The Katherines circle, and Katherine hands Katherine the knife. She feels the glowing heat of the blade through the sharkskin handle. Katherine’s never held a knife before. In Badulla, only Katherines are permitted to hold knives.
Katherine believes that once there were prayers that went with the quenching ceremony, or songs, but Eli stole those from the world: the Katherines wheel in silence. The knife blade has a liquid sheen.
Katherine stabs herself in the belly. Heat. Cold. Screaming. The Katherines pull the knife out, red and bloody. They wipe away the blood with a smoking cloth, but the red remains.
They crash through the door at the top of the stairs into the stock room of a department store, wherein the background music is, for some reason, Rage. Daniel grabs a PA phone from a startled clerk and shouts “run away” before Hugo’s axe bites through its cord. Tyler kicks Hugo’s knee and his next swing goes wild, and the four of them are scrambling away from the giant and his gang, straight up the escalator bannister. “Weapons,” pants Alex, “need weapons–”
When Hugo and the mooks arrive a few seconds later they’re poised in stance, calm and ready, umbrellas high.
“Pirate ships don’t come with instructions,” hisses Sacker. “If those nice men find out you’re not really a captain–”
“Okay!” Sherrinford paces the cabin. “Go get the whatsit. Cabin boy. He’ll know how things work, but he won’t sway the crew.”
Sacker does. Sherrinford squats. “Hi, Simon,” she smiles. “Pop quiz! When your old captain wanted to go to Bermuda, what would he do? Slowly.”
“First,” says Simon slowly, “he’d get the instructions.”
Sherrinford looks hard at Sacker, who rolls his eyes. “You’re lying, boy,” he growls.
“Yes,” mutters Simon.
“The truth this time?”
“Very first,” Simon sighs, “he’d bugger me.”
“Tomorrow we’ll get drunk and sunburnt,” smiles Glass: a circle of chuckles around the dying fire. “Yesterday we didn’t sleep. Two days from now we’ll dress in gowns, get our magic papers. Two days ago we we started our final sprint.
“Tonight.” Steam whistles; she lifts an iron pot from the embers with a poker. “Tonight we have four hilltop acres, darkness and music, a path to the water’s edge.” She tips the pot, fills a goblet. “Drink. Stay up nine more hours. Speak to each other as you won’t speak again.”
They sip, and pass, and forget how to lie.
Mario is five again, in the Beanbag Corner, where Miss Gladisant is teaching him the phonics of time. She sings three simple syllables at three pitches and they loop, a perfect echo, three times before they fade away.
Mario tries to copy her, but he gets one note exactly wrong. As soon as he finishes he feels himself grabbed by the stomach, yanked, breath forced back into his throat–sings again, can’t help it, grabbed, singing, helpless, again and again.
Miss Gladisant shouts a strong, angry word. The loop shatters. Mario wakes, nauseated, in Mexico, and knows what Barrister has done.
When he realizes he’s putting jelly on both sides of the bread, Solange puts the knife in the sink and sits in the corner with his head between the walls: this is all he can do. Confine his world to here, now, the carpet and baseboard. Small.
Stop it, he breathes to himself, drag it back. He blots his eyes with the heel of his hand and writes on his palm with his felt-tip that DISSIPATION DIDN’T WIN THE WAR. This time the mocking mental refrain doesn’t ask him exactly what did win it: oh, it says instead, you won?
They Shall Breathe Ashes, the famous assassin, and her assistant Shelby are crashing a wedding. They is wearing a red carnation; Shelby has long sleeves. The people on the right think Shelby is They’s daughter (those on the left, her date).
“And how do you know Enrico?” says a curious gentleman with glasses and not enough hair.
“I’m going to kill him,” says They, and winks outrageously. The table loves it: a jealous ex!
“Isn’t he vegetarian?” says Shelby, in that lovely contralto voice.
“That’s right.”
“Then why are they serving Caesar salad?”
“It’s salad,” says the gentleman, a little confused.
Owlbears with machine guns! WHOOOR!
“What kind of roar is that?” pants Sandal as she slams the stairwell door; bullets rattle off the other side. “Are they trying to eat me or protest my choice in relationships?”
“Hopefully neither,” grunts Bud, hauling himself up the stairs and fishing something out of his shirt. Below, talons rip open the steel door. Sandal scrambles onto the roof.
“Okay!” she gasps. “Now what?” But Bud’s busy, blowing red-faced into a busted whistle.
“WHOOOR!” shriek the owlbears, piling out. Bud drops the whistle and grins. Sandal sees swooping shadows, sudden hope, looks up: orcabats.
Camellia’s new to the building, only six months, right? She insists as much in silence and closes the door behind her, trying not to wake the man asleep on his mattress in the living room. Weird. Not as weird as bumbling into a stranger’s apartment.
Next day she does it again, dammit, why does her key even open this door? He’s still there, black hair wild, legs in a bar of sunlight.
Camellia sits down beside him. No movement. She puts her hand on his chest, feels it rising, falling; she tells herself this isn’t creepy. His skin feels really good.
“Power?” he asks, judging the size of the empty room.
“Out,” she says, and flicks the lights to demonstrate. “Sorry. We’ll get that turned on very soon. And we have an excellent furniture rental service…”
Valentino stands in the middle of the carpet, hunching, hands in his pockets. He seems to have no intention of putting on a shirt.
“I know this isn’t ideal,” says Yelena. “The situation changed on short notice and we’re doing our best to–look. It’s hard to guess what you people want, sometimes.”
“What does any god want?” he asks.
“Power?” she guesses.
“Out,” he says.