Authors: Todd Shryock
Quinton glanced across the street to
see if he could spot Sands but saw nothing. There was also still no sign of the
maggots. As usual, maggots were proving unreliable, even on a good day. He
sighed and looked over at the vagrant again. His heart stopped. The vagrant was
holding another item up the light to see it. But this time Quinton noticed
something different. The light was coming from the far end of the street where
the wall was, but the man was holding up the objects in different directions
each time. In some cases, his shadow was falling over the item, making it
impossible to see any detail. He wasn’t examining anything -- he was using the
motion as a means of slowly studying his surroundings, including the
rooftops. Quinton wondered if he had already been spotted. The top of the
tower was still shaded and dark, and he was not between the man and the rising
sun, meaning he wasn’t backlit. He hoped he hadn’t been spotted but stepped
back to the center of the tower to be safe. Had Sands spotted the man, as well?
Who was he working for? Wren? This wasn’t something they had discussed. Should
he use the mirror now?
He decided to wait, keeping a close
watch on the man while still waiting for the maggots. The vagrant was almost
directly below him now, on the far side of the street. Quinton had to stand on
his toes to be able to see over the wall of the tower. The man was looking up
again, this time in his direction. Quinton could see the man’s eyes and that he
wasn’t looking at the small stone in his hand; he was looking right past it to
the tower. Quinton cursed himself for peering over with the man so close.
While he was still deep in the shadows and doubted the man could see him, there
was no need to take the risk. He decided not to move. He knew firsthand that
movement gave away a position more than anything. If the man had looked up
late, he would just be another part of the shadow and wouldn’t have noticed a
change. The vagrant looked down toward the base of Quinton’s building, made a
sound indicating he had spotted something good and shuffled off across the
street toward his position.
The boy was stuck. He didn’t dare peer
over the wall, as that would give him away for sure. But he also didn’t like
the idea of not knowing where the man was. If he got into the building and the
stairwell, he would be trapped. He moved back toward the wall nearest the
street away from the stairs that descended into darkness. If the man came up,
he could try to scramble down the wall and get away before he could catch him.
Quinton looked down the part of the street he could see. He immediately spotted
the two young maggots rounding the corner. He watched their faces to see if
they would give any indication of the vagrant’s presence below, but they were
staring straight ahead, chatting away.
Stupid maggots, he thought. Not paying
attention to your surroundings was the quickest way to get a permanent dip in
the river. If they saw the vagrant, they gave no indication, which told Quinton
that the man was probably below him in the building. Just then, he thought he
heard a shuffling below him, like rats scattering about, but he wasn’t sure.
His heart was pounding and he wasn’t trusting his senses. To make matters
worse, Quinton saw three men, each with greasy long hair tied behind him in a
ponytail, round the corner the maggots had just came from. Their faces were
grim and their eyes set straight ahead on the boys, who were unknowingly about
to be taken.
Quinton took the mirror, aimed it in
the air and pointed it across the street. Nothing happened. He looked again and
realized that the shadows from the tower roof were still too deep. He couldn’t
reach out far enough to get the mirror into the sun. He cursed again. This time
he heard a laugh coming from downstairs.
“I’m coming to get you,” came a voice,
the last word echoing on the hard stone walls of the stairwell.
Time to go. Quinton wrapped the mirror
shard in a small pocket to free up both his hands, ran to the edge of the wall
furthest from the street and climbed up on the edge. He grabbed at one of the
wooden posts supporting the roof of the tower and nearly tumbled over the wall
as a large piece of wood broke off in his hand. The post was dry rotted and
filled with the hollow tunnels of insects. He regained his balance and stuck
his foot over the wall, searching out a place that would support him. His foot
searched around but kept slipping off. The tower was made up of beach stones
that were rounded smooth from years spent tumbling around at the bottom of the
sea. The narrow mortar lines weren’t wide enough for him to get a grip, and the
stones were far too smooth to climb on. Maybe Sands could climb down something
like this, but Quinton knew that with the man coming up the steps, he didn’t
have much time to learn.
