Fire’ll kill them just like sunlight. And ash will burn their skin. But they love both, even in the heat of the middle summer cicadas calling and burring, gotta keep that fire lit. Only Kast fears an open flame; says he dreamed of a time when it consumed him. Keeps an oil burner instead. The other Masters mock him. Dain reckons he’s a fool, that the oil’s more dangerous than any open flame.
Dain often sits by his fire. Reading, staring into the flames. Don’t know what he reads there in the blaze but his look goes distant. Not predatory, but calm. I could almost imagine him a man, in the way his head tilts, and his fingers tap against his wrists, as though he’s playing some musical instrument.
But he isn’t a man. Most times there’s no mistaking that. Long fingers curving to fists, a lip that will pull tight and reveal the compact mass of cutting teeth beneath. Most times there’s no way of forgetting what he is.
CHAPTER 8
TWO NIGHTS LATER and things are nearly normal, if they can ever be. I could almost forget what happened but the world, as they say, always thinks otherwise. Dain shakes me awake, a gentle touch, but insistent. I open my eyes, squeeze them shut again, in no mood for consciousness. Body heals quickly, or maybe it’s that the days pass so slow: there’s a cruelty and a tenderness to that. I’m a little sore, but Dain has to wake me, because sleep’s coming easier again.
Wind’s turned cool, shifted west to east, down from Mount Pleasance. The air doesn’t quicken the blood but stills it, and I’m worn out and not happy at the waking. But that doesn’t matter.
How I feel doesn’t matter. Not really.
Dark eyes study me, pale almost luminous skin, like he’s part of the moon come down all ghostly to walk amongst us. A sharp-toothed sliver, and like the moon it’s aglow with a bleak heart. I blink back at that gaze, wipe my crusted eyes.
‘Wake. Wake,’ he says. ‘We’ve work to do, boy.’
‘What?’
‘Your answer is always a question, isn’t it? A strength and weakness. The correct response is yes.’
I don’t tell him that he was the one that taught me to do so. I don’t think argument would do me well tonight.
‘Wear your suit,’ he says. ‘The good one.’
And I know where we’re going. Only one place in the night requires that.
‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ Dain says. ‘And if you do not hurry, we will be late, and that will not look good. I’ve called the Court of the Night to order, and we, most of all, must be seen to take it seriously. You, Mark, you must be seen to take it seriously, so hurry. I’ve let you sleep too long. I should have woken you early. Now all we have time for is haste, and that is rarely a good thing.’
I’m already pulling on my clothes, in that awkward half-asleep way. The suit’s only six months old and it doesn’t quite fit across the shoulders, and my wrists poke out, and rupture the formality with white skin, tendons and knobs of bone. My right wrist is bruised.
Dain tilts his head, purses his lips, frowns. All hurt to me offends him. All such hurt he feels as his responsibility. Doesn’t he get that I’m the one meant to be looking after him?
His eyes drop to my feet.
‘Matching socks,’ Dain says. ‘Matching socks, if you please, Mark.’
I don’t please to do anything except fall back into bed and never get up again. But I grunt, squint into my drawer, and make sure my socks square up—how does he know? How can he tell? But he’s always right—and that my shoes are shining (after a last bit of spit’n’polish).
‘Quick, boy,’ Dain says.
I was, and I am! Wasn’t he watching?
‘Quick!’
The wind’s got up, the sky’s clear, and the moon’s setting itself to wane. No one’s about, but you wouldn’t be at this time of night. It can be seen as an open invitation if a Master’s in a mood—and they always are, of one sort or another. Moody as the storm-thrashed spring, Dain says, every single one of them. The Night Train’s come and gone, not even an echo on the horizon or a beat on the tracks.
Town Hall’s on Main, near the square. The Constabulary’s part of it, built into the western edge. It’s an old white building—far older than the troubles—always smelling of fresh paint. People got pride in this town: as long as there’s paint, this hall will be painted.
We aren’t the last to the meeting but we’re not the first either, and I can tell that annoys Dain. But he’s been tetchy all the last few nights, like a prickle in a sock. Like the one in my sock, the matching one, digging in and I can’t even scratch the bugger.
Two Masters come in late, smelling of blood, eyes as wide as plates, neck veins thick. And the Parson twins are dressed shabby, one of them hasn’t even managed to match his shoes. I flash them a grin a touch superior, until Egan gives me a look that would freeze the blood of a normal boy and chills mine right enough.
Five Masters together, in Town Hall. What a solemn splendid thing! There hasn’t been a proper meeting in months, and certainly not one that required me or the other boys to be here. The floorboards creak and crack with their footsteps; the gravity of such inhuman men. They can be as light as breath, but here they are weighty. The windows are misting. The Masters are darkness and luminosity and that shifts, depending on their mood. They’re marked with ash-burnt Suns, their bangles clatter and their eyes give out their radiance.
