Day Boy (10 page)

And I get the feeling that we're at the end of another story,
that it ended bad,
and tragic. And that it's coming into ours was only to falter and die.

Maybe all stories end that way.

Mick sniffs, spits at his feet. ‘You all right boys?'

We don't say nothing; he can see we're all, right.

He pushes the dog aside with a boot. Then makes gentle work with the shovel. A hiss
of breath comes out of him when he uncovers them.

‘Is that a babe?' Grove says. ‘Is that a woman holding a babe all dead in that earth?'

‘You boys go on home,' Mick says.

But we don't move.

‘I said go.' There's a hardness to his voice, but he gentles it quick. ‘You've work
to do for your Masters. And I've work to do here. Stop on by the hall and send Jane
out to me. Tell her to bring her gear. She'll know what I mean.'

We hover there, looking at his work.

‘Don't try my patience!'

And we're on our bikes and riding.

Dain wakes me that night. ‘I heard what you did, and what you found,' he says. ‘You
should have told me.'

I shrug, sleepy-eyed.

‘The world scars you ten times more if you hold such things inside. If you don't
share them.'

Says the man who doesn't give away a thing.

‘We found a shallow grave,' I say. And all the time I'm thinking that we wouldn't
have if it weren't for Dougie busting up Grove's bike. And I'm thinking I'd like
to bust up Dougie right now. But I know how that ends.

‘You found a mother and child,' Dain says. ‘You found their corpses. It is a terrible
thing.'

‘Will you find who did it?'

Dain shakes his head. ‘They're long gone. Not even the auditors could find them now.'

‘So they're not here?'

‘No, murderers of this sort fear our kind too much to linger.' Dain lowers himself
onto the end of the bed. ‘But not enough to stop them from doing this. A mother and
a babe, and the mother scarcely more than a child herself. This is a dark place made
darker by monsters and fools.'

Dain touches my hair, quick and light. ‘But we are still a part of it.' He sighs.
‘I better get back to my book.'

Feels Dain's been writing that book since forever. I asked him once if it were about
those last days, when words were powerful.

He just laughed. ‘Words were powerful, yes. Lightning quick. And judgments flickered
across the earth. In those last days we had screens that we drowned in. They led
everywhere, but mostly we only saw our own reflection in them. And then the dreams
changed, and then they stopped being dreams.

‘Mark, I sometimes wonder…if that isn't true. If I just never woke. But then why
would I dream of you?'

Well—why wouldn't he?

Two days later there's visitors that come from Hadentown in a cart horse-drawn. Two
men: thin, armed with knives. They come at noon, to Town Hall. Mick's waiting and
he guides them inside. They leave almost at once—their faces dark and heavy. Two
small coffins set on the back. One of the men
doesn't bother hiding his tears, and
it's a hard thing to see.

I'm there gawping with Dougie: the fella knows where the action is. Called me to
it, from my work at the Sewills'.

Mick glares at us. ‘You two, move on.'

We do—if a trifle slow.

‘There was a woman missing from Hadentown. Woman and a baby,' Dougie tells me, because
Dougie knows most of anything, and when he's in a good mood, he's fine company. Likes
to gossip as much as destroy bikes or lay his fists upon you.

‘What's it all mean?' I say.

Dougie looks at me. ‘Means there's a murderer about. Or there was.' He shrugs. ‘Maybe
it doesn't mean anything but the world's a damn awful cruel place.'

Dain's not from here. He wasn't born to this town. I don't know where he came from,
some other place of the before here nows. But he was tenured to the university in
the City in the Shadow of the Mountain. I've asked him why he isn't working there
still.

And he said the place was a poison and a joy. But the poison was worse. So he left,
was assigned, or banished (depending on his mood), to Midfield. His kind don't get
much of a choice in where they're sent.

But he says he loves the place, that it suits him more than he would have believed.
The city must be fed, and it is the Masters that ensure it is. That keep the manufactories
running, that keep away the other monsters, that bleed the towns, as the townsfolk
themselves are bled.

I know he misses his books. I know he misses the conversations. The Grand Conversation,
he said, that is the confluence of all that thought. I asked him once if he was afraid
to go back, or that they might make him go back. ‘My people are cruel,' he says,
‘but it's a clever cruelty, I know it; I possess it too. It would do them no service
to bring me back, I was too good at the game. It was why I left.'

That's about the best answer I got. Never quite understood what the game was, when
he told me this. But I think I do now, having been a piece in it.

PART TWO

COUNTRY MICE

Of all the sins beneath Lord Sun

Of all the sinners, the worst, they run.

CHAPTER
14

IT'S A MONTH since that Hunter's knife. The wound don't pull so much now. And the
sting and the shame of that meeting is dulling. Been a week since me and Grove found
that shallow grave. Dain looks me over, sends me protesting for a haircut and tells
me I'm to wash. He has suitcases packed in his room. And a note for me to take them
down to the front room. They're heavy, but I get them down those stairs.

Another note says,
Pack for hot and cold, and four days at least.

I don't have much, but I pack my best. The long-sleeved shirts and the vest. And
a cap that Dain gave me last year on my birthday with NYC embroidered on its face.

That night he wakes me. Big bright moon in the sky.

‘Up, boy, up. We don't have much time.' He's holding his bags like they're light
as air, not a single hint of strain. The bags themselves creak and grumble like all
things when the Masters touch them; they quicken—not quite alive.

‘Where we going?'

‘You know where we're going,' he says. And my heart races.

I know. I know. The City in the Shadow of the Mountain. The city of them. The city
of the Masters. Only two places we'd ever go. The city or the sea. Never been to
either. And now.

