Day Boy (29 page)

Dougie looks at me. ‘Egan's gonna kill you,' he says. ‘He won't let this lie.'

Right then, I don't care. In fact I'd welcome it. I nod my head. And they carry him
into town, away from the Summer Tree, and the deer running to the High Land, away
from his blood.

‘You'll be all right,' Certain says, but there's a shake in his voice.

‘No,' I say. ‘No I won't.'

Certain doesn't say another thing, just squeezes my shoulder.

‘God help us all,' someone says.

God sure as hell won't help me.

CHAPTER
42

CERTAIN'S THERE WITH me when Dain wakes. He rises groggy, but is quick to see that
the world isn't right. And I'm barely moving. Just sitting in the kitchen.

Cup of tea in my hand that Certain must have given me, cold and undrunk.

‘Grove's dead,' Certain says. I have no talk in me, just an ache that fills my body,
deep and dire. ‘Mark was with him when he died. You know how Egan gets. You know
how this'll play.'

Dain nods.

‘Boy, my boy,' Dain says, and he holds me as I sob. He lets me go when I start shivering.

There's a great low moaning out in the dark that builds and echoes back from the
mountains: a roaring wild sadness. Egan's woken too, and his grief is tied to a great
rage.

Dain nods. Looks to Certain.

‘Stay with him,' he says. ‘There's so much danger for him.'

‘I don't care about no danger,' I say, 'cause I would let it wash over me this night.
Drown me.

Dain dips his head towards me. ‘You should. I want you to. Grove would want you to.'

‘He's dead, he don't want nothing.'

Dain strokes my face with his cold hands. ‘Oh, my boy.'

He tilts his head, hears something I can't. His eyes narrow, his shoulders hunch,
and he shows a little teeth.

‘Keep him safe,' he says to Certain. ‘You've ash on you?'

Certain nods.

‘Good, have it near.'

Then he is gone.

I hear them in the darkness. The terrible noise of Masters at fight. Distant then
close, shrill and low and all the sounds that rip the fabric of the night. One time
there's a bloody big crash, the earth shakes. Certain sits taller, but he doesn't
leave my side. Bag of ash in one hand, axe in the other.

‘What you going to do if he comes?' I say.

Certain gives me a look, he isn't one to lie. ‘Nothing I could do. Master in full
wake, and rage. But I can stop you walking out there. I can keep you from getting
yourself killed. There'll be other Masters out tonight, looking for leverage, perhaps
looking to curry favour with Egan. They might kill you just as easily.'

‘And what if I want to die?'

‘You don't. Believe me when I say this, for I know.' Certain says. ‘Even if it feels
like you want death, you don't.'

And maybe he's right. I stay in that kitchen, and I hear them Masters at fight. Not
a bit of sleep I have. Or maybe I do, and that fight becomes part of it. Certain
sits by me.

‘I want to change it,' I say. ‘I want to change it all back.'

Certain sighs. ‘Only thing we can ever change is ourselves. Even that's hard. Thing
is, Mark, we never change as much as we want, and we always change more than we fear.'

He rises when the door opens.

‘Put down the axe, man. I'm not some wolf to be cut,' Dain says, and he stands, unsteady:
his clothes torn, flesh marked with all the violences of battle.

Certain drops his axe and his bag of ash. ‘What happened out there?'

Dain shivers a bit.

‘We filled the sky with our rage. The collision of Imperatives.' He looks dazed.
‘With claw and fang and all the dark sendings and snarls of my kind, we fought, brought
down hail, and trees. And the others lurched and gyred around us, but they did not
interfere. They knew better. Either of us could have killed them this night. He fought
with all his strength, and it surprised him that I was his match.'

He blinks, and looks down at me. ‘Surprised myself. You need to sleep. You're safe
for now.'

‘No one's ever safe,' I say.

‘Foolish, foolish boy, to say such a thing when the whole world has been bent to
your welfare,' he says, voice scarcely a whisper driven soft by the Sun so near.
‘The worst is done. The worst is done.'

