Chapter 5 #2
I have only a second to register ears and a bushed tail—that motherfucker threw a cat at me —before I manage to catch the animal against my chest. Claws sink into my biceps and above my ribs; I hear a frantic hiss.
It takes me precious seconds to disentangle the stray cat from my suit jacket and set it carefully on the ground.
As far as diversions go, it was an effective one, because now I’m bleeding from the arm, I can’t see my quarry, and this cat is perfectly fucking unharmed, turning around to hiss at me as I start running again, like I’m the one at fault here.
It’s luck that I see the flash of movement up ahead, just a dart through the crowd, and I shove past people trying to sell bouquets of mint or purses into a leather goods store, which is mostly empty.
I emerge onto a terrace overlooking a tannery and choke on the foul air.
Vats of cow urine, pigeon feces, and lime dot the courtyard below, and beyond them are deep wells of dye—henna, saffron, indigo—and everywhere are wet animal skins, some raw, some fully processed.
Across the tanneries, I see a group of tourists heading back inside a store from their viewing terrace with handfuls of mint held to their faces, and then finally on the terrace below, I spot the man I’m chasing.
He casts a quick look back at me before he hops the final half story down to the tannery itself.
I jump after him, landing with a flinch as my thirty-six-year-old knees absorb the shock, and then jump again until I’m down on the level with the vats and skins, among the fetid air of the tannery.
I’d kill for even a sprig of mint right now.
The man hoists himself onto the honeycombed array of dye vats, scurrying between the opaque pools of red and yellow and blue, and I follow, quicker than him by just enough to be within grabbing distance as we reach the edge.
He surges toward a narrow, empty alley piled with colorful stacks of finished leather, and once I’m in the alley with him, I tackle him to the pungent skins with a heavy thud.
We roll once, twice, and he’s reaching for something, and so am I, and by the time we stop rolling, we’re in a scatter of leather with Isolde’s stolen knife to his throat and the tip of his knife digging into my ribs.
He hisses in my face, “I’m not afraid to die. But I plan on taking you with me.”
I believe him on both counts, but I’m also not interested in killing him—not at the moment at least. “Since you’re so eager to reach heaven, maybe you’ll know the person I’m looking for.
” I keep my tone conversational, but the honeysuckle blade remains unambiguously pressed to his throat.
“A Father Minch. He’d be a few years younger than you—short, British, very paranoid. ”
The man’s eyes burn up at me. His face is well shaped, with a strong brow and a wide jaw, but the ferocity of his anger makes him look wrong. Twisted. “You’re too late, Sea Hound.”
It’s been some time since I’ve heard my old CIA code name, and I’m a little charmed by it, even if I don’t like what he’s saying. “You’ve already found him then.”
“He’s been sent to God to answer for his sins.”
“Sounds like something a saint would say,” I say, but it’s more to keep his attention on my words and not on the subtle shifting of my knees on the leather beneath us.
I’m not surprised he’s a saint—there aren’t very many people who will cross themselves while leaving bloody footprints across a public square—and it makes sense they would be as interested in Father Minch as I am. But it’s not ideal.
“You know nothing about what a saint would say,” he says, and his voice—accentless until this point—is getting more Italian by the syllable. “You know nothing about?—”
I don’t care. I’m already wrenching myself sideways, away from his knife, and by the time he’s rolling to follow me, I’m pouncing, slicing.
Two quick cuts—a scream that’s muffled by leather—and then I’m standing, flicking his blood off the blade with a few practiced motions.
“I’m sorry about the tendons, but I’d rather you not follow me. I’m sure you understand.”
The saint gives me a baleful glare. “God will punish you for this,” he seethes through clenched teeth.
Grow up , I want to say. Suburban tennis players deal with Achilles injuries all the time. “You’ll be fine. You won’t able to run for a few months, but I doubt Mortimer will put you down like a horse.”
His eyes burn brighter at the mention of his boss’s name. “You’re too late anyway, you scarred, perverted drunk.”
Good to know my reputation precedes me.
“You mentioned about being too late earlier. I guess I’ll have to go see for myself.” I step on his hand, pinning it and his knife to the ground. I bend down and pry the knife out from under his fingers and tuck it in my jacket. “I guess this is farewell,” I say. “Give Cardinal Cashel my regards.”
I’m stepping away, my mind already retracing our path through the medina, when he calls out, “God will punish her too, you know.”
This stops me as surely as any knife. I turn to face him, this murderer belly down in an alley, his ankles bleeding onto the dusty cobbles.
“Excuse me?” I ask pleasantly. At least I think I sound pleasant. I think I sound like someone in control.
His face is folded in pain and righteous fury as he twists to look up at me. “Your wife. She’s an apostate, and it doesn’t matter how well you’re hiding her. God will find her, and he will drag her weakness and her lack of faith into the light.”
It doesn’t matter how well you’re hiding her … So the saints think I’m hiding Isolde? Cashel thinks I’m hiding Isolde?
Could it be that she hasn’t spoken to her uncle since she ran away from Lyonesse?
“What does this punishing and dragging involve?” I ask, squatting down next to him. “You wouldn’t be talking about hurting her, right? My wife? That seems extraordinarily stupid to do, even for a zealot.”
“It is not up to me what will happen to her but up to God, and God has chosen me to find her and force her atonement, whether by purging her sins in this life or sending her to purgatory.”
“God has chosen you to force her atonement?”
“Yes.”
“Cashel condones this?”
“The cardinal only conveys the will of God. He doesn’t choose it for himself.”
I flip the knife in my hand, the inlaid rubies glittering in the scant light that’s worked its way down into the alley, and I catch the knife in reverse grip.
“Thank you for your honesty,” I say as I lean closer. “God would be so proud.”
I make sure he doesn’t bleed too much on the leather as I kill him. It doesn’t seem fair to the tannery workers to ruin all their hard work.