Bloodtide

by Melvin Burgess

  Another couple of hundred metres and I’d had it. I sat down in a doorway, my whole body heaving for air and I was suddenly, wetly, hugely sick.

  I waited for the hand on my shoulder, but it never came. I’d lost ’em. No one liked to go too deep into the slums to catch a thief. What was the point? The slums were full of thieves – you’d only get robbed.

  I’d lost them, but I’d also lost everything else. I’d lost all my clothes, left back in the hotel room. I’d lost the gun, I’d lost the money. I’d lost the clothes off my back. I’d even lost my dinner. I sank my head in my hands and retched weakly. The poor people wandered to and fro. I sat there for maybe half an hour until I felt chilled to the bone, and I made my way back to the school.

  I was the hard man.

  I had nothing – a miserable twenty quid I found stuffed in the back pocket of my filthy trousers. Doing that clothes shop, the bath, the good food, the rest, they all fooled me into thinking I was myself again. I wasn’t. I was useless. I kept thinking about Melanie waiting back there in the boiler room for me. I’d been making out I was her lucky day, but she’d starved herself half to death for me and what had I done to thank her for it?

  She was there, waiting for me. She gave me this big, gummy, gormless, greedy grin. I’d guess she was half certain I’d cleared off, like everyone else in her life. Since I was back she thought she was rich.

  She sat there shifting about on her scrawny old bum, waiting for the jackpot. I just dipped my head. I was so ashamed. I’d had it all and I’d lost it because of my big head, and this wasn’t a party game, like it used to be for me and Signy. This was winter. This was life or death.

  I thought, King Winter, and I bowed my head before him.

  I dug my hand in my pocket and handed over the twenty quid.

  Melanie stared at it. I could hardly look. Then, an even huger, even gummier big grin spread across her old creased-up, crisp bag of a face, and she flung back her head and opened her arms and she grabbed hold of me and began jigging up and down on my toes.

  ‘You lovely boy, you darlin!’ She kissed the money and she kissed me. I just thought, wot? What was there to be so pleased about?

  It only dawned on me gradually. The thing was, as far as Melanie was concerned, twenty quid actually was a fortune. Her dreams had all come true. Me, I hadn’t any idea what things cost, I’d never had to buy so much as a sausage in my life. I’d been thinking of the sort of stuff me and Signy used to dole out to the poor – hundreds, thousands of quid. That was treasure to me. But the sort of stuff Melanie ate you could live for a couple of months off twenty quid. She danced and grinned and yodelled. I’ve never seen anyone look so happy, and all for twenty measly quid. I thought, it doesn’t take much, does it?

  And then I realised – sod it, I’d done it after all. Yeah…! I’d done it! I took her by the hands and we did a sort of slow, starving dance like a pair of stick insects doing a jig, round and round in circles, until we’d worn ourselves out and we fell down in a heap on the pile of rags where I fell straight to sleep.

  I spent the next few hours sleeping on feathers – as much as I knew about it, anyway. Next thing I knew it was dark, and Melanie was shaking me awake and pushing a bowlful of hot, thick, squelchy stew into my hands.

  The good times were back!

  For the next couple of weeks me and Mels lived like – well, like a pair of pigs. We gulped our way through bowls of stew and loaves of bread. We devoured potatoes by the bowlful. Well, I did, anyway. My appetite was like a lorry with no brakes, it wouldn’t stop. She used to watch me stuff my face like I was something at an exhibition. I said, ‘Eat up, eat up!’ But she couldn’t keep up with me. She ate tiny amounts. I wouldn’t have fed my pet rat on so little in the old days.

  I ate cheese by the pound. Eggs, I fell in love with eggs. I got sudden, violent hankerings for fruit, yoghurt, steak, apples, bread and butter, biscuits, fruit cake, stew, sausages, trifle…

  ‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ she complained. I grinned at her and showed her the muscle on my leg.

  ‘What’s the problem? I got the money, didn’t I?’

