Broad gave Sarlby a look over his lenses. ‘Will you ever stop pricking at me?’
‘It’s your conscience doing that.’
‘Oh, aye, you just hand it the ammunition.’
‘You get tired of the stabbing feeling, you know what you can do.’ Sarlby put a hand on Broad’s shoulder, murmured in his ear. ‘The Breakers are gathering, brother. More of us every day. There’s going to be a Great Change. Just a matter o’ when.’
Maybe it was the breath on his neck, or the sense of a secret shared, or the risk of what they were discussing, or just the sticky heat, but something gave Broad a shiver. He’d wanted to change things once. Before he went to Styria and learned things don’t change easy. ‘’Course,’ he grunted. ‘And they’ll give every man his own dragon to ride and a candy castle to live in. Then when we get hungry, we can just eat the walls.’
‘I’m no fool, Bull. I know what the world is. But maybe we can spread the wealth about a little. Maybe we can take some rich bastards out of those palaces on the hill and some poor families out of those cellars on Meadow Street. Maybe we can give each man an honest wage for an honest day’s work. Stop the false clocks and the fines and the girls pressed into night work. Put an end to the butchers selling tainted meat, and the flour bulked out with chalk, and the ale watered down with rotten water. Maybe we can make sure there’s no little boys being scrubbed with brine any more, at least. That’d be worth something, wouldn’t it?’
‘Aye. That’d be worth something.’ Broad had to admit there wasn’t much in Sarlby’s little speech he could argue with. ‘Never had you marked down for an orator.’
There was a clatter somewhere, further down the brewhouse floor. ‘I stole the words from better men,’ said Sarlby. ‘You like that, you should come to a meeting, listen to the Weaver. He’d soon have you thinking our way.’
Broad could hear someone shouting, muffled. ‘Can’t afford to think your way,’ he said, with some regret. ‘I gave up putting the world right a while back. First time we climbed those ladders, maybe. Second time, for sure. I’ve enough trouble at my back. Got to keep my head down. Look after my family.’
Another clatter, louder, and a cloud of soot came belching from one of the fireplaces they’d just doused.
‘What the hell?’ Sarlby took a step towards it. ‘We’re trying to sweep up down here!’
A scraping, slithering sound echoed from that fireplace, and another puff of soot, and a high wail came from inside. Broad went cold all over at the sound of it – shrill with pain and panic.
‘I can’t get out!’ Had to be one of the sweep’s boys. ‘I can’t get out!’
Broad and Sarlby stared at each other, Broad seeing his own helpless horror mirrored in his old comrade’s face.
‘He’s trapped in there!’ squawked Sarlby.
Broad dashed to the chimney, dropping his broom, clambering up onto a bench beside the flue. The fires had been burning all day. Even on the outside, the bricks were hot to touch.
There was another clatter, the sound of something sliding, and the boy’s cries turned to mindless, wordless shrieks.
The flue had been built no better than most of Valbeck, and Broad tore at its crumbling mortar with his fingertips, with his fingernails, as if he could rip it apart with his bare hands and get to that boy, but he couldn’t.
‘Here!’ Malmer had run over, was shoving a crowbar at him, and Broad snatched it from his hands and started digging at the loose mortar, stabbing, hacking, brick chips flying while he hissed curses.
He could hear the boy inside, no screams for help any more, just coughs and whimpers.
A brick came grinding free and the wash of heat made Broad jerk his face away. He wedged the bar in the gap, used it as a lever, popped more bricks out.
Soot came billowing with them and he coughed, dust across one side of his lenses. He saw Sarlby grab at the side of the ragged hole, gasp at the heat, tear his apron off and wrap it around his hands.
Broad rammed his bar into the chimney and heaved with all his weight, trembling with effort, growling through gritted teeth. A great wedge of bricks tore free and tumbled down, the black flue opened up and Broad saw something wedged in there. Two black sticks. One had a boot on the end.
So hot inside. Oven hot. Broad could feel the sweat springing out of his face. The boy’s trousers were smouldering, smoking, the flesh of his legs all slick and bubbled. At first, Broad thought it was ash that slid off when he grabbed them. Then he saw it was skin.
‘Damn it!’ snarled Sarlby, digging again with the crowbar. Bricks and mortar tumbled down and the boy slithered out into Broad’s arms in a shower of soot.
He was hot, too hot to touch. It was a painful effort not to let him drop.
‘Set him down!’ rasped Malmer, sweeping a bench clear and slapping embers from the boy’s smouldering hair.
‘Fuck,’ whispered Sarlby, back of his arm across his mouth.
The boy didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Burned as he was, maybe that was a good thing. There was a smell like cooking. A smell like bacon in the pan of a morning.
‘What do we do?’ shouted Broad. ‘What can we do?’
‘Naught we can do.’ Malmer’s grey-fuzzed jaw worked as he stared down. ‘He’s dead.’
‘Cooked,’ whispered Sarlby. ‘He fucking cooked alive.’
‘I thought you said the west side …’ Broad turned to see the sweep standing there, the little lad next to him, staring. ‘I thought you said—’
It was cut off in a gurgle as Broad caught him by his collar, lifted him, rammed him into the broken chimney. He fumbled helplessly at Broad’s fists, the tendons standing stark from the tattoo on the back of his hand.
‘I didn’t know …’ Tears wet on his face and his breath stinking of drink and rot. ‘I didn’t know …’
‘Easy,’ Broad heard someone saying. A deep voice, soft and soothing. ‘Easy, big man. Let him go.’
Broad was like a flatbow cranked too tight, all that strain running through him, far easier to let the bolt fly than not. Took a mighty effort not to break the sweep’s back over the chimney, to unclench his hands and let go of his dirty coat, to step away from him, let him slide down to sit blubbing on the floor beside the boiler.
Malmer patted Broad on the chest. ‘There you go. Nothing to gain with violence. Not now.’
Not ever. Broad knew that. He’d known that for years. But what he knew and what he did had never had much to do with each other.
He looked back at the boy, lying there all blackened, all reddened. He made his aching fists unclench. He fumbled off his dirty lenses and stood breathing. He looked up at Sarlby and Malmer, two blurs now in the lamplight.
‘Where are these meetings?’
Surprises
Rikke flopped down, misjudged it and sat so hard she bit her tongue and gave her backside quite the bruising. Isern had to shoot out a quick hand to stop her chair going over backwards.
‘You’re drunk,’ she said.
‘I am drunk,’ said Rikke, proudly. She’d hit the chagga pipe as well and everything had a lovely glow. Faces all shiny and smeary and happy in the candlelight.
‘You’re proper shitted,’ said Isern. ‘But people are forgiving of you because you’re young, foolish and strangely lovable.’
‘I am lovable.’ Rikke took another drink, which met just a smidge of burp-sick coming up the other way and made her half-choke and splutter ale everywhere. Would’ve felt extremely undignified if she’d been less drunk. As it was, she just laughed. ‘And being drunk, well, that’s the point of a feasht.’
Isern’s eyes slipped slowly towards her over the rim of her cup. ‘The word is feast.’