“I hear you,” called a hollow voice
from below. The man was much closer, probably half way up the steps by the
sound of his voice.
Quinton looked up. The roof of the
tower had a slight overhang that he thought he could reach. Using one arm
looped around the rotten post, he leaned out and was able to get a solid grip
on the edge of the roof. With his feet on the edge of the wall and his body
leaning precariously out over the forty-foot drop below, he unslung his arm and
grabbed the roofline with both hands. Rocking side to side, swung one foot up
onto the roof and used that to pull himself up onto the roof, grabbing and
clawing at the broken tiles all the way. Once safely up, he moved up to the
center of the peak and waited. With any luck, the man would think he had
climbed down the side and escaped.
After a few seconds, he heard the man
make the same noise of surprise he made when crossing the street. It was more
like a cry of happy discovery than anything else. Quinton held his breath, then
remembered the maggots below. He felt around the folds of his clothes, found
the mirror shard and held it out to the light. He aimed it across the street
and quickly flicked it back and forth, hoping that Sands had seen the signal
before it was too late. Then he heard the scraping. The man was feeling around
the roofline, his large dirty hands searching out a handhold. The boy watched
as the fingers felt around, looking for a hole or bump they could claim as
their own. It didn’t take long to find one. The man made the noise again, the
roof rocked slightly as he pulled himself up on the edge of the wall, and just
like Quinton had, the vagrant started searching with his other hand.
The second dirty hand reached up and
grabbed hold of a broken tile. The boy started inching his way down the peak of
the roof. Maybe he could kick his hands loose before he could climb up. As he
approached the edge of the roof, a mop of dirty hair slowly rose up, revealing
a scruffy, bearded face streaked with sweat and two dark hollow eyes that shone
of murder. As soon as the man saw the boy, the eyes narrowed slightly and a hum
of happiness came from his lips.
“Room for one more,” the man stated,
not asked. He swung his leg up, and with alarming quickness, pulled most of the
rest of himself up, as well. But as he just started to climb on to the roof,
Quinton heard a slow cracking of wood. The man froze.
“Uh oh,” he said in a slow, quiet,
almost girlish voice.
The roof started to sway. The rotten
post must have given out, and now with the weight of both of them on the roof,
it was starting to slowly rock in a circular motion that got slightly bigger
with each pass.
Another post cracked and gave way.
Quinton watched as the roof stopped swaying and the man looked up at him again.
“Ah,” he said with a grin. He moved his
hand up to get a better grip. The other two posts snapped in half, dumping them
over the side of the tower, Quinton riding it like some sort of twisted sled
through the air, crashing down to the roof of the warehouse below.
Quinton watched in disbelief as the
broken tower roof smashed into the warehouse roof, pushing the vagrant through
a hole and dislodging him into the darkness below. He breathed a sigh of
relief, only to have it pulled from him as the warehouse roof gave way, sending
the remains of the roof and him to the floor below. The roof hit the stone
floor and shattered, sending tile and wood fragments in every direction. He was
thrown off onto the floor and rolled to stop next to the blank stare of the
dead vagrant, his face forever frozen in a strange look of happiness, as if the
plummet from the roof had been a joyful ride in the country.
Quinton’s entire body hurt. His chest
and legs hurt from being bounced on the broken tiles and from the sudden jolt
of hitting first the roof, then the floor. His right knee hurt so badly he
wasn’t sure he could bend it, and he could tell from the light coming through
the hole above that he was bleeding in several places. But at least he was
alive. The rats, at first startled by the sudden appearance of the two men and
the tower fragment, started inching back toward him. They were already starting
to sniff around the dead vagrant, and he hated to think what they would do to
him once they realized what an easy meal he was.
The boy forced himself to sit up and
winced in pain. It took several moments to regain his breath and test his body
parts. He didn’t think anything was broken, but his knee was starting to swell.
He rolled over on his hands and knees, then slowly rose to his feet, gasping
for air to alleviate the pain shooting through his body. He could tell it was
quickly getting lighter by the glow coming from above and from the door that
was slightly concealed from him by a pile of debris. The boy limped over to get
a better look at the door, then headed out, sending rats scurrying around him.
