Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...
Paris
"Why do I have to sit in front?" I sighed. It was raining. How could it rain so coldly in winter? The horse, which smelt of wet dog, snorted as it trudged through the mud.
"You sit in front so you won't fall asleep." Pesha shrugged and the long cloak he'd gotten from the old man fell over me. " "And so I can do that."
I shook my head. Sometimes you're so weird, Pesha. I pressed my back against him. Snow, cold, and more trees. Wasn't there a town anywhere near the old grandparents' house? I heard Pesha grunt as the horse slid a bit.
"You're still hurt. We should find someplace to stop."
"In another gadjay hovel?" Pesha growled under his breath. "Bah. I feel more polluted already!" I sighed, lowering my head. So he hadn't forgiven me. I saw his sigh drift up in an exasperated puff of cloud. "Perhaps we'll stop soon." He tugged my ear. "You're dozing anyway."
The night sloshed on.
"Tibya." I stirred slightly, looking about with glazed eyes. When had I fallen asleep? "Milaya moya." Pesha's warm voice coaxed my eyes open. He smiled, brushing the hair from my face long enough to kiss my forehead. "Dobroye utro, yuna moya."
I took in our surroundings. We were on the floor of a vardo, covered in blankets and skins. And Pesha was naked for some hell of a reason. He shrugged.
"Eh, I fell off a time or two. No matter."
"Where are my clothes?" I'd found it expedient to look down.
"Drying with mine."
"Did I fall off too?"
"No," and here was his madman's smile, "but I like the fact that body heat is the best sort of warmth."
"a**."
"You know you love it." He stretched, resting his head on his hands. "Admit it." I shook my head, turning on my other side. I shivered as he pressed against my back.
"Are you cold?"
"No."
His breath tickled my ear. "Don't shake so." I forced myself to quit. "Oh, I see. I think I know why you're twitchy as a drunk."
"Pesha, stop... This isn't--"
"Bear with me." He smirked against my neck. "Bear with me, as you always do." He chuckled. "As you always are."
"Yes, hello, we appreciate your visit, but look what you did to my floor!" The voice's high pitched crescendo started me up. A Frenchman. Even in winter, what parts of his skin I could see were dark. The rest was covered in gaudy yellows, lavenders, maroon, and two jingling bells.
"It's been a pleasant stay, as you may see, Fool Clovo." Pesha was clothed once more; I, too, found this true for myself as I made my way to the door.
"May your stays elsewhere be as much so, Fingersmith Boyko." After an intricate hand-conversation, Pesha stepped out of the wagon. The Fool held my arm a moment. "Some small advice for a young mind: keep a knife in your boot. And fear where that man refuses to tread."
A fourth-second later I'd all but leeched onto my companion's back.
We rode on ahead of the band we'd paused with. The snow had gone, but the cold rain that replaced it was sour comfort. However unpleasant the storm, though, it was doubly preferred to the men with pikes arisen from the gloom before us, halting our cityward progress.
"Halt!" Pesha gave the man--I supposed him a man, however much of a fresh face was 'neath his helm--a withering look. "We said halt!" The crossed weapons barred our way. "What sort of travelers be you?"
"The Devil and the Antichrist for all you goodly Christened warriors care." Even I flinched at the barbs on the lash Pesha made of his tongue. He moved the horse around them, speaking to their quivering, wet backs, "Where are the families of such brave boys? Go home to your mothers while you yet have legs to walk!"
The streets we clopped down varied in their unsanitary degrees, but all over pervaded a stench the like of which all Romani smelt leastways and seldom forgot.
I glanced about through the rain. Alleys, byways, a river... I gocked. Churches I'd seen, but this was a monolith in and of itself. Steps wide enough for all our band to stand rowed grew from the cobbles. Statues projected every which where. Demons bared their fangs, holy people stared down their noses at us, creatures out of nightmare leapt from drenched shades.
The huge glass circle flashed as lightning stabbed the air in twain. Twin towers rose high, higher, enormous, most frightening of all the features. As if the building were raising its hackles at my rain splattered, upturned face.
