When We Were Executioners (13 page)

“Out and about,” said Turco. Turco pulled a match from another pocket. He slipped some spare weed into the pipe, and flicked a match. He held it out to Djoss.

Djoss took one puff, and knew he had made a mistake taking the pipe. He coughed. His head spun. He leaned back into the wall. He shoved the pipe back in Turco’s hands. “Thanks,” he said, “I needed that.”

Djoss slid down the wall. He looked up at the sky. It moved. He felt coughs rising up from his chest like sweet butterflies. “Elishta,” he said, “What kind of weed is that?”

“Good stuff. Not the common stuff we been smoking on the corners, all mixed up with lettuce and chicory and whatever else to fool us with. This is the stuff we run around to the pipes. This is the raw demon. This is the burnt tongue of Imam and Erin all in you.”

“I’ve never had any that tight before,” said Djoss. He looked at his hands. His hands seemed far away. “Nothing that tight. Where did you get that?”

“You’ve been running it out and about with the mudskippers. Three Kings, three crowns rolling a racket with this stuff. Good stuff, right? This is off the tip top.”

“Amazing,” said Djoss. He watched his hands shrink in front of him. The sky was purple. The air he breathed was thick with joy. His coughs faded into a hum in his throat, like a hiding smile on the back of his tongue. “My sister’d kill me. Headcheese can break a fellow’s skull. Break it in half. Amazing stuff.”

“Right, that. You ready to help cut it?”

“No,” said Djoss, “You see my sister anywhere?”

“No. I know a fellow who might have seen her.”

“Really? Who?”

“Don’t know his name. He knows everyone in the city, though, if they’re worth knowing. He’s a Senta, too, but he keeps his head growing and growing with the names and places where people are, and this good stuff.” He lifted his pipe to his lips. “Good stuff, yeah. He knows everyone to know, and everything, too. He knows me. He knows you.”

Djoss held out his hand for the pipe. “Hey, let me try that again.”

“Careful,” said Turco. He handed Djoss the pipe.

Djoss took a long hit, until his lungs burned and he coughed away the pain until the glow rolled in like a cool breeze on a hot day. He smiled. “Where is this fellow?”

“I’ll take you,” he said, “How much money you got?”

“Some,” said Djoss, “How much it cost?”

“We’ll see when we get there,” said Turco, “Finish that pipe for me and we’ll go.”

* * *

Turco took Djoss by the hand, because Djoss wasn’t walking straight. Turco led Djoss to a tavern by the water. The sign out front had a picture of a woman standing next to her own head.
The Silent Woman
, it was called. He led Jona inside. Turco waved at a fellow behind the bar, and the fellow waved Turco past the bar, and into the kitchen. Once there, Turco knocked six times on a wall next to the counter. The wall opened. Turco took Djoss’ money from Djoss’ own pockets and handed it to the bouncer of the lower room. The bouncer counted the coins, nodded, and gestured down with his thumb.

Candlelight surrounded a pool of pillows. Men and women lay in heaps on the pillows. They clutched at the thin ends of a huge hookah, like a giant glass tree reaching out rubber branches to the men laid low on the pillows. A mound of slowly churning pink weed smoke bubbled up through the water. Men sucked on the little hoses.

Turco snagged one of the limbs, and handed it to Djoss. “Here,” he said, “Try this.”

Djoss took a drag, and the universe opened in his skull. He fell backwards onto the pillows. His mouth opened.

Turco laughed. “Welcome to Elishta,” he said, “Folk like us only get one shot at the right life. This is it.”

Djoss slowly dragged himself up to sitting. He took another quick sip from the limb of the tree. “Where’s the fellow who knows where Rachel is?” he said, after three tries at speaking.

Turco looked around. “I guess he isn’t here, yet. Just stay tight. He’ll get here.” Turco slipped a limb off the hookah. “Everybody says this stuff is bad. I don’t know why. Way I see it, we spend our whole lives wishing for happiness and never getting it. Here I am, and I drink the smoke of this here wishing tree, and I wish for happiness and I get it. Where else guys like us be happy?”

“When will the fellow get here?” said Djoss, like he hadn’t heard a word.

“Relax,” said Turco, “He’ll get here.”

