The Edge of Everything(25)

X winced at the sight of her hands: They were all bone and knuckle. What fingernails she had were ingrown and crusted with blood. Still, there was a gentleness to her, a glow, that he hadn't witnessed since he was small.

"It is one of the few tunes I remember," she said. "And do not inquire after the words, for they have gone poof out of my brain. Something insufferable about a sparrow, no doubt."

She pressed the cloth to X's brow.

"They never told you my mother was a lord?" he asked her. "Truly?"

"Never, I swear it," said Ripper. "I knew there was something special about you, and I told you as much. You were a finer and fiercer bounty hunter than I by the time you were seventeen-and, as you know, I am a veritable legend."

Once she'd cleaned X's wounds, Ripper began to bandage the more severe ones, beginning with the gash on his leg. X did not have the strength to lift his head and survey the damage. Still, he knew it must be profound, because his friend frowned at the sight of it.

"This nastiness on your leg concerns me," she said. "It is a jagged valley of tissue and blood. Does it burn?"

"Yes," said X. "As if with white flames. And please do not describe it again."

"My apologies," said Ripper. "I fear it may be infected, though I am not a doctor, merely a murderess."

X ground his teeth to distract himself from the discomfort, and looked up at Ripper. Her skin had hardly suffered from centuries in the Lowlands, and she was still beautiful by any measure. She had strong, clean features, a sturdy, dimpled chin, and ageless blue eyes. Because it had been decades since she had hunted a soul, even the bruises beneath her eyes had faded. Today, her dark hair was swept up in a knot atop her head, a single silver lock weaving through it like tinsel. 

"Do you miss being a mother?" X asked her, after a time.

Conversation was a welcome relief, and he saw that he would have to feed it, as one feeds a fire.

Ripper nodded.

"I was a good one," she said. "Alfie and Belinda were always rosy and plump. Unfortunately, one's children grow distant after they've seen one bash a servant's skull with a teakettle."

X asked if she'd ever looked in on them-peeked in their windows, or stood across the road in disguise-when she had been out collecting souls.

Ripper shook her head wearily.

"I could not see my children without embracing them," she said. "I could not have survived it." For a moment, she was lost in thought. "A hundred years after I was brought here, another bounty hunter discovered for me what had become of my family. My husband took a new bride-an American, of all things-and they sailed for New England, like those ghastly pilgrims. When Alfie was eleven-"

Ripper stopped for a moment, deciding whether to continue.

"When Alfie was eleven," she said, "he perished in a fire in a stable. He was trapped under a post or a beam or the like. Belinda tried to push it off his chest, but she was only nine and had not the strength for it. She never recovered from the grief, I was told. She was deposited in some asylum, because my husband's new wife could not countenance her wailing."

"Your husband," said X. "Did you love him?"

The question seemed to break Ripper's cloudy mood.

"Good god, no," she said. "When he refrained from talking-and from putting his sweaty hands on me-he was an amiable enough companion. Yet I suppose a tall plant could have served the same purpose."

X closed his eyes. He listened as she tore a length of bandage.

"I believe-" he began, but stopped when he felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment.

"Yes?" said Ripper. "What is it that you believe?"

"I believe that I  …  I believe that I may be in love," he said.

If Ripper had laughed, or smirked, or even paused to let his words ring, he would have clamped his mouth shut.

She did neither.

"Yes, I thought it must be something like that," she said. "Else you wouldn't have broken so many of the laws I taught you. I half-expected the lords to punish me for your transgressions, you know. If they did not think me irretrievably mad, they might well have."

"Even I have thought you mad," said X.

"Yes, well, I nearly was for a time," Ripper said. "After I learned of that fire in the stable, I mean. And in that interval I learned that the appearance of madness has its uses."

She stood and, with a dramatic flourish, tossed the contents of the bowl into the corridor. The water splashed the prisoners down below, and there was a chorus of profanity, which caused Ripper to titter.

She sat beside X once more.

