Evan Burl and the Falling, Vol. 1-2 (5 page)

Light streaked through dust-clogged air.

CHAPTER SIX

A melon-size fist broke through the solid koa-wood door like it was made of match sticks. Five cracked-stone fingers unclenched, ripping away what was left of the door. The jamb and part of the wall disappeared into a cloud of dust.
 

Light flooded in, drowning us. I blinked, swearing at myself for waiting that last second. Three shadows rose, silhouetted against the towering windows behind them. The only adults I'd ever really known: Uncle Mazol, Ballard, and Yesler. The Warts.

Ballard reached through the dust, yanking Henri by the hair. She dissolved into the light, screaming.
 

I jumped up, plunging blindly after her. Pain shot through my leg, a constant reminder of the night I fell off the tower with Pike. Ballard's free hand became a wall in front of me. I made out the outline of Henri's body crumpled at Mazol's feet.
 

I fought to reach Henri. Ballard caught me by the neck. Uncle Mazol yanked Henri's arm. Twisting it behind her back, he forced Henri to her feet.

"You canis." Mazol shook her. "Made us miss a full half-day of processing."
 

She sobbed.
 

Mazol squeezed her mouth. "This if for your own good, can't you see that?"

I pried at Ballard's fingers but might as well have been trying to rip roots from the ground. "You're hurting her!"
 

Yesler backhanded me across the face. The sting of his gaudy rings cut my cheek. I tasted blood.

"That's enough." My uncle was particular about who got to beat me and when. "All of you, follow me."
 

Mazol dragged Henri by the arm. She tripped to keep up. Ballard pulled me along by the back of my shirt. My bad leg screamed with every step. Yesler followed last; unblinking, eyes grinning through his porcelain mask. As we turned toward the castle's domed entrance hall, I caught a glimpse into a room I hadn't seen in years.
 

For a moment, I was taken back to playing with toys, pretending to fight off bad guys with sticks and Mazol smiling like a man who enjoyed kids but didn't know how to show it. Now Mazol was the bad guy.

We stopped in the center of a towering room. Carved marble staircases swept up both sides of the room to a balcony. The front wall was lined with windows and two large doors that led to the stairs and courtyard. The windows were covered with velvet curtains that allowed only cracks of sun to pass around their edges. Dozens of statues and tables and bookshelves covered in white dust sheets surrounded us like ghosts.

Mazol released Henri and began to search under sheets. "Someone find me a stool."
 

Yesler took a turn around Henri. I imagined him inspecting a defective clanker in much the same way. Slipping a knife slowly from his belt, he licked the blade then pressed it to her throat. "Like stealing food? Skipping out on work all day?" Yesler glanced in Mazol's direction. He pressed the dagger deeper into Henri's skin. A trickle of blood ran down the edge. Henri squirmed and cried out. He pushed harder.

"Does it hurt?"

I lunged at him, but Ballard yanked me back.
 

Pulling a dusty white sheet off a set of brightly painted tables, Mazol looked over his shoulder. "Cut it out."
 

Yesler put his knife away but didn't turn away from Henri. Mazol dragged a burnt orange stool across the mosaic tile floor. The screech seemed to linger long after the stool had stopped moving.

"Uncle Mazol," I said, fighting against Ballard's grip.

He ignored me.

"I stole the food."

Mazol waved his hand at me for silence. Yesler pulled Henri to the stool.

"She didn't do anything wrong!"

There was barely room for both of Henri's feet on the stool. "Stand here until sun-up. You'll have plenty of time to think about your selfishness."

"A full day—" I said.
 

"If you make it that long," Mazol continued, "I won't be giving you no lashes for your thievery."

I wriggled away from Ballard. "Let me do it instead."

"The gimp wants to be a hero, does he?" Mazol said.
 

"You can't stand for five minutes without your crutch," Yesler said.

"I can do it."

"You're needed in the Caldroen," Mazol said. "Just what exactly do you think will happen to us if we don't get our work done each week? The deliveries will stop coming. Then we'll be immanis worse than hungry."

