When We Were Executioners (9 page)

The corners of her mouth turned up. She kept watch over all the people below her, living their lives and none even looking up at the two nobles on the roof. “Thank you, Jona,” she said. She turned to him. “Thank you for that.”

Jona turned away. “What will you do if Elitrean has gone for a swim?”

“A marriage with a king is a difficult thing to arrange.”

Jona laughed. “I was talking to my Sergeant about him and his lady, Franka, today. They met at a pub, and she’s got a kid by someone nobody even knows who, but they’re in love and marrying. Sergeant Nicola Calipari and his barmaid. Love and marriage and nothing else in the world matters and it’s as natural as breathing.”

“Is he a good man?”

“Nic’s tapped as a keg, but he’s a solid fellow.”

“Send him my regards.”

“You met him once,” said Jona, “Remember the fellow with me when we came about the dog?”

“Oh,” said Ela, “Yes.”

Jona clenched and unclenched his fists. Lady Ela Sabachthani looked below at all the people walking, and in her mind she was probably wondering if any would ever be her royal subjects. Either that, or she was thinking about kissing Jona. Maybe both.

Jona broke the silence. “Look,” he said, “I can poke around a bit, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Best case, Elitrean’s kid wasn’t the one who rolled the Chief, and he jumped town thinking he was next. Worst case, Elitrean rolled the Chief and died in the riot when he was trying to escape.”

“I’m sure you are capable of finding out more than I am,” said Lady Sabachthani, “My father and I have our ways, but they are imprecise, like the Sentas.”

Jona shrugged. “I don’t know about that stuff. What I know is, if I was Elitrean and I didn’t roll the Chief, I’d be on a slow ship to Galvez with someone else’s name and not even my father knows about it until you’re married and on the throne.”

“Someone always knows,” she said, “You’ll find the one who knows, if anyone can. I trust you.”

“You say you trust me, but I bet you don’t trust anyone.”

“Not even I can go through life alone, Jona. I have to trust someone, sometimes. You’ve never lied to me before. You’ve never gotten involved in these little diplomacies of marriages.”

“I haven’t?” said Jona, “Good luck to you trusting me. My take is drop the crown, and go find some nice old guy who takes good care of you. Have kids before it gets on too late. Most girls your age are working on marrying off their daughters, not on having them.”

Her lips pressed together, cold. “I am aware of my age, Jona. Please don’t remind me. Just tell me that I’m beautiful, and that you’ll help me.”

Jona sighed. He rubbed the back of his head. He stood up straight. He bowed to her, like a barefoot courtier. “I’ll help you,” said Lord Joni, “And, I guess, right now, you’re beautiful.”

“Thank you, Lord Joni,” she said. She turned, abruptly to the door.

Jona watched her leave and couldn’t help but feel this weird lump in his throat. Not like crying, but still a lump. A little, harmless, weird lump just sitting there in his throat, dry as a bone—but weird.

CHAPTER XV

My papers are covered in rocks to hold them in place, in their order. My papers are piled in a corner away from the door. I finish a page, dry it, and place it facedown in the corner beneath the rock.

The rest of the room is smothered in Calipari’s clean lines. A huge map in dozens of pages covers the inn room’s floor, with all the corners in their place, and all the places merging into the center, where—in place of the King’s Palace—we place the pile of Calipari’s introductory letters. My husband stomps in from the streets. He jumps on tip-toes across the corners of the papers. In the center of the room, he rummages for the right letter.
We should’ve put this somewhere else,
he grumbles,
or gotten a larger room
. I wave him away. I’m writing.

Then, he hops back to the door, and leaves again.
Good-bye, my love, and stay safe. When half a heart dies, the other half dies, too.

Guard Captains and Nobility may serve us, but the people do not believe we tell the truth. Unless we throw the wolf upon our backs, we remain just faces in a crowd. Even as wolves these city sheep would be too afraid to obey. They’d run and ring their bells in fear.

Sergeant Calipari’s clean black inklines cut mud-wonderful streets into corners, and rivers, and valuable informants’ daily routines.

My husband returns and tells me that the church record-keepers have found the old woman alive.

