The Fly Guild

by Todd Shryock

  The Fly Guild

  Todd Shryock

  Copyright 2011 by Todd Shryock

  Third Edition

  Chapter 1

  The boy peered around the corner of the ancient stone building, seeking his quarry. The youth of 12 or so years pushed his long auburn hair out of his eyes and back over his ears. His hair was matted and dirty, but this was of little concern to him, as the rumble in his stomach demanded far more attention than the simple demands of grooming. His dark blue eyes flicked back and forth, scanning the street for the right person, but seeing nothing, he leaned back around the corner and sighed. He took a deep breath and glanced the other way up the rough cobblestone street, a stench of human waste starting to rise with the morning mist. But hidden between the layers of stink was the sweet smell of bread; a smell that made his stomach yearn for the soft, doughy texture of fresh-baked goods that would quiet his insides, at least for a little while.

  The baker set up his small cart to entice early morning passersby to spend a copper for a muffin or bread slice. The smells were irresistible, a scent of heaven arising from the stench of human hell. Pay a copper, taste a better life. The boy glanced up the street again and saw a large man carrying the tools of a mason walking at a slow gait. Perfect, he thought.

  “Quinton!” came a cry from behind him. “What are you doing?” Quinton glanced behind him and saw Altil, a younger street urchin who wasn’t as daring and was looking more emaciated each day as a result.

  “I’m getting me some food. Now go away.” The other boy looked at him dejectedly and shuffled away. Quinton turned his attention back to the large man coming toward him.

  He let the man pass by, then stepped out into the street, matching his pace. He was careful to keep the large man between him and the baker, who was busily setting out the first of his goods on the cart outside his shop, so that if he glanced up, he would only see the mason.

  As the man neared the cart, the boy slid closer to the mason, and at the last second, stepped out from behind him, grabbed a muffin and ran.

  “Hey!” cried the baker. “Stop, you little thief.”

  Quinton glanced back and saw that the baker hadn’t come in pursuit but had turned to look directly across the street. The boy glanced over his other shoulder to see what the baker was looking at. In a doorway almost lost in the shadows was a man in a dark cloak, his face hidden in the folds of the hood. He looked at the baker, then at the boy, and nodded. A hand crept from the sleeve and the darkness and entered the morning light in the street. It pointed at the boy and flicked once.

  The boy’s heart raced, as he thought the man was putting a spell on him, but when he turned back around, he saw instead that the man had been signaling two tough looking teenagers further up the street who had been leaning against a building. At the signal, they popped off the wall and started trotting toward the boy.

  The boy turned right onto a side street, taking a bite of the muffin as he ran, trying to swallow the luscious bits of nourishment between breaths. His bare feet ached from the pain of running on the rough cobblestones, but his fear drove him on. The toughs were at a full run and gaining fast. The boy knew the city streets and alleys well, and zigzagged through the maze of narrow paths and avenues, but his pursuers were unphased. He headed for the place he knew best, a narrow alley that ended in a dead-end wall. On the other side of the wall was an old building with several holes along the street. He should be able to lie down in one of the holes, cover himself with the abundant garbage and wait for trouble to pass.

  When he reached the wall, the toughs had yet to round the corner behind him. He stuffed the last of the muffin in his mouth and scaled the old stone wall and its slick face with uncanny grace. He grabbed the top of the wall and pulled himself over, his heart pounding in his ears, held the edge tightly, lowered himself to the other side and then let go to drop the remaining few feet.

  Quinton spun around and took a step, running right into the man in the dark cloak he had seen in the doorway across from the baker. The man’s fist lashed out, catching him under the rib cage, forcing the air out of his body and the rest of muffin out of his mouth. The boy coughed and gagged as the food caught in his throat. He fell to the ground, curling up to try to regain his air, the man’s boots filling his field of vision. He heard a shrill whistle, and as his breath returned, he saw the two boys come panting down the alley to stand on either side of the man. They bent over, gasping for air, their stares showing a dislike for the boy who had led them on the merry chase.

