Day Boy Read online

  There’s a gasp. Old names. Old names and so publicly spoken.

  Egan ignores it, in fact he lifts a hand, all dismissive, but he keeps talking like Dain isn’t even there. ‘No, no! Nothing of the sort.’ His gaze takes them all in. ‘And what do you think, my fellows? Yes or no to whimpering and begging for our overlords’ indulgence? Do we crawl on our bellies at the slightest trouble, like snakes to our makers?’

  ‘Nay.’ There is no need for a second vote.

  Dain lowers his head.

  ‘This is for us to manage,’ Egan says. ‘As the townfolk cull the deer, so we shall cull those Hunters who dare approach this town. We will extend our territories a little. The fate of our servants is ours to deal with, let these Hunters seek out others, not little boys who should know better. Now, there are other matters to attend to. The ridge is to be made off limits to all those of mortal blood. As is the river east of the last turn, as it always was. Do I need to remind you that our word is law, boys? Well, do I?’

  ‘No, Master,’ we chorus.

  He looks at me, belts away my breath again, and all I am is a bird, caught in fingers that could crush it. ‘There’s some I believe less than others. But we shall see.’

  The meeting lasts another full hour before we’re out, and deep in that summer night, low clouds passing over. And the boys and their Masters heading to their homes. Just me and Dain walking together in the dark.

  ‘Overindulgent,’ Dain grumbles. ‘Overindulgent, says he, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Master of Thuggery. I’ve long known he’s no patience with Sobel, and yet he hurls that at me. Bad blood’s rising between us again, so be it. And the rest…Fools, every single one of them. May the sea take them all. There’s new webs in the making, so you best look out for spiders.’ He clenches his fists, looks east to Mount Pleasance, and growls. ‘This isn’t an ending boy, this is a beginning. To bed with you. There’s work in the morning.’

  I take a step towards the house, and his hands fall upon my shoulders, and he turns me to him, crouching low, like he did when I was younger, scarcely out of napkins. When Dav was around, teaching me the tricks, keeping me on my toes.

  ‘You be careful now,’ Dain says. ‘Eyes are watching, waiting for you to fail. You’ve enemies. We’ve enemies here in this town.’

  ‘We ever had friends?’

  Dain laughs. ‘No. But I feel I’ve grown complacent. Careful, you must tread as careful as a fly on the web.’

  ‘I will,’ I say.

  Dain laughs again, and it is like the cold wind running before a summer storm, a blessed relief and a threat too. ‘Oh, if I could believe it!’

  The last of the clouds gives out and the sky is bright above us. We stand there awhile, looking up.

  ‘You know, the stars were less bright once. We dulled them with our own bright works. Light was a pollution, can you believe it?’

  Then he is rising, and walking into the brilliance of the night (for there’s hours of it still ahead) and I’m stumbling back to my bed, where I know sleep has been kicked clear to the next town away, and all that remains is a ragged thread of cruel, dark-eyed dreams and a wind that blows to the west, hard and fast and gossipy.

  People fear the Masters. Fear them more than the Imperatives they lay down for us to follow.

  Dain says that’s how he knows my kind are weak. He’ll ruffle my hair with those cold hands of his as he says it; even say fondly: I was the same, Mark. I was just the same. It’s how we rule, through human weakness.

  Of course, there’s more to it than that.

  There’s three councils of law in the land. The Day Council, the Court of the Night, and the Council of Teeth.

  The Day is for roads, and civil laws; every community has one. There’s always one of us there, once a week, except in emergencies—and there are a few of those each year, fires, plagues and whatnot.

  The Court of the Night is the Masters; once a month it’s run, and by a different Master each time. It’s a court of blood and promises, and those things which the Day Council can’t decide.

  Then there’s the Council of Teeth that rules from afar. It’s the Sun and the moon. It’s the proclamations that appear, mysterious, on pillar and post. It’s the Imperatives; it’s the voice of the wind, and the dark reason behind it.

  And it’s the auditors that are sent to pass on night’s justice deep into the day.

  KAST THE STORM

  Those Parson boys. They’re always snapping at each other, brothers scratching and chasing each other’s tails. Dougie fights dirty, but those boys are nastier to each other than you could imagine, a big tangle of cruelty and love in the way they’ll look out for the other, or finish a sentence, racing and rushing to make sure that their twin doesn’t fall. That’s how those Parson boys are.

  Gotta respect that, and fear it too. They could easily run this town, if it weren’t for Grove’s strength and Dougie’s guile.

  And this is how they tell Kast’s story.

  It was a storm. Big one. One of those big ones. Maybe the biggest.

  Definitely the biggest, worse even than that storm a year back. Worse even than that fella.

  Maybe.

