E (9 page)

"Actually," says Jonas in a level voice, "they're a
symbol of resurrection."

I glance at him, and my eyes stick on his olive-skinned face, on
his green eyes looking out over the marketplace.

"Eve's tears," Apollon says as the woman moves away,
taking up her horrible song. 

"Hunh?" I say.

"When Eve got kicked out of the garden, they sprang up from
her tears," Apollon says.  "They're just right for you," he
says.  "Eden."

"Or just exactly wrong."  I eye the lily he holds
out to me.  Just one of them.  Is he keeping the other for Elaina?

"Here," he says, making a movement like a shrug while
holding the flower out.  "Take it."

Reluctantly, I pinch the stem between my thumb and forefinger, and
take ownership of the lily.

"It won't hurt you," Apollon mumbles.  His eyes
fall on Jonas. 

There's a split second where Jonas' face changes, though I still
can't read his expression.  He starts shaking his head slowly. 

Apollon holds out the other lily to him.

Jonas' jaw clenches.  He looks like he's going to say
something.  Then his head tips back just the slightest touch-- defiance--
but he takes the lily.  He looks decidedly uncomfortable doing so. 
And pissed, too.

Apollon beams. 

I'm still trying to figure out what all this means when Apollon
takes both of us by the arm and starts us walking again.  As we get going,
his hands drop to his side.  There's an easiness to his stroll that says
he's quite pleased with himself.  I glance at his face.  He looks
happy.  As if things couldn't get any weirder, he suddenly starts spouting
poetry.

"’
The modest rose puts forth a thorn,’"
he says,
looking at me and my uncomfortably clenched flower, "’
The humble sheep
a threat'ning horn.’"

My mouth has fallen open at this point, but he's looking at Jonas
now.

"’While the lily white shall in love delight, Nor a thorn,
nor a threat, stain her beauty bright.’"

Jonas is clearly ignoring him, his eyes scanning the marketplace.

Apollon glances at me.  "William Blake."

I say nothing.  I'm just looking at him in disbelief. 

After a while he looks at me again.  He smiles, touches his
chest, and says, "Apollon, god of poetry." 

I already know the punch line.  I say it with him. 
"Among other things."

That earns me a grin.  Thankfully, we've arrived at our
destination.

It doesn't take long to determine that something is wrong. 
We stand in a group with two peddlers under an awning stretched on four metal
poles.  Apollon and Jonas inform them that they’ll have three sets of
nightglasses, with compatible microthermogenors, and at least four, maybe five,
aether traps ready for delivery tomorrow.  But the peddlers insist the
regular price is too high.  Apollon and Jonas don't agree.  The price
is fair.  The parts cost money and they need to make a profit. They haggle
for a while, and then it comes out.  The peddlers have had another
offer.  Someone is underselling Miranda.  Not only this, but they're
underselling by so much that there's no way we can match them and make any kind
of profit.  Apollon is furious.  Jonas takes him by the arm and pulls
him back, thanking the peddlers and saying we'll get back to them.  But as
we move away, Apollon shakes Jonas off.

"This is ridiculous," he hisses, turning on his friend.

Jonas remains calm and measured, but I can see his anger beneath
the level exterior.  He opens his mouth to reply, but Apollon talks over
him.

"You
know
what's happening, right?  No one is
going to make a profit off prices like that.  It's aimed directly at us.
At Miranda."

The idea makes me shiver.  Donegan.

"We can't assume anything," Jonas begins.

"Don't be stupid," Apollon snaps.  "You know
exactly who's doing this."

Jonas starts to shake his head, but Apollon is already walking
away.

"Apollon," Jonas calls after him, "don't
you
be stupid."

Apollon waves him off.  We watch him go.

Jonas sighs.  After a moment, he looks at me.

I sigh, too.  I glance down at the lily still in my hand, and
hold it out to him.  "Here," I say.  "I really don't
want this."

He takes it from me passively, his eyes following after
Apollon.  Switching it into his right hand with the other lily, he grips
the two stems in a fist, swinging at his side as we walk.

"How bad is this?" I finally ask, when we're about
halfway home.

His eyes dart to me, scan my face.  "It's
bad." 