  I was exercising, getting my strength back quick now that there was good food and plenty of it. I didn’t let it all turn to fat. I was running up and down those stairs fifty, a hundred times a day. I started letting myself think about things again. Conor, for instance. He had my knife. And my sister…

  I was thinking, I’m gonna get my sister back and I’m gonna get my knife back. It was the first time I’d seriously thought I was capable of getting anything together beyond the next meal. Oh, yeah, I was on a roll! I was building up my health, putting the weight back on, getting my confidence back.

  But of course it couldn’t last.

  Thing is, Melanie made such a fuss over that twenty quid. Like I say, I didn’t have any idea how much things cost. I thought it’d last forever. Well, maybe it could’ve lasted Melanie for ever, but Melanie lived off spuds and greens, tiny amounts like I say. She didn’t eat cheese or butter or ham or steak. She didn’t swallow four eggs one after the other. So the day came a lot sooner than I thought when Melanie put down a bowl of soup in front of me and said, ‘Time t’get some more money, boy, if yer wanna eat tomorra.’

  And I was amazed all over again! Stupid idiot – one minute I thought twenty quid was nothing, next I thought it’d last forever. But the money was gone all right. She made it last pretty well, I see now. I had to go out on the hunt again, and this time I knew it wasn’t going to be so easy.

  No gun. If you’re weak you gotta have a gun. That’s what they’re for.

  ‘I need a gun, Mels,’ I told her. ‘I can’t go robbing without a gun.’

  I found myself trying to convince her that she had a few quid left over, buried away somewhere, just enough for a small broken old handgun, surely?

  But she hadn’t, of course. We had an argument. She really riled me by telling me if I didn’t want to rob, I could do something else instead – begging, for instance.

  ‘Me! Beg?’ I was furious. But as Melanie pointed out, it wasn’t any better expecting her to beg for me.

  And then she said this…

  She was lying on her back on a heap of rags, with her porky hands folded over her belly staring dreamily into the air and she says, ‘Maybe King Val’ll give me some more chops.’

  I nearly choked. ‘King Val?’ I said.

  ‘Those chops,’ she said. And she went all dreamy eyed, like she was seventeen and thinking of her boyfriend.

  ‘… King Val gave you those chops?’ I licked my dry lips. It wasn’t possible! Dad was dead, wasn’t he? ‘My father?’ I croaked.

  She looked at me and frowned. ‘Nah, it was a girl.’

  I almost seized her by the throat.

  I was livid! Why on earth didn’t she tell me? She knew all about my father, who didn’t? But she was sure this was some agent of Conor’s. To make matters really infuriating, she couldn’t even really remember what the girl looked like. She remembered the chops well enough. How thick the fat was. That nice middle chunk of kidney stuck up against the rib. But the girl…

  I couldn’t work it out. First she said the girl was dressed a bit like a man. My heart leaped – it was Signy! Then the girl had red hair – it wasn’t Signy. So who was it? Perhaps she was right. Conor’s agents must know I was still alive and they were looking for me.

  I kept at her and at her and at last I came across a clue. This girl apparently had strange eyes. Cat’s eyes, in fact. I thought, now, where have I seen something like that before?

  I was down there by the market in Leytonstone the very next day. I walked about, I begged. It was all right to be begging if it was a disguise, you see, that didn’t offend me. Actually I did all right. I had the face for it. I made two quid in one day. I was there the next day, and the next, and the day after that. And then she came.

  It had been such a brief glimpse that day in the halfman lands. She’d swung suddenly into view
and I’d got an impression more than a sight of the thick red hair, the pointy little chin, and those wide, impossible eyes as she kissed me on the cheek. So when she came swinging through the market, shouting and making a fuss, I was scared to go up to her in case it was a trap after all. And she was older – much older. She was almost a woman already. How could she have got so much older in just a few months? I thought maybe she was that young girl’s sister, but I didn’t know then what I know now. Cats age differently from people.

