Stardogs (53 page)

Keilin didn’t wait for them to have a second shot at him. He was off, bolting through the new-made way out of the dead end. His one glance backward showed that the Guard-Captain had made his escape through the same hole. The man seemed to have no intention of following him, though. Kemp was just running in blind panic.

Keilin slipped into a narrow multibranched alley, and waited hidden behind a lip of brickwork. No footsteps followed. After a few minutes of swallowed panting and gradually slowing heartbeat, the boy slipped quietly away in a different direction. Finally, as the sky was beginning to pale, and the first sounds of stirring of the city’s dayside began, he dropped over a wall, and then shimmied up a drainpipe. This gave access to a narrow ledge surrounding the building at third-floor level. He edged along the dark line of crumbling bricks, and around the corner to a small window.

It wasn’t barred . . . most unusual for Port Tinarana. In fact it only appeared to be closed. A fingernail under the edge of the rusty steel and it opened silently, or should have, after the amount of stolen oil that Keilin had lavished on it. Instead, it opened quietly a little way and then . . . stuck. Keilin was standing on a four-inch-wide ledge, trying to apply outward leverage. He cursed in a whisper, using language no fourteen-year-old ought to know: not just because it was obscene, but because it was obscene in an extinct language. Perhaps as a response, the obdurate window flew open abruptly, nearly tumbling him down for perhaps the twentieth time. He
had
fallen once, and the memory of the fear in those stretched-out moments was still with him. He was shaking as he pulled himself into the musty darkness.

His eyes adjusted to the dimness as he closed the window behind him. Relief washed through him as he looked at the familiar cracked washstand from his perch on the toilet cistern. This was one of the port’s original buildings, and here, unusually, the plumbing still worked. In most public places the fittings had long since been looted, to become nonfunctioning ornaments in some wealthy merchant’s house, or perhaps cut and fitted to the normal bucket and seat arrangement. But here . . . this place was largely forgotten. Those who did remember its existence treated it with superstitious awe. This is the fate of libraries in largely illiterate societies.

After a long drink of the slightly rust-flavored water, Keilin slipped out, through the crowded stack-room, and into the little kitchen the librarians used. He knew that he was in trouble, and needed to think of some way out, but for now he let his familiar rituals carry him. Years back Keilin had worked out that the mistake that most thieves made was to try and attack the food chain at too high a level. If you’re hungry, don’t try to steal meat pies, or gold for meat pies. Those things are well guarded, and thieves are hunted down. The port grain silos however . . . well, they were poorly defended against rats and pigeons, and easily accessible to a nimble boy. The porridge he made from the mortar-crushed wheat wasn’t nearly as appetizing as a meat pie, but Keilin, unlike most of his peers, wasn’t malnourished. Also, the grain made good bait for the pigeons he trapped on the roof. Keilin looked down at the porridge and sighed. If he’d not been tempted into trying for peppers, he wouldn’t have been spotted and chased into that alley.

He cleaned up meticulously. Everything was left in its exact place. He’d been using the kitchen for three years now without its legitimate owners being any the wiser. By the time they got in, the little alcohol stove would be cold, and any smells lost in the odor of yesterday’s curries. He sometimes stole a little of these too . . . but very circumspectly. He went to wash, a ritual he’d taken up when the head librarian had smelt Keilin’s far-from-delicate alley bouquet, and had spent the next hour zealously hunting dead rats around his hideout. Keilin had spent the time silently between fear and chagrin. There were no rats in the library, now. But they’d been his main source of food when he’d first taken shelter there.

His mind kept turning back to the previous night. For now, the “Die Hards,” the street gang who had caught him first, thought he was dead. But, by tonight, the word would be out. Anyone who denied that the city watch had links with the gangs was just naive. So . . . what passed for the law—the gangs and the watch—would be out to kill him. He didn’t know what story the Guard-Captain had come up with to explain his men’s sudden demise, but he was willing to bet the truth hadn’t figured in it. The man wasn’t going to rest easy until Keilin was dead. As for the other gangs . . . they would go along. To keep the peace, any of them that caught him would hand him over to the Die Hards. But the worst was that the whining killers had found him again. He sat down with the book he was currently reading and tried to lose himself in it. Keilin knew that being able to read was all that set him apart from the other scavenging children of the city . . . but this time he couldn’t see how it could help him. Gradually the book swallowed him.

