Dagger - The Light at the End of the World (3 page)

“
Where did it happen?” she
asked instead.

“
Outside the tavern of the
‘Gypsy.’ That jerk was drunk, I swear, he looked like… I threw him
on the ground, with the knife on his throat, and then he stretched
out his hand and tore the handkerchief from my face, screaming like
a madman. The gypsy turned on the light and illuminated me.
Fortunately, he didn’t feel like getting out in the dark to help a
stranger.”

“
You had to kill him. You’re
in deep shit. Mama will know about it. Mama always knows
everything. Maybe if he was really drunk he won’t remember your
face.”

“
I don’t think so. He
clearly said, ‘Oh shit, what color are your eyes?’” He grinned
bitterly. “You easily remember a pair of red eyes.”

“
Shit.”

“
You already said that. I
will think of something this time too.”

“
This time is
different.
This time
we lose.”

“
The
prayers!” the voice of Mama admonished.

Dagger turned. Right next to the door, locked up in a sacred
shrine and surrounded by black and red candles, Ktisis watched him
gnashing his wood fangs, roughly carved in his eternal sneer. He
knelt down and prayed.
He prayed Ktisis to
help him just once more, only once. But the g
od did not answer. He just kept on
staring at him, grinning.

Dagger opened the door and
found himself absorbed in a magnetic gaze, the stifling gaze of
eyes dark as night; sitting behind the desk, old Mama was waiting
for him. His presence filled the whole room. It was like the
notebooks where he used to write everything, the trunks in which he
was the only one who could get his hands into and the dusty, rusty
weapons around him were appendages of his body. He
was
that room. He didn’t
just live there. Everything in it reflected his own personality,
especially the trapdoor in front of the desk. The lament of the
Spider closed below rose even more desperately, hearing his
footsteps. Dagger had been down there only once, but not to be
punished. Mama never did punish him, not even when he did something
really stupid. He got down there pushed by curiosity, one of the
many times the old man was drunk to the bone. He did not find
anything special in that great, dark and cold space. There was
definitely nothing scary. It was just a cold and dark hold, with a
filthy mattress lying on the ground. He could not imagine what the
old man did to his fellows down there. None of them had ever wanted
to talk about it, as if they were ashamed. But every time he
summoned one of his Spiders, the old Mama made him stand upon the
trap door, painted in black with splashes of red paint, from which
came the need to never make him angry, not in there. Dagger stepped
forward, prisoner of his eyes, until his bare feet stood on the
rough painted surface of the trapdoor.

“
Three?”

“
Admirable!” Mama replied,
staring into his eyes. “And you’re still helping your sister,
aren’t you?”

“
Three Dragoon,” Mama
repeated, fiddling with a cigar between his fingers. “You’re the
only one that still manages to bring them to me, except of course
your sister, but that’s another story. You must have been at the
tavern of the gypsy. Yes, that place would remain open late even if
the entire city would end under water. And you have waited a long
time, since you got back this late. I like it, Dag, it means you
can wait for the right time and that sooner or later you always get
what you want. You’d have a long way with me, if you weren’t a
hopeless troublemaker who sooner or later will bring me to war with
the Three Galleons. It already happened, remember?”

“
And maybe you’re still
wondering why I haven’t killed you after what you’ve done,” Mama
thoughtfully continued, in one of those moments in which he seemed
to be speaking only to himself. “Disfiguring the face of a member
of the Three Galleons. You have to be really crazy, or desperate,
to do it.”

“
But he wanted to gouge out
my red eyes and burn me alive because he thought I was the son of
Kti—!”

“
Shhh!” the old man said,
raising an index finger. “Do. Not. Interrupt. Me. We paid a high
price. I had to hand them three of your fellows, of course the most
incompetent, but that’s another story. Only Ktisis knows, in his
divine cruelty, how much those guys have suffered before they
kicked the bucket. If they are already dead. In that guild, there
are people able to torture you for the rest of your days, you know?
Once they used to work for me, then they made a career. This world
brutalizes. You don’t have a little remorse?”

