Day Boy (13 page)

Carriages pass me by, three of them, shooting down the road towards the heart of
the city, but I'm headed the other way. I'm safer in the light.

The Gates of Dawn are three feet thick, all steel and mechanics, gears as big as
houses, big enough to set the mountain ticking. And they're closing fast.

I'm running.

‘Oi!' someone yells. But I keep my feet banging hard against the concrete road.

I bolt through the doorway just as they're shutting, tons of metal drawing towards
me, bearing down on me, threatening. Could be squashed flat, but there's no turning
back and when someone yells at me again I ignore them. Dark shapes thrash past, the
last of the bats.

A leathery smack to the face, and another; doesn't even slow me, not one bit.

I make it, the door closing behind me. I'm locked out, in the Red City. In the light
of a red dawn. Smoke and dust and diesel. Parrots are calling, fires are burning
and I stand with my world behind me locked away in mountain rock and iron.

‘Here he is,' someone yells. ‘Here he is, the Day Boy.' I think he says
the
; it might
just as well be
a
.

How do they know?

Well. What else would I be?

Twitcher is just that. All twitches and worries. He shuffles, he runs. And when he's
alone he smiles. I don't know him enough, but I know he's smarter than he puts out,
less frightened. There's an anger to him, a sharp edge all its own. And you see it
with his story. Here it comes out, and when he's done with its telling, he always
seems surprised, as though he's just been reminded of something. Something that he
should never forget. That's Twitcher, he sneaks but he's clever about it. Makes it
look like something else.

You know how it is with poison. Dangerous, the sort of thing that can get out of
hand, that can rise up and swallow you, like the sea does to the Masters, if they
get too close—Tennyson says that's because the sea and the salt never quite changed
the way everything else did. It remembers, and it will always remember with hatred.

Tennyson was a chemist. He made play with all that bittery sweet stuff. He was good
at it. Some he helped, some he killed. He liked the killing. In secret.

The war was still on, but we were already losing it. The world was closing in, and
they were at the edges, the Masters and the other monsters. No one quite got that
the Masters were our last best hope, keeping the worst things at bay. But who would
know that? Who would even suspect it?

Government thought Tennyson might find some cure.

He never wanted to. Why would he want to? He could see the poetry in it. Says it
was splendid those last days. Like a Sunset. Like a sky flaring its last great bright
upon itself. The beautiful fury in the dying of beautiful things.

And while all of them looked out, looked at what was coming, he looked in. He looked
so deep within the heart of things. Where everything is muddy, everything a possibility
no matter how outlandish. Some singularity had been met, and now, it were shifting
everything. The world weren't dying, it weren't even sick. It was dead. But it might
rise again.

He opened doors. He found out secrets.

Nothing is set in stone, says my Tennyson. Nothing is still. And everything might
be or might not. And what he saw, with all those magics of the past time, was a shifting
of the hinges. Worlds changed forever.

There was a war on but everyone, everyone, was fighting themselves. He found a way
to bring us all onto the one path, to sort wheat from chaff. He flooded the world
with his elixirs and those that died thanked him. Those that rose up thanked him
too. Death is a gift that he gave out willingly. He made them all see its beauty.

CHAPTER
18

THERE'S A HALF-DOZEN of them. Some of the biggest men I've ever seen. Like that damn
Hunter, but none's knifed up.

They're confident in their strength, that's to my advantage. At least I've got that
blade in my boot, though cutting's likely to end with broken bones, cutting's close
work. And I reckon I can run faster than any of them if I've room, if I've a chance.

I puff up my chest. ‘What of it?' I say, and gesture at the lightening sky. ‘It's
day, isn't it?'

Someone laughs. ‘You know what we mean.'

There's the train tracks nearby. And narrow streets, running up the mountainside,
and houses, plenty of houses. And I can smell bread baking somewhere, and the smell
of the Sun rising and baking the land. The ground's hard beneath my feet, and there's
not a hint of green anywhere, no grass, no trees. It's a wilderness of buildings
and people; sets my heart pounding so hard it's hurting in my chest.

