[b]Sevan, Armenia[/b]

In Sevan, they found a town straddling the line between resort and barracks. The empty green hills of the Armenian highlands rolled onwards like a thick lumpy blanket ruffled from one horizon to the next, with the sea blocked by the city itself. Dull grey concrete buildings mixed with fresher architecture plaster and paint. A lone tower built on wooden stilts protected the approach, and a lone machine gun watched over the road. This wasn't the only sign of the war they had seen. On the way in, a crashed fighter still lay in a crater of ash and kicked up dirt, its cockpit and engine charred along the edges. Sahle watched it worriedly as they passed, taking note of the goat wearing swimwear that was painted on its nose. The image had turned gray and was splattered with black. [i]Do they leave the bodies in those?[/i] He had wondered. War was not something he could get used to. He couldn't imagine anybody ever did. 

They had passed through the worst of the war in Syria. The Turks had made a final push, shelling rebel positions with such ferocity that it looked as if the clouds were on fire. The bright flashes and deep thrumming of their guns had kept him away, watching the grey on the horizon as it sizzled with light. It had looked like storm gods going to war with one another. Despite that, they never saw a shell fall, being too far from the action itself. They had only smelled it, and it had smelled of fire and dust. Shortly after they had found and claimed a military vehicle rusting on the side of the road

But now they were away, in Armenia. The place where the war started, but for them the place it had ended. Yared and Marc road in front, but that did not stop Sahle and Aaliyah from leaning against the bench of a front seat and staring out across the windshield. This same vehicle they arrived in Sevan in.

Most of Sevan was nothing more than another town, filled with stores just opening as the sun came up and apartments slowly leaking the people who lived inside of them. Most of them were women or old men, as the younger men had yet to return from the war. It wasn't until they chanced upon a smooth lakeside avenue that they found what they had came for. 

There were restaurants and cinema's and beach side kebab stands, but there were also bars and clubs and hotels that promised a different sort of good time. Painted metal signs and the dimly colored shapes of unlit neon lights spelled their names. [i]Lake Place[/i], [i]The Prancing Goat[/i], [i]Maria's[/i]. Most were dark, abandoned for the day or for the week. Those they could find were not hiring, citing the end of the war as the end of their business. It was only once they had exhausted half of their leads that they found one that would hire them.

The [i]Dead Soldier's Den[/i] was a short hangar shaped building with a simple plaster front, hardly fitting in with its flat-roofed brick and grey-stone neighbors. It favored simple cast-iron letters bolted to the wall over any other signs, and its door was a simple tin thing that looked locked from just seeing it. It was only when Yared shrugged and went to turn the knob that it opened easily and let them in. 

The inside of the Dead Soldier's Den smelled like piss and aging wood. The floor was covered in thin carpet with filth-tinged red patterns broken only by stains. It warped as they walked on it, but they found that it muffled their steps. Soon, they were in an open room. A stage dominated the wall on the far end, built from raised dark wood and heavy red curtains. In between there and the entry were dozens of round wooden tables with chairs placed on top hanging by their seats. On the wall nearest to them, a dark-wood bar stretched across the room.

"We are not open, you are seeing." a syrupy voice with a thick Russian accent flanked them. Startled, all four musicians jumped.

The Russian was a taller man with sleepy eyes and a pale, moon-shaped face. His hair was a greasy streak hanging from under a fur cap. He wore brown-green fatigues, and had an assault rifle tossed over his shoulder. Sahle made eye contact with the gun barrel and Yared did the speaking.

"We are here looking for a job, friend." Yared said in his mellow, friendly tone. "We are musicians from Africa."

"From Africa is what you say." he said, "I do not know why you would come to this country. It is cold up here, and we do a lot of war." he smirked and swung his gun into his arms. The action caused all four of them to back away at once, but that only made the Russian laugh. "I am thinking you are not comfortable with by equipment, but do not worry. I am the bouncer here, and I have found that having this with me means I have to bounce people around much less." He shrugged and tossed it back around his shoulder before extending an arm. "My name is Vasily. I think that we might be hiring some, but I will have to call the boss. He is doing some sleeping right now, so you will have to wait."

And so they did. The Russian went behind the bar and picked up a phone, spinning the dial quickly. [i]Bzzt[/i] [i]Bzzzzzzt[/i] [i]Bzt[/i]. Soon enough, he was speaking to it in a low voice.