He nods once to Certain. ‘You can go now, but I would appreciate an eye kept over
the house.'

‘It'll be done,' Certain says.

Then he is out the door.

Dain touches my shoulder with a hand that isn't cold, but
feverish. ‘Sleep,' he says,
and he stumbles, almost falls. I'm on my feet, and he leans on me. I take him to
his room, and pull low the shutters and the blinds.

‘You keep out the light,' Dain says. ‘You make me proud.'

And then he is falling into his dream-stark sleep, and I shut the door behind me.
And I'm sobbing again. Not for long, but it helps a little. Just a little.

There's a knock on the front door.

I open it. Grainer's standing there.

‘I'll be standing guard today,' he says. I nod, but I am hardly paying attention.

Half the trees around our place have fallen, snapped at the trunk, stripped of leaves.
And by the stairs to the verandah is a deep, dark furrow three metres long at least—some
scar of battle. And all of this for me. For my life's ending, for its salvation.

I am ready to drop to my knees, but I don't.

‘Thank you,' I say.

I shut the door, and, somehow, sleep finds me when death couldn't.

There's a funeral. Ours don't go with no pomp and circumstance. One at night, just
the next night over, the body buried deep. And all of us Day Boys gather.

I'm sniffling. ‘He died 'cause of me. He died 'cause of me.'

Dain strokes my back with hands not given to comfort. Already his strength is returning,
like last night's battle was nothing.

And then I'm sobbing—worse than little Thom ever did—and I don't care who sees it.

‘No,' Dain says. ‘No. There's no fault to be found for you in this. None.'

Egan comes over, his face is bearded-thick with blood I can only guess is Mick's
or he'd not be so brazen in showing it. There he is, dressed to the nines in the
finery of death, and the blood is the final touch. He reeks of it. Blood and anger.

‘I will not forget this,' he says, with a calm that runs eight leagues deep, a calm
so cold it could kill me as I stand. I feel my heart slow. ‘Your time is coming to
an end, boy. And I will be glad to see those hours run down, like I saw the running
down of the Old World.'

His eyes glow with their rings of flame, and my Master's eyes burn back.

‘You will do no such thing,' Dain says low and hard, and it looks like they might
start again.

Me, I'd be happy to die right here. All that hurt and hate at self thrown up anew.
There's not much I have left. Why not be at it and get to death? I tilt my head;
show my neck clear. Come finish me now.

‘Stop with the folly, boy,' Dain says and pulls me back. ‘And you,' he glares at
Egan. ‘You should know better. We have our agreements.'

‘Yes.' Egan bares his blood-rimmed teeth. ‘Agreements.'

But there's a settling in the mood. Sobel walks between them, and he's puffed up,
entire. You can see the savagery in him, near unchecked, from fingertip to fingertip.
His eyes are all fire and rage.

He spreads his arms wide. ‘Gentlemen. Gentlemen. This is not the time nor the place
for such fractiousness. Did not the last night draw the wound? Come, aren't we all
fellows here?
This is a time for grief, not fire and fury. Find yourself calm. Find
yourself peace.'

And that's how I see, again, the love they hold for us, even wrapped as it is in
their cruelty.

Dain to protect me, Egan to seek vengeance. I can see it would be easy to hate me
but Dain's never done that, quite the opposite. And just now I don't understand his
love. But I accept it.

So there he was writing this book. Even as the sky was falling.

Trying to capture what was already passing. He hunted for them. The right words,
the right order, the placement of this fact after that. As ruthless a predator as
any of them. He didn't chase any moon, just the light of lines heading in the right
direction. Words are curly buggers, no good for pinning down. But he was meticulous,
thorough in the way of thorough men. Says he was so intent upon the words, he forgot
what he was saying, he forgot what the words had mapped.

Did it matter? Did it really matter?

He had a library, prodigious. And it served him well, when all those libraries in
the air failed. When he could no longer pluck a word from the webs of them, he still
walked those shelves, could track the long aisles of them. When he started there
were many. It was almost a race, a meticulous chasing of the source and the madness
that beat upon the world. But one by one those other blind folk fell.

