Day Boy by Trent Jamieson Page B

There’s lights and steam engines throbbing
somewhere, like the pain in my temple. I can see the streets below, the folks walking
through it all as though it were nothing, and maybe it is nothing.
    But I can’t look at this place and see it without the threat Dain has suggested.
It’s there in the lights and shadows. From here all the way down to the Wide Circle
Road where the statues of the Fallen Dark stand, lit and featureless, as the Sun
once made them.
    I feel a gaze settle on me, and I stare down at the streets, and see the red glow
of eyes, a head turning, a figure walking away fast.
    I reckon since that Hunter chased me I’ve felt on the run, as though I had a target
painted on my back and there’s all manner of folks chasing me for it.
    And the paranoias strike me, and I think that maybe Dain has left me here. That he
isn’t coming back, that I’m some price paid whether I want it or not. Everything
has a cost, Dain says. Maybe I’m that cost.
    When I walk back inside someone’s waiting in the room. Give a little yelp, before
I’m jutting out my jaw.
    I’m out with my knife quick smart and the man smiles at me. ‘Put the stabber away,
little man.’ Madigan bares his fangs. ‘I’m not here to bleed you.’
    I slide the knife into my boot, but I keep the handle clear and in easy reach. ‘Why
are you here then?’
    ‘Your Master has left a message. He will not be returning this night, but you are
to expect him tomorrow evening.’
    ‘Where’s he gone?’
    ‘It is not for you or I to ask such things, or expect an answer.’
    I grimace at that, and he flashes me another toothful smile. ‘Deeper in the mountain,
I suspect. There is a meeting of the Council, and your Master has been invited. Just
as you do not question him, he cannot question them.’
    But I’ve questions all right. This fella smiles again, once, then is out the door
almost faster than I can see. It shuts and I lock it, though it’ll not do me much
good.
    Night and there’s doors closing, slamming. There’s airs moving. I can feel the breath
of the old building. I open one window a crack, catch the fires on the slope to the
west, and see the long shadows. Stir-crazy I am, two long days in this room, and
longer nights without Dain. Books only hold so much comfort when you’re as worried
as I am.
    There’s screams, and laughter, horrible until it ends, and then the silence is worse:
nothing more quiet than predators.
    A machine starts up somewhere, and I realise I’ve been dozing. Resilient, Dain’s
always called me and I thought he meant stupid.
    The doors to the outside are closing. I can smell the smoke of engines straining
at their work. Dawn’s coming another day, and the Master’s not returned, and I’ve
not had a visit from Madigan since that first.
    There’s trouble.
    Trouble I’m not the cause of, not at least direct like.
    And then, I see it, on the foot of my bed. A slip of paper marked with a spiral.
The Hunter’s spiral. And I’m gripped with the deepest of terrors. Things are creeping.
They will come tonight, and I have it, a horrible rising certainty. I need to get
out of here.
    I open the door wider. Step onto the balcony. Something hurls itself into the sky
and I bite back a yell. It’s just a bird, but my heart’s pounding. I look to the
road and the great doors closing.
    I know I shouldn’t. I swore I wouldn’t. But that terror’s rising. And I realise it’s
been there all along, building.
    Some of my kind have taken to calling you the Feast. If I run I could make it. I
might. I grab my bedsheet, tie one end to the edge of the balcony and then clamber
down, letting myself drop when the sheet runs out. I land a bit funny, twist my ankle
a little, but I can still run—sort of. There’s a low fence and I’m over it.
    Carriages pass me by, three of them, shooting down the road towards the heart of
the city, but I’m headed the other way. I’m safer in the light.
    The Gates of Dawn are three feet