His heartbeat thumped in his ears as the stairs creaked from the pressure of slow footsteps. He was lying on his side, facing away from the stairs. The steps reached the landing. Liam watched from the corner of his eye, straining to see. Deaglan’s form appeared and stopped at the foot of his bed. He seemed to be staring down at him. Liam’s whole body tensed as he fought to remain still. An age seemed to pass, Deaglan standing and staring. Liam started to consider whether to confront him. Then he turned and moved on.
Liam could hear the rustling of blankets as Deaglan lay down on his cot. He barely slept the rest of the night. He jumped awake with a shock more than once, looking about for what woke him but finding nothing .He kept a hand underneath his pillow, holding tightly to the knife there.
******
His bones were tired. He coughed and rubbed at his eyes, which were thick with sleep. His muscles ached. He pulled his arms up around himself. Dust, everywhere there was dust. He sneezed. Groaning, he shuffled up onto his hands and knees. He stretched his back out, rolling it up and down. Then he turned and sat against the wall, yawning. He rested his head back, allowing his eyes to slip closed for a moment.
The crying had been there since he had woken. It had been there while he had slept. It was quiet, muffled … tired. The type of sobbing that had been a constant for some time. The owner of the grief was worn out, he was exhausted, yet had nothing else to do, no other purpose, but to grieve. Liam opened his eyes, staring up at the ceiling. He understood those sobs. He knew them. He knew their source, deep within his gut, he knew, without looking. He fought against his pounding heart and the panic welling up inside of him. He fought against the tears and the immense sorrow that threatened to overtake him. Oh Lev, Lev …
He didn’t want to change his gaze from the ceiling. He didn’t want to look down to confirm what he already knew. A few more seconds, a few more moments of denial. To deny this life, to deny this hell. Just over a month ago … It had all gone to shit. He dropped his head, quickly, into his arms, avoiding sight of the room. He took deep, calming breaths.
After a while, he felt that he was ready. He looked up. Bradan was crunched up on the floor, quietly whimpering. Liam’s eyes glanced to the still form beside him, just to confirm. He banged his head back against the wall. Hot tears escaped and cascaded down his cheeks. His eyes moved across the room. They met Darren’s. They were red-rimmed. A large growth was at the corner of his left eye, an angry red in colour. His face was dirty, his tunic worn thin and torn in places, like Liam’s, except too large rather than too small. He held his gaze for a long time. They were opposite one another. At last Liam glanced down at the leather sandal that sat beside Darren, like a talisman, a silent friend that could not die.
He looked to the corner where the girls sat. They looked wide-eyed and sad. They were fucked, out of all of them they were the most fucked. He had to get out of there. He, Racquel, Darren, they all did. They had to move on. They had to find something.
Lastly, he spared a glance at Deaglan, Ultan and Erinin. They also sat quietly, propped against the wall. Deaglan looked sad, like the rest, and angry. Liam suddenly feared the day when anger was no longer there to draw upon. He fired up the furnace that was forever burning within him, building up the hate, the rage and the fury, keeping them warm and within arm’s reach.
Erinin leaned in and whispered something in Deaglan’s ear. He smirked, saying nothing. Liam met their gaze for a moment each. Another one was gone. Another dead. How many had there been? He started to tick them off in his mind.
He was an orphan. He had been brought to the orphan school straight from the orphanage at the age of three. He didn’t remember anything but the school. It was all he knew, before leaving for the wider world of the slums.
There must have been two hundred in the whole orphan school, a large, three storey building, mainly consisting of huge dorms. It was run by three destras with the help of some older boys who had never left, cruel and weak all.
Ailbe, a kind and defenceless boy, raped and felt up by Destra Efrain for over a year, before he died from absidia, which had killed thirty or forty of the boys in the school that year. A horrific disease that caused the tongue to swell and retain fluid, turning a greenish blue in colour. It took two weeks from start to finish, the victim slowly smothering for hours before succumbing to unconsciousness and death.
