Day Boy (17 page)

Then he looks at me one more time and flees the room.

CHAPTER
24

THERE'S THE RIVER rushing, quickening around the bend, Sun's hot, but it's a lessening
thing, grown to its limits and already retreating. Summer's passing is a slow slide
down and then a drop. Few weeks from now, we'll see our first frosts. The trees are
already turning, shifting to the ambers and the reds. And the road here is shaded
in that colour on either side of the bank, and Anne's standing beside me. All the
colours I could ever want.

‘How was it?' Anne asks. We shouldn't be here, but we are. And there's a sweetness
to that shouldn't that is sweeter than any other, but I keep it bound up. I keep
it where she can't see it: the foolish smile that I'm hoping doesn't mark my face.
I am happy and terrified at once. I haven't seen her in so long. How can she put
a deeper fear in me than any Master? I've faced that council, I've had troubles find
me that I'd never expected and seen them off, and yet, here, in front of her, it
doesn't mean a thing.

I look at her steady as I can. ‘It wasn't so bad.'

‘The City of Monsters? Really? Heard you ran. Panicked and ran, out into the Red
City. Even I know that is a bad thing to do.' She says that last bit as though I'm
stupid.

Maybe I am.

We're spitting off Handly Bridge, down on a log that's got caught in the bridge,
half-submerged. I'm thinking it's a crocodile, and why not? Come all the way down
from up north, where they grow big as logs, and I mean big logs. Grey and grinning,
and rising from the murk to bring down water buffalo, or roos, or a man. Masters
aren't the only predators.

‘That was just ill circumstance,' I say.

‘Dain talking to you yet?'

‘A little.'

‘You should have seen him when he thought you lost. He came to see my ma. Such a
sadness.'

I feel my heart clench.

‘I thought it might even be the death of him.'

‘And you?'

Anne gives me a sly smile. ‘I knew you'd be back.' She spits out across the shimmering
air. ‘So a person can live there?'

‘Yes, but why you'd want to is beyond me. All those folks dressed up, all them Masters
crowding out the living.'

Anne laughs. ‘All that city politicking, Ma says it drives the Masters to distraction.
Chasing their tails with their teeth and filling the air with schemes and machinations.'

I hock another spit. ‘There was some of that, I reckon, yes.'

‘So what's it like in the City in the Shadow of the Mountain?'

‘Dry and dark,' I say. ‘No river like this.' I close my eyes,
feel the Sun on my
face, taste the muddy smells of our muddy river—no dust. Then I remember that place
deep below, and the shallow ponds that stand before the stone coffins. I wonder if
they really are shallow. Perhaps they run deep, deeper than this river, down into
the hollow places of the earth. Perhaps they are the true death of the winds, the
drowning of them once they have given up their secrets.

‘Were you scared?' Anne says, and there's a weight of mockery in her voice. Maybe
I'm showing too much.

I puff out my chest. ‘Scared to hell sometimes, but I handled myself OK. I'm still
breathing and I saw the heart of that city. I saw the spaces beneath their great
brass Luminance.' And it still haunts my sleep, that bright dark, those endless pools,
the hands that closed around my throat. And where they touched, still tender.

Anne folds her hands across her chest. ‘You saw the young Masters' cages, too?'

I give her a good look. ‘You know about them cages?'

Anne snorts. ‘And you didn't? Whispers drift both ways.'

‘Of course I knew about them.'

I think about those mad things, their howls and their cries. ‘It was a dreadful sight.
And I have seen many dreadful things.'

Anne snorts again, spits again into that brown surge beneath. ‘You ever think about
going in them?'

‘That's not my decision.'

‘Don't be a fool,' Anne snaps. ‘It's always your decision. That's the grand Decision,
and it's not one that'll be offered to me. Damn boys club, with your boys rules.
I hear over east they don't just have Day Boys, but Girls as well.'

‘You think you'd be a good Day Girl?'

Anne shakes her head. ‘I'd be better than that. Put the lot of you to shame,' she
says, and then with a smirk—and Dain's right, smiles have a sting to them—she's jumped
off the bridge. I feel my mouth gape as she drops into that brown. And all I can
think about is that log, and it hitting her, or hurting her. I've no choice but to
follow. She might strike her head, she might drown or be lost, and I'd be the one
that would get the trouble of it. And I would likely die myself, and I'd want it
too. Like I'd pushed her. Like I could ever push her. Why is it that I'm always following?
But I do, I jump and I hit the cold water, breath knocked out of me, and I scramble-swim
up, feeling out for her. Like she'd be near me anyway, the current's not moving that
way.

Anne's already at the shore by the time I surface, lying flat against the river sand,
and I swim to her, mouth snarling. The water's cool against my body, but the swimming's
a strain: I'm out of practice. I feel a rising panic that for all I've seen and done,
it'll be this river that'll have me. I breathe faster, and faster. But there's a
calm I can find if I want it, if I'm lucky enough: and I find it. Current's taken
me a way, but I start for the bank. I take it slow and reach the shore, quite a distance
from where Anne is lying.

I get out of that water, gasping and spitting, and make the slow walk towards her,
passing beneath the bridge, looking around in case of trolls. Nothing, of course,
but it'd be just my luck if there was. I push through tall grass, and she's there,
stretched on the sand. And I think about how beautiful she is, just lying there,
and something pulls in my throat like an ache, like a cry, like a silence more full
than any sound. And I put a finger to my lips as if to catch it, but you can't catch
that.

I'm about to speak when Anne laughs.

‘I thought I was going to have to jump in and rescue you there,' she says.

‘Just a stitch.'

Anne's eyes widen, all a-mock. ‘A stitch, you say. And you a Day Boy and all.'