  The man in the dark cloak pulled back his hood, revealing a human in his thirties, but whose eyes showed an age far beyond that. His hair and full beard were the color of the sand along the riverbank near the edge of town, and his deep brown eyes showed no emotion as he addressed his two companions.

  “He would have escaped had I not been here to bail you out,” said the man, his voice soft but stern.

  “Sir, the little bugger is fast,” panted one youth, his black hair slicked back on his head with an oily substance.

  The other one, a burlier lad with curly red hair who looked as though he ate very well, agreed. “I don’t know how he got over that wall, it’s slick as a fish’s puss.”

  The man with the sandy hair stared at the boy, who had pushed himself back up against the wall and slowly stood up. The boy’s clothes were rags. They were clothes that had once put him in with the city’s middle class, but that was some time ago. He had the look of a wild animal now, his eyes alert, even now darting here and there when he thought they weren’t looking, hoping for a chance to escape. The man looked at the wall behind the boy. Its rocks were smooth and covered in slime and moss. The roofs of the nearby buildings dumped all their rainwater onto the wall, keeping it perpetually wet in the deep shadows of the building, never drying out.

  “I assigned you a task, but yet you failed,” said the man to the two boys. “You will be punished. That is our law. The baker is paying us for a service, and to fail in that service means we fail our reputation. Without our reputation, we will be nothing.”

  The youths showed a flash of fear at the mention of punishment, but their faces quickly turned to anger as they stared at the boy.

  “Now,” said the sandy-haired man in a slow, methodical voice, “show this lad what happens when you steal from someone protected by the Fly Guild.

  Quinton recognized the threat in the man’s voice and made one last desperate move. He had felt out a small foothold in the wall with his hand while the man was talking to the boys. Making a move so fast that even the sandy-haired man was surprised, the boy put his foot in the small hole, reached up the wall and desperately reached for the top edge to pull himself over. Feeling the edge of the wall, he shoved up with his foot and almost got his knee up to the top that would have allowed him to swing over to the other side.

  But the man was quicker. He grabbed the boy’s other foot just before he pulled it up and yanked him down to the hard stone street. Pain shot through the boy’s shoulders and head as he landed with a thud, sending the air from him once more. Before he could even think about what to do next, the two boys were on him in a flurry of fists and feet. He felt blows striking every part of his body, and the pain was soon overwhelming. They dragged him to his feet, his back to the wall, and while one held him up, the other unleashed another round of fists to his head and chest, and then paused to kick him in the groin and legs.

  After a while, the pain just went away. With every part of his body damaged, the overload of signals to his brain became too much to sort out and almost all the pain was turned off. Both of his eyes were swollen shut to the point he could only see darkness. He was having trouble breathing, because every time he inhaled, several parts of his chest retaliated with what
felt like daggers stabbing into his lungs. His arms and legs were bruised and aching, and he was having trouble feeling anything in his left leg. He could hear the boys trying to catch their breath. They had pummeled him to the point that they were exhausted. He couldn’t tell whether the man was there or not, but suspected that he was. Quinton knew he was finished. One way or another. If they didn’t kill him, he would be unable to survive in his broken condition. The rats would eat him tonight in a slow, tortuous death.

  “Shall we finish him?” asked the thinner of the two boys, who was recognizable by his higher voice spoken between heavy breaths.

  There was silence. The broken boy assumed the man would end his life with the simple signal of his hand. It didn’t really matter. No one would miss him. There was no one left to miss him.

  “Sir?” asked the boy’s voice again.

  There was another pause, the broken boy listening for any sound of his final verdict. The only sound he heard was the other boy exhaling loudly and footsteps coming near him again. He wanted to turn his head to protect his face from another kick to the nose but was unable to move. He was helpless.

  He felt the thinner boy pick him up for another round, the final round, of punishment. His arm snaked around his back and he placed his arm around his shoulders. He then felt the bigger boy do the same on the other side. Together, they dragged the boy down the street, the tops of his feet being torn and cut on the rough stones of the street. The broken boy strained to see through his swollen eyes but could only see darkness. They would throw him in the river, and that would be the end of him. He took one more conscious breath, then passed out.

