“What? What is?”
“The corruption of innocence. And pulling your heart out by the roots.”
Unai stepped up beside Usoa and put his arm around her waist. “Our watch is over, Zianno,” he said. “This information only proves it. We have made mistakes before, but none this egregious and untimely. We regret it and pledge on your mama and papa’s memory to help you any way we can. If I could change the way events have transpired, I would. Tout de même, we owe you, Zianno. We owe you.”
“You owe me nothing,” I said. “The Fleur-du-Mal owes me the return of a little girl who has nothing to do with this. And in return for her, I will take his life.”
“What can we do?” Usoa asked.
“We begin tomorrow. Ray and I will need your insight and knowledge, your memories and maps of his haunts and habits. We are no longer watching. We are after him like dogs.”
Unai clutched the Stone beneath his tunic. I looked down at Isabelle sleeping, dreaming there on the ground. She smacked her lips once and made me think of a doll, a dreaming doll being kept by two children older than any place her dreams could ever go.
Ray said, “Dogs?”
We checked in to a hotel that same night. It was an old hotel well past its prime, but centrally located and still run with discretion and an emphasis on privacy. There was cast-iron grillwork all around with thick vines weaving in and out. Ray and I liked the old place and the fact it was called the St. Louis made it a good fit.
I gave them my real name at the desk but registered under Owen Bramley’s and told the management he was the executor of my grandfather’s estate. There was no problem and the date of our departure was left open.
The next day, at about noon, Ray and I began a ritual that was to last much longer than either of us had anticipated. I awoke before him to the overpowering smell of fresh-baked bread and pastries coming from a bakery below our windows and not half a block away. Our rooms in the suite were separated by a sitting room, but each opened through louvered shutters onto a balcony that ran the length of the suite. I dressed and made my way downstairs and to the bakery, where I picked up a dozen assorted croissants and rolls with fresh butter and jam. When I returned, Ray was awake and waiting for me on the balcony, drinking chicory coffee that he’d ordered from room service. That in itself, a twelve-year-old kid ordering coffee, would have been out of the ordinary anywhere but in New Orleans, where the unusual becomes the ordinary. We sat on the balcony sharing the rolls and coffee, speaking little and watching the street life of New Orleans pass around and below us. Eventually, we planned our strategy for the day. We were searching for the Fleur-du-Mal, who was referred to by several names in countless countries, but whatever name was used, he was actually known to only a few. Ray, in his manner, decided to start in the French Quarter, then make his way to the far side of the Quarter and Storyville, the red-light district. My plans were slightly less practical and a lot more vague. Ray said, “Where you goin’, Z?”
I said, “Everywhere. Nowhere.”
Ray found out more that first day, on his own, than he ever did following any name or place that Unai and Usoa gave him later. It was not their fault, really. Ray had known the underworld, especially the kind of vice, deceit, and shifty deals that was New Orleans, most of his life. Unai and Usoa’s life, until they had been watching the Fleur-du-Mal, had been quite different. That evening, I found out some of it.
We met at Isabelle’s, as we would many, many nights thereafter. I only saw Isabelle herself infrequently. As usual, she was in her boudoir preparing for a grand ball that didn’t exist, and when I did see her, she was in a panic and yelling to Usoa that they would be too late, she would have to cancel. She was quite mad and Usoa always told her they had more than enough time and not to worry, she looked lovely. I asked Unai how long she had been this way and he said it had been a gradual but increasing decline, probably due to her love of absinthe. He said he had seen it before, the Giza destroying themselves from the inside out, as had most Meq. At the mention of the Meq, I thought of Sailor and Geaxi and asked if he had heard from them. He said no, but that was normal, he had once gone a century without hearing from Sailor. Impulsively, I asked him when and how he had met Usoa. He laughed out loud and sat down in a beautiful wicker chair with broad armrests and a wide, fanned back. He looked so tiny in the chair. A child in high leather boots and yet, when he spoke, when I looked in his eyes, I knew he spoke from twenty lifetimes before the chair was even made.
“I owe it to Charlemagne, de bonne grâce,” he said. “And his ignorance of the Basque. But I also owe Adelric, the great Basque chieftain, and his ignorance of love.”
“Was it sudden?”
“Was what sudden?”
“Your realization of it, your. connection.”
“Ah, I see,” he said. “No, no, Zianno. Our realization and our connection were à tort et à travers, or rather wrong and crosswise.”
I sat down in a wicker chair opposite him and leaned forward. I caught a glimpse of Ray moving in the shadows, finding a place on the ledge of the fountain, and I thought of Opari, appearing out of the shadows and into my life, changing everything in an instant. “Tell me the story, Unai. Please.”
He looked at me strangely and asked, “Where should I begin?”
“At the moment you knew she was your Ameq.”
He turned his head and stared into the darkness of the courtyard and then looked up, focusing his black eyes on the night sky above us. “You want to know of the Isilikutu, the silent touch, the Whisper, only our hearts can hear.”
“Yes,” I said.
“All right,” he said. “I shall begin there, but first, I must tell you where ‘there’ was.
“I was staring at the sky as I am now. I was in the Pyrenees, hiding among the boulders above a narrow pass called Roncesvalles. The year was AD 778. It was the first time I had been back to the Pyrenees in over two hundred years. I was summoned, or more properly, Sailor was summoned in North Africa by his Aita and I was traveling with Sailor at the time, so we decided to return together, more out of curiosity than anything else. Charlemagne was in retreat across the Pyrenees, making his way to the safety of his Frankish kingdom. He had discovered that the Basque, even most of the Christian Basque, did not want his presence in their homeland, and he was about to suffer the worst defeat and humiliating military campaign of his entire career. He would be ambushed in the narrow pass and cut off from his rearguard and supplies, all of whom would be killed and the supplies scattered in ravines by the time his massive army and entourage were able to turn and bring relief. He had underestimated the Basque and their ability to join separate, fiercely independent tribes into a cohesive fighting force. And in the Pyrenees, with their heavy weapons and armor, Charlemagne and his men would be no match for the Basque. In the mountains, the Basque could become ghosts.
“Sailor’s Aita, Bidun, had summoned him to witness the occasion and very possibly, in case something went wrong, use the Stones, though he must have also known Sailor would never do such a thing.
“The point is, we did witness it, and in the midst of the carnage, while the air was filled with Basque arrows and the screams of men and horses being pierced and blinded, I stared up at the sky and suddenly felt the presence of something else, something unknown and yet as familiar as my own heartbeat. I heard her breathing. I heard her breathing rapidly. I was six hundred and forty-four years old and had been in the Itxaron for six hundred and thirty-two of them and I knew instantly I was in the presence of my Ameq. I looked down fifty feet below and at the head of the baggage train was a caged caravan breaking away from the others and making a run for freedom along the narrow ledge. Behind the bars of the caravan were several men, women, and children, all Christian Basque who had resisted Charlemagne. And there was one other among them who resembled a child, but of course was not. The caravan struggled, passing and pushing oxcarts and packhorses into a three-thousand-foot drop. Then, just as the caravan broke free and moved away, she grasped the bars and looked up among the boulders, searching for me. Amid the screams and chaos, she had heard my heartbeat and felt my presence. I stood up from my hiding place and looked for the first time into the eyes of Usoa. She whispered one word which I heard with all my being. She said, ‘Beloved.’ In another instant, she was gone and the caravan disappeared around the rock cliff. I stood staring, sans souci and oblivious to the battle raging below.