Fours was another story. “You’re not going anywhere,” he snarled, and pushed away from the sheriff to put all of his five-foot-nothing straight up in Elim’s face. “After everything she did for you, you left Día with those – those scavengers, and you’re not leaving until I have her back!”
He was frightening in spite of his frailty, as mad and menacing as a shithouse rat, and Elim cringed as he felt the tingling ache in his limbs, the itching prickle of new-grown hair under his poncho, and his own burgeoning certainty that one wrong move would find him strung up between the posts again, tied out for Sil’s mysterious killing-friends to find and finish with. Elim’s reason clung fast to his fear as if it were a bucking horse, one back-popping snap away from being thrown off altogether. “No, I’m not,” he said, closing his eyes to concentrate on getting the words out. “I’m a free man now, and you can’t –”
“– you’re a murderer and a cheat and a bastard twice over –” Fours snapped, but he wasn’t so scary when Elim didn’t have to look at him, and he wasn’t about to take that.
“– and she’s a free woman old enough to know her own will –” Elim retorted, grabbing the reins for a hard pull.
“– and you didn’t have the decency to save her!”
“I had the decency to LISTEN to her!” Elim roared, and by then he’d mustered the guts to stare down at the old fishman, even if his mismatched eyes made a clashing discordant mess of the view. “I didn’t ask her to come for me, and I didn’t tell her to stay, and I didn’t force her to go with me after she refused – because she’s free and grown and so am I, and it’s probably about time you respected that.”
Yes, that was it: he was people, dammit, and the frightened horsey thing inside him had been pushing him around too long, spooking and kicking and even actually killing that poor boy in the barn, and it wasn’t going to gentle itself. He was going to have to make it.
And here for practice were three people whose power and authority outmatched any thoroughbred’s. Elim squinted one eye closed for clarity, and tried to meet each of theirs in turn. “I’m sorry it didn’t turn out like you wanted, with Bootjack and Día and the rest of them. I sorely am. But that ain’t my fault, and I’m not your hostage. I went to clear my debt, and I came back to do you a courtesy. Now it’s done, and I’m going home.”
Elim put everything he had into each word, projecting every last ounce of the confidence it took to match wills with a thousand-pound animal and get it so clear on your intentions that it plain forgot its own – that it never even thought to ask how come it ought to listen to a hairless two-legged weakling it could ignore or maim or kill without a first thought, nevermind a second one.
These people didn’t operate on horse-logic, of course. Fours and Huitsak and the lady-sheriff had more smarts than Elim ever would. But regardless of what the rest of the world’s people-creatures did, he would at least be the master of the one inside him. He couldn’t afford not to.
“...Vuchak,” the a’Krah boss said. “His name was Vuchak.”
Elim swallowed, caught off guard. Had he been getting it wrong all this time? “I’m – I’m glad to know that,” he said. “I was glad to know him, too.”
Fours was saying something to the sheriff, who was staring at the left side of Elim’s face with uncommon interest. He turned his head by old force of habit, though probably not to any useful purpose. The horse-eye was already giving him a headache.
And they stood there like that for a minute, four people just slightly too short on gumption to make the next move. Elim used the time to try and will away his strangeness, settling it back into its stall with assurances that the work was done, that they weren’t in any danger, that nobody needed to get spooky or bolt, because Elim was the smart one, and he had taken a look at things and knew for a fact that they were fine.
... sort of.
“You did make your promise to the Azahi,” Huitsak said at last. “I don’t think anyone here feels qualified to let you go without him.”
Elim took a big, calming breath while he worked on not hearing things that hadn’t been said. “When’s he getting back?”
“Today,” Fours said, after another consultation with the sheriff. “This afternoon, we hope.”
Elim was not too much in the mood for hoping... but that would still get him back out of here before Sil came looking for him. What would Sil do here, anyway?
