‘Scrapper, I am,’ Jack says.
Grainer rolls his eyes. ‘That’s Wes, with the long arms.’
‘Gets me outta trouble,’ Wes says, flexing his biceps. ‘And into it, sometimes.’
‘And the little one’s Rat.’
‘I’ll be a wolf one day,’ Rat says, and all of them laugh. Like they’re playing at being men, and they are.
‘How’s it feel to be down here with us?’ Grainer says.
I pull the biggest smile I got, like that could pull the wall from behind me, like I don’t care. ‘Pleasure to be with such fine gentlemen.’
‘Where you from?’ Rat says.
‘Midfield.’
‘Country boy,’ Jack says. ‘Surprised you made it.’
That gets my back up, like he knows anything. ‘Where you from?’
‘Raised in these streets, and then the Academy when I was five, given to a Master when I was seven, and these streets again. They have you, these streets. Even when you’re gone, they know you’re coming back to ’em. They’re patient as the sky.’
The Academy, I can’t help but roll my eyes. Dougie’s an Academy boy too. He says it’s the hardest school for the hardest Day Boys, outside of those Crèche-raised.
‘You think that’s funny,’ Jack says. ‘Serve our Masters to the best of our skill, work and work, never much rest. And now this, cast out like them angels. Our lives are bloody tragedies.’
Grainer laughs. ‘But we’re still breathing. And I chose this. Couldn’t face the Change, and such a decision wasn’t seen too kindly. Some gifts offered you have to take. So, here we are not blooded or dead, bit sweeter than tragedy.’
I’m still taking it all in. I’ve already set it in my skull that I’m not staying here long: this isn’t my story. And it isn’t near no tragedy.
Grainer must see a bit of that in my face, because he smiles at me, but there’s a hardness there. There’s laughs and boasts in this room, but there’s scarce a breath of warmth. I’d not wish a life with just Day Boys on anybody. I think I know why they end up getting caught. A lost boy can only stay a lost boy for so long. Lost boys end up found or dead boys. Don’t know which I’m to be yet.
Then my stomach rumbles and I realise I’ve not eaten; that it’s still just morning and I’m in another world, and that my belly don’t care.
‘Hungry?’ Wes asks.
He reaches a long arm into a pocket and flicks me an apple lightning quick. I catch it—no drop for me in this crowd all hungry for failure—just a casual catch, like I’ve been catching things all my life, which I have.
‘Break your fast,’ Grainer says, looking sort of impressed. He nods at the door. ‘We’ve work to do.’
CHAPTER 19
THE CITY BEYOND the mountain, outside the Gates of Dawn. The Red City. Dry as dust. The streets are narrow, the buildings’ roofs touch—makes it harder to attack from above. Less space for the Masters to drop down from. And the edges of the gutters are barbed, which looks more effective than it probably is, or the Masters would have torn it down long ago.
‘Always been folk like us Day Boys,’ Grainer’s saying as he leads through streets that curl, the low roofs above us admitting sharp fingers of hard light. I can smell my sweat and the sweat of all those other lives in the dry hot air. ‘Poor fellows, quick but not quick enough for Mastery or not wanting it, and too wild for the other things. Cursed and blessed in one breath. Wasn’t luck you found us. We’re drawn to each other, all that turbulence of luck and dismay, it’s like magnets for the body and the soul.’
The Red City and the City in the Shadow of the Mountain wind around each other. The heart of domination—and resistance, such as it is. They say it’s only left so the Masters have something to prey upon. Good for breeding Day Boys too. The best Day Boys come from insurgent stock. Rebellion is energy, and it’s that energy they desire. You’ve gotta stir the blood or it grows thick and sluggish, and Day Boys aren’t cattle. We’re help and trouble, and that’s how they like us.
‘You’ve gotta toughen up.’ He gives me a look part pity, part disgust. ‘May the Sun and Sea take them Masters that don’t toughen up their boys. We’ve all done it, run this gauntlet.’
Toughen up! I want to smack Grainer one in the mouth, but that’d prove nothing. He’s not my enemy. He just don’t know what I’m capable of.
‘We’ve need of nails,’ he says, and parts thumb and forefinger a good length, maybe ten centimetres. ‘At least this long. You’ll see them, they’re the ones daubed in red paint.’
‘How many?’ I say.
‘As many as you can get, though ten should be enough, we take only what we need. And remember they’re after boys like us. You fail at this and you’ll end up in the Cage House.’ He gestures across the city towards a tower, it’s painted in the blue and white of the Constabulary. ‘They’ll be watching you. You don’t have the privilege of terror no more.’
I don’t know about that, I feel pretty terrified even though I know I can be cunning, and I can be quick. And just then I wish for Anne’s calming voice. Thought of her sends a yearning for Midfield through me like a flooding river. I’d be at weeping, but this for sure isn’t the time or place.