The horse shuddered with me.
"Welcome to Paris, tibya."
* * *
The rain abated. Finally! Weather. Honestly, why have any? We'd managed to squeeze into an alcove down under one of the walls. A rather loud sneeze echoed in the space and rebounded off the alley wall.
Pitti wiped at his nose, making a nasally moan before, "G'morning, Pesha." He pressed his still soden head into my breast, shuddering. I felt his face. No fever. Relief settled over my form, warmer than a blanket of wool.
I'd call him the dumbest a** in the world for a cold, save the worst insults for the brainless dolt who couldn't give him a roof.
"Pesha?"
"Hmm? What is it?" Then I heard my own stomach. I rolled my eyes. "Please, you can go without food for one day, can't you?" I laughed at the little scowl on his face.
Standing, we moved from the space and passed down the alley to the main--well, mainer--streets. Pitti all but dove headfirst in with the masses. I snagged his shirt, thrusting his back against the wall.
"Stupid tibya, where the hell are you going?" I fished a rag from my pocket and set to tying it around his head.
"What's this thing for?" The earlier scowl was returned.
"So if you get trampled to death I'll know who to turn into a shirt. Besides," I smirked, tapping his cheek with my palm, "you look cute." I drew my arm around his shoulders as he blushed. (NB: Cheek as in face, you perverts.)
(...Not that I wouldn't grab his puny a** if the occassion arose.)
We slid into the writhing tumult of bodies.
"Breads! Fresh and hot!"
"This price is outrageous!"
"Meats! Pigs' hooves! Sheeps' stomachs!"
"I think I'm gonna be sick..."
"Walk. Walk!"
"Horse flesh!" There was no stopping him that time. I myself almost felt ill as well. I crouched down, letting him climb on for a short ride. We passed more people hawking wares of varying disgust. Then, "Boys, boys!" Pitti turned his head. I watched from the corner of my eye.
The man had the voice of a Spaniard. I gave him a once over. Boots, thick pants, long-armed loose shirt. He had what seemed a failed attempt at a moustache.
Pitti had already gotten down to inspecting his wares: a bunch of overlarge jewels and the like. I groaned and resigned myself to wait.
"I think you'll like this one."
"A necklace?"
"Made from amethyst. Maybe for your girl." The Spaniard winked hugely, not knowing that he would never have a girl.
"What about this one?" I blinked. That glint had never shown in Pitti's eye before. The thief's eye on his target.
"Oh, the bracelet? It's from the New World."
"New World?"
"Made by Indians. They make them out of jewels we can't find here." Stupid of the man to hold it in full face of him. A flash of his little fingers, it was gone. As were we.
"You insane child!" I panted. He licked his lips. "Oh, you little..." He grinned. "Wipe that damn smirk off your face! What's so--"
"Here." He slid the band around my wrist. His face was flushed, not from the run. "It's for you."
"I suppose you'll be wanting this bauble then?" I threw him the little stone on the string. "Don't lose it, else go your fingers." He hugged me, despite the threat to his digits.
Stupid, precious boy.
"Aha. There you are." I barely turned my head. A boy. Scarcely taller than my yuna, lankier, well-groomed, voice speaking of long wintered lands where he'd obviously stayed inside.
"My name is Remi." He smiled as fakely as his Parisian accent. "I have a proposition for you."
"And your forked tongued father had the same for your goat footed mother." I gripped Pitti tightly, so hard he winced. I knew that boy's smell. He smelt of his father. The Remi boy made a quick backstep as I drew my lips back, baring my fangs.
"Now, now. Let's be reasonable."
"Who do you think you are, talking of reason when--"
"Are you hungry?' He looked at Pitti. "Cold? Tired of staying out in all weather? Of the hate people look at you with?"
"I can take care of my own!" I snapped, sliding my free arm around Pitti's waist. His stomach gurgled under my hand.
"How...parental of you."
"What's the matter? Lonely without Mommy and Daddy?" The brat flinched. Raw nerves, ah? Wonderful. His eyes narrowed.
