Day Boy (26 page)

‘He's a good boy,' I say. ‘Got me out of trouble in the Red City.' Got me into trouble
more like, but I don't say it. Me being caught ended up far worse for him and his
boys. I owe him a debt, as I see it. I pay them when I can.

Certain considers him, working his way clumsily in the yard, but working nonetheless.
‘You know I ain't an orphanage.'

‘He takes me as a boy who knows how to work,' I say.

‘What about you?' Certain studies my face, and I try to
look like it's nothing. ‘You
know what you're giving up. Only one spare room in this house. Think what you're
doing here. Even if I'd consider it, they won't let that many of our kind work together.'

I know it, and I don't need him to say it. ‘Some choices you just have to make because
they're right. Not because they're right for you.'

Certain squints at me. Measures my words like I'm a man, not a boy; like I've earned
that.

‘He can stay then,' Certain says. ‘You go and tell him the good news.'

Certain don't look at me after that as he walks inside.

‘You're staying here,' I tell Grainer, and the old boy nods.

‘Certain will work you hard, but it's good work.'

‘This your place?' Grainer says. ‘This your out?'

‘You going to work harder than you ever worked.'

‘Good,' Grainer says.

I nod. ‘You better go in.'

And he does, and I look at that house like it's the last time I'll ever see it. And,
in a way, it is.

Dain wakes me in the middle of the night, no gentleness, cold hands to slap the dreams
from you. I hear him sniffing at the air. ‘You've dust on you boy. You smell of the
Red City.'

‘Had a visitor today,' I tell him, yawn, get to roll back on my side, all slumbrous.

‘Out with it,' he says, pulling me up. ‘Make yourself some tea, you look ill.'

‘A fella does when he's snatched from sleep.'

‘Enough complaints. Tea, then talk.'

I'm drinking that tea and telling him about Grainer. When he's done I can see he
is at once angry and proud.

‘Sometimes you please me well,' he says. ‘But this is no good for you.'

‘I'll be all right.'

Dain's brows furrow a bit. ‘Him showing up now, I don't like it; the time's all wrong.
Or too right.'

‘Nah, he's just showed up. Like them cold children.' I say it casual, but I'm still
embarrassed at them. ‘Like the winter winds. Some things happen because they happen.'

‘Winter winds don't just come and snatch away your hopes.'

‘They do at that,' I say. And whose hopes is he talking about, his or mine?

‘I could talk to him. Draw out the truth.' He could, too, just like drawing out blood.
I don't know what truth it would be that he might find, and I don't know just how
deep he would need to go, but I sense that there might be death in it, accidental
or deliberate. And I won't have that.

I shake my head. ‘Draw what out of him? The long miles, the dark things what he saw?
I could see all that in his eyes. I could see the truth. He found me out, because
he knew I would help him, like he helped me in that city. I'm not going to fail someone
that's made the effort of all that road.'

Dain laughs. ‘What are you going to be, boy? What are you going to become?'

‘What everyone that lives long enough becomes. Have to grow up sometime.'

Dain rests his chin upon a hand, looks down at me. ‘Perhaps I've judged you wrong.
Your flight in the city turned my head against it…but still, perhaps, you might rise
to Mastery.'

I feel my eyes grow wide. ‘You think?'

‘I'm not one to speak lightly of such things.'

There's all sorts of light and heaviness vying for supremacy in my guts. I never
thought this might be a path to which I walked. And now it's laid up ahead, grey
stones bedded, stretched to a horizon beneath the Sun.

But do I want it? Do I want that cage? Do I want that hunger?

‘Think on it,' Dain says.

Think on it! It's all I can think on. A pup spinning after its tail. Yes and no.
To feed…or to
feed
?

A few days later I visit Certain. Just a social thing, Certain don't need me, and
we don't play at it. We're both straight-up kind of men.

Sit in the shade of his verandah, spring's settling in. Winter's slipping away, there's
already a bit of heat to the Sun. Just the suggestion of summer, but that's the weight
of the land now, it's where we're heading no doubt at all. I'm wondering where I'll
be come summer. Seemed so long away, and now it isn't.

