It was them—the wild boys!
I kicked the fishing nets away, tumbled off the shelf and crouched to hide behind the canvas, daylight shooting little arrows through its pores.
Not quick enough. The sheet was swept back from the stall and sunshine blazed into my face. ‘Here, look what! It’s the border boy!’ was the gleeful cry.
As I tried to shield my eyes from the sunlight, more than two pairs of hands reached down and grabbed me up off the ground. Others joined in the effort once I was up, and I was yanked forward by my shirt. ‘Ha-ha! What’s he wearing today?’
‘Looks fit for greenstring, so he does!’
‘Ugh, an’ he stinks!’ spat one boy. ‘You smell that?’ He pinched his nose, batting the air.
Another leaned in and sniffed me. ‘Awhhh yuck!’ he spluttered and spun away.
Bath wasted already, then: even though I couldn’t smell it anymore, I knew I stank like rotten fish. The other stalls near where I’d slept had started opening for trade, laying out their wares on boards and counters either side of the narrow way. Some early shoppers milled among them.
Another boy stepped in to grab my new shirt’s collar. It was the tallest boy, the leader, the one I’d fought on the first day. He brought his face up close to mine and, as if rising to the dare, took a deep whiff of my neck. ‘Mmm . . .’ he mocked right in my ear.
I tried to pull away, ‘Let go,’ but he kept his grip on my collar. The others mimicked let go! let go! in silly voices. ‘Shut up!’ I yelled and pulled hard, angry. And came free, hurtling straight into a stall across the way. A tall amphora keeled forward from a shelf and exploded into pieces next to me.
The boys condensed, a tight pack, laughing: ‘Clumsy git!’ and ‘Some dancer you are, borderlander!’
‘Borderlander?’ A pair of glaring eyes appeared between the still-standing amphorae.
A woman, passing a coin with one hand and holding a bag of spices in the other, turned frowning eyes at me out of her yashmak. ‘Which one—him?’
The merchant emerged from behind his shelf of tall earthenware pots and scowled at the broken pieces. ‘The feral scamp, see what he’s done to my stock!’
I darted away from him, towards the woman.
‘Shouldn’t be any borderlanders on this side, only down the North District . . .’ she was saying. ‘And that shirt’s citadel service, why’s he . . .’
Before I could slip away past her, two of the boys jumped out to block me. They crossed their arms with fat smug smiles. ‘Nah, musta stole it. He’s a borderlander alright.’
‘Theft and damages!’ the amphora merchant exclaimed. ‘How you gonna pay—’
‘What’s afoot there?’ asked someone else. A man’s voice. The boys who blocked me turned and looked at who was coming, as did the merchant and the woman. From around the turbans, cloaks and shawls of other shoppers, stepped an official. I hadn’t seen this uniform: a vivid blue with streaks of white. On his belt and boots, silver buckles gleamed in the morning sunlight. His forearms were bound with gauntlets of silvery steel, and on his head he wore a helmet that cascaded a mane of long blue tassels down steel-capped shoulders. At his side hung a sword in a scabbard of the same blue and white. He stopped between the two boys and looked at me.
Our eyes met.
Blue and white.
I don’t know how I did it: some instinct must have told me where the leader and other boys were standing. I spun around and made a feint towards the pottery shelf. That drew all three of those boys and in the split second it gave me, I was around them and running.
‘Hold that boy!’ I heard behind me through the whoops and howls of boys. The boys gave chase.
Zigzagging out of the market, I sprinted hard alongside the stacked buildings of stone, the long white ones, and then the ones with the terraces, past the curving houses with tiled roofs, across a yard of farming carts and pens of animals, then up the slope that I remembered from last night and back into the Inner City. The whoops and cries were never far. Once I recognised where I was, I made straight for the barracks – only to be cut off by another flash of blue and white before I reached it. I jack-knifed away from the second official, taking a new direction beside the wall of the courtyard instead. It was the way I’d come last night before turning towards the underpass. This time I just kept straight.
At a break in the wall, I grabbed the leg of a stone statue – one of two birds that manned what seemed to be the courtyard’s public entrance – and stopped to catch some of my breath. I dared a glance over my shoulder. The boys raced into view, howling and yawping. And then that shining helmet too, its tassels swaying with each step.
