by M F Sullivan
“Oh, buddy”—the prostitute patted his shoulder—“I didn’t ruin your life. I saved it. Sometimes your old life has to be ruined before you can start the next. Like bankruptcy!”
Looking between the two of them, Dominia was in the process of asking, “Now I have to take two humans to Cairo—” when Kahlil, not in the rightest of minds, made an angry, stupid, and sluggish lurch for the gun in the General’s waistband. She got to it long before him and used its handle to crack him on the back of the skull much as Miki had Cicero, whereupon the human dropped against the table with a theatrical clang.
“Shit,” cried Miki while the much-startled dentist, who had retreated against the midnight marble of his kitchen counter, now hurried to study the young man’s well-being. Dominia lifted her free hand to her good eye—to rub it, its brow, the bridge of her nose.
“Sorry. It was instinctive.”
With a look of disapproval, Akachi said, “Resorting to violence is never the right choice…he will live, as you did not break the skin, but I would be concerned about a concussion.”
Miki nodded. “All the more reason to get him to Cairo as soon as possible. Red Market medical care is top notch.”
The subject of Cairo was what had agitated the General, and was, in retrospect, a contributing factor to poor Kahlil’s head wound. That, and her starvation. Four bags of donated blood over the course of her stay did not a full stomach make—no more than it helped her recover from the fast of her train journey. Among her problems, tremors were somehow both the least and the greatest of her worries. While Miki continued Tobias’s conversation in Arabic, Dominia tried to reduce her trembling through sheer force of will. That wasn’t successful with the adrenaline of conflict flowing through her limbs. It was Kahlil’s own fault for trying something so stupid on a rattled martyr who was ready for many things: for a meal; for a bed; for a therapist; but, most of all, for somebody to do something stupid. And because she was so ready for the latter, she had “resorted” to violence. So? So what. Violence was her art form, wasn’t it? Violence was her life.
But that was her Father’s influence. She tamped it away, cleansed herself of the notion that he had permeated even the human world. Dominia hid the gun once more on her person while Miki said in English, “What the fuck are we going to do about René now, wise guy? That was an important detail you thought of, and you fucked it up, yourself! We’re blind. And, if we’re going to get him checked out, we don’t have time to wait around for your teeth.”
Tobias looked up in an offer that seemed, at the time, altruistic. “I can work through the night, if necessary. The most difficult portions of creating the implants are already complete.”
“I would be in your debt.” To Miki, the General said, “It’ll take my body all of thirty minutes to recover from the procedure. The Lazarene ceremony starts before dawn?” At Miki’s single nod, Dominia said, “We’ll be cutting it close.”
“A good day for it. Everybody will be busy with the marathon.” The prostitute’s statement reminded the almost-grimacing martyr of her Father’s promise. She would deliver Lazarus to him during the race. Dominia tuned out as her friend continued, “The odds of police raids, or even Hunter interference, are pretty low.”
“Even so…” The General studied the unconscious man, whose head Akachi supported with his hand. “I don’t think it’s safe for you guys to come with me. Especially if he’s in need of recovery.”
“Remember I have your diamond,” sang Miki, wearing that sly expression. “At least, the Lady does.”
“I’m not trying to get out of going to Cairo. But I’m going to have to meet you there. When I saw my Father”—Tobias’s gaze flickered up in brief attention—“he made a threat about Lazarus, and about the marathon. About meeting me during the race.”
“Did he say where?” When the General shook her head, the prostitute crossed her arms. “Probably near the start, in front of that big hotel. At least, that’s the most logical spot. That or the end, out by Hashmat Khan Lake. Otherwise, it runs through the whole city, so I can’t imagine where you’d find him.”
“Staying in the hotel’s penthouse,” speculated the General with a snort before turning away from the humans. “Can you handle the car situation, Miki?”
“For me, or for you?”
“For yourself, and Kahlil.”
“Yeah, I can do that. We have enough ’Coins from our stunt on the train that it won’t be a problem. But how will you get to Cairo?”
