“Fine.” I pause. “We’re managing just fine.”
Tsam’s gaze flickers towards his father and back to me. “You seem… I mean, you look…” He tries to lighten his tone. “Pa’s not working you too hard, is he?”
Now it’s my turn to shuffle on my chair. “Of course not. I’m just a little tired.”
Tsam raises that eyebrow again and I continue, “Last night was… rough. But, mostly, I’m fine.”
Amin leans in, his fingers entwined around his mug. “What happened?”
I shake my head. “Just an inspection. Not us, the flats opposite. They arrested someone, and then…” I trail off. If it was only Amin I might tell him what happened, but Tsam is a Gold now. And when you live in the Red Quarter, Golds can’t be trusted.
My crumpled expression betrays me and Amin pats my hand. “Émi? What happened?”
I glance at Tsam. Amin follows my gaze and says, “You can tell us.”
Tsam is watching me. His eyes brim with concern and he is back on the edge of his chair. He glances at his gold sash and rests his hand over the top of it, as if covering it up will remove its implications. “You can trust me, Ém.”
I tap my nails against the rim of my mug. My heart is beating faster than usual and my skin starts to prickle. Not now, not here… The familiar warmth starts to rise up and up in my belly. Before I can stop it, a lightning spark jolts from my fingers and sends the mug flying off the table. Coffee sloshes across the floor and I scoot my chair back.
Amin and Tsam are staring at me. I shake my hand as if something is stuck to it and pinch my wrist. “I…”
Amin leaps up from the table and closes the shutters while Tsam watches me, unblinking. “Has this happened before?” he asks.
“Last night,” I whisper. “I don’t know how…”
Amin sits back down and pats my shoulder.
“How did I…?” I look up at him as though I’m expecting him to know the answer.
His usually genial expression has sharpened. He bobs down in front of my chair. “Listen to me, Émi. You did this last night?”
I nod.
“And the Cadets saw?”
I nod again. “They saw the flash of light. They came to the flat, looked around my room. I told them it was an accident with the lamp.” I picture the blanket on the bed, covered in splinters of broken glass… “They believed me. I think.”
Amin exhales slowly and looks at his pocket watch. “Émi, do you have anything in your flat that would get you in trouble, if they found it?”
I shake my head.
“Anything at all?”
I think of my charcoals falling to the floor. The spot where they landed, right next to the loose floorboard… They wouldn’t find it, surely?
Tsam is watching me too. “Émi?”
“I… there are some drawings, but they’re hidden.”
“What drawings?” Tsam asks.
I blush, because it sounds childish. “Sometimes I sketch what I see in my dreams. Abilene… the Watchers.”
Amin jumps to his feet. “Émi, you must go home, now. You must burn those drawings. They’ll inspect you tonight, mark my words. And they won’t leave until they find something.”
My tongue thickens in my mouth. “What if they… With the woman they arrested... They planted something in her flat. It wasn’t hers.”
Amin turns to Tsam. “Go with her,” he says. “They won’t try anything with a Gold present.”
“Are you sure, Pa?”
Amin nods and herds us towards the door. “Émi, we’ll talk more tomorrow. For now, be safe.”
I can’t bring myself to look at Tsam as we’re walking. I feel incredibly foolish. Why did I keep those drawings? Why did I create them in the first place? Thinking back, I can’t believe the Cadets never found them before. If they’d moved the desk, just a little, they could have noticed the hollow creak of the floorboard, prodded it, found it was looser than the rest, lifted it up… My thoughts spiral. The Cadets could be in the flat this very moment, hauling my mother out onto the street, shoving my blasphemous pictures into her fragile hands and saying, “You must have known! Your whole family is trouble.”
Tsam is talking to me and when I don’t respond, he takes hold of my elbow. “Émi,” he says, forcing me to meet his eyes. “It’ll be alright.” I want to believe him. I want him to be the boy who stopped me from falling out of the treehouse, who ran to fetch ointment for my scraped knee. But he’s not that boy; he’s a Gold. One day, he’ll probably be a Council Official. He knows nothing of the Cadets and their cruelty.
I tug myself away from him.“We need to hurry.”