I pushed away from the stone bird, turning left into the almost-empty courtyard, and charged across the flagstones. Ahead was the rising citadel, its broad steps climbing to grand doors. Below the steps a huge stone beast bestrode a plinth; one clawed foot raised, its wings outstretched, eyes gazing straight ahead at me. Two men with spears were standing near it – yes, yes, the guards! But that break for breath had cost me: before I reached them, one of my towel-sleeves was grabbed from behind and I was pulled.
I fell on my back, grunting as my head smacked on a flagstone. Above me was the beast. Down its curved beak, between huge talons, it seemed to glower over me, the shadow of its wings encompassing me and the two guards, who came closer. One of the guards shouted the boys back – and I heard them fan out, skipping – while the other looked at me as if I’d gone completely mad. ‘Somewhere urgent to be, have you?’
‘Please take me to the Viceroy,’ I gasped as I propped myself up on an elbow. ‘He knows who I am. You’ll see if you just take me to him, please!’
The men exchanged a dubious glance, the first wiping a smile from his lips. ‘If you’ve a message or errands for the Viceroy, they’ll wait, lad. Sanhedrin council’s to convene in an hour.’
‘That there’s a borderland accent,’ said his partner. ‘This one’s a refugee.’
‘If he is, why’s he dressed for citadel duties?’
‘Torn your fancy dress, border boy?’ gibed one of the wild boys behind me. They’d retreated a short distance away, hopping as they circled the beast-statue. But now behind them the blue-and-white official entered the courtyard.
‘Please!’ I begged the two guards.
‘Hold that boy there!’
‘Ugh, now you’ve done it,’ groaned the first guard as both leaned down, each for an arm, and pulled me up onto my feet.
‘Hey, let me go! I’ve to go to the Viceroy,’ I protested as I squirmed between them. The sound of my voice ricocheted in the cup of the stone wings, then echoed in squealing voices by the boys.
‘So you’ve told us,’ said the first guard but only turned me around to face the blue-and-white. The hopping boys widened their circle to make way for my pursuer who slowed his jog to a walk, hand resting on the hilt of his sword.
‘Hand him over,’ he said when he reached us.
‘Lieutenant, we’re under instructions from the Captain to return any strays to their shelter,’ the second guard said woodenly.
‘It’s true!’ I shouted. ‘They are! I was there when he gave them!’
‘Look, just pipe down, kid, will you,’ said the guard.
As he stopped just shy of the winged shadow, the blue-and-white looked from me to the guards; a lordly look. ‘My own instructions are different,’ he told them. ‘A refugee has no business outside the North District. As such there must and will be consequences. Mondric knows this.’
A new voice: ‘Florian!’
Blue tassels swung as the helmet turned.
Two figures were coming towards us from the entrance. Fast as he could on his crutch, Con hobbled into the courtyard with Jerome tailing him. The boys threw curses.
‘More refugees!’ the blue-and-white bellowed across the open flagstones. ‘Do you know the offence you commit by entering this quarter?’
Con came within speaking distance; breathless, eyes bloodshot, shirt soaked through with sweat. ‘My name is Conrad Imry.’
‘No one asked for your name.’
Con nodded to me. ‘I came for that boy. He’s with us.’
‘Which, I think you’ll find, is where he should have stayed,’ the blue-and-white replied. ‘Now he finds himself in the custody of the Iron Shield. As you will too, should you fail to quit this district at once.’ He turned and beckoned to the guards. To my horror, their grip relaxed on my shoulders as, no longer arguing, they gave me up and thrust me out. Dumb cowards!
‘It’s not safe here, Florian. Come back with us.’ Con reached a hand out towards me while Jerome didn’t even move, staring at me blackly. I sickly felt there should be some kind of audience for all this drama, and yet apart from the ring of wild boys and a little beggar slouched against the courtyard wall, the place was empty. Con urged: ‘Now, Florian.’ But I didn’t want to. I knew that.
The blue-and-white took a step closer. ‘It’s me you’ll be coming with, boy, and I would advise you to come quietly.’
