Nile woke with a start, shaken gently by a hand on her shoulder. She was already reaching for her knife before she realised it was Joe, crouched next to her bed. They were in their safe house in Palermo, her and Andy sleeping on camp beds in the living room and Joe and Nicky in the only bedroom.
“Nicky is going to church,” Joe said, in a low voice, trying not to wake Andy. “He thought you might want to go with him.”
“Uh, yeah,” Nile said, surprised, lowering her knife. It was so early only a very weak grey light came through the crack in the curtains, and Andy was still asleep, face down on her pillow. “Now?”
Nicky appeared in the door of the bedroom, yawning silently, doing up the buttons on his shirt one-handed.
“There are less people early,” he said, his voice still thick with sleep. “We can eat on the way.”
She had slept half dressed, and she wriggled back into her trousers, a knife slipped into the sheath on her shin, and watched Joe make coffee in the kitchenette. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and, as Nile watched, a faint bite mark on his shoulder healed away into nothing. She blushed and looked away, pulling a shirt over her head.
She was ready and waiting, sat with her elbows braced on her knees, when Nicky pulled on his jacket and kissed Joe goodbye.
"Cuore mio," he said, in a low voice, with a small, self-satisfied smile. Joe laughed, so quietly it was just a fast exhale, and darted in to kiss him one last time, a quick peck on the lips.
"Go, be back before Andy wakes up," he said.
"I know, I know," Nicky said, and let Nile lead the way down the stairs, onto the thin street, empty except for a handful of sleepy people, on their way to work or home from a night out.
"Uh, which way?" Nile said, when she realised she didn't know where they were going. Nicky smiled, falling into humour easily. When Andy smiled, it seemed like an effort, a weight she was fighting against, but Nicky seemed to find the inner well of joy easily, as easily as he could turn into a blank soldier, a killing machine. Nile wasn't used to the depths yet, the way long lives had given them deep, hidden selves.
"Follow me," he said. "Let's eat first."
They bought arancini from a kiosk set into the wall in front of one of the train stations, so full she had to eat with a hand cupped under her chin. Nicky ate it with delight, licking his fingers as he led them down Palermo’s tight streets.
"Good, right?" he said, when he’d finished chewing and Nile was working on her final bites, trying not to get rice all over herself. She nodded, and made a noise of agreement around her mouthful. Nicky dropped one of the thin paper napkins into a garbage can, and wiped his fingers on his trouser legs. “We don’t come back here enough.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, when she finished chewing. Nicky looked like he wasn’t paying attention, just looking at the tall buildings, plants hanging from the balcony, closed-up shop fronts, but she could see his eyes darting to every movement, quick sniper’s eyes always wary.
“I was born here,” he said casually. “I always think I don’t want to come back, but there’s nowhere like it. We all say we don’t have a home anymore, but I think we all secretly like going back. Even Andy.” He paused, his thumb at his lips, getting at the last bit of rice. “She’ll deny it if you mention it.”
“Okay,” Nile said, nodding. Nicky was good at making her not feel like a child. She knew she was, realistically; compared to all three of them she was a toddling infant, with hundreds of years of learning still to do. She felt hungry for it, for every hint of the long, mysterious lives they had lived. Especially Andy. She wanted to know all the strange, small things Andy must have accumulated through the centuries: her favorite foods, her favorite places, her habits and preferences. She had begun to see some of it, the way she slept face down, one arm under her head, the jokes and memories she shared with Nicky and Joe, the way they were all so easy with each other, comfortable at rest and utterly reliant on each other in a fight. When they fought, it wasn’t like they were a family, it was like they were the arms and legs of the same creature.
“Ah, here we are,” Nicky said. The narrow streets opened up suddenly, the tall buildings falling away to an open square, green with trees. The sun was only barely rising, and the only people around were opening the tourist cafes, or clearly on their way to work. The cathedral dominated, nearly completely white in the light of the sun cresting over the buildings. They were the only people approaching the main door, and Nile took her time looking upwards, the thousand carved arches, the detailed mosaic, so much ornamentation it was overwhelming.