I can taste the dust. It’s red, sticks to the back of the throat, all that iron. Dain said we’re each and every one of us dust, and that’s half the reason why the city exists.
I hawk up a spit at my feet. It comes out chalky and red: it bubbles.
‘You ready to do this?’ Grainer asks.
I nod. Course I’m not, but life don’t hand us ready. Ready is an illusion. ‘Let’s go.’
Grainer grins, gestures down at the road. ‘Only you for this. Though there’ll be distraction. Be ready when it comes.’
I walk into the markets, clothes dirty, a smear of red mud down one cheek; clean’ll stand out, Grainer had said, and here and now I can see the truth in it. No one looks like they’ve bathed in the past week. Just the dust for some.
The streets are narrow, the buildings high. I push my way through, everything tingling, more people here on this street than in all of Midfield, feels like. I take the next corner, and there’s the shop. But before it there’s a butcher’s. Wonder how old George is, back home. I push my face against the glass. I can smell blood. There’s roo and venison hung, shocked of life by blade and gravity. Butcher catches me staring, shoos at me with a hand clenched round a cleaver.
Next door is where I’m headed. Hardware painted on a sign hanging out front. I walk past it once, plenty of people there for cover. I might just get away with this.
Somewhere behind me I hear whistling.
Sounds familiar, might as well be Dougie. Swells me a mite, brings a tear to my eye, and I hurry back to the shop, to show that I haven’t lost my nerve. The door jangles as I open it, eyes turn, but none linger. That’s something.
The place reeks of steel and commerce, as Dain might say.
There’s big round hessian bags, and the bags are filled with nails. There’s even a bright yellow scoop for each, like these are sweets—which throws me right back to Mary’s shop, and Anne, and I haven’t got tim
e for mooning on the past.
I flick a gaze towards the counter, a man with a hard face is working there and he catches my eye, and I know at once that he knows what I’m up to. So I flash him a grin and half expect him to come over, but he just gives me a dark look. Too busy or too lazy or too fed up with thieves.
I survey the bags, give them the once-over. There’s the ones smudged with red paint and I’m tempted just to reach in, snatch what I need and foot it, but I can feel eyes burning into my back.
I know predators, I know that prickle of a patient stare. You don’t catch a thief before they steal, you wait and catch them as they’re doing it. Proof incontrovertible, as Dain would say—although it never stopped him from jumping to conclusions.
If I had a watch, I’d be checking it right now.
Good that I don’t. There’s a bang outside.
‘Roof’s coming down,’ someone cries. And heads are craning. I’m finding it hard enough to ignore myself.
Another bang, cursing and howling.
I slip my hand careful and quick into the nail bag, passing the scoop, and draw out ten of them red nails, then I’m through the door and running, stepping light over shattered tiles, and a man’s on his arse looking stunned, head streaming with blood. No one cries and no one follows, and I take the turning streets, following those that rise up towards the mountain.
Grainer slaps my back a block away.
‘Did you see our distraction?’
‘Did you have to hit a man in the skull?’
Grainer shrugs. ‘Blood’s the best theatre, my Master used to say when he was feeling playful. Fella’s not dead. Barely clipped him.’
‘So how’d you do?’
I show him the ten, and he frowns. ‘I was hoping for twenty.’
You could bottle the disappointment dripping from his lips. This boy’s trouble, and he’s all that stands between me and the streets.
Twenty! I’ll give him twenty.
The red-headed nails are long and hard and heavy, I slap them into his hand, and walk back. There’ll be no distraction this time.
Twice in one day. I hover around the door, waiting for business, and when it comes, when those at the counter are distracted, I step lively to the nail bag. Ten, then twenty, then thirty.
I grab them, and turn to the door.
‘Thief! Thief!’ comes the cry.
Hands grab at me, and I’m swinging out with a fist full of nails. I make it to the door and out and I don’t stop running for several blocks, until. Until I’m somewhere utterly unfamiliar. But then this whole place is unfamiliar.
People look at me, then look away when they catch my eye. I feel transparent, but there’s no fear there.
‘Hey!’ someone cries, and I turn. Grainer. I come at him, my hand still tight around the nails. He takes a step back; he can see my rage, and the hurt in it.
‘You always yell out thief the second time?’
Grainer raises his hands. ‘It’s how we sort the wheat from the chaff. The crim from the dim.’
I shove the thirty nails into his palm. ‘Don’t you do that again.’
Grainer lets the nails drop. I feel my jaw go with it.
‘Never needed the nails,’ he says. ‘There’s a baker’s door across, you were the distraction. Come. Come home, there’s bread for your belly.’
And I can’t help but laugh.
