When We Were Executioners (3 page)

Turco pointed out the guy walking around like he was somebody out of his element. Turco gestured at Dog. Dog nodded. Dog had a leather rope in his pocket, and Djoss sat on the corner and watched for guards.

People walking past that knew a thing about the Pens didn’t stop. Hat brims stayed low. Parasols angled out the view. This fellow in Senta leathers looked like he had a big red “A” on account of the way his stomach spilled over his waist like an apron. His belt lashed over the wrong part of the shirt, with a triangle in the center like a target. He had a big black beard that bobbed while he walked, side-to-side. Beard and stomach swayed in each heavy step. The Senta wiped his brow with a clean, white handkerchief.

Djoss raised his hand.
All clear!

The Senta didn’t see it coming.

Dog flipped the leather rope around the man’s throat. Turco

flanked the huge outsider, pushing him into an alley with a dagger pressed into the triangle in the victim’s belly. Did the Senta live or die? Did it matter after his clothes were gone?

Djoss didn’t watch. He didn’t want to know. He walked away. At the last stop, Djoss met up with Dog and Turco, and poured the money on the ground in front of Turco and Dog. The clothes were there, too, for Rachel.

Djoss got a closer look at Turco’s palms when Turco counted out the money between the three of them. His sweat was actually a thin sheen of blood, pink like demon weed. Djoss blinked.

Turco sneered. “What? You look like you thought of something.”

“I did but it’s nothing,” he said, “I just noticed something.”

“What?”

“You’ve got blood on your hands, and it’s coming out of your fingernails.”

“Yeah,” said Turco, “It’s mostly mine.”

Then, the three went to a tavern to dance at the tavern where Djoss was bouncing because Djoss slipped Turco and Dog in free of charge.

* * *

Rachel walked to work in the dark. She dragged ragged sheets across the line. She pushed a mop from one side of the room to another. She poured the filthy water into a sewer grate. She filled the bucket from a pump in the yard. She poured chamber pots into a large slop bucket, and mopped out the pots. She hung the two large slop buckets from two ends of an old broomstick. She dumped the buckets into the same sewer grate.

She walked home alone, undisturbed. She fell asleep in silence. Through the building walls and windows, a woman yelled at her children. Elsewhere, the sound of skin slapping skin preceded loud howls of animal bliss—nothing else to do in the long, slow days without any money. In another room, a woman had died, and her family was mourning her and people came and went to offer condolences and food. Women were wailing there, too, as loud as lovers.

Rachel closed her eyes, and fought hard to find her brother in between the lines of the koans.

She cleared her mind with breathing.

Since none can look into the sun’s light, none can see the sun’s darkness.

She held it in her mind.

Since all can gaze in peace upon the moon, all can see the moon’s shining light.

She drifted into a light doze, when time faded still, but the sounds of the city lingered at the lambent edge of her dreamless mind. Women talked, and children sang out games and laughter and men walking to work or walking home singing hellos and good-byes and a key—Djoss is home—jangling in the lock.

Djoss shoved the door open. He ran to her bedside, and grabbed her arms. “Hey, Rachel!”

She groaned.

“Are you okay?” he said.

She cringed out of his hands. “I’m fine,” she said, “I’m sleeping. Are you okay?”

“I heard a few Sentas got rolled,” said Djoss, “It’s all over the city.”

“Well, it wasn’t me.”

“Turco seems to think there’s a Senta that’s really a demon child. There’s this demon child that’s going to burn for stealing some dog, and everyone’s saying her accomplice is wearing Senta leathers to hide.”

Rachel fell back in her bed. “Well, I don’t know anything about that. We’re not leaving,” she said, “The rumor will pass. No one’s been looking at me twice. The king’s men couldn’t care less about you and me. I haven’t seen Sparrow or her little thugs anywhere, and I don’t think they can put two and two together about anything.”

“I’ve seen those little thugs. They don’t even talk about it. They couldn’t care less. Just be careful, okay?”

“I’ll be careful,” she said. She touched her brother’s nose. “You be careful, too,” she said, “You’re walking a bad way and don’t think I don’t know it.”

“I’m careful,” said Djoss, “I’m always careful. We have to get ready to run. Need coin for that.”

