CHAPTER TWO
Thomas stood on the porch of the holding prison, breathing in the sharp crispness of autumn leaves and the ash-and-meat scent of a nearby smokehouse and the pungent smell of sheep grazing on the hillside opposite. He was thinking how much he would have liked to have turned time backwards.
All around him were mountains: mountains to the west and southwest, fading blue into the distance; mountains to the east, separating western Mip from the softer central districts; and the mountain on which he stood, quiet with the slowing rhythms of late autumn.
From where he stood, he could not see Compassion Prison, hidden by the ridge opposite him and by the screen of undeveloped forest. He could almost imagine that he was a boy again, playing in the fields, never knowing what took place in the prison where his father worked.
That had all ended on the day he turned twelve, and his father announced that, as the new Keeper, he was entitled to house his family within Compassion Prison.
He stepped away from the holding prison, which was built in the western style, with a broad porch running the full length of the building's front. The building itself was ordinarily used as the town's general merchandise store and post office. There had been some grumbling among the townsfolk when the store was confiscated for temporary government use; the townsfolk complained that Compassion's Keeper should have used his own house, standing empty all these years. Thomas had been secretly glad that his childhood home would not be tainted by the activities of Compassion's guards and prisoners.
He passed the store's outhouse, from which Pugh was just emerging. They ignored each other. Leaving the yard of the holding prison, Thomas turned toward the setting sun and walked down the turnpike, its finely ground stone pavement packed hard. He passed small shacks, buildings with broken windows and peeling paint . . . Ammippian Springs, being planted upon rocky mountain ground that made farming difficult, had long struggled for survival. There had been a time when everyone had hoped that the National Turnpike which ran through the town would change matters, since the turnpike carried hundreds of travellers journeying west, all the way from the Dozen Landsteads to the middle of the continent.
But then the railroads had been built throughout Mip and its neighboring nations, and traffic on the turnpike had diminished. The owners of the turnpike, seeing their profits dip, stopped keeping up the road. Now the turnpike was crumbling in places, like the town surrounding it.
He passed another road, leading south to Compassion Prison; again, he did not pause. Just ahead of him on the right was a graciously built house, taking up the position of pride on a great lawn that swept up onto the mountainside behind it. A nearby barn, looking somewhat frail, was the only hint that this property had once been a working farm.
Thomas paused on the house's porch. His father's family, he well knew, had once owned most of Ammippian Springs. But like many Yclau aristocrats, his grandfather had been hard hit by the depression of 355, in the year when Mip received its freedom from Yclau. Some Mippite aristocrats had managed to toddle along in the years since then, supported by the stubborn desire of their neighbors to continue calling them by aristocratic titles that the Magisterial Republic of Mip no longer recognized. But Thomas's grandfather had been much disliked by his tenants; when rising prices for manufactured goods forced him to sell most of his land to the tenants who farmed the land, his former tenants promptly dropped use of his anachronistic title and ignored him.
Thomas had not known this as a child; he had assumed that the reason none of the other children in town would play with him was because his father was a guard at one of Mip's life prisons. That was reason enough, he would eventually realize.
He stared across the road at the autumn-brown fields, stripped of the last of their crops for the season. He had made his own entertainment as a child, playing by himself amidst haystacks or hunting for deer in the mountains, once Starke had taught him how to shoot. But in the same year that he learned how to shoot, he had conceived the ambition of becoming a prison guard himself. He had not realized then that he was slamming the door shut to all future hope of daily contact with the townsfolk.
And if not with the townsfolk, then with whom? The other guards either despised him or humored him. His father was displeased with Thomas's radical notions, while Thomas's mother and sisters were puzzled as to why he failed to follow the lead of his father. There was his grandmother . . . But she had died when he was eleven, the last of her line to survive. Her absence had left a small grave in his heart.
There remained the prisoners. Thomas had always possessed his father's example to dissuade him from taking that path.
He stepped off the porch of his family home, reminding himself that he was neglecting his duty. Slowly, reluctantly, he made his way back to the holding prison.
