“We will have you, child,” said a skeleton of a man. His long, mud-caked fingers wrapped around Janner’s arms and held him in an iron grip.
Janner was too frightened to scream, and if he did, it would only bring the Fangs running. Either way, he was caught. Was it better to be in the grip of a mad old beggar or the Fangs of Dang?
Before he had time to wonder, the man whistled, and a rope dropped down from the other side of the wall. In moments the rope was tied around his arms and chest, and Janner was heaved upward. The ragman clambered up the gutter past him, swung up to the roof, and disappeared. Up Janner went, so tired of running that it was a strange relief to finally be caught.
In seconds, he scraped to a stop at the top of the wall, and more of those horrible, dirty hands pulled him over.
Janner landed on his back on the roof of a house with his eyes clamped shut.
The sound of many people breathing, rasping, and whispering was so terrifying that it was several moments before Janner cracked an eyelid. Legs everywhere, like tree trunks in a forest, except the roots of these trees bore ugly yellow toenails as long as toes themselves, curling up and down like monstrous ribbons.
“What…what do you want?” Janner asked.
At the sound of his voice, the crowd gasped and cackled with glee.
“I want what is mine,” said a woman.
“Aye, Gorah is next in line,” said a man.
“Lucky Gorah,” the rest muttered.
Then the hags and ragmen picked Janner up and carried him away.
36
An Odious Arrangement
Janner was carried over their heads, a cork bobbing on the surface of a dirty river. The men and women were mostly silent. Those who made any sound at all wept. His arms were still bound at his sides, and he lay still, lulled by the floating sensation. They took him back to Tilling Street. The hags and ragmen carried him into an old building and set him gently on the floor, to his surprise. The woman, Gorah, stepped forward and poked him in the chest.
“Stay put, boy. We’ll find you wherever you may run, just like we find all the others.” She lowered her voice. “When darkness comes, I’ll get what’s mine. You’ll see.”
She cackled and clapped her hands like a little girl, hopping from one gnarled foot to the other. The others set to wailing and dancing as well. Janner closed his eyes and tried to shut out the sound.
After several minutes, most of the people filed from the room. Gorah and six others remained. They squatted against the wall and rocked to and fro, staring at Janner like hungry dogs.
Janner thought about his family. He felt certain that with Podo in charge, they must have made it safely back to the burrow by now. He had led them through great dangers before. But Tink? There was no telling where Tink could be.
Janner’s eyes drooped. Gorah hummed a melody that must have been intended to be a lullaby, and as terrible as it sounded, the song did its work. He slept.
It was dark when he woke.
A single lantern lit the room. Gorah still crouched in the corner, glowering at Janner exactly as she had when he drifted off.
“It’s almost time, child,” she said, shifting on her feet.
“Time for what, ma’am?”
Gorah laughed so hard that she toppled forward and rolled onto her back, kicking her feet in the air. “‘Ma’am!’ He called me ‘ma’am’!” She laughed until her eyes watered with tears, and Janner realized she was no longer laughing but weeping. Again, he was mystified by the behavior of these strange people. All he had done was try to be polite, and now she was crying.
“Ma’am?” he said.
“Enough talk.” She wiped her face with a rag from the floor. “And if you call me ‘ma’am’ again, you won’t like me half so much as you do now.”
One of the ragmen appeared in the doorway with an excited look. “It’s time, Gorah.”
Gorah walked to Janner, grabbed the end of the rope that bound him, and pulled him to his feet. “Come on, child. The Overseer’s waiting.”
She led Janner into the street. A crowd, holding torches, stood in the middle of the road. In the center, rising above them like a king on a dais, a round-faced man wearing a black velvet top hat sat atop a carriage so much like the Black Carriage that Janner had to look twice. The man wore fingerless gloves and a tattered suit with tails and purple lapels; in one hand he held the reins, while with the other he waved smugly at the beggars gathered around. When he smiled, his smooth face creased into too many wrinkles, and a wide set of buttery brown teeth gleamed.
When Gorah appeared, leading Janner by the rope, the crowd parted and let them through. The Overseer stood and spread his arms wide.
