We Leave Together, стр. 60

“No,” said Jona.

“Well, there you go. Anybody try to grind you today?”

“Just you,” said Jona.

“I didn’t do a thing, Lord Joni. I’m telling you, this is the dream. Land of my own, and a way out of the Pens. The air is so clean I could drink it in a glass.”

At all the taverns along the way, when they could sleep in one out of the rain instead of huddling beneath the cart, Jona sat down on the edge of the bed again and waited. He looked over at the useless bed. Somewhere in the night, Rachel might not have a roof over her.

The first guard post was one day’s journey past Franka’s tavern, but from the top of the tower, the walls of Dogsland were still in view as large as mountains. Sergeant Calipari inspected the place quickly. The boys inside, both young privates, saluted sharply. They had kept their log in order, and smiled at the weapons, even if the equipment was rusty confiscated scrap from hookah dens. Sergeant Calipari adjusted this and that for the sake of adjusting this or that, and within an hour, the inspection tour was on the road again to the next tower and they didn’t even stop for a meal. Calipari wanted to get to his land. They ate hardtack and the apples that hadn’t rotted.

The second one had half the wall blown apart and left where it had fallen. The men there slept in tents and wondered when their time would come to return to the city. In the report, Calipari wrote down the damage to the guard tower, and said this had been reported since the war, when a falling war machine had shattered the wall like a catapult blow, but it had come from their own broken siege device. The tower had never been repaired. They traveled farther, until the farms thinned out and the roads were just fallow fields and woods.

These men knew each other too well. They spoke so little to each other. They had nothing to say. Sergeant Calipari was supposed to be training his replacement, and he had given up on the Pens.

(Jona lay back in the cart at night and stared at the naked sky, with his beloved in his eyes among the stars. When they stopped for the night he shuffled off to empty his body of water, and saw his shadow there, following.)

Up the roads north, across two fords, and through the farms and pastures, the cart moved on. Farmers’ children walked to the edge of the fence, and waved at the men in uniforms passing through. Nicola pushed Jona from the cart towards one of the women. Jona stumbled against the fence where this beautiful girl in green and brown linen placed her baskets on the ground beside her garden.

“Hello, king’s man,” she said, looking away and locking her hands together in front of her dress.

“Say hello, Corporal!” shouted Calipari.

Jona bowed gracefully to the woman, as if he were at a ball. “Hello,” he said, “my name is Jona Lord Joni, corporal of the City Guard.”

“My name is Flower,” she said.

“A pleasure,” said Jona, rising from his bow.

She eyed him with a raised eyebrow. “Are you really a lord?” she said.

“Yes,” said Jona. “Are you really a flower?”

“I’ve never met a lord before.”

“If you’ll please pardon me, I have to get back to work. We have to keep the roads safe, and inspect the guard posts. We’ll be back this way again soon.”

“Are you really a lord?” she said, and then, louder to Sergeant Calipari’s back, “Hey, is he really a lord?”

“He sure is,” shouted the sergeant from the cart, “He already attends balls with the king, himself.”

Jona ran to catch up to the cart. He shoved a fist into Nicola’s back. Nicola fell forward. He kept on the cart by pushing against the donkey’s backside.

Calipari laughed and laughed, anyway, and Jona never laughed. He never did anything but skulk and wait.

They passed soldiers on the road, out patrolling the highways for the king. The army kept the woods and roads. The king’s personal guard kept the towers and the farmlands. Out a few days, the distinction was meaningless. They were men in uniform that saluted each other as they passed. Some of the older men recognized Calipari and shouted at him, and he shouted back.

The worst thing, for Jona, was how there was nothing to do for days but walk or ride or whip the mule. He didn’t even know a song to sing to distract himself.

***

At the next guard post, Calipari shook hands with a fellow he had known for years, a sergeant past the last months of service. He spent his days in the guard post waiting for his replacement to arrive from the city, and slept nights in a farmhouse on a ridge where he already had his first crop of wine grapes growing. The old sergeant and Nicola traded war stories for two drunken days.

Jona had to take the old sergeant’s shift on the top of the tower, looking up to the top of the far hill, looking for fire. The other guard was a private that had racked up demerits in a fist fight with an officer. The officer used to be a plain corporal, and the fight occurred before the private knew about the promotion. The captain would’ve arrested the private for striking an officer if it hadn’t been for the rank mixup. Instead, the private will spend the rest of his career at this empty station, watching for fire, and keeping his own kindling dry in all the wet rain, with no hope of a decent parcel or of a fleur, or of anything but this.

The private didn’t like to talk much. That was fine with Jona. Jona and the spurned private sat on the guard post, listening to the two sergeants singing old songs and pissing all over the broken furniture in