“It’s our limits that define us, Enk, not our abilities.” Ilima placed his hand on Enk’s shoulder. “It’s the boundaries we place on ourselves that makes us holy.”
“You’re right.”
“What. . . ? I am?”
Enk ran a fingertip along the back of his skull. “Yes, I need a code of ethic.”
The hand tightened on Enk’s shoulder.
“Self-defense. . . .” Enk intoned. “I’m allowed to use it if I’m attacked.”
Ilima nodded.
“And if I’m given permission by the subject.”
Ilima cracked a smile.
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s just. . . .” Ilima shook his head. “Subject? Really? You make everything sound so clinical.” He dropped his hand from Enk’s shoulder. “But those two rules are good enough for now. I’m sure we will think of more later.”
They approached the Dancing Bell, stopped before its closed threshold and shared a silent glance, neither one daring to speak for a span of heartbeats.
“So how do you want to do this?” Ilima asked finally.
“Just follow my lead and try not to say anything too stupid,” Enk said.
Ilima grabbed his breast, as if shot, and smirked. “That one landed.”
A gust struck the street corner, swept a ring of droplets into the sky. Enk rose an arm to his face, protecting his eyes from the swirling remnants of last night’s storm. Ilima shuddered, pricked by the wind’s icy fangs. Shuttered windows rattled on their frames, and chips of mortar flaked off like dried fish scales. Horses neighed behind them, and unseen dogs yelped.
The breeze fell silent.
Enk rapped on the door.
From within the Dancing Bell came the scraping of furniture, then a guff voice yelled, “We’re closed!”
Enk continued to pound on the door, a steady thumbing of a pale hand against dark wood. The sound took root and reverberated through the building.
“Go away!” The same voice from before, angrier now.
Ilima flashed his teeth at Enk, teeth that gleamed like virgin pearls. Another shining example of what was possible.
After the clanking of locks, the door swung open and smashed against the wall. An old man, with a tuft of white hair matting his head and chin, growled in the doorway. He held a club aloft in open provocation.
“Do you little ducklings have worms for brains?” The man hunched forward, lifting his club higher. “I said we’re closed.”
“We’re here about Merka,” Enk said, uncowed.
The old man grimaced then snarled. “What more do you people want from me? I’ve talked to your Inspectors, your Blackcloaks! How many more times do you want me to relieve this Shaitan blighted night?” His eyes blistered over with tears, tears that reflected stray rays of sunlight.
Enk pushed his way inside, and the old man’s tense muscles reluctantly gave way before his arm. The old man was a jar of maggots set to the boil, but, for the moment, he did not matter.
Brass lamps hung from the tavern’s high ceiling, casting darkness in watery brilliance. Angular faces lifted from brimming mugs to regard him, a collection of abused souls clutched about a round table. Beneath the veneer of their colored cloth shone the triumph of their feminine forms, beacons that compelled even as they damned.
The red-rimmed specter of their eyes spoke of prolonged weeping, of heartache made manifest by the recounting of things lost. Suffering was their birthright, scripture proclaimed, women toiled as only God toiled, in the cultivation of life, in the shepherding of the abstract into earthly motifs, and were made immaculate by the plenary bowl of cruelties only they endured. Never had anything seemed truer.
Enk swallowed, pricked numb by the luminous windows into divinity. He slowed and allowed Ilima and the old man to catch up to him.
“We’re not with the Black Agency,” Enk said in a voice that ached. “I am Enk Gueye, Merka was my wet nurse, my friend, my. . . .” Mother.
Eyes widened, blotched with understanding. They knew him, or more likely, they had heard of him from Merka’s own lips. It was a puzzling sensation being preceded by someone else’s version of yourself. Dark webs spanned his stomach, knotted his back.
“Enk. . . .” a soft voice called, more a gasp of surprise than an instance of language.
Enk traced the sound to the bottom of the double staircase and called out in dismay. Merka stood transfixed in boy watching vigil, framed in lamplight, gripping a polished railing. Hair like curled loops fell beside her ears, and gems like stars hung about her neck. Green, red, and blue stones dangling from a chain of silver.