"I can talk to people. There's plenty of room for a few trials, a few hangings." He licked his lips slowly, savoring the flavor of his threats. "Torture." I shuddered. Screams, screams, screams in my ears.
"Pesha? Pesha!"
Yuna...
Yuna...moya...
So hungry...the screams...Mother...Father...bodies...
Demon...
"Well, Brother, seems you're coming round." I blinked at the man. Clovo pushed the man aside.
"Pesha, mon ami--"
"Where's Pitti?" I rasped. A cup appeared, I swallowed.
"Pitti--oh, the boy!"
"Yes, the boy." My coughing took the force from my voice. I narrowed my eyes as he fidgeted.
"Look, Pesha, be calm, but we don't--" He glanced at the steel tickling his throat. After a moment's cautious swallow, "We don't have the right forces out. Of course! I'll get to that..."
Still, my past railed against the walls of my mind.
Demon...demon...demon.
* * *
"Oh, for the love of--You oafs didn't kill him in transport, did you?" I blinked. Blackness. Again, a retina-snapping influx of light. A cage. Roughly, four by eight by four. I was hunched over inside. Before me in the liberatingly open space of a posh--is that the word, posh? Hmm, yes--dining room of sorts stood Remi.
With a plate of meat. He set the dish down in front of the cage. He waited. I stayed where I was. He looked off to a wall I couldn't see from my position.
"Hurry up. I've heard you set food down and it'll eat, and it's almost midafternoon. You must be starving."
"I'm not some dog--" The rest of my words trailed off in my rage.
"Yes, I know. Alas, I've naught had any sort of animal. Besides, Father allowed this as my turn to practice our trade and I need you healthy and strong for that."
"I'm stronger than you farther than I could kick you. As for health, what ironic concern is that for a man that places other men in cages?" The boy huffed and stalked out of the room, resolving to return once I'd time for thought. I glared out the side of the trap. Infuriating.
"Brother. Little brother." I turned my eyes to the voice. A man crouched outside the cage with the plate of meat. "We have your friend."
"Pesha? He all right?"
"Awake and in a fine temper. Here, eat this." He slipped the food through. I snatched it up and inhaled it, letting the spice run over my tongue slowly as I swallowed. "My, you are hungry." He slipped me another piece and some water. I gobbled this down as well, chugging the water to sate my overraw thirst.
"I'll let them know you're here. Meantime, ignore that little brat. He's an annoying little slime." The man passed into the shadows and was gone. Had I imagined him? No, the cup was still in my hand and the rabidly enticing smell of Romani cooking hung cloyingly in the air.
Pain bashing against my skull awakened me. I'd begun divying my time sleeping and watching...waiting. The rag about my head was good as any pillow. It smelt of Pesha. Even squashed in the tiny cell, the thought of him was lulling.
Until some a**-brained idiot had kicked the thing over on its back.
"Sleep well?" queried Remi's all too cheery voice. I told him what I thought of his bedroom habits. His tone was miffed. "I see you've eaten. Good."
"It's not for you."
"Don't you like me?"
"Are you thick in the head?"
"It's because of that...thing you were with. Well, we'll fix that. Starting with you and ending with me." He leaned over the cell, giggling. I kicked him through the bars. He balked, blood streaming from his face. "Yes, starting with you."
* * *
I paced the room, anxious, aggrivated. Pitti...Pitti...one and only...Pitti...
"Sit down, tu bete," Clovo groaned from his chair. "Informents only have so many legs; you wearing a trench in the floor won't hurry them." The door swung open, one of Clovo's men with it. Clovo advised the panting man, half-jesting, "Words, quickly, out with them, lest he throttles you for them."
I would have, if the man hadn't spoken a thought's speed of a moment later.
"Messire, he's at a noble's house. He's a sadist pig. His brat up and coming, if he's not cruel as already."
"Where is the house?" The man relayed this. The Fool gripped my arm.
"Wait."
"Like hell I will!"