Liam remembered watching Ailbe with sadness for the last, tormented year of his life. Calum and he had smothered their friend together, hoping to ease his passing. Liam had been seven, Calum eight. They had stuffed a blanket deep into his mouth and held his nose tight. It had taken longer than either had thought it would; they had been left in tears over the body.
He remembered Iona, a brave boy who had never given up against authority. He refused to be cowed, refused to be beaten, refused to give up his fight. Until one day when he had resisted too strongly and was beaten to death by Destra Adalgiso, driven into a mad rage.
How they had all dreamt of leaving, of being free and independent, like the older boys, doing work for the gangs, drinking ale out of big mugs, being free of those bastard destras who held terrible control over them and terrible fear. Heladio, Efrain and Adalgiso, all far different. Efrain had found himself there for a reason: his fondness for boys. Adalgiso was vicious and terrifying, feared the most, while Heladio was a quiet preacher. He had little respect from the boys and harboured little hate. He read from the Sevi Natan every evening for over an hour, over and over, until each boy could recite every verse from it off by heart, the only education any of them had ever been given. Every day they had to memorize another verse, and at the week’s end recite all that they had learned the previous week, at the month’s end recite all they had learned the previous month. Punishment was severe, but it was all they had to learn. After four or five years being taught it, each boy, no matter their aptitude, knew every line of that book off by heart.
The wind howled and whistled. Clouds amassed overhead, blotting light from the world, turning the day grey. Lighting struck outwards, high up between the clouds, and thunder rolled out over the landscape. The ground began to shake, in fits and starts, then a more permanent and despairing jerking, slow and utterly terrifying.
Great holes tore open in the ground and closed over again, like the gnashing of giant toothless gums. Buildings were swallowed whole, cities collapsed. Tornadoes ravaged the countryside. Volcanoes and mountains dormant for millennia burst open, spouting and gushing hot molten lava, firing rock, black soot and smoke high into the sky. Climbing and climbing to impossible heights before mushrooming outwards, the great swirling winds swept the roiling black masses over the landscape; thousands of tonnes of stone and ash spread wide, as though the sky were the ground and the ground the sky, and grey light became black.
The oceans heaved, disappearing for miles out and returning as though tipped, roaring over new lands. People already knocked to the floor whimpered and squirmed in this impossible, black nightmare as the great mass climbed into the sky and crushed them beneath it.
For six days, man knew the price of our sins. We saw the fiery depths of Daygo. God’s eye remained, day and night, always watching. The scourge was brought upon man, and the light to show us the way …
Liam remembered leaving the school. They weren’t made to stay. There wasn’t room for everyone to stay, and they didn’t have to be forced out. Almost everyone left once they had worked up the courage to do so. When Liam first reached the flat, it was a different group. There were seventeen among them.
Carrig, who had tried to steal the purse from a homeless beggar, thinking him defenceless, only for the bum to stab him in the side in defence of what was his. All of the boys had dived on the bum, stabbing him in turn with their knives until he was well and truly dead. Him and Carrig both.
Gerrit, stabbed through the neck by a guardsman’s sword, after getting too close to a royal passenger on the Great Road. Radha, thrown in front of a wagon, a slow death. Dave,
kicked from the gang for stabbing Teo, had disappeared since. Teo died months later from sickness. Ferdia made it through to the gang. Davin disappeared. Calum, killed by a blacksmith’s hammer. Cid … dead from sickness … Rowa, an older girl, found dead on the side of a street by Darren; murdered, probably raped. Sorcha, now working in a brothel on Dasva Street.
Liam felt that he was finally beginning to realise something as his mind brought him through the tragedies of his life and all those around him. Something that now seemed so overbearingly obvious to him, that had been right in front of his face all along. He realised in the pit of his stomach that it was something Calum had known too, before he died. Why had he been so slow? He felt drained by the sadness that overtook him, his limbs sinking towards the ground.
“Liam … what’s … what’s going on?” Racquel asked, the words seeming to drift into his ears from a distance. He looked down at her fearful eyes.
“Cid’s dead,” he whispered simply.
“Dead?” she looked around the room, taking in the scene again. “What? How?”