Chapter 5
The sun was cresting the horizon, sending
long lines of brilliant red and orange across the early morning sky. Quinton
might have even described it as beautiful, if Star Gleam City weren’t such a
pit of despair -- and if his knee wasn’t screaming in pain. There were a few
workers walking down the far end of the street, almost out of sight from where
he stood. The dark shapes of the wall and the towers were visible, but as for
the maggots and the men following them, there were no signs. He looked up along
the roof line on the other side of the street, hoping to see Sands standing
there, but then cursed himself for even thinking the man would be stupid enough
to be spotted from down below.
He wasn’t sure what to do. Sands was
nowhere around, and any sense of danger seemed to have passed. He didn’t want
to head toward the wall, because that would put him deeper in enemy territory,
and he couldn’t exactly run away. He found a large piece of driftwood that had
somehow made its way up to one of the many piles of debris around the warehouse
and made a makeshift crutch out of it. His new aid in hand, he hobbled down the
street, heading back toward the guild. He hadn’t gone far when he saw two men
enter the intersection ahead of him. The men, the same ones he had seen
following the maggots earlier, were busy chatting and eyeing a butcher shop on
the corner and hadn’t noticed him. He hobbled over to a shadow along the near
building and didn’t move. One man, who was a head taller than the other,
sported grey, greased-back hair; the other was squat and muscular, his physique
emphasized by the faded red shirt that hung open at the waist, exposing a chest
full of muscle.
Quinton watched as the two men moved to
the door of the butcher shop, still talking and sometimes arguing with each
other. Occasionally, one gestured down the street where he was sitting, not
seeing him, but motioning about some unseen subject. The boy made sure he was
as deep in the shadows as possible, but the ever-increasing light made that
more difficult. There were no easy escapes from his current position, no
alleyways or cross streets. With his leg throbbing with pain, he doubted he
could climb, so he was stuck. The men stopped their arguing and the one with
the greasy hair disappeared inside, while the other kept glancing in every
direction as if standing guard. A few minutes later, the man reappeared in the
doorway. There was another man behind him, partly obscured by shadows. From
what he could see, the hidden man was wearing a rich green shirt with a large
gold medallion hanging around his neck. He was only in the doorway a moment,
then quickly disappeared back into the depths of the butcher shop. The
greasy-haired man motioned to his companion and started down the street
directly toward Quinton’s position.
Now what? he thought. There was no
running. There was no hiding. The only thing he could do was to stay put and
hope for the best. He pulled himself to his feet, put on his saddest looking
face and leaned precariously on his crutch, as if he had been a cripple his
whole life. The men were briskly walking down the street, and it didn’t take
long for them to notice him. Quinton hobbled out toward them, hoping his ruse
would work. As the men approached, he held out his hand.
“Please, sir, a coin for a poor lad?”
The muscled man didn’t pay him much
attention, but the greasy-haired man eyed him suspiciously. He repeated his
plea as the men approached.
“What are you doing here, boy?” said the
man with the greasy hair as he walked up to him and stopped, the muscled
companion standing beside him. “There are no beggars in this part of town.”
Quinton managed a wry smile. “Forgive me,
sirs, but that’s why I’m here. There’s no one else asking in these parts, so I
figured my chances would be better.”
The man ran his long pale fingers through
his dark hair as his eyes narrowed. “I don’t think that’s the case at all; do
you, Gus?” The muscled man just slowly shook his head and brought his hands
slightly in front of him.
Quinton stood his ground. “So do you have
a spare coin?” He looked from man to man, but their expressions were grim. His
time was running out. The guild taught you that when faced with a situation that
didn’t look to be to your advantage that you made every effort to change it to
your advantage. Do what the enemy least expected.
“I think he’s a maggot, sent here to spy
on us,” said the greasy-haired man. Things were quickly unraveling. Gus was
certainly the bigger threat, so Quinton struck him first. He planted on his
good leg and swung his other one up into the man’s groin as hard as he could.