We're sitting there. Not as man and boy, but two men. Well, that's how I'm feeling
it. Not much need to talk, I've a cider in one hand, just drinking it, enjoying the
cold against the pale heat.

‘He working out?' Grainer's in the yard seeing to a fence that I'd meant to fix a
week ago, and he looks like he knows what he's doing. I can tell he knows we're watching,
that he's not quite as relaxed as he could be, or ought to be. But who's to blame
him?

‘Yeah. You weren't wrong.'

‘Fella that can walk here from the Red City all on his own has depths,' I say.

Certain laughs. ‘Like you don't?'

Nah, if I had depths I'd know what I was becoming. I'd know how to choose between
monster and man.

CHAPTER
38

‘SO WHO ARE you inviting to the dance?' Grove asks.

Now I look at him I can see he's had a growth spurt: there's more than a sprinkling
of stubble on his chin and he's awful proud of it. He's rubbing that hair like it's
some sort of lucky charm. Me, I'm a long ways off beards and I can feel it. I never
liked him looking down on me, and now it's from higher up. But Grove don't have a
cruel bone in his body and I'm not going to punish him for nature's endowments. Hard
work being so magnanimous, though.

‘Didn't know I had to invite anyone,' I say. And to be honest, my mind is still too
full of that dance with the cold children to ponder long on the subject.

‘I'm gonna ask Anne,' says Grove.

And all of a sudden I'm interested. Thom's cocking his eye.

‘You don't want to do that,' I say.

Grove frowns, and I can't quite believe that we've ever been friends, not close ones,
anyway. ‘Too late,' he says, the knot of
wrinkles still fair in the middle of his
forehead. ‘I've already asked her and she said yes.'

Don't know if I've ever felt so cold in my guts. ‘She said yes?'

Grove nods his head.

‘Good fer you,' I say. ‘I don't intend on asking anyone.'

And I don't. Doesn't mean that the week before isn't a misery. Days getting longer
means more time for worry. What's Anne doing saying yes to the likes of Grove? I
know what she's doing. I rub at my smooth chin. Doesn't help that the town's all
at fretting too, getting ready for the dance and the visitors that it brings. The
central cellars are cleared out, the great safe sleeping places for visiting Masters
are set up. There's banners and bunting, and all that get-up for a festival that
lasts but a night.

And Dain works us hard. We're scrubbing floors, cleaning windows and walls, hunting
out dust, and it's a fine thing for hiding. Not a spiderweb in the house, not a drop
of dust. Our hands are raw with our labours, cracked as the ground in a big dry.

The night before, the Night Train stops at the station, and the Masters come out.
The big ones, the lords of greater towns, and even some from the city itself, tall
and small, shuffling and stepping proud, dressed as fine as the night, suits and
canes and the latest fashions. Madigan's there, he gives me a look with a bit of
judgment to it, but I ignore him.

Dain and all the others are there to greet them. Mayor Aldridge makes a speech short
enough to get through without too much mumbling.

Me and Thom are dressed in our best, better than our best, for Dain received a package
a few days before. Two suits and hats, proper fedoras, in big round boxes. We're
looking right dapper and even though mine's a bit big, Dain says I'll grow into it.
Even Thom seems satisfied.

Dain don't say much, looks at me, and says something about this being my last dance
as a Day Boy, and that a man needs a suit.

One thing I don't do is visit Anne. Don't go to listen to her music, don't hear her
laughter. And there's an ache to that stubbornness that goes right down to my toes.
But I'm not bending.

They're all there: none in the town would miss this. Certain's in a jacket an inch
short at the arms, his pants fresh pressed. He picks at the collar of his shirt like
he's still a boy. I'm picking at mine, feeling too hot in this damn thing, it's a
glove that never fit and has decided, all of a sudden to tighten. Grainer's absent
though, and I can understand why. Cast-outs don't always want to be found.

Anne's arm in arm with Grove, in a dress I've not seen before. It makes her look…something
I can't describe except if someone was to bump me, I'd burst. She's with him, but
my face is burning.

But she's not there for dancing. Grove leads her to the piano, and there, in front
of dignitaries and Masters, she plays.

