Page 7 of Love, Nemesis
“Ares has defected from the State,” Manaj said as he swept, as if sensing Lethe in the doorway.
Manaj was always prattling on about the State like an angst-filled wife talking about her husband.
Lethe pulled his sleeve down over his tattoos and crossed his arms as he searched the kitchen. “They’ve taken plenty of pressure from the Mystics on their borders lately. Another defection can’t be a good sign. Ares was their top general, right?”
“He’s the infamous one with that mutated rifle, the one that never runs out of bullets,” Manaj said, trying to free something stuck in the room’s corner with the edge of his broom.
“They say they hate mutations, but they love that one, don’t they?”
“It’s the only gun that still works since the mutations hit. I imagine anyone would.” Manaj swept the rest of the flour into a dustpan before tapping it off into the trash. He placed the broom and pan near the door, taking the rag back from Lethe as they made their way through the living room and toward the porch.
Lethe drew a cigarette from his pocket, unhooking a metal lighter in the shape of a fanged skeleton from his belt. The flinthissed from the skeleton’s teeth, the jaws opening to the flame. It grabbed the end of the cigarette before Lethe released the trigger from the skeleton’s head. Its jaws snapped closed. Lethe returned the lighter to his belt as Manaj hobbled around inside the kitchen.
“Did you finish the braided loaves?” Manaj asked.
Lethe fixed the cigarette into the corner of his mouth, nodding back into the house.
Manaj peered under a bread cloth in the living room.
“You did two braids again. It’s faster to do one.” Manaj dropped the cloth and hobbled into the kitchen.
“I know,” Lethe clipped.
“You can’t keep those hands still.”
“Or to myself. You’ve said so before.”
“Right,” Manaj replied.
“I’m happy we have an understanding.”
“There is the stress of having active hands and the stress of having mischievous hands. I pity the man that has both.”
“What can I say? I’m a burning flame, Manaj,” Lethe shot back.
“You are not a flame. You are on fire. There is a difference.”
Lethe smirked as he listened to Manaj pour from the water pitcher. He smoked, watching the world outside wake up. Acart rattled down the street. A child started crying. The banging and pattering of life crept into the morning. Thunder churned. Things would pick up soon.
An endless, loud cycle of monotony.
Manaj hobbled back outside, a glass of water in each hand. He eased down on one of the rocking chairs, sitting on the very edge before sliding slowly back into it.
“Put that out,” he said.
Lethe rolled his eyes.
Manaj hated smoking, which hadn’t been a problem until Lethe’s invention of the “super cigarette.” He’d tied three together and Manaj, knowing him well enough to know it would only escalate further, set very strict ground rules.
Lethe tossed the cigarette off the porch, balancing a hand on the back of the rocking chair as he walked around it. He collapsed into it, tilting his head to the tin roof. The morning smelled like fresh bread and rain.
He propped a long leg up against the nearest support beam, shifting against the arms of the rocking chair. Broad-shouldered, he filled the chair, and though lean enough to be nimble, next to Manaj, as he often was, he felt like a giant.
Manaj rocked with the ends of his toes covered in thick socks and patched-up sandals. He huddled in a striped, green robe he’d worn to sentimental rags. He handed a glass of water to Lethe with a single basil leaf floating inside. Reaching into hisrobe, he pulled out a pink and yellow striped hat with a hole in the side. He shimmied it onto his head.
They watched with some measure of restful silence as the orphans in the village ran to the schoolhouse. One boy tripped and two oranges rolled out of his hands. He scrambled to his feet, dusting them off before scurrying to catch up with the lines filing up to the building. They all had oranges, En Sanctus’s largest export. En Sanctus’s climate suited them, and so each year, farmers dug up bunches and bunches of them, storing the leftovers in the dark to plant the following season.
Lethe sipped the water as he watched people patrol the streets, moving from one wooden shop to the other. Their elderly neighbor across the street was taking her laundry off the clothesline.