“Merka,” he whispered.
Thunder roared within Enk, a pounding worse than a thousand ancient drums of war. He raced to her, the tightness in his throat choking. The impossible had happened. She had returned. Merka had returned! A miracle.
He wrapped his arms around her waist, buried his face into the nape of her neck and inhaled deeply. The sour tart of cheap perfume overwhelmed, the sweet aroma of bestial delights.
Soft palms pushed him away. “No.”
Enk lifted his wet cheek from warm flesh and studied the marvel before him. Merka looked unchanged. The same warm light illuminated her gaze, and yet . . . there was a slight difference besides the overzealous use of cosmetics: a mole on her lower chin, the lack of a blue streak in her golden hair, a long-healed dent in her forehead.
“Merka?” he asked. His voice sounded fragile, something made of glass. He ached to deny it had ever come from his mouth, from his breast.
“No, child,” she said, her tone so light as to be scathing. “I’m not her. I’m her twin sister, Minna.”
Enk staggered back, raised damp palms to his forehead. Heat pulsed within them. “No. No.”
“We met once, but you were only a babe then,” Minna said. “I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”
Enk looked away from her. The whole room watched him. Half a dozen painted faces marred with pity. Only Ilima and the old man did not stare, only they refused to ink the degradation any deeper.
An inner squall, the howl of a tempest.
Routed, Enk stumbled back; the urge to lash out wobbled his knees. He stopped, rediscovered balance, and breathed. Nothing else mattered but the regulating of air.
Ilima strode forward. “We’ve come to retrace Merka’s steps in the hopes of finding her killer.”
Enk clasped the backrest of a chair and whipped back the dogs of wild passion. He was a child no longer. He was a man! Men did not weep like drunken whores.
“A noble goal,” Minna whispered. “I too search for my sister’s killer.”
“The whole city searches for the Scarlet Apron,” the old man said from beside Ilima. “Yet here we are another night passed, another woman butchered. What can two more foolish boys hope to accomplish that the rest of us have not?”
“Jalloh, don’t you have work to do?” Minna said, her voice hissing with fervor.
Jalloh fled Minna’s glare, shambled his way to the bar, grumbling under his breath. An ugly, half-healed wound peaked through the thin tangle of hair at the back of his skull. He grabbed a wet rag and scrubbed at the mahogany counter.
“What can two more fools hope to accomplish. . . ?”
Enk had voiced something similar to Ilima only a day before, but that was then. Things had changed. With his new power, unraveling this knot was within his grasp.
“We will find him,” Enk said, letting go of the chair. “The Scarlet Apron won’t get away with this unpunished, I promise.”
“I’m sure you will, dear, and when you do, we will all celebrate you for it.” Minna pushed Enk down into a chair. “Now, sit, and tell your handsome friend to join you.”
Ilima did without further prompting, dropping into a chair beside Enk’s own.
“Would you boys like something to quench your thirst?” Minna asked.
Enk shook his head; Ilima said, “Two of your coldest, if you don’t mine.
”
Minna sat across from Enk and motioned to Jalloh.
The sight of her continued to yoke at Enk’s memory. Look, she’s right there, parts of him screamed, Merka! His fingers twisted crab-like on top of the table, hooked on edges and squeezed. He studied the swirls buried within the polished wood, looked down so he would not be stricken still by semblance.
“When did you find out?” Minna’s voice bruised the sudden quiet, so like Merka’s own, yet so very different.
“Last night.” Hairs stirred on the back of Enk’s arms.
“Oh.” Minna sighed. “I’ve barely had time to grieve. After the thrashers came, I tried to close early, but they wouldn’t let anyone leave until everyone had been questioned. It still seems so unreal. Merka dead. How? I—”
Jalloh slammed two mugs down onto the table. Brown beer splattered, drenching Ilima and Enk both. They jerked back, eying the culprit.
Minna clicked her tongue. “Enough of you and your broiling, man!”
Jalloh retreated, rebuffed, seething.
“He blames himself,” she said, brushing a curl back from her cheek. “He was with her when she was taken.”
