Giving comfort to the enemy
Amadi walked slowly down the long red-and-gold carpet that led through the lobby, past tables where dealers laid out cards for zebras playing baccarat and blackjack. The place looked expensive and seedy at the same time - decorated in bright colors dimly lit, full of the haze of cigar smoke and the murmur of conversations not meant to be overheard.
The start of the war, which seemed to Amadi like a distant memory but had been barely a year ago, had changed this place less than most. Tourists and merchants had given way to government contractors and off-duty soldiers from the local garrison. Being in a border town far from the capital was just as valuable now that the casino-hotel had been de facto taken over by the Legion. The loss of high-rolling corporate executives from both sides of the border meant they had to push the envelope of legality a little farther than the previous management. They could, because here, they were the law.
It had cost him nearly everything they had saved over the past year to make a reservation for twenty minutes with the pegasus. His wife would kill him when she found out. "Supply and demand," the cashier had said. Amadi had already taken back his money and turned away, but the horribly casual way the cashier said it, like he were talking about cabbages, had made Amadi turn around and put his money down, instead of going home and complaining to his wife again that somebody ought to do something.
He needed that resolve now, as he stood at the end of the hallway the cashier had pointed out, in front of a pair of double doors guarded by a zebra in a dress uniform wearing sergeant's stripes. Amadi was not a brave zebra. It was the brave ones that somebody had to stand up against.
He held the note the cashier had given him out for the sergeant, who glanced at it, then nodded. "All right, pops," he said. "I want your hooves on this side of the door when twenty minutes are up. You want to do any cleaning up, get a room. There's a clock on the wall over the bed. I'll knock when you have one minute left. Open your bags."
Amadi opened his saddlebags and the sergeant went through them. He closed them and looked Amadi in the eyes. "No blood, no bruises, no screaming. She's Legion property. You understand?"
"Yes."
"And don't lock the door. You can go in as soon as the corporal's finished."
Amadi tried not to look surprised. "Finished..."
"Cleaning."
"Cleaning what?"
"Her."
"Oh." He looked away and tried to think of something callous to say. "Interesting job."
The sergeant snorted. "Maybe the first ten times. Hail Caesar."
"Hail Caesar," Amadi said reflexively. The doors of the hotel room opened, and another uniformed zebra came out. Humid air spilled out behind him. Amadi waded in against the escaping fumes of perfume, sweat, and bleach, and the doors shut behind him.
* * * * *
She was a bright periwinkle blue, all one color, about twenty. Not stocky like his wife. Delicate and bird-like, like something out of a fairy tale, even with her head hung and her shoulders slumped despondently as she stood beside the sagging bed. Her wings were folded tightly against her back. The feathers flashed different shades of blue when they twitched. Her cutie mark had been burned away by the Legion's brand.
She met his eyes without raising her head, then glanced away. Her left rear leg was shackled. The other end of the chain was welded to the iron frame of the bed, a king-size that was up against the center of the far wall, between two windows whose beautiful view overlooking the lake was now interrupted by iron bars. The frame looked very solid. He guessed the chain was just long enough for her to reach the bathroom, whose door had been removed.
"So," he said. He hadn't really expected to get this far.
She looked up at him slowly. Her eyes were like weathered glass.
"You speak our language?"
She looked away again and shivered.
He walked over to the window to let in some fresh air, but it had been nailed shut. He wondered why anyone would nail shut a window that was already behind iron bars. He felt an answer rising in his throat like vomit, and forced it back down and looked away.
"How about a nice brush-down?"
She didn't respond, so he opened his saddlebag and pulled out a soft-bristled brush. He held it in his teeth and began to stroke near the base of her neck, from front to back. He slowly worked his way down her flank. The hair grew in strange whorls around the wings, and it was tricky to figure out the right way to brush. Especially with all her twitching.
People said she'd been a worker at that unicorn school. The only survivor. They said she'd just stood there and let herself be captured, in too much shock to fly away. Now she was a source of income and a recruiting bonus.
He had no idea what to do about the wings. They looked so fragile. He brushed around them, but couldn't resist pausing now and then to touch his nose to the feathers. They tickled. They were downy and soft near the base of the wings.
Suddenly she stamped one rear leg, and the chain rattled loudly. He stopped, and turned to look. Her eyes were wide in terror. She was silently watching him, obviously expecting him to pounce on her at any moment.
He dropped the brush on the bed, feeling stupid. Of course she didn't want to be brushed. She wouldn't even want to be touched. Not by a zebra. He backed away a few steps.
"I brought apples."
She watched him warily, without meeting his eyes.
He lifted an apple out of one saddlebag, holding it by the stem, and dropped it onto the bed. Then he stepped away, so she wouldn't have to get too close to him. She took a step toward it, dragging her chain behind her, and sniffed it, ears forward hungrily. Then she laid her ears back, stepped away without touching it, and resumed watching him tensely.