In the brief time he had been absent, he would not have been surprised to see that the new prisoner had taken control of the prison cell, stripping the "men" among the prisoners of their status of leadership. But when Thomas arrived in the attic, he found that someone had managed to rip off the top half of the new prisoner's uniform. The new prisoner was standing at the far end of the cell, sharing the space with cobwebs, as sweat glistened on his dark chest. His palms were laid flat upon a couple of the cell bars he stood against, as though he were a hunted animal seeking escape.
Indeed, it appeared that the only reason matters had not gone further than this was that the cell's men had paused to argue.
"Look, it doesn't matter which of us goes first," said Valdis in an irritated voice. "We'll all be taking him in the end. None of us is claiming him, is he?"
"Him?" Shaking his head, Horace snorted. "I'm not even sure I want to fuck his filthy body."
Walker said something in a low voice that caused Delgado to nod vigorously. "He's right. Fuck him, then rid this cell of him." He drew his finger across his neck, and the new prisoner stiffened. Whether or not he understood exactly what was being said, it was clear from his posture that he gathered the gist of the men's plans. Yet he gave no sign that he would fight in defense.
"No killings," ordered Chase in an automatic manner, but he turned to the other night guard, Blythe, and spoke in a lower voice. "He deserves a bloody long killing. Did you hear what he did before he was caught?"
"Mr. Chase, please don't swear on duty." Thomas did not need to be told what the new prisoner had done. The case had been notorious. He kept his eye on the prisoner, seeking some sign of what action the prisoner would take.
Chase simply grinned at this reprimand. "Going to claim this one, Tom? You've waited long enough."
"No one will claim him," Blythe predicted confidently. He was watching as the prisoners drew straws to determine which would conduct the initial rape. "Not in any full sense of the word."
Thomas was inclined to agree. Even the lads – who normally showed pity for any suffering endured by their fellow lads – were casting looks of scorn at the new prisoner. "He stinks," one of them muttered. "He stinks worse than Brewster, and he doesn't have Brewster's excuse." He cast a look at Brewster, an ugly prisoner who, after three weeks in the cell, was still unclaimed by anyone except the guards . . . for whom a "claim" had nothing to do with protection. Made the toy of the guards and all the men in the prison for days on end, Brewster had withdrawn into himself; he was sitting in a ball in the corner of the prison, rocking to and fro, humming tunelessly as he stared blankly forward.
"Let's thrust the new lad headfirst into the water-barrel," another lad suggested. "That will clean him well enough."
The new prisoner's gaze had flicked over to the lads. He was now gripping the cell bars hard. Thomas – who bore the primary responsibility of seeing that none of the prisoners broke out to freedom – mentally measured the new prisoner's muscles, wondering whether he had strength enough to bash in the head of any guard entering the cell. It seemed likely. But it continued to seem unlikely that the new prisoner would use violence as a means of escape. He simply stood still, awaiting the outco
me of the discussions, his chin held high and his eyes defiant.
He would not end up like Brewster, Thomas guessed. No matter what restraint the new prisoner was showing now, in the long run he would not endure the trial being set upon him. He would return to his deadly ways, and then . . . In theory, prisoners were not supposed to be allowed to kill each other. By prison custom, though, the guards stood back and allowed the prisoners themselves to deal with any rogue killers.
"He's mine," declared Valdis. "The rest of you will have to wait a minute or two." Wearing a satisfied smile, he stepped forward.
"Wait."
The new prisoner's gaze flicked away from Valdis. Everyone else had turned to stare, including the night guards. "Tom," Chase said, finding his tongue. "It's prison custom. We don't interfere with a claim."
"That isn't a claim." Thomas kept his eyes on the new prisoner, who was meeting them square.
"Don't be difficult, Tom." Chase sighed. "You know your father's orders: we don't enter the cell any more, except to make our own claims. Come on." He placed an avuncular hand on Thomas's shoulder. "If it makes you squeamish to watch, you can wait downstairs."