I retreated deeper into the shade of the stone wings, aware that behind me the two guards had moved onto the steps, moving away. ‘Only if you take me to . . . Caliph Symphin,’ I said, trying to bargain with him.
‘You’re in no position to be making demands,’ the man scoffed. ‘You have trespassed.’
Not far behind Con and Jerome, the pack of wild boys had started shouting in a chant as if baying for blood. It distracted me at just the wrong moment. Before I thought he could reach me, the blue-and-white lunged and grabbed me by the neck. I twisted, slipped out of the hold, but he caught my wrist. I dug my heels into the edges of the flagstones and leaned, tugging on my forearm and flailing. But he was a wall of pure strength.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Everything slowed then, though it happened within seconds. Con’s crutch fell down with a clatter as he put himself between us; wrapped one hand around my arm and the other around the blue-and-white’s steel gauntlet.
Boys cheered at that.
They cheered again as my captor rammed the pommel of his sword up and into my friend’s stomach. Con doubled over, limping backwards, and then the blade was drawn clear of its scabbard, the handle striking him across the face.
His fingers left me.
A broad blade sliced down through the air and stopped an inch before Con’s throat as he lay prone across the flagstones. Jerome suddenly lost some of his tan, his eyes like saucers, chest pumping hard. His brother moaned but kept his chin above the tip of the steel.
‘You will take greater care, young man,’ the blue-and-white warned him down the blade. ‘There are wills in this city that are greater than the Viceroy’s. Wills not to be thwarted. This child is under arrest. You may have some of him returned to you in due course, or you may not. The decision rests with other powers.’
‘Stick ‘im! Kill ‘im!’ the circle cried.
‘But he’s done nothing!’ I shouted back, looking to the guards on the steps for help. But they also did nothing—nothing but watch—and when I looked back to Con, the blue-and-white had turned to me again.
There was a moment of strange calm as he let go of my arm. Then, either side of the helmet’s nosepiece, his nostrils flared with anger. Blue tassels flailing, he swung the sword and wheeled the pommel from the left. It struck me just above my temple and threw my body like a branch; the pain too pure and white to feel it when I landed.
I heard only laughter from the boys and Con’s scream—‘Bastard!’ From the steps, the guards—‘Lieutenant . . .’ And then—‘Stay out of this one, guardsman.’ That voice was right above me. My collar pinched the skin of my neck as he hauled me up, ripping my shirt-front.
My vision blurred as he grappled me into a standing position, but I saw Con: he’d got up and was limping towards us again, a stream of blood down his face.
‘I’ve warned you,’ growled the blue-and-white, sword pointed at Con’s chest. That metal gauntlet was now pressed up against my windpipe, but then he slammed me hard against the statue’s plinth. I heard my head crack on the stone but barely felt it. ‘You would do well to stand clear. I’ve no qualm killing the boy where he stands.’
Behind Jerome, the boys regrouped. I saw the leader striding forward. Smirking, he picked up a shard of broken flagstone and gaily flipped it, hand to hand. His eyes were fixed on Con’s turned back. I tried to warn him, say his name, but couldn’t speak over the gauntlet.
Con staggered closer, fading my focus on the blue-and-white who had me. There was nothing I could do.
The tall boy shoved Jerome aside, clearing a path, and slung the shard.
In that moment I think I went blind. I heard the wet thud of the impact, Jerome’s scream, the wild pack’s whooping. Boots of the guards rushing from the steps. That bark in my ear—‘Get moving!’—as I was dragged onto the grand steps, past the stone beast, towards the high doors. Pain filtered through me.
When my eyes could see again, Con was lying totally still, head in a puddle that welled and ran between the flagstones. A guard was kneeling next to him. Help him, I willed. The other guard chased back the boys who’d claimed the crutch as a new weapon and had started closing on Jerome. Only once I was above the statue’s wings could I see my friend running from them, tripping and stumbling from the kicks.
----------------------------------------
A ball of pain. That’s all I was. In it, somewhere, was the hope that he’d march me to the Captain. Of course he didn’t. Foolish. Instead he marched me into an ugly, dark and jagged little room and there forced me against a grille of bars. The grille was opened. Again he hit me with the pommel of his sword, this time in the back, and I tumbled forward. He slammed the grille and my knees buckled. My body had never known this much pain. Too much for tears. Too much to really feel it all at the same time. Consciousness thinned and though he spoke at me, he sounded far away.
