With Daveron's father at his side, he remembered wielding an oak-ram that morning to break down the wall of a dank reed hut close to the Levi. They muscled through the gap and pinned down the Appomatox inside, a scarab provener late on his debts.
The room smelled of acid and rank sweat. That meant nothing to Daveron, but Sen felt his gorge rise. Lines of dog gut were strung across the room, from which hung scarabs, mulched and left to mummify in their resealed shells.
Together they held the Appomatox to his acid-burned work desk with the filthy sheets from his own bed. He screamed but they ignored that, and Daveron took turns with his father, beating the Appomatox's fat stomach with bats until his mouth ran with jellied blood. Soon he vomited black. At one point Daveron turned, drawn by a sound behind him.
In a small rusted lobster cage nailed into the wall, an infant Appomatox gazed back at him. His eyes were large and limpid. Daveron turned back to his work.
The provener tried to speak but Daveron's father deftly cut out his tongue with a pair of long shears. He sliced a thin flake off and handed it to Daveron to hang on the ringed spike at his belt. The rest he tossed into the slurry of scarab drippings on the floor.
"The law called for a gut-busting," he said, while probing the fat man's swollen belly. His fingers drew agonized screams. "This one is beyond payment, so we set an example."
Sen felt as Daveron reached over to touch the dying man's swollen purple belly.
"Is his stomach burst?"
"It is. Along with the spleen, caucus, gut-box and halo. He'll be dead within a few hours."
Sen stroked the shivering flesh. It sickened him even as it had been no more than another entry on an accounting ledger to Daveron.
"We follow the law," his father said. "We do what is just, under the Heart and the King."
He withdrew a crisp sheet of white paper from the bag on his back, marked with the brand of the King, then laid it down on the man's shivering stomach.
"This is our writ, to let all know our actions here were lawful. He was warned many times."
"I understand."
They started away. On the way out Daveron pointed to the infant in the cage. "What of him?"
"Collateral to the debt," said his father, "and no concern of ours."
Sen blinked the scene away, blinked away hundreds just like it, returning to the millinery where Daveron sat tied before him. His hand was pressed tightly to the Moleman's sweating head, and he could still feel the burn of memories underneath.
He braced against them. The spike was in his hand, and there was something he had to do. He tried to speak, but could do no more than mumble.
Instead he lifted the spike up, then swung it down to thud off his own bare thigh.
Daveron screamed.
* * *
The pain burst in Daveron like nothing he'd ever felt before, spreading down the length of his leg and up into his belly, worse than he'd ever imagined pain to feel. It wasn't a mere sense of discomfort or an amplified sense of impact, instead it was immediate and intolerable. He struggled in the ropes, instinctively seeking to curl up around his leg and hug it to him, but he couldn't move.
"I think you felt that," Sen said.
Daveron tasted blood in his mouth and realized he'd bitten his tongue. It was salty and unpleasant, something he'd never felt before. He swallowed, struggled to get his breathing under control, then spoke in a tone both ragged and amazed.
"You're torturing me."
"Torturing us," replied Sen. "You think I didn't feel that too?"
"Why?"
"Because I need you to change, Daveron. I need you to understand what it is that you do. And when you see that, I need your help to make it change."
Sen lifted the spike again, and fear flushed through Daveron. He began to tremble and his bladder voided. Sen brought the spike down on his other thigh.
The pain was everywhere. Daveron couldn't escape it. And it only grew worse.
* * *
Some time later, Sen dropped the spike. He could barely stand. A little while ago the Moleman had stopped shrieking, but Sen hadn't been able to stop hurting him, driven on by disgust at all the atrocities he'd committed.
Looking down, he saw blood and weals on his own body, striping his arms, legs, and chest, crisscrossing his scars. Bruises welled blackly in places. Slowly he pulled his hand back from the Moleman's hot brow and felt the connection tear away.
Then he was on his knees, buoyed by nothing. Gellick appeared at his back and held him up.