“A child!” He hopped down from his perch and looked into Janner’s eyes. “And a healthy one too! Where did you find him?” He straightened and put his hands on his hips. “If I knew where to find such healthy children, I would trouble you no more, dear citizens!”
“He came to us, Overseer,” said Gorah. “Today he appeared on Tilling, a gift from the Maker.”
“A gift from the—? Ah. Yes, of course. The Maker.” The Overseer gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “And do you have another?”
The crowd parted, and a man appeared, leading a boy with a sack over his head.
“Tink!” Janner cried.
One of the men slapped Janner in the face. “Quiet, you.”
Janner was so overcome with relief to see his brother that he hardly felt the sting on his cheek. Then they removed the sack from over the boy’s head, and Janner’s heart sank. The boy was younger and much skinnier than Tink. Whoever he was, he was terrified.
“Another for you, Overseer,” Gorah said.
“Good, good,” said the man in the hat, appraising the thin boy. “Mobrik! The ledger!”
He clapped, and the side door of the carriage opened. A ridgerunner skittered out with a thin, leather-bound book in his arms. The little creature was dressed like the Overseer, in a tattered black suit and top hat, and it was plain he was uncomfortable in the human clothes. The Overseer snatched the ledger from him with a show of great impatience.
“Thank you, Mobrik,” he droned while he flipped through the pages of the ledger. “Name?”
“Barnswaller,” Gorah said meekly.
“Barnswaller…Barnswaller…” The man ran a finger down the page. “Ah. Was his name Jairy Barnswaller?”
Gorah gasped. “Yes! Jairy!”
“Sorry.” The Overseer shrugged. “Says he tried to escape and was taken to Throg. Who’s next?”
The woman wailed. Her cry cut to Janner’s heart. She collapsed to the ground and thrashed about, and he felt tears in his own eyes. The crowd stepped over her and pushed closer to the carriage.
Over the sound of Gorah’s grief, a man said, “I’m next. Name’s Mykel Bolpin. Her name was Lily. Like the flower.”
“‘Like the flower,’” the Overseer mocked. He flipped through the pages again. “Will someone quiet the woman, please?” One of the ragmen grabbed Gorah by the wrist and dragged her away. “Thank you. Hard to think around here with all the racket. Now, let’s see. Yes! We have a Lily Bolpin. Would you like your daughter, sir?”
The man was too shocked to speak.
“Sir?” the Overseer pressed.
“Y-yes sir. Please, sir.” The man clasped his hands together to keep them from shaking.
“Very well, then. I’ll take these two. She’ll be here at dawn.”
The man sank to his knees and looked to the heavens, his eyes shining in his dirty face like jewels in a mud hole.
“Mobrik! Get them,” ordered the Overseer.
The ridgerunner took the ledger, then jerked the rope so hard that Janner nearly fell. He’d been staring at Gorah Barnswaller, who wept in the gutter beside the road. The ridgerunner scrambled into the carriage and tugged the rope again. Janner had faced the Black Carriage itself, so getting into the Overseer’s carriage was no great feat. He climbed inside, s
at on the bench beside Mobrik the ridgerunner, and thanked the Maker there was at least a chance that Tink had made it to the burrow.
The other boy, however, didn’t fare so well. He wept and thrashed and fought bravely against his bonds until the Overseer ordered him knocked unconscious. They threw the poor child into the carriage at Janner’s feet, as limp as a doll. Through the narrow window, Janner saw Gorah still wailing. He saw the ragged crowd dispersing into the dark of Tilling Street. And he saw the man, Mykel Bolpin, still kneeling in the road with a look of absolute joy on his face.
“S-sir?” said Bolpin to the Overseer.
“What?” The Overseer’s voice was flat and cold.
“How old is she now?”
After a moment, the man said, “Mobrik! The ledger!” Mobrik leapt from the carriage again and handed the ledger up to the Overseer. Pages flipped. “She was twelve when she arrived at the factory. That was the year after the Great War. So what’s that, eight years ago? Now she’s twenty. Twenty years old.”
