There’s a great low moaning out in the dark that builds and echoes back from the mountains: a roaring wild sadness. Egan’s woken too, and his grief is tied to a great rage.
Dain nods. Looks to Certain.
‘Stay with him,’ he says. ‘There’s so much danger for him.’
‘I don’t care about no danger,’ I say, ’cause I would let it wash over me this night. Drown me.
Dain dips his head towards me. ‘You should. I want you to. Grove would want you to.’
‘He’s dead, he don’t want nothing.’
Dain strokes my face with his cold hands. ‘Oh, my boy.’
He tilts his head, hears something I can’t. His eyes narrow, his shoulders hunch, and he shows a little teeth.
‘Keep him safe,’ he says to Certain. ‘You’ve ash on you?’
Certain nods.
‘Good, have it near.’
Then he is gone.
I hear them in the darkness. The terrible noise of Masters at fight. Distant then close, shrill and low and all the sounds that rip the fabric of the night. One time there’s a bloody big crash, the earth shakes. Certain sits taller, but he doesn’t leave my side. Bag of ash in one hand, axe in the other.
‘What you going to do if he comes?’ I say.
Certain gives me a look, he isn’t one to lie. ‘Nothing I could do. Master in full wake, and rage. But I can stop you walking out there. I can keep you from getting yourself killed. There’ll be other Masters out tonight, looking for leverage, perhaps looking to curry favour with Egan. They might kill you just as easily.’
‘And what if I want to die?’
‘You don’t. Believe me when I say this, for I know.’ Certain says. ‘Even if it feels like you want death, you don’t.’
And maybe he’s right. I stay in that kitchen, and I hear them Masters at fight. Not a bit of sleep I have. Or maybe I do, and that fight becomes part of it. Certain sits by me.
‘I want to change it,’ I say. ‘I want to change it all back.’
Certain sighs. ‘Only thing we can ever change is ourselves. Even that’s hard. Thing is, Mark, we never change as much as we want, and we always change more than we fear.’
He rises when the door opens.
‘Put down the axe, man. I’m not some wolf to be cut,’ Dain says, and he stands, unsteady: his clothes torn, flesh marked with all the violences of battle.
Certain drops his axe and his bag of ash. ‘What happened out there?’
Dain shivers a bit.
‘We filled the sky with our rage. The collision of Imperatives.’ He looks dazed. ‘With claw and fang and all the dark sendings and snarls of my kind, we fought, brought down hail, and trees. And the others lurched and gyred around us, but they did not interfere. They knew better. Either of us could have killed them this night. He fought with all his strength, and it surprised him that I was his match.’
He blinks, and looks down at me. ‘Surprised myself. You need to sleep. You’re safe for now.’
‘No one’s ever safe,’ I say.
‘Foolish, foolish boy, to say such a thing when the whole world has been bent to your welfare,’ he says, voice scarcely a whisper driven soft by the Sun so near. ‘The worst is done. The worst is done.’
He nods once to Certain. ‘You can go now, but I would appreciate an eye kept over the house.’
‘It’ll be done,’ Certain says.
Then he is out the door.
Dain touches my shoulder with a hand that isn’t cold, but feverish. ‘Sleep,’ he says, and he stumbles, almost falls. I’m on my feet, and he leans on me. I take him to his room, and pull low the shutters and the blinds.
‘You keep out the light,’ Dain says. ‘You make me proud.’
And then he is falling into his dream-stark sleep, and I shut the door behind me. And I’m sobbing again. Not for long, but it helps a little. Just a little.
There’s a knock on the front door.
I open it. Grainer’s standing there.
‘I’ll be standing guard today,’ he says. I nod, but I am hardly paying attention.
Half the trees around our place have fallen, snapped at the trunk, stripped of leaves. And by the stairs to the verandah is a deep, dark furrow three metres long at least—some scar of battle. And all of this for me. For my life’s ending, for its salvation.
I am ready to drop to my knees, but I don’t.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
I shut the door, and, somehow, sleep finds me when death couldn’t.
There’s a funeral. Ours don’t go with no pomp and circumstance. One at night, just the next night over, the body buried deep. And all of us Day Boys gather.
I’m sniffling. ‘He died ’cause of me. He died ’cause of me.’
Dain strokes my back with hands not given to comfort. Already his strength is returning, like last night’s battle was nothing.
And then I’m sobbing—worse than little Thom ever did—and I don’t care who sees it.
‘No,’ Dain says. ‘No. There’s no fault to be found for you in this. None.’
Egan comes over, his face is bearded-thick with blood I can only guess is Mick’s or he’d not be so brazen in showing it. There he is, dressed to the nines in the finery of death, and the blood is the final touch. He reeks of it. Blood and anger.
