by Jamie Buxton
“Now, where can it wait so it won’t get into trouble?” The Results Man tapped his teeth. “Oh, I know.”
They passed through the gate. Flea tried not to look at the whipping post and the bloodstains on the flagstones around it. They entered the main body of the Fortress—a hall with lots of rooms leading off it—and continued down a curving flight of stone steps.
They entered a low underground chamber. In the middle of the floor stood a brazier, its bitter fumes roughening the air. Flea recognized the smell from the Results Man’s clothing. The only light came from small windows, set high in walls that were hung with chains and a variety of tools.
“What do you think of my musical instruments?” the Results Man said. “They make such wonderful sounds.”
Flea’s first impression was that he was in the garrison smithy, but then he looked again at the tools on the wall. Knives, pincers, spikes, manacles, whips.
Anything that could hurt.
Flea made a dart for the door but his way was blocked by the same soldier who had caught him at the tombs. In this low, dark room he was a dreadful pink giant, expanded by a blanket of flesh that rolled out from under the hard leather of his breastplate. His red face was peeling but there had been no sun. His eyes were the color of earth.
“Interested in him, are you?” The Results Man nodded at the soldier. “He’s from a long way away. Germania. All forests and rain and bogs that swallow horses. We had our differences—they killed three whole legions not so long ago—but they let us conquer them in the end. And accepted our gods. Why can’t you people? Oh well, never mind. You’ve seen my instruments. You understand how I can make the truth sing. Remember: The man that walketh in a perfect way shall serve me; he that worketh deceit shall not dwell in my house. That’s another pithy little saying from your Holy Book.”
“Are you going to … use them on me?”
“What? No. Never. You work for me now, understand? This is part of your … education. Now, come with me. Don’t dawdle. I’ve got to get a squad together and there’s so much to do and so little time.”
He left with a skip and Flea followed, his heart a dead weight in his chest.
26
Flea didn’t have to lead the Results Man to the shelter because he had already told him where it was.
There was nowhere for the gang to run. The squad of Imps blocked off the end of the alleyway and moved in. Big tried to fight and was knocked down with a club, but the others were too shocked to resist. The whole time, the Results Man had one hand on Flea’s shoulder and the other digging the little spike into his back. Flea could not move, and it looked for all the world as if he was just standing there while the others were bullied to their feet and made to stand facing the wall.
Big tried to spit at Flea over his shoulder. “You sold us out, you bastard!”
Flea was about to protest when he felt the spike’s cold pressure increase. He closed his eyes and tried to shut everything out, especially when the Results Man started to speak.
“Boys, boys,” he said. “I want you to concentrate. I’m arresting you and holding the one you call Flea hostage. Is that clear? Good. If Flea behaves, you go free. If he doesn’t, none of you will ever see the light of day again. Do you understand? So, if I were you, I’d be nice to him. As you walk past on your way to prison, I want you all to stop in front of him, bow, and say, ‘Please look after us, Flea.’ All right?”
One by one the Temple Boys passed by Flea, and one by one they looked at him with hatred and said, “Please look after us.”
Flea shook his head hopelessly. For once he was lost for words. In the end, just he and the Results Man were left in the alleyway.
“It’s all yours now,” the Results Man said. “This lovely home…” His voice trailed away as he looked at the shelter. “What are you going to do with it?”
“What am I going to do? What are you talking about? I’ve got to do what you say,” Flea said.
“Oh no, no, no. You don’t understand. We’re beyond all that, Flea. Orders, salutes … I’m not a soldier, Flea. I’m the Results Man, and if you’re going to work for me, you have to start by thinking a bit. Using your loaf. You do have a brain?” He spun Flea round and looked at him. “I’m letting you go now, and for the rest of the day your job is to work out ways of pleasing me—and what will happen to your friends if you fail. It may be a tiny thing you do to upset me that only takes up the tiniest slice of time, but it will mean that your friends hurt for the rest of their lives. On the other hand, I would not want you to despair. This could be the making of you. You have led a life without purpose, a life without results, and now I have given you both. If you are clever, you will learn from me.”
“But the gang?”
“Their fate is in your hands.” The Results Man’s eyebrows shot up into a comical double arc and he pursed his lips. “There, another thing I’ve given you. A sense of responsibility. Try to grow into your new role.”
27
Flea took refuge on a rooftop a few streets away.
His ribs ached from the squeezing, his ear ached from its spiking, and his back felt fragile. He picked black flakes of dried blood from his nose and tried to blame everyone else for his situation.
He had failed.
If he hadn’t followed Shim to the tombs, if he’d headed straight back to Jude, none of this would have happened. If he hadn’t gotten mixed up with Jude in the first place, none of this would have happened. If he’d been a different sort of person, none of this would have happened.
He thought of the skinny girl and her warning. Remorse tasted foul and bitter, like a rotten nut.
Then he found some reasons to feel less bad. He thought about how the gang had treated him. He thought about how Big had held him upside down over the rat hole and how all the others had jeered and clapped their hands and stamped their feet. Very deliberately he thought about each of their faces as the Imps took them away. Big had cried like a baby. Little Big had groveled. The twins had tried to run but had been caught. Clump and Gaga had looked betrayed, but what right had they? They were toads like the rest of them and never once tried to stop the bullying. Bullying? Torture, more like.
