We Leave Together, стр. 10

He stepped into the street. He kept his head high and his pace calm, as if he was supposed to be walking here in the dark. He didn’t jump the fence. He walked behind the house, to the servants’ gate. Jona picked the lock and crossed the shadows in the little yard.

Jona peered into the girl’s open window. On the white corner of a bed, a man’s naked leg stuck out across a patch of moonlight.

Jona pulled out his knife.

He watched that man’s leg for movement.

Jona dug his knife along the top of the windowsill. He carved a single letter, slowly. With the cheap knife on this hard wood, he had to dig hard. He had to be careful not to make scratching noises. He needed to apply pressure, and indent the wood.

This wood was not from the rotting Pens.

Jona’s hand hurt halfway through the first line of the first letter of Aggie’s name. He listened while he shook his tired hand. He glanced at the man’s naked leg, unmoved on the bed. Jona touched the line he had carved. The thought of rolling the next letter on that hard wood with a sleeping man a few feet away, and thought about getting some mud or ship’s pitch, instead—or anything.

Jona looked around the yard for an idea. Jona saw a long, thin, low-hanging branch on a tree. Jona used his knife in his rested hand and wrestled the branch off. He took it back out the open servants’ gate. He stripped away his overshirt and then peeled off his ragged undershirt, exposing his scars and skin to the darkness. He put his overshirt back on. He wrapped the ragged undershirt around the edge of the stick to make a torch. He reached up to the top of the fence near the gate. He hooked the blunt butt of the stick into the streetlamp’s latch, and put the cloth end into the fire. It sparked like a match from the demon stain in the ruined cloth. Jona leaned into the bedroom with the burning stick like a torch in front of him. He looked around. A nude man was asleep on the bed, his mouth hanging open. He didn’t look up at the light beyond his eyelids.

Jona placed the burning branch onto the edge of the bed, beside the sleeping man’s leg. He ran.

He didn’t want to listen for the screams of the man, waking up to the fire on his bed, or the sound of the booming bells of the fire captains.

When he reached his little corner of the night, and safety, a thought came to Jona: Perhaps the girl had drugged the man.

He thought maybe he had killed someone. Maybe he had killed because he was angry at Salvatore. This only made his disgust with his fellow demon child grow like a rotten fruit swelling on the vine.

***

I see him now in the shadow of a dream of memory lost and found and maybe it never was real but I can see it.

Salvatore, the look in his face was this: He dreamed of cities across the world that had never known his face and king’s men weren’t hounding him day and night. These cities, their young women were lovely, lonely, and bored. He could escape there, with help from his friends. He knew that. He never quite knew exactly why they helped him.

Salvatore watched Jona’s back and thought about leaving Dogsland forever, and all the industry and all the city’s petty intrigues could fall into the fog of the immortal bloodstain.

Even Jona dies someday, whether Salvatore kills him or not.

He’s in a hammock. He’s in a cave, and doesn’t remember how he got there. He’s in the city again, and he doesn’t remember how he got there.

He knows that he cares about someone, out there. That’s all he knows. He only remembers what he can love.

***

Jona listened for the reports and rumors for the fire he had set in the bedroom, and heard nothing. He watched Calipari’s hands moving over the different papers of crimes, like cards scanned for signs of cheating. No search for an arsonist came through the messenger boys. Jona thought to peer into the paper and seek it out, but if there was no report, then there was no report and looking for one would only be conspicuous.

After dark, Jona watched for Salvatore, and saw the girl as bright as sun in the dark, dancing with her criminal.

Jona went back to the house, a few nights later, expecting it to be damaged. He didn’t want to go to Sabachthani’s latest ridiculous party, where the two were inevitably going.

Jona walked down through the houses in the dark, looking for any sign of what had happened.

The house stood fine, with no sign of fire, and not even a singe at the windowsill.

Jona stopped at the tree he had cut, and saw where his knife had plucked the branch. He reached over the fence to touch the wounded stem.

It could’ve been just a gardener’s blade.

Jona climbed up the fence enough to look inside the window, and he saw the same thing he had seen last time. Moonlight spilled on a bed. A man’s naked leg glistened on the white sheets.

Jona walked away.

He felt like punching Salvatore for this, as if Salvatore had done something to stop the fire that had burned out all by itself. He felt angrier and angrier until he wanted to grab Salvatore and shake him and hold his head in a fire even while Jona’s hands felt the burn. He should have felt relieved.

***

Mishaela was smiling when they met. Then Salvatore said something to her. She placed her hands over her face like she was playing peek-a-boo. Her shoulders shook. Jona wondered, for a moment, whether she was laughing or crying. She had been smiling. She covered her eyes like playing peek-a-boo. Then, her hand reached out, and touched Salvatore’s