I purse my lips.  We march on.  I try to mimic Jonas'
self-possessed awareness, scanning our surroundings, feigning confidence. 
My eyes fall on a man mad-dogging us from the end of an alleyway.  I scowl
at him rather than avoid his gaze.  He scowls back.  A wooden club
suddenly connects with the back of his head from the dark of the alley. 
He goes down.  Hands grab him by the shoulders, dragging him back. 
His feet disappear.

My steps have faltered.  "Wh--" I stammer.

Jonas grabs my arm.  "Keep going," he mutters under
his breath.

"Did you see that?" I ask in disbelief.  I'm
shaking with adrenaline.

"No," he says, releasing me.  "And you didn't
either."

I swallow, and keep walking.  Try to think of something
else.  Anything else.  After a while, I can't stand the
silence.  "So, Apollon..." I say lightly, though it takes a good
deal of effort to manage it.  "What's with the god complex,
anyway?"

Jonas laughs softly through his nose, not looking at me. 
Finally, he says, "Erasure is harder on some than on others, I
guess.  If you're not anything-- if you can
be
anything-- why not
decide to be a god?"

I consider this for a moment, ponder the choice of my own
name.  How will it shape me?  Is it all there is to me now? 
After a while, I ask, "Do you think it's true?  That there's nothing
left when you wake up?"  The question does not actually break the
Tenth Law, attempting to uncover your previous life following an erasure, but
it pushes the edges of acceptable conversation.  I don't care.  I
want to know the answer.

There's a certain uneasiness in his glance this time. 
"Do you?"

I hate it when people answer questions with questions.  I
tell him so, then add, "So is that new, or is it just
me
?"

He laughs, his face actually forming a smile this time.  I
like the way that feels.  I want to make him laugh again.  But he
says, seriously, "You'll be asking those questions for the rest of your
life."

We're walking down the main street now, coming up on the
Rustler.  As we start to step off the curb to cross the street, I take a
moment to surreptitiously study his face.  I open my mouth to say
something, when his arm flies out in front of me, making me jerk to a halt.

"Whoa," he says, but his voice is quiet.  He's
looking across the street.  I follow his gaze.  There are three
groups of Matthew's thugs.  Standing at the entrance to the Rustler is
another small group, talking and laughing.  I know or recognize most of
them.  Jacob and Taylor, a couple more card players whose names I don't
yet know...  There's a young man standing in their midst.  He can't
be much older than Jonas, if at all.  He has golden brown hair, an easy
manner, and a broad smile on his face.  A pot-bellied pig sits at his
feet.  He's telling a joke, it seems, and everyone is busting up,
including the two beautiful women-- one white-blonde, and one a blazing
redhead-- attached to his arms.  Everyone looks like they're having a
great time.  Part of me wants to join them.

But Jonas' fingers are pressing into my arm, pulling me back from
the curb.  "Not that way," he says as we turn down the nearest
alleyway, which actually takes us in the wrong direction.

"Why not?" I ask, glancing back over my shoulder.

"Matthew," Jonas says.  That's all.

"Matthew?" I ask, blinking.  "You mean, that
was...?"

He nods.

We walk in silence.  None of this fits.  The dreaded
Matthew is a guy who looks like he'd be a fun drinking buddy? 
Really?  I find myself shaking my head, frowning.

Jonas glances at me.  "Looks can be deceiving," he
says.

And suddenly I remember the old woman who blackmailed me. 
He's right.  I need to be more careful in summing people up.

We circle around to our previous path.  We're only a few
blocks from home, and the streets are quieter.  Maybe Jonas will be more
willing to talk.  Sentries are less common on the back streets.

"So what
do
you think?" I ask.  "About
when we wake up."

He gives me that same uncertain glance.  After a moment, he
says, "It doesn't matter what I think.  We are all what we are,
whether it’s something new, or something old."

"You think it's that simple?" I spout, before I even
have time to consider his answer.  I'm not sure why, but it annoys
me.  "Don't you care who you were?  Or is that just it, three
years and you don't care.  Just get through three years of wondering, and
you'll be fine."

He glances at me again.  I'm really starting to dislike that
glance, mostly because I don't know what it means.  If Jonas has some sort
of tell, I don't know what it is.  I can't seem to figure him out. 
He looks away from me, his eyes scanning the road in front of us.  He
says, "Some things get easier with time, yes.  Not all of them. 
But enough."

