Arc VI
Chapter LIV
Not in Kansas Anymore
(Click your Heels, Dorothy)
"A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face."
Jorge Luis Borges - The Aleph and Other Stories
The doctor turned and tossed in bed for the millionth time that night, awakening the tired gunman as she kicked his legs involuntarily, and added yet another bruise to the colorful collection of marks scattered all over his body. The man frowned, still refusing to abandon the pillow yet certain that her restlessness rooted for some company. He upped his chin with the slightest motion and observed her for a while – the procession had been an emotional ride for them both but Alexandra had taken care of the preparations of pretty much everything regarding Rosario's memorial: the woman should have been exhausted, she should have closed her eyes and succumbed to slumber the second her back met the mattress. Yet here she was, barely aware of her surroundings, waging war against her own thoughts.
Begrudgingly, he rubbed the sleep off his eyes and left the bed holding back one too many insults. He made quick work on the stairs, barely noticing the strange stillness of the place that late at night. He moved fast past the bar and grabbed a bottle of wine then went back to their bedroom. The corridor held no secrets to him: from the cold floor beneath his feet to the desolated torches still illuminating many of the doors along the way. He stopped before reaching his own bedroom as his bare back was assaulted by the cold night breeze. Completely awaken by now, he closed the solitary window as goosebumps took possession of his forearms then turned around and continued his march. He almost felt insulted in his pride when he found that the doctor was peacefully asleep now, comfortably tugged in a bed that now seemed far from his reach so the man rested the bottle on the nightstand, shook his head in silent desperation, and lit a cigar before exiting the room once again. Back in the corridor, and with nothing else to do, the man became acquainted with the realities going on inside each bedroom: some girls weren't alone while some others had yet to return.
Only then her shadow appeared on the doorframe; her nightgown a mere excuse for the man to turn around and admire her geography with eyes that, for a moment, forgot about the cold, the annoyance and the tempest within.
"And now you're up," he whispered, almost disheartened. "I should have guessed."
The woman crossed her arms over her chest then tilted her head to the side.
"What are you talking about?"
Nearly dismayed by her apathy, the cowboy pressed his back against the window and exhaled loudly – if she was having trouble sleeping, he could surely think of a thing or two that might just help her find the slumber she needed.
"Don't even think about it," she said, as if able to read his mind. "I'm too tired to even try to come up with a decent excuse tonight," the doctor let out almost defeated by her own train of thought as she sat beside him and the man shrugged his shoulders.
"I'm startin' to believe we're never gonna…" he moved his neck around awkwardly, determined not to make eye contact, "have sex, you know?" He let those words out almost timidly as if the irony of having moved to a brothel was powerful enough to make him blush at the thought of a lifetime without sex and the woman tried her best to hold back the laughter, but she failed miserably. "What?" Black asked, looking nearly damaged by her reaction. "Can you honestly tell me we're gonna have sex, eventually?"
She laughed even harder.
"Is that what you want?" She asked after a while. "I mean, is that all you want?"
"I," his exaggerated gestures were definitely betraying him. "I… you, we are…"
"Would you believe me if I told you that the moment has passed?" She tried her best to sound convincing but the smile tugging at the corners of her lips gave her away and the man looked away, throwing his arms around only to end up covering his face with his hands.
"Hang in there, cowboy," she said, but the smile on his lips surprised her.
"I can't remember the last time I heard you laugh like that," he confessed, making his plan permeable to her senses. "It's okay to laugh; we deserve a break from time to time, you know? Although I could really use the information, woman; when are we gonna have sex, you're killing me here," he joked again, and as the woman rested her head on his shoulder her smile felt warm against his neck. "You could have put on some clothes, honey, that nightgown of yours is quite revealing by the way."
"February 30th," she laughed. "You better save the date."
"I won't be in town during that week, honey," the gunman played along. "Raincheck for, let's say, February 38th?"
"You got it," she intertwined her fingers with his but her voice trailed off, leaving only the sound of the wind outside to caress his ears with the distinctive quality of an impenetrable distance. "I fear for El-A," the doctor finally confessed after a while and this time, it was his turn to become completely stunned by the surprise.
"Why?" He demanded to know, nearly angered by the doctor's sudden change of heart.
"Think about it; she's mostly driven by her own ambitions," Alex said, "and I say mostly because I do believe that even if her boyfriend is a piece of shit, she truly is in love with him. But now that everybody knows about our new positions, she's got nothing to offer. To the eyes of the Syndicate, tonight you rendered her useless."