"Yes," said Thomas, and saw a telling flicker in the prisoner's eyes. "Yes, I'm going downstairs. Deliver the prisoner to my room."
Chase stared. "Tom . . ."
"I claim him." Thomas turned away. "Bring me the Ammippian."
o—o—o
"Not yet!" whispered Dick. "Wait for the brakey!"
Lying stomach-down next to the lad, both of them screened by the shrubbery overlooking the tracks near the creek – there was a slaughterhouse behind them, which was far too appropriate – he turned his attention to the brakeman, who was inspecting a coupling between the final freight car and his caboose. Evidently satisfied, the brakeman swung himself up into the caboose and disappeared inside.
"Now!" whispered Dick, and the two of them scrambled down the bank toward the railroad junction, where the train had paused in its journey west. They began their frantic search for an empty boxcar.
Checking whether a boxcar was empty required him to leap up onto the still-step, cling to the grab irons along the side of the car, lean over, unlatch the door, shove it open . . . and then repeat the procedure when he discovered the car was filled with freight. By the fifth boxcar, he was sweating and had a good deal more respect than he had held previously for tramps' survival skills.
"Mister! Here!"
Hopping down to the ground, he turned his head. Dick had managed to make his way halfway down the line of freight cars in the time it had taken his elder to inspect just five cars. The lad was standing in the doorway of a boxcar, waving.
And the train had started to move.
Cursing, he began to ran, then ran faster as the locomotive, puffing out grey waves of smoke, churned its wheels faster. He managed to catch hold of the grab irons next to the boxcar door and haul himself up, but for a moment it appeared that the rising speed of the train would cause him to lose his grip.
Then Dick reached across, grabbed his free hand, and wrenched him into the car. They both fell to the ground, Dick underneath him.
The thought immediately crossed his mind that no magistrate in the republic was likely to trust the word of a ragged young tramp that a respectable, mid-class man such as himself had committed an assault. He pushed the thought away. Instead, he rolled over onto the floor – which smelled of rat droppings – and lay panting.
Dick, whose smile had grown slightly more noticeable, turned onto his side, resting his head on his upraised forearm. "You look filthy!" he shouted over the rattle of the train.
"So do you," he managed to gasp out. He was reflecting that, for all his Landstead ancestry, the lad seemed to have mastered the republican manners of Mip. The Queendom of Yclau, from which the Magisterial Republic of Mip had sprung, liked to boast that its new egalitarian movement was the most advanced in the world, but only in Mip had the elite and the commoners received the same system of justice since the republic's founding, thirty-seven years before . . . at least in theory. With that equality had come a tendency of commoners to treat their betters as though the elite truly were the commoners' equals, not just in the magistrates' court, but everywhere.
He found himself scanning the prone lad with his eye. The youth appeared to be somewhere in the scant year between the beginning of journeymanship and adulthood, and he had the fair looks of adolescence beneath his torn, dirty shirt and overalls.
Not that it mattered. It was said in Mercy Prison that he would fuck anything he could trap. "You mean 'rape anything,'" he had always corrected, for the amusement of seeing the speakers writhe. His fellow guards were never willing to admit that what they did to the prisoners was rape, however immune from legal prosecution they might be.
He needed to move his mind away from this subject. Pushing himself to his feet, he looked down and saw that Dick was right: he was indeed covered now with the solid evidence of the rats' previous occupation of this car. With a sigh, he took out a handkerchief.
In the next moment, Dick was kneeling at his feet, brushing away the filth with his bare hands.
"You don't need to do that," he commented, too much enjoying the view to offer any real protest.
"I don't mind," the lad rejoined. "Done it to myself often enough. Where are you headed in such a hurry, mister?"
He hesitated before lying. "The end of the line."
Dick leaned down to wipe his boots. "You transferring to the B&V, then?"
"I've often thought of visiting Vovim," he hedged. The Balmer & Vovim Railroad, just over the border in the Kingdom of Vovim, ran all the way from Balmer in the Dozen Landsteads to southern Vovim. He had no intention of taking that train . . . though perhaps he should say that he had no intention yet. A great deal depended on what he would learn at his destination.
