When We Were Executioners by J. M Mcdermott Page A

stood in the doorway. Jona lowered his shoulder and tackled through the poor man. They both tumbled out the front door, into the street. Jona leaped to his feet and ran into the mud and the ruins.
    Jona bobbed and weaved through the crowd of indifferent sailors until he hit a dive with a rabbit on a pike and rotten instead of a sign. No bouncer worked the door. Jona ran inside.
    Eaters—sailors, gangers, and warehousers—munched on the raw pink petals and leaves of the demon weed. Rough gangers working here passed around piss whiskey cut with hookah water and got more blasted than their customers.
    Jona sprinted through the room, to the stairway. He wanted anyone following him in anger to have to get through this room alive.
    By the time Jona was through the room, weapons were out and red drunk gangers had their boots on the ground, ready for a stomp with the Senta that had run through their private spot of the city.
    The men chasing Jona ran into an angry mob.
    More people died this night.
    * * *
    The real demon weed smokers huddled around the hookahs in the basements and back rooms. Jona only had one bouncer to pass—an old rowdy with no ears and no nose. Jona reached out with one hand as if to hand the fellow a fist of coins. Jona’s other hand darted under the man’s rib. Jona jammed his blade into the lung. The bouncer gasped for air. Jona shoved the bouncer into a wall.
    The sick haze of smoke and demon weed stink made running down the hall feel like running through a long, silk veil.
    Behind him, Jona heard the fighting. Jona didn’t even stop to look. He ran forward. He saw a door to the edge of the canal down a long hall drenched in pinker piss and flies. Jona jumped down the hall. He kicked open the door—the wood was all rotten and the metal was rusted through. A small landing jutted out over the water.
    There was a rowboat.
    This empty rowboat, moored with ratty rope was unguarded, oars and all. Whoever had brought this boat here had fallen into the hookahs and forgotten their boat.
    Jona cut the moor rope and kicked off into the water.
    From the four corners of the district the riot bells rang like temple minarets—all king’s men to post, and every decent citizen off the street. The ruin with the dead rabbit hanging from the door all full of pinkers and gangers had been surprised by the men chasing Jona. When surprised, they fought. When they fought, they fought everything that wasn’t one of them.
    Even more men died tonight in this little riot, some of them king’s men.
    But Jona wouldn’t die. Jona paddled with the currents to a fork in the canal. Then, he dove into the water in all those heavy Senta leathers. He dog-paddled like dancing in quicksand. He struggled into the Old Brewery’s port.
    (The knives had fallen out of his gloves in the swim. The blood on the daggers swirled like small ribbons to tease the sharks in the shallows.)
    Jona swam into the open dock. He pulled himself up into the shadow of the old crane. The Night King had emptied this room of transients tonight. Jona had a change of clothes, and a new rowboat resting against the wall.
    He stripped off his wet Senta leathers. He dropped them into the water. The leathers floated away like a dead body, all bloody and heavy, with long sleeves.
    (Probably sometime in the night, a curious guardsman might fish these out of the canal and get mad that they’re just rags, throw them back in, and then another guardsman does the same, and then a sailor or two, until a ragpicker finds them floating and turns the leathers into the paper I use to write these memories down.)
    Jona stood, glistening and naked in the reflected moonlight off the water. He rummaged through his new clothes carefully. He had trouble identifying the different pieces.
    The warehouse was closed tight, with no windows at all. Light ruined beer, made it skunky. The only opening in the brewery was this gaping hole along the canal and a few doors that had been sealed shut