She hadn’t stopped to think about it. After all, her next step was emergency surgery. While a simple procedure would not normally bother her, the idea now stuck in her craw after her experience with Cicero. Her mild preoccupation with the forthcoming removal of her eye and replacement of her teeth was more irritating than the actual event would prove to be. But perhaps it was the principle. Could there never be a moment of peace? A moment when the tide of her thoughts didn’t turn to crush her beneath their loathsome waves?
If she went home, perhaps. Perhaps, given time, she’d get over her pain and her moments of doubt. With enough effort, she could return to that numb half-life in which she dwelled before Cassandra’s arrival. That security of unfeeling. The more Dominia observed herself, the more she recognized an upsetting pattern of dichotomy. Perhaps she had created it. The world was more complex than a binary of goodness and badness; yet, she could no longer use that complexity to justify evil acts. Now she was forced to admit that evil—the truest evil—would be a knowing return into the bosom of evil out of sheer, pitiful fear.
But how easy it would be, going home! How safe. How comfortable. Normal. Not like this, her life destroyed, her body displaced in some human’s (admittedly classy) high-rise apartment, where she washed her face and tried to convince herself she wasn’t a complete fool.
This inner division traced to the issue of her parentage. The discovery of a parent’s imperfection was a natural (indeed, pivotal) point in a child’s development so far as the General observed, but that opportunity was swept from her—she thought—when the Hierophant stole her away. That made the initial divide neat and tidy. Morgan’s parents remained forever pure and good and helpless. A couple deprived of their only daughter, into whom they had poured no small amount of love and care, by the wickedest man in all the land. It sounded like a fairy tale, because Dominia insisted on a child’s way of thinking about the matter for almost ten years; until, at sixteen, the ever-surly girl and all-the-surlier teenager spotted, by total happenstance, a quartet of out-of-towners gone for a day trip to the Vatican. Two of the tourists, she recognized in an instant: beside their grief-grayed hairs, her parents could never be that changed. Ah, that second of joy! Of thrill! What small odds that they should both visit Rome at once! Her Father rarely brought her back to Mephitoli in those teen years. Yet, this week he had surprised her. She had been optimistic that, for once, the trip might be pleasant—and then, this vision.
This was a sign from the God her Father was always babbling about. Her heart raced as she pulled away from the Hierophant with whom she walked. She took two steps forward, and stupidly called out (if she had but waited a few strides, until there was no escape for them!), “Mamma! Papá!”
Words she had thought that would never use again. Words she would forever wish she had never used again when her father’s head lifted, and terror filled his eyes. Terror, or sorrow. Whatever they contained, he tapped his wife on the shoulder. Morgan’s mother looked at Dominia with a kind of coldness that made the girl think the human looked at the Hierophant.
No. This woman, turning away, gripped the hand of the little girl with whom she walked, and yanked her along so fast that the child’s pigtails snapped in the wind. While Dominia stood, dumbfounded and making excuses (they hadn’t recognized her; or were afraid of the Hierophant; or, the saddest excuse of all, they were too busy to speak to her), Morgan’s father lowered his shamed eyes and tugged attention out of his son’s shirt collar. Then, with another pained f
licker toward his lost child, and what might have been something akin to the subtle wave of his left hand, he and the boy he guided disappeared into the crowd.
The Hierophant appeared at pale Dominia’s elbow.
“What is it, princess?” His great hand lay on her shoulder. “What did you see?”
Nothing, of course. She had seen nothing. Eating was easier after that moment because before she had held out secret hope that someday, somehow, her condition would be cured, and her parents would be her parents again. How silly she’d been. What a child. In that moment, she understood that the emptiness of a martyr would be with her forever. The one thing to do was to try to fill it with flesh.