I must fly with my husband to the house in the center of the city. Calipari had left the Joni estate and the dressmaker shops off his maps, and we did not push the man. We did not need to force the issue. My husband located the house on his own.

Quill, I put you down today. I shall return to you when I can. May you remain as sharp as the wit of a wiser woman while I am away.

* * *

I pick up my pen, again.

The Joni home smelled like the sloughed skin of the family. The scent pounded into the pillows, and the scent pressed deep into the rugs and wooden walls. When people came home, the familiar smell brought them peace.

Familiar dishes seeped into the woodwork—oatmeal, and old milk and cheap sausage fried in oil and lumps of bread and boiled oranges in molasses.

I smelled her skin, too, below the lost food. Jona’s mind, from beyond the frayed sea wall of my consciousness, reached out with her memory. I saw her in my mind the way Jona saw her. A mother pushed a wooden spoon around an iron pot. Her delicate white skin draped loose and cold over eggshell bones. She smelled like spoiled milk and citrus. I saw her in her plain brown dress, dingy ash at her neck. Her face was a pinched squint that never smiled. Fuzzy thread and powdered indigo puffed in clouds from her stained clothes when she moved—a dressmaker’s aura. The job is in their hair, their fingernails, and their smell like a fine linen powder.

She smelled this way her whole life. Leaning over the boy’s bed, she smelled this way. Dressing her son for temple school, she smelled this way.

The house shrank in Jona’s mind as he grew up, but the memories held the walls farther apart than they really were. When my husband and I found the Joni estate, the rooms were smaller than Joni’s mind recalled.

We let ourselves in at a back window.

The house smelled like dust and candle smoke. The rooms were empty. The walls were smoke-stained white. The windows were dingy and muddy. I asked my husband if he was sure someone lived here. He said that he had seen an old woman coming in and out of the house, and the stink of Jona’s taint all over her.

I sniffed the air around the doorways. She had been here recently.

My husband waited near the front door, wrapped in shadows in a corner. I hid near a back door. We didn’t know when she’d come home, or if she was even still alive.

Night fell. Nothing happened. The sun rose.

The street sounds outside the walls drifted away into the songs of birds singing down the moon.

We waited for three days, taking turns seeking food from the street vendors. (A hot corn girl and an apple girl and a hot sausage boy all saw us each day, amazed at the coins we handed to them like nothing at all.)

A lock turned in a key. A door opened across the house. I walked through empty hallways. I felt my footprints born in the dust.

She saw me before she saw my husband behind her. This woman was thinner than Jona remembered her.

She screamed. “Who are you?” she shouted, “Why are you in my home?”

The demon-stain had aged her. Her veins showed through her skin like a wet map hung to dry on wicker bones. She was younger than my husband, but she walked with death.

“Lady Joni,” I said, “My husband and I are Erin’s Walkers. We must speak with you about your son.”

She breathed heavily. Her lips curled in pain. “My son,” she whimpered. Her words coughed up from a clenched throat. “
My son?
” she repeated.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Lord Joni’s dead,” she said, “All the Lord Jonis are dead.”

My husband loomed behind her, part man but mostly wolf. “Who carried the stain?” he growled, with a human tongue “Are you like him?”

Tears welled up at the edge of her eyes. “Please, just leave me in peace,” she said. She walked to the kitchen.

I held my hand up at my husband.
Let me.

In the kitchen, she had put the kettle on. “I assume you’re going to be here a while,” she said, “I’m making tea. You’re from Erin’s temple, right? Wolves come from Erin.”

“We’re the Walkers of this region. Thank you for the tea,” I said, “but we must test your blood, and we will not drink the tea in this tainted house.”

“My blood?” she said. She looked me in the face. “If you prick me, I’ll bleed to death. I’m old.”

“Who was the demon?” I said.

“Why does anyone care?”

“Please,” I said. I pulled a knife from my belt. I had the heartwood paper in my hand.

She sat down at the table.

“Can I have that knife?” she said.