The biggest of them, a man with a black beard down to his chest, comes walking towards
me. He don't need to puff his chest, he's as broad as I am long; kinda fella whose
walking by blocks out the Sun.

I look up and up at him. He looks down at me, thumbs in his belt. And the rest of
them stand back.

‘How'd you grow so tall?' I say.

‘We're made big in the Red City,' he says. ‘Who's your Master?'

‘What's that?' I say.

The fella laughs. Me standing up to a giant with not so much as a slingshot to hand.

‘You know what I mean.'

‘Never had no master.' I crack my neck, left and right.

And he finds it offensive somehow; a storm knits itself together in those big dark
brows of his. ‘You're coming with me, boy.'

‘Not coming with no one,' I say, and I'm sprinting before I finish talking, kicking
up red dust, and he swipes out at me but I'm darting wide. Another tries to tackle
me but he's not nearly quick enough.

I'm over those grasping hands, even manage a quick kick in his ribs as I jump, can't
resist showing off. Don't take much comfort in his groaning; too focused on the narrow
road ahead. They're faster than I thought but I can keep myself in front. Just not
far enough.

So I start for where the street's all bends and angles. I take one turn, then another.
But I don't know where I'm running to. All I've got is my speed.

There's a whistle on the rooftops. A cry and the banging of
a bell. And I'm putting
on more speed, lungs burning almost as bad as my legs.

A door opens to the right of me. A young face peers out.

‘Here, in here,' he cries.

And because I can't think of nothing else, I take the doorway. He shuts the door
behind me.

‘Who are you?' I demand when I've breath enough for talking.

He puts a finger to his lips.

Footfalls crashing down the street. Low cries. Men make ungainly predators. I feel
some shame for my kind.

The boy stands there, ear against the door, not that he needs it, these blokes clod
by all thump and crash and shouting.

‘They're gone,' he says, after a while.

‘What did they want?'

There's laughter, lots of laughter, and I jerk around, quick, take in the room.

It's dingy, crowded with chairs, and there's boys here, five of them, and they're
all smiling at me.

‘You,' the door boy says.

One of the boys taps his skull. ‘They want what's in your head.'

I can be slow some days but the blood's pulsing.

‘Insurrectionists,' I say.

‘Some people might call 'em heroes,' someone says.

Another laughs. ‘There's no heroes in this world. Just stupid men, and monsters.'

I know these boys. I know their type. ‘You're Day Boys like me,' I say.

The boy at the door bows. ‘We
were
Day Boys. Now we're
the lost. The discarded. We're
the ones the Masters let go. The softer ones anyway, the ones that couldn't quite
bear to kill us. We was at the top of the heap and now we're at the bottom.'

I look at him and he half-laughs. ‘Memory's a goad and a bitterness, like you'd imagine.'

‘And those men?'

‘Some of them were like us, it's how they know. Others not. All of them want the
Masters gone. We hide until we get caught, or flee the city. Bit of dying in both
of those. But we've done all right: we've collectivised.'

I'm hardly hearing him.

‘Dain would never leave me,' I say. ‘Not here.'

‘We all thought that, but here we are, deserted or cast out or fled and not found.'
The door boy taps his chest. ‘I'm Grainer,' he says, then waggles his thumbs at the
others. ‘The tall one's Midas, that's Billow with the wispiest beard, Jack with the
scar on his chin.'

‘Scrapper, I am,' Jack says.

Grainer rolls his eyes. ‘That's Wes, with the long arms.'

‘Gets me outta trouble,' Wes says, flexing his biceps. ‘And into it, sometimes.'

‘And the little one's Rat.'

‘I'll be a wolf one day,' Rat says, and all of them laugh. Like they're playing at
being men, and they are.

‘How's it feel to be down here with us?' Grainer says.

I pull the biggest smile I got, like that could pull the wall from behind me, like
I don't care. ‘Pleasure to be with such fine gentlemen.'

‘Where you from?' Rat says.

‘Midfield.'

‘Country boy,' Jack says. ‘Surprised you made it.'

That gets my back up, like he knows anything. ‘Where you from?'