Fifteen minutes left.
* * * * *
"That zebra strike you as odd?" the corporal asked.
The sergeant did not reply.
"Awful quiet in there," the corporal commented.
"I like quiet," the sergeant said pointedly.
The corporal said nothing for several minutes, until the silence was too much for him. "What do you think he's doing in there?"
"Why don't you ask her when you get your turn?" the sergeant asked.
The corporal's ears fell. "I don't think I want my turn."
"What did I tell you about thinking? That's way above your pay grade. You'll get your five minutes, like the rest of the battalion - and you'll like it, if you know what's good for you."
* * * * *
She stretched out her neck towards the apple several times over the course of minutes, before finally stepping back towards it. The chain clanked loudly as she did, and something about the leg iron caught his eye as she took a tiny, hesitant bite out of the apple.
He took a step forward and bent his neck down to look at the shackled leg. He touched it lightly with one hoof, to let her know what he was doing. It was horribly abraded and scarred around the iron, with no hair left at all. In this place, in these conditions, it would get infected. He shouldn't even be touching it. Or breathing on it.
Suddenly she snatched her leg away and a sharp pain exploded in his left flank, and he fell to the floor. She had kicked him viciously with the shackled leg, knocking the air out of him. He raised his hooves over his head and lay gasping, trying to crawl away, expecting another kick.
When he could take a breath, he jumped to his feet and backed away. She had run across the room, to the other side of the bed, as far as the chain would let her without turning her back on him. She blinked her eyes rapidly and shook with terror.
He looked at the clock. Nine minutes left.
He approached her slowly, but calmly, from the front, like you would a skittish animal. She watched as he did, tail swishing.
"It's okay," he said, still coughing slightly. "I understand. You must be very frightened."
She stomped another foot nervously.
"I... I just wanted to do something nice for you."
She seemed to understand that she wasn't about to be beaten. She let her breath out, and her back and shoulders sagged as she unfroze from her rigid posture. Amadi saw for the first time that she was physically exhausted. He came up close to her and looked in her eyes, almost touching noses. She screwed her eyes shut and whinnied quietly.
"Shh," he said, and reached up with one hoof to stroke her mane, the way you would to comfort a foal, as he had not done in so many years. She kept her eyes shut, but her trembling gradually ceased over the course of a minute.
He dropped his foreleg and took a step back. She lunged forward, wrapped both her forelegs tightly around his neck, and buried her face in his mane, leaning on him. His first reaction was to pull away, but she held on desperately, squeezing him like a child clinging to a teddy bear that someone was trying to take away. Then she began to sob silently, gulping in one giant breath after another.
She was surprisingly light. He let her draw him back to her, and stood there and let her hold him, and felt her tears run down his neck. He could see the clock on the wall over her shoulder. Five minutes.
Four minutes, thirty seconds.
Four minutes.
She slightly relaxed her grip on his neck, and he thought she was done. Then she began to cry out loud, softly at first, then louder, until she was wailing like a newborn. He stiffened, and tried to look back at the double-door behind him without shaking her loose.
* * * * *
"What's he doing to her?" the corporal said, staring at the door.
"What are you, her knight in shining armour?" the sergeant said. "You relax. I've heard people being killed, and that ain't what it sounds like."
"But that's not normal!" the corporal protested. "Don't tell me that's normal!"
"Listen up. That guy had the cutie mark of a baker. Twenty minutes would cost him a month's pay. No way he coughed that up on his own. He's got connections."
"How would a baker have connections?"
"Hell if I know. Maybe the general likes his muffins. Don't mess with him." He snorted to himself. "Not normal. You got a sense of humor, kid."
* * * * *
Amadi heard a very loud knock on the door. He coughed, which did nothing at all to get the pegasus' attention. "Hey," he said. "Hey!" He shook his head violently.
She stopped crying for a moment.
"You must let go now," he said. "Please. I'm sorry. But you must let go of me. Now. Really." He stamped one foreleg.
For a moment, he thought he would have to fight her. But she let her forelegs slide off him, and dropped back to the ground. She looked into his eyes, briefly, but the longest she'd met his gaze yet. He didn't see the gratitude that he had imagined when he had played out their meeting in his mind. Just a flicker of... weariness, perhaps. But even that was more than had been there twenty minutes ago. Then she looked away and hung her head.
He let out a breath. His heart was pounding. He picked up his brush and threw it back in his saddlebag. Stupid fool! Everything was too clean. They would know. He dragged the covers off the bed, whacked the mattress a few times with his hooves, and threw one of the pillows onto the floor. Then he turned, jumped, and reached for the door with one hoof just as it was opened from outside, and he came face-to-face with the corporal, who looked stern.
