Instead he held his hands up to the fading evening light and watched as shadows dappled the tight white scar-lines that covered every inch of his skin. In places they ran with the natural lines of his body, in others they broke free and cut fresh alignments, telling the stories of long-dead heroes and their grand exploits.
He sighed. Interwoven amongst these tales, carved by his own mother's hand when he was just a baby and written in a language nobody had spoken for thousands of years, were the names of the children.
Alam.
Daveron.
Mare.
Feyon.
Gellick.
He waggled his fingers, and the scar lines danced. If he truly was special somehow, marked out for some heroic fate, he didn't feel it. He wasn't worth the risks the Sisters were taking, hiding him from the Adjunc. If the King only knew he was here…
He let that thought guide his gaze to the dark undergrowth of trees and bushes screening the Abbey's wall. His pack was hidden there, waiting for him. In thirty seconds he could have it, be over the wall and away from the Abbey, and the threat he posed to the Sisters just by existing would be ended.
But he didn't move.
He wasn't sure if that was cowardice or curiosity. All his life he'd been hearing about the power of the secrets in his scars. Now five children really were here, and he could feel them already, the sense of their minds on the air. Different to the ever-steady calm of the Sisters, they felt chaotic and dangerous, like discordant voices calling out an alarm.
He had to leave, but curiosity held him frozen, heart thumping painfully hard, until a tuneless whistle carried to him on the air, making the decision for him.
He let his arms drop at his sides. That was Sister Henderson, whistling her way near. She was an upbeat Gawk, long-limbed and surprisingly nimble, and she'd certainly catch him if he ran now. Besides, he told himself, would it really hurt just to look at the children? He'd seen precious few castes in his time, and no children at all. Maybe he could spy on them without even showing himself. There was no special danger in that.
He started walking back through the graves to meet the Sister, joining the chalk-white gravel path as it circled round the shady Abbey's side. To either side the graveyard stretched away in mottled headstones and uneven brown railings; the realm he'd grown up adventuring within. Every chip of stone and shard of rust was known to him, like a second skin atop his scars.
He met Sister Henderson halfway to the Abbey front lawns. In the weak light she looked like a phantom scarecrow, so long and tall, her horse-thin Gawk's head standing high on her lanky neck.
"In the graveyard, then," she said, arching one eyebrow dramatically. "How morose."
Sen snorted. Sister Henderson always knew exactly what to say to poke a hole in his grander thoughts. "I was thinking."
She nodded. "Of course you were. A lot to think about, I'm sure. Fate and destiny and such things."
She took nothing seriously.
"Don't tease me."
"But Sen, you're so easy to tease. And look, you're a mess." She leaned in and picked some bits of dust from his tousled black hair. He tolerated it as she swept his hair first to one side, then the other. "What have you been doing, trying to dig up graves?"
"I did my chores, then I took a walk in the yard."
He wasn't going to tell her how close he'd come to climbing over the wall and fleeing, without even saying goodbye.
"And you didn't wash again since?" Sister Henderson asked, plucking a miniscule grass seed off his shoulder and holding it up like evidence of a crime. "Honestly, you'd think I was your chambermaid. Now come on, destiny waits."
She held out her hand, and resentfully he took it. He was too old for this, thirteen going on fourteen, but it was usually better not to argue with Sister Hen.
They went together back through the graveyard, passing between jumbled ranks of ancient tombs, here and there studded with rain-worn statues of Saint Ignifer. Soon they rounded the corner of the Abbey's cathedral, and the grounds spread out before them; a broad expanse of grass stretching down to the pond and the black iron gates, bounded by tree-lined walls. Up the middle ran the white chalk path to the sacristy, beside the cathedral.
Four of the children were sitting around a trestle table beneath the oft tree in the middle, being lectured by the Moth Abbess. Her large brown wings were spread open like she always held them at sermon, and her compound eyes glinted as though moved by the passion of the Heart. No doubt she was sharing with them the importance of the roles they would play.
But it was easy not to think about that, now, because the children fascinated him. Their violent, clashing thoughts were stronger, hinting at histories Sen could only guess at. They were from castes and districts he'd only ever read about in books. He forgot to be careful and just stared.
A Moleman, a Balast, a Blue and an Induran.
The Moleman was short and compact, wearing the white-tubing suit of an unfealted usury butcher. Deep gray fur ran over his head, snout, paws, and tail snaking out from under the chair. At his waist hung a large round metal fob, which he turned steadily through his fingers. Sen knew that one day it would hold slivers of his debtor's flesh. The feeling rising off him was clinical and cold.