They had tortured him and now they were getting a taste of their own medicine. Maybe the Results Man was right. Maybe this was his opportunity. Maybe the Results Man had seen Flea the Magnificent, Flea the Terrible, Flea the Conqueror of All Things. He had given Flea his chance, and when Flea came to him in the Fortress with information about Jude, he would smile and say, “You have passed the first test, Flea. Now we will begin.”
He would take Flea up to the highest tower of the Fortress. Below, the priests in the Temple would look like ants going about their business and the streets of the city would look like the tracks and tunnels of their broken nest, but all the lands beyond would be ripe with promise: honey-colored rocks, tawny desert, green fields. The Results Man would say, “I will show you real power. Join us, join the Imperium, and we will take on the whole world.” And when he was emperor, Flea would bring the Temple Boys before him and make them grovel one by one. Big, Little Big, Clump, Snot, Hole-in-the-Head, the twins, Halo, Crouch … Crouch. Why had his mind snagged on Crouch?
Flea thought back to the arrest. Halo had curled up, Clump had tried to climb the wall, Big had thrown a punch and fallen over … Crouch wasn’t there. He was sure of it. And yet the Results Man had counted them, one, two, three … all the way up to twelve. Of course! When Flea had told the Results Man how many Temple Boys there were, he hadn’t included himself, so that meant Crouch’s absence was not noticed.
He stood up, suddenly excited. He had to go and find Crouch now. Two heads were better than one.
Flea jumped as a trapdoor from the roof next to his was flung open and a man climbed out. He headed for a small rooftop shack and carefully opened its door. The explosion of white doves made Flea cower. They clung to the man’s hair, clothes, and outstretched arms, and when he lifted his hands
they flew off with a clapping of wings and circled, bright white against boiling black clouds, then dropped back to their owner. The man plucked them off him one by one and put them in wicker cages.
Sacrifices for the Temple. Everything good ended up there, somehow. A thin, icy rain began to fall, and Flea set off for the shelter.
28
When Flea got back to the alley, everything had changed.
A family of out-of-towners—parents, three boys, and two girls, all dressed in bright holiday clothes—had pitched their tent there and were cooking their evening meal over a fire made from the shelter’s struts and supports. A young man, sprouting his first growth of beard, picked up a stone and shouted at Flea, “Get lost! Beggar! Scum!” A younger boy, about Flea’s age, stared at him dumbly.
“This is my home!” Flea yelled back.
“Not anymore, loser!”
“I’ve been here years.”
“Going to cry like the other one?” The stone spat grit off the wall next to Flea, narrowly missing his eye.
“Which other one?”
“That bent-over-double kid. Too old to be sobbing like a baby.”
Crouch, Flea thought. “Which way did he go?”
“Who cares? That way!” He pointed up the hill, but as Flea set off he called, “No, that way, sucker.” And he pointed in the opposite direction.
Flea felt his hope dashed and stood still, not quite sure what to do next. The young man and his family turned their backs, all apart from the boy of Flea’s age. He continued to stare at Flea blankly, then, keeping his hand across his chest so no one could see, he extended his finger downhill.
Flea nodded and left.
He found Crouch huddled against a wall, his hand stuck out for passing trade. As a begging technique it was as effective as sticking your hand into a river and hoping to catch a fish. As soon as he saw Flea he stood and hobbled off.
“Don’t hurt me,” he said as Flea caught up with him. “Don’t kill me. Don’t arrest me. I’m sorry! I never did anything wrong.”
“What are you going on about?”
“They sent me out to get water and when I came back the woman opposite said you’d turned up with a full platoon of Imps and ordered them to kill us all.”
“No, it wasn’t like that! She’s lying! There wasn’t anything I could do. They would have … He showed me their torture chambers. He had a spike and stuck it in my eye. He said he was going to hurt me really badly. He took the gang to blackmail me, to keep me quiet.”
“You keep on saying ‘he.’ Who is he?”
“He’s like an agent. A fixer. He knows everything.”
Crouch blinked. “And why is he blackmailing you?”
“He wants to use me, and I know something. Shim’s betrayed them all to the Romans,” Flea said.
“Shim? But he’s one of Yesh’s most trusted followers.”
“I’ve got to tell Jude about it. He doesn’t know. But I can’t tell him—I can’t do anything—or else the Romans kill the gang. That’s the deal.”
Crouch digested the news, his thin, lined face very still. Then he said, “Do you really care? We weren’t very nice to you.”
“Whatever you did to me, it’s not as bad as what the Romans might do to them.”
“That’s really … that’s good of you. If it makes a difference, ever since you were kicked out they’ve been picking on me. It wasn’t personal.”
Flea didn’t know if that made a difference or not. And he suspected it wasn’t goodness that made him want to save the gang from torture so much as a desire to save himself from nightmares.
“I know,” Crouch said. “Suppose I warn Jude about Shim? Then they can’t blame it on you.”