It’s three days of thieving, and I get pretty good at it. Grainer’s a teacher, and his lessons are sharp. But I get cocky. Cockier.
A bakery, noonday crowd, a fresh shelf of loaves. Me and Grainer. A hand closes tight around my wrist. ‘Don’t think too highly of thieves around here.’
Grainer’s already gone, faster than smoke. Three loaves of bread missing, and the baker’s shaking his head at the floury shadows on the shelf.
‘Day Boy,’ I say. ‘I’m a Day Boy. My Master is Dain.’
The baker’s lips purse. ‘And your Master still wants ya? Don’t look like you’ve too long left in ya.’
I nod my head. ‘I swear it. I got lost, had to steal to survive.’
‘That story won’t earn you much sympathy here, boy. Streets are a-plague with the likes of you.’ He folds his arms across his chest, there’s flour all over them, they’re the kind of arms that could beat out a sorry, and I’m not feeling too sorry. ‘I’m sending for the Constabulary, and they will get in touch with your Master. Let’s see if ye’ve been replaced.’
‘He wants me, he does.’ I nod, looking contrite, looking desperate, and maybe I am.
The baker frowns, still considering whether a beating’s the more satisfactory option. Close thing. But he makes up his mind. ‘You better hope he does. Ain’t much of pleasant that happens in the halls of the coppers.’
The baker sends out the scowliest and smallest of his apprentices to find the cops. They’re not long coming, and all that time the shopkeeper keeps his eyes on me, and the door locked. No escaping for me.
Four of them come, and they’re big men like those who waited at the gates, though better dressed and harder eyed. The biggest of them jerks a thumb at me.
‘This the thief?’
The baker nods. ‘Says he’s lost his Master.’
‘Has he now?’ He crouches down before me, eye to eye. ‘We don’t look too kind on thieves and liars.’
‘I’m not lying,’ I say.
‘You better hope you’re not,’ the constable says, and they take me from the shop, marching me in silence along the street, past Grainer, who hardly gives me a look. There’s strong hands closed around my arms, dragging me to the great tower of the Constabulary. Even if it’s where I want to go, I can feel the heat of shame, hundreds of curious eyes studying me. But we’re left alone and by the time we reach the lock-up I’m almost happy to go through its great brass doors. Swallowed up by the heart of the Law.
We pass some dire things on my way down the halls to the cells. The hardest sort of men breaking. Them that aren’t broken make me realise just what sort of thing I play at, and that it’s just a game. Nothing tough about me. I could be snapped in two and worse by these fellas.
‘You,’ they shout. ‘You. Come play. Come and play.’
They grab at their crotches, they blow kisses from pursed lips and mouths with teeth all cracked. And some just stare with eyes dark and cold.
‘Quiet, all of ya. Quiet!’ The constable says, and it works some, or maybe they’re just done with their play. Still, quiet or not, I feel them staring.
And when we’re past the worst of them, walking by men that hunch in their cells and sob, the constable lets go of my arm.
‘Men can be the worst monsters of all,’ he says with some kindness, shutting me in a cell by myself. ‘You’ll be out of harm here. I’ll call your Master’s university.’
He must see my confusion, because he smiles a thin smile. ‘We’ve a line here, direct with the city. Not some backwards little town, we’ve working phones and all.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘What’s your name, sir?’
The constable shakes his head. ‘Ain’t gettin’ no name out of me. I was a Day Boy once,’ he says, ‘now I’m this. Boys don’t stay boys long.’
He smiles and gives me a long look. ‘You’re old enough to know that, stupid enough to ignore it. Time’s running down for you, either way. You’ve choices ahead that will need tending to if you are allowed them.’ He shakes his head. ‘Running. You should have never run. They look hard on it, specially those that decide to come back. There’s a weakness to it. And you know what they think of weakness, even the good ones. Are you sure you want me to call your Master?’
‘I’m sure,’ I say, and I sound it: even if he’s lit a bit of doubt in me.
‘Your Master’s a good one, then,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ I say.
I’m left alone in that cell. Hours go by, nothing to pass the time so I spend it thinking of home: the way the streets are straight, none of this curving of the city. The curves are what surrounds us, the ridge of trees that runs behind the town, and the scrub that trails away behind it. And I think of the orchard, and Anne, and Mary and the boys—those boys all strutting and laughing and mocking like they rule the world.
It’s a long enough wait that I’m half certain this is it for me.
And then the shadow of a Master falls across the bars of my cell.
‘So you have chosen to be found, eh, boy?’
I lift my head and Egan’s hard gaze is upon me.
CHAPTER 20
EGAN CAN’T STOP smiling, and here I am in this cage.
‘He says he belongs to a Professor Dain,’ the constable says with a touch of tremor in his voice, and who wouldn’t?
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