sleep. He kept his heritage a secret, and he was careful about it, but it was too easy to make mistakes when he was passing among the king’s men. He kept his true self hidden, like his blood, and no one gets close.

Jona’s life ended at the edge of his skin. This made his loneliness a broken sail that hung always on his back, windless and rain-drenched. He walked with this sail hanging over him. His shoulders rolled forward, and his eyes gazed tight into every stranger in the world.
Watch out.