Show Stealer

by Hayley Barker

  Silvio looks confused. More than confused: he looks ill. I thought it was impossible for his face to get any paler, but I swear it’s turned so white it’s ultraviolet.

  “But I’m Pure now. I mean, I always was, really. People like Hoshiko, like Greta, like all the Dregs in my circus, they aren’t Pure. Not like me. Not like you, Benedict. We’re superior. We are.”

  He clutches at my arm. His hand is shaking. He’s desperate to believe it.

  I smirk at him.

  “I think you might be wrong about that one.”

  He stands up. Pulls himself up to his full height.

  “I’ve had quite enough of you for one day, Baines!” He lifts his arm and speaks into his watch. “Guards!”

  Within seconds, they appear. Large, unsmiling, armed guards.

  “Take Baines away, will you?” he hisses. “Show him to his sleeping quarters. I’m sure he’ll be very comfortable there.”

  HOSHIKO

  Once the crowd below us has finally dispersed, Kadir pulls his hood over his head.

  “I’ve got places to be,” he tells us. “Sven will show you to your new home.”

  He vaults down from the platform and melts away into the night.

  Sven steps forward with a torch – the first time I’ve seen one in the slums – and we follow him through the winding alleys.

  We don’t bother with the disguises this time, and I feel more vulnerable than ever, flinching every time someone looks at me.

  Rosie’s waited for us and she puts a maternal arm around me as we walk.

  “It’ll be OK.” She smiles at me. “Kadir doesn’t go back on his word.”

  “What’s his story?” I ask her. “How did he get so much power?”

  She drops back a little further, lowering her voice. “There was a lot of trouble before Kadir. Gangs, drugs, guns. There were riots. Not out there, but in here, in the slums. Kadir came out of nowhere, really. He was just another kid on the streets at first. And then, one day, the riots stopped. Suddenly, all the old gang leaders were dead and he was in charge. It’s been like that ever since.”

  “But if he was in the gangs, he must have been involved in all the trouble. He didn’t just ask nicely to take over. He must have killed people. How else does someone like that gain power in a place like this? He must have been worse than they were!”

  “Shh!” she whispers, looking about anxiously. “You can’t go around speaking like that! Trust me, it’s better now Kadir’s here.” She shivers and hugs her arms around herself. “Much better than it was.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense. How does he keep his power? What happens if people refuse to do what he says?”

  She frowns. “No one does. Well, no one has for a long time. Us older Dregs remember only too well what it was like before Kadir took control. It was a horrible time, a dark, lawless time. There was so much violence back then, so much trouble. All the young men fighting like dogs against each other, stabbings and murders – lots of crime; awful, violent crime. The worst kinds of crime. Crimes against women.” Her eyes flick to Greta. “Crimes against young girls. No one wants to go back to those days. Kadir did what he needed to restore order. Yes, there are lots of stories of things he did back then, but there hasn’t been anything like that for a long time; there hasn’t needed to be. He keeps things safe around here.”

  I don’t like it, the way she speaks about him so reverently. Letting someone have that much power doesn’t seem that different to making one group Pure, one group Dreg to me. It’s dangerous. Surely the people living in the slums should want to tear down hierarchies, not build up new ones?

  I know I’m being ungrateful; Kadir’s giving us a home and he’s promised to protect us. I don’t like owing someone that much, though, I don’t like it at all. He’s the one person keeping us from being informed on. What happens if he changes his mind?

  Greta drops back and trots along next to me. “So, what happens to us now?” she asks.

  “Well, it’s obviously dangerous for you to leave, but you should be OK if you stay here in the slums. If the police come, we’ll hide you. We’ll keep you safe, all of us.”

  “We’ve got no way of providing for ourselves,” I say. “We can’t exactly go out and find work.”

  “Kadir will provide for you.”

  She’s nice, Rosie – more than nice. She’s warm and kind and she’s taken us under her wing. It seems a bit bizarre to me, though, that she’s so keen to give her trust and respect to this guy who clearly uses violence to get what he wants.

  Well, I guess that’s her choice. It’s not mine though. I don’t want to get any closer to him than we have to.