Twenty? In eight years, Lily Bolpin, whoever she was, hadn’t been able to escape from the Overseer, whoever he was? Janner felt a dread seep through him. Maybe what Podo always said was true. Maybe there was always a way out, like in Ships and Sharks. But what if that way out didn’t come for eight years? What if Janner was twenty before he escaped from “the factory”?
“Thank you, sir. Thank you,” the man blubbered.
Mobrik reappeared and pulled the door shut behind him. At a snap of the reins, the sad brown horse tugged the carriage away. The last Janner saw of Mykel Bolpin, he sat in the street staring at the heavens, looking less like a beggar and more like a father with every moment.
The ridgerunner squatted in the shadows in the far corner of the carriage, paying Janner no attention. Given his history with ridgerunners, Janner didn’t particularly want to talk to the sneaky little creature anyway. After straining again at the ropes and finding them as tight as ever, he leaned against the wall and gazed out the window at Dugtown as it passed by. He saw Crempshaw Way approaching, the hill descending to the river on the left.
When the carriage turned right and the horse strained uphill, away from the river and deeper into Dugtown, Janner spotted the street sign on the corner. What he saw made his cheeks burn and a black rage sizzle in his chest.
The sign said Tilling Court. Not Tilling Street.
Moments later, another street sign appeared that said Tilling Street, a road that, compared to where he had just been, seemed as safe and pleasant as the lane to the Igiby cottage. It stretched away east, just as Ronchy McHiggins had said, and in the distance Janner saw where it intersected with Riverside Road.
He had taken a wrong turn. It was as simple as that.
That was why he never saw Tink. Tink was smart enough to read the street signs. Fool! he thought.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked the ridgerunner.
The ridgerunner looked at him with surprise. “Why,” he said, “to the Fork Factory.”
37
Into the Mouth of the Monster
Dugtown was a much bigger city than Janner realized. The clop of hooves and the creak of the carriage settled into an eternal drone, broken only by the occasional crack of the Overseer’s whip. Janner leaned his forehead listlessly against the bars of the window and looked out at the torch-lit streets of the city.
The way the Dugtowners hurried by told him curfew fast approached. The Overseer didn’t seem to care, even when clusters of Fangs prowled past. They paid little attention to the carriage. The horse plodded on at the same slow pace, even when the bells struck curfew. At once the busy city went to sleep. Now and then a Fang passed the carriage with a grunt of greeting, and the Overseer could be heard saying, “My lord,” in answer.
Finally, the carriage squeaked to a stop. The sad brown horse snorted. Janner blinked out of his daze and strained to see ahead through the side window. The ridgerunner stepped past Janner and over the unconscious boy on the carriage floor, opened the door, and leapt to the ground. Janner started to follow him out, but the ridgerunner slammed the door in his face. “You stay,” he said.
Mobrik approached a rusty portcullis in the center of an immense brick building. With a great racket, the iron gate slowly rose. The vertical bars of the gate ended in points, which made the building look like a monster opening its mouth to swallow the horse and carriage whole. Above the gate, a big metal sign bore the inscription, in bold, rusty letters, FORK! FACTORY!
Janner was as unsettled by the overuse of exclamation points as he was by the dreary countenance of the place. With another snap of the whip, the carriage lurched forward into the mouth of the brick monster. Tucked in the shadows just inside the gate stood two children. Their clothes were tattered, their faces blank. They stared at Janner as he passed, then turned away and, taking hold of a fat chain, lowered the portcullis under the watchful eye of Mobrik the ridgerunner.
The carriage rolled through a narrow passageway, then into a large, airy chamber. Mobrik swung open the door and yanked Janner out so hard that he tumbled to the ground. Far above, rafters and planks crisscrossed the ceiling. Chains and ropes dangled down into the light of lanterns on the lower walls. Except for the carriage, the floor of the vast room was bare.
The Overseer, still wearing his top hat, appeared above Janner. He grinned wickedly and pinched Janner’s cheek between his thumb and forefinger.