I stop myself before I reply again without thinking.  I take
a deep breath, and sigh.

He glances at me yet again.

"What?" I say.

He shakes his head.

We walk on in silence.  I fight down my annoyance,
concentrating on where we're going.  Soon, we're walking up to the wall of
junk that denotes our front yard.

Jonas stops as we hit the opening in the wall and turns to
me.  "No," he says.

I frown.  "No?"

He sighs.  "No, I don't think everything is just
gone.  Not for all of us."  And he heads for the door.

He has gone a few steps before I follow after him.

Oscar and Miranda greet us inside.  Without turning toward
her, Jonas holds the two lilies out to Miranda.  She makes a little noise
as she jumps up and takes them, beaming a smile.

Jonas and I exchange glances, and I can't help but think that she
won't be smiling when she hears about what happened in the marketplace.

I begin to feel like a regular at the card table.  The others
greet me by name, now.  Sometimes they laugh and joke with me.  I do
not mistake this for friendship.  As time wears on, I become more and more
aware of the growing tension every time I walk into the room.  It's not
personal.  I win too much.  The only reason I'm still playing is
because I often make myself lose-- lose, and lose, and lose, and then
win.  I come out ahead, which I had hoped, for a while, they wouldn't
notice.  But these guys aren't the kind who miss things like where the
money's going.  And at any rate, playing like this doesn't offer the kind
of gains I would like to see.

Ideally, there would be other games to join.  I would move
around, win money here and there, but not continually from the same
people.  However, Apollon and Jonas insist that I only play with certain
groups.  Never with any of Matthew's men.  Never with Donegan. 
So I'm usually with Sumter and Lloyd and Taylor and Jacob... many of the same
players I sat with on that first night.  Sometimes Dan, the knife dealer
from the marketplace, joins us.  He's a sharp player, clever and
sneaky.  I've taken to calling him Coyote Dan in my head.  Once or
twice, he's even fooled me.

Tonight, he's sitting across the table from me, studying his cards
through slitted eyes.  Behind me, Oscar is at the bar with Apollon,
laughing.  Jonas didn't come with us.  Everyone knows who I’m with,
now, and no one bothers me.  I could probably even walk down the street
all by myself during the day.

Coins chink as Coyote Dan tosses them into the pot, raising
Jacob's bet.  Sumter and Taylor fold, leaving me, Lloyd, and a guy named
Julian Moore, who only plays once in a blue moon.  Lloyd sees the
bet.  Coyote Dan's ice blue eyes flick to me.  "Your move,
darlin'."

I nonchalantly add my coins to the pile, though in all honesty,
I'm not entirely sure he doesn't have a hand full of bosses or a royal
flush.  I have three henchmen and a pair of twos.  Full house. 
I glance at Julian, who hesitates, then calls.  We lay down our
cards.  Julian has three bosses, but nothing else.  Lloyd has a
flush.  Coyote Dan has shit all.  He gives me a wry smile as I rake
in my money.

The next hand is hard not to win.  The others get bad cards,
and I end up with a royal flush.  There's not a lot in the pot, but when I
lay down my cards, Sumter bristles.

"It seems to me," he says in a low voice, "that you
end up with more than your share of good cards, Eden."

I glance at him.  His face is rounded, with extra flesh on
his cheeks.  A depravity to his eyes.  I wonder if eating people
takes your soul away.  But I shrug as though I'm unaffected. 
"Lady Luck favors the damned, they say."  I sweep my money in,
and as I do, I catch Coyote Dan's gaze flicking back and forth between
us.  I let my vision blur so that I'm not really looking at
anything.  All the movements from my peripheral vision are magnified, now,
easier to sense.  Sumter, sitting to my left, is moving his right hand
slowly toward his hip.

I stand up.  My first instinct is to go for my knife. 
My second is to holler for Apollon.  I end up going with my third, so,
when I raise my voice, the name I call is "Arthur!"

Arthur Adner, tall, skinny, and balding on top, is standing at the
side of the room talking to two men seated at a table.  He has a rag in
his hand, not currently being used.  He looks at me across the room. 
"Yep?"

"We need a round over here."  I make a swirling
gesture at my table.