‘Best fetch my comb,' I say.

‘I've packed it for you already.'

We're quick to the centre of town, and the Station.

There's folk already waiting. Certain nods at us, Petri at heel. There's men and
women, getting wagons ready. The Parson twins are waiting for a barrel of oil for
Kast's burner; they scowl and growl at me, and I give them a good scowl right back,
and Dain clips me under the ear—how that sets them laughing. Mary's there with a
list long as her arm. Supplies coming in.

‘Shipment of paper expected for you, Mr Dain,' she says.

Dain nods. ‘I'll send the boy for it as soon as we get back.'

‘Make sure there's plenty of sweets,' I tell her. Dain's taken his bags, and is talking
low to Certain. Petri's rolled onto her back, and Dain scratches her belly.

‘I would if people paid for them rather than just slipping them in their mouth,'
she says.

‘I'm no thief,' I say, puffing up my chest.

‘No, a thief'd get away with it.'

Anne's there too, and she laughs, until Mary gives her a hard look. And I know I
best step careful. Think of it as practice for where I'm going. Mary gets called
over to Mr Stevens, Anne doesn't follow. She's about the most wonderful thing I've
ever seen today, she's more radiant than that moon, and her eyes
are darker than
the sky between the stars. And then she grins.

A smile with an edge like glass.

‘Off to the city, I am,' I say.

Anne nods. ‘Explains why your hair's combed flat like a wet carpet. Look like a lost
country boy who hardly knows what end of a brush to use.'

Heat in my face and my words all drop to my feet, no good to me there.

There's a shrill whistle in the near distance. A building cry of machinery at furious
work.

‘I—'

‘Course, that's what you are,' Anne says. ‘Be careful in that dark city, they've
little liking of country boys except their blood. But there will be music,' and her
eyes have taken a faraway cast, and I feel the strangest jealousy till she's gazing
at me again. ‘Find the music for me, Mark, and when you do, close your eyes, and
think of me.'

‘I—'

‘Yes, I know you will.' Then she's off talking to her ma, looking down the list,
and I'm watching her, my blood running hot and cold, and faster than it was.

‘What did I say about her?' Dain places the bags at my boots. ‘When will you listen
to me?'

‘I listen all the time.'

‘Schoolyard semantics invite a schoolboy caning,' he says, and I wince, but he's
smiling again. ‘No one likes a smart mouth, Mark. Particularly when it is not nearly
as clever as it thinks it is.'

My mouth's been all types of stupid today. But I'm wise enough to keep it closed
for a while after that.

Night Train comes into town all a-racket, brakes screaming out their halt. Mr Stevens
stands watching from a distance, comes over and talks to the driver. Dark shapes
dart from carriage top to carriage top. Fish all covered in ice are taken from the
rear cars. Bags of grain loaded into the car next over. Manifests are signed off
and trades accounted for. It's a few mad minutes of frenzied industry.

A fella, a Master I don't know, drops lightly from the roof of the nearest carriage
dressed in a long coat, a fedora on his head. ‘You got your tickets?'

We're the only folk heading to the city from Midfield.

‘Of course I have, Frederick,' Dain says. ‘Have you ever known me not to follow protocol?'

The Ticket Master laughs. But he inspects Dain's papers and checks me too. He holds
my jaw, tilts my head and peers into my eyes like he's looking into my skull. Not
much in there. Not much at all. Just music, and the way Anne walked to her mum, like
she knew I was watching.

The Ticket Master's eyes narrow.

‘Frederick!' Dain glares at him, hard as a glare can be.

‘Never be too careful,' Frederick says. ‘Could be strung up with bombs.'

‘The time of bombs is past. He's mine,' Dain says.

‘Sorry, Professor,' the Ticket Master says, without a hint of sorry, and tips his
hat and picks up Dain's bag. Mr Stevens is already running back to his tower, and
a bell starts ringing, and the engines are building up steam.

The nearest door opens, and we step into the train. Me in a train; in the Night Train
at that! There's a long hallway that
runs down the carriage's belly, rooms closed
tight. Though there's noises, music and cries, and laughter. I stop at one door where
a fine tune's playing, fiddles and what sounds like a guitar. Music's a bait that
catches me, already thinking of Anne's instructions. I put my head against the door.

Dain clips me under the ear. ‘Keep moving, boy.'

We find our room. A bench chair and a bed. I sit down, and the train starts moving,
slow at first but faster with each clack of the wheels. Fast so that the dark slides
by, and the town with it. And the night's in motion all around us, as though it's
drawing the train on and pushing it away. In a few minutes we're further from home
than I've been in my whole life. Further away from Anne. And I'm feeling a gloom
settle in me.

‘Boy, listen to me, now,' Dain says. ‘And watch.' He taps the bed in three places,
and it opens. There's a man-sized space beneath, dark and narrow.

‘Just so you know. Not that I need to use it this time, we'll be there before dawn,'
Dain says. ‘I've rooms at my old university. But I will take you around the city
too. It is time you knew it, knew the options that await you, low and high. You'll
see little of me for much of the trip. I've errands to run. There is some research
I need to engage in concerning this book.'

‘Well, you'll have plenty of paper for when you get back,' I say.

Dain looks at me. ‘Is that mockery I hear?'

I shake my head. ‘Will we be there too long?'

‘Put away that sad face, we'll be home soon enough. Don't you want to see the city?'

Of course I do! Who wouldn't?

Dain rings a bell and a man comes, hair cut short, tattoos of the Sun on his wrists.
He's all politeness. I can't tell if that's truly him or the job.