“Wow,” she said, as they stepped into the shade of the first arch. Nicky smiled.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, letting his fingers trail over the pillar in front of them. “Every time I come, something has changed.”
“When were you here last?” she asked, following him into the deep shade of the interior.
“Oh, not that long ago, 1873, I think,” he said.
“Yeah, just a minute ago,” Nile said to herself, under her breath.
The interior was even more overwhelming than outside. It was hugely cavernous, and lit with hundreds of electric lights and candles. Every few feet, the pillars opened up into radiating chapels, hung with paintings and overflowing with statues. And, visible in the distance, far down the shadowy length of the whole church, was the altar, blazing with light and colour. It was like nothing Nile had ever seen.
"How old is this place?" she asked, turning in a circle to see it in 360. Nicky put a hand on her shoulder to point her between the pews, towards the altar.
"Not as old as you think," he said. "They’ve added a lot of things, over the years. Everything you see-" He gestured at the intricate carving on the walls, the side chapels. "All younger than me, you know."
“Most things are younger than you, Nicky,” she said. He laughed.
“Probably only the foundations are left from my time,” he said, with a smile.
“You were here when they built it?” she asked wondrously. Every time she thought she was over it, she’d realise they’d seen or been a part of something she thought of as impossibly old. It was like finding out Santa Claus was real - a piece of magic in her life.
Nicky waggled his hand.
“Sort of,” he said. “There’d been a church here before, and then it’d been a mosque, and then they sort of pulled the mosque apart to build this.” His gesture took in the whole expanse, almost empty except for a few very early-morning worshippers. “It was very beautiful, even then.”
“When was this?” Nile asked. Nicky shrugged, as if the time meant nothing.
“Oh, they finished it long after I was gone. But they’d started it, and, oh, it was glorious,” he said. “Come, I want to light a candle.”
Nicky didn’t linger in the main nave, just led her confidently down the side of the church and into one of the side chapels. She’d thought it might be a more solemn ritual, but he reached into his pocket and deposited a handful of euros in the collection box, and then lit four candles, one by one. He looked up at her.
“Joe, Andy, Booker, and now, you,” he said gently, counting off the candles with a finger.
“Booker?” she asked, raising an eyebrow, and he smiled like she’d caught him at something.
“Yes, even now. We are still a family, you know, even if we are fighting,” he said. “Besides, I think it will be less than a century before we see him again. We’re connected.”
Nicky had a way of speaking, of saying unexpected things, that made them feel true. She smiled.
“Sure,” she said. She hoped he was right. Even she could tell there was an empty space in their group, their family as Nicky said, a blank spot at Andy’s right hand.
Nicky went and sat on one of the chairs, looking up at the chapel altar. She took a moment to look around, the bright paintings of a young woman in a robe, reaching out to a crowd of people, the statues flanking the altar. Eventually, she couldn’t avoid it anymore, and sat next to Nicky. Was he praying? Should she be praying? She didn’t know if she even wanted to. She’d never felt out of place at church, flanked on both sides by her family, but here, far from home, probably never to return, the strangeness crawled over her skin.
“Here,” Nicky said, and passed her a bible from the pile on the chairs in front of them. “This one’s in English.”
“Thanks,” she said, surprised. She flipped it open at random, reading without really taking in the words. She didn’t need to read to know the verses. Nicky looked away, as if to give her a moment.
She didn’t know how long they sat together, in silence. No light from the outside seemed to penetrate to the corner of their chapel. Nicky didn’t ask her questions, or try to make her speak. They were together, but separate, in their own world and experience. She didn’t feel peaceful, exactly, but it was a quiet pause in her life that was now strange and otherworldly. She took a deep breath and looked at the icon of the nameless saint on the wall, her beautiful, perfect, timeless face, and then exhaled, slowly.
Eventually, Nicky put a hand on her wrist.
“Let’s go?” he said, and she nodded.
When she looked back, the four candles he’d lit were still burning, the wicks leaning in towards each other, curling up in flame.