Here they are Egan, Dain, Sobel, Kast and Tennyson. The uncontested rulers of this town, have been for generations. And there it is in them, that displeasure, the intensity with which I’m considered.
Everyone knows why we’re here.
There’s five Day Boys looking at me, eyes sticky with sleep. They appreciate this about as much as me, only I’m the one to blame. Even Grove is giving me surly looks.
It’s Egan that gets the meeting started, being the senior. Grove stands behind him. Sobel and Dougie to his left. The rest of us around on the other side of the table. Dain has his enemies, even here, even in this small town. And I think what that must be like, to have those foes, to have them so close across all the centuries. I couldn’t bear Dougie for six weeks, let alone a century.
‘Time,’ Egan says, his voice so smooth it could grease a rusted lock. ‘Gentlemen, it is time. Our dear moon has found her breath at the top of her climb, and now, past pause, she falls.’
The room shifts, broadens and narrows like it’s grown alive, like it’s moved back a ways but is focusing hard on us. Sometimes the sky feels like that. Dain says that predatory sky’s one of the reasons why we need them: you need a monster to keep a monster from the gate. I don’t know. But it makes my skin crawl, that gaze, and I’m used to it.
‘We are here, we are the room and the walls, we are the table and the chairs, and the air that billows lungs. We are the Court of the Night: called to session by one of our brothers.’
They pull chairs from the table and sit, and we stand behind them: perfectly still for a heartbeat or two.
‘Dain,’ Egan says. ‘You have the floor.’
Dain stands silent, eyes cast out to the other four.
‘My boy was visited with violence, by a Hunter,’ Dain says. ‘You all know this.
He was taken out of town, taken to a boat hidden up-river, to be smuggled west. Well, he would have been if I hadn’t got there first. I have few memories of such a threat, and they were long ago, at that. Before any of these boys, before the lot that preceded them. Hunters know where our edges are, and they do not cross them. Or they haven’t until now.’
Egan stands, the whole hall shivers, there’s a rustling murmur in the air. Dain’s hands drop to the table. It creaks beneath his grip, he isn’t steadying himself, but the table itself. With all these Masters here, and words heated, the Hall and its objects seem skittish.
‘It’s a half-truth, an exaggeration and a folly,’ Egan says. ‘There are always troublesome elements, those that don’t do as they are told. But I think we know who crossed the line.’ He looks at me direct. All the niceties are undone.
‘This was more than troublesome elements.’ Dain stands steady, but there’s an edge to his voice, an effort underlying. ‘Much more. I believe that we need deeper attention given.’
A sound somewhere in the hall; near the kitchen. A door slams. Dain doesn’t lift his hands.
CHAPTER 9
EGAN GRINS. ‘AH, the Professor and his deeper study. The wind blows wrong half a night and you call for it. And you would have us draw the attention of the Council of Teeth? We’ve tangles enough without that web. It is a small town, our little exile here, surely we can manage such troubles?’
And he says it like Dain is a child, a nuisance to be placated with the barest of kindnesses. There’s heat in my face and it is building. Dain is no fool. They’ve no right to treat him as such. And then I realise they can speak to him that way because of me, and I feel the shame of it.
Tennyson, Sobel and Kast are nodding their heads.
Dain seems surprised, or angry, or both. He gestures at the others, palms open; the table shudders, released. But the others just smile. Three faces of open mockery. I can see he knows that he’s been ambushed. ‘When there is an open threat the Council of Teeth should know. This is council business.’
Egan laughs. ‘The council complicates everything. Besides, we are its teeth, are we not? Do you think it cares for us as long as we bite?’
‘It cares for the Imperatives. It cares that we don’t capsize the peace we have, or cast ourselves into the Outer Dark.’
Egan’s got one of those cat-with-the-cream grins and I understand the poison of a smile. ‘As do we all.’ He turns his all-too-clever eyes to me. ‘Trouble comes from within, in my experience, not without. Why were you at the river, boy?’
‘Wanted to cool my toes.’ Not the whole truth, but I’ve no desire to point out previous indiscretions.
‘Yes, but that place. You know the dangers of that place.’
‘Big old catfish there,’ I say.
‘There are catfish in the turns and shadows of any river. That the Hunter found you suggests you frequent that place forbidden. That he was expecting you.’
‘I—’
‘Don’t lie to me, boy. I can see the workings of a lie like the pulse that beats within the prey. You lie to a Master, and you will find a Master’s sharp penalty.’
I lower my gaze to my hands, they’ve a bit of a shake in them.
‘Look up at me, boy.’ Of course he would demand that.
His eyes are snarled with a cruel, cold grip and I can’t look away. Everything is a plummet, a background noise, a narrowing and falling away. Just those damn eyes.
