Gunpowder sizzles against Swanny’s cheek and hair. Her brain throbs. She opens her eyes. Sharkey is still standing over her. She turns her head. Right beside her, a cluster of bullet holes bore through the floor. She can see the basement from here.
Sharkey puts his gun back in its holster. His face is tight with malice, but there’s something else in his expression too, something all-too-familiar but so very out of place that it takes her a moment to recognize it: he’s disappointed in her.
“Go to your room,” he says.
* * *
Grub and Morsel like to play pretend. They don’t even have to talk to do it. They just look at each other, and they’re two baby rats in a rat nest. They’re two chicks inside an egg. They’re two dragons in the sky, flying around like gloop, gloop, gloop, we’re gonna breathe some fire. They aren’t even in Torchtown anymore, and they sure aren’t in the Chaw Shop, under the counter, listening to Sharkey’s feet creak on the floorboards as he paces back and forth.
“I knew it,” he fumes. “I knew it. Fuckin mess. She’s done.”
Duluth tells Grub and Morsel fables at bedtime, about monsters under the dead and woofs at the door. The moral of every story is: run away. Or, if you can’t run away, hide and keep your mouth shut. They don’t need to make a peep to play pretend. They look at each other with big eyes and know.
On the other side of the counter, Sharkey’s footsteps slow down. Stop, even.
“…the fuck was she talking to?” he mutters.
Grub and Morsel can hold their breath for almost a minute, each; they’ve practiced. They’re going to break the record this time.
* * *
Sharkey’s probably the only man in Torchtown with a regular habit of lighting fires. He doesn’t use the fireplace in his den too much, but on a night like tonight, staring into the crackling flames helps him think. Something nice about a fire in a hearth. It’s like a tiger in a cage. It makes Sharkey feel powerful to know that he can starve it if he wants. Or just as easily let it loose.
He’s drinking hooch tonight. It’s a hooch-drunk kind of night. Sharkey drank hooch the night that Jawbone died, so much hooch he passed out. By then, Sharkey’d already killed the guys that done it, so there wasn’t much else left to do. Now, he spits his chaw into the jelly jar and mixes it with his finger, slouched against the sofa cushions. He’s lucky to be alive, but he doesn’t feel lucky. He doesn’t even feel alive.
He should’ve killed her when he had the chance. When he still had his rage. He’ll never bring himself to do it now.
He knew it before they met: she’s going to kill him. And he’s going to let her.
The knock at the door is no surprise. He’s been expecting it for a while. It’s why he left the lock unbolted.
“It’s open.”
Swanny’s got a black eye, and a cut on her cheek, from his pinky ring, probably. It hurts his knuckles to look at it: he sure left his signature on her face. She’s in her nighty, some kind of lace-and-satin devising, nothing like the kid pajamas she had on when he found her. She looks all grown up.
“It feels like home,” she says, timid in the doorway, of the hearth.
“Yeah, it’s cozy.”
“No—I mean, like my home. In Wonland County. Mother always enjoyed a fire on cool nights. Sometimes our housekeeper would roast a rabbit on a spit, which Mother said was barbaric. But there we were, out in the boonies—who would ever know?”
“Your ma’s famous around here. You know that? She killed some friends of mine back during the Siege. Took out almost a whole raiding party. Single-handed. The last guy lost half his leg to her land mines, pogoed out to warn the rest of us at camp. Nothing to do but let him die in the woods. Ten years after, people were still telling stories about her to scare the kindlings. Old Mom with a machine gun; now, that’ll give ya nightmares. Pippi Dahlberg.” He toasts her, sips again from his jar. “You know she spiked a man’s head on her fence.”
“I believe I was in utero at the time.”
“You’re younger than I thought.”
“I suppose we still don’t know each other very well.”
The fire hisses. It’s eating itself alive. Sharkey’ll have to decide whether or not to feed it pretty soon.
“Sit down.”
Swanny obediently pads across the room and alights on the sofa. She warms her hands, peering into the fireplace.
“Good lord, you’re burning books in there.”
“Yeah. I weed out the doubles. And the dictionaries—how many dictionaries does a guy need?”
“I suppose, only a handful.”
“One for formal, one for slang,” he instructs her. “Anything else is a waste of space. You cold?”
“The garret was a bit drafty.”
“Get under the blanket.”
Swanny tucks herself under a corner of the afghan and looks at him diffidently. He takes his time drinking. He lets her stew.
“You made me real mad,” he eventually says. “I never got that mad at somebody and didn’t kill ’em before.”
“Is that a compliment or a threat?” Swanny tries to say it lightly, but her voice quavers.
“I’m trying to say I don’t have much practice apologizing.”
Swanny hesitates, then cautiously, gingerly, rests her head on Sharkey’s shoulder. He strokes her hair. He can feel her trembling.
“I’ll never beat you again,” he tells her. “That was a one-time thing.”
“But Howie?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you still going to kill me?”
“That depends. Are you planning to behave yourself?”
“Yes.”
“No more revenge?”
“No more revenge.”
“All right, then.” Sharkey throws another book on the fire. “Truce.”
They lounge together, achy and damaged. Exhaustion is the dullest drug of all, but it trumps the others—erodes away the contours of even the sharpest highs and lows. Sharkey watches the flames like he did when he was just a kindling, looking for figures in the combustion, guardian emissaries dispatched from the Kingdom of Burn, where everybody winds up in the end. Swanny relaxes into him, and he lets her.
“May I sleep here tonight? Only sleep,” she murmurs, like someone already in a dream.
“What for?”
“I’m frightened.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”
“You will?”
“I’ll take care of everything.”
26
DRAGON PRINCE