Sahle and his friends found their seats easily enough in the empty bar. Marc began to play with a small white-wax candle in the center, chipping dried dribbles of wax away with his thumbnail. "This might be it, friends." Yared said confidently. "This might be our new place."

Sahle was less certain. At first, the odd Russian kept his attention, but soon he was looking around the building. There was no true ceiling, but instead he could see the roof as it went from one end of the building to the other, its black hollowness passing over even the walls. Lights hung from exposed electrical wire that ran along the wooden and steel beams. In one corner, Sahle spied a pair of pants dangling from a beam and could not help but imagine the poor drunk who tossed them up only to have them never return. 

Looking back at the bar, Sahle saw the namesake for the first time. In a glass case, hidden in the shadows between two massive kaleidoscope-like mirrors, was a glass case holding a corpse. It looked like a shriveled old man, gray and hunched with withered limbs and dark pits where its eyes had once been. Its near-toothless mouth was agape. To complete the image, it had been dressed in a dusty green-brown military uniform that looked like a design from a century before.

It had caught Aaliyah's eye as well. Sahle could see that she was more confused by it then she was uncomfortable, but for him it was nothing but creepy.

When Vasily returned, he caught them staring at the dead man. "He is nothing to see I think." Vasily quipped, "Just another dead man, and there are more of those than there are live ones. Or at least that is what my babushka used to say. If it is between us, I don't know if he was a soldier. I think he was just some man resting in a cemetery until the old man took him and dressed him up."

"Who is this old man?" Sahle asked. 

"Sanos Horasian" Vasily explained. "He is truly an old man. It will take him a while to find his underpants, and it will take him a while longer to get down here."

When Horasian finally did make it, it was clear that Vasily had not exagerated. Horasian looked like a man in his eighties. His hair was sparse and snow-white, sticking to his head like tendrils of snow following mountain gorges. His skin was splotched and wrinkled, and his jowls hung from his face like those of an old hound. His eyes were a deep blue, but clouds marred his right. His weight worsened his already damaged health, and his gut hung over his trousers and buried his waistband, which was kept up by a pair of puke-brown suspenders.

"Musicians." he grumbled, phlegm shifting in his throat. "Why do you wake me for this, eh?"

"Sanos, you need to hire some entertainers that are not cold fish. Every night we watch them flop and flop on stage and nobody likes it. These nice people are all the way from Africa."

"Blackies then." Horasian coughed. "I hear your people are good with the bongo drums, but I don't need bongo drums. I need dance musicians."

"We have played in dance clubs from Cairo to Addis Ababa." Yared replied enthusiastically.

"Don't brag about how many places you've worked." the old man moaned, "That just tells me you've been fired a lot. Now tell me, what type of music do you play."

"Mostly African Blues and Jazz scene, friend." Yared replied. "But we can do others..."

"Hot dancing music then." Horasian had began to breath heavy. Whether it was the talking or the standing that had wore him out, he took a chair. from a table and placed it down. His butt hovered like a helicopter trying to find a landing pad in a rain storm before he finally found his seat. Once he was down, he eyed Aaliyah.

"And does this one dance, or..."

"I...I..." Aaliyah stuttered. Before she could speak, Horasian interrupted her.

"What is wrong with your eye, girl? Did one of these men sock you?" 

She shook her head. "I lost it, sir."

"Lost your eye." Horasian guffawed. "That is a shame, you might have had a pretty face before. Well, I know a guy what can fix you up. Still, I need girls for dancing and cooking. There ain't much more use for women. Dance, cook, raise sons. That is what your kind should be doing now."

"I have always found women good for warming my cockadoodle." Vasily added in his syrupy Russian accent.

Aaliyah looked like she was under siege. Sahle felt angry suddenly, and he put his arm around her as if it were a wing. "She sings, Mr. Horasian."

"Sings." Horasian looked at them funny. "Bah. We already what and got a singer, don't we Vasily?"

"Levon sounds like somebody stole his vocal chords when he was a boy and swapped them with a cow. Not a cow's vocal chords even, the entire cow." Vasily countered. "Most people like to hear pretty girls sing, not everyone is like you Sanos. If we all had your taste, we could fire most of our entertainers and just put a sputtering truck and a naked girl on the stages."

Horasian hocked and coughed so hard it sounded as if he was choking. It took a moment for Sahle to realize what he was hearing was a sort of laughter. "Maybe." the old man admitted. "Maybe. We will see tonight. Can you be here at nine?"

Yared nodded.

"Good." the old man said, "I will pay you later."