They emerged, blinking, into the blinding sun of a Palermo summer morning, overwhelming after the dark and quiet of the cathedral interior. The calm of the early morning had disappeared, replaced by the chatter of tourists, the honking, noisy Italian traffic, someone shouting from a nearby apartment, tour guides speaking in six different languages. Nile followed Nicky out of the square, away from cameras and prying eyes, and down an alleyway, until there were no tourists, only locals having a smoke and a leisurely breakfast, watching them go by.
Outside one of the hole-in-the-wall cafes, Joe was relaxing in a plastic chair, his legs out in front of him, an espresso cup and a sketchbook on the table.
“Ciao bello,” he said, warmly, reaching out for Nicky’s hand, reeling him in. Everything about them, about how they were with each other, was easy under the weight of a thousand years. They reached for each other instinctively, at every moment, during fights, asleep, over meals and travelling. Seeing it made Nile feel small, and young, like standing at the altar of the cathedral. She was in the presence of something far older and greater than herself.
Nicky hooked his foot around the leg of a chair and pulled one over, falling into the seat already smiling and leaning over to kiss Joe, their hands still joined.
“What are you drawing?” Nile asked, sitting down. Joe pushed the sketchbook closed to her.
“Just some sketches,” he said, with a shrug. Nile flipped the pages. The facade of the church across from the safe house. Andy in profile. Nicky with his shirt off, his face obscured. Nicky’s face, just in pieces, a single eye, his mouth smiling, his nose.
A waiter vaguely floated over and Nicky lifted his spare hand in a quick two-fingered gesture.
“Due caffè,” he said, and then let his head fall back, completely relaxed.
“God, it’s good to be somewhere they speak Italian. Let’s stay here another century,” he said, looking over at Joe, his eyes teasing.
“You’d get bored,” Joe said fondly, and Nicky laughed, nodding.
“I would, I would,” he agreed. “What do you think, Nile, where should we go next?”
“Is this what we do?” Nile asked, taking a coffee the waiter put on the table, mostly to have something to do with her hands. “Just keep moving, never settle anywhere?”
“For now,” Joe said, and shrugged. “Andy’s got a mission, we’ll keep moving till we see somewhere we can do good. Maybe in a couple decades, we get bored, we settle down for a while, get jobs, learn a new skill. We always end up moving on eventually.”
“Remember Berlin? When Andy took Booker to Argentina?” Nicky said happily. “I liked our apartment.”
“You filled it with so much stuff, I know you did,” Joe said. Nile propped her hand on her chin. She always liked hearing their stories.
“What did you do in Berlin?” she asked. Nicky waved a hand.
“Oh, everything. It was the 80s, end of the Cold War, regimes crumbling every day, lots of work for us. Everyone thought we were spies. Very scandalous, two spies living together,” he said. Joe laughed, rolling his eyes.
“Ah yes, that was what was scandalous, you libertine,” he said.
“It was Berlin!” Nicky said. “Anything was possible. We fit in.”
“Sounds fun,” Nile said. Joe nodded.
“It was. But Andy and Booker came back from South America, and this one-” He nodded to Nicky. “He got bored. Did a lot of travelling in the 90s.”
“I wanted to see everything before the end of the millennium. Our first one together,” he said.
Joe sucked his teeth with amusement.
“Enough reminiscing, you make us sound so old,” he said. “How was the cathedral?”
“Still very beautiful,” Nicky said. “They’ve redone all the inside, all that Victorian stuff.”
Joe looked at Nile, and she knew he wasn’t asking her opinion on the architecture. She shrugged.
“It was nice,” she said. Joe raised an eyebrow.
“Nice?” he asked. Nicky drank some of his coffee.
“Uh, it wasn’t really like going to church. I don’t know where I… where we... fit in, to all this,” she said, and gestured, meaning everything, the universe.
Nicky shrugged.
“We never know for sure. Isn’t that faith?” he said.