"All I know is that she's always been a pain in the ass," the gunslinger retorted. "I'm sorry, Alex, but she's not gonna get my sympathy now. I may be an old man but my memory's still intact."
The doctor looked away for a short moment, retrieving her hand.
"The last part of your speech was beautiful, Black," she whispered, "but I can't help thinking the first part was a taunting provocation and now we'll have hell to pay to compensate for every word you said tonight and if they managed to kill Rosario then El-A, or even me, we are nothing compared to what she was, to what she represented to the members of this community. We left her alone, Erron, unprotected," the doctor finally said, undressing her regrets. "Now that we're back your words could have offended both parties: the Syndicate and the Palace."
"They need to start doing something," he fought back, "they can't be that bland – especially now that Rosario's gone."
"Agreed," the doctor nodded, "but while you are the Syndicate's most powerful enemy, you have to admit that the emperor has not been bland to you either." She touched his hands, staring into his eyes. "I thought you would want to go back to the Palace someday. I thought you'd want to be an enforcer again."
The gunman lowered his head and sighed – it felt as if he had last protected Kotal a million years ago.
"I certainly never planned to become the manager of this place," he said softly, "but if I had to be honest, I never thought I'd get married again and here we are."
"Out of necessity," she reminded him.
"Yeah," he nodded. "Second time I do that… I must be a good Samaritan after all."
The doctor smiled and patted him lightly on the shoulder before getting up again.
"Somewhere in the road between this world and the heavens above an angel just died," she joked as she leaned down and offered the man a hand for him to get up. "We should go back to bed now, Erron; unless you want to kill any more divine creatures with those comments of yours."
"What?" He asked as he took her hand and got on his feet. "It's true."
"If you say so…"
As they walked the short distance separating them from their room, the doctor noticed a silhouette exiting El-a's bedroom. the woman stopped her march instinctively, but Black didn't notice.
"They were not supposed to bring in any customers tonight," she let out as she turned around and the mercenary finally looked her way, trying his best to find whoever had exited the room. "How am I supposed to rule this place when she doesn't listen to a word I say?"
Cautiously, Black moved past the doctor and brushed her shoulder with his nearest hand.
"And that's why she won't be getting my sympathy, dear," his voice was merely a whisper, but his feet were already empowered by renewed determination. "I'm gonna offer him a refund, this brat's gonna learn one way or another that she's not the one making the rules here." The doctor nodded in silence and followed Black downstairs, but the gunslinger had already stopped the visitor from leaving.
The look in his eyes was telling her that he had found way more than what he'd been looking for.
"Azul?" The doctor asked the second she saw El-A's boyfriend trying to leave the brothel, but Black had his arms at the sides of the young man's body, preventing him from leaving. "What are you doing here?" She asked but as her words exited her mouth Azul tried to fight his way out. He pushed the doctor out of his way and his hand formed a fist that almost connected with Black's stomach, but the former enforcer was fast, and he quickly dodged the blow.
Still, a tiny bottle fell from Azul's coat.
A tiny bottle. Brown. And empty.
Tightening his grip around Azul's collar, the mercenary began to understand what was going on: his wife was right; El-A was now a liability and, exactly like they had done to Rosario, a familiar face had been the chosen one to finish the job.
"Go help El-A!" A desperate Black yelled, and the doctor ran up the stairs already prepared for the worst. She got on her knees the second she saw El-A's lifeless body on the ground, helpless and broken by the one she had loved the most. As controversial as she had been, she now looked as fragile as a leaf carried by the wind, stripped of her ambitions and betrayed by those who had promised her the world.
Just a child, corroded by demons that weren't even hers, handed over like a piece of disposable flesh for the war to claim her whole.
As the doctor closed El-A's eyes, the image of Aalem crossed her mind and even if the girl had decided to play a completely different part in their story, her death still felt unnecessary and profusely rotten. Far from poetic; and miles away from the enchanting chains of a tragic love affair. When the woman stood up and looked over her shoulder the space around her seemed to stretch beyond the limits of her comprehension – so much death had occurred between those walls without a single drop of blood spilled to acknowledge the irretrievable loss of those who could have been friends, mentors, sisters…
Walking almost blindly amongst the shadows closing in on her, the doctor went back downstairs unable to offer any sort of explanation to the girls gathering around the scene. Her mind drifted helplessly to the man downstairs, the only barrier preventing Azul from reaching a distorted, ill-natured freedom.
