Brothers to Dragons (8 page)

The front steps were deserted. Strangely, they had been cleared of snow. Stranger yet, the usual entrance was closed off, while the boards in front of a great pair of double doors in the middle of the steps had been removed.

The gray-haired man opened the door of the car and motioned Job to get out. "Wait here," he said to the others. "Give me fifteen minutes. If I'm not back you know what to do." And to Job, "All right, kid. Take me to your leader."

Job ascended the steps and paused at the top. He had never been in this way, or seen the double doors from inside the building. He had no idea where they might lead. At last he opened one of them and went in. He found himself in a tiled hallway. It led to a broad staircase carpeted in pale mauve, and at the head of that, twenty feet above them, stood Miss Magnolia in a long gown of vivid green.

"That's her," said Job in a whisper. "She gave it to me."

If Miss Magnolia heard him, she gave no sign of it. She stood unmoving and expressionless as Job led the man up the stairs towards her.

"Can I help you?" she said at last. She was looking calmly at the man and gave Job not even a glance.

"I believe you can." But there was a first note of uncertainty in his voice as he held out an oval badge. "Can we go somewhere to talk?"

"No. We can talk right here." Miss Magnolia did not even glance at the badge. She inclined her head towards the next flight of stairs." I have important visitors tonight. I do not want them disturbed. And I would appreciate it if you would state your business promptly."

"You have important visitors. And I have important business. You sent this boy to the protection zone." The man held out the packet. "To deliver this. I don't have to tell you what it contains."

"I did
what
?" Miss Magnolia sounded more amused than afraid.

"You sent the boy—"

"You're out of your mind. I have no idea what's in that packet, or what you are talking about."

"You deny that you know this boy?"

"Oh, I know him." Miss Magnolia gave Job a brief inspection. "Slightly. He's a local street urchin. Once or twice my assistants have given him a free meal in our kitchen. A kindness that has not been returned, by the look of it."

The man turned to stare at Job.

"I live here," said Job desperately. "I have a room upstairs."

But Miss Magnolia was shaking her head. "Captain, I don't know what your game is, but I won't play it. He doesn't live here. He never has. If he says he knows his way around, then it's because when he ate here he went places he had no right to. Go get a search warrant if you like, look over the mansion top to bottom. If you find any sign that the boy lives here, or ever did, or if you find a sign of anything illegal, I'll give you free service for a month."

"Professor Buckler," said Job desperately. He turned to the fat man. "And Tracy, and Toria. They live here, too. They'll tell you about me."

"Captain, I ask you, does this
look
like the home of a professor?" There was a sound of laughter from farther up the staircase, and Miss Magnolia turned her well-groomed head to stare that way. "I don't know the boy," she went on, without looking at either Job or the captain. "There's certainly no professor who lives here. No Tracy or Toria, either. I know nothing about that package you are holding, or where it came from. What I do know is that I have very important guests, waiting for me upstairs. I always try to cooperate with officials, but if you want to detain me longer, you will have to argue with my guests, too."

"To hell with your guests—"

"Senator Nelson is here tonight. So is Senator Walsh."

The gray-haired captain said nothing, but to Job he seemed to crumple and shrink. "So we'll find nothing upstairs, eh? I hear you. And I thought I had good sources. Who told you we were on the way?"

She smiled, and Job saw a glimmer of satisfaction in her mascara-limned eyes. "Now, Captain, that's a silly thought. And it's New Year's Eve, and awful weather outside. Why don't you stop worrying, relax, and enjoy yourself here for an hour or two? I always like to make new friends."

"Yeah. I'm sure you do." The captain hefted the package he was holding. "Senator Nelson and Senator Walsh, eh? Yep. So what happens now to the kid?"

"I have no idea. But that's more your worry than mine, isn't it? You brought him, Captain. And since you will not be staying . . ." She turned in a rustle of skirts, and began to walk up the stairs to the third floor. "Close the door firmly when you leave, please. Heating this place costs a fortune."

"I wasn't lying," said Job, as she vanished around the curve in the staircase. "I do live here. Really."

