Farlander

home from the crossroads taverna, dressed in fine clothing that was much too loose on him – clearly stolen – the man had eyed the contents of the cottage as if to assess what they were worth, including his mother. It was obvious he had set about catching her that night; the couple had made so much noise in the bedroom that Nico was forced to drag his bedding out to the stable and bed down with their old horse, Happy.

He resented her for it, this weakness regarding men. He knew she had her reasons, knew too that she was hardly the one he should be resenting for what had become of them both, mother and son. But there it was, and he could not help it.

This had already been the worst day of his life, and the rest of it passed in numb shock, timeless and awful. With the falling of night, marked here not in fading daylight but by the snuffing of the lamps and the slamming of distant heavy doors, the stench within the place grew even more fetid, a drifting, clogging miasma that bore with it the smells of the human animal caged too long in its own squalor. It became so bad that Nico tied his kerchief around his mouth and nose. It helped little though, and he would occasionally have to lean to one side and lift it in order to spit from his mouth the rank taste that had accumulated on his tongue.

It seemed that whatever truce existed between the inmates during the hours of daytime vanished during those long ensuing hours of blackness. A fight broke out in another cell, shouts and catcalls and then the long keening howls of a man in pain, which dimmed to the occasional sob and then to nothing. For a time, a dull thudding penetrated the stone wall at his back, as though someone was crashing his head against the other side, while shouting out with each impact muted words that might have been, let me out, let me out.

Nico could not bring himself to sleep in such a place. Still, he was tired, exhausted from the day's events, and the thought of those still to come. So he lay awake listening to the snores of his cellmates, swiping the odd cockroach from his body, and cursed himself for ever coming to this city, for bringing Boon along with him, for getting involved with Lena and her fool ideas.

He had known that she was not to be trusted, having displayed few signs of scruples in his company. What was she doing now, at this same moment, he wondered? Did she even care that he had been seized by the Guards and thrown in the city gaol to await his punishment? He doubted it.

Nico stared into the gloom, only too aware of what they did to thieves in the city. It was this fate he was trying most of all not to think about. Last Harvest Festival he had seen a thief flogged and branded for his crime, and the young delinquent had not been much older than Nico himself.

Nico did not know if he could bear such punishment.

*

Sometime later in the night he jerked from a daze to find a hand pressed against his leg and a face breathing foul air into his own. He jerked upright, shoved the unseen man's weight away from him, shouted something that was more a cry of fright than distinct words. A muttered curse in the darkness, the scraping shuffle of someone retreating.

He rubbed his face to wake himself fully, then hunkered back against the wall.

He needed to get out of this place. He could barely breathe, in this airless, roiling stench. The blackness pressed down on him like a blanket of heavy velvet. He felt trapped, knowing that till morning he could not simply stand up and walk outside of his own volition, not even to see the sky, feel the fresh air upon his face. A memory that was more a recollection of sharp emotion came to him then: that time he had found the snare while walking in the hills overlooking their cottage – the tightened loop of wire holding the severed limb of a wild dog, flesh still hanging in shreds from the leg bone that had been chewed clean through.

A sound of shuffling feet in the darkness: someone approaching again. Nico tensed, ready to lash out.

I will tear off your flesh with my teeth, he thought, if you do not back away from me.

'Relax,' came a voice. 'I'm a friend.'

A man sat down next to him, the sound of his hands fumbling within his clothing.

A flame ignited in the darkness, at first too bright to look at. Nico squinted with a palm shielding his face. For a moment the flame sizzled and curled, as the blackened end of a cigarillo burned and glowed red. Then the man blew out the match, plunging them into a darkness even deeper than before.

'You know, I've been lying awake all night trying to figure how I recognize your face.' The red tip of the cigarillo smeared through the air and crackled into renewed brightness as the man inhaled, lighting up the extremities of his face while casting its hollows into shadow.

'Your father,' he said, exhaling. 'I used to know your father.'

Nico blinked, his eyes still swimming with spots of colour.

'Of course you did,' he said, sarcastically.

'Don't call me a liar, boy. You're his spitting image. Your father was married to a redhead by the name of Reese. A fine-looking woman, if I recall.'

Nico let his hand drop from his face, sheathing his anger for the moment. 'Yes, my mother,' Nico agreed. 'You truly knew him, then?'

'As well as any man. I fought with him under the walls for two years.'

'You were a Special?'

'Surely. Though it seems a lifetime ago now, thank the Fool. I make a living now, a small one, playing rash. Rest of the time, when I can't repay my debts, I'm obliged to linger here.' The man rubbed a hand across the stubble of his chin. 'And what of you? What brings you to this condition?'

Nico had no wish to get into the whole sorry affair. 'My healer said it would be good for my lungs, so I come down here from time to time.'

'Your father had wit, too,' the voice replied without the merest hint of humour. 'It was the one thing I liked about him.'

There was an edge to his voice as he said this. Nico heard it, and waited for him to say more. The tobacco smoke curled about his face for a moment, the scent pleasant here in this foul place. It reminded him of nights sitting around a campfire in some park or empty building, with Lena and the others he had come to know while without home or shelter, Nico cracking jokes and watching the bottles of cheap wine and the tarweed roll-ups pass freely between them, their laughter raw, while the warm circle of light held at bay the hard day that was inevitably to come.

'We didn't see eye-to-eye on occasion,' the man continued in his sour drawl. 'He accused me once of cheating at rash. Though he couldn't leave it be at that, of course. Had to go and catch me out in front of the whole squad. Cost me a lot of money, did your father. I got the man back, though.'

A cough followed that might equally have been dry laughter.

'To be honest with you I wasn't hardly surprised when he lit out on us, and deserted like he did. The last time I saw those scared eyes of his, I knew what he was thinking. Clear as day I saw it.'

Nico's jaw clenched tight. His nostrils flared. He took a breath and said, coolly, 'My father was no coward.'

Again that cough. 'I don't mean anything by it. Everyone's a coward when it comes down to it, save for the crazy ones. Some are just more scared than others, is all I'm saying.'

Nico's breathing was now loud enough to be heard above the snoring of the other men.

'Easy now, it's only talk, and talk's not worth a damn. Here, have a draw.'

Nico ignored the burning end of the cigarillo held before his face.

He thought of his father instead: a tall, straight-backed figure in his memory, long-haired and kind of eyes, and his words softly spoken. The same man laughing wildly, with a pitcher of ale in his hand, while grabbing his mother by the waist to dance with her, or snatching up his jitar to pluck them some poorly composed song. A hike the two of them had made together in the lonely hills. A sunny Foolsday when he had taken Nico to some beach so that he himself could gaze out to sea while Nico played down by the shore line.

Nico had been ten when his father enlisted with the Specials. The enemy was pushing harder than ever before, it was explained. Every day some new Mannian tunnel was encountered, or the Mannians themselves broke through into the underground works of the defenders. The Specials were taking heavy losses, and they needed volunteers.

For a month at a time his father would go off to the city and fight beneath the walls of the Shield, then come home a slightly different man. With every return he seemed quieter, and less handsome in appearance.

On one visit home he had lost a whole ear, so that only an orifice remained on that side of his head. Yet Reese still embraced him and whispered soft words in his damaged ear loud enough for Nico to overhear, telling his father how relieved she was to see him still alive. Another time, his father arrived at the door with a bandage wrapped all