We Leave Together, стр. 27

He worked at it a little harder.

“You’re going to get us both killed,” he said.

“Don’t got any guts in these Pens with all these hard boys?” said Jona. “This is on me, not you.”

Jona looked around, seeing how many men there were watching from the corners of their eyes. There were hammers that killed cows, here, and men who carved meat with knives all day. Jona was alone on the floor, with Havala hesitating and play-acting.

Jona shoved him aside. He pressed his ear against the wood, and heard the baying and shuffling and scratching. He cursed and slammed the crowbar into the slats, pushing hard. It cracked, and the smell hit, nearly blowing Jona over. It was a smell like rancid blood and flowers in bloom.

Havala stood sheepishly beside it, willing himself not to look.

The shipment of sheep was not of sheep at all. The animals bayed and keened, and some were as big as sheep, but the weed was in them, growing pink and flowering from inside of their guts and shoulders and necks. It was a vine that wrapped around them. Without tongues to truly howl their pain, they could only grunt and wheeze and occasionally bay a bit, with muted voices.

Dogs, carrying the weed that grew into their very skin. The foreman refused to look. “Ain’t supposed to open this cart for another week at least. Ain’t supposed to even open it.”

“It’s open now,” said Jona. “Look at them. Do you see?”

The foreman was afraid.

“Do you see this?” said Jona. “Do you know how to make a dog grow a weed like that? Do you know what kind of plant that is?”

The weed was sick and purple-veined, feeding on blood and soul not light. The flower bulbs were open, redder than blood and stinking of dead meat. Jona knew the smell too well. It smelled like his own blood. The demon weed came from demons, somehow. It was a demon, or a product of one. He curled his nose.

“Why won’t you look at what you do?” he said, to the foreman.

“I’m paid not to look,” he said.

Jona grabbed him hard at the back of the neck and arm. Jona wrenched him into the wall, furious. Then, Jona threw him into the crate to look and fall into the stench of dying dogs and living weed. He slammed the door. The foreman didn’t scream. He whimpered a little, then began to cry. It was a quiet thing, barely as loud as the tongueless dogs that died inside the crate.

The abattoir was bustling, but once the crate was opened, all men had backed away and fallen still. All the men stood or worked around the far side, away from the crate. Dead animals were splayed open, gutted, hacked. Living animals keened and moaned in fear beyond the walls. The men here were silent. They wouldn’t even look up. They just pretended to be working somewhere far away from the crate.

Jona grunted at them. These men, who refused to see, refused to fight. It’s no wonder Salvatore had lived so long here, and Jona’s father and grandfather, too. No one wanted to look at what was right in front of them. They were afraid to look. These tall, strong, hard men who carried knives to work and muscled down cows and horses with their bare hands and iron hammers were afraid to open a crate.

Geek was in the main office digging through papers with a note sheet ready.

“Hey, Geek,” said Jona. “We don’t need to worry about that stuff.”

“Why’d you send me over here, then? Bloody hell, Jona, you know I didn’t want to stick a finger in the hornet’s nest.”

“I know where the ship came from. I saw what was on it, and I know where that came from, too. I know, Geek. I know everything. Frankly, now that I know, I think it’s better no one else does. If I can stop it, I will, but… I won’t. I can’t. The ship came from the Island. I know where it came from. I know who.”

He crumpled up the sheet of paper and threw it on the floor. “Calipari told you that, didn’t he, back when you started poking into this business? Anyone could’ve told you that. Bloody hell, Jona. Might as well be digging a hole to Elishta itself.”

Jona nodded. Back at the station house, he wrote a report and handed it to Calipari. The old sergeant folded it in half. “Do you want me to read this?”

“Sure,” said Jona. “Not a lick of it is true. Read whatever you want.”

“Can I send it up to processing? Can I send it to the captain?”

“Yeah. I have to go,” he said. “Sorry I’m not walking about, but if I don’t get ahead of that report, my ma and me don’t survive the night.”

“Are you leaving town?”

“No,” said Jona. “I won’t leave town, and I won’t tell you where I’m going. Should be all right, though. Hey, how long have you known?”

“I make a point of not knowing, Lord Joni. I do everything I can not to know because long live the king and all that. You can be a fool if you want, but I’m sending Geek to ground with enough coin to pay for his hiding hole. I wish you hadn’t dragged him into your folly.”

“Right,” he said. “I’m going to go see someone I know and let him know it was all a mistake, and I’m hushing it up. I got a copy of the report I’m sending up the chain. Any heat comes down to me. Geek will be fine, I think.”

“I’m almost done. I’ll have land out there, where me and Franka can raise a family and work the land. I got a letter from her just the other day. Watch your step, Lord Joni. I hope you get your officer’s fleur and marry a nice merchant’s widow and get out of this mess with your