‘Raised in these streets, and then the Academy when I was five, given to a Master
when I was seven, and these streets again. They have you, these streets. Even when
you're gone, they know you're coming back to 'em. They're patient as the sky.'

The Academy, I can't help but roll my eyes. Dougie's an Academy boy too. He says
it's the hardest school for the hardest Day Boys, outside of those Crèche-raised.

‘You think that's funny,' Jack says. ‘Serve our Masters to the best of our skill,
work and work, never much rest. And now this, cast out like them angels. Our lives
are bloody tragedies.'

Grainer laughs. ‘But we're still breathing. And I chose this. Couldn't face the Change,
and such a decision wasn't seen too kindly. Some gifts offered you have to take.
So, here we are not blooded or dead, bit sweeter than tragedy.'

I'm still taking it all in. I've already set it in my skull that I'm not staying
here long: this isn't my story. And it isn't near no tragedy.

Grainer must see a bit of that in my face, because he smiles at me, but there's a
hardness there. There's laughs and boasts in this room, but there's scarce a breath
of warmth. I'd not wish a life with just Day Boys on anybody. I think I know why
they end up getting caught. A lost boy can only stay a lost boy for so long. Lost
boys end up found or dead boys. Don't know which I'm to be yet.

Then my stomach rumbles and I realise I've not eaten; that it's still just morning
and I'm in another world, and that my belly don't care.

‘Hungry?' Wes asks.

He reaches a long arm into a pocket and flicks me an apple lightning quick. I catch
it—no drop for me in this crowd all hungry for failure—just a casual catch, like
I've been catching things all my life, which I have.

‘Break your fast,' Grainer says, looking sort of impressed. He nods at the door.
‘We've work to do.'

CHAPTER
19

THE CITY BEYOND the mountain, outside the Gates of Dawn. The Red City. Dry as dust.
The streets are narrow, the buildings' roofs touch—makes it harder to attack from
above. Less space for the Masters to drop down from. And the edges of the gutters
are barbed, which looks more effective than it probably is, or the Masters would
have torn it down long ago.

‘Always been folk like us Day Boys,' Grainer's saying as he leads through streets
that curl, the low roofs above us admitting sharp fingers of hard light. I can smell
my sweat and the sweat of all those other lives in the dry hot air. ‘Poor fellows,
quick but not quick enough for Mastery or not wanting it, and too wild for the other
things. Cursed and blessed in one breath. Wasn't luck you found us. We're drawn to
each other, all that turbulence of luck and dismay, it's like magnets for the body
and the soul.'

The Red City and the City in the Shadow of the Mountain wind around each other. The
heart of domination—and
resistance, such as it is. They say it's only left so the
Masters have something to prey upon. Good for breeding Day Boys too. The best Day
Boys come from insurgent stock. Rebellion is energy, and it's that energy they desire.
You've gotta stir the blood or it grows thick and sluggish, and Day Boys aren't cattle.
We're help and trouble, and that's how they like us.

‘You've gotta toughen up.' He gives me a look part pity, part disgust. ‘May the Sun
and Sea take them Masters that don't toughen up their boys. We've all done it, run
this gauntlet.'

Toughen up! I want to smack Grainer one in the mouth, but that'd prove nothing. He's
not my enemy. He just don't know what I'm capable of.

‘We've need of nails,' he says, and parts thumb and forefinger a good length, maybe
ten centimetres. ‘At least this long. You'll see them, they're the ones daubed in
red paint.'

‘How many?' I say.

‘As many as you can get, though ten should be enough, we take only what we need.
And remember they're after boys like us. You fail at this and you'll end up in the
Cage House.' He gestures across the city towards a tower, it's painted in the blue
and white of the Constabulary. ‘They'll be watching you. You don't have the privilege
of terror no more.'

I don't know about that, I feel pretty terrified even though I know I can be cunning,
and I can be quick. And just then I wish for Anne's calming voice. Thought of her
sends a yearning for Midfield through me like a flooding river. I'd be at weeping,
but this for sure isn't the time or place.