by Daniel Finn
‘I got my job here . . .’ the policeman tried to say but she just huffed at him.
‘Let the girl go, she sick; got a fit on her is all.’ The crowd murmured their agreement.
Reve came up close to Mi and touched her arm. It was rigid, all the muscles locked and trembling. He needed to get her out of the crowd and out of the sun. ‘My sister sick, sir, an’ she get like this sometime. I need to find her a quiet place. Please.’
The policeman scowled. ‘Well, your sister made me lose a thief. I had my hand almost round his neck but then she made all that yowlin and . . .’ He threw up his hand angrily. ‘Oh, take her out of here! Before I march her straight to the Castle.’
‘Why don’ you march you’self off cos you don’ do no good roun’ here!’ And the large lady swung herself slowly round and forged her way back through the laughing, crowd, which then dispersed. The policeman turned on his heel and walked off.
Reve stroked Mi’s neck and talked to her. ‘You all right now, Mi. Nothin happen to bother you now. I got you . . .’
Gradually her arms relaxed and her breathing slowed and her eyes closed. She shuddered once and let Reve move her slowly through to the back of a stall where there was a little shade, and no people milling around them, and there was a box he could sit her down on. ‘You all right now, Mi. What happen to make you like this? You give me enough fright to put me in my grave . . .’
‘Gave me fright too,’ she said. ‘Felt myself stuck in that place where there nothing but voices screamin at me.’
This is how she had once described it to him: like being trapped in the middle of a storm of noise and shouting, sometimes voices, sometimes just noise. ‘What tip you this time?’
‘Him,’ she said.
Mi lunged forward, straight past Reve, so fast, like a snake strike, and had the small boy gripped by the arm.
‘That’s him! He the one who thief all my things!’ exclaimed Reve. ‘Took all the dollar we got!’
The boy was wriggling like a fish, but Mi had him fast, her mouth set tight and her jaw jutting with determination to keep a hold of him.
‘You let me go!’ The boy suddenly flopped to the ground, but Mi was ready and dropped down with him.
‘He thief from you . . . well, this one owe me favour,’ she said, dipping her head to one side and studying her catch. ‘That police was goin snatch him but I started shakin and shoutin so this boy could skip free. Didn’ like that policeman pickin on a child . . .’
‘You put that judderin on! I thought you took bad.’
‘It turn real on me,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Got myself stuck.’ She gave a rueful laugh. ‘That happen sometimes.’ The boy had stopped wriggling and she let him sit up. She still kept a hand on him though. ‘Maybe you come back to thank me,’ she said to the boy.
‘No,’ he said glumly. ‘She made me come back.’
‘Who she?’ asked Mi.
Reve saw her, the girl-boy with the shorn head and solemn eyes, peering at them from the corner of the stall.
Mi took her eyes off her catch for a moment to look around at the girl. ‘You always do what she tell you?’
‘Course not! You goin let me go?’ exclaimed the boy angrily.
Mi released him and he dusted himself down, fussy as a church lady.
‘You got my dollar and T-shirt and things?’
‘She put it safe.’
Reve looked at the girl and she silently held out his bundle. He took it from her and checked. All the money was there. ‘How old are you?’ She looked about the same as the boy. How could children so young run free and not get lost in this place?
She shrugged.
‘Doesn’t she talk? Don’t you talk?’
‘When she want,’ said the boy carelessly. They were a team, that much was obvious.
‘What’s your name?’ said Mi.
‘Baz.’
‘I give her that name.’ The boy puffed himself up. ‘I can do that. Give name for anything. But I real best at other thing. I just about the quickest pair of hands you ever seen.’ He flashed them under Mi’s nose, wriggling his fingers, so she almost smiled.
‘The uniform still caught you, eh? Even with your magic fingers,’ said Reve.
‘What you say, country boy? He only caught me cos o’ her.’ He nodded at Mi.
Mi looked surprised. ‘Me? How come I got anything to do with your catchin?’