He would drive a bargain, that was what. Elim helped himself to another big breath, doing his best to get past that awful moldy smell and think about what he should ask for. No, better yet: what he should declare. “All right,” he said at last. “I’ll wait until sunset. If he’s not back by then, I’m leaving. And I ain’t going back in that jail, either,” he added, just in case anybody had been thinking to stuff him back in a cage again.
This was relayed to the sheriff, whose face made it plain what she thought of Elim’s presumption. Then she scratched viciously under her hat, and replied in a tone of voice that couldn’t have been wrapped around anything but an order.
“She says you can wait here,” Fours said, and nodded up at the ceiling. “I have a – a room you can use.”
Elim did not care to spend another minute in this tragic garbage-heap... but one look at the sheriff’s folded arms told him exactly how much further he wanted to push his luck.
“All right,” he said. “All right, sure. But only until sunset. That’s all.”
“Fine by me,” Fours said. “And you, Huitsak – I want to talk to you.”
“Do it outside,” the a’Krah boss said as he maneuvered himself back towards the door. “I’m not spending another second in this shit-pit.”
Which left Elim, his strangeness diminishing right along with his bravery, picking his way through the mess and past the lingering gaze of the lady-sheriff as she watched him impose his weight on those rickety-creaky old stairs, one at a careful tentative time.
She must have noticed. She must have. But if she had, there was nothing Elim could do about it now. Nothing to do but keep his promise, and hope he had made the right one.
That got a little easier when he made it to the room upstairs.
It wasn’t like the store. There was nothing nasty or awful about it. It was just garden-variety untidy, with papers stacked on the little desk, and clothes piled around the dresser and hung over the chair, and all manner of crafts and pagan artworks festooning the dusty walls and wash-deprived open windows.
And a bed.
An honest-to-God actual bed – the first one Elim had seen since... why, since he and Sil had left the fair.
It was old and ordinary and on the small side, with a flattish pillow and a sun-faded quilt spread neatly over the top. It was also the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Elim shouldn’t. He definitely, definitely shouldn’t. It was too small, for one thing, and he hadn’t been invited, for another, and he needed to stay awake and alert no matter what. This was enemy territory, even in the daytime, and he couldn’t let his guard down now.
And yet...
And yet he was drawn to it like a sunburned hog to fresh mud, helping himself to an ever-so-gentle sit at its foot – because where else was there to sit? – and then to a temporary lie-down – because the delicate little bed would take his weight better if he spread it out evenly – and before he knew it he was rolling himself in the quilt like a fairytale vagrant, luxuriating in a rest that was too small, too rude, too dangerous... and just right.
DISGRACEFUL. THE WHOLE thing was just disgraceful.
That was what Twoblood had called it. That was the word that kept echoing in Fours’ mind after she and Huitsak had left.
The state of his house, yes. The state of his person, certainly. But the way that loutish brute up there could conjure the nerve to leave Día in the hands of the a’Krah, and then roll himself up in her very bed and fall asleep without a care in the world... by every god, it beggared belief.
Fours would get
him back for that. Somehow he would. But for now, he had other things to do.
Día was alive – that was the principal thing. She was alive and had been taken hostage, and that meant he had no more time for suicidal wallowing. At any moment, the Azahi would return from his audience with Mother Opéra, and Fours had to be ready. He had to be listened to. He had to be believed. And nobody was going to believe anything from a dirty old madman.
So he salted some water and drank it, and then sugared some more and drank that too. And when he was sure he could hold on to it – that his pores would not renew their seeping, grieving, endlessly leaking despair – he went upstairs for a change of clothes, and pitched his mildewed ones right out the window.
A jar of pickled eggs from the dresser drawer, just so he would have something in his stomach. A swig from the flask beside it, to ease the tremor in his hands and dull the pounding in his head. A last baleful look at that overgrown parasite in the bed, because it felt so good to finally have someone besides himself to hate.
Then it was back downstairs, and to work.