That abject emptiness that plagued her at the thought of family was what made it so easy to be home with Cassandra while her mourning wife reclined upon the favored couch of their new San Valentino estate. She looked like a painting from the Holy Father’s galleries. Sometimes she would lay, unspeaking, for hours; Dominia spent that time reading, sipping wine. Just looking at her. An hour seemed much shorter to the Governess, who’d lived far longer than Cassandra. In the scale of her life, an hour was good as a minute, or less. Yet, those hours with Cassandra had seemed an exquisite eternity in which Dominia forever watched sleet waves of the Pacific in the picture window behind her wife’s head, the image framed by gauzy curtains that, sail-like, bloomed with wind creeping through the patio door. That same wind stroked Cassandra’s hair until, as the starry night gave way to the viscous fog of coastal morning, Dominia, jealous of that wind, kissed her wife, and coaxed her off to bed, and gave her the opportunity for the smallness and safety that came with being in a lover’s arms. That same safety Dominia felt in holding her. She refused to believe she would never feel that safety again—perhaps with the same stupidity by which she once believed her parents would return. But she had to cling to something. The notion that memory was now her only respite weighed too much to bear.
Even in that respite, after all, she had no real peace. Emerging from the bathroom to find Miki flinging herself upon the guest bed, Dominia adjusted the awkward band of her eye patch and studied, with her organic orb, the tasteful decoration of the slick room. A palace beside Kahlil’s, with a lot of in-built storage and bookshelves curiously empty of books, but ornamented with a few fake orchids. “I’m surprised Dr. Akachi is so accommodating.”
“That’s why I brought you to him! He’s been my client for about two years. Pretty good guy. Does good cleanings. Lets me pay him in—”
“Okay,” interrupted Dominia. “But, I mean, I’m a martyr. You think that would stop him.”
“You’re not going to bite him when he sticks his fingers in your mouth, for Lady’s sake. He’s a good, Christian man, but he’s not—well, of course he’s an idiot. All people are idiots. But he’s not a complete idiot.”
“You can’t think all people are idiots.”
“I’m an idiot! You’re an idiot. Even—especially—Basil here.” Finished unpeeling her socks from her feet, she tossed one over the dog’s nose, then sprang to squish his fuzzy face. “Yes! Yes, especially Basil, you’re so cute and stupid.”
As Miki sang to the dog, Dominia made smirking eye contact with the animal that, despite its tail wags, strove to communicate something with its hilariously dry expression. The General laughed, then turned to study their view of Kabul when she recognized the distinct shape jutting inside the duffel bag to which Miki went when done harassing the hound. One patched eye meant she couldn’t watch the human from her periphery, and had to wait: had to listen for the sound of the zipper when Miki, sure the martyr wasn’t watching, opened the duffel bag to reveal the shamisen within.
Thoughts whipped at rapid clip across Dominia’s consciousness, a chain unfolding in the order of shamisen, train, Cicero: by the time her brother’s smug face entered her mind, she was already upon the human, who emitted a shocked cry as the martyr pinned her to the wall with a hand to her mouth.
“That was your mother’s shamisen. It was special, you said.” The licorice lacquer, the cherry blossoms: yes, it was the same. “Where’d this new one come from, Miki? The pawnshop? I thought it was strange you were already fighting with Kahlil by the time I got back from seeing my fathers, but you managed to keep me occupied until something else came up. You were angry with him for the same reason as me. Just like he didn’t tell me they were in town, he didn’t tell you, either, and you met one on your way back to the pawnshop.”
As the martyr lowered her hand for the human to speak, Miki said, “Shit, dude, listen, I wanted to tell you, but we’ve been—busy. You need to relax.”
“Where’d you get the instrument?”
“You said it yourself. When you ran off, I made my way back to the shop, but on the way, I—” The prostitute laughed, a high-pitched noise that indicated high levels of anxiety enfolded within her comic layers of brazen self-defense. “I thought I was dead, for sure!”
“Cicero.”
After glancing at the eye patch blinding Dominia’s DIOX-I, she uttered the word, “Yes.”
Dominia swore through the broad window that overlooked the glowing city, perhaps more active for sake of tomorrow’s race. “I guess you’ll betray me, too, huh? He returned your shamisen as a bribe? Or did he give you something else?”
