Never Knew Another (20 page)

Calipari never wrote to Franka, out where she worked beyond the city walls, to tell her that he had found a demon’s child. When he felt better, he burned his own sheets, and the mattress. He had a priest come through from Imam’s temple to clean the room for good. The king replaced everything, and paid for the priest. Reimbursement for Calipari’s expenses came with a royal seal. The handwriting under the seal was clean and precise, like a woman’s trained script. It was probably Lady Ela Sabachthani’s.

The more Calipari thought about it, the less he liked it.

And Lord Joni, who had damned this girl to spare a demon’s child, was home a few days, feigning illness. When the priest came from the king, Jona took him up to an empty room of the house, one never used anymore. Jona said he had quarantined himself there, and had already burned everything. The priest of Imam cleared the stains away from the room with holy water, not fireseeds. He didn’t realize how old and deep the stain ran. Even after one purification, flowers placed on the floor rotted in an hour. The priest scrubbed the room, floor-to-ceiling, in holy water. He offered to clean the whole, huge, empty house. Jona shook his head. He said they couldn’t afford it, and the king wouldn’t pay for it. He said he had been careful, and had planned for that, and had confined himself only in that one room, while his mother burned everything that came out of it. Jona promised to lock the room shut, never use it again until they could afford to get it really purified.

That lie reluctantly accepted, Jona went to a tavern, and then another, and then another. He pissed in the middle of the street. He lit matches and burned his own puddles of urine, like spilled kerosene. People thought it was a magic trick, like those the Sentas pulled. They cheered for it. But Jona didn’t have the face of an entertainer. If they got a good look at him, they stopped cheering and walked away.

Jona, sobered up when he found Salvatore at the next tavern. Salvatore was dancing the jewels from a teenaged girl’s neck. Jona pulled the thief away, into an alley. He told Salvatore the bad news.

Salvatore couldn’t remember Aggie’s name. He remembered she was a nun. He remembered that he cared about her. He couldn’t remember anything else.

CHAPTER XIII

D
ays passed, and weeks, and maybe more. Memories do not keep good calendars. Jona and the boys were in a dive hidden between the troubled warehouses north of the Pens waiting on this great band of musicians was coming through. The band never showed, and instead a troupe of drunk actors claimed the stage, singing lewd songs with perfect pitch and close harmony. Men had thrown their glasses or spilled their drinks or spewed their drinks because they were laughing so hard.

When the show was over, the crowd lingered in the bar by the stage, and the boys drank like gutters. It was Geek, Jona, Tripoli, and the two young scriveners full of sand after their first real action in a uniform, a day Calipari sent them out patrolling. The scriveners were chattering about this thing in the Pens the other day, and trying to talk tough about taking down brick-batters that wanted to smash a fellow’s skull until the privates cut the handles off their brick-bats with swords and smacked the fighters with the flat of the blades and one of the fighters bought it when he tried to get on top of the private, but the kid had stuck his blade in the fellow’s belly and he wanted to stand up to tell the story, to show it was just like this, how he had killed someone evil in the name of the king…

Jona stood up and glared at the private. “You think you’re so tough, why you pushing a quill all day instead of walking the Pens?”

The private looked up at Jona.

“You so tough?” Jona grabbed the private by his shoulders and shoved him back away from the table. “Tough boy. Let’s see you take me down. I won’t pull nothin’ but a fist. We’ll see who wins.”

The private didn’t move.

Geek placed a hand on Jona’s arm. “Let them have their day in the sun, Jona.”

“Yeah, one day in the sun? Two? Me and the other boys are in the sun pushing meat around every day when those kids’re pushing quills. Don’t be acting all rowdy when you’re nothing.”

Geek stood up next to Jona. He tapped Jona’s shoulder.

Jona turned. “What?”

Geek smiled, grandfather-like. He was a big, soft guy, with lots of muscle beneath his weight. He knew his way around Jona’s moods. He smiled, and raised his hands in surrender. But he wasn’t giving up to Jona. He was pushing Jona back. “Don’t you think you should find somewhere else a while? Plenty people we don’t need working in the morning you can throw around instead of our own people.”

“What are you talking about?” said Jona. “They’re just getting on my nerves.”

