“Come on Jeb, we have to get home!” Mel yelled as she skipped into the Alley’s mouth. It wasn’t fair, she was older than Jeb; her legs were longer, of course she would have won the race to the alley. She knew that, she cheated. Jeb thought that she must have been planning it all the way from the Town Hall. She had always done better in school, back when the school’s had been open anyway.
What was that word Da used? Cun- Cunn-cunning! That was it! She was right cunning she was.
“Wait! I’m coming!” Jeb yelled out, hefting the bag full of stale bread over his little shoulder and chasing after her. They had spent the whole afternoon waiting in line at the local Common building, waiting for bread that was smelled like his great-grandma’s old clothes and hurt his teeth almost as much as the time he tried to eat a rock. Ma said that was all they could get though, said he should be grateful, the first people in Idlethen had had to eat grass before they built the city! Grass, like a cow!
“Come oooon, Ma said to be home by dark!” Mel was standing just in the alley proper now, bouncing up and down like their baby brother on Da’s knee. Jeb ran to her and sprinted straight past her, the sack of bread bouncing roughly against his back. Ha! Who’s slow now? Jeb plunged into the alley as he heard Mel shout for him to wait. He gritted his teeth and kept running, she might have beat him there but he would beat her home!
Mel might be a stupid cheater but she was right about one thing, Ma said they absolutely HAD to be home by nightfall.
The alley ran between Profit boulevard and Stocks Street, they lived at the end of Stocks street in a rickety old, wooden tenement. There were eight of them crammed into their little apartment, Ma, Da, the baby, his Da’s parents and even his great-grandma. This had been normal even before the Empire and their scary men had come. Jeb and his family weren’t no mid-town Richies. They were good honest folk trying to become Richies; that’s what Da said. He said every person in Idlethen wanted to be a Richie and if they worked hard enough, they would be. It must take a lot of hard work though, Jeb thought, his Da had been working every day of Jeb’s life and they had never moved out of that apartment.
“Jeb! Jeb stop!” Jeb ignored Mel’s girly cry and kept running, looking back at her and smiling as he burst onto their street. First one there! He’d run this time, even with his little-
Jeb didn’t see the Empire man until it was too late. He smashed into the tall Canvul’s armored thigh with as much force as his small body could have. He bounced off the grey armor with a cry as both he and the Canvul went tumbling to the cobblestones. The rest of the Canuvl’s men, three humans in twisted animal masks yelled curses at him. Before he knew what had happened their long bayonets were pointed at his throat, the steel polished to such a sheen Jeb could seen his own terrified eyes reflected in them.
Jeb froze, suddenly very cold and very scared. This was worse than the time his Da had taken him to the top of the clock tower and he had looked down. At least then his Da’s strong arms had held Jeb safely back from the edge. Da had packed him up and told him it was ok to be scared sometimes, that his Da would always be there to help him. Looking into the snarling animal faces on the soldiers and the razor points of their bayonets made him want his Da very badly right then.
“Sir! Are you alright? How dare this heretic touch you!” One of the tall soldiers shouted, helping the Canvul to his feet and frantically brushing dirt off his scarlet coat.
“S-sorry sir. I-I-I Didn’t mean it.” Jeb stammered.
“Please sir! Please, my brother meant nothing by it. We just wanted to be home by curfew. Please our parents are just down the road. I’m sure they can explain.” Mel’s voice was shaky but she sounded far more alright than Jeb felt. She was standing as close to him as she could get, the bag of bread left somewhere in the alley and her pale hands were held up and away from her body, like Jeb had seen some of the criminals taken by the Empire do.
“Explain what human! There’s precious little to explain. This little one assaulted me. I’d wager your brother here is a Collaborator with the old Merchants.” Jeb didn’t understand, he didn’t like the Merchants as much as anyone in the Stock Street tenements. He wasn’t no Colla- Collaba-Collaborator, whatever they meant he weren’t it.