  “Why?” I ask. “Why would he do that?”

  “Because he’s a good man. I told you,” she says simply.

  I roll my eyes. I don’t buy it. Kadir will cash in his debts somehow. He’s already made it crystal clear that we owe him. What use can a couple of runaway circus acrobats and an ex-Pure possibly be to a guy like him? No use that I can think of. If we can just stay on his good side until we find out what’s happened to Ben, hopefully, after that, he’ll forget all about us and we can slip under his radar. If he’s found us somewhere to stay for a bit and keep our heads down, that’s all we need.

  We come to a stop outside a tiny, battered little hovel strung together from odd pieces of cardboard.

  We duck down and enter.

  Sven shines the torch around and I look where the beam shines. The room, if you can call it a room, is empty. There’s no furniture in here, no bedding, just soggy cardboard and the smell of mildew. When Sven shines the torch upward, the light reveals gaps and holes in the roof.

  “Home sweet home,” he says. “I’ll leave you the torch so you can get used to it. It ain’t much, but it’s all we’ve got to offer.” His face seems a bit softer now, nicer than it did before. “Got to be better than the circus, I guess, if what they say is true.” He smiles at me sympathetically in the darkness.

  I stare around me. His words give me a funny feeling, deep inside in the pit of my stomach.

  Anything should be better than the circus. The circus was cold and cruel and deadly. It took my Amina away from me. It hurt me. It hurt Greta. Silvio was there.

  The circus was hell on earth.

  It was bright though. It was exciting, sometimes. It was magical, now and then, being up on that wire, feeling it beneath my feet – tense, humming, like it was alive with energy. When I stepped out on to it, when I danced across it, we were a team, the wire and me, performing our beautiful, deadly art.

  It was a bewitching, fickle friend and I had to read it, had to understand it, had to let my toes, let my heart, feel it; feel the give, feel the resistance. It changed all the time – depending on the weather: the humidity and temperature in the room, and I changed too, depending on whether I’d had anything to eat that day or not, depending on my rhythms and cycles.

  I miss it so much sometimes that my body aches.

  That’s because they institutionalized you, the rational part of me says. That’s because they tried to break you. Fight it. Resist it.

  It’s hard, though. It’s in my head. It’s in my heart. It’s a part of me, a part of who I am.

  I hated the Cirque.

  I hated it, but I miss it.

  How can that be?

  I look around me. This place, this dingy, smelly, dark little hovel will never be home, not when the circus – the bright, shiny, evil, intoxicating circus – still calls me back.

  BEN

  I don’t bother struggling; I just walk with the guards to wherever they’re taking me. When I turn round, Silvio Sabatini’s silhouetted up on the hill, still surveying his dominion.

  We stop in front of a long fence, bright with moving acrobats and clowns, like the entrance gate was. One of the guards has taken out a key fob. He pushes up to a control panel and one of the panels swings open.

  On the other side, things are not quite as neat and tidy
and colourful. There’s a field stretching out in front of us. Horses cluster together, standing still in the moonlight, and I can make out the shapes of other animals too: camels and llamas I think. In the distance, two dark elephants raise their heads at our appearance, swishing their trunks slowly from side to side.

  There’s nothing else except a gaping hole opening up in the ground in front of us, revealing a narrow flight of concrete stairs leading downward. The guards push me towards the steps and we climb down. There’s so little room that we have to go in single file and it gets darker as we descend further and further underground.

  At the bottom is an iron door. The guard in front lifts up his key fob and it swings open. He pushes me inside, so hard that I fall to the floor.

  “Welcome to your luxury accommodation,” he sneers. “I hope it lives up to your high standards!” The guards turn and pound back up the stairs again, slamming the door shut behind them.

  Suddenly, I’m in real darkness. Pitch black. I can’t see my own hand in front of me. This place is so far underground that it’s never seen any natural light. I feel my heart speeding up, just like it did that time when I was pushed into the prop box, back in the old Cirque.

  There’s an unfamiliar, earthy smell in here, making my stomach heave.

  “Hello?” Although I’m whispering, my voice sounds loud in the silent darkness. “Is anyone there?”