Before he heard the man groan and saw him double over in agony, he swung his
crutch at the greasy-haired man. But the man had enough time to raise his arm
and lean away. The crutch hit him in the forearm and glanced off. His face
scrunched up in pain, but he was already moving for a knife at his belt.
Quinton lunged with the crutch, but the man jumped back out of his way. The boy
took the opportunity to smash the crutch down on Gus’ head, and he sprawled to
the ground unmoving.
“Methinks that you have made a terrible
mistake,” said the greasy-haired man as he brandished his long knife in his
right hand.
“Methinks I’m going to run,” Quinton said
as he held up the crutch to try to keep the man at bay. He glanced to either
side. The unconscious muscle man was to his right and his knee hurt so badly he
wasn’t sure he would be able to step over him. Not that it mattered. In his
current state, he couldn’t outrun anyone. There was a bit of an opening to his
left, but as soon as he glanced in that direction, his adversary stepped to
block the path.
“Be a good boy and put your little stick
down,” the man said with a sneer, showing his dirty yellow teeth as he did so.
“Or I’ll have to cut you.” He brandished his long, thin knife in front of him.
Quinton faked a lunge with the crutch to
keep the man off balance. Time was running out. “You’ll cut me anyway.”
The man smiled an evil smile with eyes
that gleamed like those of the fox at the henhouse door. “Ah, now, why would I
do that? You have some value while you are alive, but if you...”
Quinton made a break for it while the man
was finishing his thought, but his escape was short-lived. He spun to the right
and tried to run, but his knee almost immediately buckled, which allowed the
man time to reach for his arm. He missed, but it was enough to knock Quinton
off balance and send him sprawling on top of the muscle man, who groaned in
response. The boy felt a hand clamp down on his neck and squeeze hard, a blade
pressed to the base of his skull.
“Nowhere to run now.”
Quinton felt something jabbing into his
ribs, worked his hand under his body and felt the hilt of a small knife in the
belt of the unconscious man. He slowly pulled it out, but the man quickly
yanked him up to his feet, sending waves of pain through his knee and his neck.
But he still had the knife in his hand and kept it pressed against the front of
his body while the man stood behind him.
“Now I go to collect my little reward,
and you get sent away,” the man said, his breath nearly knocking Quinton back
to his knees. He didn’t know what the man was talking about, but he was at a
serious disadvantage so tucked the knife into the hidden folds of his dirty
clothes for use at a later time. It didn’t sound like the man was going to kill
him right away; he would wait for when he had an advantage to pull his little
surprise out of his belt.
“I’ll be back for you in a minute,” he
said to his unmoving comrade. “This way, I don’t have to split anything with
you. Now come on.” The last words were directed at Quinton, who was shoved
forward, the man’s hand and knife still clamped securely to his neck.
The man walked him toward the butcher
shop. A few people walked by as they made their way up the street, but they
were all smart enough not to even make eye contact, let alone question what was
going on. What was the world with one less orphan? As they approached the shop,
Quinton could see gruesome cuts of meat being placed in the window. Was he to
be turned into some sort of maggot sausage? He shuddered at the thought and
continued to look for an escape.
As he entered the doorway, the man threw
him forward and Quinton sprawled out onto the floor face down.
“Here’s a maggot for ya, Mr. Greenpants.”
Quinton was lying on a wood plank floor,
its grain long since worn smooth by the passing of booted feet. The smell of
smoked meat and spiced sausage was overwhelming, and despite his predicament,
he couldn’t help but think how hungry he was. He lifted his head and looked up.
A large pair of shiny black boots was just a few feet away. Tucked into the
boots was a pair of green hose worn by a very clean-looking man with round features
and perfectly combed hair. Around his neck he wore a small gold medallion that
he absently toyed with when he talked.
“Get up, boy,” Greenpants whispered. He
hadn’t said it loudly, but there was authority in his voice that was very
similar to Fist. He knew if he didn’t get up quickly, he was dead.
