We Leave Together, стр. 29

“Didn’t think so, pinker.”

The man turned to close the door.

Djoss’ pendulous fist cut through the rain. Mishaela heard the thump of knuckle on the back of the bouncer’s head, where the neck and the skull connect. Djoss was still strong. No one expects pinkers to be strong.

The bouncer fell into the table. Furniture crumpled inside the room.

Djoss went in with his fists up.

Salvatore told Mishaela to wait for him. Salvatore jumped down the alley. Mishaela didn’t wait. She jumped after Salvatore, and slipped a kitchen knife from her sleeve.

Salvatore unfolded his blackjack from his pocket.

A king’s man—I’ll call him by his nickname: Geek—pulled Djoss out from the room with Djoss’ arm pulled up behind the back.

“Calm yourself, killer,” said Geek. “You got some rowdy stuff in you doing like that when your head is all cheesed. You just want some coins so you can suck on some hookah somewhere, right?”

Geek pushed Djoss off into the rain. Geek pulled a few coins from his belt and threw them at Djoss’ feet.

“Get out of here,” said Geek.

The bouncer who had been struck in the head had not, in fact, been holding a club. He had the steel weapon in his hand now, and the thick wooden sheathe in the other. The steel flashed and flickered where it wasn’t dusted by rust.

Djoss bent over to collect the coins. Geek turned around to go back to the game. Geek saw the bouncer with the rusty sword out, cutting at the rain. The bouncer had that angry sneer on his face that meant only one thing from a red door bouncer with a sword in his hands.

Geek held up his empty palms. He shouted for the bouncer to cool.

The bouncer lunged.

Geek shouted, “No!” He jumped in front of the bouncer, and grabbed at the man’s sword arm. The two giant men crashed like ramming ships, then crumpled into a heap of breaking masts and shattered hulls.

The bouncer ended on top. He stood up. He didn’t have the sword in his hands.

Geek didn’t get up. In the crash, the sword blade was angled down his back, and he had fallen on it. And he made soft gurgling noises in his throat, but the rain drowned him out.

He looked up into the storm clouds. He looked up into the rain that ate tiles and nibbled at foundations like rats and filled the sewers up until everything spilled over into the canals. The rain seemed to be everything gray in the world, gray water falling from gray clouds and his eyes were gray now, too. The rain washed Geek’s blood away, washed his skin away, washed him away forever.

Djoss ran stumblingly away, carrying coins to the hookah pipes.

The bouncer had this look on his face like he had just accidentally killed a friend, which I imagine is precisely what he had done. More importantly, he had killed a king’s man.

Salvatore called out to the bouncer. “It was an accident,” he said, “I saw it with these eyes. But you think for a minute the king’s men are going to care if a plug ugly animal like you rolled their fellow for real, or not?”

The bouncer turned. He reached into his empty scabbard for a sword, but there was no sword there. His hand clenched on air twice. Then, the bouncer lifted the club-like scabbard up.

“Easy,” said Salvatore, “I don’t even want a name. I want the uniform, and I don’t care about this fellow who’s dead. I don’t know a thing from a thing about that king’s man or you. Give me his uniform, and dump your mistake into the swollen river and consider it lesson learned. Never be flashing a tooth when a blackjack’ll do you fine.”

Salvatore swung his little weapon in the air. Mishaela remained in the shadows.

The bouncer kicked Geek’s body in the stomach. “Take whatever you want,” he said. The bouncer’s hands shook. His face was paler than Salvatore’s. His eyes were scared. He walked back to the door with the red stripe on it. The bouncer didn’t think to recover his sword.

Salvatore went to work on the body, fast. He pulled the bloody sword out from the back, and tossed it into the canal. He stripped the body nude.

Mishaela stepped carefully from the shadows.

“This is horrible,” she said. She was pale.

“I know people pay good money for bloody uniforms,” said Salvatore.

“Who?”

“King’s men. We dump the body, and sell the bloody uniform back to the king, and he figures out which fellow won’t be back for muster so the families find out, you know? Do a good deed for this fellow, and make a bit for ourselves, too.”

“Right,” said Mishaela, “What about the bouncer?”

“It was an accident,” said Salvatore, “Didn’t you see it?”

“I could barely see it through the rain.”

“I saw it fine. I was closer. No one’s fault, really. Just an accident. King’s man got in the way of the bouncer and they both fell. King’s man fell on the sword.”

Geek’s mute corpse kept looking up into the rain. His mouth was full of pinkish rain that spilled out of the sides of his mouth like the water was coming from inside of him instead of from the sky.

Salvatore finished stripping the uniform. He folded it up small and shoved it into his deepest cloak pockets. He rolled the naked corpse into the water, and watched it float away until the rain shrouded the white skin in darkness.

(Jona had seen very little through the rain. He had seen only enough to know that someone was knocked down. He hadn’t seen the uniform well enough in the dark. He hadn’t seen anything real. He had been trying to decide if he should follow Djoss, or stay with Salvatore, or just go home and hide. He knew someone died, and Salvatore was taking their clothes. I can see what he cannot, because I can smell the rain on the uniform when it turns up again, and the rust from