* * *

Whether the fellow ever arrived or not is unknown to everyone. Turco had used Djoss’ money to buy himself into the hookah.

When Djoss came back down from the bliss, he was lying in a gutter, in a hard, cold rainstorm, in the middle of the night. Muddy water full of all the filth of the city streets flowed past him. He was choking a little on the rain. He sat up, soaking wet.

He tried to remember where he was. He looked to one side, and saw the ocean on the other side of the street. He looked the other way, and saw a tavern. He stood up, but his legs were full of smoke, and he had to sit back down again, splashing, into this tiny street river. He waited until he could feel the blood in his body. His whole body had fallen asleep, and he had to let the blood return to parched limbs.

He stood up. He stumbled over to a wall next to him. He leaned into the wall. He staggered back to his apartment, stopping for directions twice. He didn’t know what day it was. He stopped to puke four times. His whole body ached. He wanted to buy some food, but he couldn’t find any money in his pockets.

On his way home, he passed the square where they had burned the girl. Rain poured over the smoldering ruin. Two king’s men—privates with barely any facial hair—stood next to the damp, burned corpse, throwing dice to see who had to actually touch the corpse when they cut her hands free, and they needed to pull the melted flesh from the stake where it had melted in like glue.

Djoss sat down and looked up at the body. He sat there, and thought about his sister. He thought about the girl he saw, in the prison. He thought about his mother.

He broke down into tears. His tears weren’t acid, but they still burned down his face like every one of his nerves was broken and burning.

The rain stopped. The seasons turned, but they didn’t turn fast. The rainstorms would return again, but for now, they were only an occasional force off the ocean.

CHAPTER XVIII

When we leave this city, we won’t know where to go. We haven’t made any plans.

Don’t leave, then.

We will, Jona. I should find a way out while we still can.

Rachel walked in a straight line, looking for the city walls. When she got frustrated with that, she turned a corner. Then, she turned another corner. She walked up the first hill she encountered, climbing up and towards a river on the other side of the valley. This river had a large bridge, overgrown with city life and lined with low huts and tents. Shrewd men lined the edges of the bridge with outhouses that hung just over the lip of the bridge, available for a fee. Steady filth dripped in bursts onto the river boats like a slow, oozing waterfall.

Rachel walked over the bridge, past the many dirty shops and hot corn vendors and tinkerers selling scrap warped into tools and baubles and the ragmen with their cheap used cloth and cheap paper.

She was hungry, and tired. She stepped into an inn on the other side. She invented fortunes for strangers in the inn’s tavern until she had enough money to spend the night.

She could barely make out a glimmer of the Unity. She was a charlatan to these drunk men and she didn’t care. She had a room on the second floor of the inn. It had a bed, and a bathtub. She didn’t have enough money to take a bath—nor did she want to risk a servant’s assistance—so she fell back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. She listened to two people making love through thin walls, and it reminded her of Jona. She clutched at her stomach, and thought about him.

She didn’t sleep well. She dreamed of darkness.

In the morning, she left the inn and looked at all the people bustling off to their normal lives.

She closed her eyes, and imagined all these people who just wanted to be happy. They wanted to lead spectacular lives. They dreamt of winning prizes and the love of someone beautiful and conquering the enemies of their way of life. Every single one of them wanted to be rich, beloved, and peaceful before they died.

In her mind, she reached out into the Unity, searching for happiness. She wanted to find one happy person in the push of bodies.

Perhaps it was the stink of demon taint that kept her back. All she felt were horses pulling carriages with a numb, animal bliss. Sometimes a whip cracked, and the spark of joy faded a while, but it came back soon enough. The horses were happy.

She opened her eyes. She walked aimlessly through the streets until nightfall. She found another tavern. This time she was able to see a few actual prophecies in the cards. She didn’t earn as much tonight. People paid less for bad news.

She made enough to eat and get drunk. She staggered into the alley near the tavern and found a place to lean against the wall that was mostly hidden from the street. She pulled an empty crate over her body, and closed her eyes, curled up inside this empty, wooden box.

In the morning, she was stiff and sick. She staggered into the light, and followed the crowd to a town square.

The crowd screamed and threw rotten bits of food at a beautiful, pale girl tied to a pole.