“
I’m glad I kept you with
me, because you will have a long way,” Mama summed up, trying to
get serious. “The fact remains that you must never hide anything
from me. I know how to fix things. I can treat. This is why we’re
all still alive, or at least afloat, in this rabid dog’s world.
Pacts are important. You always have to compromise with existence.
Many think I’m crazy. They proved me right. They proved me wrong.
But they could never last this long.” He drummed his index finger
on the desk. “Not in this hell. I’ve gone crazy in this hell. Once
I was not like this. I was a legend, a
living legend
, they called me. I had
a tower, you know? From there you could see the desert, the whole
fuckin’ desert, with the Ktisisdamn ruins and everything. Then you
came. The infamous fate, in his unconscious and inscrutable wisdom,
has decided to entrust you in my sinful hands. Yeah, I was a legend
once, but you know what remains of human deeds once time buries
them under his generous load of shit?”

“
Tell me,” the Great Mama
uttered. “I will not punish you this morning. Is there anything
else I should know before I get a visit from the Three Galleons’
emissaries, or the men of the prefect, or both, knocking on my
door, armed to the teeth?”

“
Good. I believe you,” the
old man replied. “It’s just that in your eyes sometimes I read
things that… well, that are not there. I haven’t been a good father
to you. All this responsibility made me mad, but once it wasn’t
like this. It would have been better to die a thousand times than
to live this life, and now you know that too. One day I killed my
father, you know? He killed my little brother. I killed him. But
that’s another story.”

“
Ah. Dagger?”

“
Next time you help that
little bitch get the three Dragoons I throw you both into the sea,
together. With your ankles tied.” He laughed. “Oh yeah. It will be
a nice thing to see. From now on she must do it alone, otherwise
it’s useless she remains here with us! This district is full of
brothels and with her exotic beauty I won’t have trouble selling
her. You know she’s not your sister. Why do you help
her?”

“
Because she’s my only hope
of
Redemption
,”
Dagger said.

Mama remained silent, struck
by that answer. Then he shook his head. “Oh, but there’s no
redemption in this world. Not for you. So
this
is your problem. You still need
to understand it, but don’t worry. Now I’m going to help you. I
always know what needs to be done for your own good.”

“
Without you, I am nothing,”
he said, supposing she was asleep. “What happens to you, happens to
me.”

She turned in her sleep,
pillowing her sprawled face on his arm and snorting. Dagger smiled
and closed his eyes. Fatigue got the better of him. In the land
between dream and reality he felt, as always, the wind in his hair.
That wind-borne sand was about to push him in the
Antiworld
, the world of
unconsciousness and dreams where even dead were given to
speech.

“
What do you want?” he asked
but, looking in their eyes, he realized that those five were not
there to talk, and they were so high on
magic
that they didn’t fear even
death. They were there to obey an order of the Great Mama, and they
would at any cost. Dagger did not wait to attack. No one could
compete with him in there when it came to the blade. He fought back
all their attacks, far too weak and predictable, and came to cut
one of them in the face, thrusting the blade into the cheek and a
spray of blood hitting him. With pleasure, he heard his scream of
pain mixed with toxic panic. Before realizing he had fallen into
their trap with both feet, two of the Spiders grabbed Seeth, still
lay on the ground and dragged her by the hair toward the studio of
Mama, laughing crazily, their pupils dilated.

“
Dag!” his sister cried,
waking with a start and grabbing her hair. “Dagger!”

He looked at her getting
farther and farther away, helpless, as if in a nightmare, while the
other ones kept him busy with his knife, indifferent to hurt as
only someone under the effect of
magic
could be. They let him go only
once sure he would not make it; Dagger reached the door just in
time to have it slammed in his face. He tried to ram it down,
kicking it, but the Spiders lifted him up and pushed him away,
still laughing. He slammed his back against the wall and slid to
the ground, unarmed, taking his head in his hands as they continued
to beat him ferociously, with kicks and punches in the open face.
When they stopped, he heard the trapdoor being opened among the
hallucinated laughter.

“
No! No!” he whimpered
helplessly, spitting out blood. Now he understood what Sannah had
meant with his last words. He would not punish him, he never would
have. Dagger heard the screams of Seeth throughout the night, as
well as all the Spiders, as she was administered suffering. At
every cry of pain he repeated to himself it was all his fault, of
his illusion, because there was no hope, no redemption in that
world, not for him. Gods didn’t listen to a street Spider’s
prayer.

“
I’ll take you out of here,”
he whispered. “I’ll take you out of here even if it’s the last
thing I do!”