Chapter 3-2
2016 Words
“I didn’t know,” he said, trying to shake her hands from his own. “I didn’t—”
“It’s too late now,” Axeonos said triumphantly. “We are bonded now.”
“I can’t—”
“You have not been registered,” her keeper said in Usu. Deacon wasn’t a part of this conversation. “You are not married yet.”
“He’s an Inspector,” she answered smugly in the same language. “Registration won’t be a problem. We are married in the eye of the God now, and you can tell Mahati to suck his own cock.”
“You can’t marry a djinn,” the man sneered. “Mahati will see you stoned for it. I saw you give the flowers to the boy. I saw you.”
“Excuse me,” Deacon broke in weakly. “I did not know. I am sorry, but it isn’t legal for me to—”
They were not listening to him.
“He offered the flowers, and I accepted,” she said. “You want to fight him for my hand?”
Another moment of stillness fell over them, as if the man actually contemplated violence.
“Don’t be a fool,” the old woman hissed to the thug. “That’s a damned djinn. They’ll skin us all and starve our villages if you touch him.”
The truth. The Administration protected its Inspectors. They had to, when it was so expensive to make them, and they had the tasks that made the Administration so unpopular. If an Inspector was harmed in the execution of his duties, an example would be made of anyone and everyone who had been present.
Silence on the train. Stillness. Two more men entered the carriage, and engaged their leader in hushed, confused dialog in the language Deacon couldn’t place. The woman’s grip on his hand tightened painfully.
“Please help me,” she said quickly, softly, to make sure that no one else could catch the exchange. “Please.”
“I have to get off when we reach the desert,” he said to her. “I’m sorry—”
“You hear that?” she called shrilly to the man and his entourage, hearing nothing of Deacon’s muttered explanations. “We’re getting off at the next stop!”
When he stepped off the train, Deacon could see the desert behind the city. The low and level hills swallowed the garish lights of civilization. Tomorrow he would walk into the scorching sand, and in a few days, he would die somewhere out in that untraveled expanse.
“You ever been to Dhulba-Sahuli before?” the woman asked.
“No,” Deacon said, and he walked away.
She had only one small suitcase, which trailed behind her like an unwilling pet. It rumbled against the stone behind him, a constant reminder that she followed in his wake.
When they reached the dormitories, Axeonos would not follow him inside. The rumble-shriek of her little suitcase ceased, and for some reason, he stopped as well.
She told him, “I am not spending my wedding night in there.”
“It is not your wedding night,” Deacon said—a variation on the same thing he had been saying since they had met. “I am not your husband. We are not registered. I will not register you. Tomorrow, your man said he would come for you.”
She flicked a hand in the space between them and huffed a dismissal. Still, she didn’t move toward the opening gate, and neither did he. “These are my lodgings,” he told her. “Why are you not satisfied?”
“Satisfaction has little to do with it, alma-ami,” she spat the endearment mockingly. “Tonight is my wedding night. Use some of my dowry. Let’s go to the Dumaux, or the Shalloota.”
“What would the difference be?” he asked. “There are beds here. We will sleep, and then in the morning we will both be gone.”
Because she wouldn’t follow him, he was forced to wait. Why, though? He should just go in and leave her on the street, but he couldn’t seem to move his feet. She watched him, her magnificent eyes narrowed, her hip crooked out, and her hands held on her waist in a colloquial pose of restrained anger. He waited.
“Tonight,” she said softly, “is my first night as a free woman. I will not spend it in a prison.”
“It is not a prison,” Deacon said mildly. “It is temporary. We can leave anytime we want, just like the Dumaux or Shalloota, and unlike at the Dumaux or Shalloota, here there are free meals, and bedding, and company.”
“Listen to me, you—” she lapsed into Usu, “blood-sucking, penny-grubbing, pale-face, moronic djinn—” and back to Official, “I will absolutely not spend a single night in that concrete cage. With or without you, I am going to the Shalloota, and I am going to have their most expensive meal, and dance in the most expensive dress I can find.”
At Deacon’s silence and stillness, she huffed low in her throat. It was a growl, Deacon noted, like a jungle cat. He watched her spin and stalk away down the street, still trailing the tiny suitcase.
He followed her.
They walked down streets and through alleys, Deacon always twenty measured steps behind her. She didn’t buy a dress as she threatened. None of those stores would be open at this time, but she went straight to the Shalloota, with its fat columns and sweet-smelling gardens.
She danced in the nightclub attached to the building, under red and blue lights. She danced in the dress of metal rings, alone. She flicked her hands toward the ceiling and curled her fingers as she beckoned to something that couldn’t answer, the sway of her hips leading the music.