‘You frequent that place?’ I can’t even tell if he’s speaking, or if those eyes are asking.
‘Yes.’
‘In fact you have been there since, have you not?’
‘This is not an interrogation,’ Dain says, and I can hear the anger in his voice. ‘We are not here to question the boy.’
‘Why not?’ Egan’s gaze slides to Dain, and my heart starts beating again. ‘They will question the boy; the Council of Teeth will be much more demanding. All motives and possibilities will be explored, they are the kings of snares and winding avenues, and one does not rule with threadbare truths. They will grind it down then build it back up. Boy, why would you seek out such a place? What does a boy do all alone?’
Twitcher sniggers. Dougie winks at me, from behind Sobel, and Grove turns away. Even the Parson twins got big stupid smiles across their faces.
‘I was not!’
‘So you say.’ I don’t need those eyes directed at me to feel my cheeks burn. How can such a sweet voice speak so sour? ‘But you are of age. Your time is nearly upon you, such concerns are the concerns of boys. You seek solitude, the release of crude urges. Perfectly normal isn’t it? Is that what you were doing?’
‘I was not!’ And I stare back at Egan long as I can, there’s a heat to my gaze, and I feel it returned, a flash and the false light of after, and Egan almost turns his head, as though he’s forgotten who’s the Master. But he hasn’t, and I’m the first to break that stare. And I realise that he was just baiting the hook.
Egan raises his hand, all calming, almost gentle. ‘I was mocking you. You’re a Day Boy, you should recognise it. Mockery is a tool, is it not? So this Hunter came upon you while you were alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘By the reeds he waited, unseen by you.’
‘Yes.’
Egan nods. ‘I could smell his fear there, and the drink he had taken to blunt it. That was the night after, and it was still strong.’
‘He were drunk, that’s for sure.’
‘And yet you could not evade him? Didn’t even notice until he was upon you?’
‘Drunk and persistent,’ I say.
‘My boy’s skills are not on trial here,’ Dain says.
‘Of course not,’ Egan says. ‘Nothing is on trial here. We are just talking. Enjoying the cut and thrust of conversation. Surely Professor you are familiar with sophistry. Deception can lead to truth, can it not?’
Dain’s jaw juts, his hands press hard against the tabletop, wood groans, but he nods his head.
‘Yes.’
‘Then I shall continue, shall I? If that is all right with you?’
‘Yes.’
Egan looks to me. ‘So he caught you, and then…?’
‘Said he was going to take me away, to his boat. He was taking me as an apprentice, or something like.’
‘Which is not unheard of. The Hunters are unruly, their ways peculiar. His boat? Did you see this boat? Either of you.’
‘It had been cut loose,’ Dain says. ‘And not by me.’
‘I don’t think he meant what he said. I think he meant to kill me.’
‘Would that he were still alive,’ Egan says. ‘Oh, then we might have a surer hold of his motives.’
‘I spoke to him,’ Dain says.
‘Did he seek to kill your boy?’
‘He was…muddled. I don’t—’
Egan rises to his full height. Rises up with all that easy grace. ‘You don’t know? Could I submit that he wasn’t a Hunter but rather a different sort of predator? The sort that enjoys the
death of boys. And that he was drunk, and his muddlement was the muddlement of liquor and desires. Did you drink of him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you eat?’
‘I was enraged.’
‘Could such rage have muddled you?’
‘No.’
‘Always the scholar. The most rigorous and thoughtful of us all. Except we know that not to be true. We need not even look to your boy to see that. Here, in this mess, is all the evidence we need of your shortcomings. The Hunter is dead. We have no truth, only familiar mysteries. Small-town mysteries. Either there is a conspiracy involving the murder of Day Boys and, by extension, us. Or there is not.’
‘Which is what we need to know. The answer lies in the city.’
‘But what other boy has been so threatened? Just yours, one near enough to his last days to know better.’ Egan smiles. ‘And you talk so fondly of those who cast us out. As though they hold answers. Do you really trust our tormentors so? Did they not ruin you, as they ruined us?’
Dain’s lips grow ever so thin. ‘They were wise to send me here.’
And there we have the enmity between them. Egan never missing the chance to blame Dain, to remind him that they could still be in the city. Dain reminding him it wasn’t as simple as that.
‘Always so reasonable. Always so respectful. Do not even begin to think that we share your fondness for those in the city, for that Council of Teeth. Do not make that mistake.’
‘I would never think such a thing of you.’
Egan frowns. ‘Michael, you overstep. The miles are long between here and the city, and the Sun…well, you know about the Sun.’
Dain almost rises from his chair. The hall is a-creak with pressures manifest. A window rattles in its pane, then stops. The air cools till it’s stinging. ‘You’d threaten me? Stephen?’
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