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Chapter 3: Joe's Privacy

Clayton knew Joe Marney had exhibited a number of ills while in the military, but today was definitely the most out of character he'd ever been. "You're not in love with her, are you?" Creighton queried, love came and went quickly for the Dornishman, but to fall in love with such a debauched woman was really damaging to his reputation. "That's not true, but I bet she's interested in me." Joe kept his eyes on the stage though he was answering him, "I had a chance meeting with Ms. Rosa on the road today, she was standing on the street selling tickets. We chatted for a while. She's the one who gave me these two tickets for the front row seats, and I think she must have hoped I'd be able to snag the sarong." The weight of the sarong was so light that it couldn't float far from the stage with a hard toss, and only someone in the front row could catch it. Clayton felt there was some truth in him making that deduction. "You've known her before?" As he spoke, his eyes moved to follow the beating light of the stage, trying to take in the art of the dancers' stripping, but the lingering stench at the tip of his nose kept making it difficult to focus. "Don't know her, but she's a Gilda." Joe's face was nearly stretched over the heads of the front row audience. Gildas, a perpetually wandering people who were known for their debauchery and mystery. Clayton wondered if Rosa was really a Gilda, or if this was just a cop-out for Joe's intended self-indulgence. "Can you lend me that sarong?" Joe turned his head in shock, "What's gotten into you today, Lieutenant? I'm not going to let you have this opportunity." Clayton casually lied, "Just checking out the weave, I've had to buy a gift for someone recently and this looks good." Actually, he just wanted to see what was stained on it to get that foul odor. Asking the sarong into his hands, Clayton became more and more certain that his sense of smell was correct, the original stench diluted in the air had only struck him as familiar, but now the smell, so strong that it could practically be a substitute for smelling salts to refresh his senses, made him instantly remember an encounter he had once had. During the Loren War, there was a week when supplies were so scarce that the troops on the front line were fighting hungry. Later on, this was known by the Kingdom Navy, and they sent a large batch of jerky that was said to be left over from the Great Sailing Era two hundred years ago to support the front line, sending many otherwise healthy soldiers into the field hospital. That jerky was this flavor. Clayton furrowed his brow; there were some people in the audience who smelled like that, too, but he didn't think it was because of the crappy jerky epidemic-that stuff would never catch on. The strange behavior and unusual smell reminded him of rumors about the living dead ........ The sarong itself was clean, and in addition to the smell of rotten meat, there was an even more pungent odor of bad perfume. That perfume smell had been ignored by him from the beginning because it was all over the grounds. He could tell because of the extraordinarily large amount of perfume used on the sarong. The situation was as if its owner also smelled that stench and purposely covered it up ...... Handing the sarong back to a nervous Joe, Clayton made an excuse to solve his bladder problem and left his seat, he headed for the location of the underground theater entrance and exit, but didn't make it more than a few steps before coming back. "Joe, it occurs to me that I have an urgent matter that I need to get back to, and I need your help just in time." Joe turned back again with a bitter look on his face and held up his sarong in a gesture, "Please, I can't be bothered tonight." Clayton interrupted him. "Samuel's waiting for us," "Is that so?" Joe glanced at him to make sure he wasn't joking before he got up and left his seat, muttering, "Let's try to hurry then, maybe we'll come back later and catch the end." While they walked along unhurriedly, the audience on either side of the aisle remained in an enthusiastic mood, staring intently at the stage, whistling and applauding as if they hadn't noticed their departure at all. But when their figures disappeared, the dancers on the stage changed their movements, and there was a bit more delicacy in their postures. It was more like a lazy cat than the snake from earlier. I don't know who was the first to yawn, but the sleepiness soon spread like a plague, and the men gradually forgot what they were going to do as they closed their eyes and hung their heads. In a short time snoring was going on in the theater. In the first three rows of the auditorium, on the other hand, the men here did not fall into a deep slumber, but stiffened up neatly, like dolls that had lost their manipulation. Joy, desire ...... Their expressions and gestures were frozen in the moment. But the empty space left by Clayton and Joe was still between them, jarring in that fullness of emotion. The dancer stopped writhing, her hands dropping naturally, her eyes above her veil looking straight up at the location of the exit high above. "Why do you always avert your eyes, have they noticed?" The women sitting in the audience pushed aside the drowsy person next to them and stepped out of the narrow space of the coupled seats. "Cleric, should we go after them?" ..................... "Haaah ..... Haaah ....... Ha......" Joe Mani was holding onto the wall and dry heaving, as soon as he got out of that theater, he and Creighton ran about ten miles and didn't dare stop until they got to this isolated alley. Creighton didn't feel much, but had to make a show of gasping for breath, seeing him like this. Recovering a little, Joe sat down against the wall of the alley without regard for neatness, staining his pants with dirt and moss: "Now can you tell me what happened there, Lieutenant?" When leaving the theater, Creighton had mentioned Samuel as their mutual comrade in arms, but long since a dead man. Using that excuse to take him away from the theater was a fool's errand. "Someone is out to get us." Clayton spat out the conclusion. "Don't ask me who they are, at least the platoons in front and behind us are with them, and Rosa is one of them." Joe didn't pry into how he had come to his conclusion; soldiers who had been to war believed in luck and intuition. Clayton had been a soldier for over a decade and still had all his limbs, he was the absolute best at both. "With such a big gesture, who have you offended?" Clayton's eyebrows pressed down, "I should be the one to ask this question, you definitely still have things to hide from me, why don't you think more carefully yourself." He had left his seat then under the pretext of going to the restroom, then went to the vents to collect the scent from the audience there, only to find that the front rows had the same perfume smell as the one on the sarongs, and that included the row they were in. Cheap perfume would certainly be more popular among the commoners, but people who happened to be wearing the same perfume all sitting together would be problematic. Combined with the fact that Rosa, the dancer, had purposely given Joe two front-row tickets and had intentionally thrown the sarong over to create a coincidence rather than doing it in the first place, he surmised that the other party didn't want to make a big scene and for some reason had a higher priority on intending to control them and then dispose of them in a way that wouldn't be seen by the outside world to be suspicious after they had accomplished some sort of goal. Although Joe had brought him clues to the transcendental world, trouble was following in his wake. After the reminder, it was obvious to Joe who was out to get him, and there was gravity, and embarrassment, on his face. "Yeah, I probably know who it is." "So who are they?" "The Grail Council, a godforsaken organization, and I thought they'd be the only ones who'd come after me. But I didn't think they'd come cross-country to Dorne." There are also civic organizations ..... Clayton suppressed his inner excitement, "How did you get into trouble with them?" "I stole from them in Taunton ......" Clayton held his forehead, he knew the other man had a penchant for stealing when he was in the army, but he didn't realize that he hadn't changed so far. Wait, stole things? Clayton sensed something was wrong, "You didn't steal that ring you gave me from them, did you? If that's the case, I'll give it to you tomorrow and you try to make peace with their word. You can ask me for money if you need it." He thought that since the other party hadn't made a move yet, it meant that there were also scruples, and that there was still room for everything to turn around. However, mentioning the Bishop's Ring Seal, Joe instead became more difficult, "This is indeed one of the things ......." "One of them?" Clayton could barely speak, "Just how many things have you stolen?!" He made up his mind that if it got too bad, he wouldn't care about anything. "Only two, but couldn't return them because I smashed one." Joe stood up straight, getting more and more honest as he spoke: "The Grail is not an organization of good people; they use the piety of their followers to commit crimes. It was to punish them that I stole those things, so absolutely