"He killed her," she whispered, her lifeless tone making it clear that she couldn't stand the injustice for much longer. Black tightened his grip, almost asphyxiating the murderer but even if she felt like screaming, no words left her lips.
"We were right here," Black yelled, blinded by fury. "We were sitting by the fucking window and you were murdering her, you son of a bitch!" Deep within his rage, the pulsating truth shone underneath his clenched teeth: the time for messages had already passed them by. Brief and short-lived, like a sigh that reaches the outside way too soon, this act of rebellion was the definitive wakeup call in a race of subtleties and cryptic hints.
He punched the boy in the stomach and watched, almost satisfied, as blood poured from Azul's mouth. Then he tied his hands behind his back and forced him to sit down on the ground. By the time he looked over his shoulder the doctor and the girls were staring back at him. In their eyes, he could see the only thing they wanted: revenge. They knew who he was, knew what he was made of and the many secrets conveyed in the letters of his name: the chain of sins that had originated his very existence, the crooked beginning and the irrefutably twisted ending waiting up ahead.
Caressing the cold trigger of his peacemaker with his thumb, the gunman swallowed hard and turned around.
"Someone go and get the authorities," he ordered. "Tell them that the Syndicate has killed yet another innocent woman but also tell them that the murderer is right here," he got on one knee, spitting on the boy's torso, "tell 'em to come get him." As soon as he stood up, the doctor put her hands on his shoulder, eyeing him viciously.
"Finish him," she ordered, but Black took a step back and shook his head.
"I'd love to, honey," he smirked, "but I'm trying to prove a point here."
"If the authorities find out about this, they will surely see the connection, Erron: two people; dead, in a very short time, in the same place - we can't risk it." Alex pressed on, trying to convince him but the man dismissed her arguments with a quick wave of his hand.
"That's the point," he said. "I want the authorities to know that we know these deaths are connected. I want them to know that we know we're under attack, and I want them to know we're not afraid to fight back."
"Yvo won't be able to protect us forever," the doctor whispered in the gunman's ear as she leaned in and planted a soft kiss on his cheek. "The second the Syndicate finds out that we know about the barrister's limitations, it's over," she walked past him and the man turned around and looked at the congregation of scared girls staring back at him – he felt tempted to ask one of them to join his wife on her way to the Barristers' Office but he understood that, given the state those girls were in, they wouldn't be able to help Alex.
He walked up to the bar and poured himself a glass of wine but those eyes deconstructing him were still waiting for an answer.
"Now what?" He heard one of the girls say.
"Now we wait."
The darkness of the night was not enough to envelop him completely. Those girls gathered around the stairs looked like statues reminding him of the fractured nature of the brothel – factions and alliances could come and go but in their eyes, he would always be an outlander; a foreign factor modifying their lives and walking recklessly across severed paths of mistrust, fear, and anguish.
He looked for comforting words to leave his throat but found none. He was not used to being the one placating dark emotions and his mind was drifting far from all those faces, waiting for the doctor to come back home safe. Perhaps he should have been the one walking down the streets this late at night. Or perhaps they should have delivered the boy to the authorities instead of making the barristers come to them. Such mistakes, he pondered, seemed enough to carve a pattern in this ungodly hour. These shortcomings could not be erased with a bullet; this intricate dance of misdeeds and failures could not be undone by the irreversible fate that waits inside the barrel of a gun.
Minutes seemed to turn to hours with untimely ease yet the monsters in his head were far from calling it a night. What if they were waiting? What if Azul wasn't alone? He stood up, left the empty glass on the counter and walked towards the door, debating whether to run to the Barrister's office and leave the girls alone or not yet the second he opened the door he saw the caravan already headed towards him: a multitude of barristers and garrison officers were escorting the doctor back to the brothel but with them, another man was desperately trying to catch up with the group.
As the multitude got closer, Black recognized the man's face: he was none other than Ala-M Eré, Azul's father, and the Syndicate's recruiter.
The doctor shrugged her shoulders as she approached Black.
"Someone at the Barrister's Office must have tipped him off," she said, "and now he's desperately trying to save his son. He says he's willing to take full responsibility for Azul's actions."
The old barrister appeared then, nearly out of breath.
"I'm afraid that's not possible," he managed to say as he made his way through the crowd. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Black, but my bones have seen greater days." He leaned on the door for support and Black rushed to his aid.
