We Leave Together, стр. 51
Let the fires come. Let the retribution happen. Let Ela Sabachthani’s head replace Aggie’s on the spikes of the wall. Let her house and all its sins burn to the ground and beyond, and remain as dead as the red valley of the north.
The dogs will come for dogs. King’s men will ring bells by the will of the king, Elitrean the mourning lord, who lost his son to demonology. Sabachthani would find no safe passage, no safe harbor. Every sanctuary was known to the king’s men. Every place she could hide and muster escape was known. Her father would not be able to save her, or himself.
Everyone dies.
The fires of the island came, next. Once begun along the grasses, there was no stopping it. We did not bother attacking the house directly. She would be too strong there. We set fires. We set fires in the trees and grasses and ferries and docking stations. We ran and set fires. The guard had been pulled away. Eritrean had seen to that.
For three days the fire burned.
Eritrean’s men, with the king’s men, hunted down and slew anyone they thought might have been of Sabachthani. Been home to the sleeping dog.
It happened all over the city. It was news all over the city.
It was such a simple thing to do.
Jona knew enough to tear it all down, and he didn’t even know what to do with it.
The paper was enough. I wrote it all down. I handed what I knew from the mind of Jona.
We returned to the city one last time, to seek out Salvatore who had no one to keep him from us anymore. We sought out the empty sanctuary of the damned near the Pens district that had been a sanctuary for Salvatore before. We slipped into the darkness of the abandoned brewery, never removing our wolfskin cloaks for a moment. We hid in the shadows there.
Dog came back. He was still alive. He stumbled into the ruin. He was shaking. His sweat was pink. His eyes were bloodshot. He opened his mouth and howled and howled but it was only a whisper’s breath. I barked at him. I jumped and snarled to keep him back. He was crying blood, shaking his head. He was mouthing something, but I didn’t know what. His tongue had been cut so deep. However this was done, it was done that they had reached deep into his jaws with a hook and ripped his tongue from the back of his throat. He stank of blood from his failing skin and pores. He stank of dirt and filth and blood and death and the slow rot that comes to anyone who spends so much time in this mud. He was crying. He was in withdrawal. He had gone days without any weed, and it had driven him insane.
I pulled the wolfskin from my back. I touched his skull. I said, “You poor man.” I let him hold onto me. I let him scream and wail and clutch at me. My husband watched the doors for signs of anyone following after him, but no one came. The rain was too strong. It drowned out everything. Dog had come here to get out of the rain. He knew he could be dry a while here, even in such pink agony.
He fell asleep in our pile of blankets and rags. We left him there.
We left him the matches.
We left.
Do you know where we can find a demon child?
No. You?
No. Shall we hunt again? Have we healed enough of this place?
We must see the estate first. I want to see the estate, what’s left of them all once the decree goes out.
***
The rubble had only smoldered when the fire came. It would be a long time before anyone came back here. The fires we had started with Jona’s memories written down were not put out by anyone by the king’s command. They had spread, drawn to the center of the demon stain in the estate of Sabachthani. The house was destroyed. The willows were standing sticks of ash still smoldering. Rubble and bones floated in the lake burning, still.
We remained as wolves. We remained alert. We did not need to warn each other that this could be a terrible trap.
We sniffed the ground for any remnant of the stain. It was still everywhere, worse than the red valley. Salvatore’s smell was everywhere, too. We trailed it through the trees, around the lake, through what used to be hedges and fields, and out into the city.
He might have been coming into the estate. He might have been leaving the estate. Either way, we followed what we could to the edge of the ferry where his scent grew thin from all the ash and smoke that blew and fell, and the people running over the ground.
Remain as wolves. Run through the streets in the night to all corners of the huge wall. Howl in the dark and call to him. Call out to every dog that remembers in their blood the singing of the wolves. Call out his name. Cry out with me.
Cry out, husband.
Cry out with me.
Salvatore must die.
CHAPTER 15
Caravans traveled along different roads. They clung closer to the waters to trade for fish from the boys that lived near the shore in the spiraling shantytowns. These young dervishes of mud jump to the roadside with their hands waving overhead. They held them up and shouted for the caravan driver. The driver kept fishhooks in a small sack. He traded two hooks for each good fish.
Past the merging rivers, the pebbled shoreline grows a rocky shell. Young oyster divers leap nude into the surf to gather supper to feed the fullers in the wool factory who stripped lanolin from the sheets of