Prisoner of Fate (11 page)

‘I’m impressed,’ Chase said. ‘When did you learn to feel the quality of the water?’

‘Call it a Blessing,’ Sunlight replied, and a faint smirk danced on his face.

Chase wiped his hands on his navy trousers and smoothed back his dark blond hair. The grey daylight filtering through the vent revealed the extent of the Bog Pit cell.

It wasn’t a single room, as he’d assumed, but three cavernous areas joined by large openings carved in the rock. The men scattered around the walls and along the floor were thin, hungry and desperate, and as he returned Sunlight to the place where they’d slept he sensed a feral presence worse than any he’d encountered in the city slums. These were the men who failed to survive against the odds even in the city’s grimiest backstreets, men trapped and destined to die. They had nothing to lose in this place, not even identity or dignity. To the outside world they were already dead. He glanced at Boss and his three cronies leaning lazily against the rusted iron at the bars. Boss was talking to a guard, a solid, black-bearded bald man, with a massive axe dangling from his belt. ‘Is Boss friendly with the guards as well?’ he asked.

‘My guess is that you can see him at the gate,’ Sunlight replied.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s his way of making himself a big man in this place,’ Sunlight explained, as Chase and he sat against the wall again. ‘He keeps the peace in here and for that they slip him morsels of food as reward.’

‘Who are his friends?’

‘There should be one with a whining voice. That’s Pigspit. The one with the big boots is called Boots. The third one’s named Dogger. He never speaks, but Boss gets him to keep an eye on special cases as Boss calls them.’

‘What nickname did they give you?’ Chase asked.

Sunlight chuckled softly, and said, ‘Boss said he’d call me Cockatoo, but when I became too frail to get food for myself he stopped talking to me. His policy is to let the sick and dying die, preferably quickly. He’s hurried it along in some cases.’

‘He’s killed other prisoners?’

The old man nodded. ‘Of course. It’s part of his commission. That’s why the authorities put him in here.’

‘When did he arrive?’

‘About a year ago, I think,’ Sunlight explained. ‘My eyes were getting bad, but I could still see enough back then. Rumour is that he was a murderer on the outside, mainly of easy targets. He killed them for money.’

Chase stared at the rakish figure by the bars. A memory stirred. ‘Do you know his name?’

‘No. His first rule when he got in here. No names. Just the ones he gives you.’

Chase was remembering a dark narrow alley on a rainy winter night. He was about to climb out of the window from the metal merchant’s shop when two shadows passed, one a few steps behind the other. He hesitated to avoid discovery—waited in case either shadow was going to enter the merchant’s shop—before cautiously peering out of the open window. He heard a muffled shriek cut short. In the further end of the alley, a figure rose from the shadows and stalked back towards the main street. Chase had slunk back into the safe darkness of the merchant’s shop, but the figure stopped outside the window to brush down his cloak and in the poor gaslight filtering from the main street into the alley Chase glimpsed the man’s gaunt features, hawkish-looking eyes and grim expression. Then the killer moved on. Later, when he mentioned the incident to his sister, Passion, she told him about a local murderer being sought by the authorities
because he was randomly killing minor people for very little money.

‘I’m going to look around some more,’ Chase announced.

‘There’s no way out, lad,’ Sunlight reminded him.

Chase grinned and stood. ‘There’s always a way out.’

C
hase skipped over the sewer channel and followed the cavern’s curve until he stood directly beneath a vent. The daylight filtering through the grate was wintry grey and the sky, the little he could see so high up, was also grey with rain clouds.

‘What are you looking at?’ a gruff voice asked. He lowered his gaze to a skeletal figure. ‘I said,
mate
, what are you looking at?’ the stranger repeated.

‘How high is that vent?’ Chase asked.

‘Who cares?’ the man grunted. ‘I don’t like your attitude.’

‘Sorry,’ Chase replied. ‘Who are you?’

The man squinted through saggy eyes and a bedraggled shag of dirty hair. ‘Who’s asking?’ he growled.

‘My—’ Chase went to reply, but caught himself and said, ‘Boss tells me I’m Bilby.’

‘Then piss off, Bilby,’ the stranger snarled.

Chase slid his right hand into his pocket, turned warily, and retreated to a shadowy nook in the cavern from where he could survey the layout in more detail. He knew from his earlier reconnoitring the previous day that there was a vent in the ceiling of each of the three caverns, at least thirty spans above the floor and in the
centre of the roof. The walls were limestone and damp in many places, easy to dig into, but there seemed no possible way to climb to the vents. He picked up a loose chunk of limestone and experimented with digging, but the limestone tool crumbled even as it scored a hole in the wall. Digging a tunnel would require stronger tools, but it would be possible given the soft material. The problem was that digging would be very obvious in the cavern and it would attract too many prying eyes. Several inmates were already watching him intently after his brief digging experiment. He shrugged and pretended to shuffle towards the sewer for a piss.

He followed the sewer to the point in the wall where it emptied into a tiny tunnel. He was certain the sewer tunnel would have to run out to the cliff to empty its contents, so he had a sense of direction from it, but the tiny sewer offered no possible escape route. Disappointed, he returned to hunker down beside Sunlight who was picking at his remaining teeth.