I flipped the blade in my palm. I held it out to her. She took the handle and held it in front of her. She gazed at her reflection in the steel. “I used to be so beautiful,” she said, “and I had a rich husband. I had a wonderful son who loved me. Even when I didn’t have a rich husband, I had a wonderful son who loved me.” Her lip trembled. “Will you be arresting me or taking me to the guards or anything like that?”

“We will,” I said.

She looked over at the teapot heating up to a boil, breathing deep and controlling her tears. “Do me a favor,” she said, “After you’re done, will you burn down this house for me?”

“We will,” I said. I pulled a second knife from my boot. “Do you want my help?” I said.

“No,” she said, “I can do this myself. Will you be burning my blood?”

“Yes,” I said, “I have heartwood paper with me.”

“All right,” she said. She held out her hand for the paper. “I carried an of-demon inside of me. I washed his clothes and threw out his bathwater and turned his bed in spring. When he was sick, I cleaned up after him. I drank holy water to stay alive. My husband taught me. I’m probably poison. I feel like I’ve been poisoned. I drank holy water every day since my wedding, but that isn’t enough.”

The water rose to a boil. She poured the kettle into an iron pot. She pumped water from the sink’s water pump into the pot, testing with her hand for the temperature. Hot, but not too hot.

I stood up to keep a close eye on the woman. I wanted to make sure she was cutting herself, and the blood we’d be testing was hers.

She rolled her sleeve up her arm. She didn’t shake. She looked me in the face. Her stern squint dared me to step in. The knife touched her skin near the wrist. Her jaw clenched.

Her hands shook hard. She quickly put the knife in her bloodied hand. She tried to slice her other wrist, too.

I stopped her. I snatched the knife away. I placed her bloody arm over the paper for her blood. I stole a dishtowel to wrap her wounded forearm.

“Please,” she said. She leaned into my shoulder, crying.

“No,” I said, “Dogsland must have her turn with you, enemy of life.”

* * *

I tested her blood over the iron tub of water. The blood burned so hot, that I had to let the heartwood paper fall into the water. The water swallowed the flame. If she had been of-demon, the fire would burn as hot inside the water, too.

After this test, we bandaged her arm. We walked her to the Captain of the Guard.

(
She knew her fate after how her son had died. She knew, and felt no will to flee or start again. She waited for her own destruction, getting out of bed, washing her hands and face in a basin of holy water, pushing needles through the hem of dresses, cooking cheap sausage for herself alone, and talking to the son that wasn’t at the table anymore—but still she talked to him. She heard his voice in the gaps, evading her questions. She was too tired to walk home sometimes and slept in a tavern near her work to save up the strength to walk home. Since his death, she had been so tired.

Then, we finally came to send her skull to the spikes along the city wall. She was Lady Joni, once, and rich and beautiful. Now she was just another skull along the wall.
)

* * *

My husband and I didn’t use just fireseeds this time. We overturned barrels of kerosene across the halls, down the muddy stairs, and into the basement. We placed fireseeds at the windowsills so the sudden flames would blow new seeds out into the streets.

I went to the back door. My husband went to the front. We both dropped our matches. We ran through the streets to our inn near the docks.

Houses all around caught the flame. Men screamed as their shops burned to the ground. Women tore their hair. Dogs screamed at their gates with nowhere to run.

Fire companies flocked to the site, ringing bells and dragging their pumps like a parade, buying the burning buildings for almost nothing before they raised a finger to help push back the flame.

My husband and I watched from the window of our inn near the docks. The smoke drowned out the sea clouds. Old demon stains burned strong. Let this whole city burn down.

My husband spread dandelion seeds on his windowsill. He blew them into the wind.

We should burn the whole city.

We are executioners, not revolutionaries.

We were executioners. We did not kill this woman who had done such evil things for so long.

Did you want to kill her?

She was not a child of a demon, only the mother of one.

No one was looking. We could have killed her. People were hurt in the fire. They died in it.

Erin, be merciful, I pray that our holy task is judged righteously done when our soul rests in Your cold embrace.

Erin, be merciful.

The buildings that burned opened a new canopy for the seeds of life. New men would rise from the mud to grasp at the sun over the canopy. New homes and new shops and new streets would bring new hope to people that needed hope after such an awful fire.