  And then, of course, I hardly looked like myself any more. But she was – once again! – my only chance. I came close and begged spare change. Clever girl, clever girl, she knew at once. She took me by the arm and smiled. ‘I know you,’ she said.

  book two

  1

  When Signy knew that her brother was alive she held a grim celebration. So now she had to live. There was fish and cream for the cat and wine for her and the girl to toast the return of Siggy and the Volsons.

  Cherry was in heaven. Her beloved mistress was going to live! She chased round and round the table, as a cat, as a girl, as a bird. She hung on Signy’s neck and wept for the love of her, and swore she would never stop.

  Signy banged her hands down on the table.

  ‘And now we will destroy Conor,’ she said. With that she put the darkness aside and began to make her plans.

  The next morning, a small brown bird flew in through the window of a flat in Leytonstone, close to the edges of the Wall, where the shape-changer had hidden her find with the pig-woman, Melanie. Siggy had refused to move without her. She found them lying on piles of cushions in the middle of the floor, a huge fire blazing in the grate, blankets stuffed all around and under the door to keep out the draughts, duvets and eiderdowns piled up on top of them. All around were scattered paper bags stained with grease, crumbs, apple cores, empty bottles and small heaps of food. Cherry picked her way across the debris, her nose slightly wrinkled, and dropped a letter into Siggy’s lap. Then she changed into a cat. The garbage was just too good to miss.

  ‘Oh, God!’ shouted Melanie from her heap of blankets. Cherry leaped into the air and turned back into a girl as she hit the ground. Melanie groaned; Siggy giggled. There was something sickening about seeing shape treated so lightly.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mels, she does it all the time,’ said Siggy.

  ‘Whow! One shape orta be enuff fer anyun,’ grunted Melanie. She crept deeper under the blankets, but kept a sharp eye on the man and the girl. Melanie wanted to know everything that was going on.

  Cherry stared at him, and Siggy smiled back as he opened the letter, then frowned and looked quickly away. She was a pretty girl. Just for a second he was flattered before he remembered the scabby wound that was his face. But Cherry was staring with the simplicity of a cat. She had no feeling for looks at all. Actually, she was thinking that underneath the warm reek of grease and smoke that filled the room, the man smelt really rather good. She crossed her legs and began to purr under her breath as Siggy opened his letter and began to read.

  It was the first communication between them since the massacre, and Siggy was filled with the overwhelming sensation that the letter was a fraud, written by a stranger. It was Signy all right; he knew her style as well as his own. But it was Signy as he’d never known her. And what nonsense she talked!

  Revenge? Defeating Conor? Recovering the Volson lands? Restoring their father’s dream? Siggy stared down at his wrecked body, and he began to laugh.

  ‘Me, King! King Me. King of Shit!’ He waved his hand around the room. ‘King of Scraps! King of Pigs! King of…’ He laughed weakly and stared at Melanie, inviting her to laugh with him. ‘Me, King,’ he snorted. ‘You, Queen! Fight Conor.’ But Melanie stared back at him, her face without expression. Siggy felt the laughter drain out of him.

  ‘Cherry,’ he said. ‘We have to get her out of there.’

  2

  signy

  I’m information, I’m treachery. Here, on the inside, I belong here. I’m a spy. Conor wants me. He doesn’t know what love is, but he wants me. He doesn’t trust me – not yet. But he will. I’m the greatest asset we have and Siggy wants me to run away!

  He doesn’t want to see me humiliated any more, he says. He has to understand; there’s no such thing as humiliation. There’s no shame except the shame of not destroying Conor to the last drop of his blood. If I have to sleep with him, I’ll do it. I’ll open my legs with a loving smile. If I have to kiss his lips and look in his eyes like a lamb and tell him I love him, and comfort him when the night demons come, I’ll do it tenderly. If I have to bear his children, I’ll do that too, just so that I can slit their throats before his eyes. He has to suffer like he’s made me suffer. Like he made my father suffer.

  I know Siggy’s suffered more than me. He had to watch our brothers devoured. He had to give our father to Odin. But in the end it makes no difference. He can turn and twist all he likes but he has no choice. It’s not in his hands. He’ll see.

