The God Eaters

by Jesse Hajicek

  "They may as well continue, in case he intends to wander the wilderness, but it seems more likely he'll make for a population center."

  "Trestre is closer, sir, but I seem to recall Trevarde had some organized crime connections in Burn River."

  Burn River; named for the waterway that drained from the locus of concentrated power that people called the Tama Burn. Thelyan, knowing its source and function, was interested to know whether the connection between Trevarde and the Burn was coincidental. "Send a team there to investigate. There's no permanent Watch office in the town, is there? Authorize them to get assistance from the local police."

  He unsealed the room so that Warren could dispatch these orders. Then, satisfied that events were well in train, Thelyan turned to the less interesting business of his office. "Let me see the repair estimates. I'll see what I can do about your funding."

  Chapter Thirteen

  "There's a trick to it." Kieran was instructing Ash how to jump right, because it was dodgy enough having the northerner tag along without him breaking his leg. "You watch real close when I do it. And for fuck's sake don't jump in any holes or bushes or anything."

  "Sure. I can do it."

  "Hope so." Kieran leaned out, watching the lights of Burn River spread, flickering, across the horizon. There was still a wash of purply-orange light across the western sky, and they'd have to jump while that still gave them enough to see the ground. Otherwise they'd have to wait for the lights of the city, and someone was sure to notice them. "All right. Flat place coming up.

  Remember, if you can't hit the ground running, then drop and roll."

  He judged the train's speed and the terrain, and leapt; the ground jammed into his feet painfully hard, but he managed a few awkward chicken-steps before falling to his knees, and it didn't feel like anything was actually damaged. Half fearing Ash would just stay on the train, he got up and jogged alongside.

  Nope. There went Ash, flailing, tumbling, landing flat on his back. He gave an abortive couple of gasps, then wheezed in a huge breath and started coughing. Kieran went to help him up. "Quiet!"

  he ordered.

  "Sorry. Got the wind knocked out of me."

  "Well, keep it down." He gestured around the area they'd landed in: deeply gullied urban-outskirt wasteland, populated by tin-roofed shacks and rusting machinery. More of the latter than the former. "There's bums and whatnot out here. I don't feel like getting in a fight right now."

  "I can take 'em." Ash made a few weak punching gestures, grinning to show it was a joke.

  Kieran shook his head. "Come on." He set out down the railbed, fatigue keeping his pace down to a weary trudge.

  He was having trouble thinking straight. It was the hunger. Fortunately, he'd planned out this part while his brain was still working, and all he had to do was follow the program. He just prayed certain people still remembered him, and others didn't learn he was in town. And that Ash didn't screw things up. The kid was way too nice for this kind of thing. Too idealistic. Obviously thought his deprivation-fired crush on Kieran was True Love and meant to hang around until hanging around got him shot.

  Kieran had tried again to explain, in the boxcar, though he'd known it was useless; evidence that his mind was gimping from lack of food. You should have gone back north, Kieran had told him.

  You've got friends there. They would've hidden you.

  I wouldn't have made it there, Ash had replied. I'm not as good at surviving as you are.

  I'm not sticking my neck out to save yours, if we get in trouble, Kieran had warned. From the martyr face Ash had put on, he'd believed it. Not thinking straight either, apparently, not putting two and two together. He's surely seen Kieran's agony of relief at when he'd rolled into that boxcar. Kieran figured, if he hadn't been on magic-wrecking rails at the time, sensitives from coast to coast would've sat up at the same moment and thought: oh thank you fate -- never let me leave you again.

  But Kieran was damned if he'd admit it. His intention to split up had been the correct one. Their chances of survival had gone down the crapper. He really shouldn't be so happy about it.

  They walked through the dusk, and as full night fell the city's glow began to brighten overhead.

  Burn River was a major shipping nexus, point of departure for loads of ore from the mountains, point of arrival for everything heading inland to Canyon and Trestre; produce, dry goods, the raw materials for manufacturing, and people fleeing the overcrowded north to strike it rich on the frontier. What these arrivals usually found instead of wealth was drunkenness and social diseases, drugs and robbery, all indulged by an underfunded, understaffed police force, half of whom were on the take. It was a sick town, a canker, a giant bird dropping on the clean surface of the desert. It was also busy, vital, interesting, and a very good place to get lost.

  To Kieran's surprise, coming home felt like coming home. He breathed in the scent of the factory smoke, horse, and fried food, and some knot in him loosened. He was on his own ground now.

  An animal response to territory. As they drew near the switching yard, the deep mourning howl of a freight sounded; soon the heavily laden beast was grinding past them at a snail's pace, three engines pulling some fifty or sixty cars of taconite.

  Kieran remembered playing games with those rusty, slightly squashed pellets of raw iron; they made inferior marbles, but excellent slingshot bullets. He remembered climbing the sand piles behind the glass factory. Remembered lying on his cot in his mother's room, looking at the brown square of city glow on the wall opposite the window, the mottled piece of wall that always seemed frescoed with dancing figures when he was half-asleep, listening to the sound of trains hauling.

