They Shall Breathe Ashes, the famous assassin, and her assistant Shelby are on a red carpet. They is wearing a sweeping gown in cream; Shelby, a suit and a hint of rouge.
“TSBA!” shouts a man behind the velvet rope. “What was it like working with Kelsey Grammer?”
“You have no idea,” They purrs.
“They, did you really kill the Queen?” shouts a woman.
“If I did, I’d have to kill you too.”
“How would you do that,” the man shouts, “in front of all these cameras?”
Shelby drops an infrared grenade. It fires.
“That didn’t do anything,” shouts the man.
“School Boards United took a lot of downtown,” Standish reads off, “nobody expected them there, I guess, but they ceded the southeast suburbs to the Budget Committee. Can’t get a straight word from up north. Far as we know, Little Seoul and the other enclaves are still in dispute.”
“Not much time, Madam Commissioner,” says Milo, pulling his ear absently. “Is Planning and Zoning going to get in on the turf wars or not?”
Instead of answering, Beretta scoots her cup off the guardrail. Carp scatter from its shadow as it falls. Go ahead, she wants to tell them, breathe coffee.
Paola catches a column off the sunlit plaza and lets herself spiral, pinions stretched, rising on heat. Her divided skirts barely flutter. Some of the people in the market below are pointing; go ahead, she thinks. Feed the pickpockets.
Out to sea. It’s a long flight, but the courier bag is light and the sun is soft. Paola decides to treat herself. A mile out on the water she kicks off her shoes, watches them fall. Cool air brushes her ankles. It’s the only thing that makes her heart beat anymore: the thrill, the utter sensuality, of flying with bare feet.
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?