Lights clicked on, and the coatrack rose of its own accord. Kai blinked brilliance from her eyes. The living room resolved: white shag carpet left over from the dope-peddling former owners, ghostlights recessed into the ceiling, leather chairs and cheap tables. And Claude, standing over her, setting the coatrack on its feet. She recognized the curve of his thigh under his khaki pants, and the spread of his hips, and the swell of his forearms and his once-delicate hands, knuckles swollen by a hundred fights. He wore his uniform shirt, navy blue and short sleeved.
“What the hell.” She was panting. She hoped he didn’t mistake it for desire. She wondered what she looked like, then decided she’d rather not know. Hair stuck to her face, eyes wide.
“It’s just me,” he said, and offered her a hand, which she ignored. “Sorry I startled you.”
“I felt thorns.” She found the cane where she’d dropped it, and pulled herself into a crouch. “Something grabbed my wrist.”
Claude ran one hand through his cropped hair, and grinned. He had a broad face, with large front teeth. She’d loved his grin, once. She followed the direction of his eyes, and saw, on the table by the door, a dozen roses bound in purple crepe paper. “Oh, hells.” A sweater remained on the floor. She bent, cursing from the pain, picked the sweater up, and hung it on the rack.
“Jace told me you’d be back tonight.”
“Did he.”
“I thought I’d come, you know, say hi. Welcome home.”
“This is my house. You don’t get to welcome me back here.”
“You were hurt. I thought you could use a friendly face.”
“And you think you qualify?”
“We were friends, once. I thought, even after everything…” He stopped. “I’m sorry. It was a bad idea.” As if he’d just realized this.
She considered keeping her back to him, but felt like a punished child staring into the corner of her own living room. With the lights on, she saw more signs of his presence. His jacket, folded over the arm of the recliner he liked, the one she’d planned to sell since he moved out. A cup of coffee, a quarter full, occupied a coaster on the table. Aside from these, the table was bare, as was the rest of the living room. She knew how she’d left the place, and expected used water glasses and books facedown and splayed to hold her place, crumb-strewn plates covered in mold that would by now be halfway through the Bronze Age. Though there wasn’t much bronze around Kai’s living room; any prospective mold-civilizations would be out of luck. “You cleaned.”
“Most of it was done already. I put bookmarks in the books. They’re upstairs, by the bed.”
Violation. Presumption. “Thank you.” She turned a slow circle. “You get off shift early for this?”
“Something like that. My schedule’s changed a little.” A pendant hung around his neck; he dug it out from beneath his shirt. Ghostlight flashed off gold.
“Promotion. Nice. See how well you do when I’m not around to distract you.”
“That’s unfair.”
“You don’t live here anymore. I don’t have to be fair.” No malice there, or not much. She was too tired for malice. Or for manners. She sank into his armchair—no. Not his armchair, just the armchair he liked. “I saw one of your boys grab a pickpocket on the street as I was walking up here. Broke the cobblestones.”
“Public works will send a zombie crew in the morning.”
“Probably cause as much damage with Penitents as you stop.”
“Penitents are a deterrent. They don’t tire, they can’t be bribed, and they’re intimidating as all hells. Plus, they rehabilitate criminals. Not pretty, but it works as well as anything they use mainland.”
“Did it work for you?”
A cheap blow, but it didn’t seem to hurt, or else he hid it well. “You remember me when I was a kid. I was a punk. Penitence hurt, but I’m a better person now. We both are.”
She ignored that. “I saw a four-ton super-powered statue chase down a hungry girl who stole a purse from some mainlander who thinks pink is a color leather should be. Isn’t that overkill?”
“Best kind of kill.”
“So now you’re cribbing comic book one-liners.”