"Not any more, you don't." The fat man's face was twisted with frustration. "You heard her. Senators in her pocket. We'd not get to square one. I don't know why I fucking bother." He turned, and began to walk slowly down to the double doors.

Job took a last look up the stairs, then hurried after him. "What will happen to me?"

"Possession of illegal substances. Intrusion on protected property. That's got to go in the record." The captain sighed. "I'm sorry, kid. I believe you told us the truth, and I'll put in the best word I can for you. But I don't know how much good it will do. Once I file my report, it's out of my hands." He was watching Job's face. "Cheer up. It's late, and you're tired out. Tomorrow's another day. Let's go to the Compound and have some food. Things won't seem so bad in the morning."

But in the morning, Job was sent back to Cloak House.

Chapter Six

Skin for skin, yea, all that a
man hath will he give for his life.

— The Book of Job, Chapter
2, Verse 4

In the month that he had been away, Cloak House had changed enormously. Job noticed some things at once. The hundreds of dead and the handful of surviving children had disappeared, but even more new ones had taken their place. Colonel della Porta had gone. Father Bonifant was not even a memory. The doors of Cloak House had been changed, replaced by strong metal ones with double locks, and the lower floor windows were now barred.

Those were the superficial changes. It took a little longer to discover the big one: Cloak House was no longer a simple orphanage. It had been converted to a detention center, and it was a center with a hidden agenda.

On the first morning, Job was taken to the first floor apartment where the colonel used to live. He was assigned a number. It was painlessly and sub-cutaneously marked on his forehead and on his right wrist in an invisible but indelible ink.

"Don't complain," said the woman who did the marking. "That's your meal ticket. You get no food without it. Use that number to find your assigned duties each day. Today you're free, but you start work tomorrow. Make sure you get a sign-off from me when work's done. No food without that, either. Lunch at twelve, listen for the bell."

She was muscular, short-haired, and wore a gun and a thick truncheon on her hip. She was also frighteningly casual about everything. She gave Job a chit to take out a bedroll and a blanket from stores, assigned him a dormitory, and told him to go. It took him a while to realize that this was all the indoctrination he was going to get.

Job knew his way around the building. That was just as well. The other children, all boys, showed no interest in talking to him. He spent the rest of the morning wandering around Cloak House. Although it was cleaner than it had been under Colonel della Porta, access to some floors and to all the exits was now forbidden. Not even a trickle of hot water came from the bathroom faucets, and the whole building was freezing cold.

He had been given a full breakfast in the Mall Compound, so when the bell rang at midday he was quite ready to eat but not ravenous. He wandered down to the dining room. It had not changed, but it was more crowded than it had ever been. Half a dozen adults, each one armed, stood around the walls watching. Everyone else was already seated. Job found a place, sat down, and stared around.

He was probably the youngest at his table, and certainly the smallest. The skinny boy on one side of him gazed straight ahead and ignored him completely. The boy on the other side was equally gaunt, but tall and strong-limbed, with a massive head, heavy brows, and big red ears. He returned Job's stare but did not speak.

The mutual inspection ended with the arrival and distribution of plates of food. Job hardly needed to look at what was set in front of him. The rancid smell rising from the dish was enough. A small wedge of slimy fat meat floated in thin gray gravy, surrounded by a few small lumps of soggy pasta and a spoonful of amorphous bright-orange vegetable.

Every one else was gulping down the food and spooning up the greasy gravy. Job pushed his plate way.

"Not going to eat that?" The red-eared boy spoke for the first time. "Can I have it?" Job hardly had time to nod before it was being wolfed down.

"Is it always like this?"

"Like what?" The other boy did not stop eating, and he did not seem to understand the question. Job knew he had been spoiled by the quality and choices at Bracewell Mansion, but surely Cloak House food at its worst had never been this bad?

"It's terrible," he said. "Smells rotten. And even if you could eat it, there's not enough to feed a rat."

The boy had finished, and he turned to look at Job. "You'll get used to it," he said. "My name's Skip. Skip Tolson. You don't sound like a dimmie, so you must have been jaded. What you here for?"

"Dimmie?"

"Like Guppy, on the other side of you." Tolson gestured with his spoon around Job, to where the other boy had finished eating and was impassively staring straight ahead.

