When We Were Executioners Read Free Page A

of state. Our small concerns were nothing to the diplomacy and negotiations of all these crowded districts, and all the cities of the world.
    Patience, then, and wait. Close my eyes and see with my eyes, smell with my nose, deep into the streets and buildings Jona’s memory.
    * * *
    Three crowns, painted on doors and archways, lined up in a row like winning at cards, and Calipari didn’t like it. Nobody liked it. New marks on the walls meant fighting. Newcomers meant upsetting the balance. The king’s men were sent to find the new markers of things, drag them in before anything changed. Vandalism, at least, and more if they could beat anything out of them.
    Jona and Geek found a porter they knew eating sausage from a street vendor. Sweat pooled at the porter’s armpits and spilled down the front of his dirty shirt.
    Geek whistled and stuck out his hand in friendship. The porter smiled with food jammed in every gap in his teeth. The porter took Geek’s hand, but cringed when Geek clamped down for the shake. Geek had powerful hands. He was reminding the porter that Geek was not here in friendship.
    After the handshake, Geek showed his palm to Jona. Sweaty blood was all over Geek’s hand. The porter rubbed at his, trying to force a smile at the king’s men come to push him for something. Geek showed his dirty palm to the porter, too, like it was the porter’s fault.
    “Sorry,” he said, to Geek. He wiped his blood-soaked palms along his leg. It wasn’t going to get cleaner on his bloody pants. “I’ve been pushing meat from the killing floor to the river. Forgot about it.”
    “Nothing on it,” said Geek. “Me and my boy,” Geek pointed his bloody thumb at Jona, “We are on a tear looking for a few fellows.”
    “They in trouble?”
    Geek whistled and shook his head. “They will be if we don’t find them.”
    “Who?”
    “Don’t know the names. Some foreigner moving the pink demon weed around like he’s somebody, but he ain’t anybody. Who knows where he’s getting his supply? Can’t be good for his health. Dunnlander, I hear, dressed in red. Got a couple fellows on his side, drawing three crowns on things. They set up shop a day, maybe an hour. Then, they run somewhere new. Dunnlander finds the new spot, the supplies find their way in from who knows where, and these two other fellows go watch-outman or touting or something else.”
    “Always something,” said the porter, “I see that stuff coming in off the ships and lots of my boys plucking it for someone else. Don’t know anybody doing it for new people. Nasty stuff, I think. Wish you could drive it all out, but it would just find its way back again. Leastways keep it in order, right? Keep any trouble off the streets.”
    Jona’s eyes narrowed. The porter wouldn’t be so friendly with Geek if he hadn’t spent some time in a room negotiating mercy with Sergeant Calipari. He was hiding something.
    Geek touched Jona’s arm, pulling him back . “Hey, I forgot to ask,” said Geek, “How’s that wife of yours doing? You ever see this fellow’s wife, Jona?”
    The porter looked over his shoulder, his face a mask. He was feeling the fear, now. “We got a boy coming, soon. I hope it’s a boy. She’s big as a sow.”
    “This ugly fellow’s going to be a father?” said Jona. “I was doubting Imam all morning. Now I have faith in miracles.”
    The porter smiled wide with ragged teeth like a broken, yellow fence spilling sausage bits down his shirt. “I gotta get back,” he said, “But, I do hear a Dunnlander’s running with ragpickers. Mudskippers are the only ones not scared enough to know better. Those kids’ll cut your throat for your boots if you’re asleep in an alley. None of them half as old as the mongrels that follow them for scraps.”
    “Got a name for us?”
    “I don’t know nobody. I know he’s got some rowdy friends.”
    “How rowdy?”
    “Rowdy, but, you know, not rowdy enough for what they’re doing. And not