Chapter 2

Shada and Pyos discuss what happened.

Chapter 2:

“What’s your name?” Shada spoke softly, gently, hands laced together in his lap.

 

His translator echoed him, in Leskiy.

 

From across the coffee table, the kid stared back. His eyes were flat blue circles sunk deep in dark sockets, like the button eyes of an old doll. He looked smaller with Shada’s coat draped over his shoulders.

 

“Pyos,” said the skinny kid. “Petro. Synytoko.”

 

“What happened, in front of the shop? How’d you know the man was coming to kill me?”

 

The kid’s eyes jumped from Shada to the translator and back again. “I don’t know. The way he was walking. His eyes. Then I saw the knife.”

 

Shada shifted on the couch, crossing his legs. His head, resting placidly against his hand, was tipped to one side with interest. “I see.” His voice was mild and without inflection. “What I’m most interested in, Pyos, is why you did what you did.” He pulled absently at a seam in his sleeve. “When it coulda gotten you killed. Why did you fight him?”

 

Curled in the armchair across the table, Pyos looked more like a young bird rejected from the nest than a fighter.  The delicate bones in his wrists and neck stood out beneath waxy skin; his voice was rough, and at intervals hacking coughs shook his thin frame. Blood from a split lip ran in a line down his chin.

 

He looked confused. “He was coming to kill you,” he said through the translator.

 

“But why’d you fight him?”

 

“He was coming to kill you.”

 

“No, no.” Shada rubbed his chin impatiently. “I mean, why’s that matter?”

 

Pyos was quiet for a long moment. Shada opened his mouth to ask again when he responded, “You gave me food.”

 

“Aha.” Shada leaned back. “I did, didn’t I? And you thought you’d pay me back.”

 

Silence from Pyos.

 

Shada shifted again. “Okay. So where’d you learn to fight like that, Pyos?”

 

“I’ve always been able to do that. Since I was little.”

 

“Who taught you?”

 

“A couple people.”

 

“Anyone in particular?”

 

Pyos hesitated. “…Anulan.”

 

“Last name?”

 

“…I don’t know. Hadi?”

 

Shada nodded slowly. “And was Anulan in charge?” He spoke smoothly, as if to a child.

 

“No,” Pyos answered. “Mother was.”

 

Shada frowned. “Why’d your mother want you to fight?”

 

“For her.”

 

“And where is she now?”

 

A shadow crossed Pyos’s face. “Dead.”

 

“Do you have any family, Pyos? A home?”

 

“No.”

 

“How about a job, Pyos, you have a job?”

 

The translator looked questioningly at Shada, his brow slightly furrowed, before repeating his words in Leskiy.

 

“No,” said Pyos.

 

Shada leaned forward, meeting Pyos’s gaze with his own. “Would you like one?”

 

�-�         �-�         �-�

 

The kid had been in the bathroom a long time. Shada tried to ignore this; he was watching the one channel that broadcast in Lachan on the fuzzy TV and he had no interest in getting up, fuzzy reception or no.

 

Still, though. The kid was in pretty bad shape. After they finished up with the translator, Shada had started the kid off with a meal he could only choke down less than a quarter of. There was some stringy muscle left on him�"the hunger hadn’t eaten everything he had to offer yet�"but his skin was waxy and bones pressed out where the muscle ran thin. Every time he coughed Shada half-expected to see him spit blood.

 

He looked like s**t, in short. With a heavy, exaggerated sigh, Shada pulled himself off the couch. He had taken off his shoes but left his gun strapped to his belt; the kid may have saved his life, but he didn’t know him yet.

 

Shada knocked on the bathroom door. “Hey, kid. You alive in there?” He intended it as levity, but there was no answer. “Um, Pyos? Gimme something. Anything at all’d be fine, I know you can’t understand a f*****g thing I’m sayin’ right now.”

 

Nothing but the sound of running water. Shada rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “F*****g dumbass goddamn kid,” he muttered under his breath. He tested the doorknob; it was unlocked. Shada really, really, really did not want to enter a bathroom with someone else in it, it was a personal policy that had served him well for the last forty years. But what if the kid was dead in there? It was possible. So, gritting his teeth in irritation, Shada opened the door.

 

Pyos was alive and conscious. He was sitting on the floor of the shower stall in an inch of water, knees mercifully drawn up to his chin, grinning so wide Shada could tell he was missing a molar. His hair was drenched pin-straight and plastered to his face. Shada wasn’t sure how he could see at all, but when he peered in Pyos turned his face toward Shada and pointed enthusiastically at the showerhead. He said…something.

 

“I can’t f*****g understand your language, kid,” Shada said. He furrowed his eyebrows so intensely the gap between them closed almost altogether. “What, have you never used a f*****g shower before? Is that it? Is tha�"why the f**k am I even talking to you, you don’t speak Lachan.” He shut the door and stomped back to the couch.

 

“F*****g Leskiy kid.”