“I ain’t no collab-orr-ator. We just want to get home, that’s all.” Jeb yelled from the street. He wasn’t sure what that meant but Da had said to do everything these new Empire folk told him. Maybe if he did, they’d let him go? It worked at the school house often enough, maybe these fancy Canvul were the same.
The Canvul’s black lips twisted along the length of its snout, Jeb saw a flash of ivory fangs against its ochre fur. In the twilight the Canvul’s expression was twisted into something monstrous.
“I’m surprised something so stupid can speak. Are all of you like this? At least my Penitents know their place.” The Canvul nodded at one of the masked soldiers standing by Jeb.
Without a word the masked man flipped his rifle up and slammed it down hard on Jeb’s forearm. A sharp crack echoed through the empty street and Jeb felt something in his arm shatter against the cold cobblestones. The pain was so sudden, so intense that he forgot to breathe, forgot to scream as the masked soldier stepped back and stood at rigid attention. The pain was like nothing he had felt before, the outside of his arm felt like a FrostWeaver was covering it in ice but inside his bones it felt as hot as burning coal. The two awful feelings rushed to his head and for a moment the warmth took over and everything went black.
A moment later and he woke again, lying on the cobblestones now with a pain on the back of his head and someone screaming. He kept his eyes screwed tightly shut, there was a light outside and it hurt to look at; everything hurt. He wanted the screaming to stop; his head hurt enough and that nightmare had been so…
He forced his eyes open a crack too see the nightmare wasn’t over. The tip of the bayonet hadn’t moved.
“Leave him alone!” Mel screamed and ran at the soldier by Jeb, hurling her small body at them. She was only two years older than Jeb but always looked so much bigger. Against the soldier in their red and gray uniform though she was tiny. The soldier kicked out at her chest with one huge huge black boot and sent Mel sprawling to the ground in a mess of black curls, grey smock and tangled limbs.
Jeb tried to say something, to crawl over to her but the pain and the fear was too much. Instead, he just curled up on the hard cobblestones and whimpered. Where was Ma and Da? He just wanted to curl into Ma’s arms and let her rock him to sleep, warm and safe, just like when he was a kid. He had told her he wasn’t no baby anymore but he’d lied, he wanted Ma now more than ever.
“Filthy humans,” the Canvul muttered, “You, Penitent, stand aside! This one has assaulted one of his Majesty’s chosen. There can be only one punishment.” The trooper holding the bayonet to Jeb’s throat stood aside without a word. Jeb was relieved that the sharp blade was gone.
A moment later and he wished it was back.
The Canvul squatted down before him, bringing his long, snarling snout close to Jeb’s face. The man’s breath smelled of cheap wine and his black, dagger shaped pupils were wide enough they could have been human. “Do you know what my kind used to do to filth like you after the first war?” The Canvul hissed, spittle flying across Jeb’s face.
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Jeb couldn’t speak, it took all he could manage to shake his head, even that sent the world spinning and the pain in his head flared like old newspaper added to a fire. Up close the Canvul was even scarier than the bayonet. The Canvul was the nightmares that woke him screaming every night since the first two months ago, it was the monster that kept him awake late at night and hiding under the covers of his parents’ bed.
“We tore out their throats,” The Canvul smiled slowly, showing every one of his long, pointed teeth, “Slowly.”
Jeb screamed and tried to scramble back. His broken arm collapsed beneath him as he did and he crashed to the ground, sobbing and in so much pain he couldn’t keep his head up. Desperately, he looked down the street, he swore he could see people coming out of a door not far away. They were silhouetted in the light but he was sure it was Ma and Da, it had to be.
“Hey! Piss off ya’ furry bastard!” Jeb couldn’t see who had shouted but he heard a door being thrown open, followed by hard footsteps. “He didn’t do nothing wrong so leave ‘im alone.” Jeb’s thoughts moved like the packed grocery store on a Sanguinday morning, slowly and full of struggle. Was that… someone come to help?