"Tell me about this girl you love," she said. "Quickly now-before the guard comes to eject me."

"Had you told me such a person existed," he said, "I would have called you a liar."

"Is that so?" said Ripper, arching an eyebrow. "Without pausing to think, tell me three things you especially love about this astounding creature."

X thought for a moment.

"Without pausing to think," said Ripper. "I should have thought the rules of this game were plain enough."

"Her strength," X began. "But three is too few-I cannot do her justice."

"Oh, do stop your whinging," said Ripper.



       
         
       
        

"Very well," said X. "Her strength. Her blurting. Her face."

"Her blurting?"

"I cannot describe it."

"Please don't," said Ripper. "Yes, well, all that does indeed sound like love-at least as it was described to me once upon a time. As I have said, love was not a sea I myself ever swam in."

A guard loped down the corridor now, rattling his club against the bars. Ripper readied her things to leave, and X rose up on his elbows to gaze around the cell.

The purple shirt with the wild white stitching had been returned to him. It lay folded on the ground by the door. He was shocked to see it again.

"A guard returned it while you slept," said Ripper. "The fact that your mother was a lord is now a well-traveled secret."

X lowered himself to the ground again. The footsteps outside grew louder. He knew, from the scrape of a dragging foot, that it was the Russian.

"What do you think the lords will do with me?" said X.

"There will be a trial of some sort, I would think," said Ripper. "Dervish will insist that you be shredded by lions, or something equally theatrical. Still, you are an innocent soul-and the son of a lord. That makes you a special case. In truth, I wonder if the lords even have the authority to punish the likes of you. As you know, there is a Higher Power that rules this place, and the lords quake before Him-or Her, as I like to imagine it."

The guard drew close. Ripper spoke quickly.

"At the trial, you will be allowed to speak but once," she said. "Apologize for your actions in words as honeyed as you can manage. Perhaps they will let you remain a bounty hunter-and, eventually, turn their back on you long enough for you to visit your blurting girl. You are aging, unlike the rest of us. I should hate to see you rot in this cell until there is no skin left to make a bag for your bones."

Her speech finished, she placed a motherly hand on X's cheek. Her palm was raw, yet he felt its warmth.

"I have enjoyed our conversation," Ripper said. "It's been years since I spoke so many coherent words in a row."

"Thank you for your counsel," said X.

He smiled gratefully, and found he was not ready to let her go.

"Ripper," he said.

"Yes?"

"I wanted to say," he began awkwardly, "I wanted to say that I very much like your dress."

"Well, thank you, kind sir," she said, looking pleased and brushing some dirt off the decaying embroidery. "In truth, it was never particularly dear to me. But I did not know, when I laced it up on that last morning, that I was dressing for eternity." 

The Russian twisted the key in the door and entered the cell. The lantern threw a faint light on his powder-blue tracksuit.

"Is time," he said. "Party over. Now ve cry, boo-hoo."

Ripper gave X a final nod, then contorted her face into the mask of insanity she had invented for the Lowlands. It was as if someone entirely new inhabited her body now.

X watched in admiration as she spun around, hissed at the guard like a feral cat, and swept back to her cell.



The days passed, but X's bruises were slow to fade-his skin remained a landscape of purple, yellow, and blue. Soon, though, he was strong enough to pace in his cell and do simple exercises. He still daydreamed about Zoe constantly. But he managed to divert his thoughts, as a town might divert a river, from losing her to finding her again.

One day-as usual, he could not have said if it was morning or night-X awoke to the sound of a rusty key scraping in the lock. A squad of guards stood huddled outside. They were the same ones who had abandoned him on the plain. The squat chief in the turtleneck and red tie stepped forward, and helped X off the ground.

"Been meanin' to apologize, I 'ave," he said. "Me and the men behaved poorly with respect to you. Cowardly, like. You deserve betta."

The guard was only groveling because he'd learned that X's mother had been a lord. Still, X had no appetite for cruelty.