Silence (40 page)

Sheikoh laughed along, his own
stemming from slightly hysterical relief. Strangely, he’d never
seen any magic performed just for the fun of it.

“
That sounds so much cooler
than what he showed me, that’s not fair. How come everyone always
likes you more than me?” Sheikoh mock complained.

“
It’s because everyone
knows that girls are better than boys! We’re prettier and smarter
and better at fashion,” Dorothi giggled back at the
teenager.

He flashed a pair of hurt eyes at
her.

“
Don’t be sad, you were
just born a little bit wrong,” Dorothi went on, wrapping Sheikoh
into a hug. He hugged her back, and, as the girl laughed into his
torn and burned, dusty coat, Sheikoh was suddenly glad that
Camillio had healed him; he didn’t want to picture Dorothi’s face
upon the sight of him after his battle with Khryzt.

“
Whoa, that’s pretty harsh.
Specially coming from the girl only wearing one sock,” Sheikoh
replied smugly.

His face shined a warm smile down on
the small girl with her face buried in his chest. She rubbed her
face against his shirt in a motion that was either snuggling or
wiping her nose. Dorothi’s hair tickled him and made him sneeze
into his shoulder. Dorothi came up and looked at him. He sneezed
again.

“
You never told me what you
did,” Dorothi asked him with a smile, expecting a crazy
story.

“’
Mr. Dream’ wanted me to
pick up a book for him,” Sheikoh decided to tell her, fixing a
smile onto his face. Dorothi laughed and pulled her head up to look
into Sheikoh’s dark eyes.

“
So it took you this long
to get to the library and back? I thought you were supposed to be
fast, Sheek,” She teased him.

“
Fast huh?” Sheikoh’s smile
widened and a devious light sparkled in his eyes. “Like
this?”

He put both of his hands into
Dorothi’s hair, and his hands blurred with speed, tangling her hair
into a wild nest. Dorothi screamed and laughed, trying to pull away
from the teenager, without success. He didn’t let her go until her
brown hair resembled an afro. Dorothi gazed at him with reproachful
eyes. He burst into laughter at the sight her.

“
Sheek, not cool!” Dorothi
exclaimed, narrowing her eyes at the giggling teenager. Her
expression arranged itself into annoyance when he didn’t stop.
Dorothi flicked his nose the way he sometimes did to her, only
harder.

“
Sorry Dodobird, I couldn’t
resist,” Sheikoh grinned at her.

Dorothi pursed her lips for a moment.
Then her face broke into a smile of triumph.

“
A girl could resist,” she
exclaimed with finality, as though that fact proved girls were
superior to boys once and for all.

“
Then I am glad I’m not
stuck as one of you boring old girls!” Sheikoh replied, winking at
her.

They stared at one another for a
moment, and then before either of them knew what was happening, the
two of them were rocking backwards and forwards with wild laughter.
They ended up on opposite sides of the leather couch, gasping and
clutching their sides.

Sheikoh looked over at the
still-giggling Dorothi on the other side of the couch and flashed
her a lazy smile.
He suddenly realized how
much he’d missed her. Spending time with her simply made him happy;
Dorothi’s presence filled Sheikoh with an inner peace he could
never attain on his own.

“
My last job made some
serious cash. We’re pretty much rich enough to do anything that
you’ve ever wanted. If you could do anything in the world, what
would you want to do?” Sheikoh asked Dorothi with a cocky
grin.

Her face brightened into an enormous
smile.

“
Then we’re going to have
to take you shopping!” Dorothi squealed with delight, jumping up
off the couch and wringing her hands. She looked at Sheikoh with
excited eyes, brainstorming his new look. He laughed a little
nervously.

“
Not tonight, Lovebug. I
haven’t slept well in way too long. I’m gonna crash here on the
couch,” he confessed, yawning. He stretched his arms out with an
exaggerated groan.

“
No Sheek, here. We’ll just
share my bed,” Dorothi offered, beckoning.

Guess Camillio’d explained their
living situation.