* * *

Jona rowed, and Rachel ran her hands through the lake. She couldn’t really see herself in the rippling reflection, only her clothes, and pieces of her face like a ghost’s mangled shadow. She hadn’t seen herself in a mirror in a long time. “What do I look like, Jona?”

“What?” said Jona.

“What does my face look like? Am I beautiful?”

“You’re beautiful.”

“You always say that. How beautiful? Who do I look like to

you?”

“You don’t look like anyone I know. You’re just you.” “Well, if you see someone who looks like me, let me know. I

don’t know what I look like.”

“I will if I can,” said Jona.

When the boat reached the edge of the construction, Jona

pulled into the construction site where they had borrowed the boat. The site’s night watchman waved at Jona. Jona thanked him for the boat and pressed a coin into the man’s palm.

The watchman handed Jona a black feather. “Oh,” said Jona, “Hey, Rachel? I have to go. Can you get home by yourself?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. This is from someone I know. I have to go help him.”

“Okay,” she said. She frowned. She cocked her head. This had never happened to them before. “Who?” she said.

“I got my birdies and my brothers. Sometimes they need my help, is all. Dead men don’t face king’s justice, you know?” “What?”

He frowned. “This feather’s a cry for help. I’ve got to go help. I can’t really explain who it is, okay?”

“Okay,” said Rachel, “Be safe. I hope your friend is safe.”

“It’ll be fine,” said Jona, “I just have to go fast.”

He walked away confidently, holding the feather in his hands. He felt the streetlights and the passing sailors envelope him in anonymity. In a big city, a fellow could walk three blocks away from his usual places and suddenly no one knew his name, and no one remembered. Crowded cities are the only place to be a no one in a uniform. Jona turned and waved at Rachel back at the street. She blew him a kiss. He smiled at her, nodding.

He turned a corner, and turned away from Rachel. His shoulders clenched. His smile thinned into a sick sliver.

He went to a tiny tavern that took up three rowdy floors south of the Pens district. The sign was as big as the door. A giant blackbird perched on a painted minaret.

He gave the feather to one of the bouncers. The bouncer took Jona up to this fourth floor that didn’t officially exist. A door opened.

Two men stood on either side of a man in Senta robes, holding him there, waiting for Jona.

The Senta had his eyes closed. He was breathing in, holding his breath, and then releasing gently with a hiss, like air leaking out of a punctured ball.

Jona stepped into the room. The door closed behind him.

“Go on,” said one of the two men. “Show him what you are.” Jona looked up at the fellow in the Senta leathers. He wasn’t big. In the light, his little body and little head looked like a skull, all forehead, cheekbone, and jaw.

This fellow handed Jona a little dagger.

The Senta closed his eyes. “Does the wind move,” he said, “Or is it just the flag hung up in the wind? Neither really move. Motion is only the mind moving.”

“Can you truly see your own demise?” asked Jona. “Yes,” said the Senta.

“How do you die, then?” said Jona, “Tell me what you see in your dreamcasting.”

“I see only my mind moving,” said the Senta. “I don’t understand why I am here. I’ve done nothing.”

“I don’t understand it, either. I just do what I’m told. I don’t ask questions. Tell me something, though, if you had to guess, what was it?”

“A demon child,” he said. “I saw one with a woman. I saw them, and I tried to warn her. I tried to tell somebody.”

“I see,” said Jona. “What he look like? Anything like me?”

“No,” said the Senta. “He was thin and pale. He was… Don’t people care that the demon children are here?”

“How did you know what he was?”

“I… I just know. Dreamcasting is like that. It’s a feeling I get, and I see things.”

“See anything about me.”

“I’m too scared to do it.”

“Try.”

The Senta was crying. “Please don’t hurt me. I can’t see anything in you. I can’t concentrate when I’m this frightened.”

Jona cut his own palm, not very deep, along the same healed line that he had used when he had condemned Aggie. He grabbed the Senta’s ear, and shoved the prisoner’s skull sideways. Blood dripped, burning like acid, into the Senta’s head, exposing the skull beneath the skin.

The Senta screamed.

“I’m sorry about this,” said Jona. “Believe it or not, I don’t want to kill you.”