  Odin gave him the knife. Odin embraced me. Our destiny is in the hands of gods.

  Look at Cherry lying on the floor at my feet. Why else is she here – shape-changer, part human, part animal, part god? See her! She looks up at me and smiles.

  ‘There is a way,’ she purrs. ‘I can get you out if you want.’

  ‘Did you tell him that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good! Never tell him. He must think I’m trapped.’ I chew at the flesh around my fingertips. ‘Everything must be put right.’ Then I smile at her and say the terrible word ‘Conor…’ just to hear her growl deep in her throat.

  ‘He wants to have you in the same way a dog pisses on its victim,’ says Cherry. Yes! She knows. ‘He wants you to love him because he can’t love himself. He wants you to want him because then his victory would be complete. He wants you to forgive him.’ She miaows and creeps low on her stomach onto my lap. Poor Cherry! I stroke her between the ears as she turns back into cat.

  ‘I’ll let him do whatever he wants with me,’ I say. ‘And when the time comes, I’ll kill him. I’ll wipe out his armies, and I’ll put my own family back in the place he’s stolen. There will be no forgetting. Never.’

  ‘… always hate him,’ murmurs the little tortoiseshell cat on my lap. Her eyes are as hard as stones. She always feels exactly the same as I do.

  I will have power. Already I’ve had some of the guards killed. I pointed them out to Conor from the tower while they were on parade. I told him they raped me. They died. Conor was furious to think that his property had been used by common soldiers. They were hung by their heels from the trees and beaten until they could scream no more. The guards know I hold the power of life and death. One day, everyone will know.

  Conor wants everything to be just as it was. Sometimes I go along with it. He fills my prison with toys and we pretend it’s not a prison. He fills my ears up with promises, and we pretend I believe them. He fills my life up with his emptiness and I pretend I’m full. He doesn’t trust me yet, but he will. He wants to, you see, and poor Conor lies so easily to himself. And poor man – do you know what? He has no idea what the difference is between hate and love. I can fool him into thinking anything. I can even fool him into thinking that I love him.

  Each time he comes I think my heart will break all over again. I loved him so much – so much! You’d think he’d see the look behind my eyes and shudder, but instead he weeps, and kneels by my chair and begs me to forgive him.

  ‘I love you,’ he says, over and over. And then he looks at me with an expression like an animal. He raises his eyebrows slightly. He’s waiting. I realise with surprise that he expects me to tell him that I love him too.

  I only know this; if I have to fall in love with him all over again to get him to trust me I’ll do it just so I can hurt him.

  I say, ‘I’m your prisoner. How can you expect me to love you?’

  ‘You did love me.’

  I look away. This is unbearable!
/>   He inspects his clean hands and he asks, ‘Do you think you could love me again?’

  It astonishes me beyond words that he asks me this. I say, ‘I am yours, the spoils of victory.’

  When I say that, he blushes like a boy. ‘It was out of my hands,’ he growls. Oh yes, my darling, nothing to do with you. Poor, innocent one. See how I’ve hurt his feelings! But I lie so well that I could almost feel sorry for him.

  I say, ‘Then who did this to me?’ I fling the blanket off my legs so he can see my pretty legs. He hates to see my legs these days. They offend him.

  ‘It was an accident,’ he growls. ‘You know that.’ He shakes his head, dismissing my legs. ‘This had to happen, don’t you see, Signy? It couldn’t be stopped. It was all underway from a long, long time ago. The treaty was impossible. There were too many people in both camps who wanted it destroyed. It was Val or me. The gods wanted it!’

  ‘That’s why they gave you the knife,’ I say. I nod at it hanging from his belt.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Conor nods in agreement. He is surprised that I see this, but not as surprised as I am that he believes what I say. Sarcasm means nothing to him.

  ‘It was given for me to take,’ he agrees.

  I shake my head, which feels like it’s about to explode. But nothing of this shows on my face. I never let anything show on my face. It would turn me to stone if anything showed on my face in front of him.