We Leave Together, стр. 2
Sometimes, the crown fit. If it didn’t the boy carried it around, looking for another boy that fit it for a trade of crowns.
And Dog waited there, smoking the demon weed the boys had brought, measuring the boys’ heads with his fingers, and crafting new crowns in his back alley scrap forge, then sleeping like an old monster from a children’s story wrapped in lost boys and trash.
This monster of old skin, muscle, and bone looks at the water like he’s waiting for us to come and claim his horrible skull, but no one is coming for him.
No one ever comes for him.
***
I have written many things.
As wolves we ran, and as wolves we slipped underground.
We slid up from the sewers, and we stood upon the brink of our destination, where the sewers opened to the empty building of the street, at the edge of our destination.
Aggie knew the way in and out, and so did Jona following Salvatore and Aggie, and so, therefore, did we.
We slipped inside in the dark. We climbed in silence past the rectory kitchen, up the stairs and into the darkness.
Wolves slipped into the rooms, sniffing through them all for the woman who is old enough to be in charge.
We peeled back the wolfskin. We looked at her sleeping. She was an old woman in the dark, with skin empty of sunlight to our dusky brown and golden. She snored gently. She was a thin woman with blue veins like rivers in her wet parchment map of skin. She looked up at us, and pulled the ragged sheets around her body, pulling back.
She reminded me of another woman.
“We are the Walkers of Erin,” I said. “We have been hunting the demon stain.”
“What are you doing here? This is not the proper channels!”
“The proper channels are too corrupted,” I said. “Do you remember Aggie?”
“Of course I do! It was one of the worst things that’s ever happened in my life, signing off on her! Where were you? Where was your huntress in the night?”
I placed the papers at the foot of her bed.
“We need your help,” I said. I bowed gracefully. “The children of Erin beseech your aid, madame Imamite, against our common enemy.”
“And… who is our enemy?”
“Elishta,” I said.
“Naturally, but who else? Who has brought you crawling here for my help?”
“We need to see the king,” I said. “We need a meeting with him. We need to work together to end the stain in the city streets.”
She picked up the papers and shook them. She flipped through them. “Do I even want to know the details?”
I shrugged. “Copies have been made. We want you to make copies, too. Everyone must know the truth. Spread them to every convent, every prayer hall and sanctuary. Tell anyone that listens. This is why we came to you, to be sure you receive the truth directly.”
She pushed the paper back to me. “Stay for breakfast. Stay here. No one will know if you remain among the Anchorites a day. There is no contact with the outside world in here. We receive shipments in silence and veiled from one gate. We do not let our girls wander the streets wagging tongues.”
I shook my head. “Aggie was not supposed to leave your gates.”
“She was a demon child. Who knows what evil magic she used to escape us.”
“You should read those. Send your people to us when you’re ready to aid us. We need an audience with the king.”
She put them on the ground. “I should have you arrested. It is illegal for a man to invade our convent. We are allies in this world but not the next.”
“Elishta is our enemy in both. Our faiths are practical enough when it comes to that.”
She nodded. She took a deep breath. She picked up the pages. “Go, then. I will make my own decisions about what you have brought to me.”
We bowed.
Our next destination was a nobleman whose son was murdered and thrown into the water. We were going to offer him the whole kingdom. All he had to do was be ready to act when the time came to stop Sabachthani, and to make copies.
He would help us. Of course he would help us. He was weeping about his son after we handed him the truth. We told him what happened, and what vengeance he could take. We told him that we had chosen his noble line to support when the king died, and our support came with knowledge of his enemies.
Imam’s priests would fall in line with us, and with him.
Our revolution was coming.
***
I see what I see of the city, by the grace of the goddess Erin, who granted me the lost memories of the demon child’s skull that I might root out the evil of the world. I do not sleep except that I dream with someone else’s memories and wait until they may pass through me like a flood washing away in my mind. Corporal Jona Lord Joni’s memories—he is the dead demon child whose skull I carry—pour through me in waves and I am lost in him and his world. My husband is beside me, and he says it will pass soon enough. All these lost dreams will pass.
Give it time, he says. Just write them down and then you will find yourself again.
I remember too much. I step away and try to think like he does, and see the city from the angle of his eyes. The nobleman would make the city a series of islands cut open by the canals, where all the people of the street are divided by bridges that can be owned and kept by lords. It was not good that the Chief Engineer was murdered, but his incomplete canal is better unfinished. On an island, the worst would only grow taller, crueler. That is what happened to the Sabachthani on their