‘Yes and it—'

‘You're a good friend,' Anne says.

‘The best,' I say, and she looks at me with those eyes of hers. Full of quick thought
and cutting edges when she wants them to be, but now they're sad.

‘I'm frightened for you, Mark.'

‘Nothing to be frightened of,' I say. But we know it's a lie. We know there's plenty
to be scared of in this world, and not all of it is my Master's kind.

The winds are cool now, no more of those furnace breaths, these have shivers in them.
And the sky is so clear, just the leanest streaks of cloud amongst all the blue.

‘Don't you change,' Anne says. Her lips touch mine. Just the scantest of kisses.
There's a rattling roar in my head, and when it's gone so is she, and all I can hear
is her laughter, and the river finding rocks around the bend. I don't give chase,
I'm too shocked by it. I drop to the sand, my feet pointing at the brown water, and
my eyes to that autumn-blue sky. The kiss still a heat on my lips. It floored me
far worse than anything Dougie ever threw.

But how come I'm smiling?

Then I think about the music. I forgot to tell her about the music.

When I'm mostly dry I find the Culverts' place, and mark the door with the circle
and seven. And there's yard work to be done, and I'm quick to doing it in the cooling
afternoon. Rake the leaves, straighten the back fence.

Dain's stirring when I come in, but he doesn't call for me. He moves through the
house, a presence obvious, a pressure in the air. But he keeps from me, and I keep
from him.

Dinner's over with quick, and the cleaning of the kitchen, and I really have no idea
what time it is. My head's full of a different sort of rhythm.

‘This damn book, this endless book,' Dain shouts, and I smile until he calls me into
his study. He has one hand over a sheaf of papers, ink staining his fingers. And
I feel like it's the us of old.

‘You'll finish it,' I say, almost like I believe it.

Dain laughs. ‘There are those that scribble more furiously than me, writing words
that no one sees. In these everlasting selves we've become, we've lost the wit, the
inclination to produce work enduring, instead we are that work entire. We are the
Imperatives, and it seems that is enough.'

He pauses from his pontificating. ‘Boy. You smell of the river and you smell of that
girl. Must you always disappoint me?'

I open my mouth to speak, but he silences me with a gesture. ‘I'm not angry, not
tonight,' he says. ‘You came up against two unstoppable forces, rivers and girls.
I've no answers for that, other than to express my disappointment; you know my and
Mary's wishes on the matter. Must you always make things so difficult for yourself,
Mark?'

I hang my head. I've no answer in me, though I wish I did.

And all I can think of is that kiss.

‘Boy,' Dain says. ‘You disappointed me. I went to the city to plead for your position,
and to keep you on here for another year. Instead, you brought shame to me. Instead
of continuity, there is to be a new Day Boy within the week.'

And that hits me almost as hard as that kiss. ‘Egan said I was to train him.'

Dain nods. ‘His name is Thom. You will have a few months and then your tenure will
be done. Dav had longer, but you were younger, and untrained, not like those Crèche
boys. And I had more influence even back then.'

‘I will not let you down,' I say.

‘Of course you won't.' That he sounds like he means it brings a tear to my eye. I
wipe it away, before I start snuffling properly.

‘I saw Dav when I visited the Council,' I say. ‘Dav half-changed in the belly of
the mountain.'

‘I know,' Dain says. ‘I am sorry you were a witness to that. I am sorry for all that
happened. But it is done. The path to Mastery demands a long time in hunger's wilderness,
a long dark time. You don't make steel with a gentle touch. But it is a hard thing
to see.'

When I look up, he's gone. Out into the night. And the pages are scattered on the
table.

That book that doesn't want to be written; that book he's been writing since I've
known him.

I pick up the pages and read but there's little about them to pull me in. Mainly
dates and figures.

1988, Inception.

1997, the Glaring (a rigorous intercept).

2002, the Great Crash.

I can't make anything of it. The last page I put upon the table, and on it is written:

Don't read my things, boy.

So I don't.

They all have their yearnings. Their artistries. Their obsessions. Egan's tall house
with its deep basement has a yard full of sculptures, half-finished. Curious beasts,
expressions empty, that make him yell in frustration. Kast has a garden that he tends,
but anything that grows in it is the Parson boys' doing. ‘He don't have the touch,'
they say. Tennyson's equations cover a great blackboard in his house that stretches
along the rear walls. Twitch says he works and works at it, but his proofs are proof
of sense. And Sobel, I don't know what he does, but he keeps it hidden. Sobel doesn't
like mockery.

They've all the time in the world for their passions, and have found themselves at
passion's end.

Maybe the blood is all that truly fascinates them now.

Maybe all those Masters are fooling themselves, playing at Great Works, when they've
no great work in them.

Dougie tells this story like it was a book or a play. There's noises and motions,
crashing and fire. He's one that isn't given to pride except when it's his Master.
There's more of Dougie in this story than you would think, or less. I know he thinks
himself a soldier. But he don't have it in him, not really. There's a weakness in
his heart. He's covered it with cunning but he'd turn and run. Sobel wouldn't pick
a boy other than one like that. He knows a soldier is a service and a threat, and
Sobel doesn't want any threats.

There was great battles in those Before days.

All them engines of war. Turning, grinding down, and it don't matter which way they
face, there was plenty to do the dying for them. Always was in those last days before
these calmer ones.

Trenches laid out ragged across the ruined earth. Forces directed this way and that,
but there was no forward motion, only a quickening retreat. The world was shrinking,
in all ways. There were jets and rockets, and secret stations in the sky. But they
fell into the wells of gravity like stars, the heavens broke them, and new monsters
walked the earth. New, or so old and forgotten they might as well been new. Everything
old is new again, they say. So it doesn't matter which you side with.