But even as he cleared out the trash, stacked the spilled dishes and re-folded the linens, Fours was no closer to understanding than before. How had Día gone from sneaking that Halfwick boy out of town to being a prisoner of the a’Krah? And more to the point, what did they want with her? Huitsak hadn’t been able to give him any satisfaction on that front – the shrewd master of the Island Town a’Krah had seemed uncharacteristically rattled since learning of that one fellow’s death – and Fours couldn’t begin to guess on his own.
So he was left with just the same thought that had been eating him alive for weeks now: Día had lied to him.
There was no way around it. Halfwick had sat up from his grave and demanded to see his partner, and Día had arranged for it to happen. She had come right here to this very house, right up there to that very room and asked him right to his very face: Papá, how do you know the right thing to do? And she had decided right there on the spot that she would lie to him – that she would behave as if nothing were out of the ordinary, that she would let Fours go on believing that she was leaving town just long enough to dispose of the body. He had only found out the truth from the Azahi when she didn’t come back.
And who was to blame for that?
Her real father – that unyielding pious brick of a man?
That holy book of hers, stuffed with thou-shalt-nots?
Or her gutless, craven papá – the one who had spent his whole life lying to her. Lying to protect her, lying to safeguard her image of him, lying because he’d done it so long he couldn’t even remember what the truth tasted like.
And now he’d tainted her. All her virtuous bloodline, all those values her father had worked so hard to imprint on her – ruined as surely as if Fours had left a moldy handprint on a block of fresh cheese. What arrogance did he have to have ever thought he could parent a human child?
He stopped himself as he noticed the dampness sticking his shirt to his back and arms. Nevermind, he scolded his weeping flesh. There would be plenty of time for recriminations when he had her back. The Azahi had gone to Opéra, left Island Town and submitted himself to her in person to ask for her help in casting the widest possible freshwater net for his missing ambassador. And when he got back, Fours had to be able to look him in the eye and make him go wring the rest of the truth out of that two-colored man up there. More than that, some drought-tolerant earth-person was going to have to brave the trip to Atali’Krah to rescue Día, and Fours had to look like a man – like a father – who deserved to have his daughter back.
The doorknob rattled uselessly below the lock. “Hello?” a muffled Ardish voice called out.
Fours froze – and then groaned. “Maugrebleu...” Of course it would be a tourist.
But the scolding voice that followed was instantly, astonishingly familiar. “Fours, you lazy old cheat – what sort of hour do you call this? Quit flinching and shirking and open this door!”
She was dead. She was dead – Opéra had shot her and Faro had finished her and she was dead – and yet she was yelling at him.
The sound of her voice got Fours up from his janitorial crouch, his hands still full of chipped crockery. The next voice sent it clattering back to the floor.
“Papá? Are you there?”
Yes. Yes, he was there. He was surging past the shelves, and he was there. He was fumbling at the lock, and he was there. He was throwing the door open, blinking in the sunlight –
– and she was there.
And then there was nowhere to be but with her, around her, pressing her big warm-blooded body into his withered arms and biting her neck until it would bleed. “Ma joie, ma claire, ma petite fifille – oh, I thought I had lost you...”
But she’d lost herself. Fours drew back and stared at her, appalled past breathing as his trembling hands found her denuded head. “Día – Día, what have they done to you?”
Her face had long since crumpled; her welling eyes spilled wet tracks down her cheeks. “Nothing, papá,” she said, her voice hoarse and thick, her expression mirroring his as she stared at his grief-ravaged features. “I did it to myself.”
The look in her eyes promised him that it was true, or at least that she believed it... which left Fours with either a daughter who could lie to him with impeccable guile, or else one who had willingly cut off her only inheritance from her own father – her real father – for who-knew-what despicable purpose.
Fours interrogated her gaze, feeling as if he would faint. “You’re all right, ma chère?” he said weakly. “They haven’t touched you, they haven’t hurt you, they haven’t despoiled you somehow?”