‘Another one’s rotted away,’ Sunlight mumbled, a finger still probing a molar. ‘Hardly got any left.’ Chase sat beside him, brooding, staring at the ground. ‘Given up after one day?’ the old man asked.

Chase looked up. ‘No. I don’t give up that easily.’

‘Then what are you thinking about, son?’

Chase checked to see if anyone was within hearing, and when he was satisfied no one could hear him he said, ‘I want to know why you were put in here.’

Sunlight stopped picking at his tooth and sucked in his breath. He coughed, and spat, and said, ‘You already asked me.’

‘And you told me nothing.’

Sunlight coughed again. Throat clear, he said, ‘I discovered something I wasn’t meant to know.’

‘And what was that?’

‘It’s too dangerous for you to know.’

Chase laughed. ‘You’re the one telling me I won’t get out of here so what harm is it going to be to tell me?’

‘They’ll hunt you down.’

‘
They
?’

‘The Seers,’ said Sunlight.

‘The Seers?’ Chase queried. ‘Why would they be threatened by what you might tell me?’

‘I was a Seer.’ Chase’s mouth opened in disbelief and he studied the craggy, filthy face with its milky unseeing eyes and straggly grey beard. ‘You don’t believe me, do you, son?’

‘I’ve never met a Seer,’ Chase replied. ‘We don’t see them in the Foundry Quarter much, only the ones they call acolytes.’

‘How old are you, son? Seventeen?’ the old man asked. Chase nodded. ‘Well, by my estimation, I think I’m nearly sixty-seven,’ Sunlight said. ‘The eldest prince was twenty-five and the youngest one not even born when they locked me away. Even after seventeen years they won’t let me out of here because of what I know.’

Curiosity aroused, Chase leaned closer. ‘So what aren’t you supposed to know?’

‘If I share this with you, son, your knowledge will make you a dangerous man, and your life will be at a greater risk than you might want it to be.’

Chase snorted. ‘At
greater
risk? My arm’s going to be hacked off, and I’m in here. I don’t have much left to lose under these circumstances, don’t you think?’

Sunlight’s face remained grim, as if he was still deciding on whether to share what he knew. He sighed, and asked, ‘Have you heard of the Demon Horsemen?’

Chase shrugged. ‘Of course I have. Every mother tells their children that tale to scare the living daylights out of them and make them believe in Jarudha.’

‘It’s good advice,’ said Sunlight. ‘The Demon Horsemen bring death to all who see their burning eyes
or smell their fiery breath. They are meant to be Jarudha’s scourge for evil.’

‘It’s a fairytale,’ said Chase.

‘It’s no tale, son. The Demon Horsemen are real. Or at least, they can be made real.’

‘This is your secret? A lesson in religion? Everyone knows this,’ Chase scoffed. ‘Just no one believes it.’

‘What if I told you that there is a very special key to open the locks that let the Demon Horsemen ride across our mortal earth?’ Sunlight said.

Chase searched the cell for a clue that anyone was listening to their conversation before he asked, ‘What key?’

‘It’s called a Conduit.’

Chase blinked. ‘And what’s a conduit?’

‘Have you ever heard of Lady Amber?’

Chase grinned and sang softly,

’
Twas said she was a beauty rare, Of snow white skin and long red hair.

He chuckled. ‘Do you want the nice version or the tavern ditty?’

Sunlight ignored the question. ‘Lady Amber was a Conduit. She could call down the Demon Horsemen. She called them down to destroy two armies.’

‘Lady Amber was a legend,’ said Chase disdainfully. ‘She’s made up. My mother used to sing that song to send me to sleep.’

‘There are other kinds of Conduit,’ said Sunlight. ‘My colleagues are creating a new one. They intend to use it to destroy humanity.’

‘Are you saying a Seer can make the Demon Horsemen come to life?’

The old man snorted. ‘A Seer is a man of learning and magic. As a servant of Jarudha, he can do things
that are beyond the realm of any mortal. Jarudha gives him this power.’

‘And that means he can kill everyone?’

‘No,’ said Sunlight. ‘One Seer can’t do that. Alone, a Seer’s ability is weak. He’s restricted to simple spells. But with others, his power can be increased significantly. Yet even with a hundred Seers to help channel the magical energy, one Seer cannot summon the Horsemen. They need a Conduit.’

‘What do you mean by summon? And what’s a Conduit?’

‘Summon means to call them from another plane of existence. A Conduit is like a medium through which the beings that are summoned can be projected into this plane of existence. Can you read?’

‘Yes,’ Chase replied indignantly. ‘My mother taught my sister and I how to read and do sums.’

‘Have you ever read
MultiDimensional Theories
?’

‘No.’

‘I thought not,’ Sunlight said. He sighed again and coughed. ‘It would take too long to explain it to you. It took me eight years to unravel the theoretical information in that book and another three to understand what Seer Truth was really trying to say. It doesn’t matter.’

‘Someone’s coming,’ Chase whispered.