She starts off casual and simple, something for toe-tapping, there's a beat, a tension,
a sort of low melody almost like a growl of thunder that is never really small, because
it has intentions. It swells, makes the skin prickle, and there's nothing in that
hall but her and her music.

She never sounded like this before. Not in all the times I've
sneaked a listen, all
these years. Even that time at the dinner where she played for us, or the time before
during the storm—now it seems like she was only practising. Like all this crowd lifts
her, like she's found some place beyond her skill—even hers—and the right time to
use it. It's like she's grabbed my heart and squeezed it hard.

Music has that. Good music, good song, and this is the best. This is the choir in
the City in the Shadow of the Mountain. This is pure and wild all at once.

And then she is done. There is applause, loud and long, and every Master is looking
at her. Madigan is writing something in his notebook. Sobel's nodding his head slowly,
and then he turns and looks at me, and smiles, and it is the sort of smile that makes
you question just how many hours you might have left of your life. And I get a sense
of something terrible coming.

And after all the congratulations and such, the bowing and curtseys and whatnot,
when the band starts up she smiles at Grove and leaves him, his face twisted in confusion
(enough that I feel a twinge of pity) and comes over to me, and that pity fades pretty
quick when she smiles. How could two smiles be so different? But I think either of
them could kill me.

‘That was for you,' she says.

‘Thank you,' I say.

‘To say goodbye.'

Can't say nothing, my jaw's dropped. My shoulders sink as though there's a weight
in my gut drawing me in.

‘You—'

‘They've called me to the city,' she says. ‘I'm to play for the Masters.'

‘No.'

But I can see it in her eyes.

‘I don't want to hear it,' I say.

‘Hear it or not, it's true. I'll be gone tomorrow night.'

Anne touches my arm, and I don't pull away. ‘Tomorrow,' she says. ‘See me by the
Summer Tree tomorrow. We'll talk about it then.'

I grunt something and turn. Leave her to Grove.

Thom's nowhere to be seen, and Dain is talking to Madigan. So I stomp home and throw
myself at the bed.

An hour later, Dain's knocking on my door looking mad as all hell. Holding a piece
of fine paper in his hand. I don't even get a chance to ask him about Madigan, in
fact I don't care to. And besides, he doesn't wait, just starts on like I already
know what he's about to say.

‘They're taking Thom back to the city,' Dain says. ‘I'm to get a Day Boy from the
Academy in January.' He looks at me with a not-quite smile. ‘So we have each other
for a couple of months more.'

Don't know how things could get any worse.

Thom comes home late as I'm drifting off. I sit up straight in bed and jab a finger
at him.

‘You're leaving.'

He gives a little shrug. ‘They called me back to the mountain. They say I'm not
suitable here. It's too dangerous, they say. I'd be wasted.'

‘They're doing this to punish me,' I say.

‘What?' Thom shakes his head. ‘It's not about you. They think it's too dangerous
to have me out here. After the Night Train.' He looks to Dain, who's sitting there
silent; maybe he's
been there all along, but it gives me a jump. ‘I'm sorry, Master
Dain.'

Dain shakes his head. ‘Isn't your fault.' He looks at me. ‘And it isn't your fault
either, Mark. That's always been the risk of having a boy from the Crèche.'

‘And what do you want?' I say.

Thom looks at me like I'm the youngster. ‘Doesn't matter what I want. Tomorrow night
when the train arrives I'll go back to the Crèche. We're just Day Boys. We go where
we're told.'

CHAPTER
39

WASN'T SURE I even wanted to come here, but I do. Of course I do. How can I not?

When a girl asks you to the Summer Tree, you can't help but feel your nerves rise
up. I've never been asked before and it makes a fella bilious, this change in things.
This not-having-been to having-been. And it's Anne that's asked me. Anne who's soon
to go away and leave me. So much is churning in my brain and my belly. Anne; Thom,
too. I should have been the one called to the city. My time's done. I'm over with
this place, or it's over with me. And now, I don't know what to think. But she asked
me here. My Anne. She told me when and where, and she is the one who cannot be denied.