Day Boy (31 page)

Somewhere behind us, the sky flashes and rumbles. He blinks, scattered like that
cloud-spread light.

There's nothing to do but charge, run fast as I can, arms out, knife swinging circle
eights.

He's already stepped to one side. Like it's the easiest thing in the world.

‘He's dead,' I say again, and I fling that bag of ash open and into his face.

He howls a bit, but he is quick; most of it misses him. What doesn't burns and slides
down his face, a ruinous sort of thing, all that beauty broken, but he can take it.
He's had worse hurts, and all I've done is put the rod upon the beast.

‘Seen one world's ending, I did,' he says. ‘Been low and scrambling, chasing after
the moon.' He raises his hand east, where the moon will rise but hasn't yet. His
finger traces a spiral in the air, but I turn my head before it's done. ‘Been high
and mighty too. You think a little ash will worry me? Let the world fear my scarred
old face forever.'

I slash out at him, and he knocks away my blade. I scramble at it. Scurrying away.
And he slips through the dark and in front of me. So easy, and he's still just half
awake.

Egan's blinking, standing there, one foot on the knife. But I have my other cutter,
the little one, and I pull it free of my belt. Egan grins, and his seared lips crack,
and I know it hurts but he doesn't show it.

‘Wouldn't have thought you had it in you. But then Death is your shadow, isn't it?
You killed my Grove with your stupidity, and you shall pay for it. Just like your
Master. Him with all the apologies, the empty
empty
words. You killed him, and such
a low death is what you deserve, a drowning, a throttling. You'll get no teeth from
me.'

That's true, and maybe I do deserve it. Maybe that's what slows my swing, though
I never thought I'd had the speed for it. Frankly, I'm through with life after all
the killing I've just done. I don't even see him move, but I feel it.

He grabs my throat casually, then my back, and he lifts me up, and twists. Something
tears inside, oh, but it is pain, and for the first time I'm crying. He shakes me,
more pain, and I'm dropping my little knife, and he's bringing me down to get a good
look at me.

‘Should have done this years ago.'

Then there's a noise, a burning keening in my ears, and I'm on the ground and his
body's on the ground, thrashing and flaming, and Certain's holding Egan's head, like
he'd cut it right off his shoulders. The eyes are rolling, the teeth a-snapping.
Certain sets a light to it with unsteady hands, and it's quick to go up. He drops
it all in a hurry. The mouth moving till there's nothing but bone that comes loose
at the jaw. And that keeps burning.

Certain gives it a kick and it shatters in a dandelion burst of ash.

‘Damn fella goes on, don't he? Saw you riding for here, knew there must have been
one hiding. Killing their own kind, who'd have thought to see a Master stoop so low.'

I'm just lying there, curled in on myself.

‘You hurt?' Certain asks; knows I am, but some silences you gotta fill.

Grainer runs up beside him, all I can see are his feet.

‘Is he hurt?'

I can't even nod my head, raise one hand a little, and Certain crouches down. ‘What
do you think?' I say and cough so brutal that I'm crying again, and tasting blood.

‘Jeez, Mark, you made a go of it. A serious go.'

‘Yeah.' I smile a bit, even smiling is a hurt. ‘None of 'em expected me, not a single
one. It was all Egan's doing.'

‘Expected or not,' Certain says. ‘They would have come for you tonight. It's how
the world works. Maybe some day it won't, but that's not this one.'

‘I'm dying,' I say.

‘Maybe, maybe not.' He picks me up. ‘Taking you to Mary's, she's waiting.'

He says stuff after that, all the way into town, but I'm not listening. Rain's coming
in, and the dark is silent but for the rain's whisperings. There's no screaming,
no beasts moaning in the streets. Things will come creeping back in, but not tonight.

When I dream, I dream of his hand. Cold, closed around my fingers. He could never
give me warmth. He could never give me love. But he kept me from the cold, even the
ice in his heart. That was a strength of will. That was love. I don't know if I really
appreciated it until later.

But that's love too. It don't matter that you understand it.

CHAPTER
47

THERE'S A WIND blowing in from the west. Hot, hotter even than the Sun it feels like,
dry and strong, the sort of wind that sends paint to curling, and burns the grass
to powder. Dry and dusty, like it's torched its way through the land. Winds blowing
in from the west worry me. Been too many changes come with them and I've had my share
of them, surely. Can't have no more.

Except that's not the way the world works.

I've been a while getting better, don't know if I ever will. I've been wounded, and
the wounding I've done is a deeper sort of hurt. I still have the run of the town.
But Midfield's shrunk. All it has is boys and folks unbled, and people that whisper
behind my back. I figure there's been debate about what to do to me. String me up?
Cast me out? But I'm still here.

I went back home for a short while. Couldn't stay there, it felt too damn horrible,
empty of everything that made it welcome. But I managed to stay long enough to get
some
clothes, and even look at Dain's given-up-on book.

It was a lifeless thing, not a single breath to it, and I could see why he'd discarded
it. I don't know what was wrong with it, but something was missing, something wasn't
there. Some things are better left to die. Not so much a cruelty but a kindness.
Still I couldn't bear to see his papers ruined. I gathered them up, and gave them
to Mary.

‘What do you want me to do with these?' she asked.

‘Keep them safe. Keep them in a box.'

And that's just what she did.

Probably still there.

I stay at Mary's, sleeping in Anne's old room. Never saw inside it when she was here;
now I don't really care to. But you've got to put your head down somewhere, and Mary's
gentle. We've hardly had a cross word since I been here. I even help in her shop.
Not much. Sweeping out the front, only till I'm sore. Slowly finding strength.