The man eyed him up and down, his gaze
pausing slowly at the spot where he had tucked in the knife. Quinton inhaled,
worried that the man had spotted his only hope, but then his gaze moved on.
When his eyes finally met the man’s, he knew that the man knew all about his
knife and probably everything else about him, too. There was no point in hiding
anything from him.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Quinton hesitated. What should he tell
him? The man’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly and Quinton blurted out, “I’m
Quinton.”
The man smirked. “I don’t care what your
name is, you little freak. Who do you work for?” The last sentence had a sharp
tone to it.
The boy swallowed hard. Each second, his
life hung in the balance. Each right answer would buy him a few more precious
seconds to find a way out. The planks behind him creaked as the man with the
greasy hair stepped up behind him. He couldn’t see him, but he knew that long
knife was still in his hand.
“I’m a maggot and I work for Fist.”
Greenpants’ expression changed, as if he
hadn’t expected him to say that.
“Just another urchin, sir, just like I
told you. Now about that reward?”
Greenpants stared blankly at the man for
a moment. “Where’s your partner?”
“Uh, well, he, uh,” the man started.
“I knocked his ass out,” Quinton
said.
Greenpants almost smiled as he glanced at
him and then the man. He raised an eyebrow as he looked at the greasy-haired
man.
“Well, sir, that’s not exactly true. I
... ”
The man cut him off. “I think it is true.
I think Quinton here is telling the truth. And I don’t know about a reward
because maggots are hard to retrain. They are rotten in the middle. Once
something starts to rot, there’s no stopping it. And you are so incompetent,
I’m surprised the kid didn’t take you out, too.”
“I, uh, sir, that’s not fair. I brought
you another kid just like you asked, and now the way I see it, you owe me the
money, uh, sir. I need that money, you see?”
Greenpants turned and walked away,
stopping behind a counter in front of a dark doorway. “Quinton, we will meet
again.” He glanced at the spot where Quinton had hidden the knife. The
greasy-haired man started to press past him to protest his lack of reward. “Now
give the man his reward.”
Never hesitate when the moment presents
itself, because it will never present itself again. That’s what the guild
teaches you. Quinton pulled the knife from his hidden place and in one fluid
motion, planted it in the man’s neck. Blood poured from the wound and the man dropped
to his knees, choking. Blood ran from his mouth and he started to teeter
forward. Quinton pulled the knife from the man’s neck, took the knife that was
still loosely balanced in the man’s hand that was quickly turning white, placed
both weapons in his belt and limped out the front door. He didn’t know if
Greenpants had watched him go or not. It didn’t matter. He had just faced down
death and been ruled the more worthy opponent. The fear that had gripped him
went away.
The townsfolk who walked by gave the
blood-spattered boy with the angry eyes a wide berth.
***
Hours passed.
The boy wandered through the streets in a
daze as the sun shone brightly, its light reflecting off the cracked brick and
stone facades of the city buildings. He was unaware of his surroundings, the
bustle of the city passing him by unnoticed.
When the pain in his knee brought him
back to reality, he found himself in the shadows of an alleyway. He was sitting
against the wall, his knees pulled up to his chest. A woman was standing in
front of him. He looked up at her and saw concern in her eyes, an emotion he
hadn’t seen for some time.
“Child, come with me.”
Quinton recognized the face. It was Lady
Turnbull, the woman who would stand and urge the street children to leave the
gang to live with her sect. Her hand was out. It might as well have been death
offering him a deal. He stared at the hand and didn’t move.
“Come.” She waited for him to take her
hand, but he just looked at her. She dropped her hand and sighed. “I’m offering
you a better life.”
“You offer me death,” spat the boy. “If I
go with you, they will hunt me down. No one leaves the family. No one leaves
the guild.”
“You could,” she said, her voice soft and
even. “You could leave the guild.” She paused, took a breath, then continued.
“Look at you. You are clothed in rags. You have blood spattered all over you.
When was the last time you had a decent meal?”
Quinton looked to the ground. He was
hungry now. What had he eaten this morning? Some bread scraps? Who knew? Whatever
it was, it wasn’t enough.