He started for the armchair, realized she was sitting in it already, and stopped. “You don’t see what’s out there. Kavekana’ai’s far above the docks. There’s war on the street. Always some local god from the Southern Gleb who thinks he’ll catch like wildfire here. Sailors bring in strong stuff from the New World. Even the drugs are getting worse: not just plants anymore, new compounds refined with Craft. I saved a kid from flying the other night. He’d taken some Rush, you know, lets you soar for a while, knocks you out for three days after. Problem is, the comedown’s fast. We found two guys last week in cane fields on the north slope, broken as if they’d fallen from a height only there wasn’t anywhere around to fall from. Some water rat sold it, sailed off on his ship, and left us to pick up the mess.”
“What’d you do with the kid?”
“Tied him to a bed. He hovered a few inches off the surface, but a fall from that height onto a mattress wouldn’t hurt.” He closed his eyes. “I didn’t come here to talk about work.”
“Why did you come?”
“To see you.”
“Here I am.” She held out her arms. “All my bits fit together, at least according to the doctors.”
“And to ask how you’re doing.”
“Fine.”
“And if there’s anything I can do for you.”
“No.” She liked that silence. Claude was the man with answers. Ask him any question, and he had a reasonable reply. That wasn’t why their fights began, but it didn’t help once they did.
“Four weeks,” he said, wondering.
“They wanted me kept for observation.”
“All on the mountain, though. They didn’t move you down to Sisters?”
“They had reasons for keeping me out of the hospital. Nothing serious.”
He sat on the couch. His feet rested next to hers on the carpet. Creases in the shiny black patent leather of his shoes distorted their reflection. “Kai, how can I help?”
She tried to remember how their last fight started. Her hours, maybe, or his, or else something they’d tried to do in bed, and that stupid seed grew into further foolishness until voices rose and words sharpened and a glass broke and the small house gaped empty and hungry around them. “You can leave,” she said.
“You’re hurt. You’re tired. Jace said you pushed yourself so far there was little the doctors could do for you. I know I haven’t been good to you, but I want to help and the least you can do is trust me.”
“That’s not how it works. And Jace shouldn’t have told you whatever. I’m tired. I’ve had a hell of a month. And us, we’re done. If you wanted to help, you shouldn’t have broken into my house. What did you expect, surprising me with roses in my living room my first day home from hospital, as if everything’s okay between us?”
The clock ticked on the wall. Normally it was too quiet to hear.
“I didn’t expect anything,” he said. “I hope you won’t push me away just because of what you think I want from you. Give me a chance to be your friend, at least.”
“Leave.”
The clock chimed. She didn’t count the hour.
“Okay,” he said, and stood. He donned his jacket, and brushed off the front of his shirt, though Kai saw no dirt there. “I’m going. You can keep the flowers.”
“I will.”
He opened the door. Outside, the night spread.
She sat in his chair, no, her chair, and watched the door close behind him. The fence gate swung shut, too, the latch settled, and she heard the cat’s whine of the wards. The house stank of dust and stale life.
The island is our prison. Bullshit. Kavekana didn’t trap anyone. People took care of that themselves.
She carried his coffee cup to the kitchen and dumped the milky dregs into the sink. She filled the mug, washed it i
nside and out, and left it upside down on the drying rack. The soap smell did not cut the dust, or the age, or the space. Was this what they called depression? Probably not. Drunkenness. Adulthood. She’d imagined standing here as a kid: her own house, free of family and the stink of the working harbor. Standing in skin that fit her soul. The skin felt good, and the body, but the rest of her life, she wasn’t sure.
She watched her reflection in the window glass for longer than people should, and saw inside the lines and shadows everyone she had been.
She left the kitchen, turned out the lights there and in the parlor, and walked into her bedroom, where she knelt and prayed to absent gods until sleep came for her, charged with painful dreams.
14
Izza sat on her hands in the wooden chair in the bright room where the Penitent had brought her, and looked everywhere but into the cop’s eyes.
“Isobel. That’s your name, it says here. Isobel Sola. Not local.”