An enormous mechanized clanker arrived on the cart with Ballard and Yesler the day I fell from the tower. A replacement for one of the forty-eight steam operated machines that had since become our sole reason for living. The Caldroen is where we spend most of our waking hours now—a six-floor, glass-domed, hollow tower at the center of the castle—where sooty iron walkways and clankers and spiral staircases cling to the walls like spider webs.

"You'll get your chance, gimp," Yesler said "Still got yours coming." He turned to Henri and whispered, "We could have had some fun with that shiv, you and I."
 

He ran his finger along the scar where he cut her neck. Like the other Roslings, Henri healed fast. Yesler wiped the last drop of blood off her neck and licked his finger.

"She was starving!" I yelled.
 

"It's only in her head," Mazol said.

"We wouldn't have to steal if you fed us more."

"Enough! If I catch you sneaking in here tonight, I'll double her time." He turned to Henri. "And if you so much as take one step off this stool, you'll get a lash for every hour remaining until sunup. I expect you to show up for work tomorrow morning all the brighter. Clear?"
 

She nodded weakly. As Mazol walked from the room, I found Henri's eyes. Shrouded statues towered around her. Tears dried in patchwork on her blushed cheeks. Her glasses, crooked. Dirty rags hung about her skinny body.

"I'll get you out of this," I whispered. "I'll make it right—"

Behind me, Mazol laughed. I felt like a fool.
 

"What do you think a worthless gimp like you can do to make anything right?" Mazol stopped in the threshold, staring back at us. I said nothing.

"All you do is make life miserable. Why do you think I'm stuck taking care of you? Your own father couldn't even stand to have you around."
 

The beast inside told me to tear his head off. I stepped toward Mazol, my fist clenched.

He grinned. "Got something to say, gimp?"

I ground my teeth. He'd just take it out on Henri. "Nothing."

"That's what I thought." He waved away a giant red fly that landed on his forehead.

I turned back to Henri. There was something about her, a look in her eyes, like a puzzle I couldn't fit together.
 

Mazol's voice droned on in the back of my mind. "...what you should be doing is thinking about how you're gonna make up for all the lost work you've caused. If we don't get our orders done, none of us is gonna eat..."

She must have been frightened, furious, even disappointed I had let her down. But she only looked guilty. I hung my head as Ballard started to pull me from the room. Glancing back, I kept eye contact with Henri for as long as I could, limping along as she grew smaller and smaller behind me.
 

I was about to grant Henri's wish—to make her disappear—into the shadows. Yesler offered a stick to me with a smile. "Here gimp. Left your cane back in the closet didn't you?"

I eyed him and held out my hand for the cane. He tossed it across the room. Yesler put out his foot as I stepped forward. My left knee cracked against the stone as I hit the floor.

"Watch your step, gimp." He caught up with Mazol in the hall. "Who gets to give Henri the beating if she falls off the stool?"
 

"You're sick, know that?" Mazol said.

"How about we make the gimp do it?" Yesler said.

"You hear that, gimp?" Mazol said over his shoulder. "You're swinging the belt if she don't stay on that stool all night."

"Don't you think he's had enough?" Ballard said.

Yesler grinned. "It's perfect. Only way to keep him from helping her."

"You know the gimp," Mazol said. "Always trying to be a hero."

Ballard's heavy feet pounded the stone methodically as we walked away. Turning, Yesler took a long look back at Henri. "I hope she falls."

CHAPTER SEVEN

I didn't make a sound when Yesler took his belt to my back. The buckle cut my skin, but even the crack of metal on bone faded under the crashing waves in my mind.
 

I sat on the front porch of my cottage by the sea. A ship bobbed in the distance, ready to take me to a new world across the ocean. And when the whip tried to cut through my dream, I heard only the sound of a wave breaking upon the rocks.
 

The lashes weren't for stealing food. I was being punished for climbing the tower with Pike five years ago. Every punishment went back to that. I started sneaking Dravus inside the gates four years ago—he taught me about science. Physics. How little changes can add up to the difference between life and death. A thousand seemingly inconsequential events caused us to fall just the way we did. A soft breeze. The turning of the earth. The way our bodies moved, and how we changed our paths through the air without even knowing it. The result was a ten foot distance between where we each landed.
 