‘Cos you look like someone.’ The boy shrugged. ‘Tha’s why I stop.’ He slapped his knee and turned to his partner, the little girl. ‘Never stop when you makin a run, Baz, you remember that.’ Then he got to his feet and so did Mi.
‘I know that already,’ said Baz, and she went and stood beside the boy, and the two of them looked at Mi so steadily that Mi half turned her head away.
‘Stop your staring.’
‘Not just your hair,’ said the boy. ‘You got the face too.’
‘Got my own face,’ said Mi. ‘Don’t belong no one else.’
Baz tugged at Mi’s wrist. ‘Come with us – we got someone to show you.’
Mi’s eyes lit up with sudden interest.
‘No!’ said Reve.
‘Come,’ insisted Baz.
Mi frowned.
‘We agreed,’ Reve said. ‘We don’t wanna go wanderin’, Mi. We do that and we never find her. We got to follow what we agreed . . .’ He kept his voice low and gentle. ‘I mind you all the time, Mi, you know that. Come on, we do it my way.’
Mi turned her face away from him.
‘I the one who seen the woman in the sea. She come to me . . .’
‘Where you got to go?’ said the boy suddenly. ‘I know every place. You wanna go somewhere, I take you there.’ He shrugged. ‘Only fair after what you done,’ he said to Mi.
‘What’s your name?’ said Reve.
‘He’s Demi,’ said the girl. ‘That’s cos he’s half of nothing.’
The little puffed-up boy, Demi, made to kick her but she slipped easily out of range. ‘And you a monkey shadow,’ he said.
‘An’ if I’m the shadow, you the monkey.’
Baz’s face stayed solemn all the time, though Reve could see this was a game they played, the two of them, all the time, banter and tease. He couldn’t talk like that with Mi, she would crack like a bowl, leave nothing but splinters digging in his hand. He almost envied these two children – half his age and yet he got the sense they knew exactly how to deal with the life they’d been given. They didn’t seem worried, not by the people they thieved from or by the threat of the man in uniform; just water off a gull’s back.
‘We looking for a man who own a bar in Agua. You know Agua?’
Demi glanced at Baz. ‘Course we know that place. Who the man you got business with?’
‘Moro.’
‘Yeah,’ he said carelessly, ‘we know that man.’
Baz’s eyes seemed to have grown rounder as she stared at them. ‘Why you got to see him?’ she said.
‘Listen to her! She too full of question. You mind your business, Baz, you know that. Come on – we can take you to Agua. We don’t want to do nothing more here.’
Before anyone could disagree with him he set off. Baz skipped to catch up with him and Mi and Reve followed behind.
‘You really think this man will help?’ asked Mi.
‘Said he would. It goin give us a start, Mi, tha’s all. Point us to the policeman, Dolucca. Moro goin to know how to find that man. Then we find her.’ It sounded easy when he said it like that.
‘Won’t it be fine when she see us and take us in, Reve?’
He hesitated. ‘Yes.’
‘We goin to see the Night Man in the daytime. The world all upside down in the city,’ she said, and she took his hand – something she had never done before.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The two children were like fleas, hopping this way and that, skitting between cars, slipping through crowds, leading Reve and Mi away from the market area, down a rumbling thr
oughway steaming with trucks and buses and then on to quieter streets. All the time the girl, Baz, kept looking back at them, checking they were there. Sometimes, Reve noticed, she pulled at Demi, making him slow down and wait for them.
At the corner of a street called Tombre the children shouted at them to run just as a dusty red tram came hissing down beside them. They did, but when Baz and Demi swung up on to the back rail and hung there like a couple of spider monkeys, Reve and Mi fell back. They couldn’t do that. How could they, cars and motor scooters going this way and that? It was all too much. They slowed to a walk, catching their breath, and decided all they could do was follow the street in the direction of the tram.
Baz and Demi were waiting for them at the next stop. ‘They got no tram where you come from, country?’ Demi asked. ‘How you get ’bout a place ’less you can hop a tram? You two so slow seem like you walk backwards all the time.’
Baz told him to mind his manners, but he just wiggled his fingers under her nose and said, ‘I got magic fingers. I don’t need nothing ’bout manners,’ and he sped off again.