‘. . . don’t belong here . . . not long . . . pale-faced kind back in the desert at the mercy of the monsters you brought . . .’
Couldn’t look up, couldn’t focus.
‘. . . regulations . . . proper treatment for thankless guests . . . learn soon enough.’
I tried to speak: ‘Captain Mondric . . .’
‘He won’t help you,’ sneered the man before calling loudly, ‘Where’s the dwarf?’
He left.
I hugged my knees and bit one hard. As the throbbing in my temple grew stronger and stronger, I leaned against the bars to cool my eye on their metal. The darkness lapped around me as I fought to keep myself awake; tried to concentrate on the rhythms of footfalls and clatters I could hear from somewhere, and tried to figure out what part of the citadel this was. Not the barracks. Not the Deep. I winced at that. Only last night had Rusper Symphin warned me about the blue-and-white men, and yet here I was: their captive. Would Rusper Symphin, or the Captain, ever come to this place? And if they did, would they recognise me? Probably not, and so I knew I couldn’t afford to fall asleep.
Still, I flopped onto my side. I thought of Con lying in his blood and hoped with all the hope I still had that someone had helped him, taken him back to those healers, in time. Those guards could have done. Yes, that was something. They would have taken him to the healers like before.
But Jerome? Those boys were animals. If they caught him up before he got back to the warehouse, they’d kill him. Just like they’d tried to kill Con.
Refusing to sink into that fear, I stood and gripped the metal grille. Through the bars I looked at the room outside the cell. It was lit by a single guttering torch, high on a wall. Three ways led out: one left, one right and one by stairs leading down. Beside the stairs there was a table. It was bare but for a vice at one edge, all spattered black. I felt faint looking at it, so crouched to crawl into the darkest spot I could find, and stayed there.
And then I saw him. A short, round figure – his belly squeezed under the belt of his hessian cloak – approached my cell from the left passage. His hood was frayed, his boots were scuffed. And in the crook of his right arm something was wriggling: a wrinkled body of pinkish white; some long, translucent, hairless creature. Through the creature’s skin I saw its bones and tiny, rapid-beating heart.
The little man came to the grille and wedged his face between its bars. Small beady eyes, a froggy mouth. Then I remembered: it was him, the little beggar who had been slouched in the courtyard when the blue-and-white took me.
I said, ‘Who are you?’
His forehead expanded upwards like a swiftly rising loaf of bread, revealing the whites of his eyes. ‘Hetch,’ he replied in a powdery voice. Then nudged the creature’s flat head into view. It had no eyes; only a vile, long-whiskered snout with two big fangs poking out. ‘Heironymus.’
It was disgusting.
‘What is it?’
‘Sandrat.’
The man was simple, I realised. There was some dribble on his chin. Maybe he’d wandered in from the courtyard. No, he couldn’t have, surely: I’d failed to get into the citadel again without first being arrested. But it didn’t matter. I sighed and tried to ignore him away. He didn’t go. He stayed exactly where he was, forehead shrinking closed again until his puffy little eyes looked more like folded pastries.
‘He will come back again, you know,’ he informed me. ‘The Lieutenant, Jharis. Doesn’t like you Naemians.’
‘I noticed.’
‘None of the Shield do. It’s the law here, you see.’
‘What law?’
‘Against you.’
It wasn’t hard to be stern with him. ‘Tell me where I am.’
‘Gaol of the Iron Keep.’
‘I’m in a keep?’
‘Well, you’re being kept, aren’t you,’ he answered, lavishing the creature with a long stroke. ‘Because you’re Naemian, I told you. But you don’t look Naemian, Naemian. A poor example. Tell us your name.’ I looked away, shaking my head, but he bargained. ‘We told you our names.’
‘Dwarf, there you are!’
Suddenly the little man shrank from my grille as the blue-and-white came back up the stairs. Now cradling the helmet of blue tassels at his hip, his bald head gleamed in the failing torchlight. His lips were thin and flat and dark, his eyes ringed all around with shadows.
‘Here at your service, Lieutenant,’ said the dwarf as he cowered. The sandrat climbed onto his shoulder, then clawed its way down his swathed back.