“I’m asking you nice,” said Geek. “You start this with him, and he’s out for a week with busted everything, and you know Calipari’ll make you take his desk once he finds out.”

Jona looked over at his boys. Everyone was eying him like he was ruining a perfectly good evening. And he was. He nodded. “I’m going somewhere else because I’m nice, and because Geek asked me nice,” said Jona. Then, to the scrivener he had thrown back, he snarled, “If you touch me, I’ll break your arm off. What’s your name, anyhow? You’re new.”

“Pup’s my name,” he said. “It’s what people call me, anyhow.”

“Well, you watch it, Pup. You’re nothing after one day in the sun.”

Pup was smart enough not to respond.

Jona had drunk plenty to get this angry, and after being this angry he wanted to get drunk to get more angry. He stumbled into the street. He looked up and down the road, and he didn’t see a thing. He saw the same things over and over every night. He saw people moving and milling and hopping in and out of the taverns and theatres and animal pens and shops and secret backroom casinos along the trouble at the stinking edge where the warehouses met the Pens. He’d seen them all. He’d done them all.

Jona didn’t know what he was going to do now. He didn’t have a job for the Night King, hadn’t for a while since Aggie was condemned. He wondered if he could volunteer for anything, see if the carpenter needed someone killed tonight. But showing up drunk would only get him killed, and volunteering for more was not the way things worked with them. He was their blood monkey, and that was all. Like a dog, he obeyed, and did nothing more.

So Jona was bored. He didn’t want to drink. He didn’t want to gamble. He didn’t want to steal. He didn’t want to talk to any of the people he knew. He didn’t want to do anything.

He wanted to find something new—a new tavern, a new restaurant, a new play, a new anything.

He wanted—but he wouldn’t admit it to himself, or even realize it—to fall in love.

***

Jona was alone, putting one foot in front of the other, and looking for his birdie in one of the local gangs so they could go drinking and Jona could make the birdie sing without a fist for a change. He couldn’t find him. He didn’t know if the fellow was down in the pink pits sucking Demon weed from a hookah, or if he was already drunk somewhere else.

He looked up at the moon hung like a silver earring on a veiled face. He stopped where he was and leaned against the nearest wall, watching all the people walking somewhere, so intently. He had nowhere to go. Nobody looked over at him—their eyes stopped at the uniform. His face might as well have been a black mask.

As Jona lingered there, a gorgeous carriage turned into a nearby alley, headed toward the brothel that way. The bells had all been wrapped in black cloth, and the noble insignia was obscured with drapes in an attempt at anonymity.

Jona recognized the carriage. Lord Elitrean’s son was shameless… as long as everyone pretended they didn’t know his name. Jona, feeling wild himself, decided to grind the young buck’s horns down a bit. He wanted to do something that wasn’t boring. He wanted to do something new. He thought he wanted this. He thought it would be a quick laugh, and maybe a lecture later. He didn’t realize this night, this impulsive act, was going to lead him to the thing he had been seeking without knowing it for weeks, months, maybe years.

Jona jogged to keep up with the carriage. The coach stopped back in the brothel’s rear entrance. Lord Elitrean’s son disappeared before Jona could get there. The coachman smoked a cigar and leaned against the vehicle. He knew he was in for a long night tonight.

Jona walked up to him. “Whose carriage is this?” he barked, “You, tell me whose carriage this is!”

“This is nobody’s carriage,” said the coachmen. “Owner ain’t here.”

“Yeah?” said Jona. “You steal it so you can smuggle?”

“This is a lord’s business,” said the coachman, “and if he wants to keep the carriage black, then it’s black.”

“How I know your ‘lord’ is no smuggler pretending when his family crest is covered up like this?”

The coachman shrugged. “You want me to strip the drapes, I strip the drapes. But Lord Elitrean’s son will just put them right back on and come down on you like a knife. Don’t be complaining to me when he does.”

“Give them to me,” Jona snapped.

The coachman did as he was told.

Inside the brothel, Jona shouted away the ragged children who begged beside the old stairs. They kept crowding him. He threw the expensive black satin out to them, a distraction. They shrieked at their gift, tearing at the expensive cloth like sharks, and running off with their scraps.

