pointless games until the boys were put to work in the sorting house and the girls began learning household duties under the housekeeper’s watchful eye.
“Wonder why there’s so many Pieters,” he muttered, not realizing he had said it aloud until the kiddy next to him—Davey, almost sixteen, and still not crippled, not addlepated, and making no secret that he was leaving when the priest next came—laughed out loud. Davey was a good head taller than Mags, and like all the kiddies, he was so coated in dirt that it was hard to tell what his skin tone actually was. But his eyes were hard and cold and brown, like pebbles. His hair, matted, with bits of straw still in it, was hacked off short, as Mags’ was and, like Mags’, was dark, somewhere between brown and black.
“‘Cuz ol’ man Cole can’t keep his hands off n the housemaids,” the older boy guffawed. “An’ don’ it make the right-wise born ones hoppin’ mad! The boys, anyhow. Ever’ time one of them maids squirts out a kid, you kin tell, ’cause they look like thunder.”
Mags blinked, spotted a sparkle in the water, and fished out a bit of pale blue like a fingernail paring. “Huh? Why?”
“‘Cuz ol’ man Cole likes t’ tell ’em, when he don’ like what they’re doin’, that he’ll leave the mine an’ all t’ the bastards if they don’ do what they’re told.” Davey snickered this time. “He got Jarrik t’ say he’d marry some ugly stick come spring thataway, instead of some pretty piece that don’t come with money. He wasn’t half hot about it, an’ I hear the girl had some things t’ say!”
“How’dye know all that?” Mags glanced at him sideways. Where was Davey getting all this? He talked like he was in and out of the Big House all the time, and Mags knew that wasn’t possible. Granted, Davey generally came to bed last, and even in winter he was known for some sort of prowling. Mags figured he just had some angle going, maybe with the stableboy. Or maybe with a kitchen drudge. Neither the stableboy nor the drudges got paid even the pittance that the other servants got, and they took what they could get when they could get it. The stableboy secretly cooked up messes of the oats to eat, and kitchen drudges could snitch bits of this and that as they cleaned pots and pans. Mags had never been hungry as a kitchen drudge.
“’Cuz I got ears. ’Cuz I don’ need as much sleep as you kiddies, so I go sneakin’ round the Big House and listenin’ under winders.” Davey glanced over at Mags and gave him a wink. “’Cuz when you learn stuff, sometimes y’learn stuff what’s worth sumpin’. I learn stuff, makes the cook gimme stuff. I learn stuff, gets me better stuff to wear. Why you think I’m gettin’ outa here? I know stuff. I know stuff Jarrik don’ want his pa t’know. I know stuff ol’ man Cole don’ want his wife t’ know. Like about them housemaids. He tells her ’twas the boys, but it’s him, when the by-blows come.” He leaned over conspiratorially and whispered, “I’ll tell it all to you afore I go, if ye get a couple of those yaller sparklies, hide ’em, an’ keep ’em for me, then give ’em t’ me afore I flit.”
Mags felt his heart do a double-beat and bent over the pan to hide his expression. No one had ever made such an offer to him before.
He was tempted—oh, yes—he was tempted. Seriously tempted. This could mean the difference between being stuck here his whole life and getting out, like Davey. If the offer was real. The knowledge might be good for more than just getting out; it might be good for more food, a better blanket, an easier time of it from Jarrik. He, too, might get some of those advantages from the cook, and maybe other things, too.
But it might not be a real offer, and it might be a trap. Maybe Davey never meant to tell him anything once he had the sparklies, or maybe he’d make stuff up to tell, stuff that wasn’t true, that would only get Mags in trouble if he tried to use it. And then there was the danger of doing the theft in the first place, Mags had never seen what happened to kiddies who snitched sparklies, because in his time no kiddie had had a reason to try, but it had to be a lot worse than ones caught snitching food or blankets. And Master Cole was just mean enough to have said to Davey, “I’ll let you leave here with money in yer pocket and a good suit’o clothes if you find out who’d snitch sparklies, given a chance.” Mags was convinced that there was nothing Master Cole wouldn’t try just for the meanness of it.
“That don’t sound safe,” he muttered, fishing a bright flash of red out of the pan. “I take all the risk, an’ fer what? If I git caught, yer off free, an’ if you git caught, ye kin say I give it ye and niver say ye ast for it.” Davey had never done anyone a kindness so far as Mags knew. He had never been cruel, but he had never done anyone a kindness either. That didn’t make him exceptional; just about everybody was that way. But it also didn’t make him trustworthy.
And hadn’t he just said he’d been getting favors from the cook that he hadn’t been sharing with the rest, like he was supposed to. That made him even less trustworthy. Like Demmon, he’d been greedy. But unlike Demmon, he’d been sly and had never told anybody.
For that matter, now that Mags came to think about it, no one here was really trustworthy on that scale. Even the littlest of the kiddies would give you up for more food. That was why everything good got shared and split, so everyone was equally guilty if there was guilt to go around.
But Davey hadn’t shared. Which meant—what? Probably nothing good. That he was sneaky, for sure. And greedy, for sure. And that anything he did would always be all about what he got out of it.
Mags was good at watching things out of the corner of his eye, and for a moment, Davey’s expression turned savage, and more than angry enough to make the hair on Mags’ neck stand up. Then he laughed. “Suit yerself. You ain’t the only one diggin’ out sparklies. If you won’t, summun else will.” And then the older boy turned away, fixing his attention on his own pan.
Which was the truth; what was also the truth was that Davey himself was deep into a good vein of greens. So Davey could snitch his own sparklies, if he chose. It just might have been a trap.
Well, if Davey thought that turning away would make Mags beg for the chance to get what he was offering, he could think again. He’d played that game years ago, to get the donkeys into harness, showing a wisp of grass and then turning away with it. The donkeys would go for it, every time, and Mags was pretty sure he was smarter than a donkey.
He thought about turning the tables on Davey, going to one of Cole’s boys and saying “That there Davey offered stuff if I’d snitch him a sparkly an’ give it him afore he flits.”
But Davey had never harmed him before this. There were a lot of unspoken rules among the kiddies, and one of them was, you didn’t be the one to do the bad first.
If the offer was genuine, and not a trap, then Davey wasn’t being the one doing the bad first. And maybe because he was about to flit, the Pieters boys were watching Davey too closely for him to snitch any of his greenies, so he was coming to Mags, who wasn’t being watched so closely.
And anyway, that was tellin’, and the one thing a kiddie didn’t do was tellin’ on another. Davey’d have to do him a mort of bad before he’d go so low as tellin’. Tellin’ something like this could lead to terrible things, things there were only rumors of in the dark before sleep took them all. Things like tales of kiddies getting’”caught” in the hammer-mill and crushed to death, or knocked down the well by the bucket-chain and drownded, or goin’ to take a