Geek and Sergeant Calipari stood on the platform beside the girl. They looked sad about what they were doing. Geek stared at his boots. Calipari held a single torch in one hand, smoldering quietly in the sun, and in the other he held a scroll. He read the scroll, and Rachel threw up when she heard.

The girl was going to be burned alive. She had bled true for Elishta’s demon stain in her blood and she was going to be burned alive.

Geek walked over to the girl. He unsheathed his blade. He lifted her chin with the tip, and got her to look hatefully in his eyes. “Hold still,” he said. He jumped, spinning, and he slammed the flat of his blade across the side of her skull. She sagged under the blow, unconscious.

The crowd booed.

Calipari shook his head. “She’s supposed to be awake for this,” he shouted.

Geek shrugged. “I guess the terror made her pass out,” he shouted.

Calipari squinted. “Guess so,” he shouted back. He pulled a black hood over his head. He placed the flame at the pile of kindling wood bunched at the base of the kindling.

The crowd cheered. They threw pieces of wood and coal at the girl, now. The bottom of her ragged dress caught fire. Her legs reddened as the fragments fell off in bits of black ash. Then, her dress was almost completely burned away, and she was naked from the waist down and her skin was all blisters and boils like an overcooked chicken and the fire kept growing higher and higher and the skin flaked off in grey clusters. The crowd cheered when the last remnant of her dress melted into her ruined skin.

Her eyes fluttered open. Her head rolled to one side. Her hair had burned into a jagged mess.

She screamed.

Her body was blackened bones below her waist. Her chest charred from the smoke. The stink of cooked fat hung in the air. She pulled at the bonds over her head, pulling herself up higher and higher out of the fire. Her hands were still human. They reached and reached up. Rachel watched the girl’s hands. In the back of her mind, an old rhyme popped up, unwanted.

Hands are the things that make us men, 

Deaf men talk and blind men see with them 

Dead man reach hands up to the sky 

Grab that soul that’s flying by.

* * *

The crowd was gone. Only a few morbid stragglers and ragpickers remained at the fringe of the square. Calipari used his sword to cut the bonds over her hands.

The cooked cadaver crumpled into the pile of burned wood. Calipari chopped off the girl’s head with one stroke. He poured fuel over what was left of her. He covered the girl’s body in a thick yellow soup of whale oil and kerosene. He reached for a new torch. He tossed it onto her. He bowed his head and prayed quietly to Imam.

The remains of the demon-touched body couldn’t be buried. It had to be burned completely away.

Calipari and Geek tossed their swords into the flames. Calipari turned his back on the fire, and looked around at what remained of the crowd. He needed to make sure no one disturbed the fire until the body was burned away to purity. Then, the body would be thrown into a deep pit and burned again and again, until nothing remained but a black stain on the steel.

That’s how demons are killed and their poisonous bodies are removed from the world of men.

* * *

Rachel’s guts were in knots as tight as rigging. She walked to Jona’s house. She got there by sunset. She knocked on his door.

An old woman answered.

“I’m looking for Corporal Joni,” she said.

“Are you, now?” said the woman, “and what about?” “Please,” said Rachel, “It’s important.”

She sniffed at her. “Some Senta demanding my son. Have a prophecy about something, you want to share with my boy?”

Jona appeared behind the old woman. He pushed past her. “Ma, it’s fine.”

The old woman walked back into the house. “I’m going to bed. Be careful with those Senta, Jona. They can sniff things about people you’d rather they didn’t know. And be sure to do the dishes before you leave.”

Jona brought Rachel into the kitchen, and what was left of dinner. She sat down, and poked at some leftover noodles. “Mind?” she said.

“No,” said Jona. “Don’t you have to work tonight?”

“I don’t think I’m working anywhere right now.” She didn’t see any silverware, so she reached into the bowl with just her gloves. She slurped at the noodles, unashamed.

“Are you alright?” said Jona.

“Why did you have to ruin my night like that?”

“What? What did I do?”

“You didn’t even dance with me.”

“Oh,” he said, “You never dance with who you show up with. I told you that.”

“I’m not some noble hussy. I wanted to dance with you because it’s every girl’s dream to go to a ball with a handsome lord and dance into the night. And when I had someone to dance with…”