Not once did her eyes stray to Deacon who stood patiently by the door, by her small pack. She didn’t dance with or for anyone. She danced for her own sweat, and when he could see her eyes, they were large and liquid, inebriated.
He should have left. He should never have followed her in the first place. He should never have taken the flowers.
He stood a half-pace behind her when she booked a room. Her limbs were jittery with energy found on the dance floor. Her sweat smelled sweet and foul in the air.
She brushed past him, and he trailed her to the hotel dining room. They were shown to a table by a waiter who inspected them curiously but said nothing. Perhaps he thought Deacon was here to question the woman. Or that she held a position in the Administration, and took advantage of it.
“Don’t annul the marriage,” she said abruptly, when they were alone again.
“Why?”
She glared at him, but the appearance of their menus stopped her answer. The waiter filled their glasses with water, but before he could move away the woman held out a hand to stall him.
“Every appetizer, and your most expensive meal,” she commanded the young man. “And lobster.”
“Yes madam,” he said politely. “And you sir?”
“Just water,” Deacon said.
No questions. The waiter left, and the woman tossed her head aggressively. “I won’t agree to an annulment.”
“Inspectors cannot get married.” And then purely for his own, perverse curiosity, he asked, “Why do you want to be married to me?”
She shrugged, averting her eyes.
“You tricked me,” he reminded her gently.
“I was not given a choice,” she said. “Why should you? At least now we are even.”
The food arrived on a variety of silver platters, carried by a flock of waiters. The dishes covered the table and spilled out onto the makeshift trays set up on rickety stilts. Still, Deacon insisted the place in front of him remain empty. His own makeshift desert, surrounded by plates piled high of exotic food. There was so much. Too much.
At the center, between them, sat the promised lobster. Insectile. Armored. A shade of red that should be impossible to achieve naturally.
“Help yourself,” she said airily. “I will not be able to finish it.”
The absurd display of food seemed somehow more real and vivid than the room around them. The shapes were smooth, bloated with flavor. Every dish had a distinct scent, but together they coalesced into an exotic perfume that pulled on Deacon’s stomach.
Greed was a herald of madness. He could give in and devour everything in sight, eating and eating until even his body broke. He delicately picked up a crystal glass, the liquid inside clear. Tasteless, but quenching.
Tomorrow there would be no water. No food.
She frowned at him. “You don’t want to eat?”
His mouth watered, his stomach growling, and his head grew light with the aromas of rich food. “I can’t.”
“You can’t eat? I saw you eating seeds on the train. Or are you really a ghost born of smokeless and scorching fire? Is it mortal souls you hunger for?”
She grinned, trying to excite him into ritualistic play.
“No,” he said, and this was painful. The conditioning was a pleasant memory in comparison. t*****e could not have been more compelling. “I can’t want to eat.”
She c****d her head curiously, the smile peeling from her face, discarded in an instant. “You don’t look like you can afford to skip this meal.”
“We haven’t even been introduced,” he said, clasping a hand around the glass of water. “I would have thought a marriage ceremony required more … words.”
“My father is a traditional man.” She turned her attention back to the meal. “If it makes you uncomfortable, my name is Axeonos.”
“I am called Deacon,” he replied cordially. Politely. As he had been conditioned.
“I didn’t know that Inspectors had names.”
“We don’t have much cause to use them. How did you learn Official?”
“My father.”
Her tone was bitter.
“Was he a good man?” Deacon asked mildly.
“He sold his only daughter to a gangster,” she said. “To me, he is a spider.”
“Why is he a spider?”
“He could have made me and my brothers a home, but he only ever wove traps and he grew fat off the men who tangled in it. His home was his own. He did not share. A spider.”
“I’ve always liked spiders,” Deacon said experimentally, because he did not know what else to say.
“Oh, he was useful,” she agreed, “just as spiders are useful to keep the other insects in check. He taught me how to write and read, how to properly speak Official, and how to balance books. He supplied me with tutors, and anything I wanted, but in the end I was only bait.”
“Not anymore, though,” he said.
“Never again.”
“And what’s to stop him from claiming you again? Or this Mahati?”
She stiffened, the food frozen on its way to her lips. “What do you know of Mahati?” she demanded.
He winced inwardly. A mistake. It was a miracle he hadn’t already been caught. The desert, the desert. One more night of pretending at sanity, and he would be free. “I’m an Inspector,” he said. “We know all kinds of things.”
“No, you heard it on the train! You can speak Usu!” she said triumphantly. “I knew it!”
- Writer