“This was why I didn’t tell you. I knew you wouldn’t trust me to be better than that!” At the martyr’s skeptical look, the human’s temper reached such a pitch that Dominia grew more inclined to believe her. “Of course he tried to get information out of me, to get me to spy on you or whatever. But they only have chump shit to offer me. Cicero, the Hierophant—none of your Family can give me what I want.”
“What will it take to get you to betray me?”
Here came a slap, which caused the martyr to study with new, ringing perception the scowling human. “You bitch! I’m not some rat, and I don’t appreciate your assumption that I am. Did I bump into Cicero? Yes. Did he offer me money to report to him because he was ‘concerned’”—the girl made air quotes—“about you? Yes. But I didn’t take it. I’d be getting in my own way. Ishtar’s way.”
Miki then went on to describe their interaction, but Dominia didn’t need her story, because she could picture it. How deferential Cicero was, how quick to assure Miki need not worry about the crack in the head. He’d tell her he was fine and just impressed that she’d force of will enough to pick up the gun, with her state at the time. Well Dominia saw how he’d have gotten into Miki’s personal space while handing her the instrument. After draping an arm around her, he’d start walking her back to the pawnshop to show her he knew where they stayed. All the while, he’d say something to the effect of, “My poor sister has lost control of herself in the wake of her wife’s death. We’ve discussed paying a caretaker. Would you be interested?”
And when Miki, politely as she could, refused his offer, he listened to her with that frigid priest’s air, patted her shoulder, and said, “If that’s how you insist things must be.”
“Then he left me, and I was already at the pawnshop. Creep.” Miki frowned down at the shamisen. “I had time to put it away and get into an argument with Kahlil before you showed up. Sorry I didn’t mention it sooner, but, like I said…we’ve all been busy.”
“Did you check the shamisen for recording devices? Tracking devices?”
“Of course. There’s nothing, it’s unmolested.”
Naturally. Cicero would never hurt an instrument. “And did you remember to thank him? For bringing you the instrument, I mean.”
“Yes, of course. I’m not stupid, Dominia. I’ve seen the public service announcements since I was a toddler.”
Ah, the PSAs: ads in television and magazines and Internet videos that explained to humans how they should behave if they ever met a martyr. Most humans went their whole lifetimes without needing the information—those who lived in Asia might never see a martyr at all, let alone merit one’s attention—but, much as all people knew from ea
rly on that, in the event of immolation, they were to “stop, drop, and roll,” so, too, did they know that being alone with a martyr meant staying calm, friendly, and respectful. Particular emphasis was placed on the last directive, as certain subsets of martyr populations were arrogant and prone to quick offense. Cicero, as it happened, was often cited as the textbook example of this quality, for El Sacerdote made it clear that the world owed him reverence for his position in the Church, and that humans were totally subservient animals beside the martyr race. He was also well-known as the most violent Family member, and in any poll would have been recognized as the one most likely to take liberties with local laws. It was that temper of his. For instance, had Miki forgotten to thank him, he might have cited this as a form of entitlement on the girl’s part; worse, he might have seen it as a deliberate slight. The Lamb’s company helped, in large part, to keep him relaxed, his love of his brother being the single thing that might be said to humanize him. They were never apart for long. It should not have surprised Dominia that the entire Family had stopped at Kabul together.
“Isn’t it a nice Family vacation,” said the General to herself, calculating with relative certainty that Cicero and the Lamb had gotten on the Light Rail in Kyoto and been on the train the entire time. Lavinia and the Hierophant only joined them at martyr-ambivalent Almaty, as the girl was no more allowed to travel alone than was the Lamb. Now all of them were here. Waiting for her.
Let them. They could wait until the sun came up. In a few hours, she would be in possession of what seemed to all the world a full, normal set of human teeth. And the General would be missing an eye, but if that sacrifice was what it took to shake herself free of her Family’s influence, she gave it with a glad heart. Especially if she could meet Lazarus without interference.
Now the question was whether Lazarus wanted to meet her.
XV