  There’s no response. There’s nothing. There’s no one. I shiver. It’s really cold down here, even though it’s a fairly mild evening outside. Maybe this is my tomb. Maybe they’re just going to leave me here until I die, until I rot away. I wonder if this is what Hell feels like.

  I stand up, slowly. My head bumps something above me and I raise my hand, feeling a rough, rocky ceiling above my head. It’s lucky I stood up carefully; I’d have knocked myself out otherwise.

  Hunched over, I walk forward, blindly clutching my way with my hands. My feet bump into something. There’s a sloshing sound and I spring back in fear.

  “Please,” I protest weakly, to no one in particular. “Please don’t leave me in here.”

  As if someone’s answered my prayers, there’s a flicker above my head and the place lights up. Thank goodness.

  I go back and try the door, although I know it’s pointless.

  Looking forward again, I see that I’m in a long, narrow corridor, empty apart from two great big containers of water. It was one of those that I bumped into. I look around, and then walk slowly down the passageway.

  On either side of me, barred gates section off tiny little cupboard-like rooms. They stretch down away from me, all exactly the same. Behind each gate is a tiny bunk, topped with a thin grey mattress and a blanket. There’s a hole in the corner of each one, and that’s it.

  Prison cells.

  At the very end is a stone door. I push at it; it’s cold and solid.

  I walk back along. There’s nothing else in here, just these tiny cells. I count them; there’s forty of them.

  Suddenly, the celling shakes and tiny fragments of rock fall to the floor. Footsteps, lots of them, are pounding above me, coming closer, descending the stairs. The door swings open again and a large group of people file their way through it before it shuts resoundingly behind them. They stand there, clustered together, looking back down the corridor at me.

  We stare at each other. Then a girl’s voice from somewhere in the middle of the group cries out, “It’s Benedict Baines!”

  HOSHIKO

  It’s strange, settling down in that cold little shack. Not strange because of the environment so much; this is a palace compared to some of the places we’ve spent the night over the last few months, but strange because Ben’s not there. There hasn’t been one night over the last year where I haven’t slept in his arms; not one night where I haven’t woken up and seen his face. It feels so wrong, him not being here.

  Rosie disappears off and then, after a while, there’s a tap at the door. Jack opens it cautiously. Felix is outside, wearing his trademark scowl.

  “Mum told me to give you this food,” he says, thrusting a wrapped-up package into Jack’s hands.

  “Where did she get it from?” Jack asks.

  “Kadir. He’s waved his magic wand and you’ll never go hungry again.”

  He turns around and walks off down the path.

  “Wait!” I call. I look towards Greta. Her eyes are fixed on the food package; she’s practically eating it with her eyes.

  “Open it up,” I say. “I just want to speak to Felix quickly. You can start without me.”

  Jack’s eyes search my face, concern and curiosity etched on his brow. When he nods, I step out of the hut, pulling the fragile door shut behind me.

  Felix glares at me blankly, as hostile and resentful as ever.

  “I want to ask you something,” I say to him. “About Kadir. What’s he really like?”

  “How should I know what he’s like?”

  “Well, your mum talks about him like he’s some kind of saviour … is he?”

  He gives a thin smile. “Better the devil you know, ain’t that what they say?”

  “Is it though? How does he do it?” I ask. “Keep everyone in line like that? It doesn’t sound right to me. What happens if people refuse to follow his commands?”

  He looks around and then leans towards me, lowering his voice.

  “The Pures, Laura Minton, Kadir, they’re all the same when you scratch the surface. They all want power. They all want to rule. Why would Kadir want his little kingdom toppled? He’s quite happy in here on his throne. Kadir only supports change if he thinks he’s going to benefit from it. The only ones really prepared to tear everything up and start again are the Brotherhood. What my mum says about us, she’s wrong. We’re only dangerous when we need to be.”

  We. He’s joined them. Rosie was right: it is too late.

  He lowers his voice even further and looks at me with intense, fervent eyes.

  “We’re the only ones radical enough to get out there and do what needs to be done. Even Laura Minton just wants her turn in charge. My brother’s in that circus right now. Things need to happen right now. Not next week, not next year. Now. We’re gonna—”

  He stops.