Not at the cop’s eyes, or his body. Bad luck to look at watchmen or Penitents. Shouldn’t have glanced over her shoulder when she was running, even. They’d taken the purse. A dumb thing to worry her, but she hoped to get some soul out of this at least.
If she got out of this.
“You’re from the Gleb, right?”
She shrugged.
He examined the form, most of which she’d left blank. She’d chosen the first name because Izza and Isobel were close enough that she would respond to it naturally if called. The last name she made up from whole cloth. “Parents, anyone we can call?”
Another shrug.
“If no one comes to vouch for you, I’ll have to stick you in a cell until the hearing. You don’t want that. I don’t, either.”
A cell was the first step. Once you got used to walls, easy enough for the walls to close in, to wrap you round in rock until you screamed and screamed and lost yourself. She didn’t look at the cop, but she wanted to. Wondered if he had a clan scar on his wrist, or fang tracks in his arm. Had he done time inside a Penitent, or was he just a joiner? Which was worse?
He lifted a paper from the pile on his desk. Her paper. She’d never had a file before. She needed a way out, but didn’t see one, so kept quiet.
“Can you talk, kid?”
She shook her head.
No need for him to know she could, anyway.
A sigh, movement: a head settling into hands. Tired cop. She might have run for it then, but a dozen others stood between her and outside, not to mention the Penitents on guard. She ran the odds in her head, and came up long.
“The woman you stole the purse from, she’s deciding whether to press charges. If she does, you’ll face a hearing. You’re too young for community service. Just. Keep on this road, though, and you’ll learn what Penitence feels like. You don’t want that.”
That last bit of sincerity answered her question. He’d done time. He’d changed. She tightened her grip on the chair.
“Right. Fine. Who am I talking to, anyway.” He made a note on the paper, sighed, and stood. His chair legs scraped against tile. He lumbered around the desk, and set his hand on her arm. She didn’t pull back, didn’t resist, but she sagged into the chair, and he had to wrench her shoulder to drag her to her feet. She didn’t look at him even then. The floorboards of his office were pale and straight and even.
“Come on.”
She didn’t. He pulled harder, and she fell out of the chair into the desk. She almost choked, but recovered her balance.
From the hall, a voice: “Mike. Someone’s here for the kid.”
Had Cat found her? Izza hadn’t told her where she’d gone, and anyway the woman wouldn’t go so near Penitents, not after their first encounter. But for a second Izza hoped.
The hand released her arm. She looked pointedly away from the cop, at the wall decorated with engraved plaques, awards for deeds of dubious virtue. In Kathic, the yellow crust on teeth was called a plaque.
“Really.”
“In the receiving hall. Says she’s his apprentice.”
His. Not Cat, then.
“How’d he know to come here?”
“Says he has a tracking glyph on her. She snuck out yesterday.”
The first cop, the hard one, examined her, slantwise, skeptical. “You have a boss looking for you?”
She nodded, once, because it was a way out.
“What you do for him? What kind of an apprentice are you?”
She mimed sweeping.
He grinned when he got the joke. “And you’re sure you want to go back?”
She heard a stitch of sympathy in his voice. He could think whatever he wanted, so long as he let her go. She nodded. This time she let herself look, if not quite at him, at least near him. Three deep wrinkles cut across his forehead. A disbeliever, a raiser of eyebrows.
“Fine,” he said, and led her back through the office to the bright receiving hall. She spent the walk wondering how she might tell her rescuer from the others waiting; the cop was suspicious already, and if she didn’t recognize her supposed boss, or he didn’t recognize her, the game was up. She walked ahead of him a few steps, fast as she dared. She remembered the route from when they brought her in: between the desks, beneath the yellowed lights and the exhausted gaze of half-dead officers propped up by bad coffee and a soured sense of duty.
The waiting room was small, well lit, pale, with metal furniture bolted to the floor. Behind a tall wood desk sat the duty officer, cap pulled low over her head. Izza recognized the hollows under her eyes, the face harder than usual for a woman of her age: a former crook, Penitent-reformed.