Boss and his three colleagues approached and Boss cast a cursory glance at Chase as he passed. The four thugs circled three men who were sitting on the floor several paces along the wall from where Chase and Sunlight sat. All eyes in the cell turned to watch the new drama unfold. ‘Just Possum,’ Boss growled. Two men scrambled out of the circle and scampered to safety. The remaining man cowered in the centre.

‘You know why we’ve come to talk to you, don’t you, Possum?’ Pigspit said, raising his whining voice for the benefit of everyone watching him.

‘I don’t—I don’t,’ Possum whimpered. ‘Don’t hurt me, Boss. I didn’t do whatever.’

Boots sank a kick into Possum’s scrawny ribs. Chase heard the crack and the yelp. ‘Possum,’ said Boss, mimicking concern, ‘Possum, please don’t make Boots have to hurt you like that. I just want a simple answer, Possum, just a simple little answer.’

Possum was lying on his side, face against the dirt, clutching his ribs. He gasped for air, and wheezed, ‘Boss, I don’t know. I don’t know what you want.’ Boots sank a second kick into Possum’s stomach. Possum jerked into a ball and started sobbing.

‘Boss wants an answer, you snivelling little wretch,’ Pigspit snarled, almost dancing around the heaving heap of human misery and rags.

‘I don’t think Possum wants to be very helpful,’ Boss announced theatrically to his fascinated audience. As he finished, Boots and Dogger grabbed Possum’s arms, wrenched him off the floor and carried him to the sewer channel. They held his arms rigid and pushed his shoulders down until his face hung a handspan above the stinking liquid. ‘Now, Possum, have you got an answer for me?’ Boss asked with sadistic calm.

‘Anything!’ Possum screamed. ‘Any answer you want, Boss! Any!’ His legs kicked frantically, until Pigspit pinned one to the ground with his foot. ‘Please, Boss! Please!’

‘Then what’s the answer?’ Boss asked.

‘I don’t know!’ Possum screamed. ‘I don’t know what you want to know! Don’t do this, Boss! I’ll do anything! Anything!’

‘Not the answer,’ Boss declared, shaking his head sadly. Dogger and Boss pressed down on Possum’s shoulders and buried his face in the sewer. Possum kicked and writhed, but he couldn’t break the hold of the three men. His face jerked out of the liquid, and he
screamed, but Dogger and Boots forced him down again, strangling his cry.

‘Isn’t anyone going to do anything?’ Chase asked, rising to his feet.

‘Sit down, lad,’ Sunlight advised, reaching up blindly with his bony hand. ‘No one will do anything. Don’t get yourself involved. They’ll just do the same to you.’

Possum’s head twisted and jerked, until Boss stepped forward and pushed down on his head with a boot. Frantic spasms later, Possum’s body drooped and Dogger and Boots let him collapse into the muck. Boss wiped his boot on the dead man’s back before he led his gang back to the gates where a prison guard passed a ladleful of water through the bars in turn to each of the four men. The onlookers started talking quietly as they turned from the corpse at the centre of the cavern and went to their familiar places. Chase sat. ‘What did he do to deserve that?’

‘Who knows?’ Sunlight replied. ‘In here, you don’t have to do anything to be killed.’

‘Did you know him?’

‘No. I just heard his name sometimes. I hear names sometimes. Because I’m blind now, no one talks to me anymore.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Carpenter Brokentree. Outside of here that’s what he was called. He was sent down here because he burned down a factory office after he was sacked. I overheard that when he was first brought in. New prisoners either come in silent or they come in talking. He was a talker. That’s what attracted Boss to him.’

As Sunlight explained, Chase returned to observing the four men at the gates. They were like the rich men in the city—powerful and a law unto themselves. Human life was a means to an end for their own profit, but not valuable in itself. He learned that from growing up in
the Foundry Quarter where Kerwyn factory owners used young Shessian men and women to stoke their foundry fires and pour the metal into moulds and cart the bricks from the kilns. The workers got barely enough payment to feed themselves, while the owners pocketed mountains of gold coins from buyers that would pay for enough food to feed the entire city. His father had worked in the metal foundry, pouring the liquid golden metal from the vats into the moulds for export to other cities and other lands, until he was scalded to death when a vat tipped liquid gold onto him. Chase started in the foundry aged six, carrying sacks and small metal bars, learning his father’s trade, but his father’s death when Chase was eight angered him so much that he quit the foundry and took to the streets to rob money back from the rich who robbed it from people like his father in the first place. Thieving had no legal honour, but it suited his sense of justice in a world where the law was owned by the rich and out of the reach of the poor. He recognised how Boss fed on the fear he inflicted on the other prisoners. Their lives were of no value to anyone except to him because their deaths were his meal ticket.

‘Are you listening to me, lad?’

Chase looked at Sunlight, who was awaiting an answer. ‘Yes,’ he murmured hopefully.

‘Well?’ the old man persisted.

‘Well what?’

Sunlight shook his head. ‘Can we talk again? Is anyone listening to us?’

‘It’s safe,’ Chase reassured him, checking how close they were to anyone who might eavesdrop.

‘Then listen carefully,’ Sunlight ordered, ‘because I will tell you a terrible secret.’