  “What? What are you going to do? What needs to be done?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t even know why I’m talking to you about it.” He turns away and starts walking off again.

  “Stop!” I call. “What are you going to do right now? I’ve got friends in that circus, I deserve to know.”

  He looks over his shoulder at me.

  “Enjoy your meal,” he says, and runs off into the darkness.

  By the time I get back inside the shack, Greta and Jack are both sitting on the floor, the torch placed between them, its thin beam illuminating a pile of sandwiches spread out in front of them. Bojo’s already holding one in his paws, nibbling at it delicately.

  “He couldn’t wait,” Greta says, apologetically. “We did though.” She pouts. “Jack said we had to.”

  “You should have started,” I say. “Come on then, let’s eat.”

  The sandwiches are fresh: fresher than I’ve ever had before. The bread is thick, soft and doughy, not dry or stale at all, and there’s a thick slab of pink meat in each one. Ham, I think.

  Fresh meat sandwiches. Just another of the many wonders Kadir is capable of delivering.

  We eat ravenously and then spread the blankets out on the damp floor and lie down. Greta snuggles right up next to me, like she used to do in the Cirque, and Bojo buries his way in beside her, a soft warm ball under my blankets.

  What I should do right now is turf them both out. I’ve nagged Greta every day for months about sharing a bed with an animal.

  I don’t say anything though. I’m grateful to have them here; it makes me feel a bit less lonely.

  “Hoshi?” Greta whispers.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you thinking about Ben?”

&nb
sp; I sigh.

  “Yeah, I’m thinking about Ben. I wish we knew he was OK.”

  Her head shoots with up urgency and she gives a little gasp. “He is though, isn’t he? He said they wouldn’t hurt him.”

  I should know better than to worry her unnecessarily.

  “Yes. He’s fine, I’m sure he is. I just miss him, that’s all.”

  “I miss him too.”

  I hold her close, breathe in the smell of her hair. How can she still smell so sweet after all this time? I don’t even know when she last had a proper wash, but all the dirt and muck never seems to stick to Greta.

  I stay as still and quiet as I can, for her sake, and try to feign sleep until she drifts off, but I know peace will never find me, not until I know where Ben is.

  BEN

  It’s as if they all jolt into recognition at the same time. “It is him!” I hear someone saying, and the whisper echoes among them. “It’s Benedict Baines!”

  These are Circus people: they must know Hoshi and Greta. They must know that between us we blew up the last arena and have been wanted ever since. How does that make them feel about me, then? Looking at the cluster of blank faces, all staring at me, it’s hard to tell.

  I search the faces for the boy and girl from the Globe of Death. At first, I don’t see them, but then I make them out, right at the back of the group. Thank God.

  The boy, Sean, glares at me unblinkingly. The girl’s next to him; her eyes flick anxiously across from him to me and she rests a cautionary hand on his arm.

  I need to speak to them. I need to tell them Silvio was lying.

  A figure steps forward, a man. He has to stoop his head and lean forward to avoid hitting the low ceiling. He’s huge, muscular, dark, and he has a scar stretching right across his face.

  It’s Emmanuel.

  He stares at me silently for a long second and then steps forward and walks towards me with long, powerful striding steps, clapping me on the back with his big hand.

  Hoshi’s spoken about Emmanuel so often that I feel like he’s an old friend. He’s different to how I remembered him though. He’s even taller up close than I thought he’d be, but he doesn’t look fierce and warrior-like, as he does on the posters and holograms we’ve seen dotted around the city these last few weeks. He just looks really, really tired and really, really sad. He must be freezing, because he doesn’t have a shirt on. Criss-crossed welts cover his body, and there are claw marks clear as anything on his chest and back. There’s a cavernous hollow under his ribs, where a part of him has been ripped out, I suppose. The promotional images all show close-ups of his scars, particularly the one stretching across his face. I think it’s supposed to make him seem like some kind of monster. It doesn’t though: it shows what monsters they are. The people I used to be part of, the people I took far too long to see for what they were.