"Did you have to do so much?" the Balast asked, his deep voice worn by the suffering. Sen could hear the horror in his tone, but at that moment it mattered less than the pain he'd inflicted on himself. It felt like his whole body was burning. Still, he forced himself to stand, and slit open the knotted ropes binding Daveron. The Moleman sagged to the dirt floor, where he curled into a sobbing, flinching ball.
"Tell him," Sen managed, as the Balast gathered him up before he could fall again. "Tell him I'm sorry, and we need him."
Then darkness.
* * *
Daveron lay in the mud for hours, twitching to the memory of pain. It was finished now, he knew that, but still his body convulsed as the new sensations found deep bedrock in his mind.
Again he remembered the way the fat Appomatox had pleaded with them before they stuffed his mouth with rags. He remembered slamming the bat down upon his stomach. He had never felt any pleasure in it, no more than a butcher feels joy at slicing up a carcass. It was merely work to be done, and done well.
Now his own pain was a part of that memory too, building in time with the screaming of the man, with the impact traveling up his arms as the bat fell upon his belly. It sickened him, and he retched into the dirt.
Finally, when the shaking had mostly passed, he pushed himself to his feet.
Gellick was standing there, watching him. He didn't say anything as Daveron limped toward the open door. The night air was cool outside, a few hours from morning. He didn't recognize the street, though it seemed a fringe area of the Slumswelters.
The Balast spoke from behind. "Sen says he's sorry, and we need you."
Daveron turned. Little shivers of remembered pain were still working their way up and down his body. "I'll see him spiked for this," he said, attempting the deep tone his father used, though the words came out weak.
"He says the Rot is coming," Gellick went on. "What is the spike next to that?"
Daveron tried to sneer, but the effort drained him, and instead blood from his bitten tongue drooled out.
"We're going to keep posting The Saint," Gellick said. "We need warning when the Molemen are coming on a patrol. We need you to tell us. You know where we are. That's all."
"You want me to help you?" Daveron asked. "After that?"
"Warn us. That's all."
Daveron spat feebly, tainting his red tubing with splashes of his own blood, and hobbled away.
At the next street corner he dropped to his knees and retched again. Only ropey mucus came up. He wiped it away and continued walking. Soon he was back in Belial and his father's butchery yard lay before him. It was almost dawn. He let himself in through the gate, went to the blades where he had left them and sat to finish cleaning them.
It didn't matter what had happened, he told himself. No one would believe it anyway. Molemen felt no pain. But touching the blades and the bats made him feel ill. It took a long time to finish cleaning them, until after the sun had risen. He put them away in their proper places, then shuffled to his cot, collapsed, and dreamed of pain.
He woke soon to the first screams of the new day. His father would be taking skin-tags from the latest debtors on their rolls. The sound made him gag. The thought of actually working the skinning knife horrified him. He looked at his trembling hands and wondered what Sen had done.
MILLINERY III
Sen woke with the ache. It was the worst he'd ever felt, with every part of him hurting from his battered tem
ple to his battered body. In the dim light cast through the larder room's cracks, he looked at the swollen welts he'd done to himself. There were so many. He scarcely remembered more than the first two.
Gellick was hammering in the hall. Returning to the millinery had been a fear for both of them, now that Daveron knew where they were, but there was nothing else they could do. If Daveron wouldn't help them, there was no way they could hope to evade future Molemen raids. They'd gambled everything on him.
Sen dragged himself to his feet, inching slowly into the daylight of the hall, where the sky was blue and white through the ruined rafters. Gellick was down below at the bottom of the stairs, hammering his fists into the repairs they'd built.
Wood splintered like tinder under his blows.
"What are you doing?" Sen asked, then had to repeat it at a shout to get Gellick's attention. Gellick stopped his work and looked up. His green eyes blazed in the shadows on the ground floor.
"Breaking the stairs. Fixing the mess."