This was Daveron. His name was written on Sen's left forearm.
Beside him was the Balast, a hulking man of stone, with arms and legs as thick as oft-boles. The Moleman looked like a doll by comparison. He had a cragged, bald slate-gray head, atop a body that shone like rain-slicked dog-iron. Gellick.
Sen watched him moving, miming the actions to some story with exaggerated sweeps and jerks, speaking in a deep and abrading voice. It reminded him of the refectory grindstones milling chaff. The sense of him was warm and simple, like the pond's sun-warmed shallows in summer.
"Balasts are not supposed to live outside the Calk," Sen said to Sister Henderson quietly. "He'd be transported back if they found him. How did you get him here?"
"Secret tunnels," said the Sister, and winked.
Sen frowned.
"All right, in a rickshaw with a blanket over him. Adjunc rarely stop them, because what low caste could afford one?"
Sen considered that. "And my mother chose him."
"She chose them all," Henderson said and pointed. "The ladies too, Feyon and Mare."
The two girls sat side by side at the table, though they were of very different castes. On the right was Feyon, a Blue-skinned girl from the Roy, unlike anything Sen had seen before. She wore an intricate white dress of puffs, ruffles, and silvered linings, making her look part winter frost, part chiseled pearl. Her red hair was turned in elaborate hanging curls, framing a face so beautiful it almost hurt to look at, matched with a sense of elegance and sweet refinement. She was leaning subtly away from the low-caste girl at her left.
Sister Henderson chuckled. "Prettier than chopped potatoes, yes? You're blushing, Sen. The other one's spied you, though."
The second girl was an Induran Deadhead, Mare, wearing one of the Abbey's black cassocks. She glared right back at him. The left side of her head was deflated inward like a rotten pumpkin, as though half her skull had been hacked out. Her face on that side looked melted, sagging over her left eye and dropping her lip slack, though it was hard to make out through her thicket of matted hair. She seemed like a snarl, something slithering in the dark.
"Watch out for that one," Sister Henderson said. "She's as bitter as old bark."
"What happened to her?"
"Molemen took her brain. Now shall we?"
Sen nodded. He'd been seen, and there was no point in trying to run now. They started across the grass.
"There should be five," he said as they walked.
"Very astute," said Sister Henderson. "There will be. The fifth is late, Alam. Now you can welcome them."
As they drew near to the trestle table, the Abbess stopped her lecture, pulled in her wings, and gestured Sen to come forward.
He didn't know what
he wanted to say. On one hand, he wanted to know all about them. What was it that had made them special, why had his mother chosen them, what purpose would they all serve? But at the same time, he knew there were no answers to any of that, because none of it was true.
So run? Welcome them? Introduce himself?
He stepped in front of the children and felt their attention focus like a kind of heat. The Blue-skinned girl gave a little gasp at his scars. The Moleman's eyes narrowed. They would all know, now, the price the King would pay if he heard about his scars.
"You shouldn't be here," he said abruptly.
The Deadhead gave a loud laugh.
The words took Sen by surprise too, coming louder and more confidently than he'd expected, but surely this was the right thing. "I'm sorry, but it's true. This place isn't safe for you, or for the Sisters with you here. You see my scars, and you know what being near me means. You should all leave while you can."
The words hung in the cool spring air between them. Sen glanced sideways at the Abbess, but read nothing on her polished Sectile face. Of course. Perhaps she'd even expected this.
He turned back ready to say more, but now the Blue girl was rising smoothly to her feet. Her dark eyes had gone very wide, focused on his face like she was drinking him in. He could feel her fear changing to excitement.
"Feyon Gravaile of the Roy Gravailes," she said in a tart, breathy voice, then dropped into a curtsey, spreading her skirts like a crumpling white cake. "And I am not afraid, as no Gravaile would be." Tiny silver bells in her hair chimed as she moved.
Sen frowned at her. He hadn't expected this. "It's not some kind of challenge. It's just a fact. It isn't safe, for you, me, or the Sisters." He looked to the others. "None of you should stay, for all our sakes."
"There is no danger for me here," the Moleman said smartly. "Nor in any affairs of caste. The Molemen are exempt."
"Maybe not for you, but why stay?" Sen pressed.
"Your Abbey has offered to pay my cost as a usury butcher," said the Moleman, as though that answered everything.
