‘This was a few weeks back. A young boy, up here collecting dung, perhaps.’
‘We get’em, out from the city.’
The furtiveness was ill-disguised. The old man licked his lips, switched at flies that weren’t there. There were secrets here, Murillio realized. He dismounted. ‘You know of this one,’ he said. ‘Five years old. He was hurt, possibly unconscious.’
The shepherd stepped back as he approached, half raised the crook. ‘What was I supposed to do?’ he demanded. ‘The ones that come out here, they got nothing. They live in the streets. They sell the dung for a few coppers. I got no help here, we just working for somebody else. We go hungry every winter-what was I supposed to do?’
‘Just tell me what happened,’ said Murillio. ‘You do that and maybe I’ll just walk away, leave you be. But you’re a bad liar, old man, and if you try again I might get angry.’
‘We wasn’t sure he was gonna live-he was beat up near dead, sir. Woulda died if we hadn’t found him, took care of him.’
‘And then?’
‘Sold him off. It’s hard enough, feedin’ ourselves-’
‘To who? Where is he?’
‘Iron mines. The Eldra Holdings, west of here.’
Murillio felt a chill grip his heart. ‘A five-year-old boy-’
‘Moles, they call ’em. Or-so I heard.’
He returned to the horse. Lifted himself into the saddle and roughly pulled the beast round. Rode hard back to the road.
A thousand paces along, the horse threw a shoe.
The ox lumbered along at the pace of a beast for which time was meaningless, and perhaps in this it was wise indeed. Walking beside it, the man with the crop twitched its flank every now and then, but this was habit, not urgency. The load of braided leather was not a particularly onerous burden, and if the carter timed things right, why, he might wangle himself a meal at the camp before the long return journey buck to the city. At least by then the day would be mostly done and the air would’ve cooled. In this heat, neither man nor beast was in any hurry.
Hardly surprising, then, that the lone traveller on foot caught up with them before too long, and after a brief conversation-a few words to either side of the jangle of coins-the load on the cart grew heavier, yet still not enough to force a groan from the ox. This was, after all, the task of its life, the very definition of its existence. In truth, it had little memory of ever being free, of ever trundling along without something to drag behind it, or the endless reverberation in its bones as wheels clunked across cobbles, slipping into and out of worn ruts in the stone.
Languid blinks, the storm of flies that danced in the heat, twitching tail and spots of blood on the fetlocks, and pulling something from one place to another. And at its side, squinting red-shot eyes, a storm of flies dancing, spots of blood here and there from midges and whatnot, and taking something from one place to another. Ox and driver, parallel lives through meaningless years. A singular variation, now, the man sitting with legs dangling off the cart, his boots worn and blisters oozing, and the dark maelstrom in his eyes that was for neither of them, and no business of theirs besides.
The ornate, lacquered, leaf-sprung carriage that rumbled past them a league from the camp had its windows shuttered against the heat and dust.
The man in the back had watched its approach. The carter watched it pass. The ox saw it moving away in front of it at a steady pace that it could never match, even had it wanted to, which it didn’t.
Snell was nobody’s fool, and when the ball of bound multicoloured twine rolled close to the door and Hinty stared at it, expecting its miraculous return to her pudgy, grimy hands, why, Snell obliged-and as soon as he was at the door, he darted outside and was gone.
He heard Bellam’s shout, but Snell had a good head start and besides, the stupid idiot wouldn’t just leave the runts behind, would he? No, Snell had made good his escape, easy as that, because he was clever and jerks could threaten him all the time but he won in the end, he always won-proof of his cleverness.
Up the street, into an alley, under the broken fence, across the narrow yard-chickens scattering from his path-and on to the stacked rabbit pens, over the next fence, into Twisty Alley, twenty strides up and then left, into the muddy track where a sewage pipe leaked. Nobody’d go down this pinched passageway, what with the stench and all, but he did, piss soaking through his worn moccasins, and then he was out on to Purse Street, and freedom.
Better if he’d stolen the runts to sell. Better still if he’d still had his stash of coins. Now, he had nothing. But nobody would catch him now. There were some older boys with connections to the gang that worked Worrytown, lifting what they could from the trader wagons that crowded through. If Snell could get out there, he’d be outside the city, wouldn’t he? They could hunt for ever and not find him. And he could make himself rich. He could rise in the ranks and become a pack leader. People would be scared of him, terrified even. Merchants would pay him just to not rob them. And he’d buy an estate, and hire assassins to kill Bellam Nom and Stormy Menackis and Murillio. He’d buy up his parents’ debts and make them pay him every month-wouldn’t that be something? It’d be perfect. And his sisters he could pimp out and eventually he’d have enough money to buy a title of some sort, get on the Council, and proclaim himself King of Darujhistan, and he’d order new gallows built and execute everyone who’d done him wrong.