“
What did
I tell you about inviting us boys into bed with you?” He asked
Dorothi, referring to a talk they’d had when one morning, Dorothi
had run out of the toilet screaming that her insides were
bleeding.
He caught a glimpse of a
bright blush, and then Dorothi stomped out of the room, slamming
the door on her way.

Sheikoh looked after her, a little
worried. He’d only been joking. Sometimes he didn’t know what was
too far to Dorothi. He hoped he hadn’t said anything that freaked
her out overmuch.

Sheikoh fell back down onto the soft
leather couch, berating himself. Gradually, coherent thought
drifted into theatres of his dreams.

Sheikoh watched Dorothi carefully the next day, and she
didn’t seem to hold last night’s conversation against him. She was
probably too excited to be mad at him. After all, today they were
going shopping, and that was rare enough that she wasn’t giving him
any excuse to back out.

Sheikoh tracked down one of the gaunt,
tattooed men and struck up a conversation about the door to the
outside world. He learned that it could be opened into anywhere,
that you needed Camillio’s insignia, and his hand unconsciously
twitched. Sheikoh kept flattering and wheedling, and when he left,
he left with the man’s ring in hand.

He brought it to the door and, when it
opened into the east side, his suspicions were confirmed. Sheikoh
and Dorothi walked through the hallway of blackness, out of
Camillio’s castle and into the cobblestoned streets of the east
side.

First they went into a nearby high
class petticoat store. Sheikoh was complaining the second they
walked into the first aisle of tailed suits, each colored a
slightly different shade of boring. Dorothi ignored him and dragged
him to a monocle-wearing, grey-haired man. The balding dude was
wearing a suit so tight that Sheikoh was sure that it cut off his
circulation.

The elder man looked down his nose at
Sheikoh and his tattered black garments. Undaunted, Dorothi had the
dude measure him down. Sheikoh looked around and grumbled a bit
more, but Dorothi ignored him. Then they headed back the way they’d
come. He followed behind Dorothi, surprised when they left the
department store without a backwards glance.

Dorothi brought Sheikoh to another
store with a completely different vibe. They walked through a pair
of automated doors into an artificially urbane scene. Mannequins
showed off various styles, facelessly leaning against walls and
silversteel poles. The store’s ambient noise was a mixture of
trancey music and teenagers’ conversations.

For a while Sheikoh found himself
looking around in surprise; he’d never seen a rich East Sider child
before. He’d assumed that the upper class spent all their time
working, with no time to make babies. The dudes strolling through
the shop around them were mostly pale and thin, and every single
one of them wore a monocle.

While Sheikoh was people watching,
Dorothi was busy searching for outfits for him. Sheikoh jumped when
a bundle of clothes shoved itself into his arms. Dorothi pushed him
towards the men’s dressing rooms. A lady gave Sheikoh a number and
a room. He went in, carrying the clothing over his shoulder. The
door clicked behind him.

For a moment, Sheikoh stared at his
tattered reflection in the mirror. He could see why he’d
accumulated so many strange looks. He looked inordinately out of
place against the polished beige backdrop of the changing room.
Everything about him, from his lack of a monocle to his dirty,
ripped clothes, made it clear that he didn’t belong
here.

His shirt was filthy with ash and
dust. His black jacket, already torn before his fight with the
demon, had acquired three enormous new holes and a million tiny
ones. His shoulder showed through, as well as his the chest. The
right sleeve of his jacket was all but nonexistent. His black pants
were tattered to the point of indecent.

Sheikoh’s hair was frizzled and with
his slightly bemused look and the bags beneath his eyes, he looked
like a bum straight out of a sitcom; dirty, handsome and confused.
He arranged his features into an intense smolder, and the bum
became a hoodlum. Satisfied, he began to undress.

Sheikoh found a strange pleasure in
trying on the clothes that Dorothi had picked out. He watched his
reflection leap from West Sider to East Sider before his eyes. He
liked his new look; the sizes on the East Side were much more
precise than the ones on the West Side. The black jeans and thin
khakis curved around his legs gracefully, without the flaring
pockets that most of his other pants had.