“No,” she promised, her voice strong even through her tears. “No, papá – I’m fine, and I’m so sorry –”
Her apology ended in premature astonishment as Fours reached up and grabbed her by the shoulders. “You stupid, wicked, wretched girl!” he cried, with a vigor he hadn’t felt in years. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Do you know what could have happened to you? By heaven, Día, if you EVER do this to me again, I’ll – I’ll pitch you in the river and leave you for the fishmen!”
“Now, now,” came the admonishing voice from behind her. “Let’s not soak our petticoats over a little harmless mischief. She was overdue for a bit of impetuous youth, wouldn’t you say?”
Shea was standing there in Día’s shrinking shadow – dressed as an a’Krah, of all things. She had a hood drawn up over her baldness and a pair of moccasins excusing her foreshortened feet, and had darkened her skin to complement the costume – but there was no mistaking the twinkle in her eye, or her sardonic sharp-toothed smile.
Fours let go of his petrified daughter, too dumbstruck to decide whether they should still be estranged. “What are you doing here?”
Shea, of course, had elected to carry on as if nothing had happened, and threw her hand out at Día in manufactured incredulity. “Why, returning your truant child, since you can’t seem to keep her in after curfew! Really, Fours, what is she going to learn from this appalling ingratitude of yours?”
And she came at him for an embrace, which Fours did not so much return as simply fail to avoid... but it was impossible not to answer the bite at his neck, or to keep from seeping just a little as his last earthbound sibling squeezed him like an old sponge.
“You shouldn’t – you shouldn’t be seen here,” he stammered, belatedly aware of the interest their porchfront family reunion was garnering from across the street. “If he finds out you’ve returned...”
Shea drew back, a glimmer of wickedness in her eye. “Día, be a good girl and go fetch your papá a fresh shirt – you see what a mess he’s made of this one.”
Día glanced between her amphibious fosterers, the look behind her drying tears leaving Fours absolutely no room to wonder where she’d learned to deceive him: they were going to talk behind her back, and she knew it.
But that was the prerogative of parents,
even the ones who weren’t exiled spies hiding under the thumb of a legless tyrant and her smiling sociopath of an enforcer... and maybe Día knew that too. Regardless, she was the very picture of filial piety as she bowed her head and turned to go inside. “Yes, Miss. Yes, papá.”
Fours thought about warning her about the mess, or at least about the man in her bed... but nevermind. She’d discover that soon enough. And as soon as the stairs announced her going, Shea was back to business, keeping the intimate distance between them as she finger-traced a design into the wet white fabric of his chest.
“Now then,” she said. “I’m sure the two of you have eight thousand things to say to each other, but I should tell you this first: while Día and I were on our way here this morning, we met a perfectly pleasant little friend of hers about a mile upstream from here – a young Eadan gentleman of our mutual acquaintance. And we got to talking, and I got to thinking, and it occurs to me that we might just have an opportunity on our hands...”
She went on like that, her coy intimations becoming more explicit and outrageous by the moment, until even Fours’ battered mind couldn’t fail to grasp the conclusion: Día was home, safe and sound against all odds – and if Shea had her way, that would only be the beginning.
AS THE OLD saying went, there was more than one way to skin a cat – and as it turned out, more than one way into Sixes.
By the time the grandfather clock chimed one, Sil had already proven one, and prepared to test the other.
It had been an unexpected boon to meet Día again. Better still to renew his acquaintance with her mereau governess, whom Sil had apparently met once before, in this very house. Apparently they’d left the Dog Lady to care for a wounded man, and elected to walk the last of the way to Island Town themselves, with the great lady and her charge to follow after dark.
Regardless, it was the easiest thing in the world for Sil to hand Molly off to the two ladies and avail himself of a little swim, a neat entry through the gap in the fence at the north end of the island, which Shea recommended with the authority of a veteran laundress. By the time she met him back there to confirm the plan, Sil was almost dry again.
Dreams of the Eaten Page 44