“I don’t know.” He was nothing but a still form now, an empty husk. He looked back to him forlornly. Racquel went silent. The room was silent but for the soft, gentle sobbing of Bradan.
Liam helped lift the body from the floor with Darren, Ultan and a weak-limbed Bradan. They carried it, a limb each, down the stairs and out onto the street, Racquel trailing behind them. They walked with it for close to half an hour until they reached the temple of Levitas, where they laid the body down in front of the entrance and knocked on the door.
It was the largest and most impressive building that Liam had ever seen, bar the walls of the outer city. He often used to stop and stare up at it in wonder as a boy. His eyes roamed over it once more as they waited for a destra to answer their lonely call. It was made entirely of stone, majestic to Liam’s eyes, higher and wider than any of those surrounding it. A large singular square tower rose up from the centre of the temple, made of intricately slotted stone, a peaked cap at its top. There were stone carvings around the large oak front doors, which were made of six parts with six sets of hinges on each part, representing the six days that the world was torn apart and remade, signalling the coming of the Sekvi-Daygo plague. The stone pillars to either side of the door were nine-foot-tall depictions of the terrible beasts that came from the north after the breaking. Terrifying creatures that Liam had heard stories of all of his life; stooped over, covered in long black hair, human-like but more visceral and dangerous. They appeared built for savagery. According to the teachings of the Sevi Natan, they came ravaging and rampaging down through the lands of man, killing, disembowelling and eating all in their path. The nations of man, disorganised and recovering from six days of destruction, where the world rose up and revolted against its inhabitants, when Daygo’s fury was truly known, were torn apart by the onslaught of the beasts. They wiped out entire nations, never seemed to cease in their thirst for more and seemed limitless in number and deadly beyond measure. They continued south with bare resistance, at a speed almost matching that of news of their coming. It all seemed lost until a man, Levitas, not known as divine at the time, came from the southern Woanaan lands and united all mankind in the Great War against the beasts. He masterminded the great migration south to the Woanaan lands and all that followed.
Liam felt himself caught up in the imagery as he stared at the carvings. The door started to creak open, slowly and awkwardly. As it folded, the right door caught in the rail that allowed it to slide across the floor. It was open just wide enough for a man in robes to step out. He took in the group at once, his eyes passing over each boy and resting a moment on Racquel at the back of the group. They finally dropped on the limp and spread-eagled figure of Cid on the dusty floor, lying on his back. The mouth and one of his eyelids were slightly opened.
“You know we cannot afford to administer blessings to the dead of every slum rat who dies in this district. We have to buy the chemics, the incense. The sacred oils aren’t cheap to develop—”
“Please, Destra, he’s my brother.” The destra paused for a moment, looking down at Cid with disgust on his face. He glanced Bradan’s way.
“Was he even marked before? I cannot perform—”
“He’s from the school, Destra, please.” The destra stared in annoyance at Bradan for a moment.
“I will give his shell the final blessing, so that none of the Sekvi beasts can desecrate his body or steal his spirit. But you must dispose of the body yourself.”
“Thank you, Destra.”
“I will perform the rite out here. I don’t want you carrying filth into my chapel.” He returned inside the doors of the church, closing them behind him.
He returned a moment later, dragging the door open once more and giving it a sour look as he walked past. He carried a glass jar of bluish oil and a lighting candle with him. He stopped in front of the corpse for a moment, looking down at the spread-eagled form.
“Arrange him in a more respectable manner,” he commanded. Bradan and Darren stepped up quickly and moved him around so that his head was pointing towards the church. They pushed his arms and legs together and stepped back.
“His eyes,” the destra muttered disdainfully. Darren looked at Cid’s eyes for a moment with a frown. Then he stepped down and closed the left one fully.
The destra stepped up briskly. He knelt beside the corpse, dipped his thumb in the oil and drew the symbol across Cid’s forehead.
Liam watched the destra blankly as he chanted the rites of passing and lit the symbol, the magical blue flame burning Cid’s forehead. Once he was finished, he stood up. Glancing over the boys, he paused a moment at Liam’s look before turning and returning into the temple without a word.
