The grandmother who insulted him answered for the crowd. “Bond-flowers,” she said. “Your woman now.”
Between her broken Official, the now iridescent anger of the strange man, and the woman’s hand still encasing his own, he understood. A local marriage ritual.
The desert was slipping away from his grasp. His masters would learn of this. He would have to report this. There would be an investigation. They would catch him and recondition him.
“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. Torture could not have been more compelling. “I can’t want to eat.”
She cocked 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!”
He nodded and she frowned, her victory stolen. “You admit it? I thought Inspectors aren’t allowed. It is a punishable offense, no?”
“It is.”
“Then why tell me?”
“I cannot lie.” He took another mouthful of water. Poison. Bright light. Pictures that moved so fast he felt sick with their movement. “I have been conditioned.”
She sat back. A glass of red wine in her hand shone deep and clear—casting its own kind of light. Her eyes caught on his face, on his own eyes which he hated and his pale, untried skin. “Good to know,” she said.
“You sound amused.”
She hesitated, her eyes rolling to the ceiling as if considering her own emotions. “Just … speculative.”
She fell silent for a while as she savored her food and he drank water to keep himself from wanting to taste everything on the table.
The waiter had to fill his glass twice.
“Mahati?” he reminded her.
She shook her mane of dark hair dismissively. “What can he do? I am married to an Inspector, and it would be foolish for him to try anything now. He will go to my father, and that is hardly my problem.”
“You said he was a gangster,” he said. “Will your father get hurt?”
She hesitated, her eyes dark and veiled. “No,” she decided. “My father killed Sasha, the man I loved, to prove that his contract was in good faith. He will also most likely kill my dogs to spite me, but there is too much good history between him and Mahati for this to end badly between them.”
“Sasha,” he mused, balancing his glass between two fingers.
“Was not a good man either,” she said bluntly. “I loved him anyway. But he is dead, and they cannot hurt me anymore, not if I am married to you.”
Fabric covered every possible surface of their luxurious room. Carpets, the drapes above the beds, two layers of curtains over the tall windows, thickly upholstered chairs and footstools, it was all too much. Deacon felt like he was sinking.
Extravagance like this wasn’t meant for him. Only real people could appreciate the softness and the exquisite colors.
He left his briefcase on the table and stood beside the bed, focusing on the street outside the window. Chairs and tables were set outside under soft neon lights of every color. The glowing canopy zig-zagged between the buildings in every direction, marking the extent of the celebration.
“The bed is big enough for both of us,” the woman said. She had already collapsed onto the covers, her hands writhing under the pillows, searching for an edge of the sheets.
“I have work to do,” he said absently, staring down into the starkly lit street.
“All night?”
“Yes.”
She huffed a disbelieving laugh. “You haven’t even visited the factory yet. I think you are skittish. You needn’t be. I am too tired to poke fun at my djinn tonight.”
She wasn’t drunk, but obviously exhausted. Deacon said nothing back to her, keeping his gaze fixed on the distant desert, just visible through the buildings. She muttered a curse, then groaned with effort. Deacon didn’t have to turn to know she was undressing.
A sigh of release. The sound of metal rain, as she discarded her chainmail beside the bed. “I’m not naked,” she said to him, a smile in her voice.
He turned to see her sitting up in the bed, wearing the simple cotton shift that had kept the metal off her skin. She looked better. Less dangerous. “I think under the circumstances, God will forgive us if we do not consummate our marriage tonight.”
Under his gaze she removed the metal ornamentation from her hair. There were many pieces.
“I don’t believe in God,” he said.
She shrugged. “I suppose it is hard for you. You were not made by him, after all.”
“No,” he said, “but I don’t believe he made you either.”
“I believe you were made from fire,” she said, “like the old books say about the djinni.” She struggled with a clasp at the back of her head. “I can see it in your eyes.”
Again. She was trying to be playful. No one had ever spoken to him the way she did.
“How did you keep your head up, under all of that?” he asked, not sure if he was trying to make a joke. Not likely. He had never had a sense of humor before.
“Practice,” she said.
Deacon turned away, back to the desk. He sat down, ig
noring the way the pillows encased him, molding to his back. He opened the briefcase only to be staring down at his forbidden treasures.
The evidence of his insanity.
He ran his fingers over the golden watch—an antiquated thing. The smoothness of it had first captivated him. The symmetry of its lines. There were other things, too. Postcards from the cities he had been sent to examine. A stolen painting—the memory of that pain still bit at him as he brushed a hand over its colorful smudges. It was a simple portrait of a man at a desk, the light catching on golden buttons and the folds of his ceremonial dress, mysterious and dark. Deacon did not know why he took it—only that he had to have it. He had to possess it, because it pulled on something in him—an urge stronger than that he had been trained into.
He ran a thumb over the corner of it, feeling the phantom burn that came with guilt—another emotion he supposedly could not feel. Axeonos began to snore, startling him into movement.
He could not linger. He would need all his willpower and strength to complete his final act. He pulled the tablet from underneath his treasures.
The form only had two questions. He was supposed to visit the factory. He was supposed to shut it down. He took the job for that reason. If anybody bothered to see why this desert town leaked money and resources, he would be long gone, and they might guess at his victory.
He shouldn’t be able to lie, but he was insane.
And that helped.
Is the factory profitable?
No.
Yes, he wrote carefully, feeling the betrayal in every nerve of his body. He stared at the word he had written, felt the wrongness of it in his bones. It started as an itch, a burn.
His shoulders stiffened. His brain rebelled. Untruth! Pain. He let out a shaking breath. The woman snored behind him. How much time had passed?
Notes during inspection:
He readied his stylus and steeled himself. His imagination. How they would wonder at it—how all their conditioning, all their tests had failed.
And his bones in the desert, scraped and bleached white—a monument to this one act of disobedience. He would win.