  The sense of peace brought by coming home loosened his tongue so far that he even told Ash about it. "I've always loved trains. They're freedom, you know? I would have liked to drive one.

  But natives are banned from those jobs. The only way to get on a train is as a porter, and that's all yessir-nosir."

  "Not your style," Ash said quietly, with a smile in his voice.

  "At all," Kieran agreed. "I invented jumping boxcars all by myself. Didn't know anyone else did it until I hopped a Canyon local and found four old guys already in the car." He chuckled.

  "Hopped right out again."

  "Probably wise."

  "I was a skittish kid. Makes sense, I guess. I was in the way. Kind of extraneous. And you get to the point pretty early on of saying, all right, there's no place for me, I'll just dig a place. Kind of under and between. That was why I loved the trains. I can't explain."

  "No, I understand," Ash said. "They're ignored space. Temporary, mobile -- they don't seem to belong to anyone. That empty boxcar was like a safe little burrow, all the safer because it was moving."

  "Exactly." Kieran looked at Ash in surprise. "Yeah."

  Ash smiled slightly. "For me, in Ladygate, it was libraries and schools and churches. They're full of extra rooms no one ever goes into. And you can find the most marvelous things in there. I once found a sapphire earring. Just one, stuck between the boards of the attic floor, in the South Bank Library. I kept it in a box with all this other junk -- I'm kind of a magpie, actually. I've been feeling naked for a while now, not having any possessions."

  "Well, they'd be a pain in the ass while you're running."

  "Oh, I know. But I need worthless gewgaws or I'm not happy. You wait. As soon as I have pockets I'll start accumulating junk. Keys and pebbles and broken jewelry and that kind of crap."

  "Huh." Kieran considered this, a way of being that seemed similar to the hoarding habits of whores, but different in that it seemed to have no reference to wealth nor impact on status.

  Maybe it was just Ash's way of being nuts. Everybody, Kieran was certain, was nuts in one way or another. "Never trusted stuff, myself. Can't rely on it. Gets lost, broken, taken away, et cetera."

  "Ah." A long pause. "My aunt never took my stuff away. She even brought me things. A whole ring of numbered key tag
s, once -- that was my favorite. Gold pen nibs, beach glass, a crystal stopper from a broken decanter --"

  "She was as crazy as you are."

  "Absolutely."

  Kieran laughed, and Ash joined him. It was a moment of friendship, laughing together in the sharp, dry night air, just as Kieran recognized the row of dark warehouses they were passing and got another dose of homecoming. It was pleasant. It was a little marred, though, by his uncertainty about the reception they'd get when they reached their destination. He'd been away a long time. He wasn't sure the same people would be there, or if they were, how they'd feel about seeing him.

  He was so tired and hungry that he had no idea what he'd do if they wouldn't let him in.

  This was Andel Street, he knew, though there were no signs this far from the city's center. They were in the right part of town, but if they stayed on this road they'd be seen. Andel turned into pubs and boardinghouses five or six blocks up from here, and while prison clothes didn't look that different from an ordinary worker's outfit, he himself was kind of conspicuous, big as he was, and their filthy, barefoot condition would draw interest. He peered down each cross street they came to until he recognized Caire and turned them north on it.

  This took them even deeper into industrial territory, but Ash never questioned him. The northerner was reeling, stumbling, with a fixed smile on his face, but still he trusted Kieran absolutely.

  Quit trusting me, Kieran thought. I don't want that kind of power over you.

  But that wasn't the sort of thing you could say out loud, not even to an empath. He supposed Ash would be disillusioned soon enough. Kieran couldn't go on protecting him forever, after all.

  Though he meant to try. He'd made his effort to make Ash go home, and that was it, he'd shot his bolt, he didn't have the strength to try again. It was a surprise to realize this, and a relief. He'd gotten used to watching over Ash in Churchrock, he guessed, and now it was just the only way he could be comfortable.

  Past the factories -- not the only industrial district in town, but the cheapest -- came an area of long, low houses, all perfectly dark: worker barracks. Curfew was strictly enforced in those places, at least so far as lights went, but that didn't keep the men from slipping out to visit the one house in the neighborhood that had a light showing.

  It had been three years since his last visit, and while he still remembered how to sneak around back, the gap in the fence that had been a tight fit for a rangy sixteen-year-old was impossible for him now. He found a bit of rusted barrel hoop in the alley, smashed it flat on the ground, and slipped it through the back gate to pop the latch. To his relief, it was still the simple affair it had been before; if they'd put in a real lock, he supposed he'd have had to climb the fence, and in his present state he wasn't sure he could have done it.

  Muffled laughter came from the house, the artificial kind he remembered hearing so often.

  Fortunately, no one was using the back yard. Paper lanterns hung forlorn from the half-dead trees; rusted iron furniture was scattered about, and some wooden tables, one with an assortment of empty bottles on it, labels warped by water; there had not been a party here since before the rains.

  "Where are we?" Ash whispered.

  Kieran shushed him. He closed the gate and discarded his impromptu breaking-and entering tool.

  "Just look harmless."

  "My specialty."