Sen frowned, and looked around the hall. The moldy hay had all been swept into a pile in the middle of the hall, along with the broken rafters and beams. The press was back where it belonged, alongside the pile. Down below the stairs were already largely smashed into bits.
"Why?"
"It's too new," Gellick said flatly. "It's the wrong wood." He paused a moment, looking Sen up and down. "You look terrible."
Sen just stood there, not certain what to say. Yes, he looked terrible, with the weals of Daveron's torture standing up in bright purple lines on his forearms and calves, but that didn't explain the stairs.
Too new. That was true. The wood was freshly treated, a bright yellowy pine, compared to the aged brown timber of the millinery's original stairs.
"You didn't think about it, when we built this," Gellick said. "You have to think about things like that more. Like with Daveron."
"I don't-" Sen began, but Gellick chose that moment to go back to smashing. His huge fists fell and boards snapped into pieces, dropping into the caked mud. All their hard work, gone.
"Gellick!" he shouted, but the Balast ignored him. Sen started hobbling down the stairs, which shook with each blow, until he stood almost in the path of the rock man's next downswing.
Only then did Gellick stop.
"What?" he asked.
Sen didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Of course, his friend was right. Of course he should have planned better. He should have known better.
"You're right. I didn't think. I should have done. I need to do better than this."
Gellick brought his fists down, but slowed at the last moment, letting them rest on the boards at Sen's feet. Even standing five feet below, he was an imposing and powerful figure, with shoulders broader than the press.
"You hurt Daveron a lot. You killed one of them. Did you have to do that?"
Sen tried to shrug, but pain in his ribs stopped that. "I don't know. With Daveron, I just wanted to make it last. And I didn't mean to kill the Moleman. It was an accident."
Gellick shook his head, as if this was an old excuse he'd heard many times. "I can't stay with you, Sen, if it's things like that. I won't. These stairs. The raids. You need to be better."
"You're absolutely right. I will, Gellick. I promise. Now, we'll scavenge some old wood from nearby buildings. The same for the roof too. The next time the Molemen come there'll be nothing suspicious at all."
Gellick eyed him aslant. "And Daveron? Will you hurt the others like that, if you have to? Would you have hurt me, if I'd said no?"
Sen tried a weak smile. "How could I hurt you, Gellick? You're adorable."
"I'm serious."
"Then of course I wouldn't have. It wouldn't have helped. You're not like Daveron."
Gellick considered this. "But you fought Alam as well."
"Alam punched me in the face! I was definitely the worst hurt there."
"Really?"
"Really. I promise, I won't do that again, not with anyone, and I'll think more about the consequences of my actions, I promise. I hope you'll help me with that, too. The next edition of The Saint will rock the city even more, and we both need to be ready."
Gellick frowned, then nodded grudgingly. "I accept your terms. So you can make yourself useful. Come help me with this."
Sen nodded sharply. "Yes. Of course."
His body ached, but Gellick had no sympathy for that, it was clear. He shuffled down from the stairs, into the gap Gellick had smashed in their work, thinking perhaps he would find a pick and start smashing too, but Gellick gave clear directions. He was to pick up the bits of broken wood and heap them in a pile, like a nifthinder collecting spits of precious metal cracked loose on the Gutrock.
"There, and there," Gellick said helpfully, pointed to the bigger drifts of kindling. "Pile them over there." Sen had no choice but to bend to it.
* * *
They didn't talk very much after that, and Sen was glad.
There was a lot to think about. Some things he put to one side, like the dead Moleman and the tortures he'd seen in Daveron's head. To dig too deeply into those would probably incapacitate him mentally as well as physically.
He still felt dizzy from the blow to his temple. His body didn't like moving, especially bending over, but Gellick was a tough taskmaster, constantly pointing out broken fragments that had to be picked up and bundled.
He did the work, and tried to think about the future, as he'd promised. He'd given Daveron everything he needed to bring them down. One word from the little Moleman would bring all their efforts to an end.