“But they’ll all be at their feast and the room’s on the other side of the city. You’d never make it.”
“I can try. I should try. I want to.”
Flea’s heart gave a little kick. “Are you sure?”
“To make up for what we did to you. And look.” Crouch opened his hand to show four coins. “I got lucky. This’ll buy us something to eat.”
29
At a narrow crossroads they ordered two skewers of meat wrapped in bread. The vendor had greasy gray hair and wore a thick, fat-stained apron. His boy, gray-faced, hollow-eyed, and not much bigger than one of his master’s legs, was squatting by the wall, staring into space.
“Fan,” the vendor ordered. The boy got up and began to fan the flames with an old palm frond. It took Flea back to the morning the magician rode into the city and how the crowd had thrown palm fronds under the donkey’s hooves.
“Need more fuel,” the vendor said. “Stay there.”
He walked off, and Flea and Crouch stretched their hands over the spitting brazier.
Flea nodded at the vendor’s boy, who was staring at them. He had a thin face led by a narrow, prominent jaw.
“You’re Flea, aren’t you?” he said.
“Might be.”
“I remember you from the Temple steps last autumn. I was there before I got this job.”
“This is a job?”
“It’s work and it’s food. You used to be with the Temple Boys?”
Flea heard the used to be and exchanged a look with Crouch. “What do you know?”
“There’s a mob out looking for you. Some people say it’s the Cutters.”
“Cutters? Cutters? I thought they were finished.”
A wave of dull sickness swamped Flea. The Cutters were fanatics who murdered anyone who they thought was collaborating with the Romans. They did it in public and melted away into the crowds, protected by fear. If anyone pointed out the knifeman to the authorities, they’d be the next to die.
“They say you sold your gang out to the Imps.”
“It’s not true!”
“I don’t care if it is. Me, I’m here because of Cutters, so I hate them. My dad was a leather worker and they killed him because a rival claimed he was mending sandals for the Romans. Stole all his business. Nothing my mother could do to stop them. She died a year later.”
“I’m really sorry,” Flea said. “But how did you hear about me?”
“People gather round the fire and talk. No one notices me, but I listen. Heard about you about an hour ago. They want to make an example of you tomorrow, when the city’s fullest. Another thing: they said the Cutters’ leader, Abbas Barabbas, is going to be released. That’s why they’re getting bolder.”
“Why would the Romans do that? Barabbas is their enemy.”
“Who knows why the Romans do anything? All I know is what I heard. Something big’s going to happen—an uprising. Are you trying to stop it?”
The street seemed to tilt. Flea felt Crouch support him with a steadying hand.
“I’m not trying to do anything,” he stammered. “I don’t know about an uprising. I don’t know anything.”
The boy folded soft, flat bread around the skewer and wiped the meat into it. “If that’s what the Cutters think, they’ll open you up without asking questions.”
A gust of wind seemed to carry the sound of roaring upon it. It grew and faded, grew again and faded. Four alleyways fed into the crossroads where they were standing. Each one now looked bleak and menacing. Those shuttered windows were surely hiding watchers. Those shadowed doorways could be seething with Cutters.
“What’s that noise?” Flea asked.
The street vendor’s boy tilted his head to listen. “Could be the mob. Could be my master spotted you and ran off to tell them.”
“What? Why didn’t you say that before? Crouch, we’ve got to go!”
“Wait!” the boy said urgently. “Please. You’ll be all right for a while. They were heading off to the Lower City, and my master will have taken ages to catch up with them. I heard … The other thing I heard was that you’d been hanging out with the Chosen One.” For the blink of an eye hope flared in his face, lit by the brazier’s glow.
“Yes, but…”
“W
hat’s he like? He must be wonderful.”
“He’s just like … He’s a man. He’s … I don’t know.”
“And the change? When’s that going to happen?”
“I don’t know about an uprising and I don’t know about a change!”
“You spend too much time stuck up by the Temple. Down here in the slums there are stories. Any day now the fountains will be running with wine and there’ll be food for everyone, all the time.” The vendor’s boy was really warming to his theme now. “The Chosen One’s fed a whole crowd from scraps. Food just kept on coming and coming and coming and no one was told to stop eating. He’s cured cripples, cured leprosy. All you have to do is listen to him talk. I could do that. I could listen to a man talk if he fed me. It’d be better than being beaten all the time. If you have anything to do with him, tell him most of the people are behind him, but he’s got to act quick.”
Flea glanced at Crouch, hoping he’d put the boy right. But Crouch’s eyes were shining and his face was bright.
“Yes,” Crouch said. “That’s what Yesh said on the steps of the Temple. He said we had to catch the moment for the change to happen. I know it can happen. Flea, we must do what we can!”
“Cutters want to kill me!” Flea shouted. “A mob is on its way. I don’t care about your change and I don’t care about your moment! I just want to get away!”
Was it his imagination or was the awful din getting closer? And wasn’t that the flare of torches glowing against the wall?
The boy blinked and shook his head. “All right. If you tell me which way you’re going, I’ll say you’ve run off in the opposite direction. It’ll save you a bit of time. I know what that sounds like, but I won’t give you up.”