  Lightning thrown across the sky in sheets. Lightning that lasted. No little flash, but a sky-bright burn.

  I’ve never seen such a thing.

  Me neither.

  Course not!

  It was a storm.

  Kast had a home.

  He had fought for it.

  He had fought for his family. He had done all right.

  But wasn’t a time for all rights. Was a lean time, a storm-thrashed time.

  And his family died. He was—

  Was burying his sons.

  They’d sickened.

  The Angry Gods had come and made them dance and die. And he was the last, and weak, and sickly himself, but he took up that shovel, and dug. Bent his back to the labour of his grief.

  He buried them in that storm. Shovel biting the earth, hard and dry, then soft and sticky as the rain fell. He’d bundled them in sheets and towels.

  Both of them.

  He was sad.

  Course he was.

  But he was angrier than that storm.

  Angry like that storm, in fire and rage and madness.

  Angry and wanting death.

  The world bubbled and spat, and fell.

  He brought his boys down into the liquid earth. He buried their flesh and their bones, and the world cut its fire and shadow around him. And when he was done, panting and weary. The Dark whispered in his ear. The Dark brought its teeth. The Dark bit.

  They say the Change is easy for some. Wasn’t easy for him.

 
He fought it.

  Let me tell this story.

  He fought it. He raged against it. But rage is nothing to the new blood, the new birth, and what’s rage when your boys are dead? What’s rage to a storm? A storm laughs at your rage, and the biting Dark laughs with it.

  Was a while he walked the earth, buried himself when the Sun came up. But he took to the roads. He took to the roads, and he wasn’t all cruel.

  The Imperatives bound him, even then.

  CHAPTER 10

  IF I HADN’T been all busy yawning and grumbling under my breath, I’d have seen it before it hit me. Might have been able to duck, but no. I fell on my bum, blinking, and the missile bounced off me and rolled away. I’m up quick, and there’s a laugh in the not too distance, a laugh I know well. One that brings a bit of heat to my face.

  ‘Very funny,’ I yell, eyes scanning the trees on the edge of the property, rubbing my head where the half-ripe peach struck it.

  A small shape drops from the tree nearest, light-footed as she’s deadly with a peach. She’s holding another and grinning, fierce as any Day Boy.

  Takes a bite. ‘Thought you’d fancy some breakfast,’ she says between crunches.

  ‘No time for playing, Anne.’

  Anne throws the peach at me. This time I’m ready, but it nearly gets me regardless. ‘Won’t be brushed off by the likes of you,’ she says.

  She’s a hard one to cross, and a friend as good as any I got. Mary’s daughter. Mary who owns the grocers. Who I need to visit this afternoon, because I need milk because ours has gone off. Always forgetting the milk. Anne’s da, no one talks about him.

  I shrug. ‘Master’s got me chored to the teeth today,’ I say.

  ‘No time for fishing then?’

  ‘You at school today?’

  She glares at me. ‘If I was at school would I be here?’

  I shake my head. ‘No time.’

  ‘You want a hand?’

  Give another shrug. But she’s already gunning for the gutter, clambering up the ladder and onto the roof faster than me. ‘These won’t clean themselves.’

  ‘Don’t you fall,’ I say.

  ‘Falling’s the best thing!’ Anne says.

  I clear my throat. ‘I don’t want Mary coming after me.’

  Anne’s head juts over the roof, eyes that trip me up and make me fall myself. ‘And she would, you know. My ma’s got a backbone all right.’

  Two people that Dain doesn’t ever get me to mark their doors. Paul Certain’s one of them, Mary’s the other. I know Dain visits her, but I don’t draw the seven at all there. He says they have other arrangements.

  I don’t know what her ma thinks about her coming and helping: probably takes a dim view on it. But Anne’s her own girl, no Master to lord it over her. I like her. I don’t know if she likes me.

  A handful of leaves finds my head, and then another.

  ‘I’m taking that ladder,’ I say.

  ‘And I’ll just jump on your head. Thick enough from all accounts.’

  Yeah, yeah, she’s right. Chores are easier shared. If she wants to share them with me, I’m not fighting her. And she’s good: she’s a worker. She can hold a tune too, and I like listening to her sing. Sometimes I like watching her sing when she don’t think I am: I don’t think I’ve ever known such earnestness.

  We’re done with those gutters in under an hour, and a good thing too, because the Sun’s fierce this morning. Then there’s the lawn, and the garden and the raking and the verandah to be swept and cleared. By the time we’re done the Sun’s well past noon. And we’re lying on the grass in the shade of those leafy trees looking at the clouds, and I’ve pulled two cool drinks from the cellar. Anne won’t go down there with me. She thinks it’s where Dain is in repose, and I won’t make her no wiser. Some lines I won’t cross for no one, no matter how much I might want to impress. Besides, Anne’s stronger and mostly tougher than me: it’s nice to show a bit of bravery to her.