Few possible saviors among the room’s other occupants. Two women in their forties, one in a suit, another wearing a ratty shirt blazoned with the logo of an Iskari band last famous two decades ago, both seated, both reading old magazines. A bearded man sprawled across three chairs, hands bound, a spreading stain on his crotch. A thin kid she didn’t recognize, knees jutting through ripped trousers, sat balled up beside the bearded drunk. A round-bellied Iskari gentleman in a green velvet suit, threadbare at elbows and underarms, stood by the door. The green-clothed man dressed poorly for an Iskari, and formally for an islander; a visitor who’d been a long time on the island. Shifting nervously from foot to foot. Waiting.
She didn’t recognize the man, but her choice was clear. Whatever he wanted, she could escape him more easily than the watch station. Probably.
She pulled out of the cop’s grip, walked up to the Iskari, and held out her hand, firm, level with his stomach. He looked from the hand, to her, and she hoped he could read the determined set of her mouth. Get the message. Strong body language. Set lips. Don’t act as if you think I can talk.
He accepted her hand, and shook it. “I thought I’d lost you.” His palms and his face were damp. Velvet wasn’t good for Kavekana’s heat, or the other way around. Deep green eyes bulged in deeper sockets. His lips twitched when he wasn’t talking. “You’re late, Marthe.”
She pointed over her shoulder with her thumb.
“You’re late, and this man says you’re a criminal.”
Another shrug. She patted her chest, and mimed throwing her heart onto the grimy tiles.
He looked from her to the cop. “What do I owe?”
“Her name’s not Marthe.”
“Surely she did not write her true name on the form you gave her. Thinking no doubt that if she could protect her name, she might be able to resolve this trouble without my discovery. Apologies. She is energetic. As befits her calling.”
“Most masters would let a runaway apprentice stew ’til morning.”
“I am not most masters.” He pinched his faded lapels, and rose up on tiptoe. “I am Edmond Margot, master bard and scion of the Cepheid Margots. And while a few evenings’ jail is good poetic experience, my apprentice’s time is precious at this juncture. An interruption in her exercises could lead to the loss of her improvisational seed, and with it months of work.”
“Lot of
mute poets out there?”
“She is not mute,” Margot said. “She is merely bound to silence for the period of a year. It is a deeply held belief of my fellowship that only those who cannot speak place the proper value on words. Now.” He reached inside his coat. “What security do you require for her freedom?”
The cop rapped his knuckles against the watch desk.
“A hundred thaums,” the duty officer said without looking up from her ledger.
Margot paid it, though his hands trembled as he placed the coins on the desk. Izza could feel the soulstuff wound inside them: more than they asked. “Is that sufficient?”
Again, Izza risked a glance at the cop’s face, and saw a war there end in defeat. She wondered if he would have felt the same whatever he chose.
“Sure. Leave your address and name with us, so we can find you when the victim decides to press charges. And if.”
“Already done.” He bowed. “A pleasure, as is my every encounter with the local constabulary.”
“Take care of her, Margot. This town can be a dangerous place.”
Was that a hint of threat in the officer’s voice? A protective display? Whichever, Izza grabbed the poet’s hand and pulled him after her, onto the street.
The station’s were the only burning lights in an otherwise respectable cul-de-sac, the kind of place Izza wouldn’t have dared visit even in daylight. Far above her comfort level on the risk-value curve. People around here had souls, but they didn’t come free or easy. You could grab a drunk’s or gambler’s soulstuff no problem: their spirits flowed outside their skin. Artists were the same way, and musicians, and priests. Three months back and a lifetime ago she’d skimmed ten thaums off a Kosite who’d stopped to watch two kids fight over a pineapple in the mud. Conditions like that made for great graft: empathy roused the mark’s soul, easy to nab a corner without their noticing. That’s why she set up the fight in the first place. Ivy and Nick got a cut, of course, to make up for their bruises and dirty clothes. They all split the pineapple after.
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