"You'll be found out. What of your boy then? You anger the nobles and--"
"There are worse things."
I slipped in through a side entrance. No one. I moved through the kitchen, into the room the informant had mentioned. "Pitti?" A sound. I turned.
Something hard and wooden slammed into my gut.
Wet.
"Is this him? Wake up!" Wetter. I opened my eyes. My hair hung down in my face, a snowy haze. The boy stood outside bars. A cell. How familiar. "You're that man from before." I held my peace. "Aren't you wondering how you came to be here?" Obviously a noble question deserving of an answer. In accordance, I bit my thumb at him.
It was laughable how quickly the smug face morphed into a scrunch-eyed angry whelp's pout. "I'll hurt him! Yes, I've got that boy. I can make him--" I grasped the scruff of his neck, jerking his head, knife against his throat. Even the guard--guard, ha!--stood stunned at my reach through the bars.
"Rash words, you little pig filth," I hissed. "Touch that boy--my boy--and I'll cut you into fifty different pieces and throw you in with your servants' breakfast."
The stunned guard finally managed to pull him out of my grip. The boy glared and stalked off.
I leaned against the stone wall and closed my eyes. Yuna moya...
* * *
I lifted my head as the door to the chamber swung open with a metallic squeak. The blood had dried across my back, some matted the tips of my hair in clumps. I'd fallen asleep--could I call it sleep?--slumped over the post I was tied at.
It had put them off severely that I'd managed not to scream during the whipping.
"What do you think of him?" Remi strolled around the post. "What is your companion to you?" If I had been more lucid, I'd have noticed his trick. At the mere hint of those words, I sprang to alertness, my lips of their own accord shifting to the model of a shy smile.
My arms were off the post and above my head before I could realize my folly. I'd been bait. Now I'd been baited. They had him. I lowered my head, hair masking my eyes.
I saw then I'd been rising off the floor, steadily, steadily. A winch. SNAP! I shrieked. No, not broken. No, that would be too easy. There would be numbness. This machine was for torture--for ripping.
Both arms wrenched from their sockets by the weight snapping taut the rope. Easily mended--a pop enough to press the joint home--currently useless. And there I hung for a time, pathetic whipping boy of the guard's amusement.
Even if my feet had touched the cold stone, I'd nowhere to run, no means of grasping, much less opening the door.
Suspended. Defenseless.
Cold, a biting sting of brine. Hot, scaldingly so. I gasped, eyes stretched wide by the dim and the pain.
I was being lowered. I almost cried, the stone beneath me such a sweet relief. I tried to move my arms. Pain. Still disconnected. Still imprisoned. I was lifted, set on a table face down.
"Wrack..." I croaked. Drank the blood off my lips. Laughter.
"No." A nw voice. Harsh, though a whisper it was. I trembled. "No, something much, much more lingering."
"No...no, no...NO!"
* * *
I stared at the wall outside the bars. Screams, screams, so many ringing around in my ears, in my mind. Their screams? His screams. His pain. Damn them. Damn me.
Footsteps?
I surged to the bars as a form fell to the stones. Blood-seeping welts cross-hatched his back, his hair was matted with it. His ribs I was beginning to see when he took in shallow breaths, stomach disdended, covered in grime. My eyes sought his face. Strands of hair hung in his eyes. They were sunken, wide, and overbright, all for their glazed, half-closed appearance. HIs cheeks were hollow, leading to a barely parted, white-lipped mouth, which he gasped through; it seemed he still wanted breath to scream.
A chuckle bounced off my ears as I fitted my arm through the bars and reached. Even fully extended, my fingers were mere fractions from his face. His arm twitched, its movement off. I saw then how odd his shoulder appeared. One of the shadows drifted to his other side--as trembling, twitching fingers reached out--and kicked him savagely. He was against the bars, in my grasp.
A scream escaped his raw lips, he struggled. I held him to the grate, crooning in his ear, "Pitti, Pitti, tibya. Tibya moya, it's Pesha." His thrashings slowed. I slid my fingers in his hair. Vaguely, I noted it would take me months to get it as clean as it had been.