“Back into your home human! Or you’ll be the one I break next!” The Canvul sneered. To punctuate his word one of the Penitent’s raised their long rifle at the speaker.
“He’s right! Leave the boy alone sir! It was just an accident!” This was another voice, from the other side of the long street. “That’s right! Leave him!” Another voice, from the same place as the other.
The sounds of doors and shutters being thrown open echoed all over the street. The Canvul looked up, his eyes going wide as more and more people stepped into the street. His Penitents pulled in around him and Jeb. The bolts of their rifles clacking as steel met steel.
The shouting grew louder as more people joined in, protests rolling down the street like the thunder of a summer storm. Among it all Jeb heard a voice that made the pain go away, just a little.
“Leave my boy alone you bastard!” His Da roared. Through his tears Jeb could see him running down the street towards Jeb and his sister. Ma and GrandDa were right behind him. Jeb had thought he couldn’t get more scared but when he saw the expression on his parents’ faces he stopped breathing. Ma looked scared, just as scared as him and his Da…
He had never seen Da look so angry. Even the time when Mel had lost the wallet, he had given her to buy food. His father always said that nothing in Idlethen made men mad like money. Seeing his face then, Jeb realized it had been a lie.
“Stay back human! Your child is guilty! He belongs to the Second Empire now.” The Canvul roared and reached down, pulling Jeb to his feet. The man’s long claws tore through his homespun shirt and scratched at his back. The Canvul wrenched Jeb in front of him and held Jeb between himself and Jeb’s parents like a shield.
“This child, this human, is guilty of crimes against His Majesty and his soldiers and I will be the arbiter of His justice.” The Canvul was screaming, angry and desperate as the residents of Stocks Street circled closer around him. “Stay back! If any of you come closer, we will shoot. Penitents!”
The Penitents all took aim, moving together like the string puppets at last year’s fete. Jeb whimpered as his Da stepped forward, facing down the bayonets and the black maw of the barrels. Couldn’t Da see how scary they were? The polished metal burned orange in the dying twilight sun, the slight sway of the rifles made them look like Fae lights from the stories GrandDa told late at night.
“Please, please sir let him go., Take me instead, tell them I ran into you instead. I’ll-“His Da’s voice broke and for a moment Jeb thought he was going to turn around, turn around and leave him. “I’ll take whatever punishment he deserves, please. Let my boy go.” His father was right in front of the bayonets now, tears streaming down his weathered, soot-stained face. Despite the fear Jeb felt his chest go as warm as a cooking fire. Da was here to help!
But… Da had said he would take the punishment. Jeb didn’t understand, what punishment? He hadn’t done anything wrong; no one had done anything wrong. No one except the Empire and the Canvul, they had hurt him, hurt Mel.
“Gerard no!” Ma called leaping forward from the crowd until she was pulled back by his GranddDa and their neighbors. “Please sir, please,” she cried, pleading to the snarling Canvul, “please let them go. We haven’t done anything, we… we serve the Empire.” His mother wriggled out of his GrandDa’s grip and threw herself to the ground in the deepest bow Jeb had ever seen. It was just like the bows he had seen the Empire’s soldiers give their leaders.
There were a few gasps from the crowd, Jeb heard words muttered that would get him spanked if he said them. The people of Stocks Street were workers through and through, the ‘backbone of Idlethen’ his Da called them. They had no love for the Empire and their theft of the worker’s fair wages. Money made the man and stealing that money was the same as stealing his soul, or so his Da said.
“Well at least one of you knows your place.” The Canvul put his hand around the back of Jeb’s neck. Jeb could feel the sharp talons prick him through his threadbare collar. He tried to ignore it, tried to look through the pain and the tears at Ma and Da’s faces. He wanted to screw his eyes closed and ignore it all until it went away.
“Very well, we take her. Give her a chance to serve and pay her penance! Penitents!”