He slipped out of his reading-induced trance with a start. Surely it wasn’t opening time already? Yes. Those were definitely footsteps on the staircase. Damn. No time for a last visit to the toilet. He’d just have to use the bloody jar again. Moving swiftly but quietly, he went across to the inverted V of an old-fashioned bookstand, which stood against the far wall. In the old days he’d had to lift it, but since then he’d managed to unscrew one of the boards, under the lowest shelf. It had taken him many nights of effort, but it was worth the extra speed it lent to getting into his rat hole. He slipped through the gap with some effort, and pulled the waiting board back into place, just as the two elderly and slightly out of breath librarians reached the top floor. He heard them clatter in the kitchen, as he settled into his nest.

He felt his scraped ribs. He was going to have to do something about that plank. Growing was creating all sorts of problems. Then, as he listened to the librarians discussing the street news, he realized he wasn’t going to have to worry about the plank after all.

“. . . a black magician!”

“There’s no such thing, as you well know, Khabo! Only the ignorant lower classes believe in magic.”

“Think what you like, Stannel. Gemme’s cousin Shanda saw the dead aurochs herself. Killed seven people it did, before they speared it to death.”

“Amazing! Shanda got off her back for long enough to see something outside of her own bedroom! I thought she was
far
too busy for that.” Despite the catty comment Stannel was plainly impressed.

“She’s thirty years younger than you, old man. If she’d accepted you, she’d have run off with some sailor by now.”

“True. Now, instead, the sailors can come to her. So you say they’re offering a reward for this so-called magician?”

“Yes! The Patrician himself has put up five hundred . . . in gold! The brave Guard-Captain who stopped the magician is leading the house-to-house search in person. The boy’s to be killed on sight, before he can use his black powers!”

Forgetting his supposed disbelief in magic, Stannel interjected, “I thought they had to light black candles, draw pentacles and . . . you know . . . sacrifice babies and things to do their spells.”

“Huh! This one did all that years ago! The Guard-Captain said that the magician was raping a baby girl when they caught him!”

“No! Monster! I hope they’re going to make him die slowly.”

“It’s not safe, I tell you! He blasted his way though six buildings and a man to escape. His kind you kill the minute you see them, preferably before he sees you.”

“Speak for yourself! If
I
see him, I’m going to run like hell. What’s he look like?”

With a sinking heart Keilin listened to a surprisingly accurate description of himself. Why the hell couldn’t Kemp have lied about that too?

“What I don’t understand is how come he didn’t just blast that Guard-Captain to ash too?”

“Guard-Captain Kemp’s a deeply religious man. He believes God protected him against the bolts of the evil and unholy. . . .” The conversation faded off down the stairwell.

Keilin sat there in silence, hands over his face. Holy mother . . . the gangs were after him, the townspeople’d kill him on sight, Kemp was hunting house to house for him, and the whiners . . . and a reward from the Patrician. That one puzzled him though. The citizens of Port T. knew that that bastard never parted with the gold he extracted with infinite care from all his subjects, even the whores, beggars and thieves. And, by all reports, what happened in the cellars beneath the Patrician’s palace would make the librarians’ idea of black magic look like a Sunday School outing.

There were a few people out there who knew Keilin, but he’d never trusted anyone enough to reveal his hideout to them. He was safe enough here, but if he ventured out . . . well, there were always eyes in the alleys. Sooner or later someone would see him, and then the hunt would be on. He’d never make it back. In the old town alone there were at least a thousand men, and women too, for that matter, who’d slit his throat for a single gold piece, never mind five hundred.

He tried to concentrate on his book again, holding it up to the light coming through the holes he’d made. It was no use. He couldn’t divert his mind from Kemp’s plot. Hatred twisted at his gut. He’d never killed anyone before, but if he could get that man alone somewhere . . . Still, it was no use dreaming. He must get out, survive, then, one day he could come back and do a little quiet and nasty repayment.

