Chapter 70: Jean
Jean didn’t like Tuen, which smelled more and more like Pierre. Pierre was in the voices, on the tiles, in the elders’ wrinkles. Jean didn’t like coming to Tuen, but Chambert also smelled like Pierre. So much that Jean lost Leonard.
Leonard had a subtle smell, translucid, which got easily mixed with the crowd. Even so, Jean had never lost him before. When Jean was away from Leonard, he felt the taste of fire. The only flavours Jean could still feel: blood and fire. Because, when they tied his tail on fire, he tried to stop it with his tongue.
Blood, fire and rust. The rusty blade the one-eyed human had given Jean was one of the few things in the world that still had taste. Jean always had it with him, so he could lick its blade until his own tongue bled. He didn’t use it as a weapon because people made way for him. Except Pierre.
Jean didn’t hate Pierre. His aversion was instinct, nothing more. Jean was a dream and Pierre the awakening.
Jean jumped from a roof to a windowsill. A man screamed. Jean had the vague impression that people didn’t scream when he did that in the past, and that people noticed him more nowadays. On the other hand, nobody shooed him. On the contrary, people made way for him. He couldn’t imagine the impression he made: a big, burly, bearded man with a rusty sword hanging on his back jumping in through a window.
He wasn’t curious as to why people remained on the ground when there were so many perfectly good roofs. Cats hissed from under the tiles, but none crossed his way. Rats ran, nothing new there.
The man inside the house pressed his back against the wall. Jean passed by him, went out through the other window, jumped to a wall and then to the ground. It was an alley. In front of Jean stood a man and a woman. At the mouth of the alley was a small wave of armed humans. Apart from the man and woman, they all smelled like Pierre.
Joanna liked this time of the year, cool and crisp, right before the flowers began to bloom. She was coming back from Chambert with a cart full of clean pots that she would clean again when she got to the Plume. Joanna liked Chambert, the only place she didn’t feel like cleaning. People said the fortress was haunted, but Joanna had camped in the Frontier with the Caravan, and, to her, Chambert felt like a dream.
She had loved Rimbaud. It was a long time ago, but it was the last time she had loved. After the epidemic, Joanna couldn’t travel anymore. Not for fear of – she also caught the disease, but she was one of the few who survived. It was her body that couldn’t handle all the moving any longer, the provations, the long inters in the Frontier. Rimbaud avoided the Frontier, but the winter storms sometimes came earlier and trapped the Caravan in Franária.
Winter in the South wasn’t harsher than in the North, but it froze your soul. People feared Chambert, but Joanna had seen nothing to be afraid of. The Frontier scared her. The Land of the Banished was not always content to stay on the other side of the Blood.
She asked Rimbaud to stay with her in Tuen, that he quieted his feet and built a home.
‘I’ve already built a home,’ he said, ‘on wheels.’
Joanna had hoped to hear something like, ‘You are my home, I’ll be wherever you are.’ She didn’t rejoin the Caravan even when she became strong enough again. The Plume barely survived, but it was solid.
Then came Pierre and every year Joanna struggled to keep the Plume going made sense now. Every time she almost gave up, every broken tile, bitter ale, wine turned to vinager, everything was worth it when she had a place for Pierre, Vivianne, two and a half burnt men, Líran.
Joanna had never seen Pierre in the Frontier. He told her he lived in Carlaje, and the Caravan always camped in Lourdes. It was near Carlaje that the Blood was broad and lazy and the dragon bathed. Joanna had never been to see the dragon. She was afraid. No one in the Caravan went to see the dragon. Even in the Frontier Joanna had never seen anyone talk about the beast without fear.
‘Are you not afraid of him?’ she asked Pierre.
‘No.’
She noticed a few patrons had heard the exchange and ran to tell the others. Yes: the years of struggle were worth it. Now Joanna hosted Pierre.
And now, Maurice. Joanna wondered if there was still hope for her and love.
A couple of weeks ago I didn’t believe that there was anything, but look at us now. Maurice didn’t know how to give a name to this anything. He massaged her caluses and said anything. Joanna called it hope. This anything gave Maurice the courage to clean the counter beside Joanna. She liked having him polishing glasses at her elbow.
At the gate to the city, the guard said:
‘Good morning, Joanna. Luc.’
Right behind Joanna was Maurice’s one-eyed brother. He must have caught up with her while she was daydreaming.
‘Why are you here so early?’ she asked him.
‘I’m looking for Jean. Leonard gets worried when Jean disappears, and Jean always disappears when Pierre is in Chambert.’
They were training soldiers in Chambert. Pierre, Gaul and Leonard.
‘He comes to the Plume sometimes,’ said Joanna,’but he never stays long.’
‘I’ll come with you, then,’ said Luc.
Even Erla, who heard the voice of War, was paralized. The windows of Tuen, Olivier thought, reflected the sun light in caleidoscopes of sadness, fear and disgust. It was over in a minute, and every detail was printed into Olivier’s mind. The thud of something landing at the end of the alley, then a beast flashed past Olivier and Erla, smelling of rust. It clashed against the armed men and now there were ten mutilated bodies in the alley. Jean stepping on dead red, holding his rusty blade, point down, facing Maurice.
‘No,’ Olivier tried to say.
Jean moved slowly. Everything moved slowly. At the mouth of the alley two people appeared. One tall with a black leather strap sowed over his right eye socket, the other plump and blond. Joanna shouted Maurice’s name. The next moment Jean’s rusty sword tore a toothless grin on the mayor’s throat.
Luc, paralized, saw Jean come to him like an animal who finally finds a safe place. Jean didn’t seem to notice he had just killed eleven people. Joanna ran past them both and knelt on blood, hugging Maurice’s head to her chest.
‘Pig,’ she screamed at Jean, who was licking blood from his moustache.
He turned around when he heard that human voice that sounded like Pierre. Luc stepped in front of him, and held his shoulders, turning him around, guiding him away.