They did catch a tram, but at a stop this time, and Reve paid the fare for all of them: four to Agua, and they sat and watched the city stream by. It was only a few stops and Demi told them that what they were seeing was the river side of the city. All the smart and shiny shops were up near the city centre, but they weren’t allowed up there, he said. They needed to practise their skills more. They had a teacher, he said, and this was the person he wanted to take them to. Their teacher told them where to work. The market was good for them, Demi said, because they were so small. He said this with pride, as if being small was something he had designed himself.
After about ten minutes the tram swung into a huge square. There was a fountain with a big pool round it; the stone was grey but the water splashed and looked like silver in the sunlight. The whole square was drab, with tall narrow houses on one side, with some of the windows boarded up, gaps in the tiles and a thread of tiny alleys leading away into whatever lay behind. There were a few shops, but they didn’t seem to sell much that anyone would want, and there was a street market at one corner and a few bars near where the trams and buses pulled up; but the fountain was something special – neither Mi nor Reve had ever seen anything like that, water pouring up into the air in the middle of all this hot, dry, hard stone city.
The children jumped down ahead of them and ran to the fountain and splashed their faces and each other. ‘You can drink it,’ said Demi. ‘It’s a’right – don’t make you sick or nothing and you don’t pay for it. ’Bout the only thing that don’t cost.’
They cupped their hands and drank; it tasted of metal but it was cool, and both he and Mi were so tired and hot and hungry that it was good to run that water over their wrists and splash their faces. But Reve was cautious all the time, and he saw that Mi was too. He liked these two children; you couldn’t help but like them, but he didn’t trust them. Not really. He kept his bundle close and he eyed the end of the square with the bars. That was where they had to go next.
‘You sure that man goin see us?’ Mi said, brushing down her ruckled skirt and then giving her knee a good scratch. ‘I don’t think he even goin recall who you are, Reve.’
‘Most people not like you, Mi; they got memory for things. Come on. You ready?’
‘Wait.’ She kicked off her sandals and dipped her feet one at a time into the cool water, then made a business of drying them off with a strip of yellow cotton she unwrapped from round her waist.
‘You ready yet?’ he asked again.
‘A’right,’ she said.
The two children had their heads together. ‘You still sure you want to go there? We don’t like that place too much. He come where we live, give people hard time unless they pay him money.’
‘Call it rent,’ said Baz. ‘They call it rent, Demi. It happen all over.’
‘Don’t matter what they call it; still him taking money an’ . . . other thing too. You got any place you can sleep? We can show you place you can sleep won’t cost you much dollar. You got anywhere?’
Reve looked up at the sky; it was well past midday. ‘We don’t need to think about that yet,’ he said. ‘We go meet the man now. You don’t have to come with us. It’s that one there, isn’t it?’ He pointed to a bar where he could just pick out the sloping letters of the name ‘Slow Bar’.
‘You got seein eyes, country.’
There were two lizard-like men leaning up against the wall by the entrance. One was chewing on a toothpick and the other’s face was a mask behind a pair of dark glasses. They both wore black and the one on the right with the toothpick had a whirling pattern of tattoos etched into his shaven head and down both arms, purple lines against his dark skin.
‘We lookin for Señor Moro,’ Reve said. He tried to make his voice sound sure and steady, like he would speak to Theon. ‘He in there?’
They didn’t even look at him.
‘What you want, Demi?’ said the man with the toothpick, chewing it over to the edge of his mouth before speaking. ‘I don’t see your Barrio Mama holdin your hand.’
Demi stuck out his chest. ‘I here on business; delivering these people.’
‘Oh,’ drawled toothpick man, ‘deliverin, that right? That not your usual business. She do the deliverin most times.’
‘Not what you think,’ said Demi, a little less confidently this time. ‘We just helping. They come see Señor Moro.’
The second man tilted his head a little, the better to study Reve and Mi, though Reve sensed his eyes were just on Mi, in her little patchwork skirt. He didn’t like the way these men looked them over like they were meat or something, but he said nothing.