Sen glanced again at the Abbess, expecting some small sign of victory on her face, but as before she gave nothing away. Instead he turned to the Balast.
"There's no exemption for you. Why are you here?"
The stone boy took a long moment to answer, the gears of his mind turning slow. "I can't go back to the Calk," he said eventually. "I'll calcify."
"You'll calcify here too."
"No," said the Balast firmly. "It's different here. It's quiet; the air is clear. I won't end up like the others."
Sen studied the boy's intense expression, feeling the open warmth that radiated off him ripple briefly. There were dark depths underneath; the faint impression of a caste kept shrouded in their white-lime Calk district like shambling, distant ghosts. Sen shuddered and turned to the Deadhead girl.
"And what about you? Why would you stay?"
She smiled back at him crookedly and spoke, her voice a dull slur through her sagging lips. "I suppose I like the flowers."
"What flowers?"
She gestured vaguely around them. "Take your pick."
A moment passed, and Sen accepted the reality before him. He hadn't really believed the children would arrive, but now they had. He hadn't really believed he would see them, even speak to them, but now he had. They wouldn't leave, and that left him with the only other choice; he would have to leave first.
Already he began planning it out. A quiet day from hereon, keeping his head down, until night fell and he could sneak away. There would be no evidence he was ever here, just a few scraps of testimony if any of these children chose to sell him out, which the Sisters would surely survive.
Then he sensed something new.
It was a sharp bite at his mind that tasted of bitter rage. He turned. A boy was entering the Abbey through the gates at the bottom of the chalk path, flanked by a Sister on either side. He was thinner and longer-proportioned even than Sister Henderson, with an elongated chin and arms that came down to his knees. He wore pipe-thin trousers and a brown tunic smudged with grease. A Spindle from the artisan's streets of Carroway.
And he burned with anger. It was plain even on his face, in his teary eyes and uncanny white pallor. Sen felt it like a force in the air.
"That's Alam," Sister Henderson said quietly from behind. "He's the fifth."
Sen started forward down the path. He didn't know why, he just knew he had to meet this boy head-on. As they drew near the feeling intensified, making Sen's cheeks hot and his eyes prickle. A flurry of wild images flashed through his mind: Molemen in the street, a room full of gears, his father's face drunk-red and lined with tears, begging.
It left him confused. What father?
Sen stopped, and the boy stopped in front of him. He was panting, his long fingers curling and uncurling into fists. He towered over Sen, his stretched face was blotchy with crying, and his eyes were unfocused.
"What happened to you?" Sen asked.
The boy's round brown eyes focused on him, then that focus sharpened, and Sen felt it as he realized what he was seeing. Scars, the likes of which he'd never seen before. Scars on Sen's cheeks, on his forehead, over his nose and running down his throat, scars that made him an outlaw in the King's city, hunted by the Molemen and the monstrous Adjunc, scars that could be worth a fortune when handed over…
Sen saw it coming a second too late, as the Spindle boy's rage sharpened into a fine point and lashed out.
The blow from his bony fist smacked Sen on the side of the head and sent him reeling off the path. More images burst across his thoughts, of hands stretching through a fence that were his father's hands, of a long and shameful walk led by bloodless Molemen and an overwhelming anger, then he was himself again. On his knees on the dry spring grass, he watched dizzily as the Spindle ran back down the path.
Without thinking, he lurched to his feet and gave chase. He caught a glimpse of Sister Henderson running toward him, but she would be too late. Sen hit the chalk path and his feet pounded the dust like a heartbeat, while the rest of the world closed in. His vision was blurry and his mind reeled, but he could just pick the taller boy out, nearly at the gate already. Sen pumped his elbows hard, thumped his feet down on the path, and reached the gates just as the Spindle was about to straddle the top.
He leaped and snagged the boy's ankle with one hand, wrenching him off the metal frame like a wind-plucked apple. The long boy fell with an awkward thud into the dust, and Sen threw himself on top at once, batting away long arms and throwing wild fists into his thin face.
Alam's nose crunched and blood splashed out into the white dust, bringing with it more images of the Molemen, of the gear factory, of a father's pitiful face. There was a disconnected buzz in Sen's knuckles as they rose and fell, pounding until the images stopped and the boy beneath him went slack and still.
Then Sister Henderson was there, scooping him up with one arm round his belly and hauling him away.
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Copyright © 2018 by Michael John Grist
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Last Mayor (Book 9): The Light Page 24