Amadi sucked in his breath. He tried to hold his head up like a proud patriot and a big spender, not like the treasonous, penniless pretender he was. "You need to do something about that leg," he said with as much condescension as he could muster. "It's disgusting."
The corporal eyed him evenly. "I damn well will do something if it's bleeding again." He walked in, and Amadi walked out without looking back.
He started to head back down the long hallway, trying not to walk too fast.
"Hey," the sergeant called after him.
He halted.
"What did you do to her?"
Amadi forced himself to smile, though his heart was still pounding. "Nothing she didn't deserve." He continued down the hall before the sergeant could ask anything else.
"Sick bastard," the sergeant muttered.
The neighborhood was dark and still when he arrived back at the little walk-up apartment, made his way up the stairs, fumbled in the dark for his keys, went in, and crept as quietly as he could toward their bedroom in the back. His wife would have gone to sleep long ago.
He pushed open the bedroom door and saw his wife standing on the other side, glaring back at him in the dark. She snapped on the lights, thrust her head at him, and marched forward, forcing him to back up through their small sitting room until all but his head was pulled back into the hallway. There she stood with her legs splayed in a broad stance as if she were defending the apartment from him. "Where have you been?" she brayed. "What did you need to do that could not be done under the sun?"
He felt so heavy that just standing up took effort. "Can we please go to bed?"
"Go to bed? Go to BED?" she squealed. "Have you been drinking?" She nipped his chest sharply, then sniffed his breath, and then his mane.
Her ears drooped. "You've been with another mare," she said, unbelieving.
"Yes," he said dully. "I was with another mare, and I spent all our money on her."
He saw the familiar look of concentration on her face that meant she was trying to puzzle out something confusing, as if possibly he had said something entirely different and she had misheard him. He wondered why he had just used the truth to tell such a cruel lie, and why he had pretended to himself that his wife could fall asleep before he had returned. He almost had the answer in his grasp when she slapped him.
"You thought you could come back here in the middle of the night, stinking of one of those legion whores, and get away with it?" She thrust her nose against him, pushing his head back. "You think I'm STUPID, Amadi?"
He didn't look away, or give ground. He just gazed back at her with fondness and sorrow.
She snorted furiously. Then she wheeled around and kicked with her rear legs, smashing into fragments the pot of an ostrich fern that stood against the sitting-room wall just inches to his right. He was too tired to flinch.
She trod in a half-circle to face him again, breathing heavily. Then her shoulders slumped, and she sat heavily on the floor, blinking. "Twenty years, Amadi. Twenty years. You only had to go one more week. Couldn't you have had the decency to wait until you shipped out, like all the other soldiers?"
It would be better for her to think that he no longer loved her. That, he realized, was why he had misled her. Amadi knew in his gut that he would never come back from the war. Every day the news reported new victories; but if it were true, they would never have called up an old stallion like himself. He had seen the truth in the eyes of the doctors at the enlistment center, as they pretended he was in perfect health. It would be better for her to find another stallion now, while there were still some left.
But she looked so sad. He wanted to lick the tears from her cheek the way mothers did to their foals. He would probably get a swift kick if he tried.
"I had to," he said. A shy, sad smile crept onto his face, as though he had given her a present she did not like.
Realization slowly dawned on her. "You did it," she said. "You stupid zebra, you went ahead and did it."
"Yes."
Now she really cried, and she reared up and beat his chest with her hooves. Just the flats, but hard enough to hurt. "You IDIOT! What if they'd caught you?"
"I know."
"You didn't even TELL me! I wouldn't even know what had happened to you! You thoughtless little colt!"
"I know."
She stopped hitting him and sighed. "All our money, Amadi. You said we were going to leave this horrible place, buy a house with a yard and plant cherry trees."
"If you'd been there. If you'd been there. You'd have sold the silver, the books, the furniture, just to buy her one more minute."
"What about ME? What about me, here, alone while you are off at the war? What will I do?"
He could have told her that she would get all of his legion pay, or that the money had been barely enough to buy the cherry trees let alone a house, or that planning for the future now was a cruel joke. All these things were true. Instead, he said, "She was about the same age Zuwena would be."
They stood facing each other for a full minute, breathing heavily.
"You're a good zebra," she finally said, and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then she swatted his chest again, hard. "But an idiot. Now shut up and come to bed."
They pulled back the covers and crawled into bed. She snuggled up against him and put one foreleg over his neck. "Maybe you'll finally be able to get some sleep," she said.
"Maybe."
Over her shoulder, he could see the clock on the nightstand. Nearly two o'clock. The cashier's schedule had had timeslots up through three in the morning.
As she gradually relaxed and dozed off, he felt the beat of her heart and listened to her breathing, regular and unhurried as the ticking of a clock, or the waves lapping on the shore of some vast, imperturbable sea; and he could almost imagine that he could hold her like that and keep her safe, forever.