Enk tracked Jalloh’s journey back to the bar, his eyes narrowing. He shook his head. No. It would not be that simple, nothing ever was. But perhaps. . . ?
“Why did Merka come here last night, do you know?” Ilima asked.
“Does she need a reason to visit her sister?” Minna said, her voice rising slightly at the end.
Enk looked at her then, really looked at her. She tapped long emerald nails against the tabletop as the corners of her mouth pinched. Something about her manner demanded more careful observation, the way she skirted inquiry with a question, the frailty that hid within the tenor of her declaration.
A glance passed between Enk and Ilima, a slight lifting of eyebrows. The meaning was clear, to Enk at least, permission to proceed with caution. He did not have to command her to do anything, all he had to do was peer a little deeper.
Enk fumbled for his power, condensed esoterics into brilliance, bathed Minna in the glow of an otherworldly fire. . . .
Chapter Eleven
Hide and Seek
An orgy of analogies coalesced into a light laden simulacrum.
Enk found himself standing atop of a large hill, looking to and fro, even while being aware he still sat within the Dancing Bell. The memory of sunlight fell upon him from the center of a sky swimming with pink clouds. Below, a young woman chased a little girl through an endless field of lofty wheat. Their shining laughter scored the heavens, golden giggles made even sweeter by a sighing breeze.
He drifted down the hill, drawn by the beguiling sound. Blades of grass cracked like panels of glass beneath his booted feet, but no hint of pain marred his journey down, not even from his ailment. And he marveled at the sense of freedom this elicited.
The little girl burst out of the field, her blonde ponytails bouncing as she jerked to stop before him. Her eyes were wide and sparkling, and a touch of blue, baby hair dangled from her temple.
“Who are you,” she asked.
“Senet,” Minna’s voice called out from the towering wheat.
“I’m Enk,” he said. “Is your name Senet?”
“We have to hide, my mommy is looking for me.” She glanced over her shoulder, then pulled Enk into the golden field.
The young scion allowed himself to be led, and they fled, twisting this way and that, always hurrying away from Minna’s voice. The calls of “Senet” grew ever more desperate, ever more demanding, until the heavens shook as darkening clouds clashed and broiled above them.
“Stop,” Enk said, yanking Senet to stillness. “Why are you running from her? Is it a game?”
“No, not a game.” Senet tugged at him, plucked at his sleeve and fingers. “We have to keep moving.”
“Why?”
“Senet!” Minna screamed.
“Because. . . .” Senet shuddered, clutching at her dress.
Enk touched her arm. “Hey, it’s all right. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“He wants me,” Senet whispered. Stalks of wheat reeled about them, whipped by angry gusts.
“Who?”
“The bad man.”
“SENET!”
Suddenly, colors ran together and blurred. . . .
Wheat liquefied into pools of bubbling goo. Mental associations dissolved back into reality’s tableau.
■■■
Enk jerked on his chair in the Dancing Bell, flung back into his body, a buzzing drone vibrating at the back of his skull. He blinked slowly, quietly recovering from his dip into the extraordinary.
“Did she often come to visit you?” Ilima was asking as he rifled through his folder.
Minna nodded. “At least once a month without fail.”
“You have a daughter,” Enk said, “a daughter named Senet.”
“Yes, how. . . ?” Minna shook her head, then smiled. “Merka spoke of her.”
Enk searched the faces of the women at the other table. They avoided his gaze, turned red-rimmed eyes to the contemplation of mugs. He tapped his knuckle on the table and frowned. “Where is she at this moment, your daughter?” he asked.
“Honestly, I’m not sure.”
“You two had a falling out?”
“In a manner of speaking. Why is this—”
“She was the reason Merka was here last night, wasn’t she?” Enk took hold of Minna’s hand, moved more by the memory of her sister than by any real pity. A rapid pumping of blood. “Merka wanted to help mend things between the two of you, that was why she was here.”
“Yes, I asked for her help,” Minna whispered. “Jalloh was walking her to Senet’s boardinghouse when they were attacked.”