‘You takin over business from the old lady?’
‘She not old,’ said Baz firmly, speaking for the first time.
The second man laughed. ‘Hear her speak. Didn’t think that little spike had words.’
Reve had had enough. ‘You goin let us through?’
Tattoo stood to one side. ‘Free country,’ he said in his mocking drawl, ‘free entry. Maybe cost you to come out, specially your girlfriend, unless she happy to give a little favour here,’ and he patted his cheek.
Mi stalked past him and entered the bar and Reve quickly followed. He just heard Demi cheeking the man as he was goin in: ‘You think any right mind person want to catch disease from you, you got less brain than you got hair and that not sayin too much.’
Reve glanced over his shoulder before the door swung shut behind him and saw Demi and Baz dancing backwards with the tattoo man making a dash for them but giving up after only a few paces – with legs half the length of his, the children were too quick. Reve wondered if he and Mi were going to have to learn to be as fast as them.
The room was gloomy, the lights gauzed in something blue that made what light there was seem cool, a little like being underwater. There was a man at the bar leaning on the counter, smoking, eyeing them and two women in skirts so tight Reve didn’t see how they would be able to move from the stools they were perched on. Down at the end of the room, in a corner, were two figures; he couldn’t make out their faces. Their heads were close together, like they were praying, or planning something too secret for the barman to hear maybe. There was the thumbprint glow of a cigar being sucked on.
Reve felt his chest go tight and he hoped that when he spoke his voice wouldn’t shake. It didn’t usually even when he got angry, or had to face down Hevez. But this was all different.
Mi moved a little closer to him. ‘You talk to the man, Reve,’ she whispered. ‘You can do that. You know what to say in a place like this.’ He couldn’t think why she said that; it wasn’t as if he’d ever been in any bar in his life, other than Theon’s cantina, and that was as different to this as shark to jackfish.
‘We don’t give nothing to children in this place,’ the barman said.
Reve believed him, but he hoped that maybe ‘nothing’ didn’t include a bit of info
rmation about the policeman who took their mother. ‘Is that Señor Moro down there?’
The barman looked at him a moment. ‘It is.’
‘He told us call by here,’ Reve said, which wasn’t strictly true, but he didn’t want this man taking it into his head to throw them out before they even got a chance to speak with Moro. Mi was standing so close her shoulder touched his.
‘Wait.’ The man slapped up the hatch in the counter and walked through and down the room.
The figure with the cigar looked their way and the barman beckoned them down.
‘Who this then?’ The voice was an ugly growl like he was trying to be some old dog, though Moro didn’t seem that old to Reve. His face was smooth and he smelt of sweet soap and cigar smoke and he was dressed just as he had been down on the pier, a shiny expensive-looking suit over a working man’s vest. It was as if he wanted to show he had money but he didn’t care too much about it. His eyes were keen and he looked at the pair in front of him without saying anything for a moment. Then he smiled. ‘You the boy!’ he exclaimed and smacked his hand down on the table. ‘Zavvy, this boy look a little skinny but he got the cojones of a bull, I tell you. What’s your name, boy? I forget. And who this you got with you? Come here, girl! Let me see you what you like.’ He leaned back and switched on a side light. Mi didn’t move.
The man he had been talking to, Zavvy, had a narrow face and oily black hair slicked back into a ponytail that tipped the collar of his jacket. He looked at Mi and Reve but said nothing. He had a fat ring on his left little finger, and Reve wondered why a man would wear a ring. There was something about him that unsettled Reve; he had a strong feeling that this was someone who scuttled in the shadows, not in daylight; you wouldn’t see him in normal time, doing ordinary things, like hauling a skiff. Whatever business Moro did with this man, it wasn’t anything that Reve wanted to know about.
‘My name is Reve,’ said Reve, knowing that Mi wouldn’t do anything this man said. It was up to him to do the talking and find out what they needed. But somehow, because Zavvy looked so sinister, Reve found himself speaking to Moro with greater confidence. ‘You said I could call on you for favour, Señor Moro.’