  In the darkness of despair, the boy felt a warmth and saw a blue glowing light before him. He walked toward the orb, feeling the pain drain away from his body as he did so. Quinton walked into the orb, and the light shone so brightly he had to close his eyes to shut out the blinding rays. With a whisper, the light was gone. He opened his eyes and saw himself in the past, a past that seemed nothing more than a dream. He was on a ship with his parents, their faces fresh and clear here in the dream, unlike the fuzzy memories they had become in his life of survival. The ship docked at an ill-kept wharf in a city, situated with the ocean on one side and a great swamp on the other. He knew this place; it was his home, Star Gleam City. They had fled religious persecution to this new land of promise and freedom, but the city didn’t look like anything they had heard. They had been told of a beautiful city at the mouth of a river, with buildings that sparkled of gold and silver where people were free to do as they pleased. But what they found instead were ramshackle huts, broken stone buildings, filth and disease.

  It was the sickness that first claimed his father, who had taken work on the wharves, for there wasn’t much demand for a scholar in a town where few people read. He went with his mother as she dragged his father on a makeshift litter to the steps of the nearest church, but there were so many pleading for aid that the priests would only lend their healing hands to those who could afford to pay. Dejected, they took their father and husband home to die.

  And die he did, six days later. His mother went off to find work and told him he would have to do the same. She found him a job running errands for an invalid old woman who lived in one of the better homes in town, a three-story town home supposedly owned by a local crime boss. Why she was there, who could know. But the boy earned some much-needed food and an occasional coin for his services along with some clothes. He fetched bread for her from the baker, kept the place tidied up and helped her walk to the balcony on the third floor to watch the city’s bustle below. Eventually, he was allowed to sleep in the kitchen, curled up on a small blanket the woman no longer used. His mother worked all night, but she wouldn’t tell him doing what. Whatever it was, it aged her rapidly. Her bright young eyes quickly faded, and her smile was replaced with a blank stare. She hardly talked to him, and when she caught him looking at her, she quickly turned away as if in shame. The old woman wouldn’t allow her to come into her house, so each morning, the boy waited for his mother at the front door and then walked with her for a bit before starting his daily chores. One day, she never appeared. The boy felt a great sadness in his heart and knew that she was never going to come again.

  Time passed, and he continued his existence helping the old woman. He was happy for the roof over his head and the scraps of food. She was grateful to have someone she could depend on to help her. Then one day, the boy came home from his errands and found the woman face down on the floor. Her heart had stopped. He dragged her out to the street, and several men with a cart came along and took her body away to be dumped in the river, where it would be washed out to sea. There wasn’t enough solid ground in the swamps to bury anyone. If you interred someone there, the spring floods just washed them right back up again, so the dead were fed to the sea. No one had the ambition to bury anyone, anyhow.

  Quinton lived in the house alone. He found a small stash of coins that he used to buy some food when needed, and the house kept him warm and dry and away from most of the disease-carrying insects and vermin that were thick in the lesser parts of town. One bright fall day, a man came to the door and inquired about the old woman. The boy told him she was dead. The man’s puzzled look turned to one of understanding and he left and returned the next day with several other men. As the boy watched, the men emptied the house of all the furniture and rugs and loaded them onto several ox-drawn carts, their long tails swatting at the flies, patiently waiting on their masters to finish. When the men were done, the man who had come to the door gently guided the boy out the door, pulled the door shut behind him and locked it.

  “Don’t ever go into my house again, do you understand?” he asked in a soft voice, but one that carried threatening authority.

  Quinton nodded and watched as the men got on the carts and slowly trundled down the street, the carts wobbling back and forth over the cobbles with rickety wheels. He turned around, gave the house that he had known as home for almost two years a final glance and headed out into the streets with nothing more than the clothes on his back and a few coins in his pocket.