He leaves his conversation and heads behind the bar.  As my
eyes follow after him, I notice Apollon's attention has become sharply focused
on us.  He adjusts himself on his bar stool so his legs are pointed toward
us, his back against the bar.  Beside him, Oscar glances up at his face
warily.

I sit back down, casually, smiling.  "Thirsty?"

They don't exactly look pleased, but I bet none of them ever
passed up a free drink before.  When the round comes, they all
drink.  Even Sumter.  And though handing Arthur the coins to pay for
it makes my stomach tighten, I tell myself it's their money, anyway, and I'm
about to replace it.  I catch Coyote Dan's gaze from across the
table.  The corners of his lips are curved into the slightest smile of
amusement.

We continue to play, and I pace my winning evenly.  Thus I
discover the power of a round of drinks.  Before the evening's over, I buy
one more, when I win a large pot.  Again, no one looks happy about my
winning, but maybe it takes the sting off.  That, and losing part of the
money back to them.  I hate doing this, but I can't make myself unwelcome
here.  With Miranda's income gone, we only have Neveah's herb-selling
business and a few odds and ends that Apollon and Jonas come up with. 
Without my winnings, we would be in trouble.

I'm feeling OK about the way I've handled things, but as we walk
home, Apollon says, "You're going to need to sit out a while,
Eden." 

I glance at him, frowning, and then look at Oscar, whose fingers
are interlaced with mine.  I shake my head slowly, meeting Apollon's
gaze.  "No," I mumble.  "We can't."

His jaw is set.  "It doesn't matter," he
says.  "I don't like the feel in there tonight.  I don't want
you to play for a while."

I'm about to tell him that I don't care what he wants, when Oscar
squeezes my hand.  His brown eyes reflect the sliver of moon hanging above
us.  "I don't want you to, either."  It's not a
statement.  It's a plea.

I consider him as we walk, then sigh.  "Maybe for a
little while," I mumble.

Oscar smiles.  Apollon nods.

A Sentry strides down the street, two men dangling, skulls grasped
in its metal hands.  The scent of aether and a warm draft trails in its
wake.

A weight drags my shoulders down.  A lasso around my vital
organs, pulling, pulling earthward.  Again, the sense of restlessness
comes over me, and I want to run, to be away, somewhere.  I extract my
fingers from Oscar's as gently as I can.  From the corner of my eye, I
catch the movement of Apollon's hand coming to rest on Oscar's shoulder. 
I let myself take longer strides, walk ahead of them, but not run.  I'm
walking like a bat out of hell as we come to the last block before home. 
I hesitate at the side street, glancing the way I shouldn't be going,
considering
not
going home.  Considering running and seeing where I
end up.  The only thing that stops me is the certainty that anywhere I go,
it will not be far enough.  None of this is right.

This will all stop once I'm inside, I tell myself,
continuing.  I won't feel like this.  It will just be warm light, and
a dinner of real food, and the comfort of family.  Like when mothers
swaddle their babies tightly, so they can't flop about.  It's the same
thing.  There's comfort in being held so tightly.  Home will do that
for me.  It will hold me so firmly I can't move, and this restlessness
will go away.  I won't want to run anymore.

I turn through the opening in the junk wall and close the distance
to our front door, throwing it open and moving inside.  Perched on the end
of the bed, Jonas and Miranda jump apart, and I only then register that his
arms were around her, his lips pressed against hers.  She glares at me,
turning red, though I'm not sure if it's embarrassment or anger.  I really
don't care.  Now, more than ever before, I want to run.

***

For the first time, I have a different nightmare.  I'm on a
wide, broken street, with tall buildings rising on either side.  In the
distance is the single white spire of a skyscraper.  There are others
around it, but I focus on this one.  I start walking toward it. 
Start running.  I hurtle myself down the street.  All the while,
something is behind me, but more than that, I know that if I don't get to the
white spire, I'm lost.  It's not exactly that something terrible will
happen, but I
need
to be there.  Every second that I'm not is like
someone is chopping random body parts off of me.  Soon, there will be
nothing left.  Just sausage.

I run until my body shuts down, my lungs bursting and muscles
melting into disobedient puddles of flesh.  The spire is still just as far
away.  Around me, the buildings have not changed.  I try to start
running again, but my feet won't move.  I’ve become part of the
concrete.  The cracks run right up my legs.  I scream, and jerk,
trying to free myself.  But I can't.  I'm trapped.  Everything
goes black.  As the box encloses me again, I'm sure I'll die from the
terror.