"Andy says there is no god," Nile said quietly. There was still a part of her deeply shaken by their exchange in that plane out of Afghanistan, by her unanswered prayers. Nicky smiled, and leaned back in his chair.
"Ah, Andy remembers when she was worshipped as a god, maybe she is just jealous,” he said.
"Nicky, be serious," Joe said, in a quiet, disapproving voice. Nicky let his chair tip forward, and spread his hands, the same serious, patient expression he had when he taught her to fight, to speak Italian, to duel with a sword.
“Nile, I know it is hard to think of, but Andy was a god, as much as one can be on Earth. Who would have said otherwise? She could not die, and the gods of Scythia were more human than god, they walked among their people, they led their charges in battle, just as Andy did. Andy was as good as a god, in every way that matters. And when you are a deathless god, and you see that even you, with all your years of wisdom, with all your strength, with the greatest warriors at your shoulders, the greatest horse beneath you, when even then, you cannot save people, when your people sicken and suffer, when they are conquered, humbled, disgraced, how could you believe in the gods? Better to believe there are no gods, then to believe even you, at the height of your power, could do nothing."
“But that- that was thousands of years ago!” Nile protested. Maybe Andy had thought she was a god, but that wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same as the shaken, cracked foundations of Nile’s own faith.
Joe tipped his head.
“Andy has a long memory,” he said. “Nile, we all come to this in our own time. It’s alright to not know.”
The problem was, it wasn’t. She’d always been sure, God had always been a present certainty in her life. What would replace that? Would she find another person, like they had? Or a mission, like Andy?
“It’s alright for you guys, you have each other,” she said, and then immediately regretted it. It was a cheap shot.
Nicky just smiled.
“I don’t think Joe is God,” he said, and Joe put a hand over his heart like he was wounded.
“I’m hurt,” he said, and Nicky shoved him.
“Go get us some lunch,” he said, and Joe kissed his forehead as he stood. When they were alone, Nicky reached across the table, taking her hand in his, his fingers soft and warm.
“You remember how Joe and I met?” he asked. Nile nodded.
“In the Crusades,” she said. He hummed agreement.
“Nile, I know what it is to believe, so deep it is at the foundation of you. I went to war for God. I killed in his name, and I wept at the door of the Holy Sepulchre. But I was a different person then. I do not think I am a lesser person now, for my faith having changed with me,” he said.
“Do you believe in God?” she asked straight out, the question she’d been thinking since they’d stepped into the cathedral that morning.
“God and I have infrequent conversations,” Nicky said, with a wry smile. “And some days I do not think He is there. I did not think He was there in the sack of Jerusalem before I met Joe, and I did not think He was there in the other horrors I have seen. He forgave my doubt, as I am sure He forgives yours. Nile, it is not the question, if God will forgive you.” He squeezed her hand and released it. “You must forgive yourself first.”
She blinked hard, against the sudden tears, and dashed them away with her hand. Nicky did her the favour of pretending he didn’t see them.
“We are old,” he said. “But in the great scheme of the world, humanity is just a blink of an eye, and we are just a millisecond of that blink. No matter how long we live, the rocks and skies and water and deep ocean will have lived for longer than us. There are sharks in the ocean older than Booker, for God’s sake. Even Andy, who has seen every civilisation of humankind rise and fall, is just a piece of sand on the shore of time. Do I believe in God? Nile, it doesn’t matter. I believe in a purpose, a reason to all of this. You believe in that purpose too. I know you do.”
She nodded.
“I do,” she said, her voice thick. Nicky nodded decisively.
“There, then believe in that. Your faith is not gone, it is just elsewhere. I am sure the Lord understands.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Joe lingering in the doorway of the cafe, clearly trying to give her space. She sniffed, and rubbed her eyes, and gestured that he could come over. She looked at Nicky, flicking through Joe’s sketches, trying to let her cry in private.
“Did you really cry at the Holy Sepulchre?” she asked. Nicky grinned back at her.
“Like a baby,” he said. “We can go there sometime, if you’d like.”
She nodded.
“I’d like that,” she said.