“Welcome, boy!” he said. “A healthy face you have. Mobrik, untie him. I want to see his arms and hands. I believe we have someone to replace that sluggish Knubis girl at the paring station.” Mobrik untied Janner. “Yes. Good arms. Good hands. Allow me to greet you properly, child.” He dropped to one knee and removed his hat, then ran his fingers through his greasy hair. “I’m the Overseer. You’re a tool in my factory, no different from a hammer or a rake. The difference is, unlike a hammer, I have to feed your greedy face to keep you alive. Did you enjoy the ride here?”
“Yes sir,” Janner said. Mobrik chuckled.
“What did you say?” asked the Overseer.
“I said. ‘Yes sir.’”
The Overseer punched Janner in the stomach. Stars filled his vision, and tears welled up as he struggled for air.
“Tell him,” the Overseer said to Mobrik as he stood and donned his hat with great care.
Mobrik stooped over Janner and smiled. “Tools don’t speak. They nod, like this.” Mobrik nodded his tiny head up and down. “Or they shake, like this.” He shook his head from side to side.
The Overseer narrowed his eyes at Janner. “So, child. Did you enjoy your ride?”
Janner considered answering aloud again, just to see the look on the Overseer’s face. But he didn’t particularly want to be punched again, and with the portcullis shut, he was certain there was nowhere to run, however big this building might be. He sighed and nodded his head.
“Good. A fast learner. The finest tools are fast learners.” The Overseer smiled, revealing every one of his yellow and brown teeth. “I’m glad you enjoyed the ride. It was the last look at the city you’re ever likely to have. This is your new home. Unless, of course, your parents manage to capture two other children to replace you. I’m a very giving man. I have a quota to meet, and I don’t care how I meet it, whether it’s you or some other fool at the paring station. Do you understand?”
Janner didn’t, but he nodded dumbly. They could call him a tool all day long, but that didn’t make it so. There’s always a way out, Janner thought. And as soon as he found it, he would slip away to the burrow where his family waited. If he could escape by morning, they would only have lost a day. Then they could find another way past the Barrier, and a short walk over the Stony Mountains would bring them to the safety of the Ice Prairies. The thought of a world with no Fangs made Janner smile.
“Why are you smiling?” the Overseer said suspiciously.
Janner started to answer but stopped short. He said nothing but only looked at the Overseer with th
e same smile playing at his lips. It was fun to see the ridiculous man unsettled. He could punch him in the gut again if he liked. He could call him a tool and send him off to make forks, assuming that was what the Fork Factory produced. But Janner knew he was a Throne Warden, and that gave him a kind of freedom, even though he was, for the moment, captive.
The Overseer laughed.
“Mobrik! Take him to his station. Be sure he has no rest until morning. We’ll see if he’s smiling then. When you return, we’ll see to the other boy.”
Janner followed Mobrik, wondering, among many other things, when he would be allowed to eat something. The last time he had eaten was that morning at the Roundish Widow. The faces of the children at the portcullis haunted him. They looked healthy enough, or at least they didn’t appear physically wounded in any way, but their hollow, hopeless eyes made him uneasy. They seemed resigned to their fate, as if they had tried and failed so many times to find freedom that they no longer bothered to hope anymore. But surely there was some way out, even if it meant fighting. The Overseer wasn’t a Fang, after all. He didn’t have venomous teeth or unnatural strength or even a weapon as far as Janner could see, other than the whip he applied to the sad brown horse.
The Overseer disappeared through a door in the far wall of the chamber and left the horse harnessed to the carriage. Mobrik led Janner to a set of double doors at the rear of the room.
“Am I allowed to speak to you, or do I still have to wiggle my head?” Janner asked carefully.
Mobrik glanced at him. “Speak if you like. But don’t expect an answer—unless you carry a sack of apples I can’t see. The Overseer enjoys having me around to boss, but he and I both know the only reason I’m here is for the sweet yellow apples he gets from upriver.”
“No apples. Sorry.”
“Then no answers.”
Mobrik pushed through the double doors and led Janner down a long, dark hallway. At the far end was another set of doors with two square windows that glowed yellow. As they approached, Janner heard an awful racket, and the temperature rose.
North! Or Be Eaten Page 21