"Move aside, boy; chasing after such a young wife is, indeed, a taxing endeavor for old men like us," Yvo joked and the gunman merely grimaced at the thought of his own younger counterpart, the man he had seen back in Earthrealm, the one whose name was now irrevocably linked to Rosario's and El-A's murders. Once again, the old Edenian barrister was exceeding the limitations of a body that had endured more than enough and the doctor frowned in his direction but Yvo walked past her and, laboriously, sat down near the stairs, facing Azul.
"Your father says we cannot convict you because we don't know what happened," he explained. "According to Mrs. Black, you and the girl were alone in her bedroom so, no witnesses... I guess we'll have to trust your version of the story, young man."
"He killed her," Black sentenced gravelly, "then he tried to run away; innocent people don't try to run away, Yvo, and you know it."
The barrister shook his head pensively: Black was right, but his word alone was not enough.
"That doesn't prove anything," the father claimed as he fought his way inside the brothel.
"Innocent people don't run away" Black repeated furiously. "Take him away, Yvo."
"I'm afraid I can't do that," Yvo lamented. "He may be a suspect; he may be the only suspect we have but it's your word against his, Erron. There's no evidence."
"Same MO," Black spat venomously, hushing his words as he shook his head.
"Excuse me?" The old Edenian barrister questioned as he struggled to get up.
"Same MO," Black repeated as he got closer and showed Yvo the tiny brown bottle. The barrister nodded his head pensively, joining the dots and trying to connect both crimes. "And since his father is so determined to take responsibility for the boy's acts, perhaps we should let him. This man is the Syndicate's recruiter after all; his hands are not so clean either. His brother is also part of the Syndicate, but unlike this man here, he sits at their table. He's part of the inner circle, El Club de los Amantes."
Yvo's face paled under the dim light just as if Black had dared to call the devil by its name.
"You know they are untouchable, boy," the barrister hissed, "there's not a single piece of evidence to help us prove that group even exists."
"Oh, but they're real, and you know they're real, everybody knows," Black fought back. "Since Azul and his father are here, why don't we go look for the boy's uncle now? If he's the supplier and we can somehow manage to prove it, we can put them in jail right now, Yvo, we can begin our hunt - one by one."
"Don't we need a search warrant for that?" The doctor questioned as she moved closer to the angered cowboy, but the man turned around and crossed his arms over his chest.
"This ain't America, honey," he retorted, "this is Outworld, and as long as an Official Representative of the Palace suspects someone, they can search their house. And I believe our Edenian friend here has been given enough reasons to suspect these people," he stared at the barrister, his eyes begging for help. "Azul is just the beginning, Yvo. All you need to do is pull this thread a little and the entire thing will fall apart; all I'm asking for is a little courage."
Yvo stared at the gunman for a while as the spark of hesitation set in his eyes. He could understand Black's drive and motivation – taking down the Syndicate and avenging the deaths of those he had loved had become the man's number one priority but going after the leaders of El Club de los Amantes so blindly was a strategy that could backfire. And, underneath the intricate patterns of connections and leads, going in without Kotal's approval seemed a little too bold, to say the least. Yet the old man took a deep breath and exhaled loudly.
"You better be right about this, boy," he whispered, "otherwise… I guess I don't even want to know what could happen to all of us if you're wrong."
The Barrister walked slowly towards the door and nodded his head once, beckoning the handful of garrison officers to join him.
"Azul and his father will be escorted to the tribunal and Black will go with them, since he's the accuser. A judge will be assigned for the case and both suspects and Black will be expected to cooperate in this ongoing investigation. If you don't, you could be facing entirely different charges such as obstruction of justice or, in your case, boy, false testimony," Yvo sentenced. "I command the Garrison to search the home of the Eré family in the quest for evidence. It is my duty as an Official Barrister of the Palace to lead the squad since I myself will be the plaintiff. As for this place, the House of Pleasure shall remain closed until the case is solved. The victim's room shall remain sealed since it's now a crime scene."
The father, the son and the gunman were the first to depart as a couple of officers proceeded to confiscate El-A's belongings, trying to gather as much evidence as possible in order to build the case. But before the barrister could leave the brothel the doctor rushed her way towards the entrance.
"He said same MO," she said. "Yvo, if poison becomes the Syndicate's new MO, I can try to synthesize an antidote, but I have to know the exact components."
"I'll make sure you get the official report, then," the barrister offered, "until then, I suggest you stay here and wait for Erron to return."
"I can't sit around and do nothing, Yvo," she begged. "I feel completely powerless; please give me the bottle."
Yvo froze in place, unsure if Black had come clean about the bottle's origins.
"Please," she insisted. "Let me help."