Liam and the boys carried Cid off, dropping him at the side of a street where the dung collectors would see and collect the body. They always brought an extra cart for this purpose. Liam told Racquel that he was going to meet Carrick in Sally’s tavern and asked Darren to see her safely back to the flat. He told her he would be back before dark and left.
******
Deaglan watched the stray dog, dragging its hind legs behind it. It looked as though its back was broken, whether by the hoof of a horse or the wheel of a wagon or something else. He didn’t really care. He wondered how long ago it had happened. It was hard to tell. It looked to be in bad condition, but it might have been like that before. Its fur was patchy, its face old. Boy or girl? he wondered. Perhaps it was thirsty. He looked around and saw a curved, broken piece of pottery at the side of the road. He walked over and picked it up, then filled it out of the half barrel outside the flat. He returned and put it down in front of the dog’s nose. He sniffed at it and pulled himself towards it with his front legs. Deaglan laughed, edging the pottery away from his nose, watching as he crawled hopelessly after it.
Then he had a brain wave. He poured the trickle of water out on the soil in front of the dog. The soil soaked it up like a sponge. He smiled again as the dog’s tongue lolled out and licked the wet ground in vain. It gave up after three or four licks, its tongue covered in dirt.
Deaglan stood up and looked around.
“What the fuck’s keepin’ him?” he asked Erinin beside him.
“Dono,” he replied. They were waiting for Ultan to return from dropping off Cid’s body. Then they were going to Market Alley to see what they could land for the day. Deaglan’s mind wandered as they waited.
He thought of the girl Racquel. He had seen her whole for the first time the night before. She had graceful features, sleek black hair and gentle curves. She seemed so delicate. He wondered if she would break easily. The thought had obsessed him through the night and into the morning. His arousal seemed permanent. Liam was so protective of her. The dual opportunity to get at that fuck and teach him a lesson and to dig his teeth into Racquel, teach her a lesson, make her pay for being such a stupid bitch and hanging around with that fool, to see her delicate features bunche
d up in pain, to hear her high-pitched voice screaming out for help, gasping, choking.
He dropped to his haunches, trying to contain the arousal and excitement that overwhelmed him at the thought. He tried to think of something else.
“There they are,” said Erinin. Deaglan looked up as Darren, Ultan, Racquel and Bradan came around the corner. He watched as Racquel and Bradan went inside the flat. Darren and Ultan broke off in their direction. Darren nodded to them as he walked past.
“Where’s Liam?” Deaglan asked Ultan as he joined them.
“He’s gone, he has that thing with Carrick.”
A smile played across Deaglan’s face. “When’s he going to be back?”
“Heard him say wouldn’t be till tonight.”
Deaglan’s eyes slipped from Ultan to the flat behind him and his smile widened. He noticed Ultan fidget nervously beside him.
******
As he approached the tavern, Liam looked across at the warehouse at the end of the street. Not for the first time, he wondered what was stored there. He knew it was owned by the gang.
A smoky haze enveloped the familiar din of the tavern as he entered. It was busy for noon with three of the encircling tables filled along with half the bar. Liam’s stomach rumbled at the smell of stew. It seemed a long time since he had tasted anything as nice as Sally’s Stew.
Carrick sat on a stool at one of the tables, across from two burly men Liam didn’t recognise. He could see by Carrick’s awkward posture that they held influence over him. Liam picked up a stool and casually strolled over to them. He set the stool down beside them and sat.
“Alright, Carrick,” he greeted him, smiling inwardly, knowing that it would embarrass Carrick for Liam to be so at ease around him.
One of the men frowned at Liam. “Who the fuck are you?”
Liam smiled back at him.
“The fuck ye doin’ over here, Liam? Go … wait over at that table over there!” Carrick waved a hand vaguely at the other end of the tavern. Liam took his time getting up. The man nearest him threw a backhanded fist at him, but he saw it coming and stepped lightly away, knocking his stool down as he did so.
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