"Thought at first you might be going to Balmer." The lad straightened up.
He managed to bat away Dick's hands and step back, the moment before the lad was about to brush off the cloth of his trousers, at crotch level. "No. Is that where you were headed before? East to the Dozen Landsteads?"
Dick shook his head as he rose to his feet. He stood with ease on the swaying floor of the boxcar, his voice pitched just loud enough to be heard over the persistent clankety-clank of the train and the occasional whistle from the locomotive. The northern-facing doorway of the boxcar was propped open with a railway spike that the lad had thoughtfully grabbed along the way; the doorway revealed that they were passing farmland. The train whooshed by a station without stopping: Pinesburg. From the slant of the floor and the energetic puff of the locomotive, it was clear that the train was beginning to climb up one of the mountains that could be seen from Williamsport.
"It's no good there," Dick declared. "Not for servants. It's better here. My parents said."
"You ran away from them?" He thought of taking out his pipe, and then dismissed the idea. Trying to light a pipe in a swaying freight car was beyond his abilities. Instead, he stepped back to brace himself against the wall opposite the doorway.
Something moved in the lad's eyes then. "No, mister. My mama and daddy are dead. They was killed, crossing the border."
"Mippite border guards?"
"Landstead guards. Our mister and mistress didn't give us permission to leave our landstead, you see."
"I begin to see why your parents tried to emigrate." Another station name flashed by: Clear Spring. The train began to slow, chugging harder. "How old were you?"
The lad straightened his shoulders. "Four tri-years. I mean, twelve years old. Old enough. I wandered around till I found the meeting place of some tramps. One of them taught me their ways, for a couple of years before he fell off a bumper while we was beating our way east. Knocked his head in."
He thought of asking what the lad's payment for that education had been – he knew enough about Mip's underworld to have heard of such things – but decided against the question. "So is that your a
mbition in life? To be a tramp?"
Dick shrugged. "I've taken work, sometimes. Some of the other tramps laugh at me, but I don't like begging. I'd rather earn my own way. Can't find much work, though."
In those ragged clothes, certainly not. He looked the lad over again, assessing him, this time in a professional manner, as he would if the lad turned up as a prisoner. "Can you read?" he asked. Landstead servants usually couldn't.
"Oh, yes, mister!" The lad was clearly proud of this accomplishment, for he pulled out a memorandum book from a pocket of his overalls. "I taught myself. See?"
He gestured with his hand. With visible reluctance, the lad handed over the book. The lad began to speak, then fell silent as the unmistakable sound of footsteps tapped their way across the roof of the boxcar: the brakeman, preparing to brake each car when the train reached the summit of the mountain and began to go downhill. The train slowed yet further as the locomotive huffed its way to the top.
Opening the book, he expected to see half-literate scribbles. Indeed, much of the terminology was mysterious to him; he guessed that, in the privacy of his journal, the lad felt free to use the tramps' lingo that he wouldn't use around a stranger such as himself.
But he should have guessed what he'd find, from the fact that the lad had stripped himself of his Landstead accent and most of his servant grammar. Despite the underworld catch-phrases, the journal entries were painstakingly meticulous, both in language and in character. They were well-written, detailed observations of the men and boys whom Dick had met on his travels. The lad captured their virtues, their foibles . . . and the darkness that some of them strove to hide.
He did not look up from the book, but he suddenly felt naked. He wondered why Dick, so keen an observer, wasn't more frightened of him. "Have you ever shown this to any of your employers?"
"No, sir. Not to anyone. I figured they'd take it away from me."
He raised his eyes. The lad was keeping a good distance, but Dick's tense stance was that of a mother who has entrusted her much-beloved child to the arms of someone else. He said, "But you trust me?"
He never received the answer. At that moment, as the train began to make its way swiftly down the mountain, the brakeman swung into the car and pointed his revolver at Dick.