Zoe was there.
“Are you insane?” she said.
X looked nervously for his clothes.
“Relax,” she said. “I can’t see anything.”
Even so, X pulled his shoulders under the water.
She laughed at his shyness.
“Oh my god, here,” she said.
She thrust his pants at him. He pulled them under the water and put them on, feeling ridiculous.
“Why do you inquire after my sanity?” he asked her.
“Because it is freezing cold out, dork,” she said.
“No harm will come to me,” said X. “I have warmed the water.”
Zoe took off a glove and dipped her hand in the river. Surprised, X floated backward until he could feel the edge of the ice behind him. When Zoe’s hand touched the water, her eyes registered surprise.
“I told you true, did I not?” said X.
“You told me true,” said Zoe.
She sat down in the snow, and stared off at the dark ridge. The air was still. The only sound was the lapping of the water as X floated, his tattooed arms working effortlessly in the water.
“Your query about my age,” he said. “Was it the only question you asked the bowl, or are there others still awaiting me?”
“I only asked two,” said Zoe. “The other one was stupid.”
“You will not share it?”
“It was about the first time I saw you—when you were going after Stan. I wanted to know why you turned the ice orange.”
X sank below the surface and hung suspended a second time. When he finally shot up again, he pressed his palms to the ice and pushed himself out of the river. The weight of the water dragged his pants down low on his hips. He felt Zoe watching, and pulled them up as quickly as he could, then sat on the ice facing her.
“You did not ask the bowl about the bruises beneath my eyes,” he said. “Were you ashamed on my account—is that why you shrank from the question?”
Zoe was a long time in answering.
“I didn’t ask because I already knew the answer,” she said. “Someone’s been hurting you.”
X said nothing.
“Who?” said Zoe. “And for how long?”
“The lords,” said X. “It is part of the bounty hunter’s ritual. The pain is fleeting, I promise. Do not think on it.”
“I can’t help it,” said Zoe. “It pisses me off. They have no right—”
He interrupted her.
“No, Zoe,” he said gently. “I am the one without rights. I was born into their midst. I am no one’s son, no one’s brother. I belong to the Lowlands itself. My parents … I cannot imagine how they stole even a moment in each other’s company to produce me, but they broke every law of the Lowlands to do it. I am just the living embodiment of a crime—if I can even claim to be ‘living.’”
X stopped, and looked at Zoe. She had put her hands in her coat pockets to warm them. She seemed not to know what to say.
“No one ever told you who your parents were?” she said finally.
“They never even told Ripper,” said X. “I suppose they feared I would look for them. And, in that, they are correct. When I was young, I used to console myself by inventing a love story about my mother and father. I told myself that my mother wept and my father tore his hair when the lords wrenched me away.” He paused. “You did not expect such a dreary monologue,” he said. “Shall I end it there?”
“Please don’t,” said Zoe, then quoted something he’d told her himself: “Perhaps telling the story will take away some of its power.”
“I suspect my father was unaware of my existence and my mother was glad to be quit of me,” X said. “After all, they were almost certainly prisoners—and of rough character. I have scant memories of my first decade. It was an oddity for a child to be growing up among the damned. I have never met another. Only I needed to eat because only I needed to grow. Only I was aging at all.”
“It’s why you can’t read,” said Zoe softly. “Because no one bothered to teach you.”
“Many of the prisoners hated me when I was a child,” X continued. “Many still do. Perhaps I remind them of their own lost innocence. Perhaps they’re jealous because they think that, unlike them, I will grow old and one day die and escape the Lowlands.”
“Will you die?” said Zoe. “Can you?”
“I do not even know,” said X. “There is not another like me to ask. Maybe I will rot little by little but never actually perish. I see that my words pain you, Zoe, but you should know what sort of creature you have befriended.” He stopped, before returning to his story. “As a child in the Lowlands, I was kicked and punched by other prisoners. I was beaten even by some of the guards, who resented having to bring me water and meat. I was given nicknames, but they were forgotten, one after the other, because no one cared enough about me to remember them. Then, when I was ten, one of the lords simply shoved me at Ripper and told her to train me to hunt souls. ‘Let’s see if he’s worth keeping alive,’ he said.”
“Ripper,” said Zoe. “You like her.”
“I owe her everything,” said X. “I learned to hunt quickly. Banger was my first soul. I took him when I was just sixteen. I found him in a tavern. He looked at me like I was a child, a nuisance—so I struck him in the throat. Ripper seemed astonished when I brought him back to the Lowlands and threw him at the lords’ feet. She told me I was special. I swear to you, her praise kept me alive. She couldn’t teach me to read, for she had no books, no paper, no pens. She didn’t even have fingernails to scratch letters into the rock, because she had ripped them all out. But she taught me to be quick and strong and hard—just as your mother has taught you.”