forty-six #2
“One thing I liked being your partner, zel,” he said, finger wagging, “is that you never wanted to take recruits. You always went out of your way to leave the kids alone.”
“I mean, even if it wasn’t because I hated the idea, it would be quite the ordeal when it was just you and me most of the time.”
“There was always a part of me that wanted to do it, though.”
When Sonall made this confession, Sulim remained silent, her arms wrapped around her curled legs as her eyes adjusted to the darkness in his room.
“Do to some other poor brat what these bastards did to me. There were also times when we came across kids so fucked up from life that I thought, maybe it really is better on Cerilyn. For some kids, I mean. Not for me. I’d do anything to go back.”
She didn’t have to ask what he meant by that.
“It shouldn’t have happened to you,” Sulim said.
“It shouldn’t have happened to any of us.”
The whole reason Cerilyn was allowed to kidnap recruits in their treaty was because it was difficult to otherwise convince people to join—especially when training the best mercenaries usually started when they were teenagers.
There’s a reason we don’t take anyone older than eighteen.
Kids were also easier to control and brainwash into mercenary life.
“They shoulda just killed me.” Sonall’s grip on the doll’s throat would soon pop off the head, brown curls flying. “What was the fucking point of taking me? Because I was a boy?”
“I suppose so. They wanted to headhunt you, I guess. The pay was good.”
“Fuck the pay! It’s an extra level of torture to lose everything like that. I shoulda killed myself when I had the chance. Before they got into my head. Before you got into my head.”
“Hey. What does that mean?”
“You convinced me to find shit to live for, remember? The whole making money to get back to Arrah when we could leave? You even made it sound like you would go with me.”
“Yeah, well… things changed.”
“Don’t they always?”
Sulim put a hand on his arm to steady him as he reached for another doll nearby.
“I can’t believe they had this shit there. Still! The family that moved into my house was one of Marco’s cousins. He just fucking gave them the house that was covered in blood. I even saw the place where… you know. My sister.”
Sulim didn’t say anything.
The doll shook in Sonall’s large hands. “They shoulda killed me, too. Fucking bastards. I never forgot the ones who did it. I know a job is a job, and I’ve assassinated my share of noble fucks, but goddamnit. They had to pay.”
She already knew this story, yet Sulim remained passive, as if she wasn’t hearing his murder confession. Because one thing mercenaries were not allowed to do was hurt and kill each other. Otherwise, everything went to hell.
“Motherfucker took me out drinking when I advanced as a recruit. He wanted to apologize to me… can you believe it… so we could keep working together. ‘No hard feelings,’ or what the fuck ever he said before I killed him.”
“Yeah…”
“I had to do it, Sul. If I were gonna be killing people, I had to send him back to the Void first. For Graella. And my dad. He killed them both.”
Sulim realized her fingers were so stiff and threaded that they would bruise if she didn’t unlock them. When she did, her knees fell away from Sonall. “When this is over,” she said. “We’ll go wherever you want. We’ll retire.”
“Hmph. What about Mira?”
“She can come with us.”
“Greeaaat. Just a couple of lezzes treating me like their drunk dog.”
“You know it’s not like that. Man, you’ve got a girlfriend now. Sober up and get your new life.”
The doll dangled in her direction. “I love you,” he said. “I really like her.” Fake, curly hair landed back in his lap. “I’d pitch you both into the pit if it meant getting my sister back.”
Sulim knew what he meant, and didn’t take it personally. “I wish I could have met her. She seems like a sweet girl.”
The other doll was now in Sonall’s hand.
This one, with its velvet green dress and cropped black hair, brought something to his eyes.
“She really loved this one.” He barely choked out the words.
“It was custom-made to look like her when she was ten. I remember when she got it for her birthday. First thing she did was let me name it. And like the idiot nine-year-old I was, I named it Dumbo.”
Sulim didn’t expect to laugh.
“Right?” he continued. “Mother said it wasn’t very nice, so she and Graella renamed it Misty. She slept with it every night up until that day… a whole six years later.”
She was only sixteen. Naturally. Sonall was fifteen when his life was shattered. “I hope it was quick, at least.”
“Only thing you could say about that bastard. He liked to shoot people right in the head. Get it over with. Guess I learned that from him. I… kinda feel bad for killing him. Is that weird?”
“No.”
“He wanted me to forgive him. For the sake of the tribe, but also because he liked me. He apologized. I asked him why he didn’t kill me too. He said that I looked like a healthy kid, and he was so trained to take healthy boys as recruits. My sister… she was too dainty. That’s what he said.
And if she couldn’t make it as a recruit, then she had to be eliminated. It was in the contract.”
He recited the clause as if he had memorized the whole thing.
Maybe he had. “‘All heirs must be relieved of their right to inheritance.’ You know. Death or recruitment.”
“At least there was that,” Sulim said.
“Sure. Had to watch my mom be violated before some other fuck shot her, but sure.”
Usually, Sulim was so desensitized that these tales didn’t make her tear up, but there she was, listening to this grown man have to once again relive the worst day of his life.
He’d toss me in the pit if it brought his sister back.
Once upon a time, Sulim didn’t know what that was like.
But now? With Mira in her life? I’d toss him in the pit to save her. Any day.
At least they were on the same page about their ultimate allegiances—the only difference was that Graella was dead. Yet she was alive in that other reality, wasn’t she? Sulim became friends with her. It was how she met Sonall, and eventually married him.
I can’t even imagine it… If only she could remember it.
“So maybe we won’t move with you to Arrah,” Sulim mused. “Maybe we’ll get a shitty farm on Qahrain and go sour with regret until we remember what this life was like. At least it won’t be Cerilyn.”
“Maybe we’ll all go to Yahzen. Do you think they’ll let Mira and Kema back in?”
“Kema? Sure. But I think Mira is barred for the rest of my life.”
“Oh. It’s one of the only planets I haven’t been to now. Would be nice to check it out.”
As his voice faded, Sonall clutched the doll to his stomach and closed his eyes.
His steady breathing alerted Sulim that he wasn’t in danger of passing out from the alcohol, but that wasn’t his usual behavior, anyway.
He only blacks out if he’s several drinks in.
It had been a long time since he got that bad.
Sulim had a feeling that Sonall was past the worst of his alcoholism, but as long as Cerilyn provided, he would use it as his drug of choice to forget his past.
“It’s not healthy, I know.” His voice startled Sulim, who assumed he was falling asleep.
“I keep thinking I need to get rid of these dolls. But then I remember how happy she was to play with them. I was too old to indulge her tea parties and stuff when she got this one, but I remember our tutor lining them up alongside a couple of the maids for me to practice my public speaking,
and I always focused on this one because it reminded me of Graella’s kind face. Even now, it kinda feels like she’s looking back at me.”
Sulim focused on the space before her, giving him the room he needed to process his grief as the world changed around them once again. Yet as she soon watched him comb the doll’s hair, reliving whatever traumatic visions still haunted him, Sulim had a sudden thought.
The other Relic is out there somewhere…
A Relic that represented the pain and power of one hurt individual; a Relic that was infused with the metaphysical essence of a planet’s sole keeper.
Sulim gathered that it had to belong to someone who had close ties to the planet, for better or worse.
It could not be someone simply passing through or not planning to stick around for a while.
And the object? Innocuous, but meaningful.
“Hey…” She had to bring this up delicately, because she only had one shot at telling him. “I think I might know what the other Relic is.”
He kept quiet. Probably because he knew what she was going to say, and he didn’t want to hear it.