When we reach the ferry, I’m relieved to see that Nor isn’t in the queue. She must have caught an earlier boat. The huddle of Reds clutch their permits and jostle closer together when they notice Tsam. Again, he fiddles uncomfortably with his sash. When we board, we sit close to the front. The Cadet on deck this evening is a girl, not much older than me, who I don’t recognise. She flutters her eyelashes at Tsam and wiggles her hip when she walks up and down.
He turns and whispers, “What do I tell people? If they ask why I’m with you?”
“They won’t ask.”
“They won’t?”
Is he really so naive? I raise my eyebrows at him. “They’ll think I’m…” When he still doesn’t catch on I force myself to say it. “They’ll think you’re paying me to… spend the night.”
I expect him to be embarrassed but instead he shakes his head and says, “Oh. That happens a lot?”
“In the Red Quarter? Yes. Work isn’t easy to find.”
For the rest of the journey, I try to see the changing scenery on the bank of the canal through Tsam’s eyes – trees becoming shrubs, grass becoming grit, houses becoming shacks. In the mellow glow of the moon it doesn’t look as raw as it does during the day, but I can’t imagine what he will think when he sees where we live. When I first came to the Red Quarter I compared everything to our life in Green, but Tsam lives in the Gold Quarter. To him, the surroundings in Green probably seem distasteful now.
When we disembark, the Cadet snatches my permit and looks at me like I am the personification of everything she cannot stand. She doesn’t speak, just flicks her eyes towards the gate and lets me past. When Tsam presents his permit, she smiles at him with her plump lips and says, “Good evening, sir. I haven’t seen you around these parts before.” All Golds are called ‘sir’, no matter their occupation. Tsam replies with a cursory, “Goodnight, Cadet,” and follows me out onto the street.
Darkness has closed in upon the Red Quarter, which means the taverns are in full swing as I lead Tsam up Rygour Street towards the flat. When we reach the gate that leads to Junas’s front door, and the stairs to the flat, my heart hammers faster and faster. Junas doesn’t allow visitors, so I whisper for Tsam to remove his boots and carry them in his arms.
We walk up the stairs and I knock three times on our peeling front door. As always, my mother opens it just a crack and says, “Who is it?”
“It’s Émi, I’ve brought someone to see you.”
She holds the door open wider, her worried eyes nothing but pinpricks in the dark. “Who is it?”
“It’s Tsam, Ma. You remember Tsam?” I push gently on the door and force her to open it; I am losing patience. My mother studies Tsam’s face. “Amin's boy! Why, yes, I remember!”
I shove past her into the flat. Tsam reaches out his hand and says, “It’s lovely to see you again, Mrs Fae.”
My mother smiles and pats her mousy hair. “Tea,” she says, “we should have tea… please forgive me… So long since we had a visitor.” Tsam tells her tea would be lovely, but I’m already heading for the bedroom.
“Tsam,” I call, “you wanted to see some the artwork I do for the Council?” I look back to see Tsam furrow his brow at me. He doesn’t know about my posters. I’m almost ashamed of myself, but there’s no time for that now. “My drawings… you wanted to see?” I
nod my head at him, urging him to say yes.
Inside the bedroom, Tsam helps me move the desk and I throw myself to my knees to loosen the floorboard that’s usually positioned under its back legs. I lift up the board and stick my hand into the hole, withdrawing a wad of papers and a small black sketchbook.
I replace the floorboard and hold my forbidden wares in front of me. Tsam opens his hand and I pass him the loose papers. He leafs through them, gently, carefully, as if they are precious and he is afraid of damaging them. “You drew these, Émi?”
I blush. “Yes.”
“How do you… I mean, where do these images come from?”
I shrug. “I dream sometimes.”
Tsam looks a little closer at the drawing in his left hand, then flicks through the others. “Who’s this?”
He is pointing to the silhouette of a girl. She has dark hair and sad eyes, but the rest of her face is covered by a scarf that’s wrapped tight around her mouth and nose. Sometimes I think she’s me, but I know she’s not. “She’s in the dreams,” I say. “All of them.”
“Does she have a name?”