Yet the Molemen didn't come. Not in the morning while he'd been asleep, nor in the afternoon as he traipsed behind Gellick, picking up after the smashed repairs, carrying the refuse to the larder room where they set a fire blazing in the pit. The treated yellow wood burned with a strange green chemical flame.
"Too new," Gellick repeated, hammering his point home. Sen just nodded repentantly.
He thought about the reaction of the Molemen to his first posting. It had been far larger than he'd anticipated. He'd expected perhaps a few King's brands laid down, maybe a handful more Molemen on patrol, maybe even a stronger Adjunc presence, walking the streets like nightmarish dogs.
Thirty Molemen per district was far beyond anything he'd imagined. Seeing the size of their response had made him angry, and anger had led to failure. He had to be more measured in the future. He began to think of other ways they could proof themselves against raids.
The idea of an Ogric cart popped into his head. They could keep it in the ground floor, so that if they received warning a Moleman patrol was passing through, hopefully after Daveron had warned them, they could load up the press and transport it away.
It could be organized with slots for their paper and ink, always ready to go. They could set up several secondary hideouts throughout the Slumswelters, so they were never trapped with their backs to the walls again, forced to leave everything behind.
They would remake the millinery with old wood and hay, so it wasn't suspicious. With no ink, paper or sign of a press, at most any Moleman raid would think the building was just being used by some gang of street children for shelter. As long as the press itself was mobile, they would be relatively safe.
"I said, what about the next edition?" Gellick said.
Sen came back to himself, slumped against one of the second floor walls as the sunlight pouring in through the open roof faded. He hadn't even realized he'd stopped working.
"What?"
Gellick sighed a long-suffering sigh, sitting by Shellaby the press with his arm slung over it comfortably. "The next edition, Sen. What will we write?"
He'd thought about that. He'd already roughed it out while he'd raced over the rooftops.
"Something about the Molemen," he said. "The first in a series on caste."
Gellick nodded along. "More scandals? More fruits and vegetables?"
Sen thought about that. Canta-love. Did they need th
at, was it the right time for that? Or had they grabbed the city's attention thoroughly enough already?
"Not this time," he said. "This time we go hard. We attack caste. We attack the law. We go right after the King's power, head-on, without any jokes."
Gellick's big face collapsed into puzzlement. "Why would that be interesting?"
Sen nodded. "Because everyone's looking at us, now. We don't need humor anymore, because we have danger. Conflict. The King made a statement with his patrols, and people across the city will have heard of it. Whatever we print next, everybody will read it, or hear about it, or want to read it. It'll blow the issue wide open, something they've only ever whispered about before."
"About Molemen?"
"About all of it," Sen said, warming to the idea. "Usury butchery. Mogrification. Casteal law. We call it out."
Gellick considered this. "Tonight?"
Sen gave a little snort. "I think we take a break, tonight. We take some time for things to calm down, for them to think they've won. Also, we get an Ogric cart to move the press, and we build a roof." He pointed up. "We prepare, like you said, and get ready for the next time a patrol sweeps through, so we're not caught out like that again. And then we write it."
Gellick tapped the press's side. Beneath his large arm it looked like a toy. "I have some ideas, too." He paused. "About the Calk. About Balasts. If we're talking about caste."
Sen rested his head against the wall, drifting on a warm haze of pain and possibility. "Good. Yes. Balasts too, maybe the next time. Scars. All the King's foolish law."
"And scandal too?"
"Scandal when that gets dull. We're going to whip this city, Gellick, until it's ready to burst."
"And then what?"
Sen let his eyes close, and spread his arms wide as if summoning the very image he was dreaming up. "Then it bursts, and the Saint will rise in all his glory, and we all will be redeemed."
Gellick chuckled. Sen chuckled too.
Still, it was basically the truth.
* * *
Daveron couldn't work.
He woke with the new sensation in his head and his body, and from the first moment of the first flesh-shaving of the day, he felt sick. His hand shuddered on the knife, so that his father frowned in displeasure.
The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1) Page 32