Certain comes to visit some days. We talk a little, Grainer's working out fine, or
we just sit. Don't have much talk in me.

Train's lingered several times and when it does I hold my breath, waiting for the
sword to fall. But then it leaves again, tracking west or east. And I breathe. Masters
came to speak to Certain, but they never came to me. And so I'm held, not moving
forwards, not moving back. I was a Day Boy once, now I don't know what I am. And
I dream of Dain every night. He stands there above my bed, just watching, never saying
a thing. He's waiting to see what I do. I'm waiting too. Maybe I'll die waiting.

One night there is a scratching at the window, the sound that I had thought forgotten
but never was, never could be.

‘I do not seek entrance. You shall come to me.'

I pull myself from the bed. Try to hide my hesitation, but there's no hiding from
the likes of them.

‘Hurry, boy! Did you think that there would be no consequence to what you had done?
Through the dark I have come, through the secret ways.'

I open the window, I've no choice. A darkness fills the window. Two bright lights
shining in its heart, offering no true illumination. I shake and I shudder, the fits
start their rising in me. And the darkness moves, reaches out, touches my face with
old dry fingers. The fit falls from me like dust.

‘You've reason to fear, for I am nothing but fear. But I've not come to kill you.'

I know there's worse things than death, and that being left behind might be one of
them.

‘Why you here then?' I squeak.

The dark shape laughs, the bright lights wink out. ‘We used to call it cutting to
the chase, boy. Dain honed you to an edge, didn't he? He was always the maker of
weapons. The bombs and furies that are thoughts given free range. And that is why
he was cast out. We worried that he might make that which would effect our destruction.
That was his vanity: that was his true work and it put the fear into us. And perhaps
we were right.'

I lower my gaze, but he can see my surprise, I hear it in his chuckle.

‘Oh, we are not perfect. There in the dark, we sometimes forget that. There where
nothing changes, where the oldest
men squabble and mark out ageless grievances, over
and over. You have reminded us a little. Now, I did not come to eat you. I came to
warn you. More will be coming, a new five to replace the old. Not today, not for
a while yet, but they are being made ready. What you choose to do with such knowledge
is up to you.'

There is a great rustling of wings, a susurration as Dain might put it, and the Dark
is gone, replaced by the lesser dark.

‘What choice do I have,' I shout into the dark.

It says nothing back.

Mary comes knocking on my door. ‘You all right in there?'

‘Just a dream,' I say. Hell, it could have been a dream.

I can hear her hovering there, just outside my door, uncertain to the comforting
of boys.

‘Just a dream,' I say again. And the floorboards creak her passage away.

I've always loved Midfield, but me and it have changed. We don't fit anymore.

Rob the auditor finds me on that field where Dougie and I once fought, looking north
to the next ridge along. He and Sarah. Riding in from the south. Maybe they've been
here a day or so, though I doubt it. Both are stained with the passage of the Sun.
Rob drops from his horse, neat as a pin. Sarah doesn't get down. Just looks at me,
hand curved above her brow to keep out the Sun.

I don't say anything for a while. Get back to considering the limits of my world.

‘Land falls away beyond that ridge,' Rob says. ‘Flat as far as the eye can follow,
nothing but grass and rotten stumps of trees.
East of here there's forests. What
do you think of that? More than you'd have ever seen along the train line.'

‘Didn't expect to see you here,' I say.

‘Didn't expect to come back so soon. But you go where you're called, even if that
means some backtracking.' He runs a thumb over the tattoo of the Sun on his wrist,
spits a spit all speculative. ‘Heard you were out of a job.'

‘Maybe,' I say.

He grins. ‘Maybe.' He settles down on his haunches like a tired old man. ‘Don't look
at me like that,' he says. ‘There's miles plenty enough ahead in these bones, unless
the world thinks otherwise. Mark, I don't dither. I don't hesitate, and I'm rare
to give second chances. You want what I'm offerin', then I want a yes.'

‘After what I done? All those dead…'

‘I know what you done, boy. Some lives possess a trajectory. They're a gunshot, aimed
at birth. You've been heading towards us since you first bawled at your ma's breast.
Ain't gonna kill you. There's been enough of that, besides it weren't your feud.
These Masters fight. They grow sere as old thorns on their battles, and it'll be
the death of them. There'll be new Masters soon, and do you think they'll be easy
on the one that did for their brothers? You're a reminder—the tenuous way of things—and
their kind don't like that. Stay here? You will shrink and be broken.'

This town's not got much to offer me now. But it's given me more than hurt, and I'm
not so dumb I can't be grateful. But he's right: already I feel the town different,
feel it putting its pressure into me. The air's quickening out there, and growing
stale here.

Might be time to be moving on. Sometimes leaving isn't running.

‘Wasn't your fault. Situation like that, you fight or you run. Most times you die.
But here we are. No one'll blame you, not one of us anyway. Only thing that'll kill
you now is anger. Anger will bend you in ways that they won't accept. Stay angry
and it'll be your death for sure.'

‘I've had enough of anger in me,' I say, and I mean it. And I feel better for the
words. The moment they pass my mouth. ‘I'm done with anger.'

Rob shakes my hand. ‘You're a surprising quantity, my boy.'

‘He'll fit right in,' Sarah says, and I turn, and look up at her. She winks at me.

Rob smiles, a little softness to all the severity of his face. ‘You ain't done growing
yet, not by a long way. This horse ain't going to be an easy ride, but you're coming
along.'

‘Do I get to say goodbye?'

‘Life's one big goodbye,' Rob says. ‘An unutterable farewell.'