Chương 20: 1.19. The Dam

The saxophone glinted in the afternoon light. Lisa beamed." Yes fucking way." She slid the neck of her saxophone into its slot and brought its mouthpiece to her lips. Her cheeks puffed outward and a clarion cry emerged from the sax's bell. Her fingers danced nimbly across its pearl-plated keys, summoning a waterfalling melody that crested in a trilled flourish and then dropped into a jaunty waltz rhythm. Seth laughed in disbelief as she played.

The corners of her lips curled up and her responding laugh jostled the tone momentarily.

Then she stood up, braced her foot on the front bow, and kept playing, eyes screwed shut behind her sunglasses, hips shimmying to her own rhythm. Seth glanced from her, back at the countryside, and did a double-take.

"Lisa," he said.

"Bumpy road ahead. Lisa. Hey —" The wagon lurched; Lisa staggered a step, caught herself and widened her stance to squeeze out a few last notes before the jostling caught up with her and she thumped onto her butt in the wagon. Seth hastily pulled on the reins and slowed Demetrius' pace.

"Saints and Seraphs, al Ydris. Are you all right?" Lisa smacked her lips.

"The road can be hard on a traveling musician." The traffic was the first indicator that they were closing in on Fontana. Wagons laden with food and lumber, a flatbed hex engine stacked with glowing dynamos, messengers and pilgrims and huddled travelers. By the roadside, a woman selling warding charms against seraph emergence haggled with a stormy-browed murani teamster. Off in the distance there came a rhythmic rattling sound, and the rolling echo of a bellowing horn.

"That a train?" Seth squinted into the gathering dusk. He still had the reins; Lisa was lounging, her feet up on the toe board. She nodded.

"Have you ever been on an artery train, Seth?"

"Never been important enough to even see one."

"It's a fabulous way to travel," she said.

"At the end of the year I'll take you, if you like. You could winter with us at the Necropolis."

"That could be nice," he said.

"Provided I don't get snuffed out while I'm there."

"Oh, no." She held her hand up to the ebbing light, fingers spread.

"This shade is too lovely. I couldn't bear to see it desaturated. I'll fend the bachelorettes off you with a boar spear." Seth halted the wagon as the road around them slowed to a crawl. Demetrius let out a judgmental hurf. Some unseen commotion was playing out a few spaces ahead of them. A wiry man with an ascot stood atop his bulky land-schooner's high platform.

"What's the delay, then?" he called, reedily. A chorus of responses:"Pile-up ahead."

"Ahh, come on. I don't have time for this. Sun's going down."

"Hey! Hey, move your seraph-fucking carriages!"

"Dad, sit down. Please."

"Are you just stupid or are you blind?"

"Can you please just move this argument to the side of the road?"

"Pardon me, young Seth." Lisa stood and hopped forward, from their borrowed wagon to the ascot fellow's schooner.

"Gents," she announced.

"Let's get moving, shall we?" Past Seth's vision, a grating voice replied, "This sonofabitch doesn't know how to drive a—""I'm afraid I don't care who knows what, or who doesn't." Lisa swept her great black coat back, revealing the heavy pistol at her hip, and settled her hand atop its stock with matter-of-fact menace.

"You're obstructing an officer of the Sorcerer's Legion in her business. I'll have both your names, or I'll have your obedience. Choose, please." Past Seth's vision, the yelling ceased, and the turning, cobblestruck sounds of vehicles on the move began. Lisa smiled beatifically, patted the gobsmacked ascot man on the back, and stepped smartly back to Seth's side.

"Apologies for the interruption," she said.

"The adventure continues." Seth nudged Demetrius forward.

"I reckon you made a lot of friends just then." Lisa shrugged.

"And two enemies."

"Well, they were assholes." She chuckled.

"This is why I stay with Annalise, when I can. She's a patient woman, and I'm not." You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. She took her sunglasses off and hung them on her tunic's neckline, and Seth had a momentary vision of his head, right where they were nestled, safe and restful and warm, with a pair of gloriously strong arms draped around him. He hurriedly shooed it away. There was a dam in Seth's head, a tall concrete edifice.

Here, on the dry side, Annalise al Ydris was a friendly-but-intimidating boss. Someone who he hoped to impress, someone he'd like as a friend, yes; but ultimately best to keep his professionalism and his distance. He was a contractor in all but, well, contract. Something he really ought to amend. The dam was to be watched zealously and studiously maintained.

With every crack, every pebble falling out of it, Seth became increasingly aware that the current behind it was deep and monstrously swift; and if it ever broke, it was going to sweep him away completely, and he wasn't sure how he could put it back together. He'd thought how big and scary the al Ydris matriarch was, how honed her body was for war and intimidation, might aid him in maintaining it. He had seen her kill, seen her coated in blood. To his disconcerted surprise, these remembrances were not helping him.

On reflection, they might even be exacerbating the problem. The dam had found fine reinforcement when Seth met Anna. Lisa was a problem. Lisa smelled like apricots. Even if she wasn't a Verdugo, and his employer, and the mother of his new coworkers, she was unlit. You couldn't have sex with an unlit. Not if you wanted your soul to stay put and your eyes to stay white. Which would be terrible. Of course it would. Everyone knew how horrible it was to be unlit. Once you went unlit there was no return.