The Senta didn’t seem to hear anything. Jona watched his own blood burning down the side of the man’s face. He watched the skin boil and singe with the demon blood, and the clothing burn where the blood ran. Jona pressed his hand into the Senta’s eyes. They melted like ice cubes in the acid.

Jona watched it. He wrapped his hand in strips of the Senta’s leather. He sat and watched.

The Senta stopped screaming long enough to vomit. His skin kept burning away. His blood and bone boiled with the acid. The side of the Senta’s face caved in like a boiling watermelon.

Jona closed his eyes. He jammed the knife into the Senta’s heart. He kicked the Senta, with his chair back to a trapdoor near the wall that opened to the old canal.

* * *

“What do you mean, a grudge?” said Rachel, touching Jona’s bandaged palm with another question on her face.

Jona shrugged. He pulled his hand away. “Oh,” he said, “I mean that people kill each other sometimes, when they get mad at them, and we catch them doing it, and they’re never smart about it, and they confess right away because they did it when they were angry and can’t believe they did it and telling us about it and dooming themselves is like healing them.”

She touched the knife in Jona’s belt. “You ever kill anyone?” “I’m a king’s man, a city guard, so I have to kill sometimes.

They aren’t good people, though. I kill killers, and worse.” “What’s worse, children of demons?”

“No,” said Jona, “I’ve seen a poor man spend his last coin on

a single puff of the pinks, when he was supposed to be working, and his whole family is on the street with nothing to eat, and nothing to do but start stealing, so then I have to arrest the thieves who were only trying to steal to eat, and maybe they stole enough to hang.”

“That’s horrible.”

“So, when we find the smugglers, we push ’em. We do everything we can to break ’em. Then, we hang ’em high, and we put their heads on pikes along the city walls and harbors.”

“That’s just horrible,” she said.

“It’s important,” he said. He stopped and let the little boat drift a minute. “You know, when you’re talking about something that hurts one person, it’s not so big. Lots of people get hurt, you know, and you can’t stop it all. But, when something hurts lots of people and makes them hurt people, too, then you’re talking about something big.”

Rachel sighed. She leaned back and stared at the night sky overhead. Out in the middle of the lake, a few strong stars poked through the clouds and the lights. She recognized a constellation.

CHAPTER XI

I remember Jona’s friends and fellow guardsmen falling away. Corporal Jaime’s eldest daughter died. He paid the Erin priests all his savings to inter her under a picture of her because he thought she was so beautiful—so pure. He cried on duty, slipping into alleys and empty cells.

None of the other guards said anything about him crying like that.

Three weeks after the funeral, Jaime was still a mess.

Then, Jaime’s wife hung herself.

Jaime disappeared a while. When he came back, his younger kids were all living with his wife’s family. Just him and his eldest boy remained in this old house that had grown new echoes.

He sold the rope she had used to hang herself to a crazy old woman that probably imagined herself like Lord Sabachthani. He used most of the money to buy his eldest son an apprenticeship with a stone-mason in the Temple districts on the east river, and the boy never came home again.

Jaime had a few coins left and this house that had been in his family forever, all empty now. He blew all of the coins on a single bottle of foreign whiskey.

He brought the whiskey in to the guards to share, but not even the scriveners wanted to touch a drop of suicide-rope whiskey. So, Jaime sat in an empty cell alone and drank it all, singing rowdy songs, and screaming, and singing sad songs, and crying out his daughter’s name which was the same as his wife’s name.
Dacha… Oh, Dacha!

He was still there in the morning. Calipari sent him home without pay. Calipari told Jaime to get his head right and then come back when he was ready.

Three days later Jaime came back like nothing had happened, and he wouldn’t let anyone talk about it. He smiled and pushed the boys around and he was ready to walk the streets.

Two weeks ago, he had a wife, and four kids.

* * *

Aggie was not showing signs of pregnancy. The Captain was impatient, and her death was imminent.

Jona had forged a letter.

She read the letter, and cried. She crumpled it up in her palm. She threw it at Jona just like she threw words at Jona.

“How do I know this is real? How do I know it’s really him? I don’t believe you, king’s man. I can’t believe you. Why won’t he come to me? Tell me why he doesn’t come for me!”