Sheikoh pulled on a few of the tight
shirts, uneasily noting that they showed off his torso’s
disproportion. He slung on his jacket, and the difference in his
sides was hidden. Sheikoh eyed the holes in his coat. He mournfully
resolved to pick out a new one as he walked out with the clothes
that he’d decided on. The shirts that he’d picked up were all
without writing and logos; he didn’t like to pay to be some kind of
walking advertisement. Sheikoh liked dull muted blacks, greys and
other dark shadowy, safer colors.

Before checking out, Sheikoh and
Dorothi went and searched the racks of jackets, skeptical that this
was the store for it. There weren’t many jackets and Sheikoh was
very particular about the article of clothing that held his
utilities (even if he wasn’t technically a thief
anymore).

The ideal jacket was pitch black as
well as a few sizes too big, the kind of coat that sunk into
shadows obligingly. It was sturdy, as in the kind of sturdy that
could take a Sheikoh-sized beating without showing it. It needed
inside pockets for any plasmas. That wasn’t as firm a condition
however; Sheikoh had sewn pockets inside a coat before.

There didn’t seem to be anything that
fulfilled the prerequisites though. Sheikoh looked around for
Dorothi. He spotted the girl over in the clearance aisle. He
beckoned to her, and she ran to meet him with a face full of
excitement carrying something over her shoulder.

“
This is perfect, Sheek!
Try it!” Dorothi exclaimed, holding out a black and silver coat.
Sheikoh eyed it dismissively.

“
That silversteel outline
is just begging for attention,” Sheikoh responded.

“
Please? Just try it on?
I’m just trying to make you look less weird,” Dorothi murmured,
training her wide, light-blue eyes on him.

Sheikoh rolled his own eyes in
response. Then he relented and pulled it on. The second that it’d
wrapped him in its warm hug, Sheikoh knew that Dorothi was right.
It was perfect.

The jacked was a tailed overcoat that
modeled high-class made cool. Its brandished silversteel outline
traced the black edges around the neckline, down the front opening
to end after having wound at the edges of the jagged, halved coat
tails. The silversteel border fanged around the outline. Teeth-like
waves jagged from the dull metal. Then the button hole, just above
his heart, was encircled by three equal lengths of circling
fangs.

Sheikoh opened it up to find four
pockets inside. He practiced his draw, using his Trinity in the
place of a pistol, and it was like the thing had been designed for
him. He ended up looking in the mirror for a long time warring with
himself on whether to get the auspicious, awesome thing. Finally,
Dorothi’s persistent compliments and Sheikoh’s own love at first
sight relationship with the thing won him over. He paid for it all
and walked out of the store in the outfit that he’d left the
waiting room with.

Sheikoh and Dorothi had a late lunch
at an outside restaurant then. They spent over an hour picking at
their food and talking excitedly about everything. Sheikoh wasn’t
going to admit it to the girl but he’d had more fun that day than
he’d had in years. They joked and laughed and teased with one
another until their mouths hurt from smiling, not even noticing the
sun’s steady path across the sky.

While they talked, Sheikoh wondered
what to tell Dorothi about Emili. He knew he needed to, but he had
no idea how to do it. Nothing he could think to say felt genuine or
even possible. Sheikoh simply resolved that there was nothing for
it, he was just going to take Dorothi aside and try to be as
straight forward as possible. Nervousness tangled his organs around
his chest as he and Dorothi walked through the door to Camillio
Tyche’s magic castle.

Sheikoh closed the front door of
Camillio’s castle behind him, grinning at Dorothi’s giggle. The
latch snagged into the doorframe with a loud, echoing click, and
almost immediately Indigo was there in front of the two of them.
His face was suffused in relief and then annoyance as he noticed
their shopping bags. The smile slowly slipped off of Sheikoh’s face
as he took in the ganglord’s grave expression.

“
Silence, where the hell
did you go off like that?” Indigo demanded gruffly.