Keilin knew little of the world outside the walls of the port. He’d come here, a fugitive from another dimly remembered city, when he was about seven. He remembered sneaking off the ship in the pale dawn, with his mother. He remembered watching, puzzled and uncomfortable, as his mother had “paid” the bosun for smuggling them off the ship. He remembered in the grim years that followed, as her addiction grew deeper, how his discomfort and resentment had given way to resignation and then acceptance. He stretched his mind back further to misty memories of the city they’d lived in before reaching Port Tinarana. He could remember the sergeant of the Caravan Guards, but not his face.

The boy shuddered. His mind wouldn’t let him remember the face. That had been the first time he’d heard the whining sounds. The caravaneer had been a kindly man when he was sober. He’d had Keilin’s mother teach the boy to read, and been proud of his stepson’s cleverness. He’d started to teach him to use a sword. He’d tried to teach Keilin to swim, and kept Keilin spellbound by telling him tales of far-off places. If only Keilin could remember more of them, but most of it was lost in the vagueness of early childhood . . . But he could remember clearly how the man had changed into a vicious brute when he was drunk.

He’d beaten Keilin’s mother . . . slapped her about, humiliated her, called her a whore and far worse. Well, she’d had little option once he’d died, but back then it had been untrue. Keilin hadn’t even known what it meant then. The man had beaten Keilin, too. That had been bearable. It was when he’d tried to take Keilin’s pendant that it had all happened. Firstly, his mother had flown to Keilin’s aid, screaming like a fishwife, beating ineffectually at the big man. And Keilin remembered his own anger and fear, and the coldness of the amulet. It was his! It was all he had of his father. His
real
father. Nobody, but nobody, would take it from him. He’d clung to the dark jewel with all his strength. His stepfather could have jewels, other jewels, not
his
! He remembered how the flying tray of baubles had appeared out of nowhere. He remembered crawling away, and the eerie whine. He hadn’t been scared of it, back then. It had just seemed strange.

Then he’d been knocked sideways by the drunken man clumsily and greedily sprawling after the stones. And the blast of purple fire meant for Keilin had blown away his stepfather’s face. He’d run as fast as his little legs could carry him, squalling in terror. When he came cautiously back, his mother hastily gathered him up, with some of the stones, and fled to buy passage for them on an outbound freighter. She would never tell him just what she’d seen that had frightened her into this headlong flight. It never occurred to her that not knowing could be worse.

He felt at the jewel in the amulet. It was cold and oily feeling as always. His inheritance . . . along with two books. The one with the bright pictures which his mother had begged off a drunken highborn trick.
Tales of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table.
He’d loved that book. The other,
Geophysical Survey of Planet IV,
had been an incomprehensible thing of lists and strange words. He’d been taught to read from those two books. Before he’d found the library they’d been the only books he’d ever seen. He’d read both of them many times. The latter book had words his mother had said even his great-grandfather had not understood. But he’d been made to read them all, even the strange, burnt-edged pages glued into the back of
Geophysical Survey
—”Log of the Starship
Morningstar
.” On the last page someone had scrawled:

“
Even if everything else is lost, perhaps this will survive
.”

Suddenly the hideout seemed too small. He needed air, and space around himself, so that he could see them coming. On the lower floors they’d bricked up the chimney. Here on the top floor they’d just pushed the old-fashioned bookstand against it. He’d noticed it when he’d lifted the bookstand to crawl under it, and realized that it gave the hideout its most essential feature—a bolt hole.

He’d loosened the back planks ages ago, but it had taken him a while to brave the narrow, dark shaft. He’d been tempted to use it as a latrine, but instead had decided that digging out the bottom could give him access to the drains . . . his digging hadn’t made much progress yet. He’d broken through into the rubble-filled foundations. There was a weary lot of broken bricks, rocks and concrete fragments to shift before he could get anywhere.

Upwards, however, had proved easier. There had been that tiny circle of sky to aim towards. He’d knocked the chimney pot off one stormy night, and come out into the sheeting rain onto the steep tiled roof.