Day Boy (6 page)

‘Enough of that pantomime! You shouldn't have been there, Mark. Do I not keep you
busy enough?'

‘Never seen a Hunter there before.'

Dain's rage rises. ‘And you would argue the point? You'd argue it even after a blade's
been pressed under your throat?'

‘I'm not unacquainted with terrors.'

Dain laughs the chillest sort of laugh. I lower my head, and I don't look up until
he stops. And there he is, staring.

‘So, you've chores aplenty tomorrow,' Dain says, eyes serene unless you know him
like I do and can see the rage in him. I keep waiting for the back of that hand.
It's been a long time since I was struck, but I know you're never too old for a clip
under the ear.

He passes me a list, longer than what I was expecting this morning, and I try not
to cringe. He looms over me, all storm front and night lightning. Hairs on the back
of my neck try to run off. Instead I get the cold shivers.

‘He would have killed you,' Dain says.

‘I know.' I don't look him in the eye. ‘I didn't see him coming.'

‘Which is why you do not go there, by that part of the river. The edges of things
are deadly.'

I shrug.

Big mistake. Do I ever learn my lesson?

He lifts me with one arm and pulls me close to his face. ‘As much as it pains me
to say it, I do not want you dead. You've earned more than that, and the future holds
possibility—so, please, do not betray my trust.'

There, so close to grinding jaws, eyes death black—all the fire gone out of them—and
empty, I find it hard to trust in his affections. I try to speak and he gives me
such a withery look that I do not.

He lets me drop. I land with a whoomph and by the time I've caught my breath he's
gone, and I'm left holding his list. And I remember that tattoo, the spiral. Was
going to ask on it,
but then, it's nothing. Course it is, and I've lots of chores,
two days' worth at least. I'll be up with the dawn, visiting homes, gathering ash,
bagging it, getting it ready for the train.

Never going to sleep. My head full of things. But back to bed I go. Got to at least
try.

And damned if I don't sleep despite it all.

I dream again of Hunters and spirals that gyre up from torn wrists, and catfish.

Wake up hungry for fish.

So I go back out there and catch that nibbler, and it's not easy, gives as big a
fight for its life as I would and no Master to rescue it. Me and the other boys,
all six of us, feasting on that plump fella. Dougie, the Parson Boys stick thin and
laughing, Grove and Twitcher. Big fish, big party. And I told them my story, but
not as I'm telling you. More swagger, less piss in pants. We're Day Boys, we're brave
and foolish, and we don't ever let on that we're not.

We shouldn't have been there, but it's the shouldn'ts that are the sweetest.

Shouldn't be monsters. But there is.

They worship the Sun because it is the only god as cruel as them.

You see it on them, the circle with its radiants. They cannot let the Sun touch them,
not without, as they say it, Severe Consequence. But it marks them just the same.
The bangles they have fashioned, the tattoos, scratched with bone—because it scores
permanent—and ash—because it burns likewise—into their cold skin.

Some of them find shame in this fascination. Dain, at times, seems embarrassed. But
it doesn't stop him praying to the fire, playing old knuckle bones carved with the
Sun through his fingers.

Fire'll kill them just like sunlight. And ash will burn their skin. But they love
both, even in the heat of the middle summer cicadas calling and burring, gotta keep
that fire lit. Only Kast fears an open flame; says he dreamed of a time when it consumed
him. Keeps an oil burner instead. The other Masters mock him. Dain reckons he's a
fool, that the oil's more dangerous than any open flame.

Dain often sits by his fire. Reading, staring into the flames. Don't know what he
reads there in the blaze but his look goes distant. Not predatory, but calm. I could
almost imagine him a man, in the way his head tilts, and his fingers tap against
his wrists, as though he's playing some musical instrument.

But he isn't a man. Most times there's no mistaking that. Long fingers curving to
fists, a lip that will pull tight and reveal the compact mass of cutting teeth beneath.
Most times there's no way of forgetting what he is.

CHAPTER
8

TWO NIGHTS LATER and things are nearly normal, if they can ever be. I could almost
forget what happened but the world, as they say, always thinks otherwise. Dain shakes
me awake, a gentle touch, but insistent. I open my eyes, squeeze them shut again,
in no mood for consciousness. Body heals quickly, or maybe it's that the days pass
so slow: there's a cruelty and a tenderness to that. I'm a little sore, but Dain
has to wake me, because sleep's coming easier again.

Wind's turned cool, shifted west to east, down from Mount Pleasance. The air doesn't
quicken the blood but stills it, and I'm worn out and not happy at the waking. But
that doesn't matter.

How I feel doesn't matter. Not really.

Dark eyes study me, pale almost luminous skin, like he's part of the moon come down
all ghostly to walk amongst us. A sharp-toothed sliver, and like the moon it's aglow
with a bleak heart. I blink back at that gaze, wipe my crusted eyes.

‘Wake. Wake,' he says. ‘We've work to do, boy.'

‘What?'

‘Your answer is always a question, isn't it? A strength and weakness. The correct
response is yes.'

I don't tell him that he was the one that taught me to do so. I don't think argument
would do me well tonight.

‘Wear your suit,' he says. ‘The good one.'

And I know where we're going. Only one place in the night requires that.

‘Really?'

‘Yes,' Dain says. ‘And if you do not hurry, we will be late, and that will not look
good. I've called the Court of the Night to order, and we, most of all, must be seen
to take it seriously. You, Mark, you must be seen to take it seriously, so hurry.
I've let you sleep too long. I should have woken you early. Now all we have time
for is haste, and that is rarely a good thing.'