I shake my head, walk over to my bedside table and retrieve the box of matches. “No, she’s just a girl. We should…?”
I drag our (thankfully) empty urine bucket out from the corner of the room and toss in the papers. When I strike the match, Tsam looks away but I force myself to watch until my imaginings have turned to ash.
I am fanning the smoke out of the window when Ma knocks and enters with two cups of tepid yellowish tea. She hands the least yellow cup to Tsam and says, “Won’t you come through to the sitting room?” as if we’re back home in Green with our delicate saucers. We are moving towards the door when we hear Junas shouting.
“Hey! You can’t just charge in here! You could at least knock!”
My mother releases an ohh sound and Tsam turns to the desk. The black sketchbook sits where anyone could see it. Without blinking, he shoves it into his pocket and then puts his hand on my mother’s arm.
“It’s alright, Patti,” he tells her. “Don’t worry.”
While she is distracted I grab the pee bucket and tip my tea on top of the flecks of ash, then I kick it back into its corner.
“Ma, stay here. We’ll handle this.” I guide her to the bed and encourage her to sit down.
This time, the Cadets really do knock the door off its hinges. As they enter, led by Falk, I jump away from Tsam and clutch at the buttons on the front of my tunic, so it looks like we’ve been caught doing something we shouldn’t. Tsam does his best to look flustered. Falk stops in the doorway as five more Cadets plough into our miniature living space and start tearing it apart. Downstairs, crashing and shouting indicates that Junas’s apartment is suffering the same fate.
Falk assesses Tsam and immediately notices the gold sash. His eyes flicker to his own, only silver, and he fixes a polite smile on his face. “My apologies for the interruption, sir.” He has to shout to make himself heard as the Cadets drag our sideboard away from the window and pull its drawers out onto the floor. Our makeshift tea kettle spills its contents onto the tattered rug. My mother’s last remaining china teacup smashes as it is thrown to the ground.
Tsam pulls back his shoulders. “What is the meaning of this?”
Falk chuckles. “Nothing for you to concern yourself with, sir. Just a routine inspection.”
“I was under the impression we had dispatched with this kind of barbaric behaviour?” Tsam barks, as a Silver Cadet takes a knife to one of our cushions and starts to unravel its innards.
Falk clears his throat. “Unfortunately, sir, these are grave circumstances. We have been informed that this girl,” he points at me with a tapered fingernail, “may be hiding forbidden goods. Perhaps even… magickal goods.”
Tsam pretends to look alarmed. “I see.”
“Don’t worry. If there’s anything here, my men will find it. And if not… We’ll leave you to finish your… business.” Falk turns his eyes on me as he says the word ‘business’ and my throat constricts. He steps closer and reaches his hand to my face. His fingertips linger by my cheekbone. “I had no idea, Miss Fae, that you were an… entertainer.”
“This room’s clear, sir.” The Cadet who’s been mauling our sofa interrupts.
Falk snaps his eyes upwards and says, “Fine, check the bedroom.”
I hear my mother whimper as they shove her from the bed back into the living room. Tsam’s hand twitches as she crumples onto the floor and starts to stroke her broken belongings.
“Falk, wait!” I say, surprising myself by uttering his name. “I want to watch them.”
Falk opens his mouth at me, momentarily stunned, then clenches his fist as if he wants to punch me in the stomach. “What did you say?”
“I want to watch them, so I know they’re not planting anything.” Tsam’s presence has given me a dangerous sense of bravado but, as Falk glowers at me, my faith pays off and Tsam steps in.
“That seems fair, Cadet.”
Falk is bewildered, but his eyes return to Tsam’s gold sash and, eventually, he tells me to go ahead. Tsam follows me, Falk too, and we watch as the Cadets tear the sheets from the bed, toss them out of the window, and overturn my bedside table. Violently, they rip the desk away from the wall and empty every one of its drawers. Then, the moment I envisioned, one of them treads on the loose board and shouts, “Stop!” He wiggles his foot up and down and when Falk hears the creaking sound he charges in and rips the board up into the air. Triumphantly, he thrusts his hand into the hole and interrogates every crevice.
“Anything, sir?” asks one of the Cadets.