The Lieutenant flicked his head towards me as if I were something a dog had done on the floor. ‘You’ve found our borderling then.’
‘The offence, sir?’
‘Strayed too far, this one.’
I glared my fury through the grille.
‘Can’t have it, no,’ said Hetch. Grinding my teeth, I showed him a share of that fury. The ugly little goblin had tried to get me to trust him.
‘No we cannot,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘Nor should the Viceroy expect leniency from the Shield. Where he fails to contain his contraventions, he will know it. If not from the throne, then from those most faithful to it. A clear example must be made of his audacity, dwarf, or anarchy will bring the capital to its knees even before the Rath reach its walls.’
‘We’ve seen the like before, Lieutenant.’
‘But not again.’ Slotting his key into the grille, the blue-and-white gave orders. ‘Take a finger, bind the wound, return him to his people. Let it be a memorable warning.’
Hetch wheezed, ‘My pleasure,’ as the grille swung wide. The blue-and-white pulled me up, out of the cell, and at the dwarf. Though Hetch was taller than me by not much more than a foot, his pig-like limbs were more than a match for my strength. He hauled me over to the table, eyes all asparkle. ‘A finger.’ He slammed my arm down, sprung the vice’s catch, took my wrist and squeezed it into the claw of icy metal. The vice clapped shut.
With every beat I thought my heart might rip right out of my chest, and as I hung there off the edge of the table I scrapped all pride; met the Lieutenant’s dusky eyes and let my face beg them for mercy. But I might as well have begged two stones.
‘The Senera requests my presence in council,’ he said. Then lunged and seized my shirt again. ‘Remember well this moment!’ he hissed at me, flecking my face with spit, before releasing me to the grip of the vice and the dwarf. The right-hand passage swallowed up his bootfalls as he left the gaol, or maybe I just couldn’t hear them over the noise of my heart trying to burst out.
Hetch had a knife now: playfully he stropped it over the vice, whetting the blade. I looked at my hand, pinioned and encircled by old black splashes. My heart climbed, every beat pushing it higher towards escaping through my mouth. I whimpered, writhing, but writhing was useless. I was held by iron.
Hetch said, ‘Be still.’
And then the sandrat was back: it leapt onto Hetch’s shoulder. An evil, wriggling spectator even without eyes, it chattered as if cheering its master on to split my flesh and break my bone and add my blood to the tabletop. The placeless echoes of the passages around us wheeled, a nightmare, while small black spots formed on my eyes, mouth drying up. He splayed my fingers, and chose. Cool steel pushed in, pressing the skin against the bone. The middle one. ‘Please,’ I cried, squeezing my eyes shut.
‘Be still,’ he wheezed in answer, ‘if you want a clean cut, that is.’ The knife left my skin and I sagged, legs going limp.
This thing would happen. It was happening. And I did want a clean cut.
He chopped—I screamed. Screamed with so much fear and rage and horror that surely that blue-and-white Lieutenant, wherever he’d gone, must have heard and smiled. Scoring my throat, I screamed before there was even any pain to scream at. I’d scream it out, all of it.
The catch sprang open and released me. I fell to the floor, skin dragging off the iron of the vice, and gripped the wrist, ready to faint. It’s not that bad, it’s not that bad.
It really wasn’t.
No—there wasn’t any pain at all. When I had the guts to open an eye, I saw a white weal marking the place where the vice had squeezed my captive wrist. But there was no blood on my hand. No ragged, belching finger-stump. I had five fingers. Had he missed? My head was swimming, body shaking and I felt sick. But I knelt and peeped over the table just in time to see the dwarf tug his knife free of the wood and slide it under his belt-strap, at no small risk to his belly. The sandrat laughed, draped on his shoulder, while the man’s fat fingers pulled a cork. He tipped dark liquid from a flask onto the table, spattering.
‘What are you doing?’ I dared to ask him.
‘You shh!’
He tucked the flask away and slung the sandrat, like so much laundry, to his other shoulder. Then lunged for me. There wasn’t time to decide if trusting him would be a good or bad idea before he grabbed my hand, pulled me up and dragged me down the stairs of the gaol.