I'm already pulling on my clothes, in that awkward half-asleep way. The suit's only
six months old and it doesn't quite fit across the shoulders, and my wrists poke
out, and rupture the formality with white skin, tendons and knobs of bone. My right
wrist is bruised.

Dain tilts his head, purses his lips, frowns. All hurt to me offends him. All such
hurt he feels as his responsibility. Doesn't he get that I'm the one meant to be
looking after him?

His eyes drop to my feet.

‘Matching socks,' Dain says. ‘Matching socks, if you please, Mark.'

I don't please to do anything except fall back into bed and never get up again. But
I grunt, squint into my drawer, and make sure my socks square up—how does he know?
How can
he tell? But he's always right—and that my shoes are shining (after a last
bit of spit'n'polish).

‘Quick, boy,' Dain says.

I was, and I am! Wasn't he watching?

‘Quick!'

The wind's got up, the sky's clear, and the moon's setting itself to wane. No one's
about, but you wouldn't be at this time of night. It can be seen as an open invitation
if a Master's in a mood—and they always are, of one sort or another. Moody as the
storm-thrashed spring, Dain says, every single one of them. The Night Train's come
and gone, not even an echo on the horizon or a beat on the tracks.

Town Hall's on Main, near the square. The Constabulary's part of it, built into the
western edge. It's an old white building—far older than the troubles—always smelling
of fresh paint. People got pride in this town: as long as there's paint, this hall
will be painted.

We aren't the last to the meeting but we're not the first either, and I can tell
that annoys Dain. But he's been tetchy all the last few nights, like a prickle in
a sock. Like the one in my sock, the matching one, digging in and I can't even scratch
the bugger.

Two Masters come in late, smelling of blood, eyes as wide as plates, neck veins thick.
And the Parson twins are dressed shabby, one of them hasn't even managed to match
his shoes. I flash them a grin a touch superior, until Egan gives me a look that
would freeze the blood of a normal boy and chills mine right enough.

Five Masters together, in Town Hall. What a solemn
splendid thing! There hasn't been
a proper meeting in months, and certainly not one that required me or the other boys
to be here. The floorboards creak and crack with their footsteps; the gravity of
such inhuman men. They can be as light as breath, but here they are weighty. The
windows are misting. The Masters are darkness and luminosity and that shifts, depending
on their mood. They're marked with ash-burnt Suns, their bangles clatter and their
eyes give out their radiance.

Here they are Egan, Dain, Sobel, Kast and Tennyson. The uncontested rulers of this
town, have been for generations. And there it is in them, that displeasure, the intensity
with which I'm considered.

Everyone knows why we're here.

There's five Day Boys looking at me, eyes sticky with sleep. They appreciate this
about as much as me, only I'm the one to blame. Even Grove is giving me surly looks.

It's Egan that gets the meeting started, being the senior. Grove stands behind him.
Sobel and Dougie to his left. The rest of us around on the other side of the table.
Dain has his enemies, even here, even in this small town. And I think what that must
be like, to have those foes, to have them so close across all the centuries. I couldn't
bear Dougie for six weeks, let alone a century.

‘Time,' Egan says, his voice so smooth it could grease a rusted lock. ‘Gentlemen,
it is time. Our dear moon has found her breath at the top of her climb, and now,
past pause, she falls.'

The room shifts, broadens and narrows like it's grown alive, like it's moved back
a ways but is focusing hard on us. Sometimes the sky feels like that. Dain says
that predatory sky's one of the reasons why we need them: you need a monster to keep
a
monster from the gate. I don't know. But it makes my skin crawl, that gaze, and
I'm used to it.

‘We are here, we are the room and the walls, we are the table and the chairs, and
the air that billows lungs. We are the Court of the Night: called to session by one
of our brothers.'

They pull chairs from the table and sit, and we stand behind them: perfectly still
for a heartbeat or two.

‘Dain,' Egan says. ‘You have the floor.'

Dain stands silent, eyes cast out to the other four.

‘My boy was visited with violence, by a Hunter,' Dain says. ‘You all know this. He
was taken out of town, taken to a boat hidden up-river, to be smuggled west. Well,
he would have been if I hadn't got there first. I have few memories of such a threat,
and they were long ago, at that. Before any of these boys, before the lot that preceded
them. Hunters know where our edges are, and they do not cross them. Or they haven't
until now.'

Egan stands, the whole hall shivers, there's a rustling murmur in the air. Dain's
hands drop to the table. It creaks beneath his grip, he isn't steadying himself,
but the table itself. With all these Masters here, and words heated, the Hall and
its objects seem skittish.

‘It's a half-truth, an exaggeration and a folly,' Egan says. ‘There are always troublesome
elements, those that don't do as they are told. But I think we know who crossed the
line.' He looks at me direct. All the niceties are undone.

‘This was more than troublesome elements.' Dain stands steady, but there's an edge
to his voice, an effort underlying. ‘Much more. I believe that we need deeper attention
given.'

A sound somewhere in the hall; near the kitchen. A door slams. Dain doesn't lift
his hands.

CHAPTER
9

EGAN GRINS. ‘AH, the Professor and his
deeper study
. The wind blows wrong half a
night and you call for it. And you would have us draw the attention of the Council
of Teeth? We've tangles enough without that web. It is a small town, our little exile
here, surely we can manage such troubles?'

And he says it like Dain is a child, a nuisance to be placated with the barest of
kindnesses. There's heat in my face and it is building. Dain is no fool. They've
no right to treat him as such. And then I realise they can speak to him that way
because of me, and I feel the shame of it.

Tennyson, Sobel and Kast are nodding their heads.