We Leave Together, стр. 17
“I’ll try, Rachel. I’ll do what I can.”
“That’s the best you can give me? That’s it?”
“I promise I’ll do my best.”
“Please, Djoss,” she said, “Please.”
“It’s hard,” he said. “You don’t know how bloody Elishta much I want it all the time. It’s so bloody hard.”
“Please,” she said. “We can leave any day, okay? We can leave right now. Please, can we just go?”
“I like it here,” he said. He rolled over. I think this was the last time he had the bed before he sold that. Maybe he had already sold it. Inside the shape of things, making the best gestures I can from what I can see and smell and remember and know. Had he sold the bed? Was he on the floor? Did any of this happen like it did?
I could ask the butcher if he had already sold the bed to smoke the hookahs. The butcher would know.
My husband can sense my indecision.
It doesn’t matter if it feels true to the Rachel he knew. Write it down, move on, and we will find her.
How far gone was her brother? Had he sold the bed?
It’s not important.
If he sold the bed, he was much farther than even Jona knew. How could he go north?
I don’t know. It’s not important. What Jona knows is what you know. What Erin wills for us to know from these things we learn, we know. And, what we think is true is close enough for the hunt. Trust your instincts. Write it down. What do you feel, beloved?
Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe that’s what I’m feeling about the bed.
None of it matters, for Rachel is gone. She and her brother ran north across the red valley when Jona died.
CHAPTER 5
Jona believed Rachel, but he had been doing the job too long to take any bird’s words at their face value. As soon as she left, he got dressed and left, too. It was something he could do. His chest felt like Geek was sitting on it, but he didn’t know what to do about that. He had to do something. He had to get out and be out and act. Checking her word was something to do. Checking her honesty seemed important, to him, as well, in a way he couldn’t describe. He had to know if she was just taking his money for its sake, or if she was really being honest to him. Jona did not have the experience in love to understand these things. He pulled his clothes on and stormed into the street. He scowled all the way to the abandoned brewery he thought she meant.
A light rain rolled through. Generations of fish had hatched from their eggs in the season of rainstorms, feeding on the filth and silt and trash that filled their seaweed sanctuary.
The fish grew up big on trash, until a fisherman’s net pulled them from the water, and a fisherman doused the fish in salty brine.
And Jona stopped a shopgirl with salted halibut in a bucket. He ate while he walked. He tossed the bones and tail into the street where it would be washed in the rain to sea, his demon-stained spittle seeping into the natural cycles of the city’s discarded things.
He arrived at the empty brewery, seeing nothing, and sat among the folks waiting for a ferry like he was supposed to keep an eye on them today. He yawned. He looked around like he was watching for droppers and cutters and pickpockets.
And where he stood he watched the corners of his eye for ragpickers. He listened for the clanging of a scrap forge.
When the crowds got bad, he ambled around like he was just keeping the order. He watched for anyone with a crown. He peeked into the alleys running beside the building to the water.
He saw the three copper crowns on the side of a metal tub. He saw the ashy lips where many scrap metals burned off their impurities.
If he set foot in the ruined brewery alone in his uniform, he probably wouldn’t get too far in the dark, where he didn’t know what trouble was inside except that it preferred not to be disturbed. He sat down within earshot. He waited to hear the clanging of the craftsman. That didn’t take too long.
Jona peeked around the corner. He saw the boys beside the giant man and the faint whiff of demon weed beneath a trash fire.
He saw the crowns being forged for demon weed, and handed out like treasure to boys that were not a gang anymore, just boys—wild mudskippers running through the streets and begging and stealing and eating anything they found like little wild dogs.
***
“Nic, we gotta talk.”
“Talk nothing,” said Calipari. He didn’t look up from his reports. “You’re on walkabout today, Jona.”
Jona sat down on the edge of a scrivener’s desk. The scrivener leaned back in his chair and cursed at Jona for sitting on the scrivening. Jona ignored the private. “I got a birdie singing a song on the Three Kings, Nic. I put together two and two. I paid ’em for their trouble on account of it being true, and I’ll need to be reimbursed for it. I found the scrap forge where they’re making crowns. Whatever they were, they’re nothing now. Their leaders are already dead. It’s just boys buying crowns. Nothing more.”
Calipari put down his quill. “Nevermind walkabouts,” he said. He stood up. “Call the boys back, Corporal. Hey, scriveners, go call the boys back!” Calipari looked Jona in the face. “This the center?”
Jona sighed. “Yeah, but like I said…”
Calipari clapped his hands. “So, we mousetrap it, and the king’s navy for all of them we catch,” he said. “Where is it?”
Jona wasn’t as happy as Calipari. Jona’s shoulders sagged. His face begged forgiveness. His voice was calm and slow. “Mousetrap won’t work,” he said.
“Mousetraps work,” said Calipari, “Show me, and I’ll