Paul Hoffman - The Left Hand of God

“Do you believe him?” and the question really was spoken with a gasp. Riba laughed.

“I’m not sure. I think sometimes he means it and sometimes he doesn’t. But I saw his back when we were washing in one of the water holes in the Scablands-God knows how he found it in that awful place. But Henri told me what they did to Cale. Ever since he was a little boy, this Redeemer Bosco singled him out for the slightest thing. He’d accuse him of anything, the more trivial the better he liked it-praying with his thumbs crossed, not putting a tail on the figure nine when he wrote it out. Then he’d drag him before the others and give him a ferocious beating-he’d punch him to the floor and give him a kicking. And then he turned him into a killer.”

By now Riba had worked herself up into a fury of resentment-and not just against the Redeemers. “So it seems to me that it’s surprising he’d bother to give you or me the steam off his piss-let alone risk his life to save us.”

Arbell Swan-Neck’s eyes, though it was hardly possible, widened even more at this startling figure of speech.

“So, mademoiselle, I think it’s high time you stopped looking down your beautiful nose at him and showed him the gratitude and the pity he deserves.”

By this time Riba had lost some of the purity of intention with which she had begun her rebuke and had begun enjoying her indignation and her mistress’s discomfort. But she was no fool and realized it was time to stop. There was a long silence and a number of blinks from Arbell as she tried not to cry. She looked around the room with misty eyes, then back at Riba, then around the room again. She gave a long sigh.

“I didn’t realize. Until now I never knew myself.”

With that there was a knock at the door and Cale came in. Despite the completely altered mood in the room, he picked up nothing of the change that had taken place since he left. That change, however, was greater than either Riba guessed or even the young woman who was feeling it realized. Arbell Swan-Neck, the beautiful and most desired of all the desired, was touched by pity when she saw the terrible scars on Cale’s back, but she was also touched by something less noble: a hunger as intense as it was unlooked for. Stripped to the waist, Cale was a complete contrast to the slender bodies of the Materazzi, strong and agile though they were. Cale’s was wide at the shoulder and unnaturally narrow at the waist. There was nothing elegant about him. He was all muscle and power, like a bull or an ox. It was not comely; no one would have made a sculpture of this mass of sinew and scars. But just the sight of him like this had made something in Arbell Materazzi miss a beat-and it wasn’t just her heart.

Well, Redeemer,” cooed Kitty the Hare, the nails of his hand stroking the wood on the table on which stood the golden statue of the Lustful Venus of Strabo. The faint sound of his voice felt to Redeemer Stape Roy as if something worse than you could possibly imagine was just about to softly crawl its way inside his ear. “This is all very strange,” continued Kitty the Hare, staring at the statue. Or at least Redeemer Stape Roy thought he was staring-as always Kitty the Hare’s face was covered by his gray hood, something for which the Redeemer was very grateful.

“The statue is yours if you help us. What do our reasons matter?”

The vague scraping of the nails along the wood continued, and then the Redeemer almost jumped as the scraping stopped and the covered hand reached forward to the statue and the gray cloth slid away from Kitty the Hare’s hand-only it was not a hand. Think of something gray and furred, though lightly, a dog’s paw but longer, very much longer, and with mottled nails, and yet this would not be close enough. The nails, softly, like a mother’s stroking her baby’s face, gently caressed the statue for a few moments and then withdrew.

“A beautiful piece,” gurgled Kitty the Hare. “But I was told that it had been broken into ten pieces and thrown into the volcano at Delphi.”

“Obviously not.”

There was a long sigh that he could feel on his face, like the hot and wet bad breath of a large and unfriendly dog.

“You will not succeed,” cooed Kitty the Hare.

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

“It is a matter of fact,” said Kitty the Hare sharply.

“This is our business.”

“You are trying to start a war and so it’s my business also.”

There was a long pause.

“As it happens,” continued Kitty the Hare, “I have no objections to a war. They’ve always done well by me in the past. You’d be amazed, my dear Redeemer, at just how much money can be made from supplying poor quality food and drink and pots and pans for even the teensiest war. I will want a guarantee, written, that should you win, none of my possessions will be damaged and I will be given a protected passage to anywhere I choose.”

“Agreed.”

Neither believed the other. Kitty the Hare was certainly happy to make money from a war, but his plans went a good deal deeper than that.

“It will take some time,” sighed Kitty the Hare, with another gush of hot, wet breath. “But I will have the plans ready within three weeks.”

“That’s too long.”

“Perhaps, but that’s how long it will take. Good-bye.”

With that, Redeemer Stape Roy was led out of Kitty the Hare’s private rooms and into the courtyard, then out into the town itself. A crowd had gathered to watch two men no older than sixteen being hanged from a gallows. Around each of their terrified necks was a sign that read: RAPIST.

“What’s a rapist?” asked Redeemer Stape Roy of his guard, innocence and evil living quite contentedly together.

“Anyone who tries to get away without paying,” came the reply.

It was a reflective Cale who made his way toward Arbell Swan-Neck’s now carefully cordoned-off chambers. Despite his deep suspicion and resentment of her, even he had begun to detect a softening toward him. She no longer glared at him or flinched every time he came near her. At times he even asked himself if the look in her eyes (although he could not, of course, recognize it as pity and desire) might be of some significance. But he quickly dismissed such ideas because they made no sense. Still, something confusing was happening. Lost in these thoughts, he was barely aware of a group of boys about ten years old, at the edge of the practice field, looking shady and throwing stones at each other. As he came closer, he realized that one of them was much older, fourteen or so, as tall and slender and handsome as Materazzi boys were prone to be at that age. What was so odd was that the younger boys were throwing stones not at each other but at the older boy and that they were also shouting at him. “Pillock! Half-wit! Drooling gobshite! Flap-mouthed turd!” Then the stones. But despite his size, the bigger boy simply whirled around in fear and confusion as each stone struck him. Then one took him on the forehead and he collapsed in a heap. As the younger boys started to run forward to give him a kick, Cale arrived, clipped one of them round the ear, tripped up another and gave him a light kick as he lay on the ground. In a moment the gang were on the run, screaming insults as they went.

“If I see you little scum again,” Cale called out after them, “you’ll get the full benefit of my boot up your shiv!”

Cale bent down over the fallen boy.

“It’s all right, they’ve gone,” he said to the weeping lump beside him, his hand covering his face and curled up into a ball. There was no reaction. The boy just kept whimpering. “I won’t hurt you. They’ve gone.” Still there was no reaction. Somewhat irritated now, Cale touched him on the shoulder. The boy burst into life, lashing out with such speed that his hand cracked Cale on the forehead. With a cry of astonishment and pain, Cale leapt back as the boy looked at him in utter astonishment and scrabbled backward toward a wall, looking around, terrified, for his tormentors.