He'd ceased struggling altogether as I placed my hand on his head. In fact, he was rigid as a corpse, but for his lax muscles. Now and then a spark of light flashed in his glazed eyes, dazed with madness.
As though his soul in its refuge deep and buried peered through a ghost-body fog and, catching a glimpse of a visage familiar, sought to dredge itself up to its twin windows. No, no, go back, little soul, I pleaded with my eyes. This image you hold so safe and sacred is the beck and boon of the enemy trickster. Flee, flee from me.
Too late, too late. I'd called him back to his doom.
"Pesha..."
A hand lashed out, dragging him up to his toes by his hair. The smell. The smell invaded the air around me. The scent of that man...
"I see you've snared the eye of this child, demon." He ran his tongue over his lips much as his brat had. "Such a shame." Pitti shuddered, eyes wide and overbright once again, hanging limp as a she-hare gripped by the ears. "We both know the only way to purge someone of your contact is--"
I threw myself against the grate, swearing, cursing him, battering.
"I'll kill you! I'll rip your throat out! I'll kill you!" Bodies, bodies, a pile of bodies and staring eyes. I couldn't let him join them--upon my soul I refused that fate for him. Not--my--boy!
The bars snapped, falling and crashing. Heat flooded my limbs. I bared my teeth. Remi made a backstep. The man raised a brow. I wanted to rip, rend, cut, break; I wanted to slaughter, to vent my fury and blacken the floor with their b***h blood.
I trembled, excited nearly to frenzy at the mental incarnation of the scene. Abruptly sobered as a fragile noise escaped Pitti's lips. The man had turned him to face me. My heart clenched. I feared for him, for long as that man had him he was sway to that daze-eyed insanity.
The boy spoke, the Remi spawn of the snake tongue. I barely heard him. Then, "Do you want him, demon? Go ahead. Take him."
Pitti was in my arms, clutched to my chest. I vanished.
* * *
The little slime's words rang in my ears. I couldn't have told in that room if Pesha'd spoken, but he had.
"You know who my father is, don't you? If you can somehow find a way to take us all down, there wouldn't be anyone to come after you or your precious boy. But know that if you can't kill us now, we will destroy him for good and then we'll come back for you. You are the ultimate prize out of all this."
"You'll never reach him and I will not fall until I know you're dead."
"Pretty words for someone who tried to abandon his 'one and only'." Pesha clenched his teeth. "Very well then, you understand me. My father and I will meet you at Notre Dame. Let all watch you fail."
"Notre Dame."
"Yes, Notre Dame. One hour's time. It will be...interesting." After a time we reached Clovo's vardo. Pesha kicked the door open and shut in one fluid motion. The jester turned, leapt from his skin, and made a hasty sign against the Evil Eye.
I couldn't blame him, not for the fact that I wouldn't open my mouth for fear of screaming madly, but that Pesha was crouched ina corner, breathing sharply, crimson eyes ablaze. Enough to make the most stalward heart jump to the gullet. I noticed at that time his hair, shining white in the blackness of the wagon. As if the worry streaks had taken sole possession to show his mind's state.
By this time, the Fool had come over his start.
"Why didn't you say--"
"Do you have it?" Pesha interrupted, setting me on the bed in a stride. The Frenchman nodded, going and returning with an urn. I grasped Pesha's sleeve as he moved for it. Stared in his eyes, pleaded. "Damn it, boy..." He sat on the bedside, brushing the hair from my face gingerly. "Yalu blu, tibya."
"D-don't--" I stammered, forced words out of potential shrieks. "N-no, d-don't g-g--" My voice broke.
"Shh." He pressed a finger, then his lips, to mine. Tears welled, dripped down my face. He sighed. "Keep your hair out of your eyes, Pitti." He held it back, kissing my head. Something wet hit my cheek. A small smile appeared. Rare, mysterious, anguished. "You can't be by my side this time."
To be continued...
((Ask me about any words you don't understand in a PM. ^^; ))