Falk rises slowly. “Nothing.”
“Well, then. All a big misunderstanding,” Tsam says, forcing a lightness into his voice. “Perhaps Miss Fae and I can now continue where we left off?”
Falk gestures for the Cadets to leave, then takes one last look around my room. His eyes rest for a brief moment on the charred windowsill and he is about to leave when he spies the bucket.
My chest tightens, my abdomen feels hot and spiky. I clench my fingers behind my back, because maybe if I grasp them hard enough the sparks won’t be able to fly.
Falk meets my eyes and refuses to break his stare as he takes hold of the bucket and pours what he thinks is urine onto my mattress. Then he peers inside the bucket.
“Just checking,” he says with a thin smile. “You never can be too careful.”
Five
My mother trembles for at least an hour after Falk and the Cadets leave. Tsam and I use my meagre selection of tools to fix the battered door back on its hinges and then he offers to stay with her while I go to check on Junas.
In the three years we’ve lived above him, I’ve never entered Junas’s apartment, but as I tap on the door it swings open.
I tiptoe inside.
Junas is sitting in the dark in a corner of his sitting room. When he sees me, he croaks, “Émi, are you alright?” I tell him I’m fine, fumble for some matches and light the lamp by the window.
This room is in just as much disarray as ours – belongings smashed and strewn across the floor, pictures ripped from the walls, curtains pulled down from their poles.
Junas shakes his head. “They’re getting worse. Used to always knock, at least. Now they just barge in. Sneaky, good-for-nothing, sons of Mahg is what they are…”
A pang of guilt tugs at my chest. I feel like I should apologise but if Junas knew I’d brought this trouble to his door he’d have us out on the street by morning. I start righting some of his knick-knacks but he tells me not to bother.
“I’m sure you’ve got your own mess to sort out, Émi.”
I reach into my pocket. “The rent we owe,” I say, passing him some of the crowns Garvey gave me in exchange for my necklace. Junas takes the money and counts it into a pot on his mantlepiece. “Very good,” he says, then half-heartedly, “try not to be late with it next week.”
When I return to the fla
t, my mother is lying on our tortured sofa with a cloth over her eyes. Tsam is gathering broken pieces of crockery and ornaments and dropping them carefully into the drawers in the sideboard. “I’m sure we can fix these,” he says as I enter. “We just need some glue.”
“Thanks,” I say, “but you should probably go now. I need to get Ma to bed.”
Tsam blinks at me and looks at his watch. “Émi, it’s past midnight. The ferry’s stopped running.”
“Ah.” I glance towards the bedroom. “Okay, I’ll put Ma in there and you can sleep on the sofa.”
Tsam agrees and when I struggle to heave my mother to her feet, he slips an arm around her waist and helps me coax her across the room. “That’s it, Patti. Well done. A nice rest and you’ll feel much better.”
All of our bedding is now on the pavement outside, either sodden with dirt or snatched by passers by, so I tell Ma she’ll have to make the best of it.
“Oh Émi,” she moans as we lay her down, “the mattress is wet.”
I tell her it’s only tea and not to worry. Besides, the wetness will help cool her down. She grumbles, but lays down anyway and strokes my cheek.
“You’re such a good girl, you don’t deserve this. I’m sorry, Émi. Your father, he’d be sorry too. It’s not fair, it’s just not fair…”
I pat her hand and whisper, “Night, Ma.”
At least tonight she will sleep.
In the living room, Tsam perches on the sofa and I join him. I tuck my knees up under my chin.
“I can’t offer you tea, we’re out of water,” I say, gesturing to the empty flask by the window. Tsam looks at me as though he can’t believe there’s such a thing as running out of water. “Usually, I fetch some from the well on my way home,” I explain.
“I see,” Tsam says, and I think he really is beginning to see.
Now that the flat is quiet and my mother is sleeping, the sparsity of our living quarters is thrown into stark relief.
“Well,” I say, opening my arms like I’m giving him a grand tour, trying to smile. “This is home.” When Tsam doesn’t reply, I add, “It’s not much, but Junas has a kind heart and there are far worse places.”
Fire Lines Page 4