  The coins were quickly spent on food, and as the winter rains came, his clothes deteriorated into rags. He learned to steal and hide from the soldiers and the thugs who walked the streets at night. There were other children on the streets, too, but no one lasted long. Where they all went, who could know, but he was a survivor. At least until today.

  “It’s a sad story, in a city filled with sad stories,” came the voice of an older man from the glowing light that had now returned to obscure his visions of the past. The voice seemed to come from both sides of him and behind him at the same time.

  “I don’t care about his sad story, Grubbs,” said the voice of the sandy-haired man. “The boy has talent. Natural talent. Maybe the best I’ve seen. Maybe even better than me with the right training.”

  “Better’n you, sir?” said Grubbs, his voice incredulous. “Never thought I’d ‘ear you say that in my living days. A young lad as good as Sands? Hard to even think it.”

  “If he survives, that is,” said Sands. “The boys roughed him up pretty good, but he had to pay for his crime. That’s our law.”

  “That it is, sir, that it is. But I think this one is a survivor. I think he’ll pull out. He survived the tellin’ orb, didn’t he? In his state, he should have reached the light and let himself go for good.”

  “Perhaps, Grubbs, perhaps. When it comes to healing, I yield to your judgment.”

  “I’ll fix him up, but no promises now.”

  There was a muffled laugh. “You just said he would pull through. Hedging your bets, are you?”

  Another laugh came, this time from Grubbs. “Sitting on the fence allows you to flee to one side or the other as need calls for, sir.”

  “Just don’t fall with one leg on each side of the fence, or you’ll be hurt worse than if you chose one or the other to begin with.”

  Grubbs heartily laughed for a few m
oments before regaining his composure. “Where shall I put him once my work is done?”

  There was a long silence before Sands answered. “Put him in the crimper.”

  “Ooh, starting out a little rough aren’t we?”

  “Mind your business, Grubbs. I don’t want an apprentice. It’s bad enough watching over Milky’s two losers while he’s laid up with the fever. If this lad is for real, he’ll be fine. If he’s not, we’ll be rid of him right soon.”

  Grubbs snickered. “That we will, sir, that we will.”

  The light faded from the boy’s eyes and the sounds of the men’s voices became clear. He tried to open his eyes, but they were still swollen shut. The pain in his body had subsided, but the aches remained and he was unable to move his limbs.

  Grubbs waved his hand over the orb near the boy’s body. Its glow turned a slight shade of red then faded away completely. The boy wouldn’t remember anything about the experience now.

  “Relax, boy,” said Grubbs. “The pain is gone for now, but don’t worry, it will return. You’re banged up pretty good, and it’s not going to get much better for ya. I’ve pulled you through the worst of it, but it’s up to you how much longer you want to live. You’ll have to decide whether the pain in here,” the boy felt the man tap his chest, “is greater than the pain out here with us. If the pain inside is worse, then anything we throw at you will be survivable. But if out here is tougher, then you’ll be feeding the fish with your dead daddy real soon.”

  Quinton faded back to darkness once more. Dreams came to him unlike anything he had ever experienced. He saw visions of glorious castles glowing white on the shores of a great ocean, of a dark rocky tower standing defiant in the middle of a raging sea and of fantastic creatures with wings and horns and shimmering scales. Everything he had ever heard of in a story or tale was suddenly alive before him in a dazzling array of images and sights so clear he could touch the rough skin of the flying beasts and smell the salt spray as it rebounded from the dark tower back into the sea. A sense of wonder and joy flooded his body as he felt himself flying along the edges of the world, seeing everything there was to see and being free from everyone and the pain they brought with them. As his vision soared along a high cliff on the sea’s edge, as white trees with golden leaves shimmered in the distance, his thoughts turned to his long lost parents, the only family he knew that left him what seemed so long ago. His thoughts turned to sadness as he remembered his mother’s eyes and how they had faded away from the hopeful spirit they had once held, and how his father’s body had to be dumped into the river like so much garbage. When he looked out across the plain that stretched from the sea, he saw two people standing together. They were too far away to make out any details, but he recognized their forms.