Crack
.
The belt stung my skin. But it wasn't a lashing. Just a row of white towels whipping on a clothes line in the wind.
 

The night we fell, I hit a pile of longgrass. Broke a dozen bones. Dravus said my leg would never heal properly. Said I would have pain the rest of my life.

Pike wasn't so lucky.
 

He hit the cobblestone path. Dravus said a body can bounce six feet into the air after a fall like that. I've fallen hundreds of times in my dreams, but I've never kept my eyes open long enough to know if Dravus is right.

Crack.

"That's enough," a voice said. Ballard ripped the belt from Yesler's hand.

Yesler shrugged. "I was done anyway. Any more and he'd be worthless."
 

"The Caldroen," Mazol said. "Ten minutes."

Yesler added, "Don't be a hero. Just forget about Henri."

I heard Yesler and Mazol's footsteps disappear down a hall as Ballard untied my hands from the hook on the wall. I limped after them, wondering how I was going to save Henri without either of us getting caught. Ballard walked with me.
 

The Caldroen gets its name from the boiler that sits in the center and rises up four levels. At the base is a furnace with openings that looks like eyes and mouth. At 1550 degrees, it's hot enough to turn me to ash in seconds. The heat powers the boiler which sits on top: a tank of boiling water that makes steam for the clankers.

Our job is to keep all forty-eight clankers running—copper and iron beasts, they rattle and hiss and moan and creak and pop, caught in the web of platforms and walkways that hang from the Caldroen's walls. Pipes go in, and pipes go out. We don't know what the clankers do, but Mazol says it pays for food and supplies to run the orphanage.
 

Ballard and Yesler worked for a year to get them all working. They'd been out of operation for decades. I used to stare up at them, my eyes wide at shiny copper and spinning gears and levers and gauges and pipes. The fun didn't last long. Not once I realized I'd be working those clankers from sunup until sundown, six days a week.

Ballard offered an arm to lean on as I limped down the hall. He was funny like that—might hold you down under Yesler's whip in the morning and sneak you a sip of Mazol's beer an hour later when no one was looking—as if that made up for anything.

Under his other arm, Ballard carried one of the smaller chests that the Rosling infants were found in. Instead of transporting Roslings, now the chests carried the stuff we processed day and night. I wondered if even Ballard knew what's inside them.
 

He gestured to a bench. "Don't run off. I'll be right back."
 

He set the chest next to where I sat. I realized the door that led to the entrance hall was just a few feet away. Henri could hear me if I yelled her name. Was this a test? I focused on the door handle. It seemed to be calling me, begging me to open it. I limped across the hall. My fingers closed around the cool brass knob. I started to twist the handle, then stopped.

Henri would suffer even more if I was caught.

I returned to the bench and slumping down, focusing on the window in front of me. On the horizon, a ship turned into the harbor. Where was it coming from? Was there a little chest on that ship bound to be delivered to our gatehouse, filled with who-knows-what? Dravus made deliveries every Sunday morning. The chests had to come from somewhere. Why not across the ocean?

Dravus's armored guards, runners they were called, earn more money than the mayor of Queen Anne. They had to be fearless, ruthless and talented with a spear. Intelligence wasn't required. Of course, runners don't much live past thirty. If they survive that long, they paint their skin green as a mark of honor. But the jungle gets them all in the end, even the greenskins. Because the jungle is patient. She always wins.

When the runners are unloading and resting up for the return to Queen Anne, I sneak Dravus into the city. For about an hour each Sunday, he teaches me whatever I want to know. I thought about last Sunday. Dravus seemed standoffish, like he knew something bad was about to happen. Could he have known about Little Saye? As I stared at the South Gatehouse, I saw movement. I stepped to the window. Pearl stood at the gates. She threw her weight against the latch that released the weighted locks. Chains shook. The doors swung open.

Six armored warhorses and a fortified cart flew through, screeching to a halt by the grim iron lamppost that stands lonely in the center of the courtyard. Pearl jumped back, barely avoiding being crushed under the horses' hooves.