"What's wrong with him?"

"Take a look in his eyes. There's nothing back of'em. Rick Luciano—him over there—says Guppy used to be smart enough, but he got held under water too long when he was being questioned. Now he don't do nothing but eat and work and sleep. You can't get a word out of him. Lots in here like that, most of 'em born like it. Dimmies—dimwits. Not supposed to be sent here, but they are."

The plates were disappearing, every one of them wiped clean. "What's your name?" said Tolson.

"Job Salk. What did you mean about me being jaded, if I wasn't a dimmie?"

"You got labeled when you came in, right?" Tolson held up his wrist. "Know what that says, along with your number? J-D. Juvenile delinquent. You've been J-D'd, jaded, like most of us. We're too young for the Tandies. They stick us in here with the dimmies, an' hope we'll just die quiet. What did you do to get here?"

"Delivering drugs." Job did not protest his innocence. "What do you mean, die quiet?"

"All questions, aren't you?" Another bell rang, and the boys began to file out. Tolson went in his turn, and Job followed him.

"What did you mean about
dying
," he said again.

"You'd find out soon enough, so I might as well tell you. There's four hundred of us in here—"

"Cloak House only has enough space for two hundred!"

"You'd be surprised." Skip Tolson was striding upstairs, with Job panting along behind. "Four hundred. About fifty new ones come in every month, but you'll still count only four hundred at the end of it. Five or six leave because they're too old to be here—sent to the Tandies, mostly. The rest get sick and took down to the infirmary on the first floor. I've seen a couple of hundred go down, an' only half a dozen come back up. Worse than usual this last week, 'cause it's been so cold."

At the door of a dormitory he turned to face Job. His face was serious. "I'll make a deal with you."

"What sort of deal?"

"We're not allowed to steal each other's food. We get skull-cracked if we're caught, and we go without the next meal. But we can
give
each other food if we want to. So you give me half your food—not forever, 'cause you'd die, but for two weeks, 'til it starts to taste good to you and you know the ropes round here."

"Why should I?"

"Because then you get to take the empty bed next to mine, and I look after you." Skip Tolson smiled at Job's puzzled expression. "You may not think you need it, but you will. Nobody pushes me around. But you're pretty little. Did you sign out your bedroll an' blanket yet?"

"No."

"Lucky for you. If you had, and you'd left it any place, it'd have gone by now. You sleep without one when it's this cold, you shiver all night an' finish in the infirmary. I'm not making that up. You'll see it this week."

The real changes were beginning to sink in for Job. This wasn't Cloak House under Father Bonifant. It was not even Cloak House under Colonel della Porta.

"All right." But the skills developed in street forays with Father Bonifant had not been lost. "Not for two weeks, though. I'll do it for just for one week, then we'll see."

Tolson scowled, but at last nodded. "One week, then. Bet you change your mind at the end of it."

* * *

Skip Tolson had been right. Job was considering changing his mind.

When Skip had first proposed a deal, Job had been suspicious. He knew his way around Cloak House, better maybe than Tolson did. Why should he trade food for help from anyone? But at the end of a week Job was not so sure. He felt less in control of his life than he had been at four years old.

He had learned to force down the nauseous food, though there was so little of it that after sharing with Tolson he was permanently famished and lightheaded. He had also, with Skip's guidance, labeled his bedroll and blanket so prominently and permanently that no one could steal it without being found out, and he carried his soap always in his pocket. Those were the easy steps to survival.

But he was smaller than average for a kid in Cloak House, and most of the time the attendants looked the other way when there was fighting. In his first few days Job saw half a dozen shivering or unconscious boys carried down to the infirmary, bones broken or bleeding from the mouth or ears. He did not see any come back. That was when he first began to appreciate Tolson's size and strength, as well as his survival skills.

He learned that the older boy took the task of Job's protector seriously. One of the few things that Job owned was the cross and chain given to him by Nurse Calder. He wore it always around his neck. On his fourth day at Cloak House a blond-haired boy with a flattened nose grabbed it from him as he was washing, and bloodied Job's mouth when he tried to get it back.