The two Penitents aiming at Da rushed forward in a blur of red and grey, Da was tossed aside with a shout and the crowd gasped. Jeb was pushed forward too, stumbling from the force of the shove and falling to the ground on his broken arm. He screamed again, the sound lost in the cacophony of shouts, screams and curses all around them. He couldn’t see what happened then, it hurt so much his body wouldn’t move, couldn’t move.
He heard thudding boots, curses and cries from the crowd. He heard his mother screaming, bare feet slapping at the ground and someone shouting his name in a high, girlish voice. All of the noise blended together, a storm of sounds that consumed him, compressing his world down to a single, unbearable point of pain and fear. It might have lasted a moment or it might have been his whole life, he couldn’t know but he did hear how it ended.
A single sharp, metallic crack of a rifle being fired.
Jeb flinched and curled up even tighter; some animal instinct kicking in. It wasn’t the first time he had heard rifle fire, all of Idlethen had come to know that sound two months ago. It was the closest he had ever been to one though, and the first time where he knew who had fired it.
“Mel!” His Ma’s shrieked.
He struggled to roll over as quiet descend on the street, the last echo of the shot fading into the distance. The crowd had gone silent, the sort of quiet Jeb had lonely heard twice before; the day his GrandMa had died and one day, two months ago when Idlethen burned.
He finally managed to haul himself onto his side despite the screaming pain in his arm and the burning of his eyes. He saw his mother crouched over a dark lump on the cobblestones. It took him a moment to recognize what it was.
Grey smock, black curls, red blood.
His sister; tall, bossy Mel. Dead on the ground.
Jeb had seen bodies before, sleeping peacefully like his GrandMa or hanging from one of the gallows put up by the Empire. But not like this, no broken and bleeding, the colour slowly draining from a face he knew so well. He couldn’t stop staring, watching his Ma sob or his Da’s ashen face as he stared at Mel.
“She attacked one of my Penitents! She deserved to die!” The Canvul yelled, his high-pitched voice a trill that broke the moment. People in the crowd started shouting, screaming, crying. Jeb realized some of them were his neighbors, people that had know him and Mel for years. “Penitents! Take the body and the two humans!” Two of the soldiers rushed forward and seized his Ma and Da.
The other soldier left the Canvul’s side and helped one drag Ma away. She was still screaming, a high pitched, wordless screech of grief. Tall, older Mel looked tiny in her arms as Ma clutched her tight to her chest, both of them covered in blood.
“Leave them alone!” Someone shouted. “Murderers!” Shouted another voice. The anger among the crowd flared like liquor on a flame. The Canvul officer ignored Jeb and frantically motioned for his troops to back away, Jeb’s Ma and Da still being led away in shocked stumbles. Jeb cried out and tried to crawl toward them on his stomach. Each shudder across the cobblestones was agony, but nothing hurt as much as the thought of his parents, his family being taken away.
Part of it already had been.
There was a rush from behind him, people yelling, not in fear but in anger. Dozens of pairs of legs, human, Canvul, even Mrs. Yinxos with her long, furred splayed toes, large round ears and thin tail swaying behind her. They all closed around him, someone grabbed him under the knees and the shoulders, lifting him from the ground as gently as possible.
“It’s alright son, it’s alright.” Jeb didn’t know the voice, a strong masculine voice that he thought he might have heard once or twice before on the street. “It’s alright son. It’s over now. It’s over.” The man wrapped his arms around Jeb’s head, pulling him into a shoulder that smelled of flour and fermenting yeast.
Jeb kept his head there, eyes screwed shut as he listened to the furious crowd chase out the Canvul and the soldiers. There was a few more shots, a few more screams. He heard his father yell, a long wracking cry that faded into sobs lost in the noise. Someone called his parents’ names but after another crack of a rifle that went quiet.
Despite being surrounded by all his neighbors, Jeb suddenly felt very alone.