‘I will not forget this,’ he says, with a calm that runs eight leagues deep, a calm so cold it could kill me as I stand. I feel my heart slow. ‘Your time is coming to an end, boy. And I will be glad to see those hours run down, like I saw the running down of the Old World.’
His eyes glow with their rings of flame, and my Master’s eyes burn back.
‘You will do no such thing,’ Dain says low and hard, and it looks like they might start again.
Me, I’d be happy to die right here. All that hurt and hate at self thrown up anew. There’s not much I have left. Why not be at it and get to death? I tilt my head; show my neck clear. Come finish me now.
‘Stop with the folly, boy,’ Dain says and pulls me back. ‘And you,’ he glares at Egan. ‘You should know better. We have our agreements.’
‘Yes.’ Egan bares his blood-rimmed teeth. ‘Agreements.’
But there’s a settling in the mood. Sobel walks between them, and he’s puffed up, entire. You can see the savagery in him, near unchecked, from fingertip to fingertip. His eyes are all fire and rage.
He spreads his arms wide. ‘Gentlemen. Gentlemen. This is not the time nor the place for such fractiousness. Did not the last night draw the wound? Come, aren’t we all fellows here? This is a time for grief, not fire and fury. Find yourself calm. Find yourself peace.’
And that’s how I see, again, the love they hold for us, even wrapped as it is in their cruelty.
Dain to protect me, Egan to seek vengeance. I can see it would be easy to hate me but Dain’s never done that, quite the opposite. And just now I don’t understand his love. But I accept it.
DAIN: THE BOOK
S
o there he was writing this book. Even as the sky was falling.
Trying to capture what was already passing. He hunted for them. The right words, the right order, the placement of this fact after that. As ruthless a predator as any of them. He didn’t chase any moon, just the light of lines heading in the right direction. Words are curly buggers, no good for pinning down. But he was meticulous, thorough in the way of thorough men. Says he was so intent upon the words, he forgot what he was saying, he forgot what the words had mapped.
Did it matter? Did it really matter?
He had a library, prodigious. And it served him well, when all those libraries in the air failed. When he could no longer pluck a word from the webs of them, he still walked those shelves, could track the long aisles of them. When he started there were many. It was almost a race, a meticulous chasing of the source and the madness that beat upon the world. But one by one those other blind folk fell.
And he hardly noticed, until he was the last one, letting himself in with keys stolen. And finally not leaving at all. It was too dangerous outside then.
Wars had fallen into one war. The library had fallen into one man.
They found him with his books, and he fought them. But what does a bookish man have to win him such a fight? His wit, his words.
They made him one of them. And the Change was at once furore and placation.
And he thought for a while that would give him time.
But time isn’t just a gift.
Time is a curse.
Course it is.
And he forgot what he was chasing. He forgot to hunt the words. He became them, and that is a very different thing.
CHAPTER 43
DAIN COMES IN before the dawn from his vigil on the front porch.
He’s holding a letter all official-like—come in the dark by bird or bat or whatever thing they’re using now. Don’t get too many of them regardless. The sight of it makes me catch my breath.
Been three days since the burial. Egan’s circled this place every night, and I’ve not dared leave the house when the dark falls.
Dain’s looking hungry. Twice he’s called for visitors and only George has come, and he looked at me with sorrowful eyes—more than I deserved. The others are too scared of the dark, of what Egan might do. So am I.
Not much sleep I’ve been getting. I hear Egan whispering my name across the night; hear Dain calling back in refusal. That messes with your dreams.
He taps the letter against his ash-burnt wrist.
‘So when’s the new boy coming?’ I knew it was too good a thing to have until March.
Dain looks at me, like it’s the first thing that I said in three days. It isn’t, but there’s a measure of civility to it that’s been lacking between us.
‘A week.’
‘I’m guessing I’m not training this one?’
Dain shakes his head. ‘You’re to go to the mountain. To be trained for the Constabulary.’
That makes my stomach drop, no Mastery for me, and I get a thrill through me, too. Anne’s in the city. ‘No choice in the matter?’
‘No. It is not how I would have it, but I’ve no say in this. I’ve tried as much as I can. But there are limits.’
‘I know all about limits,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ Dain says. ‘Well, at least you will be far from Egan there. And your future is sorted. Keep this quiet, boy, don’t even whisper it. I feel trouble coming, should he find out.’
‘Trouble’s always coming.’
Dain says nothing for a while, holding that letter in his hands. Then: ‘You be the man you want to be. Not what I need; you be the best that you can be. Will you promise me that?’
‘Of course,’ I puff up my chest. ‘Strong enough. You taught me that.’