  Sweet cider, a blue sky streaked with clouds and the smell of fresh-cut grass.

  ‘Useless, you Day Boys. Tits on a bull,’ Anne says, drinking deep. Eyes fixed on me.

  ‘You know it,’ I say. A bit stung.

  ‘Never understood why there weren’t Day Girls.’

  ‘Same as why there aren’t woman Masters.’

  ‘Mistresses,’ Anne corrects. I wince, feel heat in my face, hotter than the day.

  ‘The women come out all crooked; it breaks them, burns ’em up. Girls is a bit different, Dain says.’

  Anne puts her glass down, brings her face close to mine. I swallow; try not breathe her in. Try not to look like it anyway. My skin prickles, my head is light, like I could just float into that blue sky.

  ‘You know what I think?’ she says.

  ‘I guess I will in a moment.’

  ‘I think they’re frightened of us. And…’ I look in her eyes, dark as the sky in the middle of the night. ‘They should be.’

  She smiles, touches my nose with a finger, swings back from me and picks up her drink. The day’s slowed. My heart’s beating hardly at all, I reckon. I take a breath, and another. I can feel her so close, a thousand miles away.

  ‘Nearly was killed last week,’ I say.

  Anne frowns. ‘You been annoying Mr Dain again?’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘You’re trouble and everyone knows it,’ Anne says. ‘Only a matter of time till you’re et, if not by him then one of the others.’

  I laugh, low and easy. ‘Who says?’

  ‘No one.’ Anne’s lips thin. ‘Maybe Sally Dalton.’

  ‘Sally Dalton don’t even know me.’ Feel my cheeks go hot all over again.

  ‘Makes big enough eyes at you.’

  ‘Never seen that,’ I say, though I probably have. We’re Day Boys, we expect big eyes. ‘She’s most likely right, but…No, it weren’t Dain but a Hunter.’

  ‘From the city? You wandering where you shouldn’t be?’

  ‘Where else?’ I take another swig. Drag a finger across my neck. ‘He was going to slit my throat.’

  ‘And you’re sitting here all calm.’

  ‘Dain saved me, but not that I needed him. Cool as this cider, I was.’

  Anne snorts, and I know I’ve taken it one brag too far.

  I pull out a smoke and offer her one, and her face falls. ‘That’ll kill ya just as good as any Hunter.’

  ‘Nothing going to kill me,’ I say. ‘Not a Hunter, certainly not plain old smoke.’

  ‘You’re a damn fool,’ she says.

  ‘Maybe I am.’ But I put the smokes away.

  ‘There’s never any maybes with you,’ she says. ‘Sun and Sea take you!’

  And I don’t know how to feel about her anger.

  No time for reflection anyway, because just then the world thinks otherwise. A green ant stings my arse; they’ve got a damn lot of venom in them, and I’m up and jigging like a ma
niac trying to get the bloody thing out of my shorts. Not the way to impress a lady. Not even close. Anne leaves me to my misery, her laughter stinging even more.

  I didn’t even get a chance to thank her for her work. Just watch her leave with a tightness in my belly, and my skin turning dull and tired.

  Soon he’ll have to make a decision, and my thoughts don’t come into it.

  Put me out into the town, or out of the town altogether and have me trained for other work or draw me up to become what he is. Send me to the City in the Shadow of the Mountain to learn my lessons, a year or two, then into the Change. But that’s a most unlikely settlement. I’m no Dav. Even I know my edges are too rough.

  I’ve known what I was since I could know such things. And now I don’t. There’s a deal of hurt in that.

  I don’t know what I want. I guess I don’t want anything much. I would have nothing change, but the older I get, the more I see it. Everything changes whether I want it to or not.

  Dain raised me. And he didn’t raise me stupid. It wasn’t just facts he hammered into my skull.

  CHAPTER 11

  THERE’S A WIND blowing in after the night, hot from the west and whispering when Certain comes to visit, Petri waiting outside like the good dog she is. Certain doesn’t always spend his time on the farm and he’s good mates with Dain. He’s an Old Boy, one of them who was once a Day Boy but didn’t take, wasn’t offered, the Change. Certain was allowed to live on the edge of town, given land and an occupation. If it rubs him the wrong way he doesn’t show it. We don’t get many visitors, it’s usually Dain that does the visiting.

  Certain’s arms are long and ropey. His smile a thin slash that you’d be hard to see as warmth. He is wide across the chest but he limps, favours his left leg more than his right. You can see the scar a quarter inch above the knee if you look hard enough.

  ‘World tackles you, boy,’ he told me once when I stared too long. ‘Sometimes you get up fine, sometimes you get up a little broke.’