Enk frowned at Jalloh’s petulant form hunched behind the bar. He agreed with Minna’s previous assessment: the man blamed himself for Merka’s murder. Even without his power, he saw that much. Jalloh ached, and, in the way of the abused, he longed to make the world hurt in his stead.
“Where is Senet now?” he asked and flinched inside from the question—for it seemed unlikely that any of this would lead him closer to his goal—but another part of him leaned forward in a kind of sinew twisting anticipation.
Just maybe this thread would prove true, no matter how tenuous.
■■■
Something gleamed beneath skin, within folded space.
A skittish light. An enigmatic half of a half of an orb.
The shard of a much larger eye, perhaps.
Enk stared at his hand in contemplation, marveled at what had happened inside the Dancing Bell. He did not understand the how of it, and yet he did. The knowledge swam at the edge of what could be perceived, moved through thought and limb—not so much the mastering of things unknown as the remembering of mysteries long forgotten.
He had been given the shadow of what he always wanted, the ability to control others as opposed to himself. The deformity still clung to his breast, still blighted until each step was fraught with danger. And yet still he marveled.
Something lay opened
He closed it.
The unseen blazing dimmed.
Enk lowered his hand, pressed his nose out of the carriage window; the wind teased rank body odor from his nostrils and mouth. The interior of the carriage was crowded, thick with Jalloh’s huddled form, sprawled in between the young nobles. Tears dampened the wisps of white hair on the old man’s chin.
“You needn’t explain, not now—not if it’s too hard.” Ilima placed a hand on the old man’s shoulder.
“No.” Jalloh dabbed at his eyes with a sleeve. “If you two fools need to hear the how of it, I’ll say it now.”
Something pulsed on the other side of what lay closed.
A twitch. A beat.
The unseen portal opened.
Sensations and images swelled like yellow pollen cast aloft, danced and twirled to the tenor of Jalloh’s voice. Whirling scenes gli
mpsed through a smog-touched perspective. A remembered night. Merka’s face awash with starlight. A blinding stab of pain, then darkness. Something wet splashing onto exposed skin.
Enk closed what lay open, and the fountaining of images and sensations ceased. He clutched his thighs, stricken for reeling passions. All this time he had thought the Scarlet Apron nothing more than a morbid curiosity, something to pass the time with idly chatter. Not once had he imagined that the fiend could take from him as he had from so many others.
“It was the rain that woke me,” Jalloh was saying. “I thought she was merely kidnapped at first, which was bad enough, but at the back of my mind I-I knew. I searched everywhere . . . until I found her hanging from hooks at the back of a butcher shop. What kind of monster does such a thing? To an innocent? To a woman?”
“We will capture him, Jalloh,” Ilima said. “This crime won’t remain unpunished.”
“I’m no wailing cuckold,” Jalloh spat, carrying on as if Ilima had not spoken. “I’m no stranger to death or horror. During the Second Crusade, I did things, unspeakable things, but seeing Merka like that broke something in me. Something I thought no longer existed.”
“We’re here,” Enk whispered as the carriage slowed to a stop. He inhaled deeply on the breeze, brushed the hint of moisture from the corner of his eye. It still seemed so unreal, the fact she was actually gone forever. Merka. Mother of his heart, if not his flesh.
Jalloh scraped at his face. “Give me a moment.”
“No, wait here, we won’t be long,” Ilima spoke with the gentleness of one consoling a bereaved child.
Denizens of the city streamed past the entrance to the boardinghouse, a three-story building that had seen better days. Both men and women had the look of cutthroats, dressed in soiled shirts and overlarge petticoats. Most openly glared at Enk as he stepped out of the carriage, and many continued to even after he met their eye and smiled shyly. Some muttered darkly. And still others watched with muted horror for a tick or two before they began moving again. He fixed his gaze to the boardinghouse’s red-painted door, feeling all the attention like hot knives slicing at his side.
He understood their trepidation and disdain. Likely, he and Ilima were the first nobles they had seen since the latest murder. Their presence here was almost a naked provocation. God willing no one pressed the issue.
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