And he hardly noticed, until he was the last one, letting himself in with keys stolen.
And finally not leaving at all. It was too dangerous outside then.

Wars had fallen into one war. The library had fallen into one man.

They found him with his books, and he fought them. But what does a bookish man have
to win him such a fight? His wit, his words.

They made him one of them. And the Change was at once furore and placation.

And he thought for a while that would give him time.

But time isn't just a gift.

Time is a curse.

Course it is.

And he forgot what he was chasing. He forgot to hunt the words. He became them, and
that is a very different thing.

CHAPTER
43

DAIN COMES IN before the dawn from his vigil on the front porch.

He's holding a letter all official-like—come in the dark by bird or bat or whatever
thing they're using now. Don't get too many of them regardless. The sight of it makes
me catch my breath.

Been three days since the burial. Egan's circled this place every night, and I've
not dared leave the house when the dark falls.

Dain's looking hungry. Twice he's called for visitors and only George has come, and
he looked at me with sorrowful eyes—more than I deserved. The others are too scared
of the dark, of what Egan might do. So am I.

Not much sleep I've been getting. I hear Egan whispering my name across the night;
hear Dain calling back in refusal. That messes with your dreams.

He taps the letter against his ash-burnt wrist.

‘So when's the new boy coming?' I knew it was too good a thing to have until March.

Dain looks at me, like it's the first thing that I said in three days. It isn't,
but there's a measure of civility to it that's been lacking between us.

‘A week.'

‘I'm guessing I'm not training this one?'

Dain shakes his head. ‘You're to go to the mountain. To be trained for the Constabulary.'

That makes my stomach drop, no Mastery for me, and I get a thrill through me, too.
Anne's in the city. ‘No choice in the matter?'

‘No. It is not how I would have it, but I've no say in this. I've tried as much as
I can. But there are limits.'

‘I know all about limits,' I say.

‘Yes,' Dain says. ‘Well, at least you will be far from Egan there. And your future
is sorted. Keep this quiet, boy, don't even whisper it. I feel trouble coming, should
he find out.'

‘Trouble's always coming.'

Dain says nothing for a while, holding that letter in his hands. Then: ‘You be the
man you want to be. Not what I need; you be the best that you can be. Will you promise
me that?'

‘Of course,' I puff up my chest. ‘Strong enough. You taught me that.'

Dain laughs. ‘It isn't about strength. Well, not altogether. Strength is just another
kind of emptiness. It takes, it makes a hunger. Give it up, give it out for what's
right; to help others, not just yourself. I'm not one to teach you that. I can't
be. And I'm sorry for that.

‘You know the pain goes away, and then it comes back, a day, a week or a month and
it's back, and I'm wondering if it ever went away at all or if I just chose to ignore
it. When the pain is there it is as if it was always there. Funny, isn't it?' He
sighs. ‘Sometimes I am sorry to have done this to you. You are not deserving of it.
And, for all I may have said otherwise, I am the one who failed you. Caught up in…pointless
endeavour. Petty feuds. How can I judge the other Masters when I am so flawed?'

He folds the letter up, slides it in a pocket. ‘Had I only been paying attention.
I think that was my greatest failing, not to see what was coming, I believe you did,
Mark, and that is to your credit.'

I have no idea what he's talking about, but I let him talk.

‘Remember to keep your eyes open, they have taught you better than I ever have. You
are a good boy, a fine boy, and I regret that I will not see the man you will become.
Please believe me when I say I only ever wished the best for you. And it is my folly
that I could not provide it. Sometimes the most powerful are the weakest after all.'

‘You spend an awful long time being sorry,' I say, and he's in my face snarling and
I can see the terrible strength of him. He could snap me, break me, easy as breathing,
and I would be dead. But it's a strength in check; I can see the cords of his muscles
shaking.

All at once the rage is gone, just gone, and he seems to be listening to something.
Some distant chords of a song I'm never going to know.

‘I'll be back,' I say. ‘You'll see the man I become.'