You were torn from your home, made a citizen of the Necropolis for the rest of your days, at the threshold of the Deathspell with the Sorcerer General's Legion all about you, barred from the rest of the world forever, never to bear children or dwell with your people or feel the warmth of a lit lover again. And yet. Seth could not help but notice that—contrary to the folklore he'd learned—the Verdugo's thigh where it pressed against his was quite warm. Warm as a lit human's. Warm and thick and well-formed.

Her breeches were tight enough he could see the line of her muscle along the outer edge. What was that muscle called again?

"Seth?"

"Hmm?"

"Are you spacing out on me?"

"Sorry, what did you say?"

"Hex engine." She pointed.

"One of those fancy open-top ones."

"Oooh. Yeah." Seth squinted through the slow-swaying horse traffic at the slick pine-colored vehicle she'd indicated.

"Real flashy."

"Tiago is obsessed with them," Lisa said.

"He's constantly intimating that we make the switch on the carriage. I have to remind him we need a way to run from a big seraph if we need to. He doesn't like horses much."

"Why not?"

"Not sure. I blame whatever fool raised him. And Meaty does too. Don't you, Meat?" She leaned forward and scratched her horse's rump.

"Yes you do. You are a disappointed horse." Seth joined in the scratching. Demetrius' tail switched in a way that was either gratified or annoyed; he didn't speak horse well enough to know for sure.

"How'd you end up with him?"

"It's a dull story, I'm afraid. When I was first given Verdugo assignation, they gave me the carriage and two drays to pull it. I picked Draco and Draka from the barrack stables but I fell in love with Demetrius, too. He'd been part of a team pulling a schooner. One of the big ones with the hex-hybrid engines to lighten the load on the team. But it was faulty, and he'd been pulling twice what he ought to be, all the way up the central corridor. Poor thing.

Old owner had given him up with the misconception that he was hobbled. The Legion owed me a few favors, so I traded one for him." Seth wondered what those favors were, but if Lisa wanted to keep the story dull he supposed she didn't want to speak on them.

"He seems fine, now."

"Uh huh." Lisa patted her horse's back. He snorted.

"He was never broken, not really. All he needed was a little love."

"And you fell in love with him right in the stable?"

"I don't know," she mused.

"I just found him compelling, I guess. The scary eyes, maybe. Sometimes I just get a feeling." Her eyes flicked to his.

"I had that feeling with you, too, Seth." He chuckled uncertainly.

"Do you, uh—like how scary my eyes are?" She smiled, but did not join in his nervous laughter.

"I've been trying to figure out what it was, exactly. I presumed I wanted to fix you, and it's a bit that, but it's not just that. Besides, it would be such a shame to fix you up all the way. You're too fun not to be a little fractured. But I have a theory." His hands were sweaty on the reins.

"What's your theory?"

"It's taken me putting on my Lisa head to really see it," she said.

"When I'm Annalise I'm excellent at reading everyone but myself. I lock myself out of myself." And you don't flirt with me, Seth thinks. This is just Lisa. Like how Anna hates me, and Annalise doesn't. That's all this is. He tried to fix that in his mind.

"I've wandered the United Territories," Lisa said.

"Farther than most. And most of the people have an air of surrender. I suppose it's understandable, under this big green dome with the feathered apocalypse screeching about outside of it. All the danger and the thin trust. If you find some kind of a life in a world like this, you batten down the hatches." Seth steered the wagon around a curve in the road. At the side of it a child was holding a battered conical hat out for alms. Lisa flicked a two-brace coin into it.

"They're grateful for what they get, on the whole, which is commendable." She watched the child bow with gratitude and skitter away.

"But most of them have, in a quiet way, given up. You know how to fake it, but you never quite have, have you?" She searched his face. The intensity of her attention raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

"I think there's a great deal of hope in you," she murmured.

"And even though sometimes it manifests as running away from life, or impulsiveness, or in those sticky fingers of yours, I can't help but admire it." Seth swallowed moisture back down his throat.

"Life has slugged you in the ribs, I think, over and over. You haven't told me much, and that's okay. You needn't. But the way you carry yourself. I can tell it hasn't been easy. And you haven't given up." She exhaled heavily and sat back.

"And then you hid behind me and I kicked you again, silly bitch that I am. I will make up for it." She fixed her ensorceled eyes on his.

"I promise." He couldn't maintain eye contact with that fervent expression. He nodded and turned back to the road. The lights of Fontana were twinkling in the middle distance.

"Is the dinner not how you're making up for it?" She shook her head.

"I guess it can count as the apology for my biting your head off. The real challenge is how I make up for that feathery fuckface Sik-Ersetim nearly biting your head off, sans metaphor. Still trying to work that one out, I'm afraid." She frowned at the forthcoming town's lights, and fiddled with her sunglasses.

"Any ideas?" One of her sunglasses' hinging arms laid against the plump, dark pillow of her lower lip.

"Nothing yet," he said.

"I'll ponder it."

"Good," she said.

"If you think of one, you let me know."

"Okay."

"Okay." Her smile slipped back on, and she returned her attention to the road, and the dam held. But there was a new crack in it, and Seth didn't know how to patch it.