The mistress of the brothel nervously fluttered over to stop Jona in the stairway. Jona announced, at the top of his lungs, that he had come for Lord Elitrean’s rogue son. Doors opened and closed, some clicking locked.

Jona pushed past the owner, and snarled at the whole house, again. He kicked open the first door he saw, but it wasn’t Elitrean’s son. The next door wasn’t, either.

Women screamed and tried to cover themselves.

The owner ran up behind Jona, and begged privacy for her guests, offering a large bribe. Jona threw the money on the floor. More money appeared. Jona smacked it away.

“Tear the place down, then,” she shouted, “And don’t be looking for me when your wick needs burning.”

The children, a flock of pigeons, snatched up as much of the spilled bribe money as they could. The owner cursed them, kicking at them, but she couldn’t stop them. The children faded into empty rooms and closets.

Jona laughed.

Lord Elitrean’s son waited in a room with a sword in his hand, a half-naked woman hiding behind the bed.

“Are you the man shouting for me?”

“Yeah. I’m Lord Joni,” said Jona. “This was all my estate before the war.”

“You’re really a king’s man? I thought you wore the uniform to sneak into parties,” said the young lord. He sheathed his blade.

“I am a king’s man, and I’m sick of all your parties, and I’m sick of you. You aren’t on your own lands here,” Jona sneered.

“Are you hiding behind the King’s service?”

“Are you hiding in a brothel? I stripped your carriage of drapes, and exposed your house seal. If I catch you with an unmarked carriage, I’ll strip it again. How you run things on your grounds is your business, but in the King’s City, you will not get away with destroying your family’s honor in hiding.”

“My father will hear about this.”

“I’m sure he already knows what you do. He’ll give me a prize for trying to stop you.”

The young nobleman looked back at the woman hiding behind the bed. “I’m not paying you,” he said, and pushed past Jona, past the apologetic owner, and into the main street. Jona followed him, watching to make sure he got into his carriage and left.

When he was gone, Jona smiled. He turned to the owner. “So, got anyone new?”

“You get out of here!” she shouted. “Calipari won’t like it you making a scene!”

Jona laughed. “My money not heavy enough for you? I want a girl, healthy and strong, and new. Who you got for me?”

“Nobody,” snarled the owner. “The Sergeant won’t mind I throw you out hard after what you just did in my house!”

“Go get him, then. See what he says.”

She backed away looking angry enough that she just might.

Jona laughed. He went back into the brothel, and back upstairs to the room where Elitrean had been having his fun. Inside, the woman had come out of hiding. She was washing her naked chest in a basin of fresh water. She looked up at Jona without covering herself. “You next?” she said. “Must have wanted me bad to chase him off.”

Jona smirked. “Something like that.”

“Sixteen for the business. Anything special, you pay more.”

“How much just to touch you a bit?”

“Touch me? Where?”

“Anywhere.”

“Sixteen.”

“Even if there isn’t any business?”

“You know I’m worth it.”

“Guess so,” said Jona. “Stand next to the bed.”

All she had on was her skirt. She stood where she was, with her hands up behind her head, waiting near the bed. Jona counted sixteen coins from his pockets, carefully placing each coin one by one on the table. He was surprised he had enough.

At the bed, Jona cupped each of her breasts. They felt heavy, like they were full of water. A little milk leaked from one of her nipples. He thought about taking her, and leaving her reeling and ill. But the milk meant she had a child hidden here, and if she got sick, her child would, too. He stopped. He shrugged at her. “Right then,” he said, “sixteen well spent. Now get out of here.”

“What? All that trouble, and that’s it?”

“Go on,” he said. “Get out of here. I want to be alone awhile. Now get going.”

“I got other customers.”

“Not tonight. Tell your boss to find a new room for you. I’m staying here a while.”

“How long?”

“Long as I want,” he said, “Now get out of here!” He slapped her lightly on her backside. Annoyed, she quickly poured the money into a bag, then pulled a robe over her shoulders. She disappeared into the hall.

Jona wiped his wet hand off on the bedsheets.

Jona didn’t know why he had done what he had just done to Lord Elitrean’s son, or to the woman in the room. He knew he had wanted to do it, and that no one would really stop him. So he did it. He wondered what he wanted to do next, and couldn’t think of anything right away.