Dain laughs. ‘It isn’t about strength. Well, not altogether. Strength is just another kind of emptiness. It takes, it makes a hunger. Give it up, give it out for what’s right; to help others, not just yourself. I’m not one to teach you that. I can’t be. And I’m sorry for that.
‘You know the pain goes away, and then it comes back, a day, a week or a month and it’s back, and I’m wondering if it ever went away at all or if I just chose to ignore it. When the pain is there it is as if it was always there. Funny, isn’t it?’ He sighs. ‘Sometimes I am sorry to have done this to you. You are not deserving of it. And, for all I may have said otherwise, I am the one who failed you. Caught up in…pointless endeavour. Petty feuds. How can I judge the other Masters when I am so flawed?’
He folds the letter up, slides it in a pocket. ‘Had I only been paying attention. I think that was my greatest failing, not to see what was coming, I believe you did, Mark, and that is to your credit.’
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I let him talk.
‘Remember to keep your eyes open, they have taught you better than I ever have. You are a good boy, a fine boy, and I regret that I will not see the man you will become. Please believe me when I say I only ever wished the best for you. And it is my folly that I could not provide it. Sometimes the most powerful are the weakest after all.’
‘You spend an awful long time being sorry,’ I say, and he’s in my face snarling and I can see the terrible strength of him. He could snap me, break me, easy as breathing, and I would be dead. But it’s a strength in check; I can see the cords of his muscles shaking.
All at once the rage is gone, just gone, and he seems to be listening to something. Some distant chords of a song I’m never going to know.
‘I’ll be back,’ I say. ‘You’ll see the man I become.’
And Dain nods his head. ‘Of course you will. Now, to bed with you. I am what I am. I am my nature. Boy, I once said there’s a poetry in us; in the eternity that is us. But I was wrong. Poetry is brevity, the sweet and sour ending of things. When time stretches entire before you, it’s stripped of urgency, and there is no poetry. Every crime, every mistake and hatred, is not released but clung to. Enough time passes, and all we are is our sins. Hold the sweetness of these next days to you. Remember this town, please.’
‘I’ll not forget it,’ I say.
‘I know you won’t. You’re a good boy,’ Dain says. ‘Even at your worst.’ He walks to his door and the room where I’ve already pulled the blinds and curtains. He pauses, turns. ‘Don’t forget those gutters need cleaning,’ he says.
‘I hadn’t.’ My face shows enough for him to tell I had.
‘Don’t forget.’
‘I won’t.’
Dain smiles and his hand closes around mine. Cold as it ever was, that hand. ‘Good.’
And I sleep. Deep, worn-out sleep.
And I don’t hear Egan calling once.
CHAPTER 44
I’M UP WITH the Sun and the house is all quiet; always is now, without Thom. I’m having breakfast, the milk’s off so it’s just an apple, and there�
��s a note: Get milk, I can smell it from my room. Boy, how do you live?
Five days left here, and that’s what I get. I can’t help but grin.
I get myself out of there.
Oh, the day’s a beauty for all my work and mood, even if it’s rubbing it in: the Sun’s just sitting and glaring warm and getting hotter. I’m puffing on a smoke, and stomping down the road, the big house behind me. Might be some storm this evening, I keep an interest though I’ll be abed, listening for the whisperings of them corrugations, and the soft rustling movement of Dain out and about.
I hit Main Street about the same time as most of the other Day Boys. We nod, Dougie at the front, all the others deferring, couple of mocks are thrown, nothing too serious. There’s no fighting now. Things are all unsettled in some ways; more certain than ever in others. We’d not put our Masters backs to no new battles. Might as well cut our own throats.
My time is almost done and Egan has a new boy coming soon. Dougie’s senior, without question.
There’s some girls coming out of Mary’s and I strut and grin. Still have to keep up the show, even though it feels empty. No Anne.
There’s a few giggles, mostly they’re just staring back. These are newbies, the school’s taking in students from towns to the south. I haven’t seen them before, but they know me by my proud stomp. Day Boys, as Mary says, we’re all of a type.
‘Ladies,’ I says, dip my hat too—finally wearing the one Thom gave me.
‘Off with that hat in here, charmer,’ Mary says, and I’m quick to it. Think she’s a bit annoyed that I never bought one of the ones she ordered. ‘What’s the old man want?’
I place the list careful down onto her counter, and Mary squints at the spidery hand and sighs. It’s a long list. ‘I’ll have it ready by three.’
I nod and duck out, not before I snatch a handful of sour sweets. ‘On the tab,’ I shout, but we both know that is talk. She just throws a curse word or two my way, all half-hearted. What else can she do? I’m a Day Boy for a few days more.
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