Then I'm being shaken awake, the fingers pressing into my
shoulder.  "It's alright," Jonas voice murmurs sleepily,
breaking into my nightmare.  I open my eyes and peer around in the
darkness, disoriented as usual.  At first I think he's in the box with
me.  Then I realize where we are.  I take a deep breath.

His arm goes over me, and a flash of anger seers through my
brain.  I want to push him away, throw his arm back at him.  But I
don't.  I let my breath out, close my eyes.   My body relaxes
and sinks into the mattress.  I pull his arm closer, snuggling it like a
child's doll.  Somehow, as I drift into the land of dreams, I no longer
feel the need to go anywhere.

***

Apollon and Jonas return from the marketplace with sour expressions
and a smaller bag of food than anticipated.  Miranda scowls at them from
the table.  She's been sitting there all morning, working her wires and
metal, even though she knows there's no use.  This is her attempt at
staying sane.  If she didn't have this to do, what would Miranda be
like?  I'm going to find out soon.  I begin to make plans to keep out
of the house as much as possible.

“What?" Miranda snaps at them, squinting at the bag clutched
in Apollon's fist.

Apollon tosses it down on the table.  "Not sure. 
Something's going on with shipments or something.  No one seems to know
exactly what, but prices have skyrocketed."

No one says anything for a while.  Finally, because I'm
hungry and no one else seems to be doing anything, I stand up and take the bag
from the table. "I'll make lunch."

Apollon eyes me as I turn toward the stove, but says
nothing.  I take the meager amount of brown rice from the bag and empty it
into the pan.

"Aren't you going to save some of that?" Miranda
asks.  She's still looking at her wires when I glance at her over my
shoulder.

"No."

Now, I feel her eyes on my back.  "What about
later?"

I add water to the rice.  "I'm hungry now.  I'll go
play some cards later."

"Cards," she says.  "I thought that was a bad
idea.  Apollon said--"

"Somebody has to make some money around here," I snap,
turning my head to toss her a glare.  She goes red, then pale.  That
wasn't really necessary.  I'm considering what I can say to soften it,
when Jonas speaks.

"Neveah is doing OK, still," he says.  "People
still need what she sells, even if food
is
more expensive." 
He pulls a handful of coins out of his pocket.  Squatting down beside the
kitchen table, he bends out one of the wall panels underneath it, dropping the
coins into a jar wedged into the space in the wall.  "There's no
sense in risking yourself, Eden," he says, glancing at me as he
stands.  "We should concentrate on gathering herbs.  There's a
lot in season right now, but there won't be for long.  We should try to
stock up."

Apollon nods.  "Good idea."  But he glances at
me uncertainly. 

It's then that I realize I
need
to play.  Even if we
stock up on herbs, if things continue to go like this, Neveah's income won't be
enough.  We eat in silence, a heaviness weighing over us.  When I'm
done, still thinking about our predicament, I take my plate to the bucket where
Jonas is washing up.  As I reach around him to set my plate down, I see
that his sleeves are pushed up to keep them out of the water.  On his left
forearm, the entirety of his scar is revealed, and it
is
shaped like a
star.  Four lines intersect in the middle, with the bottom point extending
longer than all the others. 

He glances at me and sees that my eyes have gone wide.  Sees
where I'm looking.  His eyebrows pull down in the middle, his eyes
narrowing.  I look quickly away, turning back to the others.  I focus
on what I must do tonight.

Later, as Apollon, Jonas, Oscar, and I walk together outside the
wall, I give Apollon a look and a sideways nod.

He wanders a little way with me, and as we harvest the
yellow-budded weeds, we meet each other's gaze.

"I have to do it, you know," I say.

His jaw sets, but he nods.  "I will never let anything
bad happen to you, Eden."  If he'd said it differently, it could have
seemed like some grand gesture; some foolish, self-important proclamation of
masculinity.  But the way it came out, so simply, so sincerely, I believe
him.  He's got my back.

I nod toward Jonas.  "Will he be on board?"

Apollon follows my gaze, his eyes wandering over his friend
warily.  "He will," he says flatly, and stands, and moves to the
next weed.