again.
‘What the . . .?’ Big, the gang leader, stuck his head out of the shelter. ‘FLEA!’
‘BUT THEY’RE COMING! LOOK!’
Big’s blunt features were blurred by sleep. He rubbed his face, grabbed the stick from Flea and sent the rats scurrying away down the hole at the end of the alley.
‘What bloody use are you, Flea?’
Flea was panting. ‘I had a bad experience with rats,’ he said. ‘When I was a grave robber.’
‘When you were a grave robber’s slave . . .’
‘It doesn’t matter! He sent me down a hole. I got attacked. Look. LOOK!’
Flea pulled out his lower lip to show the small pale scars on the inside. The hole in question had been a cliff tomb outside the City walls. The way in had been too narrow for both Flea and a lamp, so he had been forced to rummage through the old bones for jewellery by touch. In the utter black, scraped by the rocks, aching with the effort and choking on the dust of dead people, he had felt the darkness bunch, writhe and squeal. The grave robber had pulled him out, screaming, with one rat hanging off his mouth and the other dangling from his ear.
Flea had been sacked, of course. Grave robbing was meant to take place in silence – rats or no rats.
‘Leave it or we’ll shove you down the rat hole to be eaten alive,’ growled Big. ‘I mean it. Now fix the shelter.’
‘I can’t. You’ve got the stick.’
‘And you’ve got trouble.’ Big raised the stick above his head.
‘Don’t!’ Flea pleaded.
‘Then get water. Get bread. Get milk.’
Flea grabbed the water skin. The skinny girl Flea had spotted hanging about near the shelter for the past week was just around the corner. She was smiling like she’d seen the whole thing. So he yelled at her to stay away from him if she knew what was good for her and set off for the fountain.
The City was built on two hills. The Temple sat on one and the rich lived in the elegant palaces of the Upper City on the other. Squeezed in between the hills and spreading out at either end was the Lower City, a dense maze of streets and alleyways zigzagging up and down the slopes. Houses of two and three storeys were crammed together in jagged blocks or stacked in precarious cliffs. The streets were so narrow that if you leant out of your window, you could practically reach into the house on the other side. Flea knew the City like a hunter knows the forest, as a place of danger and opportunity. But he wasn’t after game; food and money were what he wanted.
The City was crowded at the best of times, but in the run-up to the Feast it was stuffed so full you’d think the high old walls would burst. The Law stated that for the night of the Feast, everyone in the country had to come and stay within the City walls. Most people made a few days’ holiday of it. Every house was crammed. Every rooftop groaned. Every alleyway was blocked with milling out-of-towners.
Flea pushed his way up the winding alleyway to the fountain, the district’s only source of water. As he drew closer, the crowd grew thicker and angrier. People were grumbling that lodgings were more expensive, wine was more expensive, food was more expensive and, most of all, that the Temple was robbing them blind. To pay your Temple tax you had to convert your money into Temple silver. To make a sacrifice you had to a buy a holy lamb or holy dove and, again, you had to convert your money to Temple silver. Every which way, you lost and they won. And what about the disgraceful water shortages that never got any better? The new aqueduct was meant to bring more water to the City, but who got it first? The priests, who were hoarding it in giant reservoirs under the Temple and leaving the City high and dry.
The Temple Boys despised the visitors, but relied on them like everyone else in the City. They were like a great flood that left behind a vast deposit of money: for the Temple, for the market traders, for the innkeepers, for the butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers, for anyone who owned four walls and a roof, but most of all for the beggars, thieves and pickpockets.
As Flea worked his way through the crowd, he kept an eye out for easy pickings – coins on the ground, open purses and the like. But he decided on balance it would be better to stay honest. In a dense and angry crowd like this getting away would be hard and if you were caught you’d be beaten, kicked, even killed.
Not worth it, Flea thought, but then, neither was hanging around. He pushed his way through, shouting, ‘Water for the leper! Water for the leper boy,’ ignored the furious stares, filled the water skin, slung it across his shoulders and staggered off.
Halfway down the hill where two streets met, the Grinderman, a travelling knife-sharpener, was setting up his wheel.
Flea called to him. ‘Hey! Why are you lazying around when there’s work to do?’
‘Why chase after work when work’ll find you out all too soon? Lambs’ throats are waiting to be cut and knives are waiting to be sharpened,’ the Grinderman said. ‘Anyway, what are you doing here? I’d thought you’d be off to the Black Valley Bridge this morning.’
‘Why would I go there? Did a priest drop his purse?’
‘Pay me and I’ll tell you,’ the Grinderman said.
Flea pretended to throw a coin that the Grinderman pretended to catch and then bite.
‘Usual fake rubbish,’ he said. ‘Now I’m not going to tell you about the magician who’s coming to town.’
‘What magician?’
‘I said I’m not telling.’ The Grinderman grinned gappily and tapped the side of his long nose. ‘He’s not from Gilgad and I wasn’t told about him by a guy who saw him make pigs dance. He’s not got a legion of demons behind him all bound to do his wishes. He can’t turn water to wine, or make cripples jump over the moon, nor conjure banquets out of thin air, neither. And you didn’t hear it here first.’
Flea cupped a hand to his ear. ‘Hear what?’ he shouted and set off for the shelter, his mind racing. He knew all about street conjurors: there was one on every corner at the time of the Feast, but all they really cared about was making your money disappear. Real magicians were something different, though. He’d heard that they could send a child up a rope and make them disappear, call up red-eyed demons in clouds of black smoke and persuade people to do things they didn’t want to. That really was some magic he should try and learn. Maybe then he’d have the power to persuade the gang to go to the Black Valley Bridge with him.
When Flea got back to the shelter, Big was sorting out jobs for the day.
Big was the tallest and strongest member of the Temple Boys and their only real fighter. He’d been abandoned as a baby because he wasn’t born perfect – a few toes had been missing. Unlike most abandoned babies he’d lived because an elderly couple took pity on him, but when they died he’d taken to the streets. Spots pocked his face and his nose was flat. Flea