  It felt strange to climb the three steps to the back porch. Stranger to do it with longer legs, bigger feet. To hear the boards that had once chirped at his bird-boned weight now groan under his heavier step. To have to bend to look into the kitchen window; to tap on the glass and see a total stranger start and squeak in surprise.

  The girl at the kitchen table sat staring at him for a long time, hand to chest, cup forgotten in her hand. She was wearing a ratty yellow robe over some kind of frothy underwear, her hair frizzled and her makeup smeared. She was white, blond, a bit pasty. She was probably frightened to see a big, filthy, tattooed native staring in at her, unsettled that it should occur in the one room in the house that clients never saw.

  Kieran mouthed his question at her, aware that she would not hear it unless he yelled, and unwilling to yell. When this failed to conquer her fear with curiosity, he turned to his companion.

  "Ash, look pitiful."

  "Not hard," Ash said with a rueful grin. He waved at the girl, waggling his fingers like a child.

  "Hello? Miss? Could you open the window?"

  Either Ash's waifish face did the trick, or she realized that they could go around the front if all they wanted was to come in. She crossed to the window and bent to open it a crack. "What do you want?"

  Kieran tried to sound friendly. "Is Shou-Shou still here?"

  "What do you mean, still here? She supposed to go somewhere?"

  "It's been a while since I was in town. Could you get her to come talk to me?"

  The girl looked suspicious. "Depends on what you want."

  Kieran sighed his exasperation. "Girl, if I wanted to make trouble I'd just do it. Go get her. I'll wait on the porch here. Oh -- and not that you would, but if you tell anyone else about me, Shou-Shou will pull out your neck hairs with a tweezers."

  The girl raised an eyebrow, but shrugged her acquiescence as she shut the window. Maybe his knowledge of the way Shou-Shou punished girls who annoyed her convinced this one that he knew what he was talking about.

  "This," Ash said abruptly, "is a bordello."

  "That would be dignifying it."

  To his credit, Ash accepted this and let the subject drop.

  A few moments later, a far shorter time than he had expected, he heard the click of the kitchen door's deadbolt. It opened to reveal a plump, sagging native woman of middle years, clothed in purple, her hair bleached an unnatural orange, a grin spreading across her face as she looked at him.

  "Well," she said. Then, sounding more pleased with every word, "Well! Fuck me blue. Little Kieran. Little Kieran has come home to roost. I was sure they couldn't kill you."

  "Little Kieran," Ash whispered, grinning.

  "Who's your friend?" she continued. "No, let me guess. This must be that Shanin Dyer they talked about."

  Kieran felt a wince go across his face, and saw it echoed in Shou-Shou's as she realized she'd blundered. "No," he said simply. "Shan didn't make it. This is Ash Trine."

  Ash made a deep, theatrical bow. "At your service, ma'am. I hesitate to cut short the reunion, stranger that I am, but any minute you're going to let us in and I'd like it to be now. I promise I'm housebroken, declawed, and I barely shed at all." He put on his most pathetic face. "Feed me?"

  Shou-Shou laughed. "Get your skinny asses in here. There's a pile of leftovers, some customers ordered a banquet and then got too impatient to eat it. You can sleep in the attic -- good god, boy, you look like you been the cat's dinner, and you ain't had no dinner yourself for a long time."

  This as they came inside, into the light. Kieran looked down at himself, then at his reflection on the inside of the window glass.

  It was a shock. He'd known in the abstract that he was thinner, that he was dirty and bedraggled.

  But it was still unpleasant to see it. His eyes were hollow, as were his cheeks, and all the roundness had gone from his muscles until he looked like a sculpture of wire and bone. Mud and blood crusted his skin, matted his hair into clumps. His lips were chapped and cracked. His eyes looked huge and strange in his face, luminous, feral, like those of an injured animal.

  This inspired him to take a closer look at Ash. The white boy was, if that were possible, even thinner, even dirtier, all his exposed skin crisscrossed with scratches. His hair stood out in snaggles all over his head, so dirty it looked dark brown instead of red. He needed rest and food.

  Kieran was prepared to grovel to get it for them, but knew that Shou-Shou was proof against histrionics. He spoke calmly instead.

  "I'll tell you the truth, Shou-Shou. We've escaped from prison. They'll be hunt
ing us."

  She looked skeptical. The blonde hovering at the other end of the kitchen just looked confused.

  "There was a storm," Ash put in. "Broke the place open. We're not the only ones who got out."

  "We covered our trail pretty well," said Kieran, "but they will be looking for us. If they find out you've sheltered us, you'll be in trouble. It's up to you. If you tell us to go, Shou-Shou, we'll go."

  For a long second, she considered the risks. Then she snorted. "Looking like that? I don't think so. Sit down, both of you, and stop talking noble bullshit. Ami, get the boys something to eat."

  She glanced over her shoulder at the door that led to the public part of the house. "I've got customers." She swept out, closing the door firmly behind her.

  Kieran turned to Ash, ready to fish for praise at this satisfactory solution. The northerner had his head down on the table. He was sleeping like a child.